Itches & Scratches: Part One

I just finished reading a funny book, and for that reason it's much recommended, even if I fear it may be out of print far ahead of its time. It's called The Hotel on the Roof of the World: From Miss Tibet to Shangri-La. It was written by Alec Le Sueur (b. 1963), a hotel sales manager. It has nothing whatsoever to do with today's blog attempt, which if all goes as planned ought to be about traditional implements for the relief of itching, which in its turn probably in no way reflects on the high international standards of the Lhasa hotel that used to be called "The Holiday Inn." (Now it's called "The Former Holiday Inn.")

It was only while reading another less amusing, perhaps, but no less interesting book, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture, by John Kieschnick, that I started thinking seriously about this anyway serious and delicate subject. I'm speaking of my new-found fascination with scratching devices, not Material Culture in general, although with the publication of yet another 'material' book by Japan Buddhologist Rambelli we seem to have entered a new phase in the materialization of the Buddhist world. Well, at least as far as two academic giants of Buddhology are concerned.

I imagine by now some of you are already humming a well-known song by Madonna — by the way, herself a convert to the indubitably spiritual teachings of Kabbalah, even if of the Ashlagian / Bergian sort at which so many of our more traditionally-minded kabbalists sniff long and hard while looking down their noses and readjusting their spectacles. (Does anybody know the real history of those red wrist-strings? I'm convinced it's a Tibetan Buddhist practice adapted to Judaism, an "invented tradition," but I'd love to have my beliefs overturned if they turn out to be sadly mistaken.) Kieschnick and Rambelli, from what I know of them, are, like Madonna, not the least bit interested in reducing people, in their case Buddhists, to a set of accoutrements. Not at all.

As Kieschnick at least makes clear (I haven't read Rambelli's book yet), paying more attention to the arts and artifacts of Buddhist culture can give new insights into the actual lives of Buddhists. Even those more lonely academics who rely mainly on texts for their information will start reading from them with new eyes. It doesn't mean becoming a 'materialist' (which would signify that the material stuff we have makes us what we are, rather like the technological historians mentioned in an earlier Tibeto-logic blog, who see mechanical innovations as the primary gear that makes every other little cog in human culture turn and do its business).

Of the many chapters, two in particular I found most captivating: The one on sugar, of course. But also the one on the Ruyi scepter. The Ruyi scepter is not exactly the first thing that leaps to the front of the mind when broaching the subject of Chinese culture. Even Sinologists might not know much about it depending on their areas of expertise. The very idea of specializing in a particular realm of knowledge implies one or many shadow realms of things that are ignored in the process of focussing on that more 'special' subject. If I may use the phrase without insulting anyone's intelligence, there are "areas of ignorance" in even the best informed of minds.

That said, I'm assuming you will not be overly appalled to learn that this blog writer, a not-so-well-informed one after all, and one with sub-standard and declining recollection functionings, could not recall ever having heard of Ruyi until Kieschnick brought them to his attention. J.K. says that there have been two basic theories on how the Ruyi originated. One group of investigators believes it came from India as an import item along with Buddhism. Another group favors indigenous Chinese non-Buddhist conception and birth (with the Buddhists perhaps latching on to it in later and less interesting times).

But wait, I'm sorry, I haven't told you what a Ruyi is yet. Let's just say that in different times and places during Chinese history, the Ruyi was understood in different ways:

1. as a back scratcher,
2. as a baton used in debate when making a point,
3. as a royal sceptre to be raised when making a ruling,
4. as an emblem of Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra,
5. as a kind of lectern with notes for monastic preaching.

By now you must be wondering what a Ruyi looks like. I don't have a photo to call my own, but thanks to the web, you can find yourself in the time it takes to wink an eye transported to a richly ornamented paradise of Ruyi photographs at the Palace Museum website (the one in Beijing, not the one in Taipei, not that it matters all that much to anyone at this moment). Look at the pictures, but I don't advise spending too much time reading what it says there, because I believe there are some small but perhaps crucial parts that you should not find convincing. It's surprising to see a PRC site giving so much credit to Indian Buddhism instead of choosing the Sino-generative, or nationalistic (a word that signifies, in translation: everything of worth comes from the group of people I identify myself as belonging to), alternative. Still, there is no Sanskrit word anuruddha even remotely linked to itching and scratching, and if Ruyi has anything at all to do with Sanskrit riddhi, 'super-ordinary abilities' like walking on water or passing through walls, I just don't get it. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of my story. What does a lowly plebian back-scratcher have to do with a scepter of royal power? On second thought, I'm sure I am. Getting ahead, that is. Let's backtrack.

First of all, I think there is no reason to think there is, or would be, anything connected to the Ruyi in Tibetan cultural history. I even know of no knowledge of the Ruyi on the part of any Tibetan writer of times past (I really recommend the chapter on Chinese religions in the newly translated text by Thuken if you want to see how inadequate even the best-informed old Tibetan-language accounts of Chinese culture could be). The absence of the Ruyi in Tibetan cultural consciousness shouldn't be very surprising. We're talking about people who thought of Kong-tse as an obscure progenitor of some particular types of astrology known mainly to professional astrologers, or of an equally rather obscure and certainly arcane (well, to myself in any case) ritual called the toe (gto).*

*(True, a Kong-tse name-sake also oddly pops up in Bön religion's account of the life of their founder Lord Shenrab, something non-Bönpos will scarcely know anything about...)

To try and be fair to both sides we could ask, How much did Chinese of centuries past (and still today, in large part) know about Tibetan cultural heroes like Guru Rinpoche, the figure perhaps better known in the world by his Sanskritic name Padmasambhava? In recent years there have even been a few fairly high-profile incidents of Chinese authorities destroying images of Guru Rinpoche (in both Samye Monastery in central Tibet and at Mt. Kailash in western Tibet). Obviously, they don't 'get' him. Meanwhile erecting outdoor images of Confucius in China is considered highly meritorious (Murray's article). Why, don't you remember how some delusionary neo-Maoist Chinese actually sponsored and erected a 35-ton earthquake-resistant outdoor statue of Mao in Tibet? Not that I find the double standard unexpected, given who we're dealing with. Still, is it even conceivable that they would want to honor a ruler responsible for over 40 million deaths that had nothing to do with international warfare, a man evidently intent on annihilating his own nation? Ok, you're right... Obviously, I don't 'get' him.

To get back to the Ruyi, I thought it would be interesting to test the idea of the Ruyi's Indian origins by looking at Tibetan-language Vinaya sources about itches and scratchers. Perhaps the answer would be found in them. I won't be sure until I find out. All, or very nearly all, of the Vinaya texts that were translated into Tibetan from Indian languages have been put up in digital form by the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP), so it has become a fairly simple matter to search for words in them.

But before starting we ought to find out what the classical Tibetan word for 'back scratcher' was. The word ruyi in Chinese means 'as one wishes,' but I don't know what to do with that. There is so much wish-granting going on in Buddhism, it simply is not specific enough. We have a great pre-modern Tibetan word for 'itch,' which is zatrug (za-'phrug). These itches are sensations that flare up or 'arise' (langs) on the body. We know that the Dharmaguptaka sect's version of the Vinaya, translated into Chinese but not into Tibetan, mentions the Ruyi in a list of things that might be made from ivory, so we could search for the Tibetan word for 'ivory,' which is baso (ba-so). Another item in the list of things that might be made of ivory is called the khabrel (khab-ral), a special Vinaya term for 'needle container.'

Did you think to ask the obvious question, What is the classical Tibetan word for back scratchers? Well, the only literary source (as distinguished from lexical sources) I know for the Tibetan word with this meaning is (on p. 18) in the late Michael Aris' edition and translation of a late 18th century work by Jigmé Lingpa, one of the most famous teachers in the recent history of the Nyingma school. Here the Tibetan word corresponding to 'back scratcher' is yatrug (g.ya'-phrug). The first syllable of it corresponds to yawa (g.ya'-ba), a word for itching known at least as early as the first decades of the 9th century, although I do suspect the bodily sensation goes back much further. Trug ('phrug) the dictionary identifies as synonymous with ndre ('brad), which means to scrape, scratch or abrade (hmmm. No... not going into it, although, hmmmm... Why would that Tibetan word 'brad look so similar to that English word abrade with its excellent Latin pedigree?).

So without any more ado about anything, let's set off to locate those ACIP texts and start word-searching for those just-mentioned Tibetan words.

— Several hours later... dum-de-dum-dum —

Oh my, Where did my day go? Did I say it was going to be easy? This is a lot more complicated than I imagined. I didn't find any of those words in the Vinaya Vibhanga, but I did find a number of references to yenpa (g.yan-pa), a disease characterized by itching, which might be treated by the application of mustard seed oil. It's because of this itching disease, which for want of anything more scientifically precise I will just call 'prickly heat' (a common affliction in very hot places in the world, including India where the texts were written), that the monks were allowed to use a special under-garment called the 'itch cloth' or 'itch cover' (Tibetan yen-gab, [g.yan-dgab], in Sanskrit, kaṇḍū praticchadana; in Pāli, kaṇḍu paṭicchādi). It appears as one of the thirteen essential possessions of a monk (or as one of the 9 permissible cloth articles, I'm not so clear on this at the moment). Its purpose was not so much to cure or alleviate the disease as it was to protect the robes from being soiled by any oozing from the wounds that might result from scratching the vicious itching (see the Upasak book).

