A Mountain in Tibet

by Charles Allen

kadakh (T) – ceremonial white scarf

  Kailas – lit. spire, 22,028-ft mountain peak in S. W. Tibet believed by Hindus to be physical manifestation of Meru and Shiva’s paradise. See Kang Rinpoche

  Kali – black goddess, see Devi

  kang (T) – ice, snow; also gang, thus kangri – snow peak

  Kang Rinpoche – jewel of chief of snows, Tibetan name for Kailas, believed by Tibetans to be physical manifestation of Tisé

  khola (N) – river

  kiang (T) – Tibetan wild ass

  Kumaon – former Himalayan province west of Nepal and east of British Garhwal

  kund (S) – pool or lake, thus Brahmakund

  Kungribingri – up and down, pass from Milam to Tibet, elevation 18,300 ft

  la (T) – pass, hill

  lama (T) – superior person, thus priest or teacher

  Lanchen-Khambab (T) – Elephant-Mouth, source or upper reaches of the Sutlej river

  lapcha (T) – cairn of stones, surmounted with prayer-flags; also laptche

  lingam (S) – phallic symbol, the form in which Shiva is most commonly worshipped

  Lipu Lekh – border pass leading from Garbyang to Taklakar, elevation 16,750 ft

  Mahabharata – epic poem assembled about 400 BC but describing events that took place a thousand years earlier in N. India

  Mahadeva – the great god, Shiva

  Mana, La – border pass between Mana and Tsaparang, elevation 17,900ft

  Manasarovar (S) – Manasa-sarovara – formed in the mind (of Brahma), celebrated in the Manasa Khanda and puranas as the holiest of lakes; also Mapham Tso

  mandala (S) – symbolic microcosm for meditation; see yantra

  mani (T) – the mantra Om Mane Padme Hum, thus mani-cylinder or prayer-wheel containing mantra, and mani-walls on which inscribed mani-stones are placed

  mantra (S) – mystic formula or incantation

  Mapchhu-Khambab – Peacock-Mouth, source or upper reaches of the Karnali river

  Mapham Tso (T) – unconquerable lake, see Manasarovar

  Marathas – Hindu peasant-warriors of Deccan and Western Ghats

  Marchhas (B) – Bhotias living in upper Alaknanda and Dhauli Ganga valleys

  Maryum La (T) – pass dividing provinces of Ngari and Tsang; also Mayum, Mariam, elevation 16,900 ft

  mela (H) – fair, festival; thus Magh Mela – early spring festival at Hardwar and Kumbh Mela held every twelve years at several sites beside the Ganga

  Meru (S) – Sumeru, mythical world-pillar, world-lotus or cosmic navel, on which is sited Swarga – heaven, also known as Tisé to Tibetans. Manifest as Kailas or Kang Rinpoche

  Milarepa – Tibetan yogi of twelfth century, known also as Jetsun, Milarspa

  mithun (A) – form of Indian bison, domesticated and reared only for status

  morang (Abor) – tribal long-house

  munshi (H) – language teacher or interpreter

  Ngari (T) – province of Western Tibet, capital at Gartok

  nirvana (S) – salvation, ultimate absorption into the absolute

  Niti La – border pass leading from Niti to upper Sutlej, elevation 16,630 ft

  nor (T) – lake, thus Tengri Nor

  nyen (T) – Great Tibetan Sheep, Ovis Ammon; also nyan

  obo (T) – cairn, more correctly lapcha

  Om (S) – mantra, mystic symbol and sound of the universe

  padma (T) – lotus, thus Padmasambava, Indian founder of Tibetan Buddhism in the eighth century AD

  pahar (H) – hill, mountain; thus pahari – hill-man

  palki (H) – palanquin

  Panchen Lama (T) – spiritual co-leader of Tibet, living at Tashilunpo monastery, also known as Tashi Lama

  parbat (H) – mountain; thus Kailas Parbat, Mount Kailas; Parvati (the Mountaineer) – Devi

  parikarama (S) – circuit of object of devotion made by devotee

  pashmin (Kashmiri) – long-haired goat of Kashmir and Tibet

  peling (T) – European

  Po (T) – Tibet, thus Tsang-Po, great river of Tibet

  posa (A) – annual grant of government funds

  prayag (S) – sacred confluence, as in Deoprayag

  puja (S) – act of worship; thus pujari – priest

  pundit (H) – learned man, religious teacher (sometimes pandit); also title given to the surveyor-spies trained by the Survey of India

  purana (S) – old, thus Puranas, eighteen sacred texts written between 200 BC and AD 800, of which the Vishnu Purana is the best known

  Purang (T) – ancient kingdom in S.W. Tibet, now a district, with its capital at Taklakar

  Raj (H) – kingdom, but generally understood to refer to period of British crown rule from 1858–1947

