Tibet: Panchen Lama book summary
April 27th, 2009 by LaraHello. I’m currently editing a scholarly book that will soon be published on the history of Tibet and China in the 1920s and 30s. I have lots to say about it from a translation point of view, since it was based on Chinese and Tibetan sources, written in French, translated into a Gallic English, and then passed on to me. But I think it might be handy if I just give you a summary of the action in the book. It’s written by F. Jagou, and will be published by Silkworm Press later this year as a project of the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient. Please read the book once it’s available; it’s great to actually have some facts to work with:
The Panchen and Dalai lamas have run Tibet for some centuries now. Both are members of the Tibetan aristocracy with well-defined rights to land, monasteries, and couvee labor from Tibetan peasants. The Dalai Lama has some general political dominance, but the Panchen Lama is supposed to be a great Buddhist scholar, at times the Dalai’s spiritual advisor/superior. This feudal system worked OK until the 19th century, when China, Britain and Russia all started making incursions into Tibetan territory, getting Tibetans to sign treaties sacrificing certain sovereign rights over trade and international alliances, and suddenly the Dalai Lama (#13, not the current one) realized it would be handy to have an army. How to fund it?
The Dalai Lama sent notes to the 9th Panchen Lama in 1923 or so, explaining that the PL owed taxes (measured in barley flour and hay, in some cases, but payable to Lhasa in silver specie and Nepalese currency) for the maintenance of one quarter of the new Tibetan army; in addition he was to pay back taxes for various wars and services dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. The PL tried to appeal this decision, since he’d never paid any taxes before and didn’t think he or his people could afford it. The DL remained adamant, and the PL fled to China, leaving a note explaining that he was trying to find the money from among the princes in of Outer Mongolia. While they were devout Buddhists, and supported him handsomely in return for Buddhist teachings, he couldn’t find enough $$, so went to China.
There he found receptive ears among the Republicans and warlords, and he wandered around giving teachings in return for more support/maintenance from government figures. He bought into Sun Yat-Sen’s ideas and promulgated them, and earned various titles and stipends from the Republican gov’t., but little or no power. He was probably under the impression that his status with the Chinese gov’t. was that of a spiritual superior giving teachings in return for material support; but the Chinese of course viewed his acceptance of their money (patronage?) as an expression of fealty; since they also thought that he was the ruler of Inner Tibet (and the DL the ruler of Outer Tibet), this explains why they consistently claim rights to Tibetan territory. Anyway, he was in the midst of negotiating his return to Tibet with both the Chinese and the DL when he died.
That was Panchen Lama #9, and I’m unclear about where #10 was; as you know, recently the Chinese claimed to have discovered #10’s reincarnation in their very own #11.
It’s a really interesting book, as it’s written based on sources no other westerner has seen; the author is a French scholar who knows Tibetan and Chinese, and did all kinds of interviews in China, India and Tibet with survivors of all this action, as well as reading whatever archives the various governments made available to her.
