The Tibetan Olympics of 1695. The Nine Men's Sporting Events

A famous 1900 photo of the Potala Palace, Lhasa, by the Kalmuck Buddhist Ovshe Norzunov.  The darker building in the center is the Red Palace, which contains among many other things the funerary chorten of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama. This is one of the very earliest photographs taken in Lhasa. (Double click on the picture for more detail.)

It’s an Olympic year, in case anyone has noticed. Please, I’m joking, of course you noticed. Even I noticed. Now let me say first, before the opening shot so to speak, I truly dislike talking about things about which I know very little. But as much as I dislike it, I suppose by scrupulously circumventing this problem I would end up saying hardly anything at all. One of those things (the things about which I know very little) is this: sports. 

Ugh! It’s not just that I never majored in kinesiology. Maybe it was that sadistic physical education teacher in high school. He would make us run in circles endlessly, and if we seemed to lag behind he’d slap our bare thighs with a long measuring stick as we passed by. He made us do leg lifts, lower our legs until just four inches from the ground, and then command us to hold that position despite the heightened sense of excruciating pain this exercise caused us. He would make us hold our arms straight out to the sides horizontal with the ground, making the shape of the cross, for as long as fifteen minutes at a time until we started to feel, well, crucified. 

I never saw very much point in all this pain-inducing asceticism — I never bought into the Charles Atlas cult — although I suppose I sometimes enjoyed playing actual competitive sports, particularly soccer, even softball and basketball from time to time. For a few years in college I got addicted to occasional long bouts of ping pong playing. My opponents, who were largely of Chinese origins, taught me both to serve and return the balls with a very nasty spin attached. I won as many times as I lost, which to me sounds good, but hardly made me Olympic material. Not very long ago I attended a talk in which someone tried their best to communicate the rules of cricket. I really had (and have) no idea. Rule-governed behavior? No thank you. We get enough of that.  Where’s the fun exactly?  

These days most of my exercise seems to take place on the computer keyboard, but when that gets old, as it tends to, I take a walk or jump on my stationary bike and spin for awhile. Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on about my high school phys.-ed. teacher, although obviously this still rankles some ulterior lobes of my psyché. I did have another purpose in mind besides grousing about a childhood that could have been a little more perfect.

Today is the day when His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama’s two envoys arrive in Beijing to hold talks with Chinese government officials. I write this blog today in honor of the occasion, as a small tribute to its huge possibilities. I’m betting on optimism and hoping, even if cautiously as every Tibetan in the globe certainly is today, that the outcome will be positive. Since I know this means a lot to a whole lot of people in the world, I’ll also make a wish for a successful Olympic Games in Beijing, something for everyone to take pride in, as unlikely as this may seem at the moment. And I’m not even holding out for any particular outcome for Tibet and his proud people except that it must be a good one. Independence would be great. He (yes, that's right, he, for Tibetans know their country as a Father Land, Pha-yul) was an independent nation in the past, which would fully justify an independent future as a part of the world’s community of nations. Or failing that, autonomy that would include some degree of reliance on Beijing for one or another reason. I think it’s not wise for either side to have any hard preconditions, since this — the level or the definition of Tibet’s future autonomy — is precisely the solution that has to be arrived at through the coming dialogue and negotiation. Talking is one of the Olympic sports. The main thing is to get the game started.  Don’t pre-determine the outcome. That would be unsportsman-like. Perhaps even unfair.

Did I say talking is one of the Olympic sports? I guess I did. I imagine you might be wondering why. Well, all in the Tibetan past was not darkness and dread as Beijing’s self-serving polemical version of Tibetan history, now enshrined in a brand new museum, would have its intended victims believe. Tibetans are not opposed to games. Just the contrary. Tibetans in centuries past not only managed to find love and have fun, they even played games. Besides children’s games — about them I will say not one more word today — there were more serious games for mature athletes. These are known in pre-modern Tibetan literature as pho rtsed sna dgu, which means, translating syllable-for-syllable, except in reverse order: ‘Nine Different Games [of/for] Men.’*

{*There is a second way of enumerating the nine sports, but I'll save that for another time.}

Here they are. They come in triads:

1. Talking.

2. Letters.

3. Calculating.

4. Archery.

5. Stone[lifting and carrying].

6. Jumping.

7. Foot racing.

8. Swimming.

9. Wrestling.

1-3) Of course the first trio doesn’t appear to contain any ‘sports’ at all. Seeing the renewed popularity of the spelling bee, I would expect to see it there, perhaps. No. 1, talking, is in Tibetan a word that might tend to mean oral/verbal skills of all kinds, but more particularly story telling and speech making. I'm thinking, since I’ve not found any explanation, that ‘letters’ means calligraphy, but I'm not sure.  It could include spelling, which is certainly challenging sometimes.  'Calculating' in your own head without technological assistance, a mental skill (the two earlier ones were in some sense verbal), is basically a lost art, although when I was a child we took a lot of pride in it.

4) With ‘archery’ we find a most popular art among the Tibetans (in neighboring Bhutan, it is even a kind of cultural madness). Here is a depiction of an archery competition from the Tibetan Olympics of 1695 (I haven't made myself absolutely confident of the exact date yet) as found in wall paintings inside the Potala (I apologize for the poor quality of the digital photo... They will improve, I promise). These Potala murals are meant to depict the celebrations that took place following the completion and consecration of the Red Palace and the Fifth Dalai Lama's tomb-chorten in 1694-95.  The murals themselves are believed to date to that same time more or less, although they have no doubt been retouched in later centuries:

In Tibet, as in other neighboring cultures, the arrow is practically synonymous with manhood, so much so that arrows may serve as stand-ins for the male member of the family in various rituals (where women are represented by spindles), although at times it symbolizes long life as well.