Oh my goodness, there is a lot more itching lore than I had bargained for. I'm afraid it will have to wait for a second installment. I know I've left the puppets hanging for months now, so I'm not so sure you're prepared to take me at my word any more. Well, in my defense I've got things to do and people to see and miles to go before I sleep. It seems that the real place to look for back scratchers is in the Vinaya rules about what monks and nuns can and cannot do while bathing. I hope you, like me, are itching to learn more. I won't leave it on the back burner for very long, I promise. Promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. Thaaat's now it goes.

~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~

Reading up on itching etc.:

Michael Aris, 'Jigs-med-gling-pa's Discourse on India of 1789: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Lho-phyogs rgya-gar-gyi gtam brtag-pa brgyad-kyi me-long, Studia Philological Buddhica series no. 9, The International Institute of Buddhist Studies (Tokyo 1995). By the way, Michael Aris, a prominent Tibetologist, is survived by his more famous wife, the brave and unfortunate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in the news once again recently.

Boaz Huss, All you Need is LAV: Madonna and Postmodern Kabbalah, Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 95, no. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 611-624.

Matthew T. Kapstein, ed., Buddhism between Tibet & China, Wisdom (Boston 2009). I'm just beginning to dip into this multi-authored volume. A list of authors and titles is here at Indologica.

John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture, Princeton University Press (Princeton 2003). You can get what is known as a "snippet view" or a "limited preview" here.

Shen-yu Lin, The Tibetan Image of Confucius. Contained in: Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, vol. 12 (March 2007), pp. 105-129. Available online. Here is a direct link to the PDF. We may also look forward to a forthcoming paper on Kong-tse in Bön literature by Kalsang Norbu Gurung (Leiden University). When the late Dawa Norbu said, "For no Tibetan knew about Confucius," he wasn't far off the mark, even if it is true that Tibetans knew about a Kong-tse who scarcely resembled Confucius in any meaningful way.

Julia K. Murray, "Idols" in the Temple: Icons and the Cult of Confucius, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 68, no. 2 (May 2009), pp. 371-411. Note the photo of the freestanding Confucius image on p. 405. This officially sanctioned standard PRC image was created in 2006.

Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism, Stanford University Press (Stanford 2008). I hesitate to recommend commercial links, as a general principle, but here at the S.U.P. page you can find a table of contents and read the introduction gratis. I will not be held responsible for what happens to your credit card number after you feed it into the electronic order forms that are popping up all over the web. (I'm serious. I won't.)

Alec Le Sueur, The Hotel on the Roof of the World: From Miss Tibet to Shangri-La, RDR Books (Oakland 2003). I found it hilarious in some parts, even in some of the very parts that might seem offensive to those inclined to take offense, like his portrayal of Tibetan Buddhist merit-making practices. (It could just be me.) You can read the first pages of the book for free, in PDF format, here.

Thuken Losang Chökyi Nyima (1737-1802), The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems: A Tibetan Study of Religious Thought, tr. by Geshé Lhundub Sopa, et al., ed. by Roger R. Jackson, The Library of Tibetan Classics, Wisdom Publications (Boston 2009). See p. 357 for this Mongour Tibetan Buddhist monk's ethnographic observations on Chinese Buddhist monks:

"The Chinese Buddhists do not eat meat and they do not ride on animals; the monk's robe overlap[s] like birds' feathers. As there is only a single class of monk in this country, one need not worry about making a mistake in identification, so there is no tradition of sectarian markings for distinguishing one from another. In Chinese tradition, yellow is the auspicious color of the king and red of the ministers, and the king of that time explicitly forbade either color to clerics. By virtue of the fact that according to Chinese tradition it is shameful for bare flesh to be exposed, the heshangs spread the custom of wearing dark-colored robes with sleeves. Later on, Tibetan lamas came... The separately developed customs, whereby the heshangs wear dark-colored cloth and the Tibetan monks wear red or yellow robes, persist to the present day."

Thuken's words "only a single class of monk in this country" and "no tradition of sectarian markings for distinguishing" are arguably misleading in light of what we may know from Kieschnick's book. Kieschnick tells us (on page 89) that before the 10th century monks from different regions of China could be distinguished by the colors of their robes: pitch black in Jiangnan region, brown around Kaifeng, etc. But since then the colors gradually standardized, and nowadays Chinese monks usually wear black or gray robes (with sleeves, and sometimes even trousers, that were never used in India, Tibet or the Theravada countries of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia). Purple robes were awarded by rulers to monks of special merit, the 1st such award made in 690 CE. Robes could also be symbolic of abbatial succession and Dharma transmission, and as such certainly a mark of distinction with sectarian characteristics, even a mark of leadership over an entire sect. But I suppose Thuken is just trying to make a contrast here for the sake of his Tibetan audience. We Tibetan Buddhists, he is saying, may know to which sect a monk belongs by seeing what they wear, but not so (or not so much so) in Chinese Buddhism...

C.S. Upasak, Dictionary of Early Buddhist Monastic Terms (Based on Pali Literature), Bharati Prakashan (Varanasi 1975). See p. 64 for the entry on the itch cloth:

"This cloth is allowed when a monk is suffering from itches or other cutaneous diseases. It is used as an under-wear in order to keep the antaravāsaka (sarong) free from being soiled by the wound..."

The two poor photos are my own this time. The frontispiece is called "The palm at the end of the mind," with a hat tip to Wallace Stevens. The endpiece? "The flower at the heart of the thistle." Maybe I'll start giving names to all my photos.

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I think I'll find another way
There's so much more to know
I guess I'll die another day
It's not my time to go.

— "Die Another Day," Madonna

Bell Envy

This engraving is from the German-born Jesuit Athanasius Kircher's ground-breaking book in oriental studies entitled China Illustrata. It was first published in Amsterdam in 1667 CE in Latin, and almost immediately translated into Dutch, French and English. In its day, it was a publishing success story. It exerted a significant influence on people's ideas all over Europe.

When I look at this engraving, it seems to exude rich odors of old, but not-all-that-old European stereotypes about heathen idol worship. To be sure, portraits such as this one doubtlessly had their own influences on the negative mental images lurking in occidental minds. If there is something Egyptian-looking about it, that's not accidental. One main thesis of Kircher's book is that all of oriental religion actually came from the west and had its origins in Egypt. Bits of Egyptianizing, Persianizing and Sinicizing tendencies may be discerned here. Europeanizing, too. Do you see it? One thing that appears — to my eye at least — to be missing is any visual clue that would tell us that this scene is supposed to be taking place in Tibet.

While Kircher's ideas about Egyptian hieroglyphics and their relation to Chinese ideograms were later discounted and today regarded as highly laughable, to give just one example of the colossal wrong turns his brilliant mind sometimes took, it would be wrong of us to forget his positive role in widening knowledge of Asia in Europe. This would be just another tediously predictable example of the modern world's complex that consists in building up its self-image by dismissing the past with a sneer. We post-moderns need to get past it, really. Otherwise what would the "post-" mean?

(Right, some say it's code for 'hyper-' and that might not be far off.)

Looking at this picture also reminds us that there were problems in the transmission of knowledge that resulted in distorted pictures such as this. It wasn't all the fault of deliberate misrepresentation, either. Kircher never visited Asia, and the bulk of his book is in fact devoted to a Chinese & Syriac inscription made by Nestorian Christians during the Tang Dynasty. 'Discovered' in 1625, it had created a sensation and a little controversy in Europe (Hsia's article in Findlen's book, and also the Billings article).

This news was considered by some 'too good to be true.' In particular, a Protestant scholar named George Horn accused the Jesuits of self-interested fraud. Since Kircher had written on this monument before, he had both a personal and institutional stake in the arguments that had been made meanwhile. I suppose he needed to defend his honor and his credibility, as we all do, or think we do, from time to time. It might also be significant that as a young man he twice petitioned his Jesuit order to send him as a missionary to China, but was both times turned down.

He sat in his library and his museum in Rome. He based what he knew on missionary and travelers' reports both oral and written, most important for Tibeto-logical purposes being those of John Grueber who journeyed together with Albert d'Orville in 1661 from Peking, past the Blue Lake (Koko Nor, or in Tibetan Tso Ngön) to Lhasa, to "Necbal," to India, where d'Orville understandably expired from sheer exhaustion. In those days, people took notes on what they saw and often made sketches as best they could. When it came time to publish their books, the engravers took their clues from the notes and sketches and did the best they could. This meant considerable leeway in interpretation, Europeanizing things or otherwise distorting them in curious directions.

