Homicide, Forced Suicide, Vengeance and the Ghost

Andrea Mantegna's St. Sebastian, c. 1455-60

"It will have blood: they say blood will have blood.   

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

... ... ... I am in blood 

stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, 

returning were as tedious as go o'er."

— Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4.

I’ve been reading an interesting new master’s thesis. Wait a minute, does that sound like a normal sentence to you?  Well, anyway, it surely is an interesting work that put my mind to thinking after I finished shuddering. Think of it as Macbeth and St. Sebastian with more than a touch of Silence of the Lambs. If you are OK with that, you might be ready to read on.

The thesis, by Sara Conrad, is about the Sakya Bagmo (ས་སྐྱ་འབག་མོ་), often called “witches” in English —  the weird sisters of Macbeth? — since anyway some of the things they have done were quite ghoulish to say the least, and time after time they needed to be brought under control by the Sakya hierarchs. These women are actual flesh-and-blood women possessed by a kind of spirit (for this reason they are sometimes referred to as söndré - གསོན་འདྲེ་ or living ghosts). The real meaning of the name Bagmo is mask (with the mo just a regular feminine ending).

When reading this account of the origins of the Sakya Bagmo, I was struck by the recurrence of a theme (or complex if you prefer) in Tibetan culture, one that has its various manifestations in most or all of the different sects, not just in the Sakya. Without getting too structuralistic about it, let’s pare it down to the basic formula.

A, B and C are good friends of X.  At some point X gets in the way of his three (or four or more) friends’ plans for the future. A new plan is made to get him out of the way, a plot in which they all participate in some way. X is killed or, which is practically the same thing, cornered into an impossible position from which the only escape is suicide. The unjustly killed person cries out for revenge from the grave. The guilty parties, and their wider organization, engage in acts of propitiation, meant to turn X into a protector rather than an antagonist. Time and again, X requires reminding not to slip back into vengeance mode, which anyway X threatens to do with some regularity, just as the guilt of A, B, and C keeps flaring up from time to time, generation after generation. Is it the guilt or is it the ghost that gets propitiated? The rituals can’t tell and perhaps don’t even know the difference.

Of course this skeletal scenario was constructed by myself just this moment, and one thing you need to remember is that not every single facet of it has to be repeated in every instance of the story. The larger structural parallels are what I want to point out, not the architectural details.

Here is an account of how the Sakya Bagmo originated somewhere around the 16th century. The Rabjampa Sönam Özer (རབ་འབྱམས་པ་བསོད་ནམས་འོད་ཟེར་) was captured by a group of three political figures (sde-pa) named Lhakhangpa, Lhasa Dzongpa, and Kyetrangpa (their motives not clarified). They tied him to a pillar next to the long stairway of the Great Temple of Sakya. Then they shot arrows at his chest and killed him.

“According to the oral historical tradition, when the Rabjampa was killed he said these prayers with great intention: ‘As I pass from this lifetime, may I be born as the empowered one of one third of the world.’  But due to the fact that his consciousness was vengeful and angry, he said, ‘as I pass from this lifetime, may I be born as devourer of one third of the world.’ ” (Conrad, p. 11)

By the power of his negative intentions (however justified by the unjustness of his death) he was born as the first Sakya Bagmo. Her name was Namkha Drölma (ནམ་མཁའ་སྒྲོལ་མ་). It fell upon a Sakya leader by the name of Drachen Tutob Wangchug to try and subdue her, but try as he did methods both peaceful and wrathful they were to no avail, so he took the next best step and married her, or as the text says, took her as a [f.] Seal (ཕྱག་རྒྱ་མ་). In any case, they were in cohabitation when she died. Then Drachen peeled off her skin, tanned it and made from it a mask. This he used in a ritual to coerce the spirit to become a protector of the Sakya school. This mask was kept in a special box and taken out once a year for ritual purposes.

Well, I did warn you about the parallels with Silence of the Lambs. Still... if you are still with me... What else does this story in general remind me of?  For one thing the account of Shugden. If you want to read more about it, the quickest and best way is to send you over to another blog by another blogger. You will find the link below under “Dreyfus,” so I’m not going to go into this much better known story right now.

Less well known is the account of a once-vengeful ghost turned protector spirit of the Bön school. Some will surely be surprised to learn that Bönpos turned a high incarnation of the Karma Kagyü school into a protector of their own school. How did that happen?