5) Stone lifting is of course identical to weight lifting, only without the nicely designed equipment. Generally this involves not only lifting the infernally heavy hernia-inducing object, but carrying it some distance as well. Even the Jesuit Father Desideri, although he had hardly much of anything to say about Tibetan sports when he told of his time in Tibet in the 2nd decade of the 18th century, did say something about the stones (it's interesting that he, too, mentions archery first): 

Their games are archery, or shooting at a target with a musket, at both they are exceedingly expert. At other times they play with heavy stones as we do in Europe with quoits.

About 200 years later, Waddell would summarily describe Tibetan sports and games like this (Lhasa & Its Mysteries, p. 422):

The chief amusements of the men are horse-racing, wrestling, putting the stone, archery, quoits, dominoes, and a game like droughts called ‘Pushing the Tiger’.

The written Tibetan inscription on the Potala mural of the stone lifters specifies that the competitors in the stone lifting event were ‘Khampas, Mongolians, Tibetans and others’ (the exact reading is this:  644 kham sog bod pa sogs rdo mgyogs 'gran par nang zan glang ru 'ba' lug rtser son pa /).  I think it rather resembles the highland Scottish Stone Carry.

6) Jumping.  Jumping in Tibetan usage mostly resembles the broad jump, but with special Tibetan characteristics.  Melvyn Goldstein long ago wrote the classic article on the subject.  In old days there were, in Sera and Drepung Monasteries just outside Lhasa, groups of monks within the category of Dobdob, who would meet periodically for sporting events. And the main events would seem to have been variations on the broad jump done after running to the top of a ramp and leaping off (sometimes throwing stones at targets could be part of it... See Goldstein's article for more).  The setup for the jumping contest was called the chongra (mchong-ra), the ‘jumping enclosure.’  The following is after Goldstein’s article:

Charles Bell took a very nice photograph of such an event held by monks at Gyantse, with the competitor suspended in mid-air for all eternity.  It has been published many times, not only in Bell's own book, but also in David MacDonald’s Twenty Years in Tibet.  Try looking here, where the photograph itself is curiously missing, although you do find a description of it.

7) Foot racing. This was and has remained one of the most popular spectator competitions in ancient and modern Olympic games. It's relatively straightforward in its rules. Get to the ending point faster than the others. Given the altitude of the Tibetan Plateau, I don’t suggest that any foreigners try competing in this event. Well, perhaps some Peruvians.  In my understanding the Tibetan bang refers to footraces only, but it could be that horse racing (rta-rgyug) is also included here.  It ought to be included somewhere, since there is so much horse racing, racing that involves all kinds of fancy riding tricks, all over the plateau during the late summer months.*

{*Perhaps the most formal and elaborate of the annual sporting events was one called "Gallop behind the Fort" (in Tibetan rdzong rgyab zhabs 'bel or rdzong rgyab zhar 'phen) held in Lhasa in winter, on the 26th day of the first month.  In the Doring biography, it is called the rdzong rgyab rtsal rgyug.  All the Lhasa officials would attend it in their finest robes.}

8) Swimming.  The swimming event in the 1695 Olympics took place in the Kyichu River.  It’s maybe interesting enough to try and translate a few of the labels on the Potala mural paintings:

Don't these swimmers remind you of the "swimmer's" in our last weblog?  Only these swimmers are enjoying themselves, not going to a watery grave.

488 Among the water sports were these:  sitting [on top of the water] in the Vajra Posture and...

489 ...diving [and]....

490  ...carrying banners into the middle of the current [evidently an underwater swimming competition to judge from the mural, with flags to indicate their locations].

You see the cross-legged figure in the Vajra Posture on your left.  Another figure is clearly walking on the water like Saint Peter on the Sea of Galilee.  The divers are on your right. It looks like one of them is getting a slight push.  The three things at the bottom are the banners mentioned in an inscription.

Here are the shorter Tibetan inscriptions in the painting:

488 chu rtsal gras / rdor dkyil dang /

489 gting 'dzul /

490 chu gzhung dar lcog 'khyer ba /

9) Wrestling.  I don’t know much about Tibetan wrestling. It certainly is not as famous to the world at large as Mongolian wrestling, and of course the Japanese wrestling style called Sumo are. Nowadays it would seem that the top Sumo wrestlers are ethnic Mongolians, like Asashoryu. It seems that Tibetan wrestling is primarily done with the arms while avoiding the use of the feet, just as classical Graeco-Roman wrestling did.  In any case, that’s how it appears in this piece of the Potala mural.

The inscription tells us that most of the wrestlers were Mongolians (643 sog po shas che ba'i sbar kha rgyab par drang ma byung ba /... notice how the word for 'wrestling' which ought to be sbe-ka, is here misspelled sbar-kha). The Tibetan word for wrestling probably is, as Berthold Laufer argued over a century ago in his famous article on Tibetan loanwords, borrowed from the Sanskrit word bheka, which means ‘frog’ (as it does in Hungarian, also, strangely enough). I'm still trying to find a good explanation for this. Is there something frog-like about wrestlers? You be the judge.

