Ear Sleepers and Other Peoplers of an Earlier World

One of the myths we still find among our contemporaries (I almost said moderns) is this: that everybody in the past thought the world was flat — that is, before Columbus proved to them it wasn’t. We today are categorically superior thanks to our new knowledge that it’s spherical. Say it loud! We’re modern and proud!* Somehow or another this rough and rude version of scientific history has worked its way into so many people’s brains, it’s pathetic. A few more words on that before we get to the ears... 

(*During the last half of the 20th century, and probably still earlier, historians have been proclaiming this idea, that all pre-Columbians believed the earth was flat, a myth. But it is the nature of certain types of myths that the role they play in a culture is too important to abandon them. Besides, who would ever think to ask a historian about history? Their long involved answers would just provoke perplexity or put you to sleep, right?  But if you have a few minutes to spare and you think I’m talking nonsense about early knowledge of the spherical earth, go see the Stern piece listed below. Then come back.)

I was long eager to get my hands on a copy of McCrindle’s translation of the Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes, and when at last I did I read the whole thing through in about 20 sittings. You may remember Cosmas. He’s the one who in around the mid-6th century seemed to know a few secrets about the Bos grunniens, a creature known in common parlance as the yak. He calls it the Agriobous. We mentioned this earlier on, in Yaks, a Few Useful Bits.

Cosmas assumed very passionately that Christians had (or more accurately ought to have had) the same superior view of the world he had. Clearly, for Cosmas, it’s shaped like a shoe box, only it is divided into a lower compartment where we live, and a higher compartment where we might go, since Jesus made an opening that we can squeeze through if we do the right things. The altitude of our otherwise flat earth gets higher and higher the further north we go (as you go through the climes, you climb!), and the weather (the clime-ate) gets colder. Somewhere up there in the north is a mountain that the sun and moon revolve around. That’s why sometimes you see these celestial luminaries and, well, sometimes you just don’t. 

I’m afraid my respect for Cosmas went down a few notches every time I heard him blasting the pagans once again for thinking the world is round and for stubbornly refusing to face the undeniable fact it’s a shoe box. About the only thing that saves his book, really, are some brief passages based on his own travels. This Egyptian, who says a lot of interest for Ethiopian studies, I ought to add, made it all the way to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately he didn’t feel it was interesting enough to tell us more about what he saw on his travels, so obsessed was he by his cosmological arguments.

It was only a few years ago I heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama saying to an audience made up of both Tibetans and non-Tibetans that if Vasubandhu, the author of the Abhidharma Treasury, were alive today he would have written his book differently. I’m fairly convinced He meant primarily the 3rd chapter, the one with all that cosmology wrapped around a wee bit of geography. Much of what you find in that chapter is also in Maudgalyāyana’s much older text, the Lokaprajñapti, that may date from a century or two before the Common Era.

Very recently I discovered to my consternation that I wasn’t the first to see the similarities between Vasubandhu’s and Cosmas’ world systems. This had already been the subject of quite a long discussion by none other than the missionary Desideri of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who was in Tibet at the beginning of the 18th century. I’d like to be able to claim that I’ve read Michael Sweet’s new complete translation of Desideri’s missionary account, but the fact is, although the book is sitting up there on its shelf, I first located the passage through Googlebooks. I will read the book, I promise. But for the moment let me go right to that interesting passage to give you a few tastes of it. It’s too much for me to type, and anyway, I think you ought to go to the book itself. By that I mean the printed one.

[p. 345]

“They [the Tibetans] say that our terraqueous world is not round in the form of a globe, but level, flat, and circular, and at the center of this circle they situate an extremely high and immense mountain called Rirap Chenpo...  Around this mt. or very close to it is the principal, largest, and noblest part of the earth that they call Dzambuling, that is, Asia...

“Dzambuling... is surrounded by seven immense circular seas. In the first of these seas are four vast islands, the first located to the north of dzambuling, the second to the south, the third to the west, anmd the fourth to the east...  They give out the fallacious belief that the seven seas differ from one another in taste and color...  They say that Dzambuling is where the most virtuous human beings are born...  

