Kailas Histories, by Alex McKay

Tibet’s Mount Kailas is one of the world’s great pilgrimage centres,
renowned as an ancient sacred site that embodies a universal
sacrality. But Kailas Histories: Renunciate Traditions and the
Construction of Himalayan Sacred Geography demonstrates that
this understanding is a recent construction by British colonial,
Hindu modernist, and New Age interests. Using multiple sources,
including eldwork, Alex McKay describes how the early Indic
vision of a heavenly mountain named Kailas became identied
with actual mountains. He emphasises renunciate agency in
demonstrating how local beliefs were subsumed as Kailas
developed within Hindu, Buddhist, and Bön traditions, how ve
mountains in the Indian Himalayan are also named Kailas, and
how Kailas sacred geography constructions and a sacred Ganges
source region were related.

Leserschaft
For all students and scholars of Indo-Tibetan religion and history -
ancient and modern – and those interested in pilgrimage,
renunciation, sacred geography and the European colonial
encounter with Asia.