  Rajput (H) – martial Hindu caste, originally from Rajputana – land of kings

  rakshas (S) – demon

  Rakas Tal – lake of demons, known to Tibetans as Langak Tso, Rawan Hrad

  Ramayana (S) – oldest Sanskrit epic, probably compiled about 500 BC

  Rawat (B) – clan name for Bhotias of Johar; see Shokpas

  ri (T) – peak; thus kangri – snowpeak;

  Rinpoche (T) – jewel, blessed; thus Gyalpo Rinpoche – blessed leader

  rishi (S) – sage; thus Rishikesh – abode of sages

  sadhu (S) – ascetic, holy man

  Sakya Muni (T) – Buddha

  sal (H) – plains hardwood, shorea robusta

  sambur (H) – large deer, found throughout India

  sanyasi (S) – ascetic

  semal (H) – plains tree, bombax hepta phyllum

  Senge-Khambab (T) – Lion-Mouth, source or upper reaches of the Indus

  Shaiva – See Shiva

  shakti (H) – female creative energy released in conjunction with male principle, Shiva. See tantra

  shikar (H) – hunting; thus shikari – hunter

  Shiva (S) – (also Siva) destroyer and transformer, third god of the Hindu trinity, evolved from Rudra, also manifest as Mahadeva, Nilkantha, Kedaresh war, most often worshipped in form of lingam, residing on Kailas; thus Shaiva – follower of Shiva

  Shivling – Shiva’s lingam, 21,468-ft peak near Gaumukh

  Shokpas (B) – Bhotias of Johar, also known as Rawats or Shokas

  sirdar (H) – honorific title of chief, often given to leader of working men

  Siwalik (S) – abode of Shiva, first range of the Himalayan foothills bordering on UP

  sola topee (H) – pith helmet made from sola plant fibre

  stupa (S) – Buddhist monument in the form of a microcosmic mound

  swastika (H) – talisman or mark of spiritual strength, good luck

  tal (H) – lake, as in Rakas Tal

  Tamchok-Khambab (T) – Horse-Mouth, source or upper reaches of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra

  tang (T) – plain, plateau, as in Chang Tang

  tantra (H) – mystical cult associated with Shiva-Shakti

  tasam (T) – staging-post for changing horses; thus the Tasam highway from Lhasa to Leh, and Tarjum – official in charge

  Tashi Lama (T) – see Panchen Lama

  terai (H) – belt of formerly thick jungle south of Himalayan ranges

  thugee (H) – secret cult of Kali involving murder prevalent in N. India until about 1845

  Tisé (T) – peak, world-pillar, Tibetan version of Meru, also Ri-Rab, made manifest as Kang Rinpoche

  tsampa (T) – parched barley flour, staple food of Tibet

  Tsangpo (Tsang-Po) (T) – great river of Tibet, upper course of Brahmaputra river

  tso (T) – lake, as in Mapham Tso; also tsho

  Unta Dhura (B) – pass leading north from Milam to Kungribingri pass, elevation 17,590 ft

  UP – Uttar Pradesh, formerly United Provinces, originally comprising Rohilkand, Budelkand, Oude and Doab, first absorbed by stages into the East India Company’s Bengal Presidency, then North-West Provinces

  Vaisnova – See Vishnu

  Vishnu – preserver and creator, second god in th
e Hindu trinity after Brahma, also manifest as Badrinath, Krishna, Hari, Rama; thus Vaisnava – follower of Vishnu

  Vedic – first ‘Aryan’ form of Hindu religion, being principally nature-worship

  yab-yum (T) – male-female principles or deities of tantric Buddhism

  yak (T) – Tibetan ox, bos grunniens, found domesticated and wild (dong) and cross-bred with cattle; also Chowhur (B), Banchowr (H)

  yankti (B) – river

  yantra (S) – mystic instrument for meditation and tantric exercises; see mandala

  yatra (H) – journey to holy places; thus yatri – pilgrim

  yin-yang (Chinese) – female-male polar forces of Taoist philosophy

  yoni (H) – female sexual principle; see lingam

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  My use of Ganga for the more familiar (to Westerners) Graeco-Roman Ganges may irritate some readers, but if 650 million Indians prefer to call this most sacred of rivers the Ganga then the least Westerners can do is to follow suit.

  Scholars may be disappointed at the absence of numbers in the text and footnotes, but not, I think, the general reader. The following notes give the main sources for each chapter.