[p. 346]

“They do not maintain that sun, moon and stars move and rotate in the heavens but rather around Rirap Chenpo., and that it takes a period of 24 hours for the sun to make a complete rotation around it...  

“From the cosmology as described in the Tibetan's books, one is led to the obvious conclusion that the ancient people and pagans of Hindustan, from whom the Tibetans took most of their books, had adopted in its entirety, or nearly so, the system propounded and explained by the 5th-century Alexandrian author Cosmas the Egyptian.  He was also known as Cosmas Indicopleustes, since he had traveled around almost all of India when he was a merchant...  

[p. 347] 

“According to his system the world and the surface of the earth is a quadrangle, such that its longitude from east to west is twice as great as its latitude from north to south.  This is precisely what the Tibetans assert about Dzambuling.  He also holds that the earth so shaped is completely enclosed by high walls...

“In order to explain day, night, and eclipses, Cosmas says that in the extreme north of the quadrangular earth there is a very high and massive cone-shaped mountain around which the sun, moon, and stars revolve. When the sun is on the side facing us, it is visible and day, and when it turns around to the other side of the mountain it is night...”

There are similarities between the two geographies. This is especially so if we ignore the big difference in shape:  Cosmas has a square shoebox shape that is portrayed in an illustration that goes back to an old manuscript version that was recopied, evidently (that means it’s likely this and the other illustrations, even if recopied as we have them, look a lot like the ones Cosmas put in his book):

Depicting the sun in the west and the sun in the east,
circling the northern mountain. I suppose
India would be on your far right.
The dark area would be the seas
with Persian Gulf, etc.

The Indian and Tibetan Buddhist cosmologies are in the round, at least, with most things coming in circles around other things. But if we limit ourselves to the land mass we live on being located to the south of the cosmic mountain — this being the conical mountain around which the sun and moon regularly circle (rather than around the whole spherical earth) — they are in these broad outlines very much the same.  Desideri is right about the generic similarity even if he messed up on a few other things.*  

(*Some are details, but his placing four continents in a circle arrayed around Jambu Island is mistaken; Jambu Island is the southern one among those four continents, and it’s triangular in shape, a not-so minor detail, and yet another difference, of which he is at first aware and then fails to notice:  For Buddhists the world is not square...  Well, a yellow square might be a symbol of the earth element, but that's the earth element, not the world.  The square you see in the chart just below is just Mount Meru seen from above.  We don’t live on it; we live in Jambu Island. Oh, and the cosmology of Vasubandhu is far older than the time of Cosmas, so the idea that the latter must have been copied by the former is totally untenable...)

Mt. Meru surrounded by the continents
(Jambu Island is in the south on your left)
See the “original” at HAR

Everything I’ve said so far is fairly beside the point, as it has so little to do with those Ear Sleepers. First a personal anecdote that might help bring things together (in my head, even if nobody else’s). Way back in nineteen hundred and ninety-two, I remember seeing a display in the lobby of the university library.  There were a bunch of oversized posters commemorating the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by C.C. If you were around then, you will know that there was a lot of justifiable debate about how and in what way various people living in the U.S. would or could or ought to celebrate this occasion.

Standing in front of one of them, I let out an audible gasp. The western world was being berated for (once or now?) thinking that the other peoples in the world were a bunch of ludicrous monsters, people who sleep in their ears, ski on their feet, have eyes in their chests and all that jazz. A group of them was depicted there bigger than life. Clearly it was meaning to tell us that the western world is guilty of the grossest discrimination. Why the gasp? The ignorance took my breath away. The maker of this propaganda (oh, sorry, educational) show didn’t show the least awareness that these alien beings were imported as a group from India by the Greeks,* or that the Greeks passed them on to the medieval western world.

(*It looks like Megasthenes picked up the stories when he was in Pataliputra — that's Patna today — and they were extracted and reviewed later on by Strabo.)

India’s contributions are often neglected or belittled, to be sure, yet I’m not sure India will be all that eager to receive credit in this particular instance. Nevertheless the fact is you do find lists of these unusual peoples in the Indian epic literature, you find them in certain geographical passages in Indian Buddhist literature, and last but not least, you find them here and there in Tibetan literature, both translations and Tibetan compositions.

