Johan Elverskog
Biographic Data
| ID | 501907 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johan Elverskog |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johan |
| FAMILY NAME | Elverskog |
| SIGNATURE | ELVERSKOG J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Southern Methodist University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3701-9640 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
A History of Uyghur Buddhism
Religious Exchange
This chapter explores the nature and consequences of the previously unprecedented possibility of religious exchange across Eurasia made possible by the Mongol Empire.
The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Chinggis Khan and his progeny ruled over two-thirds of Eurasia. Connecting East, West, North and South, the Mongols integrated most of the Old World, promoting unprecedented cross-cultural contacts and triggering the reshuffle of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical identities. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Empire holistically in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and …
A Mongol-Mughal lens on religion and empire in Eurasian history
This article introduces this special volume on the Mughal policy of sulh-i kull by situating the collection of articles in relation to broader developments across Eurasia. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration...a singular conformity may be fou…
Beyond the Steppe Frontier
Reviewed by: Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border by Sören Urbansky Johan Elverskog (bio) Sören Urbansky. Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border. xii + 367 pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. ISBN 9780691181684. In this incredibly rich and theoretically sophisticated study, Sören Urbansky uses the Argun Basin to explore the fascinating history of the Chinese-Russian borderland…
Mongol Time Enters a Qing World
Our Great Qing
"In a sweeping overview of four centuries of Mongolian history that draws on previously untapped sources, Johan Elverskog opens up totally new perspectives on some of the most urgent questions historians have recently raised about the role of Buddhism in the constitution of the Qing empire. Theoretically informed and strongly comparative in approach, Elverskog's work tells a fascinating and important story that will interest all scholars working …
The Mongols, Astrology and Eurasian History
Wei-Cheng Lin. Building a Sacred Mountain
Mount Wutai has been the most important sacred mountain in East Asia for almost a millennium and a half. The main question animating this historically and theoretically rich study is how this came to be, especially in light of the fact that this mountain had no sacred pedigree. Thus, unlike other sacred sites, like Jerusalem, that present us with a mytho-historical stratigraphy of competing religious claims, Mount Wutai appears nigh ex nihilo in …
(Asian Studies + Anthropocene)4
In his Jungian-inspired utopianism, Joseph Campbell (1988, 32) once declared that the famous "Blue Marble" shot of earth from space (see figure 1) could potentially become a symbol of a new mythology that celebrated our common humanity. Of course, much as Jung and other universalizing theorists have been laid to rest over the last quarter-century by poststructural, postmodern, and postcolonial thought, so too apparently has any new mythology of o…
Fuzzy Pluralism
This article, part of a Common Knowledge symposium on "the consequence of blur," concerns the place of religion in the historical literature on Asia. It finds a minimalist approach to religion in the case of Buddhism and a maximalist approach in the case of Islam: historians of Asia have little to say about Buddhism, while they exaggerate the role of the Muslim religion. This problem is acute when treating historical circumstances in which Buddhi…
Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road
This groundbreaking work challenges contemporary stereotypes by revealing how both Buddhist and Muslim religious traditions were shaped by a millennium of cross-cultural exchange along the Silk Road from Iran to China
A Buddhist Origin for Islamic Blockprinting
Two Buddhisms in Contemporary Mongolia
In a recent overview of the ‘two Buddhisms’ thesis of Buddhism in the West, Paul Numrich argued for the continued validity of this typology. In particular, through an extensive overview of current scholarship, he convincingly showed that the oft-noted dichotomy between immigrant Buddhism and western convert Buddhism remains a valuable heuristic tool. At the same he also suggested various avenues for further research. One such topic was the need t…
The Legend of Muna Mountain
This article explores the development and transformation of the legend of Muna Mountain, which describes Chinggis Khan's funeral cortège. In particular, it argues that this legend arose among the post-Yuan Mongols in order to sanctify 'Inner Mongolia' as the new homeland through the establishment of the cult of Chinggis Khan at the Eight White Tents. Over time, however, both the legend and the cult changed and these developments are further explo…
Time, temporality, and imperial transition
