Thinking Through Changing Times: A Review of Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood

Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire by Matthew W. King

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Oftentimes historians and scholars are called upon to interpret the past, but they cannot always divorce themselves from the present. In this work of intense academic rigor, Matthew King explores the life and work of Zava Damdin, a Mongolian Buddhist monk at the turn of the 20th century living through China and Inner Asia's turn from the Qing era to socialism.

I must start this review off by noting that this is an academic work, which means that Prof. King uses the specialized language of his field of study to relay this story. As such, not only can this book be rather impenetrable to the layman, but it already assumes that the reader knows something of the history of this period in Chinese and Inner Asian history. It covers over the last decades of the Qing dynasty's reign over China and it's reshaping into the short-lived Republic of China. At the same time, Russia was also transforming from Tsarism to communism and Buddhist communities, like Zava Damdin's, would be targeted and purged during and shortly after his death. But Prof. King doesn't focus too much on this. Instead, this is more of an intellectual history showing how Damdin's major works, particularly The Golden Book, took shape over the course of his life. Damdin was an incredibly learned scholar and Prof. King does a tremendous job of showing how influential his works were back then and still are today. Even the present Dalai Lama has been known to teach from Zava Damdin's works. Prof. King also shows how Zava Damdin tried to cope with Inner Asia's turn towards socialism and the persecution that was only just beginning. Like many conservatives in rapidly changing times, Zava Damdin clung to his traditional upbringing in Buddhist scholasticism, even writing some pointed criticisms of the Western worldview that were beginning to be expounded by other Buddhist scholars during his final years.

This is not a work that should be approached lightly. Nor is it one that should be approached on it's own as I found myself wishing throughout that I knew more about this time and place, or that Prof. King would give more background to this work. Though the academic language used throughout is difficult, for those of you who are interested in the changes affecting Asia at the beginning of the 20th century, this is a great work to complement your studies. The layman though might struggle with this though

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