The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839?1888), Explorer of Central Asia

by Donald Rayfield

  A neo-classical facade has now entombed the stark granite and bronze. A dozen biographers have turned Przhevalsky into a model of heroism, patriotism and zeal as petrified as his mausoleum. In 1952 a film was made, showing Przhevalsky as a friend of revolutionary Koreans and Chinese, fighting to victory over a conspiracy of reactionary geographers, lamas and agents of Benjamin Disraeli. To understand Przhevalsky, we have to remove the myths in which his posterity has encased him; we have to cope with the awe, revulsion and commiseration he inspired, as did his contemporaries.

  In the conservative newspaper, Novoye Vremya (New Times), that had once mocked Przhevalsky, Anton Chekhov published anonymously an almost deifying obituary:

  One Przhevalsky or one Stanley is worth a dozen polytechnics and a hundred good books. Their loyalty to an idea, their noble ambition, whose basis is the honour of country and science, their stubbornness, their urge, undaunted by any privations, dangers or temptations of personal happiness, to reach the goal they have set, their wealth of knowledge and their love of work, their acclimatization to heat, hunger, homesickness, enervating fevers, their fanatical belief in Christian civilization and science make them in the eyes of the people heroes who personify a higher moral force. No wonder that every schoolboy knows of Przhevalsky, Miklukho-Maklay and Livingstone, no wonder that along their routes peoples make up legends about them …

  … In our sick times, when European societies are in thrall to idleness, apathy and doubt, when everywhere in a strange combination dislike of life and fear of death dominate, when even the best people sit with their arms folded, justifying their idleness and their corruption by the lack of a definite goal in life, heroes are as vital as the sun … People like Przhevalsky are especially precious because the sense of their life, their exploits, goals and moral physiognomy are intelligible even to a child. It has always been true that the nearer a man is to truth, the simpler and more comprehensive he is. We can understand why Przhevalsky spent the best years of his life in Central Asia, the sense of those dangers and privations which he underwent, the whole horror of his death far from home and his last wish—to continue his task after death, to enliven the desert with his grave … Reading his biography, none will ask, ‘Why?’, ‘What for?’, ‘Where’s the sense?’ But everyone will say: ‘He’s right.’

  Chekhov followed Przhevalsky’s footsteps eighteen months later, across Siberia to the penal island of Sakhalin: the hero-worship that briefly distorted his vision vanished there. On his return he wrote The Duel, a story in which one protagonist, von Koren, utters sentiments very like Przhevalsky’s and leaves us in no doubt that Chekhov rejected the ruthless neo-Darwinism implicit in Przhevalsky’s outlook.

  Chekhov was not the last writer to fall under Przhevalsky’s spell. Forty years later, Vladimir Nabokov gives the hero of The Gift an explorer-father, aloof, single-minded, who roams Central Asia after butterflies and disdains to take notice of the sordid towns or people—a character who bears the imprint of Przhevalsky.

  The aftermath at Przhevalsky’s estate, Sloboda, is a sadder tale. Of Przhevalsky’s ‘family’ only the grenadier Nefedov returned to settle in Sloboda. He married Sonya, the beautiful daughter of the village joiner, but died a few years later of tuberculosis. During the Second World War, in fighting between the Germans and partisans, Przhevalsky’s house burnt down to the foundations. In 1964 the Smolensk authorities built an asphalt road from the town of Demidov to Sloboda; they renamed the village Przhevalskoye and put up a small museum of Przhevalskiana there. But Sloboda is not altogether spoilt. Beyond is the wilderness. Virgin forests stretch for miles, still full of lynx and wolves.

  Przhevalsky left an enormous scientific heritage. In 1889 the Academy of Sciences published material from his botanical collections; over the years before the revolution his collections of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish were also studied and the results published. But masses of botanical material still await attention. Przhevalsky had brought back 16,000 specimens of some 1,700 species. Western Europe has seen only a few of his discoveries—three Himalayan poppies, Mecanopsis punicea, quintuplinerva and integrifolia; three honeysuckles, Lonicera nervosa, syrigantha and tangutica; two alliums, a gentian, a geranium and a daphne. But our ideas of plant distribution have been transformed by Przhevalsky’s revelations of Himalayan species in Kansu; the specimens of alpine flora he collected in the Nan Shan and Tibet may yet hold surprises for scientists. But Przhevalsky collected relatively little ripe seed: most of his plants are dried, herbarium specimens, a few perhaps never to be seen alive again.

