A Word for the Gaze

 

His divine fish-soul hung there, poised in its alien element, gazing, gazing through huge eyes that perceived everything, understood everything, but having no part in what it saw.  

—Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza.

I’ve long been on the lookout for any sign of Padampa’s South India heritage, and one thing I was always hoping to find was a trace of a Dravidic language in records of his speech. It wouldn’t matter if it were Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam. In fact I’m still looking, since I’ve found not one clear example.* There are a few, very few, occasions when Padampa while speaking, as he did, in Tibetan, drops an Indic word into the sentence. Each incident of ‘code switching’ as our modern linguists would like to call it, needs to be thought about separately, since there may be more than one reason to try and get by with a word most likely unintelligible to your audience. Why risk getting a blank face in return? One very possible reason is the frustration of trying to put a complexly embedded cultural term into another language, just because the target language has no word for exactly what it is you want to say. For English speakers, examples like Gestalt and simpatico are first to come to mind, although the fact is English vocabulary has absorbed and naturalized so many of these kinds of foreign words that we would hardly ever recognize them as being foreign as such, such as ketchup or pyjamas or the drink called punch. We know just what is meant when we hear these words, origins be damned.

(*Although not a vocabulary example, one thing I have noticed is the unusual number of sea turtle metaphors Padampa used. When we compare the most common metaphors used in Indian epic literature with those of Padampa this is one of the most striking differences. I believe it must be due to Padampa's close proximity to their coastal nesting areas during his childhood, before age 15 when he was sent to study in a monastery in the Gangetic plain of north India. We also know that his father was a sea captain, so a home close to the sea is in any case very likely.)

As a long-time adult learner of modern Hebrew, I’ve found some excellent examples of code switching there: Two words that English-language speakers in Israel cannot avoid using are davka and stam, and they are placed in English sentences in much the same way they are found in Hebrew.

Davka (Hebrew)

Emphasis on first vowel (first syllable stress is davka unusual).

A word with several meanings:

1. Done on purpose/done in spite.

Example: “Jon pushed that kid davka.” (This means he pushed him on purpose, not by mistake)

2. On the contrary/actually.

Example:“I thought you didn’t like basketball.”“What do you mean? I davka ADORE basketball.”

May

Stam (Hebrew)

“With no purpose, value or significance.” "Just because!"

Example: “What is that?”  “Oh, that’s stam an old bucket.”

or

“Why did you step on the ant?”      “Stam!”

But it is not the case that entire sentences using these words are untranslatable. It’s just that single word that immediately makes translation appear to be impossible. And if you have these alien words in mind when you are mentally translating from Hebrew, you simply cannot give them up for some English word that doesn’t quite fit. They are too useful. So you keep them. Even at the risk of not being understood at all, there is no way you can settle for some fuzzy approximation that stam doesn’t have the same punch to it.

Some other examples go in an opposite direction supplying us with more germane analogies, English words that routinely pop up in everyday Hebrew sentences, words like fair and chance. This is a problem of matching, since Hebrew davka does have abundant terms for concepts of justice, rightness and opportunity. Words are not the problem.

I imagine a similar phenomenon taking place when Padampa ‘saved’ the word karaṇa for the yogic gaze. Part of his problem is that the term has a very rich range of usages and meanings in Sanskrit, and he couldn’t come up with a Tibetan word that would share the same semantic range.

Karaṇa in truth is one of those simple Sanskrit words... Well, simple in the sense that it easily and obviously derives from a very common and basic root √kṛ, the ordinary verb meaning to do. It shares the same root with that by-now English word karma. But such simplicity can conceal considerable complexity when we consider usage.

करण  —  expressive move, operation (?).

The Sage Bharata's Dance Manual is one of the earliest works of identified authorship in India, although there is wide disagreement just how early it was, or how late were its final redactions. It was written in a time when there was no distinction made between dance and drama, just as there was no difference between song and poetry. In this work the word karaṇa has a technical meaning for a selected list of standard stances or postures to be performed on stage.  Although technically beyond numbering, discussion is limited to 108 of them.* Each posture is defined as a combination of two things: [1] particular positions taken by the feet, and [2] the same for the hands. The text goes on in great detail to speak about positionings of other parts of the body as well, and not just postures but types of transitions from one posture to another. Well, acting in itself could be nothing but posing, I suppose, but all the same we usually associate it with movement.

(*They are illustrated in 13th-century South Indian friezes on the outer walls of Cidambara Temple. It was raised up by the Cola King Kotottunga III, who reigned from 1178 to 1216 CE.  Photos of some of the karaṇas are displayed here.)

Finally, to wind this down, I have to admit that I haven’t really solved the problem. Nested inside the mystery are more mysteries. It may be entirely understandable to use a term of dramatic arts for the yogic gazes, but I still don’t see any positive evidence that would link the two together in Indian sources. The ironic thing is that something we inevitably think of as an unblinking gaze, a steady stare of total concentration, would go by the name of an expressive dramatic pose or movement of the arms and legs. I think I’d like to return to this subject when I know more about it, when I get a better sense of where things are going.

 

Stuff on code switching, gazing, staring and so on 

A.E., The Candle of Vision. See the PDF archived here. Both this fairly famous literary figure and his admirer Aldous Huxley, recommended staring intently at a candle, something yoga practitioners, at least nowadays, would call trāṭaka | tratakam. Try looking for it.  

Aldous Huxley, By the Fire.

Aldous Huxley, Scenes of the Mind. 

