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NLA News - home April 2005 Volume XV Number 7

Tibetan Texts and Travels

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The Grand Lama, bSod-nams-phyogs-glang (1439–1505)
From Peintures tibetaines (Tibetan paintings) by Odette Monod-Bruhl. Paris: Albert Guillot, 1954.
Luce Collection, Asian Collections. LUCE q 529

Andrew Gosling explores the Library’s holdings on the people who live on ‘the roof of the world’

The oldest Tibetan writings have been discovered at sites along the Silk Road in Central Asia. They date from the time of the early Tibetan kings. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, a strong and united Tibet competed with China’s Tang dynasty (618–906) for control of the trading centres along the eastern Silk Road. Many of these documents were found at the ancient Buddhist cave temples of Dunhuang in western China. Although they are now dispersed among libraries around the world, the International Dunhuang Project, based at the British Library, is making thousands of the Chinese, Tibetan and other manuscripts available on the Internet.

Tibet was never as powerful again. In the thirteenth century, the principal Tibetan religious authority became vassal to the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, later Emperor of China. A similar loose protectorate existed under the Manchus, who ruled China from 1644 to 1911, with the Dalai Lama as Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader. After half a century of independence, Tibet was incorporated into the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. The XIVth Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since 1959.

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Map of Tibet and adjacent regions. From Nouvel atlas de la Chine, de la Tartarie chinoise, et du Tibet by Jean Baptiste Bourguinon d’Anville. (New atlas of China, Chinese Tartary and Tibet). Amsterdam: chez Barthelemy Vlam, 1785.
Map Collection. MAP Ra 282

Beginning in the seventh century CE, Tibet developed a strong and distinctive culture, absorbing and adapting Indian Buddhism. Numerous Buddhist writings were carefully translated into Tibetan, which uses a script of Indian origin. While Buddhism later declined in India, much has been preserved in the Tibetan-language texts.

The most striking publications in Tibetan at the National Library are two major sets of the Buddhist scriptures housed in Asian Collections. The Tibetan Tripitaka, edited by D.T. Suzuki, is a magnificent Japanese reprint of the Peking block-print edition in 168 volumes, including a four-volume catalogue and index. It was reprinted under the supervision of the Otani University, Kyoto, and published by the Tibetan Tripitaka Research Institute between 1955 and 1961. D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966) was a Japanese scholar and thinker best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism to the West. The other Buddhist scripture set is the Nyingma edition of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, published under the direction of Tarthang Tulku in 120 volumes by Dharma Press, California in 1981. It is accompanied by a research catalogue and bibliography in eight volumes, produced in 1988. Tarthang Tulku was born in 1935, left Tibet in 1958, settling first in India and then moving to the United States where he established the Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Centre and the Dharma Press. The Library’s copy of the Nyingma edition is rare, being one of a limited run of 100. The volumes, gilt-edged and in red slipcases, are beautifully illustrated.

The Library’s other Tibetan-language holdings are not particularly extensive but do include some important publications. Several of the formed scholarly collections, such as those of Walter Simon and John Cooper, contain works wholly or partly in Tibetan script, as well as translations of Tibetan religious, literary and other texts.

The Simon Collection is the Library’s single most important resource on the Tibetan language. Walter Simon (1893–1981) was a scholar and professional librarian, born in Berlin but forced to leave Germany after the Nazis took power. He moved to Britain, where he became Professor of Chinese at the University of London. In his later years he wrote many articles on Tibetan philology. The Simon Collection, now housed in Asian Collections, reflects this strong interest in Tibetan studies. It includes major dictionaries, linguistic, historical and religious publications from many parts of the world and dating from the 1840s onwards. Some are wholly or partly in Tibetan, as well as in other East Asian and European languages.