This engraving, a prime example, is supposed to depict the god Manipe. The name Manipe, not a name known to Tibetans, results from a misinterpretation of the Six Syllable Mantra that then as now was and is most likely to be on Tibetan lips: Om Mani Padme Hum (Tibetans pronounce Padme as pemey). Kircher mistakenly thought the mantra meant, "Manipe save us!"

Donald Lopez, in his book Prisoners of Shangrila (page 117), quotes from the 1669 English version of China Illustrata, part of its description of the "Tangut" religion of Lhasa:

[It] hath a King of its own, and is altogether intangled with the foul Errours of Heathenism, it worshippeth Idols with the difference of Deities; among which they call Menipe, hath the preheminence, and with its ninefold difference of Heads, riseth or terminateth in a Cone of monstrous height... Before this Demon or false God this foolish people performeth their Sacred Rites with many unwonted Gesticulations and Dances, often repeating of these words: O Manipe Mi Hum, O Manipe Mi Hum, that is, O Manipe, save us; and these sottish people are wont to set many sorts of viands and meats before the idol for the propitiating or appeasing of the Deity, and perform such abominations of idolatry.

We ought to compare Van Tuyl's (p. 65) independent translation into modern English, but here we will just supply a part that immediately follows. By "our fathers" he means, of course, Grueber & d'Orville. From this part, at least we may know that there were some drawings for the engraver to work from. Evidently it was Grueber who had the artistic talent:

Our fathers, to illustrate the blind folly of these nations worthy of the pity of lamentation, drew the idol in the form they saw it. Figure XVII shows the idol in the form they saw it. However, they also sent it to me in the form shown by Figure XXI. (These figures, combined in a single engraving, will be reproduced below.)

In Tibetan culture, since at least the 11th century (and probably as tradition would have it going far back into the time of the Tibetan Empire) Buddhists have been repeating the Six Syllables as part of the cult (not in the scary journalistic sense of the word 'cult' of course, but here corresponding to devotional and/or sadhana practice) of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, particularly in the 4-armed form Mahakarunika (Thugjé Chenpo), Great Compassion. It should suffice to say that Tibetans won't recognize anything of themselves in Kircher's description, and would be very right to take offense with him, or even with me for bothering to type it out for the whole world to read.

Now look again at the picture, try to temporarily overcome your revulsion, however righteous, and see how the decapitated heads are piled up as if they were cannonballs on top of the altar together with the offerings. Think for a moment, how many cannonballs would it take to make such a pyramid? I know, you can see that six heads are visible, but how many more would it take to complete the three-dimensional pyramid? Got it? Hold that number securely in your mind.

Now have a look at this detail from a 15th-century image of 11-faced Avalokiteshvara from the Rubin Museum (item no. 88, with many more examples here).

If you are still with me, I guess by now you've understood that the placement of the heads on the altar, weirdly separated from the body of the Bodhisattva, is entirely due to the engraver's misunderstanding. He was very literally unable to imagine the form of the deity correctly on the basis of the directions he received. That the illustrations in China Illustrata were not satisfactory was noticed by the surviving Tibet-traveler Grueber, who wrote to Kircher saying,

I wish you had at least sent me the headings of the chapters before going to press; I should certainly have supplied you with several data of no small importance. These I intend to send you at some future time — perhaps shortly, together with the whole of my journal, which as yet I have not been able to finish on account of my continuous work among the soldiers. (Note: he served as an army chaplain for Austrian soldiers in Transylvania.)

There are certainly points in China Illustrata that need correction, especially the drawings, but it is better to leave things as they are, though I shall send you the emendations for insertion in case the work should be reprinted. (See the Wessels book, p. 168.)

One of those points that required correction was, if you've been paying close attention, the number of heads, which Kircher — once again mistaken — counted as nine. Neither Grueber's book manuscript nor his journal has ever been found, and we are largely reliant on Kircher (and of course on a few surviving letters) for the little we know of his travels.

I don't want to lock horns, not today at least, with Kircher about whether or not the Egyptians were the first or, failing that, the most influential people to conceive the idea to build dwellings for divine or spirit presences of one kind or another and then treat them to human hospitality.

(Anyway, ancient Israelite temple cult wasn't all that different from other parts of the Middle East... The incense burning, lamp lighting, food offerings and prostrations in our frontispiece were all done there as well. Only the 'empty niche' syndrome would seem to have set Jerusalem apart; see Haran.)

I'll just state what I know with assurance to be true, by saying I don't know who started it or where. I doubt you do either.

I also don't want to get into one of those very important 'Big' debates about intellectual or theological or moral superiority of one religion over another. Not today. In modern inter-religious dialog, we don't speak of arguments for religious supremacy or superiority, but talk instead about problems with "triumphalism." Wording seems significant, significance not that much...

Today I intended to talk about something immensely more trivial, touched off by this and another recent blog entry from Tibetan Buddhist Digital Altar about the Chinese-style bell at Tandruk Temple near Tsetang. A photograph of that bell, taken by the late Hugh Richardson, shows a strange and inexplicable hand-print that at least appears to be impressed into the metal, just as we often see handprints (and footprints) in Tibet pressed into solid rock. (I hate to ask you to take my word for it, but anybody who has spent much time around Tibetans knows how ordinary and common these miraculous objects are.) This bell, like the earlier and very similar one at Samyé Monastery, was sponsored by an Empress, a Queen of Trisongdetsen, one of five, who later became a nun (her story is told in Uebach's essay, pages 40 to 42).

That these bells are in the usual Chinese style, as we can know by just looking at the overall shape, is underlined by the fact that the Tibetan sources even borrow the Chinese name for 'bell' which is otherwise but rarely encountered in Tibetan. The Chinese word is:

鐘

zhōng "bell"

The Tibetan borrowing is pronounced chong:

ཅོང་

The usual Tibetan word for the bell, usually meaning the small handbell that looks like this — ࿄is drilbu:

དྲིལ་བུ་

***These Tibetan words and images were produced on what is known as a "unicode picker," which you can try for yourself at this site.

So, anyway, what is this we see near the back of Kircher's book?

• You can see a later engraving of the same scene here.

On your left, the "Campana Erfordiensis," and on your right, weighing in at an amazing 120,000 pounds is the "Campana Pekinensis." Well, translating the Latin labels into English, what we have here are a Bell of Erford and a Bell of Pekin[g] (which would be Beijing to you younger people). In the text of the accompanying letter by Brother Ferdinand Verbist in Pequin (!) to Brother Grueber in Siganfu, as translated by Van Tuyl, we read:

In the year 1403 A.D. the king of China named Yum lo [i.e., Yung-lo, or Yongle, my note] was the first to move the royal court from Nankin to Pekin. In order to leave an eternal name for posterity he caused huge bells to be cast of bronze, all of them of equal size and weight... Kircher on page 522 of his Musurgia mentions the largest European bells. There is none greater, according to Fr. Kircher, than that of Erford. Of this he says, "The Erford bell is the queen of bells." Just before this he says, "The Erford bell is the greatest, not only of Germany, but of the entire world." These bells of Pekin, however, are larger, since each weighs 120,000 pounds, and each pound is equal to sixteen European ounces...

Now the name "Erford" as a name for a place in Germany will prove fairly fruitless when placed in today's Schmooglebox. Try "Erfurt" instead. The Erfurt Cathedral bell — like most Catholic bells it received a name, generally at a kind of christening or "bell blessing" (whether or not it receives, or ought to receive, a proper consecration or a "baptism" is a matter of contention) — was named Maria Gloriosa. We may learn from the "Catholic Encyclopedia" that the Maria Gloriosa was cast in 1497, and weighed 13 tons. It was rung for the first time two years later.

Some at least of the Yongle bells are still in existence, along with the tower built for it or them (how many were made and how many of them survive in which places?), in Beijing, due north of the Imperial Palace.

You can compare the numbers for yourself:

Erford Bell: 8 cubits, 5 fingers high.

Pekin Bell: 12 cubits.

Erford Bell: 7 cubit, 1 finger diameter.

Pekin Bell: 10 cubits, 8 digits diameter.

Erford Bell: approximately 25,400 pounds in weight.

Pekin Bell: 120,000 pounds.

Let's just state briefly that bells have, at least in more recent centuries, come to have similar central symbolic meanings in the two religions. In Buddhism, the bell is one of the most important symbols (along with the cry of the cuckoo, the beat of the drum...) of the awakening sound of Buddha Speech (among other things). In Christianity, it has come to symbolize the 'good news' of the Gospels (among other things). Both religious cultures also use them as 'time markers' to mark off regularly scheduled prayers or chanting sessions... Medieval Christians believed the sound of the bell exorcised the surroundings of evil spirits and kept thunderstorms at bay. Similar, but OK, also different... I'll save the documentation and arguments about usage and symbolism for another time.