One last ‘sport’ I would just like to mention is rope sliding. Sometimes it’s classed with acrobatics, but I believe it actually belongs in the category of ‘extreme sports’ or the dare-devilry of earlier times. I think it’s probably much more dangerous than bungee jumping. Many foreign travelers to Lhasa witnessed it.  And there are wonderful old photographs which you should go and look at right now at this website. Waddell (Tibetan Buddhism, p. 505, n. 4) says:

The games include archery; putting the stone (and called Ling-sing ch'en gyal-po), in which the losers pay forfeits; acrobates, in the Lhâsa festivals these come usually from Shigatse (Tsang-jo-mo-Kha-rag), and slide down long ropes of yak-hair from the gilt umbrellas on the top of Potala to the foot of the edict pillars.

Another work by the same British imperialist scholar, describes it like this (Lhasa & Its Mysteries, pp. 397-8):

At the foot of the great staircase stands a tall monolith, a counterpart of the one outside (see photo, p. 336), but bearing no inscription. To this is fixed the lower end of the great rope for the "Flying Spirits" at the festival of the New Year, the upper end of the rope being tied to the topmost roof of the palace, over 500 feet above, and down this terribly dangerous incline slides an acrobate, carrying good luck for the incoming year admidst the huzzas of 50,000 people. The man who personates the flying spirit belongs to a class of professional acrobats. He rides a wooden saddle, and encases his body in thickly padded vestments to counter-act the friction of the rope. Taking his stand on the top of the palace, he throws a libation of wine and dough images of men and animals to the devils and then slides down the rope, sometimes sitting astride as on a horse's saddle, at other times flying with the saddle under his breast. Although he travels down with terrific speed, and the dangers of being killed or lacerated by the friction are great, he seldom suffers accident, the present performer having accomplished the feat for several consecutive years. Its object is to confer good fortune on the Grand Lama and his country, and the "Flying Spirit" appears to take the part of a good angel rather than a scape-goat, as he is fêted and does not flee into retirement.

(A footnote adds that the practice, as known in Garhwal, is described under the name "Barat" by Dr. Moorcroft.)

Spencer Chapman, who attended the event at the Tibetan New Year in 1937, described it like this (I’ve abbreviated considerably):

Then followed a ceremony that all Lhasa turned out to see. In the old days a yak-hair rope was stretched from the roof of the Potala to a stone edict pillar at the foot of the southern staircase, hundreds of feet below. Then several men, protected by leather saddles, slid down the rope at terrific speed. To provide these men was a form of taxation levied on certain villages. The men usually arrived at the bottom in a half-dead condition, and on one occasion a performer slipped beneath the rope in his descent and was nearly killed. So the Dalai Lama stopped this performance on the grounds of cruelty, and substituted another acrobatic feat, which I was lucky enough to witness and photograph from the flat roof of the "War Office" building overlooking the edict pillar.

Here a tall pole, say fifty feet high, and swathed in yak-hair cloth to prevent it splitting, was put up on the flat paved platform at the foot of the wide Potala staircase, and was held in position by yak-hair shrouds. Meanwhile crowds of people were settling themselves down to wait on the steps ...

All at once there is a hush, and a man looking — and probably feeling — singularly like a sacrifice, is swung astride a rope preparatory to being hauled to the top of the pole. While he is only just above the heads of the crowd he starts to chant, and drinks a cup of tea which is handed up to him. His head is bound with a white cloth. On the summit of the pole is a small platform on which there is just room to stand. Above this projects a short rod of iron. To begin with the man, chanting all the time, stands for a moment on the platform; but a strong wind makes this too precarious, and he is obviously not too confident. After all, the pole was only put up a few hours ago, and he cannot have had much opportunity for rehearsals. He takes his boots off and throws them down into the crowd. Several times he stands up with his arms outstretched, but only for a brief moment. Then, tying a bobbin-shaped piece of wood on to his stomach, he fits this over the top of the metal rod and, with arms and legs outstretched, starts to spin round and round. After he has repeated this several times he is allowed to return to terra firma, where he bows down three times towards the Potala, offering thanks that his ordeal is safely over. Many of the crowd throw coins into his hat as they disperse to their homes.

The Tibetan names for this acrobatic performance have been given as “Sliding Down a Rope Like a Bird” (bya mkhan thag shur), "Rope Sliding" (thag bzhur), “Rope Sliding from the Royal Fortress” (rgyal mkhar thag bzhur), and “Sky Dancing Rope Game” (gnam bro thag rtsed).

So now that I’ve gone on and on much longer than I intended to, I’d just like to end by saying that I believe it is now well enough established that the 1695 Tibetan Olympic Games were an international sporting event. This is explicitly stated in the label to one part of the mural, where it says that athletes from China, Mongolia and Tibet attended. Observe the different hats in the picture below and try to decide which is which if you can. I was going to say something about Tibetan “psychic sports,” about psychic heat, trance running and the like, but maybe some other time. Oh, and I also thought I would pick out a particular, and particularly Tibetan, sport for nomination to the Olympic board for future inclusion in the international gaming events, perhaps before the 2012 London games. There is time enough for that. And anyway, we ought to include a sport or two that originated in China.  The only Asian games that will be included in the Beijing Olympics are two, one from Korea and the other from Japan.  

We know that the Nine Men’s Sports were the basis for the 1695 Olympics.  Just look at the first words of this long inscription: pho rtsed sna dgu.

READ more & then some more then even more than that:

Tamim Ansary, What Makes a Sport 'Olympic'?  Available online here. Highly recommended. Charmingly written. Quite readable. Insightful. Gives good links. This article ought to demonstrate to anyone's satisfaction that the original Olympic sports were similar in number and content to the Tibetan Olympic sports. Much more so, of course, than the modern Olympics.