The Tibetan-language sources are widely scattered and are not especially clear. The one summary I know of is by Samten Karmay, who says that when the 10th Red Hat Karmapa died unexpectedly in Nepal during the Tibeto-Nepalese wars in 1792, the Tibetan government forbade recognition of his reincarnation.* Later on his ghost manifested as a spirit. Then the abbot of Menri Monastery named Sherab Gonggyel (1784-1835) made him into a protector of Bon religion, giving the spirit protector a name that is identical to the name of the First Red Hat Karmapa: Dragpa Gyaltsen (1283-1349). Although it is true that the Bön protector figure is the most recent one to develop, it is still a curiousity that his name Dragpa Gyaltsen is often prefaced with a set of epithets that mean Fierce, Forceful, and Great King. The second of these three, Forceful, translates Shugden (Shugs-ldan).*

(*More about the Tenth Red Hat Karmapa here.   **I located another source that adds a fourth epithet: Wealth God [Nor-lha].  YTKC, p. 932: drag po shugs ldan rgyal chen nor lha grags pa seng ge'i mchod bstod /  YTKC is a very lengthy catalog of Bon scriptures. Look here.)

Baumer (p. 170) says that the 10th Red Hat Karmapa’s death was what could be called a forced suicide: “[He] is supposed, for political reasons, to have incited the Nepalese Gurkhas to undertake their military campaign of 1788-1791 against Tibet. [He], having failed, committed suicide, but was unable to release his soul from the earthly realm of existence and became a wandering evil spirit. The abbot of the Bön monastery of Menri, however, recognized that this tulku was originally the son of the demon king Khyapa and the daughter of Shenrab. He tamed him and forced him to become a protective deity of Bön.”

If there is a single historical figure behind all these guilt-tripping unjustified death cults, it would have to be this one: Dranka Pelgi Yönten (བྲན་ཀ་དཔལ་གྱི་ཡོན་ཏན་), the first signatory of the Tibetan-Chinese peace treaty of 820-821 CE.

Dranka, a royal minister, was falsely accused of having an illicit affair with the royal consort Ngangtsulma (ངང་ཚུལ་མ་). This is likely to sound familiar if you’ve ever heard the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.  But his rivalry with one of his fellow ministers started already in their childhood days, according to a remarkable and lengthy story we don’t have time for at the moment. The false accusation has a deeper background, so it seems it cannot be so simply reduced to a religiously motivated argument between the pro- and anti-Buddhist forces. Perhaps that, too.

The Deyu history says that when the pregnant queen Ngangtsulma heard the news of the minister Dranka's murder she became physically ill, slashed open her own stomach with an obsidian knife and said, “If you want to know if the minister and I did or did not have an affair, have a look at this!” Everyone could see that inside her stomach was a child with a full set of conch-like teeth as well as eyebrows of turquoise color. These they knew to be unequivocal marks that the child was of royal blood. The king himself confessed his mistake and as part of his penance erected a sacred icon-volume of the Perfection of Wisdom scripture.* The ghost of Dranka went on to be credited with everything terrible that happened in the post-imperial period, including the civilian worker uprisings (ཁེང་ལོག), and the looting of the royal tombs. To follow Dranka’s curse, the end of the imperial line itself may be credited to him: “May the azure sky turn bluer, the tawny earth turn to red.  May the lords and civilians revolt and the royal line be cut off.”** 

(*This volume was called the Red Abridgement. **Deyu history, p. 361.)

It may be that Dranka's death set the precedent for the others. I’ll just put that forward as a hypothesis that might gain or lose strength with further investigation and reflection. The Dranka story may itself have precedents. Anyway, all of these stories regardless of their chronological coordinates can be traced back to the same unhealthy psycho-social complex.

I have to say that today’s blog doesn’t exactly portray Tibetan Buddhism in the best of lights or its finest of moments, much like our contemporary Shugden controversies. To judge from what I’ve seen on the internet, they seem to bring out the worst in people. If you are thinking that way you aren’t alone. I know a number of modern-day Tibetan Buddhists will agree: It would be just as well if these vicious cycles of guilt, vengefulness and propitiation could find resolution in a new way. 

My recommendation? (Not that anyone asked me...)

Confess, apologize and try to make amends for the incidents of cruel and unusual injustice that underly them, and admit that these cultural complexes are from beginning to end about political power and sectarian allegiance, not religion. I have no doubt Buddhism will fare better without these particular practices that keep raising up the ghosts of guilt. As we all know, guilt  is, along with martyrdom, one of the specialties of the three main monotheistic religions, and as far as I’m concerned they can keep their corner on the market. Buddhists ought to be aspiring to attain Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings without getting sidetracked.

§  §  §

References

Christoph Baumer, Tibet's Ancient Religion Bön, Orchid Press (Bangkok 2002).

Sara Marie Conrad, Oral Accounts of the Sa-skya 'bag-mo: Past and Present Voices of the Terrifying Witches of Sa-skya,  master’s thesis, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University (Bloomington, June 2012). Look here and here.

Brandon Dotson, “At the Behest of the Mountain: Gods, Clans and Political Topography in Post-Imperial Tibet,” contained in: Cristina Sherrer-Schaub, ed., Old Tibetan Studies, Brill (Leiden 2012), pp. 159-204. This paper is much recommended for its close reading of the classic versions of the Dranka story.