 

The normal Tibetan word for these gazes would be lta-stangs, or gzigs-stangs, a term much used in Dzogchen. And sure enough, there is one place in the Zhijé Collection where ka-ra-na is directly defined by the word lta-stangs. It’s in volume 2, p. 12, line 5: ka ra na ni rgya skad de / don la blta bstangs bya ba yin te. That means, “Ka-ra-na is Indian language, it signifies what is known [here in Tibet] as blta-bstangs.”

 

Padampa uses the term in particular contexts implying that by keeping the gaze steady, distractions coming your way from the world of objects cease, the disturbing thoughts go into stop motion, and sinking and scattering don’t stand a chance.*

(*Oh, and there are quite a lot of names for special eye postures, most of them named after animals, after all. Certain animals both domestic and wild are proven masters of the art of the stare. If you will permit me, I would love to talk about these another time.) 

Bharata, The Nāṭyaśāstra (A Treatise on Indian Dramaturgy and Histrionics) Ascribed to Bharata‑Muni, vol. I (Ch. I‑XXVII), tr. by Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta 1967). Republished in the Chowkhamba Sanskrit Studies series no. 118 (Varanasi 2003), in 4 volumes.

See chapter 4, verse 29 ff., where 108 karaṇas are enumerated.  These 108 ‘dance phrases’ may be found demonstrated on the internet if you search for them, but since these URLs tend to be highly unstable I hesitate to put any up for you.

H. Brunner, G. Oberhammer & A. Padoux, Tāntrikābhidhānakośa, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna 2004). 

In vol. 2, pp. 50-52 is quite an interesting discussion of various Hindu tantric usages of the word karaṇa. The only part of it that directly references gazes is as part of a larger set of yogic prakaraṇas that largely correspond to something well known to Tibetan Buddhists as the Seven-Point Posture of Vairocana (རྣམ་སྣང་ཆོས་བདུན་), seven bodily positionings that ought to be assumed in preparation for meditation. And only one of those seven has to do with what to do with your eyes.

Kalsang Yeshe ༼སྐལ་བཟང་ཡེ་ཤེས་༽, “A Preliminary Note on Chinese Codeswitching in Modern Lhasa Tibetan,” contained in: R. Barnett and R. Schwartz, eds., Tibetan Modernities, Brill (Leiden 2008), pp. 213-248.

Nicholas Tournadre, “The Dynamics of Tibetan-Chinese Bilingualism: The Current Situation and Future Prospects,” China Perspectives, vol. 45 (2003), pp. 1-9.

Look here: http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/231.

Although I wouldn’t call it code switching necessarily, it does happen that in early Tibetan-language narratives about sojourns in India one finds words and phrases in something like colloquial Hindustani.  For examples, see Ulrike Roesler, Rgya gar skad du — ‘in Sanskrit’?  Indian Languages as Reflected in Tibetan Travel Accounts, contained in: Oliver von Criegern, et al., eds., Saddharmāmṛtam. Festschrift für Jens-Uwe Hartmann zum 65. Geburtstag, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien (Vienna 2018), pp. 351-368.

A note on the frontispiece: What you see here is a detail from an old thangka painting of the Zhijé Lineage illustrated in an earlier Tibet-logic blog. Look very closely and intently at Padampa's eyes. Tell me if they don’t resemble the eyes of the peacock. And aren’t peacock feathers the very thing Indian hypnotists waved in place of the swinging pocket watches of western hypnotists? 

This brief video needs no translation.

Śākyaśrī's Chronology of 1207 CE

Everything you need to know about Śākyaśrībhadra you will find in this biographical sketch by Alexander Gardner. Otherwise I would have to teach you Tibetan, and then your work will be cut out for you. But rest assured you'll lead a full life with hardly ever a dull moment worth mentioning.

During his stay in Tibet, the Kashmiri monk and master, arriving in Tibet after a long stay in Bihar and Bengal, made date calculations three times, the first time at Khro-phu in 1204, the second time in 1207 at Sol-nag Thang-po-che Monastery and yet a third time in 1210. However, it was the second of the three, the one done in 1207, that is remembered in the Tibetan sources. And it is the one that concerns us right now.  

The core chronological passage, in verse, could be translated like this:

In the middle of the night on the eighth day

of the white part of the month with moon in the Pleiades,

at the same time the moon was setting on the mountain,

the Munīndra completely passed beyond suffering.

Counting from that time, 1,750 years plus two and one-half

months

and indeed five days have well passed by.

The time left for the Teachings in the future

is 3,249 years,

nine months, and ten days.

It was the svabhava year, or in other words the Fire Female Hare

(1207 CE),

the middle month of summer, the daylight of the fifth date

in the white half of the middle month of summer, known as the

Rooster month,

in the place called “Thang-chen,” that this was calculated by the

Dharma Lord.

If you wouldn't mind reading Tibetan in transcription, you will find the relevant materials typed at the end of this blog. If you are restricted to English, I'd recommend looking at A.I. Vostrikov, Tibetan Historical Literature, tr. by Harish Chandra Gupta, Indian Studies Past & Present, Soviet Indology Series no. 4 (Calcutta 1970), pp. 111-112, but note that the earliest citation of the passage, in the works of 'Bri-gung 'Jig-rten-mgon-po (1143-1217), was not available to Vostrikov in the time he was writing, or even at the time the English translation of his book was published, an event long post-dating his execution.

One point that could be made about all this is that of the dozen or so chronological discussions well known to Tibetans, they almost all give the historical Buddha death dates between 800 and 2100 years BCE. It's this chronology by Śākyaśrībhadra that comes closest to more common ideas current in our times about His dates since he places the Buddha's death at somewhere right about 544 BCE.*

(*I can predict your next question, but no, I can't tell you for sure what the actual date of the Parinirvana was. If you're curious, read this 525-page book: Heinz Bechert, ed., The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Die Datierung des Historischen Buddha, Part 1, Symposien Zur Buddhismus Forschung, IV, Vandenhoek & Ruprecht (Gottingen 1991).)