Gerald D. Berreman, Himalayan Rope Sliding and Village Hinduism: An Analysis, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 17, no. 4 (Winter 1961), pp. 326-42. The performance of rope sliding was once widespread in Garhwal district in India bordering western Tibet. On p. 330 are references to English literature on the event that took place annually at the Potala Palace.

Chabpel Tseten Puntsog (Chab-spel Tshe-brtan-phun-tshogs), Bod mi rigs kyi srol rgyun lus rtsal pho rtsal sna dgu zhes pa'i skor cung zad gleng ba, Bod ljongs zhib 'jug, issue no. 59 (3rd issue of 1996), pp. 98-114, 164.

F. Spencer Chapman, Lhasa the Holy City, Readers Union (London 1940), pp. 313-314.

Ippolito Desideri, An Account of Tibet: The Travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia S.J., 1712-1727, tr. & ed. by Filippo de Filippi, George Routledge & Sons (London 1932), p. 189.

Doring Tendzin Paljor (Rdo-ring Bstan-'dzin-dpal-'byor), b. 1760, Rdo ring pandi ta'i rnam thar, Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Chengdu 1987), in 2 volumes, at vol. 1, p. 182, makes reference to the Nine Men's Sports (pho rtsal sna dgu'i gras kyi mda' rdo mchongs gsum dang / bang rkyal sbo gsum sogs kyis rtsed 'jo'i go chod sbyong brdar dang...; note the mispelling sbo instead of sbe) and elsewhere in this biographical work there are plentiful mentions of horse races, archery contests and so on. This information ought to be included in a future study.

Melvyn Goldstein, A Study of the Ldab-ldob, Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 9, no. 2 (1964), pp. 125-141.  This has nicely been made available as a PDF at the author's own website.

Siegbert Hummel & Paul G. Brewster, Games of the Tibetans, FF Communications (Folklore Fellows Communications), vol. 77, no. 187 (1963).

Könchog Jigmé Wangpo (Dkon-mchog-'jigs-med-dbang-po, Chos kyi rnam grangs (=Mdo rgyud bstan bcos du ma nas 'byung ba'i chos kyi rnam grangs shes ldan yid kyi dga' ston), Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Xining 1992), p. 121. This is my main authority for the list of Nine Men's Sports: pho rtsed sna dgu ni / gtam yig rtsis gsum / mda' rdo mchong gsum / bang rkyal sbe gsum rnams so.

Kunga T. Dorji & Tashi Phuntsho, Archery: The Real Game is Played Elsewhere, reprint from Kuensel newspaper here.  And try this video about Bhutanese Da.

Berthold Laufer, Loan-Words in Tibetan, contained in:  Sino-Tibetan Studies, ed. by Hartmut Walravens, Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi 1987), vol. 2, pp. 483-552.  Sbe-ka appears at entry no. 33 on p. 534.  Malla is the usual Sanskrit word for 'wrestler.'

Lobzang Chödrag (Blo-bzang-chos-grags), De sngon se 'bras kyi grwa pa rdab rdob kyi gnas tshul dang de'i shed ngoms rtsal rtsed kyi skor, Gangs ljongs rig gnas, issue 6 (2nd issue of 1990), pp. 55-59.

Andrea Loseries-Leick, Körperkultur und Klosterleben, contained in: G. Bernhard, et al., eds, Traditionssport in Tibet, evidently a special issue of Spektrum der Sport-wissenschaften, vol. 8, no. 1 (1996), pp. 108-116. I've never seen this, but it seems interesting.

Andrea Loseries-Leick, Psychic Sports: A Living Tradition in Contemporary Tibet? contained in: Helmut Krasser, Michael T. Much, Ernst Steinkellner, Helmut Tauscher, eds., Tibetan Studies I & II: Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1997), vol. 2, pp. 583-593.

Alex C. McKay, The Other "Great Game": Politics & Sport in Tibet, 1904-1947, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 11, no. 3 (1994), pp. 372-386.

Ferdinand Meyer, The Potala Palace of the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa, Orientations, vol. 18, no. 7 (July 1987), pp. 14-33.

Robert & Beatrice Miller, On Two Bhutanese New Year's Celebrations, American Anthropologist, n.s. vol. 58, no. 1 (February 1956), pp. 179-183.

Mingyur Je (Mi-'gyur-rje), Bod rigs kyi srol rgyun lus rtsal dang bod kyi gna' bo'i rtsed rtsal rta thog po lo'i skor cung zad gleng ba, Bod ljongs zhib 'jug, vol. 9 (2nd issue for the year 1984), pp. 13-26. On the history of Polo.

W. Müller, K. Pieringer, B. Stockinger, T. DeVaney, K. Gmoser, Traditional Tibetan Sports: A Field Documentation. A paper given at the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies at Schloss Seggau, Austria in (1995), abstract only.

Rosalind O'Handlon, Military Sports and the History of the Martial Body in India, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 50, no. 4 (2007), pp. 490-523.  Recommended if you are interested in the history of martial exercises, bodybuilding and sports, archery and wrestling included, in India during the last 4 or 5 centuries.  With two very interesting illustrations.

Katrin Pieringer, Bewegungskultur in Tibet: Vom Festcharakter zum sportlichen Ereignis, doctoral dissertation, University of Graz (1998).