Georges Dreyfus, “The Shuk-den Affair: History and Nature of a Quarrel,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, vol. 21, no. 2 (1998), pp. 227-270.  This page links to the more academic publications on the Shugden issues, with Dreyfus’ article at the top of the list, as it must be. I prefer not to supply links to all those other Shugden-connected sites, since they are so numerous and you can find them with ease. If I wanted to link to anything so dreadfully uninspiring I’d sooner link to Xinhua editorials, to tell the truth. Here is a recent statement on the Dalai Lama’s own webpage on the issues raised by the protesters that seem to pop up everywhere He goes these days. 

Elena de Rossi Filibeck, La malizia delle donne e l'innocenza maschile: il tema della moglie di Potifarre in Tibet, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. 80, nos. 1-4 (2007), pp. 41-49. This is the best and most recent writing on the Potiphar’s wife type of story in Tibet.

Samten Karmay, The Arrow and the Spindle [vol. 1], Mandala Book Point (Kathmandu 1998). 


Mountain Phoenix, “The Spirit that I Called: Dorje Shugden and the Unresolved Political History of the Gelugpas” (September 15 2014). For being so well spoken, and for its even-headed and independently-arrived-at assessment of the situation, I place this essay in a class by itself.  For a related but earlier (October 4, 2008) essay by the same author, look here.

Roberto Vitali, “Sa-skya and the mNga'-ris skor gsum Legacy: The Case of Rin-chen-bzang-po's Flying Mask,” Lungta, vol. 14 (Spring 2001), pp. 5-44.  This is in a special issue of Lungta (a publication of Amnye Machen Institute, McLeod Ganj) entitled Aspects of Tibetan History, guest edited by Roberto Vitali.

Afterthoughts

Dranka we ought to emphasize was a very important political figure during the first two decades of the 9th century, and his name appears carved in stone more than once in old Tibetan inscriptions. His historical existence isn’t likely to be doubted by anyone.

Conrad names the one who subdued the Sakya Bagmo as Sgra-chen Mthu-stobs-dbang-phyug (སྒྲ་ཆེན་མཐུ་སྟོབས་དབང་ཕྱུག), born in the 10th rab-byung cycle, the Water Dragon Year (1592 CE). Since he was the eldest brother of the much more famous A-myes-zhabs (ཨ་མྱེས་ཞབས་,1597-1659 or 1660), his identity is not in much doubt.  But the TBRC spells his name in the form 'Jam-dbyangs-mthu-stobs-dbang-phyug, འཇམ་དབྱངས་མཐུ་སྟོབས་དབང་ཕྱུག, giving him the dates 1588-1637. The specifier Sgra-chen (སྒྲ་ཆེན་) would suggest that he was a great grammarian, however another source known to me calls him Sgar-chen (སྒར་ཆེན་), connecting him to a ‘great encampment.’* Neither of these two epithets/specifiers is used in the brief entry in this biographical dictionary: Ko-zhul Grags-pa-'byung-gnas and Rgyal-ba-blo-bzang-mkhas-grub, Gangs-can Mkhas-grub Rim-byon Ming-mdzod, Kan-su'u Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Lanzhou 1992), pp. 638-639, and nothing is said about the Sakya Bagmo. It does say he was born in 1588, and here his name takes the longer form འཇམ་དབྱངས་མཐུ་སྟོབས་དབང་ཕྱུག་གྲགས་པ་རྒྱལ་མཚན་.

(*This other source is Khetsun Sangpo's Biographical Dictionary of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, vol. 3, p. 790; I just double-checked it. It very certainly refers to the same person, since A-myes-zhabs is mentioned immediately after him.)

— — —

“Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.”

I imagine Shakespeare meant for us to find a mantic element in this mysterious phrase of his. The speech of tree and stone is found in Homer’s Odyssey, and in Plato's Phaedrus, and even long before these Greeks in an Ugaritic text. For the evidence, look at this essay fresh off the press: Alexander S.W. Forte, “Speech from Tree and Rock: Recovery of a Bronze Age Metaphor,” American Journal of Philology, vol. 136, no. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 1-35.* We are supposed to imagine some kind of ghostly imprecation, as if the blood were crying out from the ground, as if stones were ominously moving (crashing rocks = crashing thunder), or trees prophesying future vengeance. To quote pp. 30-31 on the phrase speech from tree and/or rock:

“In the Iliad, the phrase has connotations of persuasion in a context of courtship; in the Odyssey, it is generative and prophetic; and in the Theogony, it occurs in a transparently prophetic context within a larger work concerned with the creation of the universe. 

“Each Greek phrase is likely an idiomatic reflex of a phrase which is well-preserved and artfully represented in the Ugaritic text, in which lightning and thunder represent divine speech as a prophetic utterance and are representative of the mingling of heaven and earth.”