Time is basic to human consciousness and action, yet paradoxically historians rarely ask how it is understood, manipulated, recorded, or lived. Cataclysmic events in particular disrupt and realign the dynamics of temporality among people. For historians, the temporal effects of such events on large polities such as empires—the power projections of which always involve the dictation of time—are especially significant. This important and intriguing…
The Mongols at China's Edge
The Story of Zhu and the Mongols of the Seventeenth Century
The post-Qing Mongol histories of the seventeenth century all contain two stories about the Ming dynasty: a legend ascribing Mongol origins to the Yongle emperor, Zhu Di, and a lengthy and detailed history of Zhu Yuanzhang's rise to power and ultimate conquest of the Yuan.' The Yongle legend is well known. 2 The story of Zhu has languished in obscurity, perhaps because its total historical inaccuracy has led scholars to doubt that the main charac…
Things and the Qing
This article explores how the notion of stasis has shaped the study of Qing Mongolia. In particular it investigates Mongol visual culture in order to reveal how Qing rule and the success of its imperial consolidation was less a stationary monologue of Manchu-Buddhist imperial rule than an on-going fragmented discursive practice
The Jewel Translucent Sūtra
The first full-fledged critical edition and historical study of the Erdeni Tunumal Sudur, the Mongolian history of Altan Khan and his descendants, offering a full-range English-written historical and literary evaluation of this unique and fairly reliable, but long neglected discovery in Mongolian studies. With transcription, word index and English translation, as well as extensive commentary on the historical events of Altan Khan’s reign, especia…
The Jewel Translucent Sūtra
The first full-fledged critical edition and historical study of the Erdeni Tunumal Sudur, the Mongolian history of Altan Khan and his descendants, offering a full-range English-written historical and literary evaluation of this unique and fairly reliable, but long neglected discovery in Mongolian studies. With transcription, word index and English translation, as well as extensive commentary on the historical events of Altan Khan's reign, especia…
(Asian Studies + Anthropocene)4
In his Jungian-inspired utopianism, Joseph Campbell (1988, 32) once declared that the famous "Blue Marble" shot of earth from space (see figure 1) could potentially become a symbol of a new mythology that celebrated our common humanity. Of course, much as Jung and other universalizing theorists have been laid to rest over the last quarter-century by poststructural, postmodern, and postcolonial thought, so too apparently has any new mythology of o…
The Legend of Muna Mountain
This article explores the development and transformation of the legend of Muna Mountain, which describes Chinggis Khan's funeral cortège. In particular, it argues that this legend arose among the post-Yuan Mongols in order to sanctify 'Inner Mongolia' as the new homeland through the establishment of the cult of Chinggis Khan at the Eight White Tents. Over time, however, both the legend and the cult changed and these developments are further explo…
Things and the Qing
This article explores how the notion of stasis has shaped the study of Qing Mongolia. In particular it investigates Mongol visual culture in order to reveal how Qing rule and the success of its imperial consolidation was less a stationary monologue of Manchu-Buddhist imperial rule than an on-going fragmented discursive practice
The Jewel Translucent Sūtra
The first full-fledged critical edition and historical study of the Erdeni Tunumal Sudur, the Mongolian history of Altan Khan and his descendants, offering a full-range English-written historical and literary evaluation of this unique and fairly reliable, but long neglected discovery in Mongolian studies. With transcription, word index and English translation, as well as extensive commentary on the historical events of Altan Khan’s reign, especia…
The Jewel Translucent Sūtra
The first full-fledged critical edition and historical study of the Erdeni Tunumal Sudur, the Mongolian history of Altan Khan and his descendants, offering a full-range English-written historical and literary evaluation of this unique and fairly reliable, but long neglected discovery in Mongolian studies. With transcription, word index and English translation, as well as extensive commentary on the historical events of Altan Khan's reign, especia…
The Story of Zhu and the Mongols of the Seventeenth Century
The post-Qing Mongol histories of the seventeenth century all contain two stories about the Ming dynasty: a legend ascribing Mongol origins to the Yongle emperor, Zhu Di, and a lengthy and detailed history of Zhu Yuanzhang's rise to power and ultimate conquest of the Yuan.' The Yongle legend is well known. 2 The story of Zhu has languished in obscurity, perhaps because its total historical inaccuracy has led scholars to doubt that the main charac…
Things and the Qing
This article explores how the notion of stasis has shaped the study of Qing Mongolia. In particular it investigates Mongol visual culture in order to reveal how Qing rule and the success of its imperial consolidation was less a stationary monologue of Manchu-Buddhist imperial rule than an on-going fragmented discursive practice
Time, temporality, and imperial transition