 

https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/as/original/DP123361.jpg

Oh, another interesting thing. It looks as if Buddha Dharma is going to last until the year 3792 CE. I suppose that means our world, too, will remain for at least that long. So a solution to global warming is going to be found after all.

§   §   §

 

For a newly released chronology of Tibetan history by Katia Buffetrille, see "Chronology of the History of Tibet: 7th to 21st Centuries."

Here is the entire text containing the words of Śākyaśrī with the commentary surrounding it added by 'Jig-rten-mgon-po. It is found in the following:

The Collected Works (Bka’-’bum) of Khams-gsum Chos-kyi-rgyal-po Thub-dbang Ratna-srī (Skyob-pa ’Jig-rten-gsum-mgon); Tibetan title page: Khams gsum chos kyi rgyal po thub dbang ratna shrī’i phyi yi bka’ ’bum nor bu’i bang mdzod, H. H. Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Konchog Tenzin Kunzang Thinley Lhundup, Drikung Kagyu Institute (Dehradun 2001), in 12 vols., at vol. 3, pp. 548-550. It has a descriptive title added by the modern editors.*

(*In the older publication of his works in 5 volumes, at vol. 3, p. 61.4, is another mention. We also found the Śākyaśrī chronology in the Klong-chen-pa history (1991 ed.) that isn't actually by the famous Klong-chen-pa, p. 456, where it has no textual differences that effect the meaning.)  

310. Sangs rgyas kyi 'das lo dang bstan pa'i gnas tshad pan chen shākya shrī'i gsung du nges pa. [p. 548]

om swa sti /

dus gsum bla ma yi dam dang ||

ma lus bla med dkon mchog gsum ||

bstan pa'i mnga' bdag dge ba'i bshes ||

kun kyi zhabs la gus phyag 'tshal ||

'dzam gling rgyan gyur dge ba'i bshes ||

lnga rig mkhas pa shākya shrī ||

rdo rje gdan sogs yul dbus kyi ||

bstan pa'i mnga' bdag gnas brtan mchog ||

rgyal po sing ga la rigs kyis ||

gces par 'dzin pas bstan pa 'di ||

ji tsam gnas pa rtsis pa yi ||

lugs su mkhas pa chen pos gsungs ||

[Note that the following section is repeated, with no significant differences, by Mkhas-pa Lde'u and in the Klong-chen-pa history.]

smin drug zla ba'i dkar phyogs kyi ||

tshes brgyad nam gung mnyam pa la ||

zla ba ri bo la nub tshe ||

thub dbang yongs su mya ngan 'das ||

de rjes lo ni stong phrag cig ||

bdun brgya dang ni lnga bcu dang ||

zla ba gnyis dang zla ba phyed ||

de bzhin nyin mo lnga rab 'das ||

lo ni stong phrag gsum dag dang ||

nyis brgya dang ni bzhi bcu dgu ||

zla dgu dang ni nyin mo bcu ||

ma 'ongs bstan pa'i lhag mar gnas ||

zhes pa me mo yos kyi lo {1207}

dpyid zla 'bring po'i gral tshes lnga'i nyin mo / yar lung sol nag thang (thang po che zhes kyang zer) gyi gtsug lag khang chen por / chos kyi rje pandi ta chen po kha che [550] shākya shrīs rtsis pa lags so //

[Here begins 'Jig-rten-mgon-po's commentary:]

bdag gi rnam par rtog pa la ||

ston pa mya ngan 'das 'og tu ||

slob dpon chen po 'phags pa byung ||

dgung lo drug brgya'i bar du bzhugs ||

'phags pa'i slob ma zla ba grags ||

de sras rig pa'i khu byug gis ||

a ti sha la dbu ma bshad ||

ston pa mya ngan 'das 'og tu ||

lo ni dgu brgya lhag tsam na ||

slob dpon chen po thogs med byung ||

lo ni brgya dang lnga bcur 'tsho ||

thogs med slob ma dbyig gi gnyen ||

de sras 'phags pa rnam grol sde ||

de bzhin so skye rnam grol sde ||

rab mchog sde dang dul ba'i sde ||

bai ro tsa na'i sde yis ni ||

seng ge bzang po nyid la bshad ||

de yis ratna pha la la ||

des kyang ghu na mai tri la ||

de yis gser gling pa la bshad ||

des kyang a ti sha la gsungs ||

brgyud pa mang dang nyung na yang ||

don gyis legs par dpyad pa las ||

chos rje pan chen gsung du nges [551] ||

'di la dga' ba chen po skyes ||

bstan pa yun ring gnas pa dang ||

bdag cag bsgrub pa byed pa rnams ||

'bras bu rgya chen thob pa la ||

mkhas pa dga' ba cis mi skye ||

slob dpon chen po 'bum .tig mkhan pos* / de bzhin gshegs pa mya ngan las 'das pa'i 'og tu / lo lnga stong gi bar du dam pa'i chos gnas par 'gyur te / de la lo lnga brgya phrag bcu yod de lnga brgya phrag dang po la dam pa'i chos spyod pa rnams phal cher dgra bcom pa'i 'bras bu thob par gyur la / gnyis pa la phyir mi 'ong ba'i 'bras bu thob par gyur la / gsum pa la lan cig phyir 'ong ba dang / rgyun tu zhugs pa'i 'bras bu thob par gyur ba mang ba ste / lnga brgya phrag gsum po de dag gi tshe ni chos rtogs shing 'bras bu thob pa mang ba'i tshigs zhes bya'o //

