"The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism" By Jacob P. Dalton

Published in June 2011 by Yale University Press, “The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism” by Jacob P. Dalton examines mythic and ritual themes of violence, demon taming, and blood sacrifice in Tibetan Buddhism.
From the Yale University Press website: “Taking as its starting point Tibet’s so-called age of fragmentation (842 to 986 C.E.), the book draws on previously unstudied manuscripts discovered in the “library cave” near Dunhuang, on the old Silk Road. These ancient documents, it argues, demonstrate how this purportedly inactive period in Tibetan history was in fact crucial to the Tibetan assimilation of Buddhism, and particularly to the spread of violent themes from tantric Buddhism into Tibet at the local and the popular levels. Having shed light on this “dark age” of Tibetan history, the second half of the book turns to how, from the late tenth century onward, the period came to play a vital symbolic role in Tibet, as a violent historical “other” against which the Tibetan Buddhist tradition defined itself.”
“The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism” was the winner of the 2013 E. Gene Smith Book Prize on Inner Asia given by the China and Inner Asian Council, both are regional councils of the Association for Asian Studies. It was also winner of the 2013 Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize sponsored by the South Asia council, a regional council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Buy the book on Amazon here: http://amzn.to/12CvIks