  As for zoology, Przhevalsky’s discovery of wild camels has still not led to agreement among scientists whether it is a genuine wild progenitor of the Bactrian camel, or just a feral race descended from escapees. The wild horse Equus przewalskii, however, revolutionized ideas about the origin of the horse: it is now thought to be one of four wild species which have contributed to the domestic horse. Roborovsky and Kozlov brought back a second specimen in 1895. Shishmaryov obtained a skin in the western Mongolian town of Kobdo (Hovd). Finally, in 1902, live specimens were caught and sent to the wildlife breeding stud on the Ukrainian steppes, Askania Nova, then the property of the Falz-Fein family. From five Falz-Fein mares derive most of the Przhevalsky horses now in captivity. A few more were captured in the twentieth century. They still exist in the wild; a Hungarian team of zoologists studied them in 1966. But their habitat has dwindled to a few thousand arid square miles in an area so remote and unsupervised that extinction in the wild is but a matter of time. There may soon be more examples of Equus przewalskii in Prague Zoo than in the Dzungar-Mongolian borderlands.

  Equus przewalskii is perhaps Przhevalsky’s chief claim to fame in the West. But at the end of the nineteenth century Przhevalsky seemed to have made a greater mark on imperial politics. British intelligence in India grew more alarmed about Russian influence in Tibet once they had dealt with a Tibetan incursion in Sikkim; the Tibetans were now presumably anti-British and, if they were ever armed with modern weapons by the Russians, would threaten the peace of British India. Anxiety, fed by rumour, swelled to paranoia. In the 1890s it became obvious that the tutor to the Dalai Lama, now in his twenties, was a man of enormous influence and authority. Imagine British alarm when it was confirmed that the tutor, Ngaku-wang Dorje, was born Dorjiyev, a Buryat Mongol, in Russian territory of Russian citizenship. He had studied in Urga and come to the poweful Drepung monastery of Lhasa in the 1880s. Rumours in the Indian press and disseminated by anti-Russian writers such as Wilhelm Filchner put two and two together; they assumed that Przhevalsky’s journey from Urga to Tibet in 1884 coincided with Dorjiyev’s; they made two and two equal five by claiming that Przhevalsky had recruited Dorjiyev for Russian intelligence.

  Some British historians even today take these rumours on trust. One supports the theory with evidence that a photograph in Przhevalsky’s From Kyakhta to the Sources of the Yellow River includes a man who is not mentioned in the text and who bears a strong facial resemblance to Dorjiyev. A careful search of the book reveals no such thing. All the Cossacks, Buryat or Russian, in the photograph are named in the text. There was, tantalizingly, a Banya Dorjeyev among them, but this proves nothing. Dorjeyev is a common Buryat name, and Przhevalsky’s last diary shows that Banya Dorjeyev was waiting for him in Karakol, not Lhasa, in 1888.

  The world of intelligence officers, then as now, revolved on the fantastic conceit that they and their opponents were men of Machiavellian ingenuity. In India Lord Curzon had the scepticism to discount the rumours of Dorjiyev’s involvement with Przhevalsky. There was no evidence. The only known photograph of Dorjiyev, nicely reproduced in Peter Fleming’s Bayonets to Lhasa, was taken long after Przhevalsky’s death and bears not the slightest resemblance to any of his Cossacks. It was only natural for Dorjiyev to lean towards Russia; he was a Buryat Mongol—the first to rise to any eminence in Lhasa—with a knowledge of a European power which was unrivalled in Tibet. It needs no conspiracy to explain w
hy Dorjiyev encouraged the Tibetan government to offset the threat from Britain by contacts with Russia.

  If Dorjiyev was really in Lhasa by 1886, it took him many years to persuade the Tibetan civil and ecclesiastical hierarchies to break the practice of many centuries and make overtures to a government neither Buddhist nor Chinese. True, the Tsar since 1894, Nicholas II, had a sympathy for Buddhism which, rumour added, amounted to an inner conversion. True, Tibetan legend foretold that the founder of the Yellow Hat Sect, Tsong Khapa, would be reincarnated in a city far to the north-west, not incompatible with Petersburg. Dorjiyev made his way unobtrusively to Petersburg in 1898 and got in touch with government officials as well as with the Buryat court doctor, Jamsaran Badmayev. But his ostensible mission on this first visit was purely to collect funds from Buddhist Kalmyks and Buryats.

