Comment

In: Comparative studies in society and history, Band 3, Heft 4, S. 439-442

Abstract

Professor Miller adds more information to help build up a knowledge of how Lamaist monasteries have functioned in the recent past. Such monasteries performed (and in some cases still perform) not only religious and social functions but political and economic ones. As regards their internal financial systems, they seem to have had similar organizations all of which varied somewhat according to local environments. But Professor Miller comments on one common thread: the uisa system, and appraises its significance for the original spread of Inner Asian monasticism, for the fluctuations in fortunes of individual monasteries, and for the economy as a whole.