(*This probably means Daṃṣṭrasena / མཆེ་བའི་སྡེ་, often identified as the author of the Hundred Thousand / འབུམ་ commentary.)

lnga brgya bzhi pa la ni lhag mthong gi shas che zhing shes rab rno ba mang ngo //  lnga pa la ni zhi gnas shas che [552] ste / ting nge 'dzin bsgom pa mang ngo //

drug pa la ni tshul khrims dang ldan pa mang ste / lnga brgya phrag gsum po de dag gi tshe ni / zhi gnas dang lhag mthong bsgom zhing tshul khrims dang ldan pa mang bas bsgrub pa dang ldan pa'i tshigs zhes bya'o //

lnga brgya phrag bdun pa la mngon par dar bar 'gyur / brgyad pa la mdo sde dar bar 'gyur / dgu pa la 'dul ba dar bar 'gyur te / lnga brgya phrag gsum po de dag la bcom ldan 'das kyi zhal snga nas gsungs pa'i sde snod gsum pa la brten cing lung la spyod pa mang bas lung gi tshigs zhes bya'o //

lnga brgya phrag bcu pa la sde snod gsum la yang brtson par mi byed / chos bshad pa rnams kyang gzhung las bshad pa bzhin du legs par nyams 'og tu mi chud /  mtshan ma tsam zhig spyod pa mang bas mtshan ma tsam gyi tshigs zhes bya ste / de ltar lnga brgya phrag bcu'i mtha' ma 'di la phyi ma'i dus lnga brgya mtha' ma zhes bya'o //  [553]

de'i dus su yang shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa 'dis sangs rgyas kyi bya ba byed par 'gyur ro zhes gsungs pas / 'bras bu thob par 'gyur ba mang nyung tsam du gsungs pa las / 'bras bu mi thob pa ni ma gsungs te /

ZLA BA SNYING PO'I MDO las /

bstan pa nub pa'i dus su yang dgra bcom pa des pa 'byung ba dang / sangs rgyas mya ngan yong mi 'da' // chos kyang nub par yong mi 'gyur // gsungs pa lags na /

gdul bya smin pa dang grol ba rgyun chad par ga la 'gyur te / tshe lo bcu pa'i dus su yang rgyal po rdo rta can dang / bcom ldan 'das mgon pos tshe lo brgyad khri'i bar du 'khrid ces grags pa dang / 'khor ba ma stong gi bar du 'phags pa rgyun mi 'chad pa las shes par bya'o //  //

——————————

For the quotation in Bu-ston's history, see Obermiller's English translation (corrected in Vostrikov's book), vol. 2, p. 107, or this passage in the digital version of the Tibetan text:

kha che shâkya shrîs | shing pho byi lo la khro phur brtsis pa dang | me yos la sol nag thang chen du brtsis par | 

smin drug zla ba'i dkar phyogs kyi | 

tshes brgyad nam gung mnyam pa la | 

zla ba ri bo la nub tshe | |

thub dbang yongs su mya ngan 'das | |

de rjes lo ni stong phrag cig | 

bdun brgya dang ni lnga bcu dang | |

zla ba gnyis dang zla ba phyed | |

de bzhin nyi ma lnga rab 'das | |

lo ni stong phrag gsum dang ni | |

nyis brgya dang ni bzhi bcu dgu | |

zla ba dgu dang nyi ma bcu | |

ma 'ongs bstan pa'i lhag mar gnas zhes | 

Doughballs

Scapegoat - Photo by Natesh Ramasamy

TODAY’S BLOG is about how I found, to my amazement, a very clear and specific ritual practice shared by ancient Mesopotamia and Tibet until modern times. Looking back on it, I shouldn’t have been so surprised since it fits into a tight semantic circle of Tibeto-Mesopotamian word-connections earlier defined as “Bricks, Brilliance and Baking.” But I’m convinced there is one thing that makes this new revelation special: It not only connects a discrete ritual practice in both localities done with closely identical motives, it also goes along with a striking word borrowing. This co-incidence goes far toward confirming a transmission from Iraq to Tibet that may otherwise seem too far fetched to consider.

One Losar (“New Year”) I was celebrating at the home of a Tibetan friend, a layman who was not all that religious, perhaps even borderline agnostic. Still, he served us the Guthuk Soup and “most importantly” (his words) he took our sins outside. ‘How did he do that?’ you may well be thinking. He gave us each a small ball of dough which we rubbed on our necks to pick up some of the filth that does tend to accumulate there and then we handed them back to him. He took them with a small tray holding a rudely fashioned dough figure outside, and even if I didn’t see it done this time, he should have taken the whole lot to a crossroad and set it on fire. I hoped he wouldn’t get caught doing it. It wasn’t exactly a Tibetan cultural crossroad we were living in, after all. People would have looked askance, to say the least, at any bonfires blazing up at a busy traffic interchange.

The scapegoat complex came up in a recent blog, in the comments section, and I may not even need to point out that placing your sins (ethical impurities, pollutions, ills) onto something else that will take it away from you is very much along the lines of what we mean by a scapegoat ritual. The original (?) scapegoat ritual may have involved an actual goat for all we know, but we do use the term for a wider range of ritual actions that work analogously, with or without the goat. Indeed, in the contemporary language of corporate blame assessment, the word scapegoat is used quite a lot... Really, far too much.

Of course, the very term scapegoat puts us to thinking about the Middle East where such complexes are still common enough, and where we popularly imagine it all originated. So I shouldn’t have been too surprised to come across doughballs there. Here is how it happened.