  The Indian press caught wind of Dorjiyev’s movements and seethed. In 1898 the Simla News claimed that a secretary of Przhevalsky’s called Baranov was to visit Lhasa in 1899; perhaps they had heard of the Imperial Geographical Society’s plan to send Kozlov on a new expedition and Kozlov (‘Goat’) in some strange permutation became Baranov (‘Sheep’). Lord Curzon still preferred to think the Tibetans more pro-British than pro-Russian and refused to counter Russian moves. But in 1900, brazenly travelling via Darjeeling and Calcutta, Dorjiyev left Tibet on an official visit. He reappeared in the Crimea and was solemnly received by Nicholas II as the Dalai Lama’s ambassador. Letters were exchanged and, it was said, the Dalai Lama was even going to visit Russia and had sent his throne on ahead. For the first time the Russian press, the St Petersburg Gazette, substantiated these Russian-Tibet an contacts.

  Pyotr Kozlov, now captain, was at that moment on the greatest of his expeditions, the first he unquestionably led, from Mongolia to Tibet. He arrived at Chörtentang in Kansu to gaze at the portrait of Przhevalsky painted by the abbot. He made his way south to the Do Chu, the upper Yangtse; from here he sent the Imperial Geographical Society’s greetings to the Dalai Lama. Then he headed south over ridges and gorges to Chamdo. The expedition was attacked by Ngoloks; in the best traditions of Przhevalsky, Kozlov killed a great number of them and fought his way through to Chamdo, before returning in 1901 to Chörtentang. It was a Homeric journey which led, some years later, to a magnificent book, Kozlov’s Mongolia and the Kham Country. For British intelligence it was the last straw. It helped to tip the balance, so that Indian and British authorities turned a blind eye to legality and allowed Francis Younghusband to shoot his way as humanely as he could to Lhasa in 1904 and force the Tibetans to observe some of the niceties of diplomatic relations.

  The thirteenth Dalai Lama was, in the end, to be won over by Sir Charles Bell, the British envoy to Lhasa. But for some years the Younghusband expedition played into Russia’s hands. The rumours circulating in Simla and Whitehall proved unfounded. Stories of Cossacks escorting caravans of modern arms from Russia to Lhasa under a mysterious Colonel Orlov could not have been true, for the Tibetans had only the most primitive matchlocks and cannon to resist Younghusband’s men. When he got to Lhasa, Younghusband found not the slightest trace of any Russian ever having been to Lhasa or having sent a single gun there.

  The British in Lhasa found neither Dorjiyev nor another Buryat, Tserempil, supposed to use the Russian name of Bogdanovich. They did not find the Dalai Lama either. In July 1904, accompanied by Dorjiyev, a doctor, two ministers and eight guards, the Dalai Lama fled incognito. When he reached Nagchu Dzong he threw off his disguise and rode in triumph the 1,500 miles to Urga in Mongolia. The Russian consulate in Urga telegraphed Petersburg; captain Pyotr Kozlov was sent as fast as the Trans-Siberian Railway could carry him to Transbaykalia. Here he collected Panteley Teleshov and the two of them made haste for Urga.

  At 3 p.m. on 1/14 July 1905, seventeen years after Przhevalsky’s death, his two closest companions, Kozlov and Teleshov, were introduced to the Dalai Lama. Dorjiyev was not present; the conversation had to be relayed through two interpreters. They exchanged presents and white scarves in the Mongol and Tibetan tradition. The Dalai Lama thanked Kozlov for his greetings from the Do Chu and expressed his ‘sadness’ at the British invasion of Lhasa. It was a satisfying moment for Russia. For Kozlov it was ‘the happiest day of my life’, the spring that Przhevalsky had predicted for him. The Dalai Lama was interested in building a telegraph line from Lhasa to the Russian frontier; he studied the map of Kozlov’s Kham expedition and declared, ‘Lhasa is open to you.’ Kozlov was allowed to photograph the Tibetan ministers and an artist was permitted to sketch the Dalai Lama.

  Przhevalsky’s dream of ‘having a look at the Dalai Lama’ had vicariously come true. In 1907, Kozlov set off on a new expedition to Amdo, the Tibetan-speaking country south of Kuku Nor. But for the moment archaeological interests came to the fore and he did not make for Lhasa; successful excavations were to lead him to exhume the lost Mongol city of Khara Khoto. In 1913, however, he prepared to take up the Dalai Lama’s invitation; the First World War put a stop to the expedition. Revolution came and created the Soviet Union and nominally independent Mongolian People’s Republic. Kozlov was sent in 1924 on a secret mission to Urga. Few knew that in Urga an important Tibetan lama, Galsan, was waiting to escort Kozlov to Lhasa. The Dalai Lama had personally inscribed a silk pass, which was cut into two interlocking pieces. Galsan handed one half to Kozlov; the other half was kept by the Dalai Lama’s frontier guards at Nagchu Dzong. But this time Kozlov went no further than Gashun Nor in Mongolia, near the dead city of Khara Khoto. It is not clear why. Soviet historians are possibly right when they blame the British for putting diplomatic pressure on both Tibetans and the Soviet Union and for having the expedition recalled. Kozlov had to console himself with extensive wanderings in central Mongolia, more excavations at Khara Khoto and the discovery of a new genus of jerboa, Salpingotus kozlovi. He lived until 1935. He planned to retire to Issyk-Kul’ and die near Przhevalsky’s grave. Death came too soon.

