Stéphane Arguillère (IFRAE / Inalco)
Much has been written about the debate on “emptiness-of-other,” “subitism” and “practice linages,”1 to the extent that some may have presented it as something that became central as early as the 14th century and remained so for the rest of Tibetan intellectual history. At some point, such an ideological device was constructed, but it actually became central as a commonly shared doxographical framework only in the nineteenth century with the “non-sectarian” (ris med) masters of eastern Tibet in their struggle for life against Gelug hegemony. In historical research, it is important to deconstruct false historiography—that is to say, to understand these late narratives as an ideological product of their own time, expressing the power games of that period, and basically irrelevant to the era we are studying.
- The full history of the fabrication of these amalgamations and stereotypes has not yet been written. The fact that they cannot be used as a frame of reference for serious history would not prevent them from being good objects of study for the historian. The purpose of inserting these explanations is merely to exorcise them so that we can appreciate the actual facts without the superimposition of irrelevant ideology. [↩]