I know that Tibetan translations of two of Shakespeare's plays — Romeo and Juliette and Hamlet — have been available for over a decade now. I've been on the lookout for a translation of Macbeth, since someone once told me there was one, but so far no good luck with my luck. I just thought it would be fun to supply a Tibetan version of the quote at the front of the blog. For an entertaining thing about translating Shakespeare into Tibetan, go to Adam Pearcey's website, “More Shakespeare in Tibetan.” Tibetanists should pay good attention to the alternative verse translations in the comments section to that page!

(*I should add to this a quite significant discussion in Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria, E.J. Brill (Leiden 1996), pp. 181-185. She supplies this translation of the Ugaritic words of Baal:  “For I have a word which I want to speak to you/ a message which I want to communicate to you, / a word of trees and a whisper of stone.”)

A Word of Trees and a Whisper of Stone. That really says it.

༓   ༓   ༓

Postscript:  The following comment was sent to me by email from Sara Conrad, the author of the master’s thesis that got me started on this topic.  This is what she had to say about her difficulties researching the topic of the Sakya Bagmo (October 2, 2015):

“I had a lot of problems collecting interviews on this topic. No women would talk to me about the Bag mo, even though I interviewed a high ranking female member of the Sakya pa - she would not go on record. Since you brought up Silence of the Lambs, I will bring up Poltergeist - where they were afraid of talking about it because they were afraid it would come true or something would happen. I also felt (and this was said to me as well) that people did not want to talk about violence in Buddhism. The only interviewee really excited to talk about this topic was the Nyingma pa Rinpoche.”

Lexical Euphoria: Good News on Dictionaries

A lot is happening of late in Tibetan lexicography. It can be hard to keep your head above water, but there is much good news for dictionary lovers. On the one hand we have the electronic dictionaries that can even be downloaded as apps for your smart phone, like what is now the standard of its kind: the Monlam Dictionary.  I suppose the most popular reference these days among students would be the Tibetan-to-English Translation Tool at The Tibetan and Himalayan Library (look here). There is no "Google translate" automated translation program for Tibetan yet. In the mean time this is the closest thing there is.*

(*If you or your children are just beginning to learn Tibetan letters, you may want to try the brand new “Tibetan Kid” or a similar app. I understand there is now an android app for THL’s translation tool, but I can’t tell you any more about that right now. If you want to install Monlam Dictionary with its Bodyig fonts on your Mac, see this video.)

Most young translators of Tibetan texts keep folders full of scanned dictionaries on their laptops. And they collect them like young people once used to collect baseball cards and phone tokens, swapping them with other collectors they happen to meet. This is just a fact I’ve often observed. If you can’t remember the times when Jäschke and Das were basically all there was, you can be sure you can count yourself among the young translators. Me? I don’t use smart phones, and I remember like it was just yesterday how we used to bitch and moan about Jäschke and Das and dream of a better time to come, so you know what that makes me.

Today I’m going to type in some minimally helpful words about print dictionaries.  You know what I mean, the old fashioned kinds that haven’t as yet had their content splashed up all over the internet (as far as I know).

I remember how we used to talk about “the three-volume dictionary,” but that name got rapidly outdated by being reprinted first in two volumes and finally in just one.  For a long time now its content has been made available to the world in digital form, and practically everyone I know of is using it that way. The print book just sits there unused, although if you are so fortunate as to have the particular version (of the first part of the dictionary only) in English form, it can come in very handy.*

(*Zhang Yisun (1893-1983), et al., Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1985), reprinted several times.  The English version got off to a good start with An Encyclopaedic Tibetan-English Dictionary (Bod dbyin tshig mdzod chen mo), The Nationalities Publishing House in association with The School of Oriental and African Studies (Beijing & London 2001), in 1384 pages, covering the first 8 letters of the Tibetan alphabet, ending with the word bsnyol-ba.  The project directors were Tadeusz Skorupski and Dondrub Dorje, while the translators were Gyurme Dorje and Tudeng Nima. For a somewhat critical review by Stephen Hodge, who worked on the project in its earlier stages, look here.)

Now, as if meant to confuse us, there is a new three-volume dictionary that is not (yet) so well known. It is a dictionary of literary Tibetan. The details are as follows:

Bod yig tshig gter rgya mtsho, compiled by a committee and edited by Thub-bstan-phun-tshogs (b. 1955), Si-khron Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Chengdu 2012), in 3 vols., page nos. continuous, in 4013 pages. 

You can see what a hefty set it is in this photo:

I do recommend this other three-volume dictionary, and my main reason is that so many of its entries are original ones, not simply copied — as so often happens — from previous dictionaries. It may be difficult to locate it without making a special effort, and these days the mailing cost alone may be only slightly less than prohibitive. Still, I think it will prove its worth enough times you will be happy with the decision to get it. 