Katrin Pieringer & Wolfram Müller, Traditionelle tibetische Bewegungskultur: Tibet auf dem Weg zu einer differenzierten Sportkultur? contained in: Helmut Krasser, Michael T. Much, Ernst Steinkellner, Helmut Tauscher, eds., Tibetan Studies I & II: Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1997), vol. 2, pp. 769-784.

Christian Schicklgruber, Race, Win and Please the Gods: Horse-race and Yul-lha Worship in Dolpo, contained in: Anne-Marie Blondeau, ed., Tibetan Mountain Deities, Their Cults and Representations, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 1998), pp. 99-108.  Like the following article by Elke Studer, this one emphasizes the important link between the local deities (generally mountain deities) and the horse races that are regarded as an integral part of the offerings made to them.

Elke Studer, Ritual under Change: Mongolian Influences on Horse Races & Mountain Divinity Worship in Tibet, Inner Asia, vol. 4, no. 2 (2002), pp. 361-373.  This advances the interesting idea that Tibetan horse race events may have been influenced in the 17th and 18th centuries by Mongolians, with their own traditional set of three men's sports called Naadam.  That means wrestling, horse racing and archery.

Elke Studer, Wettreiten für die Götter. Ritual im Wandel: Religiöse, politische, historische und rezente Veränderungen des nordtibetischen Reiterfestes in Nagchu, Diplomarbeit, University of Vienna (Vienna 2002).

Tubten Puntsog (Thub-bstan-phun-tshogs), Bod kyi lo rgyus spyi don padma ra ga'i lde mig, Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang (Chengdu 1996), vol. 1 (stod cha), pp. 330-335. Although brief, this is as far as I know the best general survey of Tibetan sports and sporting events down through history. I haven't made much use of it, but list it here for your information only.

Hugh Richardson, Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year, Serindia (London 1993).

Tsepak Rigzin (Tshe-dpag-rig-'dzin), Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Terminology, p. 172. This dictionary translates the nine men's sports as 1. oratorship, 2. writing, 3. calculation, 4. archery, 5. weight lifting, 6. jumping, 7. running, 8. swimming, 9. stick-games. All these translations seem fine, with the exception of the 9th.

L. Austine Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries, with a Record of the British Tibetan Expedition of 1903-1904, Dover (New York 1988), reprint of John Murray (London 1905).

L. Austine Waddell, Tibetan Buddhism with Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology, Dover (New York 1972), reprint of W.H. Allen (London 1895).

Wang Yao, An Inquiry into Polo: Tibetan Contribution to the Athletic Sports, Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Narita 1989, Naritasan Shinshoji (Narita 1992), pp. 849-52.

- - -

See the webpage “Life on the Tibetan Plateau,” January 29, 2007, for a photo with description, Tibetan Horse Festival in Amdo.  Another fine photo here.  Or try this extremely brief video (watch very carefully).  This 4-minute video is very artistically done, and well worth seeing for the racing with yaks alone.  Here is a PRC site (you will find in this strong arguments for the impossibility of automated machine translations from Chinese... this absolutely requires direct human mental input, imho; anyway I apologize that the link has gone dead), with some very interesting pictures, including a photo of Tibetan-style tug-of-war, which is done by two opponents using a long loop of rope.  The two men loop the rope loop around the backs of their necks facing away from each other.  Then they let the two ropes go between their legs, go down on all fours, and use both feet and hands to push like crazy.  This makes it quite different from tug-of-war (which was once an Olympic sport) as normally understood in the rest of the world. Namkhai Norbu also describes this in his book (in Tibetan) about nomadic culture. He supplies a drawing, and calls it Gurten (sgur-'then, literally ‘pulling while hunched over’), although most dictionaries give the name just as Tagten (thag-'then, 'rope pulling'). Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Could this be the Tibetan Olympic sport the world has been waiting for?

POSTSCRIPT (08/08/08):

I would like to refer you to a fascinating story of how Beijing's propaganda efforts to make it appear as if traditional Tibetan horse races were being held in homage to the Beijing Olympics have, for the moment at least, fallen flat (a few days ago the words "Tibetan Olympics" popped up in the straight (non-blog) media for the first time, and Yes we do wonder where that came from!).  A recent blog entry from Agam's Gecko tells it well. Go there as soon as you can.  It won't take long to read.

Two giant pieced-fabric tangkas hanging in front of the Potala, as depicted in a mural inside the Potala.  The cloth image (göku, gos-sku) 0n your right with the red Amitabha was commissioned by the Regent Sanggyé Gyatso in 1683, soon after the actual death of the Fifth Dalai Lama, and displayed on the anniversary of his death on the 30th day of the 2nd lunar month of the Tibetan calendar.  It measures about 47 by 55 meters.  The two göku became worn and had to be replaced at least twice in Tibetan history.  Once in around 1787, and again in the early part of the 1940's, after the enthronement, in 1940, of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama.

Since the nearly one-fifth million Tibetans living in exile were denied entry into the Beijing Olympics (the application of Team Tibet met with complete silence from the IOC), they are holding their own.  Look here.  (And here.)  This event will be held from the 15th through the 25th of May 2008 in Dharamsala, India, the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe its organizers have ever heard of the Nine Men’s Sporting Events, although I’m thinking somebody ought to tell them.

What Do Tibetans Want?

What if someone held a protest and nobody could be there to report it?  And even if they could, what if nobody heard what the protesters were saying? Or if they heard, what if they didn't understand? Or what if the things they were saying got hijacked or drowned out by other people with their own very different concerns? Could such a protest be said to have taken place at all?