I was reading a chapter from the Cambridge Histories Online, in a volume entitled The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West from Antiquity to the Present, the first chapter entitled “The Ancient Near East” composed by Daniel Schwemer. Schwemer distinguishes two types of rituals, the first one, ‘witch purifications’ that involves incinerating an effigy of the witch made of clay and wax. This kind of ritual is called maqlû. But the one that concerns us more at this moment is the other, different but related, type of ritual called šurpu. Let me quote p. 35, in the general context of undoing curses by ritual means: 

“Whereas the burning of the witches’ figurines dominates the proceedings of maqlû, the ritual šurpu aims at removing the patient’s impurity that has been caused by his or her own transgressions. It is not figurines representing the patient’s enemies, but the consequences of his or her own actions that have to be eliminated and are destroyed by fire. Thus, the performance of šurpu includes the burning of dough that is applied to and wiped off of the patient’s body. The patient throws various items representing his or her crimes into the fire, among them garlic peels.” [The added emphasis is my own.]

As if the identity of ritual actions, objects and objectives weren’t enough, Tibetan has borrowed this very word šurpu from Akkadian, and it fits into another (similar yet not identical) ritual context done with a different motive — food offerings to hungry ghosts and the spirits of the departed — in which barley flour (perhaps mixed with butter and/or other food substances to make a dough) is singed rather than incinerated.

The Tibetan word (or words) that means to singe or scorch in that ritual by the same name is bshur-ba, with imperative form shur-cig! And it obviously belongs to the same verb group as another verb with similar meaning gsur-ba. I won't bother you with the lexicons and what they say, but save the philological exercises for another time. The gsur ritual itself involves burning grain, but the motive is feeding hungry spirits. It was long ago described by Panglung Rinpoche in a short essay on the subject.

So to sum up, here is why I think here we have an excellent case for Mesopotamia-Tibet transmission. First, an identical object, the doughball, is made use of in closely identical ritual actions, the rubbing and the burning. Secondly, both rites are done out of the same motives, to purify the person of sin and similar blights. Third, we see that a different Tibetan grain burning rite, one with a different aim, bears the name of the very Mesopotamian rite that involves the rubbing and burning of the doughball. And the final blow to skepticism, I think, is the fact that this word that means ‘burning’ in Akkadian and ‘scorching, singeing’ in Tibetan fits seamlessly inside of an already-identified semantic circle of apparent borrowings that include words for blazing (bar|’bar) and brilliance (zil|zil).

§   §   §

Further ruminations, a little bibliography, and a few significant links

Sometimes, in order to switch gears and get a fresh start, we need to clean up some of the messes from the past. Rituals — as well as confession, restitution and reconciliation not accompanied by rituals — can certainly help. Notice how Leviticus 5 is immediately followed by a chapter on actual (not just ritual) restitution.* Apologies done, regrets expressed, while giving people back what is rightfully theirs usually must precede other efforts to smoothe things over between us.

(*The actual annual scapegoat ritual that used a real goat, intended for collective iniquity, is not all that relevant for us right now. For it, see Leviticus 16.)

To see how the very important Bon monastery known as Menri (སྨན་རི་) celebrates New Year, look here. Here they use strings instead of doughballs, but I do remember participating in a community ritual at Dolanji many years ago (not at New Year, n.b.) in which both strings and doughballs were used (everyone holds the same string, which is then cut so that each person is left holding a piece of it).

You can find other elaborate accounts of New Year rituals, including more than one way of using the doughballs, here.

With Rosh Ha-Shana upon us, to some of us it will be of special interest that the traditions of making challah bread for ritual purposes include a step in which a small doughball is taken from the large one and purposely burned. It’s this small doughball that the word challah properly refers to. This post-temple practice is consciously connected with a temple practice of daily incinerating doughballs on the fire altar.

As part of the sin purifying atonement practices leading up to Rosh Ha-Shana, many have the practice of throwing small crumbs of bread into a stream of flowing water while reciting confessional prayers. For more, try Schmoogling for "Tashlich" (send off, dispatch) or have a quick look at this news story. And if you have a little more time a particularly well done essay is this one. It’s a popular practice, and as such it doesn’t receive blanket approval from all religious authorities. It’s interesting how it uses the element of water, not fire, and crumbs instead of dough or grain, but anyway, I think you can sense a connection.

Tibetan names for dough are zan and spag. Uses include as a kind of cotton ball for spreading oil on babies, or animals, especially horses to make their fur coats shine. Also, for divination (or drawing of names from a hat). “Aleuromancy” is a word I wanted to slip into the discussion somewhere, so this is as good a chance as any. It’s supposed to be a type of divination done by slipping inscribed slips of paper into doughballs, kind of like the fortune cookies distributed after meals at Chinese restaurants in the U.S. The Guthuk dumplings of Tibetan New Year have objects, not inscriptions, placed in them.

John V. Bellezza, “Zenpar: Tibetan Wooden Moulds for the Creation of Dough Figures in Esoteric Rituals,” Collector's World. Color illustrations of zan-par. I believe this was also published in Arts of Asia, vol. 47, no. 5 (September 2017), p. 132. There is a bibliography on the subject here: http://www.francobellino.com/?p=2338.

Isabel Cranz, Atonement and Purification: Priestly and Assyro-Babylonian Perspectives on Sin and Its Consequences, Mohr Siebeck (Tübingen 2017). I’d like to say I’ve read this book, since it is precisely on topic, but anyway I hope I can read it soon and get back with you.

Zara Fleming, “An Introduction to Zan par (Tibetan wooden moulds),” Tibet Journal, vol. 27, nos. 1-2 (Spring 2002), pp. 197-216.