A few points to observe: It bears traces it was created in Eastern Tibet. The system of alphabetization is not of the standard kind.* It includes a lot of proper names, medical terms and the like.** 

(*Superscripts come before subscripts, if you can believe that! Then combinations including both superscripts and subscripts... I guess you get the picture if you are meant to.)  (**I'm sorry, but I don’t think I’ll get into the new medical dictionaries that are coming out, although I suppose I might get around to that someday. For now I’ll just say that there are some good ones.)

Teams of Tibetologists in Munich have been working for many decades on a Tibetan-German dictionary project, illustrated in our frontispiece. The title is Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache. The good news is that it’s easy to use and full of examples of usage. No simple lexicon, it is indeed a citation dictionary, with bibliographical references to the sources used. It includes a good selection of place and personal names as well. 

So far, only good. The somewhat less good news is that not all the fascicles have come out yet, although they seem to be appearing with some regularity. I count myself fortunate to have fascicles 1 through 26 (I count a total of 1678 pages), covering the first eight letters of the Tibetan alphabet, and quite a bit of the ninth letter  ཏ་  ending with the word lto-stong, meaning hungry.  

Those years you spent trying to learn German will pay off here, while you will regret those other years you were forgetting what you learned. Some will be heartened by the idea that this is supposed to become a Tibetan-English dictionary at some point in the future, although I’m not sure if my information on that point is up to date or not. 

The history of the making of this dictionary is told in the introduction to the first volume. It started in the 1950’s and has continued ever since. When you see how many fine Tibetanists contributed to it during a half century of labor, and when you see what care has gone into its production, you know it is going to be at the top of everyone’s dictionary list when it will at long last reach completion. And when it finally is all there, my calculations indicate it ought to be about 4834 pages in length. That’s awesome.

And finally:  You may wonder why a Tibetanist who has basically locked himself up in the 12th century would even care. But one of the dictionaries I am most looking forward to seeing is this one:

Roland Bielmeier (1943-2013), Comparative Dictionary of Tibetan Dialects (CDTD) in five volumes: Introduction, Noun, Verb, Index and Syntax.

Go here and here and here for more information about it.

The truth is, many words from the pre-Mongol period of history that became obsolete or quite rare in later Tibetan writings are still in use in regional dialects (or Tibeto-Burman languages; the distinction between the two is far from clear) in our day. At the very least, knowledge of contemporary dialect terms can supply us with evidence for early meanings. I know some people are fundamentally opposed to the very idea of using present evidence to document the past, but I think we can go ahead and do it if done with honesty and care, as part of a discussion taking in wider realms of evidence. After all, we have to do something when, as happens to Tibetan-language translators with some regularity, we feel the need to find ways to crack the hardest of eggs.

More resources

For a great set of links to various dictionaries (both Sanskrit and Tibetan), look here. Also, try this.  And this.  There are a number we haven’t mentioned in this blog that you can find using these just-linked resources.

Although I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I noticed Jue Liang wrote a review of the above-mentioned Tibetan-German dictionary in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 78, no. 2 (2015), pp. 405-408.

You are welcome to drop a line in the comments box if you have suggestions of your own about good dictionaries. We would be glad to hear them, and perhaps other people would like to compare notes and share experiences.

I guess most of my friends already know of my longterm fondness for the “Btsan-lha.” It is especially helpful for the earlier periods of Tibetan vocabulary, including words that people tend not to know anymore:

Btsan-lha Ngag-dbang-tshul-khrims, Brda dkrol gser gyi me long, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang (Beijing 1997).*

(*It may be impossible to find or purchase this dictionary, although I expect a reprint any year now. The Padma Karpo Translation Committee has created a digital version, so if this interests you you can go to their site. Be aware that their digital dictionaries are for sale, not for free.)

I just picked this next one up on my latest travels to the east, so I don’t have much to say about it yet. Still, here is another big dictionary in 786 pages:

Sgom-sde Lha-rams-pa Dge-bshes Thub-bstan-bsam-grub, Mdo sngags kyi gzhung chen mo'i tshig mdzod ris med mkhas pa'i zhal lung, Sherig Parkhang (Delhi 2011).  My copy is a 2nd edition, the 1st edition being from 2005. 

As the title suggests, the vocabulary is largely from Buddhist works, it does indeed include quite a few terms from the tantras, and the entries are often quite substantial ones, making it somewhat encyclopedic in nature.

There is also a new Vinaya dictionary that has proven of crucial importance to me a number of times:

'Bras Blo-gling Nyag-re Lha-rams Dge-bshes Tshe-dbang-nyi-ma, Dam chos 'dul ba gtso gyur gyi gzhung sne mang las btus pa'i tshig mdzod mun sel sgron me, Norbulingka Institute (Dharamsala 2009).  

The printing was subsidized by The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation of Taipei (it is no. T1476 in their series) which means it is intended for free distribution only. Their generosity only compounds our difficulty in finding copies of this very valuable lexicon. It may be possible to download the book from the Taiwan website. I suppose you might give it a try, but I failed to locate no. T1476 in their download list. (I suggest going there anyway, since there are many other things of great worth.)