In recent weeks news from Tibet has been painfully slow in getting to the outside world. I just today received this information from an English translation of Wozer's Chinese-language blog entry of April 26, 2008:

Two nuns, 32-year-old Lhaga and 30-year-old Sonam Dekyi in Draka Nunnery in Ganzi County in Kham (Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province) were arrested by the police on April 23, when they distributed “Wind-horse” banners with scriptures and leaflets written with such words as ‘Long Live the Dalai Lama” and “Tibet is a independent country,” etc, while shouting slogans in the county seat of Ganzi County.

{On the same incident, there is a bit at RFA.  Thanks for the tip from Agam's Gecko. Note how the PSB officer does not verify the story when the journalists phone him. Indeed, he denies it.}

Like much of the more recent information coming out of Tibet, to my knowledge the facts about this event have not been verified. Indeed, verification of news is one of the main obstacles preventing news about Tibet from reaching the newspapers. This was so even last month, when news agencies seeking verification would often desperately search for a phone number, any old phone number, of a hotel or office in the vicinity of the protest. Even then they would often get people unwilling or "not authorized" to say anything.

With all the normal channels of communication, the ones we take so much for granted in the 21st century, closed off by the party in power (a story we heard back in 1987), it makes it all the more crucial to find out what these protests are all about. One way of doing this would be to examine what we can objectively know about what the protesters are saying. And one way we can be clear about their demands in a way that doesn't require much in the way of 2nd-hand verification is to look at what they say on their protest banners, banners like the one in the photo above held by monks marching in Rebkong in Amdo.

Of course there are obstacles, not least of all the fact that most of the protest banners have been written in Tibetan language only, even if the protest took place in Beijing. And in one case at least it's too difficult to read them in the videos & photos we have. Watching the video of the Labrang monks' protest of April 9th, I was frustrated not to be able to get a clear look at the Tibetan words, although I imagined, after freezing frames every second or two, that one cloth banner started with the words "drowa mii tobtang" ('gro-ba mi'i thob-thang), which means 'rights of human beings,' or more simply, 'human rights,' which might suggest that this was the main issue on these monks' minds. I got the clearest glimpse of this banner in this Dutch-language newscast. This shows a 2nd banner, even less legible.  But you can also see the monk saying in very fast and for myself (I'm ashamed to admit) only partially intelligible Amdo language translated into Nederlands in the sub-titling as We hebben geen vrijheid, helemaal geen vrijheid, en ook geen rechten.  We willen dat de Dalai Lama terugkomt."I imagine that may have made perfect sense to you, but I'll try a translation anyway: 'We have no freedom, no freedom at all, and no rights either. We want the Dalai Lama to return.' Clear enough? I think so.

The Rebkong protests were not well covered by the international press, first of all because it seems no tourists were present, or endangered by the events. Sad to say, but I believe this does make a difference to them when deciding what is newsworthy. And besides, as I said before, because the usual journalistic standards for verification have proven difficult to fulfill.

So first, before talking about the banner and its inscription, I'd like to copy a long account of the recent history of demonstrations in Rebkong/Rebgong, based on the same source quoted above, the blog dated April 17:

As early as two months ago, i.e. on the evening of February 11, because the military police disrupted the religious ceremony held by the local monastery in Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) County in Tsolho (Ch. Huangnan) Prefecture, Qinghai Province, it caused great resentment among the local monks and lay people. Thus, they shouted slogans demanding freedom of religious belief and wishing a long life to the Dalai Lama. Consequently, they were dispersed by the local government with tear gas, and they madly arrested over 200 monks and lay people. 

The next day, this prompted several thousand monks and lay people to stage a demonstration at the county seat, demanding the local government to release the monks and lay people who were arrested. Under the pressure, the local government had to release all those who were arrested, but three monks and one old man were severely injured from beating, and had to be sent to the emergency room so as to save their lives. 

Soon afterward, the authorities transferred special police from Xining and Zhengzhou (in the local hotel there are banners on which such words as "Welcome the special police from Zhengzhou to stay at our hotel") to Rebgong. Suppressed by the massive forces, the “Incident of February 11” that happened in Rebgong was temporarily calmed down, but we can say this was the prelude to the series of incidents that happened after March 10 in Lhasa and protests which spread to all Tibetan areas. 

On March 17, all the monks of Rongwu Monastery in Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) County made incense offering at the mountain pass to the west of Rongwu Monastery, reciting in unison prayers for the Dalai Lama. 

Later when the monks were about to go on to protest in the downtown, they were prevented from going by lay people who were crying out loud and pleading with them not to go. Some monks slashed their wrists under great indignation and resentment, and appeared to be very excited. 

At that time, the armed policemen were on high alert. In the end, the monks made several demands to the government via the reincarnated lama of the monastery Sharitsang Rinpoche: the armed policemen cannot patrol around the monastery; dismantle the security cameras installed in the monastery; Buddhist activities such as making incense offering should not be stopped unreasonably. 

The local government agreed to all the demands. However, in the afternoon, the local officials organized work teams to visit Tibetan families, forcing Tibetans to sign their name on the written pledge. They had to pledge not to go on protest etc. 

At the same time, on March 18, police with special duties from Xining were dispatched to Rebgong and the authorities continued their revenge against the protesters. 

On April 15, the authorities again arrested the old man and monks who were injured through beating in the “Incident of February 11” and kept them in custody. Thereafter, some monks and lay people who participated in the protest were arrested one after another. At the same time, they had been keeping a close watch on and controlling the dissidents in the region. This morning (April 17) some monks from Rongwu Monastery went to inquire about the conditions of monks and lay people who are imprisoned by the authorities, the local government ignored them, and did not give any answers to them. 