Zara Fleming, “The Ritual Significance of Zan-par,” contained in: Erberto F. Lo Bue, ed., Art in Tibet: Issues in Traditional Tibetan Art from the Seventh to the Twentieth Century, Brill (Leiden 2011), pp. 161-170. I’m not sure how these stamped dough figures figure into our discussion, but I imagine they ought to, somehow, if not now, some other time.

Jampa L. Panglung, “On the Origin of the Tsha-gsur Ceremony,” contained in: Barbara N. Aziz and Matthew Kapstein, eds., Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, Manohar (Delhi 1985), pp. 268-271. There is a Tibetan controversy within the Gelugpa school about whether “Hot Sur” (or as Panglung suggests, perhaps “Burnt Food”) ritual offering is Buddhist in its origins or not, with the Fifth Dalai Lama saying it’s not justifiable in Buddhist scripture, while the later Bstan-dar Lha-rams-pa argues it is. The brief essay ends with notice of a Dunhuang text nicely demonstrating that the word and its associated context goes back at least to the Tibetan imperial era.

Erica Reiner, Šurpu: A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations, Weidner (Graz 1958). This includes English translations.

Francis James Michael Simons, Burn Your Way to Success; Studies in the Mesopotamian Ritual and Incantation Series Śurpu, doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham (2017). I list this because of its useful survey of the literature. It doesn’t seem to have anything else specifically relevant for us at the moment. Tibetanists will find instruction in Mesopotamian use of juniper as an incense or fumigant for purifying large areas, just as Tibetans do in bsangs burning rites. The Mesopotamians even had a way of blessing the juniper for use in ritual. This study emphasizes juniper and cedar use for controlling and repelling insects, although this has never, as far as I know, featured in discussions about the Tibetan practice.

Wikipedia has a worthy entry on the Mesopotamian rite that you can see here.

Alexandra Witze, “Barley Fueled Farmers’ Spread onto Tibetan Plateau: Cold-Tolerant Crop enabled High-Altitude Agriculture some 3,600 Years ago,” Nature News, an internet journal. Try this link. Well, I for one regard the knowledge of just when barley cultivation started in Tibet as key to the issue of when grain baking, toasting, barley beer making and the like could have also had their start. I doubt this article will have the final word on the subject, but it does give us food to think about.

The Tibetan conversant can benefit from this video that depicts and interviews people about several of the dough-related parts of Tibetan New Year rituals. Go ahead and click on it:

 

བོད་ཆོལ་ཁ་གསུམ་གྱི་དགུ་གཏོར་ངོ་སྤྲོད།

This video of Gutor (Torma Rite of the Twenty-Ninth Day, just before New Year) shows outstandingly astounding cham dances, but you have to wait to the very last minute to see the torma burning.

+   +   +

Particularly for people who are not confirmed Bible-lovers I recommend, as a friend already recommended to me, to go read Leviticus chapter 5 carefully. There you will see that its sin-dispelling practice had both a bloody meat aspect and a bread-dough/grain aspect. This dyad of red and white elements, the blood and the grain, the wine and the bread, can be traced back to the original sacrifices of Cain and Abel in Bereshit, with Cain representing the preoccupation with field agriculture, and Abel the animal husbandry. There is a lot to puzzle over regardless of your beliefs, but I suggest putting on alien binoculars for a change before switching back to normal setting.

And finally, especially for the Tibeto-theoreticians, I’d like them to observe something. We’ve probably become too comfortable in our view that the ancient blood sacrifices were (entirely or largely) ‘replaced’ by grain and dough sacrifices as time went on, particularly the dough figures of animals and so on that we often see in Tibetan rituals. Even if there may be grains of truth in this common idea, we should permit ourselves to be bewildered by the simultaneous presence of dough and blood sacrifice that we see in Leviticus 5. I mean, the doughballs and dough figures could have been there all along, am I right? One didn’t have to replace or substitute for the other.

PS: These days I have so much tedious work to do I don’t have time to read books much, but before I go to sleep at night I read some pages of two very different books about Genesis: Gary A. Anderson’s The Genesis of Perfection and Catherine L. McDowell’s The Image of God in the Garden of Eden. I’ve already found dozens of subjects for a Tibeto-logician to blog about, but if I don’t promise to write them, I won’t commit any sin if I don’t, will I? Each of the two books is mind-altering in its own way. I’ve always been intrigued by the creation account, so much that I have trouble reaching other parts of the Hebrew scriptures. It doesn’t matter if you think it presents a true history of things, to me it’s more about how it provokes a lot of questions and presents a number of puzzles. Even if you were to read it as the opening of a best-selling novel.

Bagel, Baklava and Bag-leb

 

I suppose this to be the original bagel,
even if in Turkish it’s called simit.

I won’t waste breath apologizing for the frontispiece. Still, I wish I hadn’t put it up there. It’s making me drool... crunchy, salty yet soft inside, and I can’t have one if only because of the gluten. This is, in case you don’t recognize it, a Turkish-style bagel called simit. You probably won’t find them among the items called bagels in your local convenience store. You might have to ask.

You could have already guessed what we’re aiming for when you first glanced at the title of today’s blog, so I’ll keep it short. A bagel is not a baklava, but they could share some etymological roots, it seems to me. Could this also be true of the Tibetan food term bag-leb?