Did you know you can download a huge PDF of Melvyn Goldstein & Ngawangthondup Narkyid's English-Tibetan Dictionary of Modern Tibetan (1984) from the prof's own website at Case Western?  Well, you can — by going here.

Added on September 28, 2021:

There is now a fantastically useful presentation about Tibetan dictionaries by Paul Hackett that is likely to be of use to many. And it’s a free video.

Has Always Been a Part of China, Huh?

The Smallpox Edict and its willow tree,
Photo from the Pitts River collection

Michael Henss (b. 1941), the noted Swiss scholar of Tibetan art, has now at long last published the fruits of a lifetime of labor, a two-volume boxed set devoted to the architectural and artistic monuments of Central Tibet. Among the thousand and one matters in his book that might bear discussion, one thing certainly caught my eye. On page 41, M.H. notes that the Smallpox Edict — a Manchu period edict long ago studied by L.A. Waddell and more recently by H. Richardson — has something of interest to say about the historical relationship between China and Tibet. Of course it is important to bear in mind that the author of that edict was one of the official representatives of the Manchu Government, called the Ambans, stationed in Lhasa: one named Ho Lin.  In this stone inscription made in 1794 CE, Ho Lin says that during the Tang and Song dynasties Tibet was “not yet incorporated in its [the Chinese] territory,” and was “established as a vassal” only during the Qing dynasty. (n.b. The quote marks here mark words from Richardson's translation.)

Actually, in Ho Lin's estimation, Tibet would have been made a vassal of the Qing dynasty nearly one hundred years before he had his inscription made. Checking Richardson's edition of the Tibetan text, the words used there for “established as a vassal” and “incorporated into its territory” are in both cases the very same Tibetan phrase chab 'bangs-su bkod[-pa].  This phrase we could translate as was subjected politically. Nothing in the expression carries any notion of territory, let alone an incorporation of territory.*

(*Perhaps someone would care to comment on the Chinese version, and Stein's translation of it that Richardson made use of.)

The phrase dang 'gres che didn’t make sense to Richardson, so he suggested reading 'brel in place of 'gres. I suggest reading 'gros instead. The whole passage could then be translated, ‘In olden times, during the time of the Thangs and Bzungs (i.e., the Tang and Sung) kings [Tibet] had much communication with the great kingdom of China, yet it had not been made subject to her power. It was in the time of our great emperor Tha'i-tsung-'un* that [Tibet] was made subject to her power. As it has been up to the present time a little more than one hundred years...’

Richardson's reading:  སྔ་སོར་ཐངས་དང་བཟུངས་ཀྱི་རྒྱལ་པོའི་དུས་རྒྱ་ཡུལ་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཆེན་པོ་དང་འགྲེས་ཆེ་ཡང་ཆབ་འབངས་སུ་འཁོད་མི་འདུག་ཅིང་། ངེད་ཚོའི་གོང་མ་ཆེན་པོ་ཐའི་ཙུང་འུན་གྱི་དུས་ནས་ཆབ་འབངས་སུ་འཁོད་པ་བཅས། ད་བར་ལོ་ངོ་བརྒྱ་ལྷག་ཙམ་སོང་འདུག་པར་རྟེན།...

(*Richardson identifies as “Emperor T'ai Tsung Wên Huang Ti,” posthumous name of Abahai, the first real member of of the Ch'ing [Qing] dynastic line (reigned 1626-1643). Of course the Amban is mistaken, since at this time the Manchus had never come anywhere near Tibet, although they did offer some patronage to Tibetan Buddhist teachers [Grupper]. He is just referring to the founding of the Manchu dynastic rule over China.)

Somebody ought to do a study of the following fascinating phenomenon: I’ve noted over the years, even if I didn’t think to note down exact dates, that post-Republican China has dated Tibet’s belonging to China to [1] the Tibeto-Sinitic marriage alliances of the Tang dynasty way back in the 7th and 8th centuries. Then they moved it up to [2] the period of Eurasian ‘world domination’ by the Mongols in the 13th century. And most recently some have been saying Tibet was made part of China [3] in the Ch'ing/Manchu period, a time when another ‘national minority’ (as Tibetans, Manchus, Mongolians and Hui would later come to be labeled) ruled over the Han (i.e., Chinese). But why the sudden leap backward I’ve noticed in recent months? It seems positively counter-evolutionary. We should have a look at that.

Since the middle of April of this year, the Beijing committee that decides these things determined the new thing they’ll tell the world about Tibet is that “it has been a part of China since antiquity.”* Nicely ambiguous and so subject to interpretation, still it puts the unity of the Han and Tibetan nations so far back into unknowable history as to be unfathomable. I guess that is their motive for making this new move in their very very slow chessboard game. Sure, they hate it when we outside people comment on the matter, with their huffy none-of-your-business attitude. If we persist in our ignorance of the “truths” they so considerately extend toward us they will (with considerable regularity) pull out their ultimate wildcard and call us anti-Chinese, or even worse, accuse us of containment (whatever that means these days, if anything).