Of course bells with their comparative weights and sizes were not the only calculations taking place in those days between the two religious cultures. By the late 17th century, Europeans had been made aware of Chinese written records that pushed their continuous history back to 2952 BCE, which very closely mismatched Christian calculations of the date of the Noahide flood at 2957 BCE (Hung's article, p. 258). Europeans started asking questions that sometimes ended in reassessments or even major readjustments of their then-scientific understandings of the universal flood (perhaps it didn't reach as far as China?) and the tower of Babel (perhaps the Chinese lived too far away to help build it, and so preserved a more pristine and 'unconfused' language?).

(And just as an aside, these arguments are hardly over and finished. In the contemporary debates in the U.S. between creationists and evolutionists the former have resurrected some of those very old arguments from the 17th century. Like the interpretation of a Chinese word for 'boat' analyzed into parts that then is read "boat eight mouths." Just try Schmoogling something like "Noah China Flood" and you'll find quite a few webpages devoted to this. I remember first seeing it as a child, in a late 19th-century edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and found it quite impressive at the time. This Christian search for 'signs' in Chinese ideograms, and its selective appropriation of Chinese mythology, is a fascinating field for research in its own right. For the moment I'll just say that stories of floods in extra-Biblical sources do not go toward proving the Biblical flood any more [or less] than Biblical flood stories prove any particular story of extra-Biblical floods...)

I wonder, could this episode of Christian bell inferiority be the 'primal scene' (to take a page from Freudian depth psychology only to crumple it up) or historic trauma that would explain the psychological complex that has gone on to motivate Christian-Buddhist bell exchanges in subsequent history? Could it take part in explaining how a Buddhist bell cast in 1750 ended up at the Maryknoll Seminary in Palo Alto, California? Along with other examples we've considered in earlier blogs.

But history is a complex subject, too complex to reduce to singular psychic complexes, I would insist. We could say that the Buddhist and Christian worlds experienced phases of bell exchange followed by bouts of bell competition, perhaps (I say "perhaps" because I actually detest these broad historical strokes and the grand theories that drive them) mirroring the phases of openings and closures of their respective cultures vis-a-vis one another.

Think, too, about international political positions such as "Open Door Policy" and "containment." Think about the early Sinophiles (Liebnitz & Voltaire being the most prominent, they often argued for Chinese priority and superiority) and subsequent Sinophobes in Europe. I'm just saying, Think about it.

Perhaps these are just the shy first steps of hope and fear that make so many of our human relations so anxiety ridden. Perhaps they are just signs of the future happiness of living together, or even a lasting marriage, between Buddhists and Christians, between Asia and Europe? I guess we'll see. I'm guessing, too, that it will have a lot to do with what we do meanwhile. Perhaps, perhaps & perhaps.

As you might have expected, the Euro-bell size-deficiency trauma was definitively dissolved when it was pointed out that the Great Bell of Moscow (first made in 15th century and recast in 1653?) was bigger than either the Maria Gloriosa or the Yongle bell[s]. Hurrah for Russia! (But this only holds for Kircher's time... even bigger bells have been made since, but why should we care about them?)

The Catholic Encyclopedia discounts this and all those other eastern bells by saying something that may hold truth, although rather beside the point if you ask me and a prime example of what I like to call definitional gerrymandering,

The gigantic bells cast in Russia, China, Japan and Burma seem only to be struck with a hammer and never properly 'rung'.

Notice that word "properly," which allows the Catholic writer to ignore bells that after all are bells that are indeed larger than the Catholic bells that he had just finished listing along with their respective tonnages. Anyway, with all their careful measurements in cubits and pounds they forgot to measure the decibles, or even more useful, I'd say, they forgot to say which rang more true. On that last point, you will be the judge, I'm sure.

§ § § § §

• XVII. The idol Menipe in the city Barantola of the Kingdom Lassa.
• XXI. Another idol of Menipe.

More books & stuff you might want to add on top of that ever-growing pile on your desk until you finally get around to reading it all:

Athanasius Kircher, S.J., China Illustrata with Sacred and Secular Monuments, Various Spectacles of Nature and Art and Other Memorabilia, translated from the Latin by Charles Van Tuyl, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies (Bloomington 1987). The only nice online version of the original Latin publication I could find is this one. Try this link to go directly to the page with the bells. You might also try this one. There used to be an Athanasius Kircher Society, but it went the way of the dinosaurs.

Adolf Müller, Athanasius Kircher, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Co. (New York 1910), accessed June 28, 2009 here.

C. Wessels, S.J., Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603-1721, Asian Educational Services (New Delhi 1992), reprint of 1924 edition.

Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher, the Last Man Who Knew Everything, Routledge (New York 2004). Lots of interesting writing here, but most relevant is the article by Florence Hsia — Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667), an Apologia Pro Vita Sua. And Haun Saussy's paper "Magnetic Language" is also fun to read, considering the part Kircher may have played in imagining computers and 'artificial intelligence.'

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, University of Chicago (Chicago 1998).

Timothy Billings, Jesuit Fish in Chinese Nets: Athanasius Kircher and the Translation of the Nestorian Tablet, Representations, no. 84 (Summer 2004), pp. 1-42. A fascinating study showing how Kircher reframed the Xi'an inscription as a proto-Jesuit document, glossing over doctrinal controversies associated with the Nestorians.

Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel, Eisenbrauns (Winona Lake 1985). One of my favorite books ever, right up there with with The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates. I've read it twice. I'm thinking I'll read it again very soon.

Helga Uebach, Ladies of the Tibetan Empire (Seventh to Ninth Centuries C.E.). Contained in: Janet Gyatso & Hanna Havnevik, eds., Women in Tibet, Hurst & Co. (London 2005), pp. 29-48.

Ho-Fung Hung, Orientalist Knowledge & Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East-West Differences from 1600 to 1900, Sociological Theory, vol. 21, no. 3 (September 2003), pp. 254-280.

Christopher Hutton, Human Diversity and the Genealogy of Languages: Noah as the Founding Ancestor of the Chinese, Language Sciences, vol. 30 (2008), pp. 512-528. There was in Europe a "craze for identifying legendary Chinese emperors with Biblical patriarchs," that "declined by the second half of the eighteenth century." Another work by the same Hong Kong professor (no access so far) deals with the ways some of these same people engaged in "etymological readings of Chinese characters as encoding the story of Genesis."

Wendel Westcott, Bells and Their Music, G.P. Puttman (New York 1970), available online here.

From the end of Chapter Two:

The fourteenth century seemed, indeed, to mark a turning point in the development of bells. It was now possible to cast tower bells weighing several tons. This was to lead, later, to rivalries between churches, and even cities, to see who could boast the largest bell. Perhaps by this time the artisans of Europe had learned that the Chinese had long since cast large bells, or perhaps economic conditions were more favorable.

(Note: I don't think this is quite right. The late 17th century, not the 14th, was when Europeans realized how small their bells were compared to those of China.)

"Great Bells of Europe by Country." Press here.

Catholic Encyclopedia, "Bells." Press here.

§ § § § §

There is a truly dreadful legend about how the bell caster's daughter had to sacrifice her life in the casting the Yongle bell[s]. This legend may be found in various forms around the internet, with perhaps the most detailed version here. (If the link doesn't work, go to Googlebooks and search for A Chinese Wonder Book by Norman Hinsdale Pitman.) Another version says that it has its sweet sound only because eight men were sacrificed in the making of it. So I don't know which legend is more true or more dreadful.

If you find time, try Schmoogling for "Yongle Bell Tower Beijing" or "Erfurt Cathedral Bell." You might be amazed what you can come up with. If you're equipped with German I recommend this video at You-Tube about how the bell was removed for repair. Once you get there, have a look at the prose description (by clicking the words "more info"), where there is a transcription of the Latin inscription on the Maria Gloriosa, with a German translation:

Aufschrift: Laude patronos cano gloriosa / Fulgus arcens et demones malignos / Sacra templis a populo sonanda / Carmine pulso / Gerhardus wou de Campis me fecit. / Anno Dni M. CCCC.XCV II.

Mit ruhmreichem Lob besinge ich die Schutzherren, wehre Blitze und böse Geister ab, läute m.hl. Gesang, der im Dom vom Volk erklingen soll. Gerhardus Wou aus Kampen hat mich gemacht. Im Jahr des Herrn 1497.

Note: Kampen is not far to the east of Amsterdam.

§ § § § §

Another interesting bell inscription from the Catholic Encyclopedia "Bells" entry:

Funera plango fulmina frango sabbata pango

Excito lentos dissipo ventos paco cruentos.

At obsequies I mourn, the thunderbolts I scatter, I ring in the sabbaths;

I hustle the sluggards, I drive away storms, I proclaim peace after bloodshed.

§ § § § §

Postscript...

