Marginal Buddhists: Frontier Lamas and Religious Formation in Tibet’s Southern Borderlands

This paper examines a purported “borderland Buddhism” along Tibet’s Mangyul Gungtang corridor, a trans-Himalayan conduit for trade, transportation, and religious exchange between Tibet and South Asia since the seventh century. Focusing on the hermitage of Drakar Taso and its nineteenth-century abbot Chokyi Wangchuk (1775–1837), the paper develops the concept of the “frontier lama”—a religious exemplar whose authority and institutional practice are constituted through work from the margins rather than proximity to centers of power. Drawing on Chokyi Wangchuk’s extensive writings, and engaging scholarship on medieval European frontier monasticism, the paper argues that the frontier lama’s defining features—border mobility, stewardship of endangered lineages, and synthesis of doctrinal traditions—represent a coherent pattern of Tibetan religious activity in the southern borderlands. It further contends that the borderlands functioned not as passive periphery but as an active site for the formation, preservation, and transmission of religious culture.