(*Truth by committee I call it. Go ahead and Schmoogle that phrase [including the quote marks] “part of China since antiquity,” then try “has always been a part of China,” and you will see what I mean about the periodization of Beijing’s eternal truths. Just about everybody there repeats what they are told to repeat (I hope you will not need to ask yourself why this is so), whether they agree with it the least bit or not; well, besides one very exceptional professor of Fudan U. by the name of Ge Jianxiong. Back in 2007 there was a lot of press [look here] about his position that China wasn’t always as big as it is right now...  Duh... Imagine that!)

The Smallpox Edict, however carved in stone it may be, reflects the views of a benevolent yet arrogant (yes, you heard right, arrogant... after all, he calls Tibetans stupid and savage... the heights of arrogance in my book) functionary of the Manchu government from his station in Lhasa. Its date of 1794 is significant, since it comes soon after the end of the Gorkha war in 1792, and the subsequent Manchu attempt in 1793 to isolate Tibet from the countries on its southern borders, trying to gain control over Tibet’s foreign trade with South Asia (Engelhardt, p. 240). This was the time when Manchu power was at its height, when Golden Edicts were issued forbidding such normal Tibetan cultural practices as sky burial, or attempting to oversee the selection of recognized incarnations, edicts that by all accounts went unheeded in Tibet by everyone except the Amban and his coteries. So, to make clear what my main point is before this blog gets too long, the Amban Ho Lin directly contradicted presentday Beijing’s wistful notion that Tibet has been a part of China since antiquity. Ho Lin at the same time obviously had no vested interest in promoting Tibet’s independence, quite the contrary. This makes his statement that much more remarkable.

§  §  §

Afterthoughts and notes on sources:

Well worth observing, I believe, is the position on the issue of Tibet’s [in]dependent relationship with the Manchus that may be found in the geographical work by Tsenpo Nominhan (བཙན་པོ་ནོ་མོན་ཧན་), writing as he was in the same era as the Amban. He was one of the Tibetan Buddhist teachers with the closest of ties to the Manchu court, yet he was perfectly clear that Tibet was not a part of China. Find and read this lengthy essay:

Lobsang Yongdan, “Tibet Charts the World: The Btsan-po No-mon-han’s Detailed Description of the World, an Early Major Scientific Work in Tibet,” contained in: Gray Tuttle, ed., Mapping the Modern in Tibet, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Andiast 2011), pp. 73-134, particularly pp. 99-100:

“Although the Btsan-po was one of the Qing Emperor’s seal-holding lamas, he did not consider Tibet to be a part of China or part of the Qing Empire.”*

(*Go to the essay itself for more about the borders between Tibet and China. He awards Tibet, and not China, the central position in Jambu Island. Just like other Tibetan historical sources, he lists both China (རྒྱ་ནག་) and Tibet (བོད་ཡུལ་) as nations and territories within a larger list of nations and territories that also include India (རྒྱ་གར་), Nepal (བལ་ཡུལ་), Mongolia (སོག་ཡུལ་ or ཧོར་ཡུལ་) among others.) 

* * *

The main sources on the Smallpox Edict that I know of are these:

L. Austin Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries, Dover Publications (New York 1988), reproducing the 1905 edition, with the Smallpox Edict illustrated opposite p. 340, and discussed on p. 362.

N.V.L. Rybot, “A Small-Pox Edict Pillar at Lhasa,” Man, vol. 26 (1936), pp. 180-181.

Hugh Edward Richardson, “The Smallpox Edict of 1794 at Lhasa,” Journal of Oriental Studies, vol. 6, nos. 1/2 (1961/4), pp. 114-124.

Hugh Edward Richardson, "The Smallpox Edict of 1794 by the Amban Ho-Lin," contained in: H.E. Richardson, Ch'ing Dynasty Inscriptions at Lhasa, Serie Orientale Roma series no. 47, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (Rome 1974), pp. 55-61.