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Tibetan women in ceremonial dress, 1920s
From the Hermann J. Asmus Collection, Pictures Collection. PIC 3409/518+

Works about Tibet are also found in other major Asian scholarly collections held by the National Library. Walter Simon’s contemporaries, the Englishman Gordon Hannington Luce (1889–1979) and the Frenchman George Coedes (1886–1969), were leading experts on early Burma and classical Indo-China respectively. Tibetan language, culture and Buddhism were of considerable interest in their studies of Southeast Asia’s historical links with neighbouring regions. The collection of Jose Maria (Jack) Braga (1897–1988) on the Portuguese in Asia contains several titles on Catholic missions and travellers in Tibet—including one by the Jesuit Antonio d’Andrada (who in 1624 was the first missionary to reach Tibet) and several editions of the French Lazarist Father Huc’s writings on his brief mission to Lhasa in the 1840s.

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Drawing of a Tibetan
From Ma, Shaoyun, Wei Zang tu shi [Tibet illustrated]. Qianlong 57 [1792]
London Missionary Society Collection, Asian Collections. LMS 526

The Australian Buddhist Library Collection contains a number of titles about Tibetan religion and culture, mostly in English or Chinese. Originally housed in Sydney’s Chinatown, the multilingual Australian Buddhist Library of more than 3000 books was developed by the Liao family and other benefactors. Eric Liao donated it to the National Library in 1987 to secure its long-term future. Its coverage ranges from the Tibetan language Biographical Dictionary of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, compiled by Khetsun Sangpo in 12 volumes, to Buddhist Studies by the Dutch-born scholar and founder of South Asian and Buddhist Studies at the Australian National University, J.W. (Jan Willem) de Jong (1921–2000).

Tibet is also an important topic in Dr John Cooper’s Theosophy Collection, recently donated to the Library. John Cooper (1930–1998) was a noted Australian historian of Theosophy and his large collection includes books, serials and manuscripts relating to the Theosophical Society and related movements. The Society was founded in the United States in 1875, though it traced its origins back to ancient teachings on direct knowledge of God. Its first leader was the émigré Russian spiritualist Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891). The Society taught that all religions and philosophies are reflections of a greater and secret truth. It drew on Western and Eastern philosophies and religions, placing a strong emphasis on Buddhism and Hinduism. Theosophists believed that Blavatsky was in contact with adepts in Tibet who mystically communicated their secret doctrine to her. Cooper collected more than 100 books by Theosophists specifically about Tibet, and books by other scholarly and popular writers on Tibetan religion, literature, medicine and other aspects of culture. (For example there are several studies and translations issued by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, India, the headquarters of the Dalai Lama’s Central Administration-in-Exile.)

Apart from those in English, the Library’s largest number of books on Tibet is written in Chinese. There is a wealth of resources published by the Chinese government on contemporary Tibet, covering a wide range of subjects from Tibet’s Buddhist religion and art, its history, politics and economics, to its language, literature, and traditional medicine. Most of these comparatively recent imprints come from the Tibet Autonomous Region, and surrounding Chinese provinces with large Tibetan populations, as well as from the Chinese capital. Some are parallel texts in Tibetan and Chinese. The Library also has extensive holdings from 1956 onwards of the official Chinese-language newspaper published in Tibet, Xixang ri bao (Tibet Daily). There are also Chinese publications on Tibet from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Among a few older works is Wei Zang tu shi (Tibet Illustrated), a four-volume Chinese guide to Tibet’s people, history, geography and customs. It was published in 1792 and acquired as part of the London Missionary Society Collection of rare Chinese titles.

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Walter Simon (1893–1981)
Simon’s collection, now at the National Library, contains many books on Tibetan language and culture.
Pictures Collection,. PIC/3736 LOC Box PIC/3736

The West’s fascination with Tibet grew particularly strong in the late nineteenth century, in the era of Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical writings. In 1893 another spiritualist and author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was forced by his reading public to bring back the apparently dead Sherlock Holmes. The detective’s long absence was explained away by Holmes: ‘I travelled for two years in Tibet … and amused myself by visiting Lhasa and spending some time with the head lama.’ And in Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s most famous novel, set in India, the young hero accompanies a Tibetan lama on his travels.

In 1811, Thomas Manning had anticipated the fictional Sherlock Holmes’ travels: he was the first Englishman to reach the Tibetan capital, and the first to meet its spiritual leader, the IXth Dalai Lama. Manning’s published notes are among the many travellers’ books about Tibet held by the National Library. His main interest, however, was not Tibet itself: he had studied the Chinese language in Napoleonic France and was determined to see China, but attempts to enter the country through Canton and Vietnam were thwarted by China’s ban on foreign visitors. His third expedition was launched from British India and Bhutan across the Tibetan border. He was accompanied by a single Chinese Catholic assistant.

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Tibetan Buddhist Canon (Nyingma edition). Oakland, Calif.: Dharma Press, 1981
Asian Collections, OC 1803 8448

Meeting the young Dalai Lama, the Englishman was awed by the boy who had ‘the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated, princely child’. The visitor’s response to the Dalai Lama’s offer of help would please all acquisition librarians: Manning asked him for ‘books respecting his religion and ancient history’. Unfortunately there is no indication that any Tibetan writings were provided. (Manning was soon forced to return to India because of the official ban on foreigners, but managed to see the Dalai Lama again at New Year in 1812, presenting him with a telescope as a parting gift.)

Long before Manning, one of the papal envoys to the Mongol rulers of China in the early fourteenth century, Odoric of Pordenone, claimed to have returned through Tibet on his way home to Italy. Scholars now doubt this, though the Franciscan friar did provide information about Tibetan culture including its distinctive burial customs. From Antonio d’Andrade in 1624, until the 1740s, Jesuits and Capuchins opened missions in Tibet but failed to make converts among the Buddhist population. One of the few early missionaries to learn how to read and write Tibetan, Father Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), compiled a detailed Account of Tibet, a copy of which is held in the Library’s Jesuit Collection.

Despite their lack of converts, the Jesuits played a major role in making Tibet better known to the West. For instance they provided information for Father Du Halde’s monumental description of the Chinese empire published in Paris in 1735. The Library holds rare early French and English editions of this book. The maps to accompany Du Halde’s works were included in J.B.B. d’Anville’s Nouvel atlas de la Chine, de la Tartarie chinoise et du Thibet (New atlas of China, Chinese Tartary and Tibet). D’Anville was the Royal Geographer of France, and his 1737 atlas remained the standard geographical source about China and adjacent territories for many years. The maps were prepared during a lengthy survey of the Chinese Empire ordered by the Kangxi emperor in 1708. The fieldwork was carried out by Chinese, with some supervision by the Jesuits. This was the first atlas to depict Tibet and its districts. The Library has recently acquired a rare 1785 edition from a specialist bookseller in Canberra.

Nearly two centuries after Thomas Manning’s travels, a young and now famous Indian writer undertook the Englishman’s planned journey in reverse. In 1981, Vikram Seth was a student of Chinese at Nanjing University. He decided to return home to Delhi for the holidays by hitch-hiking through western China, Tibet and Nepal. From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet records his impressions of a resilient people who had recently endured China’s Cultural Revolution, during which ‘almost anyone or anything vulnerable or creative or non-conformist was damaged or smashed’. Seth is one of many to see and write about Tibet since it was reopened to foreign visitors.

The National Library continues to develop its resources on Tibetan culture. It seeks to provide access to publications which reflect a wide range of views. Many are produced in the People’s Republic of China; by the Dalai Lama’s Central Administration-in-Exile in India; or by Tibetan and other writers living across Asia, Europe, America and Australia. The collection is complemented by the holdings of the Australian National University, which also maintains the highly regarded Tibetan Studies World Wide Web Virtual Library.

ANDREW GOSLING, former Chief Librarian in Asian Collections at the National Library, writes on Asian studies and libraries. He may be contacted at andrewgosling@netspeed.com.au

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