  Anyone embarking on a more detailed study of the subject would do well to start with Sven Hedin’s Southern Tibet (vols I–III) and Col. R. H. Phillimore’s Records of the Survey of India (vols I–IV), both prodigious works of scholarship, and my more or less constant companions over the last four years. Hedin’s work is much more than a chronicle of his own travels and discoveries, being also a wide-ranging survey from remote antiquity to his own time of lake Manasarovar, the sources of the great Indian rivers and the Trans-Himalayan range. All the same, these three volumes represent the case for Sven Hedin’s defence and should be read with caution. Phillimore’s Records – the fruit of two decades of painstaking research after his retirement from the Survey of India – provide as accurate and comprehensive a history of the Survey up to 1860 as one could ever hope to find. For a pilgrim’s view of Kailas-Manasarovar that combines the esoteric with the scholarly point of view there is Swami Pranavananda’s Exploration in Tibet (1955), based on the Swami’s many pilgrimages to the area made between 1928 and 1947. For those seeking a more up-to-date and possibly definitive view on the sources of the Indus, Brahmaputra, Sutlej and Kamali his book has all the answers. Readers searching for a higher plane would do well to consult the German-Bolivian ‘Lama Anagarika Govinda’s’ The Way of the White Clouds (1966).

  Abbreviations

  AR

  Asiatic (k) Researches

  BL

  British Library

  GJ

  Geographical Journal

  IOLR

  India Office Library and Records

  JASB

  Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal

  JRAS

  Journal of the Asiatic Society

  RGS

  Royal Geographical Society

  Prologue

  GJ CXIX (1955); The Times 26 November 1952.

  Chapter 1

  For the geography and geology of the Himalayas and Tibet, see: B. C. Law(ed.), Mountains and Rivers of India (1968). A. Gansser and H. Heim, Geology of Central Himalaya (1958); Thron der Götter (1938) (also private correspondence). D. N. Wadia, ‘The Himalaya Moutains’, Himalayan Journal 26 (1965–6). S. G. Burrard and H. H. Haydon, A Sketch of the Geography and Geology of the Himalayan Mountains and Tibet (revised 1934). Prof. K. Mason, The Abode of Snow (1955)

  For the Himalayas, Kailas-Manasarovar and the Indian rivers in antiquity see: Hedin, Southern Tibet. E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan Districts of the North-Western Provinces vols I–II (1882). J. Dowson, A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion (1913). K. S. Fonia, Uttarakhand (1978). Eric Newby, Ganga (1974). Hindu and Tibetan sources as stated in the narrative. Translations from the Puranas are H. H. Wilson’s. See also AR VI (1807), and AR X (1810).

  For Hindu and Buddhist religion see especially: W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935). Govinda, op. cit,. and The Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (1960). Philip Rawson, Tantra, and Indian Cult of Ecstasy (1973). W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Milarepa – Tibet’s Great Yogi (1928). H. Hoffman, The Religions of Tibet (1955). E. B. Havell, The Himalayas in Indian Art (1934). E. Stoll, Ti-sé, Der Heilige Berg in Tibet, G. Helvetica 21 (1966). G. Tucci, Il Manasarovar, Lage Sacro del Tibet, Vie Italia e Mondo, vol. III (1936).

  Chapter 2

  For European views of Mogul India, see: Niccolo Manuchi, Storia di Mogor ed. W. Irvine (1908). S. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). Sir W. Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India (1926).

  For the story of the Jesuit explorers, see: John MacGregor, Tibet: A Chronicle of Exploration (1970). C. Wessels, SJ, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia (1924). Carlo Puini, II Tibet, SGI Memorie X (1904). Filippo de Filippi, An Account of Tibet – the Travels of Ippolito Desideri (1931). Father Hosten, JASB (1912), Memoirs of the ASB, vol. III (1914).

  For a moving picture of Tsaparang as it is now, see Govinda.

  Chapter 3

  Still the best account of that exciting period (for the British) at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is Philip Woodruff’s The Men Who Ruled India, vol. I (1954). M. Gray and J. Garrett’s European Adventurers of Northern India (1929), provides a vivid account of the activities or mercenaries like Hearsey. Col. H. Pearce, The Hearseys: Five Generations of an Anglo-Indian Family (1905) is an inaccurate and dull account of a lively family (John Hearsey is currently engaged in writing a new history of the Hearsey family in India).

  For exploration and surveys see: Phillimore, vols I and II. James Rennell, Memoir of A Map of Hindustan (1793). Capt. F. Raper, ‘Narrative of a Survey with the Purpose of Discovering the Source of the River Ganges’, AR XI (1810). Major H. Y. Hearsey, Account of a Tour to the Sources of the Ganges (1808), BL 26653. J. B. Fraser, Journal of a Tour Through Part of the Snowy Mountains of the Himala Mountains and to the Sources of the River Jumma and Ganges (1820). AR vols VIII, XI, XII, XIV; GJ vol. XXXI (1851). Emily Eden, Up the Country (1866).