On political conditions at the time, and especially the Manchu containment policy regarding Tibet, see Isrun Engelhardt, “The Closing of the Gates: Tibetan-European Relations at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” contained in: Henk Blezer, ed., Tibet, Past and Present: Tibetan Studies I, Brill (Leiden 2002), pp. 229-245. Another relevant study is one by the late Anne Chayet, “À propos du règlement en 29 articles d'e l'année 1793,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 15 (2005), pp. 165-186. On the Ambans and their degree of involvement in Tibetan politics, there is a remarkable new paper by Kalsang Norbu Gurung, “The Role of Ambans in the Dalai Lama Government according to the Ten-Point Edict of 1795,” contained in: C. Ramble, P. Schwieger, A. Travers, eds., Tibetans who Escaped the Historian's Net: Studies in the Social History of Tibetan Societies, Vajra Books (Kathmandu 2013), pp. 27-39.  The classic study on the Ambans is Josef Kolmas, The Ambans and Assistant Ambans of Tibet (A Chronological Study), Archiv Orientalni, Supplementa VII (Prague 1994), in 86 pages.  On early Manchu patronage of Tibetan Buddhism, see in particular Sam Grupper, “Manchu Patronage and Tibetan Buddhism during the First Half of the Ch'ing Dynasty,” Journal of the Tibet Society, vol. 4 (1984), pp. 47-75. Here you can find some information on Abahai’s support for several Buddhist teachers of the Sakyapa school. You may be interested to read the earlier Tibeto-logic blog on the issue of historical Independence dated April 15, 2008 entitled “Tibetan Independence: Testimonies from Two Professors and a Bird.” It is no doubt embarrassing to find oneself used in this way (and it is hardly the first time this has been done to European and American students of Tibet), but a press item was produced that makes as if M.H. were lending his support to Chinese rule of Tibet (just schmoogle the title “Swiss Scholar: Tibet Now No Doubt a Better Place” since for some reason I don’t relish the idea of directly linking CCTV pages). They did the same thing to Jimmy Carter and Helmut Kohl, so he would seem to be in good company.  Oh, and another matter, did you notice the "pock" marks in the stone of the inscription that half succeeded in effacing half of the inscription? There is no doubt that members of the Younghusband Expedition (Waddell being among them) shared among themselves the story that this was a result of Tibetan magical thinking, thinking that this smallpox monument, if chipped off and consumed, would protect them from smallpox. I set this story aside as one of many British stories about Tibet until such time as I find verification from a Tibetan source that there is any truth to it. Meanwhile, I will assume that all those chips were made in it because Tibetans didn’t appreciate it very much. Perhaps it wasn't so much damaged that they could not still make out the ethnic chauvinism and anti-Tibetan rhetoric of its author. But then it is only the side with the Chinese character version that is defaced (according to Rybot), and that fact could also bear some significance.

Wikipedia has a page on the “Tibetan Sovereignty Debate” (here). As is often the case in Wikis the many hands pulling it this way and that make for very choppy reading. I also have a fundamental opposition to their official opposition to what they call “research,”* thinking they could use a whole lot more of it. I’m sure the “talk” page is the more interesting one, beginning with “Opening 'Sentence' Sucks.”

(*They dismiss research under their terms “special research” and “original research,” while insisting that their writers always err on the side of generalities or what is believed to be generally accepted. This is a fundamentally conservative position that denies independent thought, retards new ideas and discourages freshly drawn conclusions based on larger bodies of data (you may want to see how Wikipedia defends its demands for “no original research” here). More particularly, in the page in question, it discourages writers from bringing forward evidence that is only available in Tibetan language [that would, after all, be “original research”], even though so few of the Tibetan histories and historical sources most germane to the issue have been translated.)

Nota bene:  

There are some who may think that since there are and have been conflicting and contradicting testimonies on the issue of Tibet’s [in]dependence that it is something indeterminate and therefore unknowable, that we should simply shrug our shoulders and give up (or pass over it in the manner of diplomats these days: Oh well, there are different sides to every issue and the truth must lie somewhere in between). 

I beg to differ. Yes, sure, we ought to hear the words of all parties in the historical “debate” but do so constantly bearing in mind who the people doing the talking were, and what their interests (and their jobs) were, in order to better comprehend who they were, what they were talking about, and what their motives were. In other words we need to approach the malleable and situational statements of the various parties historically. Doing so will surely give us a healthy skepticism when politicians of one country or another make their next pronouncements on the subject. That will help us preserve or achieve our own independence of thought. This sort of independence seems to be in short supply to judge from what I’ve been reading in the press lately. Even so, there is no good excuse for falling into agnosticism or nihilism, since when all is said and done Tibet’s own historical tradition is the one that has to carry the most weight in our thinking, and most assuredly not the self-serving historical constructions and calculated statements of a neighboring culture with its sometimes-frustrated aims to impose upon, isolate, engulf or thoroughly devour him.

Addenda:

Somebody just reminded me that some of the issues raised here have already been covered better in an essay by Elliot Sperling  published in China Perspectives back in 2009. He shows, among other things, that the views of Ge Jianxiong are not as exceptional as I had thought (and, in fact, E.S. has shown elsewhere that G.J.’s views were seriously misrepresented in the world press). The essay, entitled “Tibet and China: The Interpretation of History since 1950,” is easily accessed here, and I very much recommend reading it.

[July 13, 2015]  

I also would like to point to E. Sperling’s contribution entitled “Tibet” in the following volume:  Naomi Standen, ed., Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham 2012), pp. 145-152, where he demonstrates what “ancient times” (or “antiquity”) is supposed to mean. I’m still mystified how imperial control is supposed to be established retrospectively. I guess the reason is it’s really mystifying.