For a list that was transmitted to us in both Buddhist and Bon texts, look at Figure One, toward the end of the file attached below.  Near the end of Fig. 1, you will see (to translate the Tibetan of some of the ethnonyms): Noseless Flat-Faces, Huge Ears Covering Bodies, Winged Ones, Naked No Body Hair, Human Bodies Walking Hunched Over, and Eyes in Chests. The Eyes in Chests are, of course, the Blemmyes.  You noticed the Enotocoitae, I hope, although the Sciapods aren’t in evidence here for some unknown and probably unknowable reason.

The article (a rather technical one that I do not recommend to any but your most aberrantly Tibeto-logical of personalities) is one about the history of Tibetan geographic conceptions that I wrote and published a long time ago. It is now posted at Tibetological website, on its own page, here (tap on that word here to go there, or tap on the following, either way).

Tibet at the Center 
(Tibetological)

Enjoy yourself with that if you possibly can. If you need me I’ll be snuggling into my own capacious and comfortable ear. If it gets a little chilly, no need for a quilt, I’ll just pull the other one over me. Life is good.

Readings both amazing and necessary

Blo-bzang-yon-tan wrote a piece on a globe kept in Tibet.  There’s even a picture of this globe, which is supposed to have been at Labrang Monastery when Gendun Choephel was there. If you read contemporary Tibetan and your computer displays Tibetan unicode correctly, go study it at the Khabdha site and report back to us in the comments section, if you please. This essay goes quite a bit into the history of flat and globular earth theories, including, I see, the shoe box of Cosmas. I think sa'i go-la ('globe of the earth') is a 20th century expression, but go-la is a quite old borrowing from Sanskrit, where it has the same meaning. In my limited experience go-la is always applied to the sphere of the stars, and even then I don’t know if that usage in Tibetan goes further back than around 1700. As far as pre-Columbian Tibetan science is concerned, I think Stag-tshang Lo-tsâ-ba (1405-1477 or 1488) must have thought of the earth as globe-shaped, otherwise his idea about lunar phases being caused by the shadow of the earth wouldn’t make much sense...  Would it?

Cosmas Indicopleuthes, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk, J.W. McCrindle, tr., Hakluyt Society (London 1897), written in circa 550 CE. If you think you could actually read it on the screen, go here. It’s free.

Carol Delaney, “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 48, no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 260-292. One of the chief aims of C.C.’s mission was to get enough gold to finance retaking the Holy Land from the Saracens. This is not exactly the story about him that is useful for inspiring young aspiring scientists to daydream about a future life as discoverer. See also Hamdani’s piece listed below.

J. Duncan M. Derrett, “A Blemmya in India,” Numen, vol. 49 (2002), pp. 460-474.

Ippolito Desideri, Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J., translated by Michael J. Sweet and edited by Leonard Zwilling, Wisdom (Boston 2010). Pages 346-348 are the most relevant for today. Here is a story about the book and its author, translator and editor.

Gendun Choephel (Dge-'dun-chos-'phel) wrote what has become for one sector of Tibetans a significant landmark on their path to the glories and wonders of modernization (and no doubt for some an excuse for rejecting everything of worth in their cultural past, that whole modernist polemic... you either buy the whole modern package or, well, you just don’t... we are familiar with the drill). To connect directly to the page of the Tibet Mirror in question, dated 1938, tap here. Click once on the newspaper page and it will be big enough to actually read it. I think it’s worth seeing even if you don’t want to read the Tibetan.

Abbas Hamdani, “Columbus and the Recovery of Jerusalem,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 99, no. 1 (January 1979), pp. 39‑48, at p. 43.

My note: Columbus took with him on his first voyage a Jewish convert to Christianity by the name Luis de Torres to act as an Arabic interpreter. Upon arrival in Cuba, which Columbus thought was China, he sent Luis into the interior thinking he would locate the court of the Mongol Khan and be able to communicate with him. Columbus' explorations grew out of a medieval Christian crusading mentality, and this fact or facet of his character is now generally ignored in favor of the (secular) scientific discovery ideal that we would like to inculcate in our children.

Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, tr. Stephan A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 2010).  Isidore (ca. 560-636 CE) believed the earth was a wheel-shaped disk, which makes him more like a Buddhist than Cosmas was. For his cosmology, see XIV.ii, and for the Panotians of Scythia, “who have such huge ears that they cover all the body,” see XI.iii.19.

Matthew T. Kapstein, “Just Where on Jambudvîpa Are We? New Geographical Knowledge and Old Cosmological Schemes in Eighteenth-Century Tibet,” contained in: Sheldon Pollock, ed., Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500-1800, Duke University Press (Durham 2011), pp. 336-364.

Bacil F. Kirtley, “The Ear-Sleepers: Some Permutations of a Traveler’s Tale,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 76, no. 399 (April 1963), pp. 119-130. The story is surprisingly widespread all the way to the southern tip of South America, but this author still thinks it most likely that the place it was first recorded, India, must have been the place from which it spread. There are dissenting voices who hold that New World peoples had ideas about their other peoples that were in fact similar, but not borrowed. Then there are those like Mason who see this as evidence of the European monologue, Europeans projecting their own accustomed models of alterity on to the subjectivities of other peoples in the absence of any real or significant communication with them...

Berthold Laufer, “Columbus and Cathay, and the Meaning of America to the Orientalist,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 51, no. 2  (June 1931), pp. 87-103.

From p. 96:  “Pigafetta who accompanied Magalhaens on the first voyage round the world records a story told him by an old pilot from Maluco: The inhabitants of an island named Aruchete are not more than a cubit high, and have ears as long as their bodies, so that when they lie down one ear serves them for a mattress, and with the other they cover themselves. This is also an old Indo-Hellenistic creation going back to the days of the Mahâbhârata (Karnapravarana, Lambakarna, etc.) and reflected in the Enotocoitai of Ctesias and Megasthenes. As early as the first century B. C. the Long-ears (Tan-erh) also appear in Chinese accounts; their ears are so long that they have to pick them up and carry them over their arms.”

Peter Mason, “Seduction from Afar: Europe’s Inner Indians,” Anthropos, vol. 82 (1987), pp. 581-601.

Craig J. Reynolds, “Buddhist Cosmography in Thai History, with Special Reference to Nineteenth-Century Culture Change,” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (February 1976), pp. 203-220.

[p. 219]  “The task of rethinking Buddhist cosmography in Siam was accomplished smoothly compared with a similar process underway in Japan, where Buddhists were sometimes hostile to the propositions of Western science. For Siamese Buddhists, the centering of the universe around Mt. Meru never assumed the importance it did for Japanese Buddhists, some of whom defended Buddhist cosmography as late as i88o, fearing that Christianity would undermine Buddhist teaching.”

David P. Stern, “The Round Earth and Christopher Columbus.”  Go there here. It seems the author works* for the Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA. Here is his homepage, if you are an avid Flat Earther and would like to argue with him directly. (*Wait, now I see he’s retired.)

Strabo's Geography, Book XV, may be read here.

Vesna Wallace, “Cosmology, Astronomy and Astrology: A Bibliography.” If you’d like to look into these subjects in Buddhist sources and need some pointers, this is a much recommended bibliographical essay by a professor at Oxford.  Go here. Have a look here while you’re at it.

Rudolph Wittkower, Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, Thames and Hudson (New York 1977).  A classic study in the field of art history, the relevant chapters are 3, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” and 4, “Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East.”

T.V. Wylie, “Was Christopher Columbus from Shambhala?”  Bulletin of the Institute of China Border Area Studies (Taipei), vol. 1 (July 1970), pp. 24‑34. The answer, I suppose, is “Yes.”

Zhang Zhishan, “Columbus and China,” Monumenta Serica, vol. 41 (1993), pp. 177-187.  First appearance of the name of Columbus in a Chinese-language work (one composed by Giulio Aleni) is dated to 1623, where his name in Chinese sounds like Gelong. Later sources call him Kelun, Kelunbo, and in more recent times Gelunbo.  