On their way back to the monastery, these monks were surrounded and blocked by the military police. First they arrested 20 monks on the spot. The common people pleaded with the police and attempted to prevent them from taking action; soon quite a great number of these lay people were also arrested and taken away. This incident happened around noon. 

According to a local person, at that time about 100 monks and lay people, who filled four military trucks, were arrested. Among them there was a reincarnated lama known by his Dharma name Khaso,* who is a well respected 60-year lama. He was also arrested when he was trying to mediate. Throughout the incident, none of the monks or lay people resisted, they were just expressing their wishes and appealing. 

In the afternoon, the authorities dispatched a great number of military police to rush to Rebgong from Xining. It is said that, in reality, they are infantry soldiers who changed into military police uniform and changed their plate numbers as well. Meanwhile, a great number of fully armed military police charged into Rongwu Monastery, carrying batons and machine guns. They searched all the living quarters of the monks, confiscating all the photos of the Dalai Lama and all the DVDs concerning the Dalai Lama. Many monks were arrested and taken away from the monastery. The local people said that 80% of the monks in Rongwu Monastery** were arrested, and altogether at least 200 monks and lay people were arrested. 

At present the monastery is rather empty. There are only a few old monks left in the monastery, but even they are not allowed to leave the monastery. The local people’s morale is rather low, and they are sad and indignant. Even those Tibetans who are incorporated into the Chinese system are very dissatisfied. Everyone feels insecure, and the atmosphere is rather tense."

{*For more about this respected religious teacher, 80-year-old (!!) Alak Khasutsang, along with a photograph, look here. I've already placed him in my short list of heroes (and by 'heroes' I do not mean martyrs) for his willingness to put himself in harm's way in order to negotiate peace. (And Yes, this list most definitely includes Grace Wang or rather Wang Qianyuan, a young woman who deserves to be the pride of Chinese people everywhere, and I'm confident she will be in the near future.) While you are there, take note of the protest banners at the top of the page. The one on your left is the same one depicted above, just in a different photograph of the same event. **If you would like to know about the history of Rongwo Monastery, see the book by Gruschke listed below.}

According to the source of the photo, it was taken during the demonstrations of March 17. You will notice that the faces have been 'fuzzed' to prevent recognition. This is sadly necessary since they might well be used as evidence in a country that recognizes no such thing as a legal demonstration (the only exception, in actual practice, being when it seems China's national pride has been slighted; and of course Hong Kong is also an exception for the time being ...).

Let's have a look at the wording which, as might be expected in a banner, is crisply and concisely worded. In direct letter-for-letter transcription (transliteration) according to the Wylie system, which is practically the standard system, it reads like this: 

gong sa gdan zhu /

rang dbang rtsol len /

You could roughly pronounce this in a central Tibetan dialect (of course these Amdo monks would read it with a different pronunciation) as:

kongsa dänshu /

rangwang tsöl len /

We'll analyze this word-for-word using the phonetic version. Kongsa means 'High Earth' or 'Lofty Level' [Level of Buddhist spiritual attainment, called Bhumis in Sanskrit].

I guess it's fairly well known that Tibetans rarely refer to His Holiness as "the Dalai Lama." It has become the accepted international norm, so when Tibetans speak in English, they will certainly do so as well. There are certain frequently-used ways to speak of His Holiness in Tibetan, of which Kongsa is only one. Others are Kündün (sku-mdun), "the Presence"; Kyabgön (skyab-mgon), "Lord who Protects" or "Lord who Provides Refuge"; Gyelwa Rinpoché (rgyal-ba rin-po-che), "Precious Victor" ['Victor,' Sanskrit Jina, is usually used for the Buddha'], and Yishin Norbu (yid-bzhin-nor-bu), "Wish-granting Jewel."

Dänshu, being a very polite term (what is sometimes called 'honorifics') literally means "to request to take [His] seat," and often means 'invitation' or, understood as it must be here as a verbal form, 'to invite.'  Some might have preferred to see a 'high honorific' used here, but I think that doesn't matter much (Amdowas are not famous for their use of honorifics to begin with). It isn't especially clear what the tense of the verb ought to be, although I assume it is or was meant to be imperative (or a future used as a kind of subjunctive). So I read this first line to mean "Invite the Dalai Lama!" although I suppose it could just as well be rendered, "We invite the Dalai Lama!" or "The Dalai Lama ought to be invited."

Rangwang, as you know from the latest Tibeto-logic blog, means 'independence.' In its literal syllable-by-syllable meaning, it could be awkwardly translated as 'own power' (being under one's own power rather than under that of another).

Tsöl, means to work hard for something, to strive or to seek.

Len means to take.

So I would translate the second line as "Seek [and] take independence!"

I hope you not only learned a little Tibetan today, if you haven't already, but that you would also have a little clearer idea about what at least one group of Tibetan protesters say they want, inscribed in very large and clear black letters drawn on white cloth for all to see. And if you have any clarifications to offer, I'd especially welcome the comments of Tibetans.  Amdowas all the more so.

Read more, see more, hear more, feel more, think more, predict more:

Cao Changching, Independence: The Tibetan People's Right, Chinese Studies in History, vol. 30, no. 3 (Spring 1997), pp. 8-28.

