Christian Letter Puzzler

 

Imagine receiving a written message like this. It looks like a page hastily torn from the end of a book or notebook, then folded down the middle. In some sense, it could be an example of early Buddhist-Christian dialogue even if we are hearing just one side of the story.  It was written by one named Ras-bir, a Lama of Ro-bag, and addressed to a Great Lama of the Jesus (Ye-shu) tradition. The blank space at the top indicates respect for the recipient. It isn’t well spelled, and I’m likely to miss something. On the other hand it’s expressed in a direct language, so much so I get the impression that Tibetan was not the native language of one or both of the persons involved. But the abruptness of language might have to do with the circumstances of its writing.  

The letter says that one of the Lama’s students had been hit by a large stone that wounded both of his legs. He demands that the one responsible would come to him on that very day. Meanwhile, until he appeared in person, Ras-bir would not be dressing (‘cleansing’) the wounds.  It is signed “I, Ras-bir,” and dated Water Mouse year, 5th month, 7th day.

Who is Ras-bir, where is Ro-bag, and which Water Mouse was it?

Part of my problem is that although I thought this letter was interesting enough to save on my laptop, I did not take the trouble of noting down how I got it.* All I know is that it is labeled “FieldMuseum700_2166.” That must mean it is in the possession of the Chicago Field Museum, a public institution I once worked for, back in the early ’80’s, indirectly, as underling in a Tibetan text cataloging project. Is this something Berthold Laufer picked up during a museum expedition in China and the Tibetan borderlands of Sichuan? Or could it be something that Shelton or some other retired Christian missionary donated to the museum?

(*I already tried doing a Google image search, but that didn’t lead anywhere.)

I don’t have enough of a sense of the letter’s date to translate the Water Mouse into a Gregorian calendar year (1852? 1912? 1972?). If Laufer was involved in it the more recent date would be very unlikely. Given other considerations, 1912 seems to be the one.

So if you have an answer to any of these questions let’s “crowd source” as much information as we can. I’ll be here scratching my head waiting for it to fall like the spring rain through the holes in the web. Oh well, I know it isn’t spring yet, but we’ve got time, all the time in the world.

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On Tibetan epistolary culture, see “Letter Writing Manuals.”

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PS (September 29, 2022):

It occurred to me that Ras-bir could be a Tibetanized spelling of an Indic name. As Tibetan, it makes no sense at all. Rasbir in modern Hindi, occasionally encountered as a man’s name, can be the same as classical Sanskrit Rasavīra, or Nutrition Man (also the name of a mercurial medicine, I see).  Switch the two Sanskrit words around and you get vīra-rasa, the name for the 'heroic mood' in Indian poetic sciences. If this makes sense as the name of the Lama then it would make us change our minds about where the letter comes from. We would have to move to the north parts of India into one or another of the Tibetan-knowing areas of the borderlands.

Oh my, here is what just happened. Since I all of a sudden had the name Rasbir to play with, I went to drop it in the search box at Googlebooks, and just look at this passage that popped up!

“In village Ropa lived a lama, a religious mendicant, Rasbir by name, who eloped with the wife of one Jwalam of Breli. The scandal has been rendered into verse as below: [that is all Googlebooks allows me to see, unfortunately*].”

(*Don’t you simply abhor snippet views? The printed book, out of my reach, has the title Kanauras of Kinnaur: A Scheduled Tribe in Himachal Pradesh. The author is V. Verma, the publisher B.R. Publishing. It looks like copies are available, so I should just order it, then I can tell you what the verse says. But maybe you have it in your personal library and could send it to me.)

Aha!  So Ro-bag in the letter is the village of Ropa (Ropak is likely the local pronunciation) in Kinnaur, and the lama Ras-bir who therein complained about the stoning of his student also, in a surely unrelated incident, ran off with another man’s wife. This is one juicy detail we hadn’t known before...

Oh, and at this moment I’m thinking Theodor Schreve could be the missionary in question, him or some other Moravian, as Moravians were the missionaries active in those parts in earlier days. I will need to look into this more closely. I’ve been planning to blog on those Moravians (here is a sketch of their history) for the longest time. I see he was working as a missionary together with his wife Mary in the Himalayas between the years 1887-1897. Oh, no, that doesn’t work with any Water Mouse year, so I suppose I will just have to keep on looking. I hope you will do the same. If you could, drop us a note in the comments and tell us what you find out.

Biblio:

John Bray, “Christian Missionaries on the Tibetan Border: The Moravian Church in Poo (Kinnaur), 1865-1924,” contained in: S. Ihara & Z. Yamaguchi, eds., Tibetan Studies, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), pp. 369-375. Succinct and insightful essay on the rise and fall of the very small Moravian missionary enterprise in Kinnaur.

John Bray, “Debt, Dependency and the Moravian Mission in Kinnaur, 1865-1924,” Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, vol. 57 (January 2021), pp. 33-65. Available online.

John Bray, “Early Protestant Missionary Engagement with the Himalayan Region and Tibet,” contained in: J. Bray, ed., Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, Brill (Leiden 2005), pp. 249-270.  

Laxman S. Thakur, “Tibetan Historical Inscriptions from Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti: A Survey of Recent Discoveries,” contained in:H. Krasser, et al., eds., Tibetan Studies, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1997), vol. 2, pp. 967-979.  On p. 968, you can spot a Tibetan spelling for Ropa in the form of Ro-dpag, a spelling I’ve noticed a few times in other places. It’s off the main road, so even though I was once, back in 1996, on a very long bus trip passing through nearby Poo, or Pooh, I never saw the place. I often wish I had spent a longer time in Kinnaur. If you had seen what I did see you would surely wish the same. You could see a rough map of a few features of the village on Googlemaps if you were to look here.

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PS: The comments that follow were sent by John Bray as part of an email of September 30, 2022 (the articles he mentions have been added to the bibliography just above):

Here are a couple of immediate thoughts:

• I enclose another paper on Pooh to add to your bibliography. It doesn’t solve the problem but perhaps adds a little more ‘texture’

• In 1912 there were still Moravians in Pooh, and they had a dispensary. The founder missionary – Eduard Pagell, who died in 1883 – had a particular reputation as a great doctor. His successors were not quite so famous but perhaps still worthy recipients of honorifics.

• Laufer had some papers from the Moravians: they came from the estate of Karl Marx (no relation) who died in Ladakh in 1891.

• Does the paper tell you anything? The shape looks ‘Western’ to me. And what about the script? Dbu-can because addressed to someone who wouldn’t have been so good at reading cursive?

There might possibly be another missionary candidate. Prochnow – German missionary working for the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society in Kotgarh – travelled to Kinnaur in the 1850s (see the other attachment) but this would have been a relatively fleeting visit, not enough to build a reputation as a great lama. I think 1912 sounds more plausible than 1852

You seem to have found a plausible place name but otherwise one might look in Lahul as well.

Postscript (June 10, 2024)

I believe the writer of the letter may well have been the uncle of Kunu Lama, a remarkable Buddhist teacher highly regarded by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  Khunu Lama went to stay with his uncle between age seven (1901) and 14, and that uncle's name was "Lama Rasbâr Dâs," in the village known as Ropa.  Since both the name and place of residence correspond, and because there is no chronological problem, I believe this identity can be established.  See Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche, Sunlight Blessings That Cure the Longing of Remembrance: A Biography of the Omniscient Khunu Mahâsattva, Tenzin Gyeltsen, translated by Erick Tsiknopoulos and Mike Dickman (2011), pp. 9-10.  This pamphlet-sized book was made available online at tibetologist.com.  If this identification proves correct, it would seem to favor the 1912 dating of the letter.