  No Russian officer, in fact, is recorded as having reached Lhasa; the only exceptions are two White Russian refugees in the late 1940s—Nedbailov, who escaped repatriation from Dehra Dun in India to the Soviet Union by fleeing to Sikkim, and who worked briefly as an electrical mechanic in Lhasa; Vasilyev who fled with the American consul from Sinkiang in 1948 and stayed in Lhasa to recover from gunshot wounds inflicted by Tibetan soldiers. Przhevalsky’s dream of Lhasa never came to pass; the Cossacks who rode to Lhasa did so only in the nightmares of intelligence officers.

  The Central Asia which Przhevalsky mapped and yearned to conquer has changed irrevocably. Tibet is an autonomous region of the Chinese People’s Republic; lorries ply between Hsi-ning and Lhasa; coal and oil leave Tsaidam by rail; atom bombs are tested over Lob Nor; the ‘friendship’ railway links the Tien Shan to Peking (though it never reached the Russian border); the nomads of Mongolia live on state farms; lamas have been shot and lamaseries pulled down; the historic oases of Turkestan are known by their Chinese names today; there are few tigers left on the Ussuri and the Tarim. Many of the geographical mysteries have been solved, and the political vacuum is filled. Above all, for better if not for worse, today’s explorers and zoologists are not Przhevalskys. If he was one of the first explorer-scientists, he was also one of the last explorer-conquistadors, an obstreperous breed that now has, like Equus przewalskii, two options: cage bars or extinction.

  The Przhevalsky horse is none the less beautiful for its intractable nature and its vicious temper. We must steel ourselves to accept the violence of natures like Przhevalsky’s, his distorted vision, his intolerance and his lust for war; these attributes are inseparable from the spirit of the frontiersman, in science as in history. They are not lovely or humane, they are animal and human, and we would be wrong to dismiss them. There is a streak of Przhevalsky in all who have scorned the multitude and turned to the wilderness.

  Select Bibliography

  For a full bibliography up to 1939, readers are referred to Velikiy russkiy geograf N. M.
Przheval’skiy Moskovskiy gosudarstvennyy universitet, Moscow 1939. Further items are to be found in the appendix to the 1946 edition of Przheval’skiy, Mongoliya i strana Tangutov.

  An asterisk indicates works on which I have drawn substantially for this book.

  A Works by Przhevalsky

  Vospominaniya okhotnika, Konnozavodstvo i okhota, 1862, 6-8

  *Puteshestviye v Ussuriyskom kraye 1867-1869, St Petersburg, 1870

  Puteshestviye v Ussuriyskom kraye 1867-1869, Moscow, 1937

  Mongoliya i strana Tangutov, vol. 1 and 2, St Petersburg, 1875 and 1876

  *Mongoliya i strana Tangutov, vol. 1 (with notes by Murzayev), Moscow, 1946

  Ot Kul’dzhi za Tyan’-Shan’ i na Lob-Nor, Izv. russ. geog. obshchestva, 1877, 5

  *Ot Kul’dzhi za Tyan’-Shan’ i na Lob-Nor, (with notes by Murzayev & extracts from diary), Moscow, 1947

  O vozmozhnoy voyne s Kitayem, Sbornik geog., topog. i stat. materialov po Azii No. 27 & No. 32, St Petersburg, 1883 and 1888

  Iz Zaysana cherez Khami i Tibet na verkhov’ya Zholtoy reki, St Petersburg, 1883

  *Iz Zaysana cherez Khami i Tibet na verkhov’ya Zholtoy reki, (with notes by Murzayev), Moscow, 1948

  *Ot Kyakhty na istoki Zholtoy reki, St Petersburg, 1888

  *Ot Kyakhty na istoki Zholtoy reki, (with notes by Murzayev, missing first and last chapters and most plates), Moscow, 1948

  *Izvestiya Vsesoyuznogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, vol. 72, 1940, No. 4-5: includes:

  Avtobiograficheskiy rasskaz

  Vospominaniya okhotnika