Saint-Making in Tibetan Buddhism. The Long & Chequered Career of Drukpa Kunley in Tibet, Bhutan & the Modern World

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Antoni Huber
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 574851682

The monograph Saint-Making in Tibetan Buddhism presents an evidence-based taxonomy spanning the last five centuries to reveal the diverse species of one of Tibetan Buddhisms most popular saints, Drukpa Kunley. Employing a wealth of indigenous textual sources, works of art, and ethnographic observation, the aim is to highlight the widely ignored but clearly demonstrable phenomenon of saint-making. The work argues for the central importance of saint-making, not only in how highly revered religious identities can be better understood and defined by scholars, but also as a core feature of Tibetan Buddhism itself. Saint-making is shown to involve far more than writing the hagiographic texts which have remained the focus of almost all existing scholarship; it also necessarily depends upon certain forms of oral, ritual, visual-artistic, architectural and performative culture for its success. In documenting various cults based upon six often radically divergent Drukpa Kunley identities in Tibet, Bhutan and the modern world beyond Asia, particular attention is given to the saint-makers, the creative agents who crafted and promoted those identities. Each successive saint-maker, and their respective saint-making projects, are historical 1y situated in terms of the biographical, political, cultural and economic factors that influenced them. This demonstrates how each newly produced species of Drukpa Kunley should be viewed as a locality-specific response to a saint-makers own place, time, circumstances and goals. The work concludes that scholars need to employ far more explicit theoretical and rigorous methodological approaches when describing and evaluating highly revered religious persons in Tibetan Buddhism. The detailed case study of Drukpa Kunley itself offers an example of how that can be achieved. publication financing support is sought to cover production (copy-editing, graphics, layout) and publication costs for the book Saint-Making in Tibetan Buddhism to appear as an immediate Open-Access publication (so-called Gold OA model). Of the two cost estimates I solicited, I strongly favor that by the Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften for the following reasons: i. lower overall costs; ii. the manuscript has already passed this publishers anonymous academic peer review process, been accepted for publication in the final form, and a contract for publication exists; iii. the security that a national level scientific institution will maintain long-term digital hosting of an Open-Access publication.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants