Prisoners of Shangri-La

by Donald S Lopez, Jr

  25. Some of the photographs taken by Tolstoy and Dolan in Tibet have been published in Rosemary Jones Tung, A Portrait of Lost Tibet (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980).

  26. Their story is told in William Boyd Sinclair, Jump to the Land of God: The Adventures of a United States Air Force Crew in Tibet (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1965). Sinclair reports that the crew was stoned by a mob of ten thousand Tibetans in Lhasa because they had flown over the Potala and thus looked down on the Dalai Lama. See pp. 122–124, 138–140.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A briefer version of this essay appeared under the title “‘Lamaism’ and the Disappearance of Tibet” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38 (January 1996).

  1. Sherman E. Lee, “The Luohan Cūdapanthaka,” (plate 309) in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. Jay A. Levenson (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 459. At the National Gallery exhibition, one room among the four devoted to Ming China was labeled “Lamaist Art.” In the coffee-table book produced for the exhibition, however, among the reproductions and descriptions of the more than eleven hundred works displayed, no painting, sculpture, or artifact was described as being of Tibetan origin.

  2. Philip Zaleski, review of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, New York Times Book Review, 27 December 1992, 21.

  3. This always useful mnemonic appears in the poem “The Lama.” It reads in its entirety: “A one -l lama, he’s a priest / A two -l llama, he’s a beast / And I will bet a silk pajama / There isn’t any three -l lllama.* . . . *The author’s attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer.” See Ogden Nash, Many Long Years Ago (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1945).

  4. For a discussion of this rite, see Ferdinand Lessing, “Calling the Soul: A Lamaist Ritual,” Semitic and Oriental Studies 11 (1951): 263–84; and, more recently, Robert R. Desjarlais, Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 198–222.

  5. For a general discussion of bla, see Réne de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1956), pp. 481–83; R. A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 226–29; Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 190–93; Erik Haarh, The Yar-luṅ Dynasty (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad’s Forlag, 1969), pp. 315, 378; and, especially, Samten G. Karmay, “L’âme et la turquoise: un rituel Tibétain,” L’Ethnographie 83 (1987): 97–130. On the related notion of the sku lha during the dynastic period, see Ariane Macdonald, “Une lecture des P. T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047, et 1290: Essai sur la formation et l’emploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Sroṅ-bcan sgam-po,” in Études Tibétaines dédiés à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971), pp. 297–309.

  6. The early standardization of bla ma as the rendering for guru is attested by the presence of the term in the eighth-century compendium of Buddhist terminology, the Mahāvyutpatti. The term bla itself was not used in the Buddhist vocabularies as a translation for any notion of a soul, but to render the Sanskrit terms pati (lord) and ūrdhvam (elevated). For a citation of usages from the Mahāvyutpatti’, see Lokesh Chandra, Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Company, 1976), 2:1680.

  7. Although such a pervasive practice might suggest to some that Tibetans place an inordinate emphasis on the lama, an emphasis unique in the Buddhist world, it is clear from the literature, notably the tantric literature of northern India, that such an emphasis was equally strong in the Indian practices from which the Tibetans derived their Buddhism. For instances available in English translation of the Indian Buddhist emphasis on devotion to the guru, see, for example, Atiśa, A Lamp for the Path and Commentary, trans. Richard Sherburne (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983); Herbert V. Guenther, The Life and Teachings of Nāropa (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); Tsang Nyön Heruka, The Life of Marpa the Translator, trans. Nālandā Translation Committee (Boulder, Colo.: Prajñā Press, 1982); Aśvaghoṣa, Fifty Stanlas of Guru-Devotion, in The Mahamudra Eliminating the Great Darkness, trans. Alexander Berzin (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1978).

  8. For some historical data and a rather incoherent argument on this event, see Turrell Wylie, “Reincarnation: A Political Innovation of Tibetan Buddhism,” in Proceedings of the Csoma de Kőrös Memorial Symposium, ed. Louis Ligeti (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978), pp. 579–86.

  9. It is therefore not the case, as Pratapaditya Pal and others claim, that “Every lama in Tibet is considered a reincarnation of a predecessor.” See Pratapaditya Pal and Hsien-ch’i Tseng, Lamaist Art: The Aesthetics of Harmony (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1969), p. 17.

  10. Turrell V. Wylie, “Etymology of Tibetan: Bla ma,” Central Asiatic Journal 21 (1977): 148. Wylie seems to derive this etymology from an unnamed informant of Sarat Chandra Das in the compilation of his dictionary. See Sarat Chandra Das, A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1902), s.v. bla ma. That such a reading does not appear in traditional etymologies of the term could, alternately, suggest that the term bla was intentionally not rendered as “soul” by the early Buddhist translators so as to discourage the Tibetan belief in such a soul, something that Buddhism famously rejects. The modern Tibetan scholar Samten Karmay has recently argued that Buddhism was never able to suppress the concept of a soul in Tibet and that over the centuries the concept was gradually reintegrated into popular rites, despite being at odds with the Buddhist doctrine of no-self (see Karmay, p. 99). This would suggest that at some point in Tibetan history, the philosophical doctrine of no-self exercised a marked influence over popular religious practice, something that has yet to be demonstrated in any Buddhist culture.

  It may be significant that the other standard Tibetan-English dictionary, that of Jäschke, also cites an “oral explanation” in offering “strength, power, vitality” as one of the definitions of bla. See H. Jäschke, A Tibetan-English Dictionary (1881; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), s.v. bla. The recently published three-volume Tibetan-Tibetan-Chinese dictionary defines bla as “that which is above” (steng) or “that which is fitting” (rung), but also mentions that bla is “the support of life explained in astrology” (dkar rtsis las bshad pa’i srog rten). See Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, vol. 2 (Mi rigs dbe skrun khang, 1984), s.v. bla.

  11. In this reading, ma would be taken as a substantive marker (as, for example, in tshad ma and srung ma).

  12. Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, trans. and ed. Sir Henry Yule, 3d ed., revised by Henri Cordier (1926; reprint, New York: AMS, 1986), 1:301-3. For a discussion of the term bakshi, see Yule’s p. 314 n. 10, and, especially, Berthold Laufer’s “Loan-Words in Tibetan,” in his Sino-Tibetan Studies, comp. Hartmut Walravens, (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1987), 2:565-67, where Laufer identifies bakshi as being of Uighur origin and dismisses the connection, reported by Yule, between bakshi and the Sanskrit bhikṣu (monk).

  13. See Elliot Sperling, “The 5th Karma-pa and Some Aspects of the Relationship between Tibet and the Early Ming,” in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1980), p. 283.

  14. In the Records of the Qing (Qing shilu) of June 24, 1775, one finds a command given by the Emperor Qianlong to generals during the Jinchuan War wherein appears the phrase, “Jinchuan and Chosijiabu have hitherto fully supported and spread your Lamaism [lama jiao].” See Gu Zucheng et al., Qing shilu Zangzu shiliao (Lhasa, 1982), p. 2586. I am indebted to Elliot Sperling for discovering this reference and for providing me with the other information contained in this paragraph.

  15. See Ferdinand Diederich Lessing, Yung-ho-kung: An Iconography of the Lamaist Cathedral in Peking with Notes on L
amaist Mythology and Cult, vol. 1, Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China under the Leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin, Publication 18 (Stockholm, 1942), p. 59. This reading is drawn from Lessing’s comments and his translation, based on the Chinese and the Manchu. The parenthetical remarks are added by Lessing. The Tibetan side of the stele provides a somewhat different reading. The Tibetan reads zhva ser bstan pa mchog tu bzhung pa ni | sog po tsho ’i ’dod pa dang bstun pa yin ste zhin tu mkho ba ’i gnad che | de bas gtso che bar dgos | yvon gur gyi dus Itar bla ma rnams la kha bsags dang rgyab byas pa ’i tshul gyis bkur ste bya ba min | (“With regard to holding the teaching of the Yellow Hats to be superior, this accords with the wishes of the Mongol and is most essential. Therefore, it should be foremost. [I] do not honor the lamas by praising and protecting them, as in the Yuan dynasty.”) For the Tibetan text, see Otto Franke and Berthold Laufer, Epigraphische Denkmaler aus China I. Lamaistische Klosterinshriften aus Peking, Jehol, und Si-ngan (Berlin, 1914). The passage appears in the third line of large script on the first Tibetan plate.

  16. Lessing, Yung-ho-kung, p. 58. In the Lama Shuo, “lama” is rendered in phonetically equivalent Chinese characters, rather than translated, a convention that had been in use since the Ming dynasty. I have adapted Lessing’s translation here. His last sentence reads, without justification, “Lama(ism) also stands for Yellow Religion.” The Tibetan side of the stele reads bla ma ’i slab bya la zhva ser gyi bstan pa zhes yod (The training of the lamas is called the teaching of the Yellow Hats). The first sentence also seems to differ. The Tibetan reads bod kyi rab byung pa la bla mar ’bod nas brgyud pa yin (It is traditional to call Tibetan renunciates lamas). For the Tibetan text, see Franke and Laufer. The passage appears in the second line of large script on the second Tibetan plate.

  17. Bernard Picart, The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World (in French) (London, 1741), p. 425. Ironically, a more detailed and accurate account of Tibetan religion had by this time already been written by the Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri, who lived in Tibet from 1716 to 1719. Unfortunately, his Relazione, completed in 1733, was not discovered until 1875.

  18. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (1800; reprint, New York: Bergman Publishers, 1966), pp. 302–3.

  19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1973), p. 272. In his 1794 essay “The End of All Things,” Kant made a disparaging reference to the pantheism “of Tibetans and other Eastern peoples.” See Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), p. 100.

  In Joseph Marie Amiot’s 1777 Mémoires concernant L’Histoire, Les Sciences, Les Moeurs, Les Usages, &c. des Chinois: Par les Missionaires de Pékin, vol. 2 (Paris, 1777), we find mention of “les trois sectes idolâtriques des Tao-sée, des Bonzes, des Lamas.” See p. 395.

  20. Pallas’s reports were published in German in three volumes as Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs (St. Petersburg, 1771–76). Trusler provided a much-abridged translation in the second volume of The Habitable World Described (London: Literary Press, 1788). The term “Lamaism” appears on pp. 255 and 260. On Pallas, see also Carol Urness, ed., A Naturalist in Russia (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1967).

  A Mongolian term may provide (with the Chinese lama jiao) another source for the term “Lamaism.” Buddhism is often referred to in Mongolian as blam-a surǧal, “lama teaching.” The term is attested as early as the second half of the thirteenth century in a text called Čaǧan teűke. See Klaus Sagaster, Die Weisse Geschichte, Asiatische Forschungen, vol. 41 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1976), where, on page 145, note 2, the following passage appears: blam-a baǧsi-yin surǧal-dur ese orobasu maǧu űilen oroyu (If one does not embrace the teaching of the lama master[s], one will fall under the influence of evil deeds). I am grateful to Dr. Samuel Grupper for providing me with the text and the translation.

  Possible evidence against the Mongolian derivation of Lamaism is the fact that Isaac Jacob Schmidt, who also studied among the Kalmyks, argued in 1836 that the term was a European fabrication. See I. J. Schmidt, “Ueber Lamaismus und die Bedeutungslosigkeit dieses Nahmens,” Bulletin Scientifique publié par L’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg 1, no. 1 (1836): 11. His statement is translated below.

  21. See Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat, Mélanges Asiatiques ou Choix de Morceaux Critiques et de Mémoires (Paris: Librairie Orientale de Dondey-Dupré Père et Fils, 1825), 1:134 n. 1. He says in this article (p. 139) that the word “lama” means “priest” (prêtre) in Tibetan. Sven Hedin interpolates the term “Lamaism” into Abel Rémusat’s text. He translates “The first missionaries who came into contact with Lamaism,” whereas Abel Rémusat’s French text (p. 131) reads “Les premiers missionaries qui en ont eu connaissance,” with the referent being simply “cette religion.” See Sven Hedin, Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet (London: Macmillan, 1913), 3:325.

  In 1795 C. D. Hüllmann published Historisch-kritische Abhandlung über die Lamaische Religion (Berlin, 1795).

  Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary cites 1817 (without reference) as the year “Lamaism” first appeared in English. This is mistaken; as indicated in note 20, the term appears in 1788 in Trusler’s The Habitable World Described. L. A. Waddell, then, is also mistaken when he writes in 1915 that the term appears to have first been used in Köppen’s 1859 Die Lamische Hierarchie und Kirche. In the same article, Waddell, in contrast to his 1895 The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism (discussed below), says that the term “Lamaism” is “in many ways misleading, inappropriate, and undesirable” and “is rightly dropping out of use.” See L. A. Waddell, “Lamaism,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 7:784.

  22. William Moorcroft and George Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara, comp. and ed. Horace Hayman Wilson (London: John Murray, 1841), 1:346.

  Moorcroft died of fever in Turkestan in 1825, his papers eventually becoming the property of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. They were not published until 1841, after being compiled and edited by the Oxford Sanskritist Horace Hayman Wilson. There are indications that the term “Lamaism” may not have been used by Moorcroft but rather that it was introduced by Wilson. Of his task, Wilson writes, “I have, in fact, been obliged to re-write almost the whole, and must therefore be held responsible for the greater part of its composition” (Moorcraft and Trebeck, p. liii). Furthermore, Moorcroft reports that all of his information on the religion of Ladakh was received from Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (p. 339). In his extensive writings on Tibetan literature and religion, Csoma speaks only of Buddhism and does not use the term Lamaism.

  Perhaps the first European to attempt to etymologize “lama” was the Jesuit Emanoel Freyre, who accompanied Ippolito Desideri on his arduous trip to Lhasa, arriving on March 18, 1716, only to return alone to India after one month; he could not bear the climate. In his report on the journey, he wrote, “Having spoken here and there of ‘lamas,’ before proceeding, I will say something about the etymology of their name, their clothing, the temples, their recitations, of prayers, and their Superiors. ‘Lamo’ in Botian [Tibetan] means ‘way’; whence comes ‘Lama’—‘he who shows the way.’” Freyre here mistakenly attempts to derive lama from the Tibetan lam, meaning “path.” See Filippo de Filippi, ed., An Account of Tibet: The Travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J., 1712–1727, rev. ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1937), p. 356.

  23. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 170.

  24. Victor Jacquemont, Letters from India, 1829–1832, trans. Catherine Alison Phillips (London: Macmillan, 1936
), p. 324. For his opinion of Csoma and his work, see also pp. 112–13.

  25. I. J. Schmidt, “Ueber Lamaismus und die Bedeutungslosigkeit dieses Nahmens,” Bulletin Scientifique publié par L’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg 1, no. 1 (1836): 11. My thanks to Professor Constantin Fasolt for translating the passage.

  26. Translation of the passage cited in Henri de Lubac, La recontre du Bouddhisme et de l’Occident (Paris: Aubier, 1952), p. 45. For an even earlier observation of similarity, see the comments of the Flemish Franciscan friar William of Rubruck who visited the court of Möngke between 1253 and 1255:

  All the priests shave their heads, and are dressed in saffron colour, and they observe chastity from the time they shave their heads, and they live in congregations of one or two hundred. . . . Wherever they go they have in their hands a string of one or two hundred beads, like our rosaries, and they always repeat these words, on mani baccam, which is ‘God, thou knowest,’ as one of them interpreted it to me, and they expect as many rewards from God as they remember God in saying this.

  See William W. Rockhill, The Journey of Friar William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55, as Narrated by Himself (London: Hakluyt Society, 1900), pp. 145–46. See also Willem van Ruysbroek, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, trans. Peter Jackson (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990), pp. 153–54. In addition to being the first Westerner to note the existence of the mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ, William may also have been the first to encounter an incarnate lama: “there had been brought from Cathay a boy who, from the size of his body, was not more than twelve years old, but who was capable of all forms of reasoning, and who said that he had been incarnated three times; he knew how to read and write.” See Rockhill, p. 232; see also van Ruysbroek, p. 232, where the boy is said to be three years old.