Schuyler Cammann, in a brief article entitled "The Bell that Lost Its Voice," published in 1947 in the journal called Folklore, reported on a visit to a bell tower in Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan. Let me quote him exactly on what he found there, since it is all rather curious:

It is a triumph of casting. At least ten feet high, and fully eight feet in diameter, its blue-green surface is perfectly smooth except for the dragon-loop by which it is hung, and a narrow vertical band running down each side with Tibetan-style Buddhist thunderbolts (dorje), in low relief. This unusual motif would suggest that the foreign wizard [my note: Cammann mentioned a legend that said it was made by a foreigner, but read further on] was probably a Tibetan, though the lama's great skill at metal-casting seldom extends to objects as large as this bell.

Notice the size, which anyway is a guesstimate. Although large, it would seem to be significantly smaller than the Yongle bells. But then look what he says at the end of the article. The bell actually has an inscription:

A panel on the upper side of the bell gives the date of its casting as "the twenty-second year of Yung-lo in the Ming Dynasty," or 1422 A.D....

It is a Yongle bell.

§ § § § §

Post-postscript!

For a continuation of the story, adding in essential Burmese episodes from the bell history between Buddhists and Christians, go over to Tibetan Altar blog by pressing the link here.

§ § § § §

Post-Post-Postscript!!

William Rostoker, Bennet Bronson & James Dvorak, The Cast-Iron Bells of China, Technology & Culture, vol. 25, no. 4 (October 1984), pp. 750-767, at p. 751:

The epitome of this practice was the great bronze bell cast in the Yongle period (1403-24) of the Ming dynasty, now housed in the reconstructed Jueshing Temple in Beijing. [here footnote 5 says this temple has been renamed "Temple of the Great Bell"] Perhaps the largest bell ever made, it is 6.75 meters in overall height, 3.3 meters in base diameter, and 18.5 centimeters thick at the lip, and it weighs 46.5 metric tons. The metal is bronze with 16.4 percent tin and 1.12 percent lead. Cast onto its outer and inner surfaces are the texts of seventeen Buddhist scriptures and prayers comprising a total of 227,000 characters. As is characteristic of such bells, the inscriptions are not impressed into the surface but rather raised above it, showing clearly that they were cut or stamped into the face of the mold before the bell was cast.

Of course the words "the largest bell ever made" are not true. But then who's keeping track?

I'm interested to know more about which Buddhist scriptures were inscribed, and in which language (some of it was in Sanskrit language, they say, but which script? Sanskrit in Chinese ideograms? Sanskrit in Tibetan letters, perhaps? Lantsa? Siddham?). Some say that the Lotus Sutra "and six others" were inscribed. I haven't yet gained access to any detailed description or study. I imagine there ought to be plenty.

A Prayer for the Happiness of Tibet

A change of pace... For today I have nothing to offer apart from a small aspiration prayer. The important Buddhist holy day Saga Dawa is approaching in just a few days accompanied by the full moon, but still no signs in sight that would augur well for the future happiness of Tibetans in Tibet. Under these circumstances a religious people are bound to feel inspired to pray.

(As their special contribution to Saga Dawa the PR of C is busy blocking Tibet’s communications with the outside world, even blocking the “blogger.com” site where you find yourself right this moment, as they are known to do from time to time. I apologize to my readers inside China for the temporary inconvenience. Our prayers are with you.)

I believe someone already translated this short prayer by the great Jamgön Kongtrul (1813-1899). But then I can’t remember where I saw it. I know I translated it myself about twenty years ago, but I don’t seem to locate a copy of it anywhere in my old filing cupboard. Therefore I rough out a quick and entirely fresh translation here.*

(*Suggestions for improvements will be received with thanks, and used with thanks if I am convinced by them.)

I know nothing about the circumstances or time of composition apart from what little may be divined from the colophon at the end of the text. Perhaps there are clues somewhere in the huge autobiography that has only recently been Englished (by Richard Barron)? The colophon mentions “very great turmoil of the present time,” suggesting the prayer was written in a time of war. I wouldn't blame anyone for finding prophecies in this prayer (some lines do sound uncannily prescient), but at the same time, it may be be inspired by events that occurred during the last quarter of the 19th century, when I believe it must have been written (probably before 1892 when Jamyang Khyentse died).

We see that in 1882 there was a devastating smallpox epidemic followed by serious droughts in 1883. In that same year there was a looting of Nepalese shops in Lhasa, causing the Nepalese traders to flee Tibet (afterward they were offered compensation by the Tibetan government). This in turn caused the British in Sikkim to take a closer interest in Tibetan affairs. The Macaulay mission was set to enter Tibet (with agreement of the Manchus), but in 1886 a Tibetan government army was sent to Sikkim and Chumbi Valley to prevent them. The next years saw many incidents of fighting with the British in Sikkim, enough to justify calling it an Anglo-Tibetan war (see Nornang).

I apologize for being such a historically minded person. What am I to do? Can’t help it. Without any further fuss, I will just present my translation of Kongtrul’s prayer. Feel free to read, print, recite and copy it. It is given freely and without any copyright forever.

PRAYER FOR THE HAPPINESS OF TIBET

To our never-failing refuge place, the Three Precious, and [1]

More particularly to the Lord of the Snowlands Avalokiteshvara,

To Reverend Tara, to Guru Padmasambhava, I pray.

Grant the fulfilment of our highest aspirations.

Bless us to fully achieve our Bodhisattva aspirations.

In this age of polluting byproducts we find [2]

As primary and contributing causes both misguided schemes

And disturbances of outer and inner elements,

Resulting in previously unheard-of epidemics of man and beast,

Afflictions by elementals, demons of the dark side — king, snake & planet spirits.

Blight, frost and hailstorms. Failing crops. Battling armies.

Unreliable rain and water supplies. Snowstorms, marmots, mice, droughts,

Earthquakes, fires, oppositions and other types of destruction by the four elements.

And especially troops on the border intent on harming the Teachings.

May these and all other types of damage or harm to our Snowland

Be swiftly alleviated,

vanquished to their very roots.

May all the humans and other inhabitants, the asuras and animals,

As a matter of course give rise to the precious supreme aspiration for Awakening,

And while free of any injurious schemes,

Be filled with thoughts of mutual love.

All the while may the country of Tibet (Bod-yul)

From its center to its boundaries

Be gloriously wealthy in happiness and comfort

And may the Teachings of Buddha flourish and long endure.

By the power of truth invested in the Three Roots, [3] the Victors and Bodhisattvas,

And through the magical force of our purely good higher intentions

Along with all the roots of virtue [4] to be found in nirvana and sangsara,

May we attain the results of this our wish and our prayer.

[Colophon:] The Lama Jamyang Khyentsé Wangpo told me, that seeing how there is such great turmoil these days, he himself was reciting a prayer for the happiness of Tibet six times each day. Saying that I should do so also, since it is very important, I wrote this down in order to refresh my own memory. May the prayer's purpose be achieved.

This was written by Lodrö Thayé [Kongtrul] at Tsandra Rinchen Drag in the waxing phase of the moon in the morning hours. Just so may it be achieved.

§ § § § §

Some notes on the translation, which was made in the increasing phase of the moon in the morning and evening of the same day:

1 — One of the most common ways to define who is a Buddhist is just to say that it is anyone who takes refuge in the Buddha, His Teachings and His Community. That’s what is meant by the Three Precious. Avalokiteshvara and Tara both are Bodhisattvas who save those who believe in them from dangers of various kinds, but Avalokiteshvara is particularly identified with His Holiness the Dalai Lama (the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had been enthroned in 1879). Snowland translates Gangs-can. It might be more precise to say it means Glacier Land (still, it exactly translates Sanskrit Himavan).

2 — I translate snyigs-ma'i dus as ‘age of polluted byproducts.’ Snyigs-ma means ‘residues’ or ‘impurities.’ In Buddhist eschatology these latter days of our eon (kalpa) are characterized by five types of snyigs-ma, often translated ‘degenerations’: those of view, kleshas, creatures, life-spans and eon itself. Disturbances of outer and inner elements means disturbances located in [1] the outer physical world and [2] the world internal to the body (or the metabolic balance that characterizes the healthy body).

3 — The Three Roots are three objects of refuge that Tibetans often include in their refuge prayers in addition to the Three Precious (of note 1). The Three Roots are: [1] The spiritual mentor or Lama, said to be the “root of empowerment.” [2] The divine form of high aspiration (yidam, or yi-dam-gyi lha), the “root of blessing.” [3] The sky-goer (mkha'-'gro), the “root of spiritual accomplishment” (and/or of magical feats called siddhi).

4 — ‘Roots of virtue’ translates dge-ba'i rtsa-ba, which is a universal Buddhist concept. Of course it basically means to do good things (dge-ba) rather than bad, but these good things must also be done without accompaniment by any negative emotion at all. That means no greed, jealousy, lust, pride, boredom, etc. Then it follows that these selfless good deeds produce merit conducive to Awakening. This merit can then be dedicated to the welfare of all sentient beings (in itself a selfless act that multiplies the roots of virtue still more...). ‘Victor’ or in Sanskrit Jina, is a common way to respectfully address the Buddha (followers of the Jaina school have their own Jinas). That words of truth (bden tshig), words told with truth behind them, have an inherent force that may be called upon is an old Indian (not just Buddhist) idea. See these words of truth, and these, and also these.

§ § § § §

C. Macaulay, Report of a Mission to Sikkim and the Tibetan Frontier, Bengal Secretariat Press (Calcutta 1885). Reprint (Kathmandu 1977). The entire book has been placed on an internet archive. Look here.

H.A. Iggulden, The 2nd Battalion Derbyshire Regiment in the Sikkim Expedition of 1888, S. Sonnenschien (London 1900). Archived here.

Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima, Chos-kyi-nyi-ma), translator, The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul, Snow Lion (Ithaca 2003). Translation of The Autobiography of 'Jam-mgon Kong-sprul Blo-gros-mtha'-yas, Kandro (Bir 1973). Bibliography here.

§ § § § §

N.L. Nornang & L. Epstein, “Correspondence Relating to the Anglo-Tibetan War of 1888,” Journal of the Tibet Society, vol. 2 (1982), pp. 77-104, at p. 78:

Those called foreigners, such as these, do not tolerate the perfect wealth of others. Hence, except for whatever lands and peoples they can conquer in all neighboring nations through deceit and coercion, they are widely known to be evil deceivers, not of the sort that have learned contentment to their desires and the good customs of shame, modesty and prudence which are suitable as the mark of a great nation.

• From a letter drafted by the Tibetan Cabinet (Kashag) to the Bhutanese Regent, dated 1888.
  

Dibyesh Anand, “Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet’s Geopolitical Identity,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 68, no. 1 (February 2009), pp. 227-252 at p. 234:

If one reads accounts from the period carefully, it is clear that there was a visible fear of British imperialism inside Tibet. For instance, Macaulay was informed in 1885 that “all would go well if they [the Tibetans] did not fear that the English would take their country.” Even when this “fear of foreigners” was recognized, it was seen as irrational, backward, medieval, and hence wrong. The hegemonic imperial ethos prevented most commentators from accepting this fear as borne out of a legitimate understanding of the nature of modern Western imperialism.

§ § § § §

For my translation I used the only version of the prayer known to me, the one published in vol. 28 of the Rtsib-ri Par-ma, pp. 150-152 in the section entitled Smon-lam Stobs-po-che:

bod yul bde smon bzhugs so //

skyabs gnas bslu med dkon mchog rtsa ba gsum //

khyad par gangs can mgon po spyan ras gzigs //

rje btsun sgrol ma gu ru padma 'byung //

gsol ba 'debs so thugs dam zhal bzhes dgongs //

smon lam yongsu 'grub par byin gyis rlobs // 5

snyigs dus 'gro rnams bsam sbyor log pa dang //

phyi nang 'byung ba 'khrugs pa'i rgyu rkyen gyis //

snbgar ma grags pa'i mi phyugs dal yams nad //

gza' klu rgyal gdon nag phyogs 'byung po'i gzer //

rtsa sad ser gsum lo nyes dmag 'khrug rtsod // 10

char chu mi snyoms gangs can bra byi than //

sa g.yo me dgra 'byung bzhi'i 'jigs pa dang //

khyad par bstan la 'tshe ba'i mtha' dmag sogs //

gangs can ljongs 'dir gnod 'tshe'i rig mtha' dag //

myur du zhi zhing rtsad nas 'joms gyur cig //

mi dang mi min 'gro ba mtha' dag gi //

rgyud la byang chub sems mchog rin po che //

ngang gis skyes nas gnod 'tshe'i bsam sbyor bral //

phan tshun byams pa'i sems dang ldan nas kyang //

bod yul mtha' dbus bde skyid dpal gyi 'byor //

sangs rgyas bstan pa dar rgyas yun gnas shog //

rtsa gsum rgyal ba sras bcas bden pa'i stobs //

'khor 'das dge ba'i rtsa ba gang mchis dang //

bdag cag lhag bsam rnam par dkar ba'i mthus //

gsol btab smon pa'i 'bras bu 'grub gyur cig //

ces rje bla ma 'jam dbyangs mkhyen brtse dbang po'i zhal snga nas deng sang dus kyi 'tshub 'gyur shin tu che bas rje nyid nas bod yul bde ba'i smon lam nyin zhag rer lan drug rer mdzad pa yin pas khyod nas kyang de ltar gal che bka' stsal phebs pa ltar rang gi bsnyes gsos su bris pa ji bzhin 'grub par gyur cig //

ces blo gros mtha' yas kyis tsā 'dra rin chen brag tu rgyal zla ba'i dkar phyogs 'grub pa'i sbyor ba dang ldan pa'i snga dro'i char bris pa ya thā siddhirastu // //

Two minor emendations to the text.

Line 10: read btsa' instead of rtsa.

In the colophon: read bsnyel in place of bsnyes.

§ § § § §

Now I whole-heartedly recommend a visit to Early Tibet blog where you will find a much older prayer for the happiness of Tibet.

§ § § § §

AND DON'T NEGLECT TO READ THE COMMENTS this time.

Otherwise you might miss the "Lay of Lachen" by Macaulay himself (thanks to Arno for that).

If you don't see the comments coming up, just give a click to the word "comments" after the photograph. And if you have something to say about all this, please add your own.

Tibet Mirror Revivified

Photo by Lobsang Wangyal, permission pending.

For the full-sized photo, have a look here.

"In the middle of the Tibetan quarter [of Kalimpong] stands a corrugated-iron shed, from which a steep flight of steps runs up to a small stone building. The two buildings house the editorial offices and press of the oddest newspaper in the world.  This is the Mirror of News from All Sides of the World, as its title means literally, some hundred and fifty copies of which appear monthly. Until the occupation of the Land of Snow by Red Chinese troops, this was Tibet's only newspaper. It was founded as long ago as 1925. The editor is Kusho Tharchin, an affable Tibetan who prefers European clothes and has mastered English as thoroughly as the tortuous formulas of honorific Tibetan. This paper is an exception among Tibetan printed works: it is not printed with wood blocks, but with lead type from the fonts of the big Baptist Mission press at Calcutta."

So says the book by René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz entitled Where the Gods are Mountains, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson of London in 1956 — an English translation by Michael Bullock from the original German, Wo Berge Götter sind (1955). By the way, doesn't the German title mean "Where the Mountains are Gods"?

Unfortunately, while much less interesting travel books from his time have been reprinted several times, I haven't heard that this one has been, not the English version.  N-W was a keen observer.  'Keen' on account of his deep study of Tibetan language and literature that allowed him lucid insights into the things he saw. There were so many foreign eyewitnesses to Tibetan culture, but few who could begin to overcome cultural biases and approach the understanding that can only come from sympathy in close communion with learning. His narrative continues:

"The Mirror of News from All Sides of the World generally consists of only six or eight small pages of print, but it offers a wealth of absorbing news to him who can read it. There are columns headed 'News from Lhasa,' or 'Reports from Bhutan.' Next to the latest rumors from the caravan routes stands a report on the most recent sitting of the Tibetan Council of Ministers, followed by intelligence from the land of U-ru-su (Russians) and the Sog-po (Mongolians), from [r]Gya-nag (China), Ko-ri-ya (Korea) and Ri-pin (Japan).  In between are to be found the 'Legend of the essence of Good Sense contained in the Wise Sayings of the Lama White Lotus,' and news of the opening of a new 'skyway' — the Tibetan term for an airline. Many of the headlines would do credit to a sensation-mongering Western paper, e.g. 'Thunder, Lightning and Hail over Lhasa,' 'Six Tibetan Robbers Commit a Double Murder in Sikkim,' 'Serious Damage by Earthquakes in Yunnan' or 'No World War to be Expected This Year.' A column under the heading 'News from India' contains the outline of a peace speech by Pandit Nehru and in the section 'News from the Western Continent' may be read a declaration by President Ai-sing-hu-war on the Formosa conflict. The name of the island is spelt Phormosa, for the Tibetan language possesses no 'f'...

"Most issues of the paper carry a few photographs.  A picture of the young Dalai Lama often graces the front page, but a photograph of the Communist National Assembly at Lhasa is quite likely to appear as well. A few pages farther on a true marvel is shown: a new-laid egg, the natural markings on whose shell form the party symbol of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang. The back page of the Mirror of News from All Sides of the World also has interesting information to offer. Under the heading 'Commercial News' it gives the current prices of Tibetan wool, fox and snow-leopard skins, black and white yak's tails, hog's bristles, and musk. Next to this are announcements by the Association of Tibetan Merchants in Kalimpong and a few advertisements, such as the statement that Ballisandas Shyamrata pays the highest price for musk, or a price list of the goods just arrived at Haji Musa Khan's shop on the Tenth Mile."

Finally, we get to the unbelievably good news. Thanks to a tip from Jonathan Silk of Leiden I am thrilled to be able to announce that a large percentage of the issues of Tibet Mirror have now been placed on the internet for free viewing by anyone in the world who is hooked into the web. (That must mean you.) I understand that much of the work of it was done by Paul Hackett, although a number of other people have lent a hand to help make it happen, in Columbia University and other places in the world as well.

Tibet Mirror was not the first Tibetan-language newspaper. But as often happens in Tibetan studies we get into a political problem even asking which one exactly came first. I'm of the opinion that the first was the La-dwags Pho-nya ("Ladakhi Messenger"), published by August Hermann Francke (1870-1930 CE), founded in 1904, according to some. Issues seem to have appeared between 1908 and 1914, and it was revived, it appears, under the editorship of Walter Asboe at the Mission Press in Leh between the years 1935 and 1947 (Asboe also published a monthly sheet called Kye-lang Ag-bâr from 1927 to 1935). These newspapers, published by Moravian missionaries, didn't conceal their evangelical ambitions.

But there are also claims that the earliest newspaper was published under Chinese government sponsorship. Between 1913 and 1916 there was a mimeographed newspaper called Bod-yig Phal-skad-kyi Gsar-'gyur ("News in Colloquial Tibetan"). Actually, it was a semi-official gazette of the Chinese government printed in Peking, one with educational intentions. Some have said that its years of printing were 1908 through 1912, but if you will excuse my confusion I am not sure of the truth of this. One issue of it (here with the title visibly Bod-kyi Phal-skad Gsar-gyur) has been reproduced in a lavishly illustrated 5-volume set entitled Precious Deposits (vol. 5, pp. 23-26). According to the accompanying English text it was founded by the Amban Lian Yu in the last years of the Manchu Dynasty. It claims this, the depicted issue, is the 21st, published in the year 1910.  One source says its first issue was in 1909. Assuming in the absence of any clear statement to that effect that it came out each month, this date could be correct, I suppose. I only tell what little I've been able to find out, in hope of learning more.

In any case, Tharchin's Tibet Mirror was the only long-lived such newspaper of its times, lasting as it did from October 1925 through the 1950's up until around 1962 or '63. Tharchin,* a Kinnauri by origin, was a Christian convert. Still, unlike the earlier Ladakhi and Lahuli newspapers, his never overtly pushed Christianity. It reported the news from all over the world in Tibetan language. It had a degree of independence that earlier newspapers lacked, which could be one reason why it was trusted and read in the Tibetan-reading world for so long.

*Tharchin's full Tibetan name was Dge-rgan Rdo-rje-mthar-phyin, 1890-1976 CE. He usually signed his name simply G. Tharchin, and he was known to local people in Kalimpong as Tharchin Babu.

If you are one of the billions of unfortunate people alive today that never got a chance to study Tibetan, you might be thinking there is no use looking at the following links. You might be surprised. It's still worth having a look at the drawings, photographs and advertisements, at the evolving design of the newspaper over the decades. In the '57 issues you can find fascinating rude sketches of monasteries in eastern Tibet, in Kham, getting bombed by planes and invaded by armies with bodies lying all over the place. You might notice an English translation quickly penciled in here and there, telling you how few monks remained when the fighting was over. 

If you see an ad for red dye, think about the continuing vitality of the carpet-making industries in Tibetan communities across the Himalayas. Try to figure out if it's really organic, from madder (Tibetan btsod) or something like it, or perhaps one of those chemical dyes supposedly never used to make Tibetan carpets and an ecological disaster for some Himalayan rivers. If you find the photo of that Kuomintang egg, send us the direct link to it right away.

If you do read Tibetan, and if you are also interested in the events of the first half of the 20th century, this is a resource that you will turn to again and again, for all kinds of reasons.

Go to the two different Columbia University pages, here and here.  But before you do, a word of thanks to the people known and unknown who made it possible, along with a further word of hope that persons and institutions that own missing copies will help in every way they can to make the online collection complete. Cooperation is key. Generosity is the first Pāramitā.

A quick Schmoogle reveals that even White Lama picked up a few issues preserved for us still today in California.

And go here to Lobsang Wangyal's site (or this "mirror" site) and read a nicely illustrated story about Tharchin and his paper.

If you are a Tibeto-logical fanatic like myself, you'll want to read the huge new book in two (now, I'm told, three) volumes devoted to Tharchin's life. Here is the author with the title, although I haven't had more than a passing glance at it, so I can't guarantee that its monumental size is matched by its quality.

Herbert Louis Fader, Called from Obscurity: The Life and Times of a True Son of Tibet, God's Humble Servant from Poo, Gergan Dorje Tharchin, with Particular Attention Given to His Good Friend and Illustrious Co-Laborer in the Gospel Sadhu Sundar Singh of India, Tibetan Mirror Press (Kalimpong 2002?).

Other readings of interest:  

Bhuchung Tsering, Want to Read the First Ever Tibetan Newspaper, posted on May 15, 2009. Press here.

John Bray, A.H. Francke's La Dvags Kyi Akhbar: The First Tibetan Newspaper, The Tibet Journal, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1988), pp. 58-63.

Dawa Norbu, Pioneer & Patriot: An Extract from an Interview with Rev. G. Tharchin, Lungta, issue no. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 11-12.  This is a special issue of Lungta devoted to "Christian Missionaries and Tibet."

Tashi Tsering Josayma, The Life of Reverend G. Tharchin, Missionary and Pioneer, Lungta, issue no. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 9-10.  On p. 8 of the same issue, you  may see a front page of La-dwags-kyi Ag-bar, dated July 1, 1907.

Thubten Samphel, Virtual Tibet: The Media. Available here.  A well done sketch of the history of Tibetan journalism is included.

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POSTSCRIPT — May 15, 2009:

Many apologies for my inexcusable negligence in overlooking the press release dated May 7th, 2009.  It is quite rich in information on the Tibet Mirror, so I recommend you go there straight away. According to this, 97 issues have been digitized so far, which means about 30% of the full run. That means 2/3rds of the issues still need to be located and added. I'll just say one thing. Help if you can.

The Rubin's Situ Panchen Lectures

 

Some of us had the misfortune of dwelling on a totally different continent when the Rubin Museum had its Situ Panchen conference. I've heard from more than one Tibetanist that it was a huge success. And even if many may want to, most of us can't find let alone afford apartments in New York City, so we haven't been able to see the Rubin's amazing art exhibit. It's bound to please a much wider public than its associated conference. The show, entitled "Patron and Painter," ends on August 17, so there is still time if you have the interest and where-with-all.

Our frontispiece is a sample of a Situ-commissioned painting (copyright Rubin Foundation). In fact it depicts Situ Panchen as the donor and commissioner — notice the tangka painters hard at work in the lower left-hand-corner — for a set of paintings illustrating Avadâna stories.* I don't need to say much about this, since there is a very nice explanation of this set among the Himalayan Art webpages that may be seen here. (If you are really insistent you can of course go read the works of David Jackson listed later on.)  Evidently Situ made the sketches for the originals of this set totaling more than 23 paintings, directed the painters, and several years later, in 1737, he himself performed the consecration rites.

*That means the Bodhisattva-avadāna-kalpa-latā (Byang-chub-sems-dpa'i rtogs-pa brjod-pa dpag-bsam-gyi 'khri-shing) composed by the Kashmiri poet Kṣemendra (Gewai Wangpo; Dge-ba'i-dbang-po) and his son Somendra (Rabjor Dawa; Rab-'byor-zla-ba), completed in the year 1052 CE.  Each scene in the paintings has an inscription that keys it to the stories in Kṣemendra's work.  The artist consciously chose to illustrate this Indian work in a Chinese-inspired painting style, but with "palaces and costumes in an Indian or Nepalese manner" (Jackson's book, p. 264).

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Now the conference:   

The conference (see the press release in PDF here), co-organized by David Jackson and Karl Debreczeny, with the full title Situ Panchen: Creation and Cultural Engagement in 18th-Century Tibet, took place at the Rubin Museum on Saturday, February 7, and Sunday, February 8, 2009. Among the nine scholars presenting papers or acting as respondents were these:

Rémi Chaix — Centre national de la research scientifique, Paris: “Situ Panchen and the House of Derge: A Demanding but Beneficial Relationship.”

Nancy Lin — University of California, Berkeley: “Situ Panchen and the Re-enactment of Buddhist Origins.”

Frances Garrett — University of Toronto: “Medical Literature in the Situ Panchen Tradition.”

Kurtis Schaeffer — University of Virginia, Charlottesville: “Situ the Scholar.”

At the link to the audio (sorry, no video this time) versions of these lectures, you will also find the lectures by Jann Ronis and Karl Debreczeny. You will hear both David Jackson and Elliot Sperling acting as emcees before, and respondents after, the papers. I believe Tashi Tsering (Amnye Machen Institute) also gave a paper.  In any case, you can hear him speaking in the question & answer session. But wait, now I see that he was in fact the keynote speaker, although I still can't seem to locate the audio file for his lecture.

I'd like to especially comment on Karl Debreczeny's, since it has to do with a set of paintings that I believe to be truly great in many senses of the word. Although Situ Panchen didn't originate this set, he did commission copies.  K.D. located them as a set of wood-panel paintings that were preserved in a temple in Lijiang, in Yunnan (you'll learn more about this with patience and a reliable modem), as well as in scroll-painted copies and copies of copies. The Rubin possesses some of these tangkas, and the whole world can admire them at Himalayan Art website. Go here to see the New Encampment Style (Sgar-'bris) set of Eight Bodhisattvas (and if you have at hand's length the book Worlds of Transformation and its essay by David Jackson, look at pages 102-109).  I think you can observe the same luminous visionary perfection in some other paintings in the New Encampment Style, especially in the single-Mahasiddha and single-Arhat portraits.  Among the portraits of Situ Panchen himself, this one showing nine Indian masters seated behind him is truly remarkable.

Before I get too carried away and forget what I intended to say, the good news is that iTunes University (there is such a thing, silly as it sounds, if you will kindly accept my word for it) has put up the audio for six of the (7?) papers plus the question & answer session.  First of all make sure your computer is equipped with iTunes.* Then try this link.

*If you have a newer Mac it's part of the package, but if you don't have it you can try this link and have patience, bearing in mind that I do this as a favor to you for this purpose only, and not as an encouragement to consumerism. iTunes U is educational and free as far as I know. It's the other parts of iTunes that aim to part fools from their money...

I imagine that might have worked for you without any hitch. If it didn't, open iTunes on your computer.  Use the internal search function (not Google!) to search for "iTunes U," and while you are there look for the words "Situ Panchen Conference." Then you can get the downloading started. You can probably let the downloading go ahead in the background while you busy yourself with other things on your computer. Downloading takes a little time, so I recommend you not watch it while it works.

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Print publications well worth seeing:

Marilyn M. Rhie & Robert A.F. Thurman, Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion, Tibet House, Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, & Harry N. Abrams (New York 1999).

David Jackson, A History of Tibetan Painting, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1996). This being without risk of exaggeration or contradiction the best historical study of Tibetan art ever written in any language, see especially Chapter 10 on art associated with Situ Panchen on pages 259 through 287.

On p. 266 (plate 50 with detail in plate 51) you will see the photo Karl Debreczeny talks about, of White Tara surrounded by the eight fears from which she saves us, also mentioned in David Jackson's comments following K.D.'s paper (look here for several versions of this salvific icon).

Karl Debreczeny, The Buddha's Law among the 'Jang: The 10th Karma-pa's Development of His 'Chinese-style Thangka Painting' in the Kingdom of Lijiang, Orientations, vol. 34, no. 4 (2003), pp. 46-53.

Tashi Tsering, ed., Situ Panchen: His Contribution and Legacy.  A special issue of Lungta, the occasional publication of the Amnye Machen Institute, issue no. 13 (Winter 2000), it includes contributions by E. Gene Smith, Elliot Sperling, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Hubert Decleer.

Some significant linkages:

I understand the papers from the Situ Panchen conference may eventually be published as a group in the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies (JIATS). If this happens it will be very good news, since the JIATS is entirely free and freely available to anyone with a wire plugged into the web. This is the real and future way to circulate Tibetological research, and not those ungodly precious academic publishers (the guilty parties with their one, two and three hundred dollar volumes know who they are).

Go to Flickr to see some 85 photographs from the conference.  Maybe while you're at it you could check and see if this is the same or a different set.

Four of the papers were revised and/or repeated at a panel of the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting in Chicago in March.  At this page you find abstracts!  

Here is the Art Daily announcement for the conference.  Another from Asian Art Newspaper can be found here.

A catalog of the Situ exhibit has been published, although my copy is still in on order, on its way I hope. It's entitled Patron and Painter: Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style, authored by David P. Jackson with a chapter (chapter 10) by Karl Debreczeny.

If you feel like spending whole days looking at Situ Panchen-related art (and really, Who wouldn't?), look here.  Take note of the Sino-Persian sense of space, the emphasis on landscapes, the subtle shading methods. Use the "take a closer look" function, and do just that.  Be dazzled by the details.

Death, Rebirth and Being Human in Tibetan Buddhism

Our in-built bodily reproductive functions along with our tendency to waste away and die are two of the topics that interest us the most, or bother us the most, as you will. The concern with eros and thanatos is one academics share with everybody else, and not only the ones who work in Italy. I tried, but failed, to think of anyone I know who isn't the least bit concerned about reproduction and death. The first is part of sex, after all, and the second, well, part of life. In her lecture, Frances Garrett, Prof. at the University of Toronto and a well-known Tibetanist, emphasizes certain broad themes: for example, how the area of human health concerns gets divvied up — in culturally distinct ways — between the realms of [medical] science and religion. 

Although I assure you she does speak in an accessible manner, non-native or basic English speakers will be heartened to discover that a transcript is available, because like so many North Americans, she speaks a little too quickly. 

The video lasts 38 minutes, and your computer needs to be equipped to view "RealPlayer" videos. Bear in mind this is a streaming video. That means it can't normally be downloaded for later viewing or linked directly to — or embedded in — a blog. 

I recommend that when you have gone to this link, you immediately tap on the words below the video window: "Launch in a new window." That way you can control the size of the screen, which is otherwise quite small.

The Tibetan word korwa ('khor-ba) means 'circling' or 'cycling' (Jeffery Hopkins' frequently emulated translation is 'cyclic existence'), used to translate Sanskrit saṃsāra or संसार (often spelled sangsara, which is its normal pronunciation, too). The Sanskrit means a course or coursing (as of a river or of life), a 'flowing along.' Above all, it means the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This is the subject of the painting shown above, the Wheel of Life (you will see more of it in the video, which is very nicely illustrated with Tibetan artworks).

Prof. G. tells part of the story of one Dawa Drölma (Zla-ba-sgrol-ma), a 'returner from the realm of the dead' Tibetans call a delog ('das-log).  I believe she must intend by that name the mother of Chagdud Rinpoche. This account by the late Rinpoche's mother is one of the few available in English translation, and is very highly recommended for all kinds of reasons.

Between the years 2007 and 2008 Frances Garrett served out the term of her David B. Larson Fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center, neighboring the U.S. Library of Congress in the U.S. capitol.  This video was made on August 12, 2008, during her tenure at the Kluge. I look forward to reading her recent and upcoming books on embryology.

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A book we mentioned:  

Delog Dawa Drolma (1905-1941), Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, "translated from the Tibetan by Richard Barron under the direction of His Eminence Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche," Padma Publishing (Junction City 1995). 

Another recent and perhaps more easily gotten book on the subject is the one by Bryan Cuevas.

The paintings:

The Tibetan painting that forms our frontispiece is from the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. For more information on that painting, look here.  

Just above, you see the main thangka that illustrates the Blue Beryl ideas about conception, fetal development and childbirth. (I'm hoping it will appear much larger in a new window if you double-click on it, so give it a try!)  Some of this thangka will be seen in the video. It is very important to know right at the outset that some of these painted images were intended to be 'emblematic' (or mnemonic) for a topic in the outline. These were not meant to 'illustrate' in the modern photographic sense of the term. Equipped with that wrong assumption, many misunderstandings have occurred. The turtle stage, for example, doesn't have anything especially to do with turtles.  It just tells us that this is the point at which the major bodily limbs become evident, but before they reach their full extent. It may appear that the stages of fish > turtle > pig are the kind of recapitulation of evolution about which many modern embryologists have spoken, but really, these are (also?) three successive incarnations of Vishnu in Indian Puranic mythology.

The Tibetan medical chart you see just below is from the Rubin museum's collection. It also was painted as part of the set intended to illustrate the Blue Beryl medical work composed by Regent Sanggyé Gyatso. Look here to learn more.

To see a set of 77 medical paintings all in one place, look here.

An Inaugural Lecture on Tibet's (Creative) Dark Age

Rethinking Tibet’s Dark Age: Demons, Tantras, and the Formation of Tibetan Buddhism

October 21, 2008 

in Heyns Room 

Faculty Club 

Speaker:Jacob Dalton

Go to this link — as soon as you have an hour to spare — to hear and see Jacob Dalton talk about Vajrayana manuscripts found in Dunhuang. I was intrigued to learn that there are Earth Rites (Sa Chog) to be found in them. The speaker is introduced by Robert Sharf.  This event was sponsored by Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley.

If you want to brush up on Earth Rites to prepare yourself, try this most recent article on the subject by Alexander Gardner.

Hmmm...  I seem to be having trouble making the link to Alex Gardner's paper work for me. If it isn't working for you, try schmoogling this title: "The Sa Chog: Violence and Veneration in a Tibetan Soil Ritual."