Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Polymaths of Socialist China

Winner, 2024 E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies

Honorable Mention, 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize Post-1900, Association for Asian Studies

In the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes. Renowned as the “Three Polymaths,” Tséten Zhabdrung (1910–1985), Mugé Samten (1914–1993), and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé (1927–1997) earned this symbolic title for their e...