To begin with, as you may know there are several culinary invention myths associated with the Turkish siege of Vienna. Let’s skip over the milk-coffee, the coffee-house, and the croissant — the croissant is supposedly based on the Turkish/Islamic crescent — and go straight to the matters that interest us right now, the bagel and baklava.  It is usual to find a Germanic root meaning 'round' behind bagel, or just to assume the Yiddish origins of the word, an automatic assumption (likely to be accepted without investigation) just because it is so widely regarded as a Jewish food. But legend says it was invented by a Viennese baker to commemorate victory over the Turkish forces, based on the shape of the stirrups of the Polish cavalry. I’m already confused about what counts as real history or not, and in danger of making matters worse, but I believe the bread item itself, or should I say items, were of Turkish origins, the naming based in confusing which of the newly introduced doughy items was which. Tell me if I’m wrong.

Baklava you must know is made of super-thin pastry layers and filled with nuts and honey. It has a clear Turkish name, first borrowed into European languages in the mid-17th century.  But just remember what a huge territory was ruled by the Ottomans then and since and you will know where to find the places where baklava is well known as part of the national cuisine. They have different styles of making them, of course, and tend to pronounce it with an accent on a different syllable. I like to say it with an initial accent. But if the Ottomans donated it to the Austrians at that point, there is still no telling how much history was already behind it. Most think it is quite ancient, guessing it is Roman or even Babylonian, it is difficult to find agreement.

There are even those who argue that the word, if not the sticky sweet itself, goes back to the time when Turkic speakers neighbored Mongolian speakers in the Orkhon River valley of Mongolia, far before the Turkish migrations. I haven’t found any sense of consensus on this.

Then, during the long centuries of emigration and expansion into Asia Minor, the Turkish people absorbed a tremendous number of words from neighboring languages, particularly Arabic and Persian, so much so that Ottoman Turkish got complicated. So it might not be possible to be sure of the word’s ultimate origins. I know I can’t tell you, even if I’m working on expanding my Turkish vocabulary again these days.

So now that we’ve managed to reach so little certainty on those first two words, let’s see what we can do with the third, the common Tibetan word bag-leb for ‘bread’.

Some people think, mistakenly as we will see in a moment, that bag-le-ba is just another spelling (perhaps the more correct spelling?) for Tibetan bag-leb.

A TBRC search of bag-le-ba reveals that in its 6 occurrences it is 5 times used as a regional or country name with its own peculiar script (or is it the script only that has the name?).  In one instance only is it a type of cloth (perhaps a cloth named after the place?). To be safe, I tried searching for bag-le-pa, and the 4 occurrences there point to it being a fabric. And the most likely solution to this, too, is to see it as meaning Pahlava.*

(*There are some country lists contained in Tibetan translations of scriptures where Pahlava appears in the forms Pa-hu-pa and Ba-hu-ba, both of these I think being based on misreadings of a more exact transcription that also occurs: Pa-hla-ba.) 

But, and this seems like a large but, in those cases where a fabric is concerned, it is possible these are all references to cloth made from bark, and this draws us into an Indic/Sanskritic etymology for bag-le-ba that likely has no connection to Pahlava.

Paul Pelliot, in his legendary Notes on Marco Polo, suggests it may be explained by a Prakrit form similar to Bengali bāklā, 'bark.'  The Sanskrit form is valkala. Emeneau wrote a piece on bark clothing, so you can read about that for yourself in case you have trouble believing in it.

In short, we can now forget about bag-le-ba. When you encounter this spelling it never means bread.

So now that we have eliminated this touch of confusion with the Persian realm and its script as well as cloth made of bark, we can settle down to the word bag-leb. Bag-leb is, as we said, the quotidian Tibetan word today for bread. It may be true what Laufer says, I cannot eliminate the possibility that it’s a two-word expression meaning flatbread. Still, I think it could well be another example of what I call a ”Tibetanization,” a borrowing that slowly and unconsciously naturalizes the foreign word by spelling it in a form that lends itself to a Tibetan meaning. And this is especially likely in multisyllabic words in my experience. See our earlier blog about Turkish and Mongolian loans in Tibetan.

Indeed, it is the case that as far as there is such a thing as traditional Central Tibetan bread,* it would to be in the form of approximately three inches in diameter, & maybe 3/4" high, rounds, more along the lines of a thick pancake or flattened roll than a loaf of bread, and usually made with brown wheat flour. In my experience the better ones always were.

(*Not everyone will appreciate the note of skepticism, but I have yet to run into a bona fide pre-20th-century usage of the word bag-leb, and all my searches for early instances have been in vain. You can go to TBRC and try searching for it yourself. But wait,  I spoke too soon. I do seem to find one usage in a medical work preserved for us in the Tanjur written by an Indian physician Raghunātha (Ra-gu-nā-tha/ར་གུ་ནཱ་ཐ་) who visited Tibet sometime after 1656. This is significant! I do wonder if the Indian writer intended an Indian flatbread, roti or chapati or the like, when he used the word. It seems to be difficult to find evidence for these Indian breads in pre-Mughal literature.)

So finally, I ought to be ashamed of myself. After all, I’ve invited you over to visit from a great distance for a much-kneaded discussion over a cup of tea only to offer you an empty, or very nearly empty, plate of answers. So now it’s your turn. Tell me what makes sense to you.

°

Testimonies of some highly reputed scholars of past generations

M.B. Emeneau, “Barkcloth in India—Sanskrit Valkala,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 2 (April 1962), pp. 167-170. I believe this is the single best discussion on this important topic, in case you’re as curious as I think you should be. Surely you are thinking, Is it comfortable? Can it breathe?

Berthold Laufer, “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” T'oung Pao, vol. 17, no. 1 (1916), pp. 403-552, at p. 532, footnote 1:  

The Tibetan word pa-le (“bread”), however, which Dalgado (l.c. p. 120) derived from Bell’s Manual of Colloquial Tibetan and with an interrogation-mark placed among the derivatives from Portuguese pão does not belong to the Romance languages. It is written bag-leb, both elements being genuine Tibetan words, bag meaning “flour, pap, porridge” and leb, “flat.”

Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 1, p. 465:

...it shows once more that the translators of the Mahāvyutpatti from Tibetan into Chinese often adopted arbitrary interpretations : hua-mien, ,,cotton”, is given as a translation of Skr. vakkali, Tib. bag-le-ba. But the would-be Skr. vakkali can be nothing else than a Prākrit form of Skr. valkala, ,,bark garment” (cf. Pali vakkala and vakkali), and Tib. bag-le-ba seems to be an adjectival form of bag-le, itself based on a Prākrit form similar to Beng. bāklā, ,,bark” (on which cf. J. Bloch, La formation de la langue marathe, 404; but bag-le-ba may have been contaminated by Bag-le-pa or Bag-le-ba, ,,of Balkh”).  

NOTE of mine: just a comment on those last words, I think Pelliot introduced an unnecessary confusion with Balkh. Balkh is represented in Tibetan sources in the forms Bag-la and Sbal-kha. Heed the metathesis, it happens, especially when liquids are involved.

Stig Wikander, “A Central Asian Loanword in Arthaśāstra,” contained in: J.C. Heesterman et al., eds., Pratidânam: Indian, Iranian & Indo-European Studies Presented to Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper on his Sixtieth Birthday, Mouton (The Hague 1968), pp. 270-274. I haven’t made reference to this, and in fact added it here only in July of 2023. I’m not sure of its conclusion, and need to think about it some more. Still in the passage he discusses deer, sable and other skins that might be kept in a royal treasury, and all are qualified as bāhlaveya, or having to do with bāhlava, which S.W. takes to mean ‘from Balkh.’ I’m tempted to think it means cloth made of skin or bark, just that I can’t guarantee it. An Indologist could be helpful here.

On the web

For a discussion on the bagel, look here. Search for yourself and find a lot more. I regret that I didn’t read this book before posting my nonsense: The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, by Maria Belinska. You can see some of it at Googlebooks if you look for it.

For a recipe with clear directions for making bag-leb (བག་ལེབ་), go to this page at Yolangdu website. You should at the very least go there for its photograph of what ordinary Central Tibetan bread looks like. Yolangdu is a commercial site in the sense that they offer travel services as well as a cookbook that can be purchased. I am not advertising their paid services — you are right now reading a non-commercial blog — just linking this particular page with its recipe generously offered to the world without any price attached.

For a trip around the world showing the many forms that bread can take, I think this page is the greatest: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/gallery/worlds-best-breads-travel-photos/?gallery=38. It has photos of every type mentioned in this blog, including Tibetan baleb and Turkish simit.

Some books about Tibetan food

Rinjing Dorje (Rig-’dzin-rdo-rje), Food in Tibetan Life, with illustrations by the author, Prospect Books (London 1985). 

Not just useful for its recipes, this has impressive cultural information on such matters as table manners, joking and swearing. So I recommend reading it even if you don’t like food. My older brother once borrowed the book, and swore that he did his best to follow its directions for making Tibetan beer and nearly died when he tried it, perhaps because he took seriously the suggestion that eagle shit and aconite might be used in the yeast starter. But my dear brother, rest his soul, always had a flair for the dramatic, knew how to embroider his travel stories to ensure maximum impact. I never had that useful ability myself.

Bod-kyi Nyer-mkho'i Zas-rigs Tshig-mdzod (“Tibetan Traditional Food and Drink Dictionary”), Kokonor People's Printing Press (Xining 2000). 

Perhaps you can view it here (www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W20183). The brief introduction and postscript can be read in English. Each entry gives definitions in Tibetan, Chinese and English, although it is often the case that the Tibetan definitions are much longer and more detailed.  Notice that the late famous Namkhai Norbu was involved in the making of this reference work, but his name is given as Mr. Na Ka Nuo Bu, “the famous Tibetan scholar of Italian Oriental University.” The entry for bag-leb defines it as a name for flat go-re, which is interesting, even if the English translates with the technically incorrect “Baked bread.” Looking at the entry for go-re, it says it is the general word for any kind of bread, and then continues with three pages of entries for different types. I think the basic meaning of go-re is simply round, with extended meaning of completeness, while in the kitchen context the best translation might be bun.

Bod Zas Bdud-rtsi’i Bum-pa (‘The Vase of Ambrosia that is Tibetan Food’), Tibet People’s Printing Press (Lhasa 1993). 

Perhaps you can view it here (https://www.tbrc.org/#!rid=W4CZ309050). I wouldn’t much recommend this recipe book for most people. There is hardly anything in it for me since I’ve reverted to the vegetarianism of my younger years and have discovered a need to stay gluten free. Well, there is one very simple recipe for honey bread (sbrang thud) that is sounding good, although I think I’ll make it with teff. You know, I once enjoyed fresh croissants from the French Bakery in Lhasa, proving true that line of a song, “It’s a whole world after all!”

And a final note for myself (July 29, 2021)

I ought to think more about one occurrence of a region called Bag-le. This is in the discussion of earthquakes found in the omens text by Garga (Derge Tanjur, Toh. no. 4321).  It is mentioned just before Persia, and seems to be described as located in Tokharia (the western one no doubt, not the eastern). It’s part of a longer list of countries, and looks like this with country names turned red:  tho gar gyi yul bag le dang  /    bar sig [~par sig] gi yul dang  /... That means that Bag-le probably means Balkh (Skt. Bāhlika), so I should go back and apologize to Pelliot for doubting him.