Time is basic to human consciousness and action, yet paradoxically historians rarely ask how it is understood, manipulated, recorded, or lived. Cataclysmic events in particular disrupt and realign the dynamics of temporality among people. For historians, the temporal effects of such events on large polities such as empires—the power projections of which always involve the dictation of time—are especially significant. This important and intriguing…
The Mongols at China's Edge
Two Buddhisms in Contemporary Mongolia
In a recent overview of the ‘two Buddhisms’ thesis of Buddhism in the West, Paul Numrich argued for the continued validity of this typology. In particular, through an extensive overview of current scholarship, he convincingly showed that the oft-noted dichotomy between immigrant Buddhism and western convert Buddhism remains a valuable heuristic tool. At the same he also suggested various avenues for further research. One such topic was the need t…
The Legend of Muna Mountain
This article explores the development and transformation of the legend of Muna Mountain, which describes Chinggis Khan's funeral cortège. In particular, it argues that this legend arose among the post-Yuan Mongols in order to sanctify 'Inner Mongolia' as the new homeland through the establishment of the cult of Chinggis Khan at the Eight White Tents. Over time, however, both the legend and the cult changed and these developments are further explo…
Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road
This groundbreaking work challenges contemporary stereotypes by revealing how both Buddhist and Muslim religious traditions were shaped by a millennium of cross-cultural exchange along the Silk Road from Iran to China
A Buddhist Origin for Islamic Blockprinting
Fuzzy Pluralism
This article, part of a Common Knowledge symposium on "the consequence of blur," concerns the place of religion in the historical literature on Asia. It finds a minimalist approach to religion in the case of Buddhism and a maximalist approach in the case of Islam: historians of Asia have little to say about Buddhism, while they exaggerate the role of the Muslim religion. This problem is acute when treating historical circumstances in which Buddhi…
(Asian Studies + Anthropocene)4
In his Jungian-inspired utopianism, Joseph Campbell (1988, 32) once declared that the famous "Blue Marble" shot of earth from space (see figure 1) could potentially become a symbol of a new mythology that celebrated our common humanity. Of course, much as Jung and other universalizing theorists have been laid to rest over the last quarter-century by poststructural, postmodern, and postcolonial thought, so too apparently has any new mythology of o…
Wei-Cheng Lin. Building a Sacred Mountain
Mount Wutai has been the most important sacred mountain in East Asia for almost a millennium and a half. The main question animating this historically and theoretically rich study is how this came to be, especially in light of the fact that this mountain had no sacred pedigree. Thus, unlike other sacred sites, like Jerusalem, that present us with a mytho-historical stratigraphy of competing religious claims, Mount Wutai appears nigh ex nihilo in …
The Mongols, Astrology and Eurasian History
Mongol Time Enters a Qing World
Our Great Qing
"In a sweeping overview of four centuries of Mongolian history that draws on previously untapped sources, Johan Elverskog opens up totally new perspectives on some of the most urgent questions historians have recently raised about the role of Buddhism in the constitution of the Qing empire. Theoretically informed and strongly comparative in approach, Elverskog's work tells a fascinating and important story that will interest all scholars working …
Beyond the Steppe Frontier
Reviewed by: Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border by Sören Urbansky Johan Elverskog (bio) Sören Urbansky. Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border. xii + 367 pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. ISBN 9780691181684. In this incredibly rich and theoretically sophisticated study, Sören Urbansky uses the Argun Basin to explore the fascinating history of the Chinese-Russian borderland…
A Mongol-Mughal lens on religion and empire in Eurasian history
This article introduces this special volume on the Mughal policy of sulh-i kull by situating the collection of articles in relation to broader developments across Eurasia. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration...a singular conformity may be fou…
Religious Exchange
This chapter explores the nature and consequences of the previously unprecedented possibility of religious exchange across Eurasia made possible by the Mongol Empire.
The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Chinggis Khan and his progeny ruled over two-thirds of Eurasia. Connecting East, West, North and South, the Mongols integrated most of the Old World, promoting unprecedented cross-cultural contacts and triggering the reshuffle of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical identities. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Empire holistically in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and …
A History of Uyghur Buddhism
History (17 works) · Eurasian Exchange Networks (15 works) · Ancient history (14 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (13 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Buddhism (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Art (6 works)