  Chapter 4

  The best account of Moorcroft’s extraordinary travels to date is given in John Keay’s Where Men and Mountains Meet (1977). Dr Garry Alder has a biography in preparation. See also: W. Moorcroft, ‘A Journey to Lake Manasarova in Undes, A Province of Little Tibet’, AR XII (1816). Hyder Jung Hearsey, ‘A Tour to Eastern Tatary’ (MS in the possession of John Hearsey). Col. H. Pearce, ‘Moorcroft and Hearsey’s Visit to Lake Manasarovar’, GJ XXVI (1905); London Asiatic Journal XVIII, Phillimore, vol. II. Hedin, vols I and II. There are several accounts of the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16, including John Pemble, The Invasion of Nepal (1962).

  Chapter 5

  Richard Wilcox’s narrative is contained in his ‘Memoir of a Survey of Assam and the Neighbouring Countries, Executed in 1825–6–7–8’, AR XVII. James Burlton’s MS Journal is in the Records of the Survey of India. See also: H. T. von Klaproth, Magazin Asiatique (1825–6). V. Elwin, India’s North-East Frontier in the Nineteenth Century (1959). L. W. Shakespear, History of Upper Assam (1914). Sir R. Reid, History of the Frontier Areas of Assam (1942). R. M Lahiri, The Annexation of Assam (1955). Phillimore, vol. III. Hedin, vol. II.

  Chapter 6

  For accounts of the Strachey and Schlagintweit brothers’ visits to Manasarovar see: Atkinson, op cit. H. Strachey, ‘On the Physical Geography of Western Tibet’, GJ XXIII (1853). R. Strachey, ‘Narrative of a Journey to Manasarovar’, GJ XV (1900); Notebook, Eur. Mss 2331, IOLR (1848); JASB XVI–XIX (1848–9), Letters RGS. Schlagintweit, Result of the Schlagintweit Mission to India (1862) RGS Map Room.

  For Smyth’s journey of 1862 see T. L. Webber, Forests of Upper India (1902). Gen. G. MacIntyre, Hindu Koh: Wanderings and Wild Sports On and Beyond the Himalayas (1889).

  For the Pundits see: K. Mason, op, cit., ‘Great Figures in Nineteenth Century Exploration, JRCAS (1956); ‘Kishen Singh and the Indian Explorers’, GJ (Dec.
1923). Indra Singh Rawat, Indian Explorers in the Nineteenth Century (1973). Col. T. G. Montgomerie, ‘Report on a Route Survey made by Pundit *——, from Nepal to Lhasa and thence through the Upper Valley of the Brahmaputra to its Source’, GJ XXXVIII (1868), XXXIX (1869). C. Markham, A Memoir on the Indian Surveys (1878), Survey of India Records, VIII, VIX. Gerald Morgan, ‘Myth and Reality in the Great Game’, Asian Affairs (Feb. 1973).

  Chapter 7

  Shakespear, op. cit. Reid, op. cit. H. E. Richardson, Tibetan Précis (1942). E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1872). Sgt-Major G. Carter’s Diary of 1858, Eur. Mss. E.262 IOLR.

  For Nain Singh Rawat’s last journey see: Rawat, op, cit., Survey of India Records vol. VIII. Capt. H. Trotter, ‘Account of the Pundit’s Journey in Great Tibet from Leh in Ladadkh to Lhasa and his Return to India via Assam’, GJ XLVII (1877).

  For Kinthup’s story see ‘Explorations on the Tsangpo in 1880–4’, GJ XXXVIII (1911). L. A. Waddell, ‘The Falls of the San-Pu’, GJ (1885); Among the Himalayas (1899). Proceedings RGS 1885–6. Survey of India Records IX. Sarat Chandra Das, ‘Note of the Identity of the Great Tsang-Po’, JASB (1898).

  For Needham and exploration of the Dihong see: St J. F. Michell, Report on the N.E. Frontier of India (1883). J. F. Needham, Report of a Trip into the Abor Hills (1884); Report of a Visit paid to the Abor Villages of Padu and Kumku (1885); Excursion in the Abor Hills. RGS Suppl. Papers vol. II (1887–9); RGS Letters. W. R. Little, Report on the Abor Expedition (1894).

  For the Abor Campaign see: Angus Hamilton, In Abor Jungle (1913). Lt-Col. A. B. Lindsay, ‘Expedition Against the Abors’, Army Review, IV (1913); private letters belonging to Sir Martin Lindsay.

  For European attempts to explore the Tsangpo gorge see: Capt. C. G. Rawling, The Great Plateau (1905); GJ XXXIII (1909). Major C H. D. Ryder, GJ XXVI (1905), XXXII (1909). F. M. Bailey, China-Tibet-Assam: A Journey (1945); No Passport to Tibet (1937); Reports on an Exploration on the North-East Frontier (1913, with Capt. H. T. Morshead). Arthur Swinson, Beyond the Frontiers (1971). Sir F. Younghusband, The Epic of Mount Everest (1926).