A Map of 1660, showing the world
according to Tycho Brahe,
Harmonia Microcosmica

- ~ -

"Columbus ('Kho-lom-'bog) he was of the school of thought of those who considered the realm of the world to be rounded or globular. He is the one who was the first to arrive from Yo-rob to the land of A-ri in the year 1492. He put together four rationales for the world being round, and these were checked and tested by the wise. Twelve years after this a man named A-mi-ri-kha made a map of A-ri and named the country after himself so that even now it's called the land of A-mir-kha. A-mer-kha became independent in 1776, and from then until the present year 1980, 204 years have passed. A bell that was rung on the day she got her independence (rang-btsan) is to be seen even today on display in Phi-lâ-tal-phi-ya."

'kho lom 'bog de ni 'jig rten gyi khams zlum po'am ril ril yin pa'i srol byed yin / de nyid yo rob nas 1492 lor a ri'i sar thog mar sleb mkhan yang red / de nyid 'jig rten khams zlum po yin pa'i rigs pa bzhi bkod 'dug / mkhas rnams brtags dpyad gnang / de las lo 12  'jug a mi ri kha / zer ba'i mi gcig gis a ri'i sa khra bzo bzung lung par rang gi ming btags pas / da lta'i bar a mir kha'i yul lung zhes zer / a mer kha'i lung pa 1776 rang btsan byung nas da lta 1980 bar lo 204 song / rang btsan thob pa'i nyin dung ba'i dril bu phi lā tal phi ya'i 'grems ston khang la da lta'ang yod.  

— Sgo-mang Dge-bshes Ngag-dbang-nyi-ma (1907-1990), Works, vol. 6, pp. 573‑574.  

- ~ -

Note:  If any of this inspires or provokes discussion, please do leave a comment. I'm all ears. Really. Even if it’s only to say you despise me for what I’ve written, it will be so much better than all those spam postings I’ve been getting lately. They always have compliments about the blog, but with back-links to web pages selling Italian leather handbags, trips to Tibet and such. I delete them, of course, but being targeted by them makes me a little sad and wastes my time.

Oh, another thing. If the Sciapods are missing from the Tibetan lists there could be a reason for that, and all this time I’ve been laboring under a false etymology for their name. Isidore (XI.iii.23) says, “The race of Sciopodes are said to live in Ethiopia; they have only one leg, and are wonderfully speedy. The Greeks call them skiopodes (shade-footed ones) because when it is hot they lie on their backs on the ground and are shaded by the great size of their feet.” It seems there was some mental juggling and fumbling going on between the people of the antipodes (with feet facing the opposite direction as ours... Isidore found the idea highly unlikely - IX.ii.133), and people who had feet with the toes facing backward, and the shade footed ones who lived in a place so hot we can’t go there and find out more about it. In maps that came after Isidore, lands of people with wide feet were starting to get their own continent in the unknown zone south of sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps the Asians* weren’t yet familiar with this place either. And like (some of) you, I was imagining how they might have been gliding over the snowy hills in their bare feet.

(*“Asia is named after a certain woman who, among the ancients, had an empire in the east. It lies in a third sector of the globe, bounded in the east by the rising sun, in the south by the Ocean, in the west by the Mediterranean, in the north by Lake Moeotis [i.e., the Sea of Azov] and the river Tanais [i.e. the Don]. It has many provinces and regions, whose names and locations I will briefly explain, beginning with Paradise.”  XIV.iii.1.  What a nice place to begin.)

Tibet Mirror Revivified

Photo by Lobsang Wangyal, permission pending.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other readings of interest:  

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

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

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

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

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

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POSTSCRIPT — May 15, 2009:

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

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POSTSCRIPT — Oct. 4, 2012:

For your urgent notice!  Isrun Engelhardt has just published a great paper about Tharchin Babu and his Tibet Mirror.  Here are the details:  “Tharchin’s One Man War with Mao,” contained in:  Roberto Vitali, ed., Studies on the History and Literature of Tibet and the Himalaya, Vajra Publications (Kathmandu 2012), pp. 183-209, with some very interesting illustrations.