Cao Changching & James D. Seymour, eds., Tibet through Dissident Chinese Eyes: Essays on Self-Determination, M.E. Sharpe (London 1998).

Dru C. Gladney, Internal Colonialism and the Uyghur Nationality: Chinese Nationalism and Its Subaltern Subjects.  Available here.  Note especially the quote from a 1995 interview with Liu Binyan, a former Xinhua journalist who became a dissident and moved to the U.S.  He said,

Nationalism and Han chauvinism are now the only effective instruments in the ideological arsenal of the CCP.  Any disruption in the relationship with foreign countries or among ethnic minorities can be used to stir 'patriotic' sentiments of the people to support the communist authorities.  

We can certainly read the truth of these words in the newspapers today.

Andreas Gruschke, The Cultural Monuments of Tibet's Outer Provinces: Amdo, Volume 1, the Qinghai Part of Amdo, White Lotus (Bangkok 2001), pp. 51-54, on Rongwo/Rongwu (Rong-bo) Monastery's history, with remarkable color photographs on pp. 139-142.

Thomas Heberer, Old Tibet a Hell on Earth? The Myth of Tibet and Tibetans in Chinese Art and Propaganda, contained in: Thierry Dodin & Heinz Räther, eds., Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, Wisdom (Boston 2001), pp. 111-150.  An earlier German-language version is available with the title Das alte Tibet war eine Hölle auf Erden. Mythos Tibet in der chinesischen Kunst und Propaganda, contained in Thierry Dodin & Heinz Räther, eds., Mythos Tibet, DuMont (Cologne 1997), pp. 114-149.  In recent days the author, a well known Sinologist, has written against demonizing China; see this for example, which contains these words:

"In the eyes of Europe and North America, Tibet has long been something very special and mystical. Tibet is considered an exotic entity, which is idealized. A book published a few years ago described this phenomenon as the so-called 'myth of Tibet'," said Heberer.

Interesting to notice that he refers to the same book, Mythos Tibet, that contains his article about how Chinese idealize and exoticize Tibetans.  (It is entirely possible that his statement is misrepresented.  This is old news, but the PRC news-release agency always only makes use of the bits it knows to be politically acceptable.)

Jamyang Norbu, From Tibet the Cry is for Rangzen, contained in: Edward Lazar, ed., Tibet: The Issue Is Independence, Parallax Press (Berkeley 1994), pp. 75-78.  This has been republished recently in the author's new book, Shadow Tibet.

Elliot Sperling, The Rhetoric of Dissent: Tibetan Pamphleteers, contained in: Robert Barnett & Shirin Akiner, Resistance and Reform in Tibet, Hurst (London 1994), pp. 267-284.

Wu Naitao, Independence of Tibet: Untenable and Futile, Beijing Review, vol. 27, no. 25 (June 18, 1984), pp. 20-21.

If you would like a fast review of the events in Tibet during the Ides of March and events leading up to them, I think one of the more reasonable and factual (certainly more intelligible) accounts is this one.

A collection of some of the most disturbing and dramatic photographs from the Tibet protests between March 14th and March 17th may be found at the webpage of Citizen Journalism Report. But be warned that the first pictures are extremely difficult for beings who are at all human to look upon without extreme pain.  Very honestly, I recommend preparing your mind as far as possible before tapping on this link.  Be aware you will be seeing some bullet-ridden corpses (Tibetan corpses that the PRC press denies ever existed).  And you may rest assured that sufferings of Chinese shop owners in Lhasa are also well represented here. And if you look carefully, you will locate a very fine AP photo of the Rongwu monks' defiant act of incense burning on March 16th. At the same time, you should be aware that a few of the photos are mislabeled, including the one with the following label:

In this image made from video and provided by APTN, a protestor speaks with authorities, Friday, March 14, 2008, in Lhasa, Tibet. Police fired tear gas to disperse Buddhist monks and others staging a second day of protests Saturday in western China in sympathy with anti-Chinese demonstrations in Lhasa, local residents said. (AP Photo/APTN)

This and the photo that follows it were both taken in Nepal (in Kathmandu most probably), not in Lhasa.  (For more examples, see anti-CNN.com; they got this part right, the fact that news agencies got confused about what took place where.  I'd give the link, but everybody in the universe has had a look at it already.)

I feel I benefitted from listening to this hour-long audio program at Tibet Connection with its very interesting comments by Dr. John Powers of Australian National University, among others.

For more on what is going on inside Tibet, have a look at the latest news in Agam's Gecko.

I'd also like to recommend Donald S. Lopez Jr., How to Think about Tibet, published on March 31, 2008, and available online at the OpenDemocracy website.  Dr. Lopez, professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, makes connections between Tibet and Latvia that certainly never occurred to me.  While you're there, have a look at the piece by Gabriel Lafitte, published on March 18, 2008: Tibet: Revolt with Memories.

The incense burning of March 16, 2008 (or was it March 17?) on a hill above Rongwu Monastery (AP Photo/Cara Anna).  Another photo here.

Update of April 28 on conditions at Rongwu Monastery (from Wuzer's new blog):

It is reported that since April 21 the work team consisting of over 50 cadres carried out the “Patriotic Education Campaign” in Rongwu Monastery in Rebkong County (Ch. Tongren) in Amdo. The monks were required to criticize the Dalai Lama, and those who disobeyed were struck with batons. At present, Rongwu Monastery is controlled by a thousand military police, and monks are not allowed to enter or leave the monastery. There are about 400 or 500 monks left in the monastery, among whom over 160 were injured and over 300 are still in custody.