The Peoples of Asia
General Editor: Morris Rossabi
Each volume in this series comprises a complete history, from origins to the present, of the people under consideration. Written by leading archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists, the books are addressed to a wide, multi-diciplinary readership, as well as to the general reader.
Published
The Manchus | The Mongols |
Pamela Kyle Crossley | David Morgan |
The Persians | The Tibetans |
Gene R. Garthwaite | Matthew T. Kapstein |
The Mughals of India | The Afghans |
Harbans Mukhia | Willem Vogelsang |
In preparation
The Turks | The Phoenicians |
Colin Heywood | Irwin Scheiner |
The Phoenicians | The Chinese |
James Muhly | Arthur Waldron |
© 2006 by Matthew T. Kapstein
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
8 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kapstein, Matthew
The Tibetans / Matthew T. Kapstein
p. cm. – (Peoples of Asia)
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 978–0–631–22574–4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Tibet (China) – Civilization. I. Title. II. Series.
DS786.K313 2007
951′.5 – dc22 2005037145
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List of Figures
List of Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transcription and Translation
Maps
1 The Vessel and Its Contents
High Peaks, Pure Earth
Peasants, Nomads, and Traders
The Tibetan Language
2 Prehistory and Early Legends
Sources of Archeological Evidence
Children of the Ape and the Ogress
Tibetan Religion before Buddhism
3 The Tsenpo’s Imperial Dominion
The Rise of the Tibetan Empire
Later Monarchs and the Promotion of Buddhism
The Empire’s Implosion
4 Fragmentation and Hegemonic Power
Dynastic Successors and the Kingdom of Gugé
The Buddhist Renaissance
Mongols and Tibetan Buddhists
Successive Hegemonies
Tibetan Buddhism and the Ming Court
5 The Rule of the Dalai Lamas
Monastics and Monarchs
Between Mongols and Manchus
Regency and Retreat
Cultural Developments in Eastern Tibet
The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth
6 Tibetan Society
Property, Economy, and Social Class
Government and Law
Marriage and Kinship
Women in Traditional Tibet
7 Religious Life and Thought
Propitiation, Therapy, and the Life-cycle
Buddhist Basics
Monastic Institutions and Education
Tantrism and Yoga
Major Orders and Schools
Festivals, Pilgrimages, and Ritual Cycles
8 The Sites of Knowledge
The Speech-Goddess’s Mirror
To Form Body, Speech, and Mind
Medicine, Astronomy, and the Divinatory Sciences
9 Tibet in the Modern World
The End of Traditional Tibet
Rebellion and Exile
The Promise and Peril of Century’s End
Notes
Spellings of Tibetan Names and Terms
Bibliography
Index
Unless noted otherwise, all photographs are by the author.
Preface
In 1979, when the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) was created at Oxford, most of the world’s scholars of Tibet could gather in a single, small lecture hall. Tibet was then an obscure field of study, far removed from the public view, and the little community of Tibetanists had the feel of a close-knit clan. All inhabited a common microcosm, in which it was more or less taken for granted that one should be familiar with all things Tibetan: topics as diverse as history, anthropology, art, medicine, literature, philosophy, and religion. Since that time, however, public interest in Tibet has increased dramatically, fueled in part by a flood of popular publications on Tibetan matters generally and above all on Tibetan religion. Simultaneously, the academic field of Tibetan studies has grown to a considerable extent, becoming more specialized in the process and divided into several distinct subdisciplines, sometimes with relatively little communication among them. Whereas the 1979 Oxford meeting produced a modest publication documenting its proceedings, the ninth seminar of the IATS held in Leiden in 2000 yielded ten specialized volumes of new research.
Despite this expansion, there are few works that suitably introduce current knowledge of Tibet to a general readership. Academic texts frequently address minutely defined topics and seldom have the non-specialist in mind. Popular writings tend either to dwell one-sidedly on religion, often supposing the reader to be a seeker of spiritual guidance, or else concern personal experiences in Tibet, whether from a Tibetan or foreign perspective. Though such accounts often have considerable value for the testimony and insights that they provide, they do not supply an orientation to the study of Tibet overall. The Tibetans, in accord with the program set out for Blackwell’s The Peoples of Asia series, offers an introduction to Tibet that is based upon the conclusions of recent scholarship, but at the same time presupposes no prior knowledge of Tibet.
Although an abundance of information about Tibet is now readily available, it has been necessary to keep this book within strict limits of length. One hopes that brevity will contribute to accessibility in this case, but it has required that hard choices be made about just what topics to cover and to what degree of detail. Inevitably I have adopted some restrictions that others would contest. Some of these must be mentioned at the very beginning.
“Tibet” is not now and never has been a monolithic entity, and the Tibetan people, far from being homogeneous, are diverse in terms of lifestyle, language, religion, and indeed most areas of culture. One of the ways in which Tibetan studies have positively matured in recent years has been precisely through their affirmation of this complexity, so that few scholars now entertain simple notions thought to pertain universally to the Tibetans or to Tibet as a whole. What is emphasized in current research tends to be the particular and the local, and some would suggest that it makes little sense to speak of such things as “Tibetan identity” any longer. We know of peoples who identify themselves (and in some cases are officially designated) as Tibetan, but whose language is not Tibetan. At the same time, we find others who speak languages that are clearly related to Tibetan, and whose history and culture are closely tied to Tibet, but who have nevertheless come to regard themselves as ethnically distinct from the Tibetans. There are even communities that neither speak Tibetan, nor are regarded by themselves or others as ethnic Tibetans, but whose culture is so thoroughly Tibetanized that they have for centuries been thought of as constituting an integral part of the Tibetan cultural world. To avoid conveying an oversimplied account of the Tibetans, therefore, it would be necessary to detail these and many other ethnic, political, and linguistic particulars that are comprised within the Tibetan realm as a whole. Nevertheless, in the span of the present work, to do so is clearly impossible.
Given this, however, we can still speak sensibly, if tentatively, of a Tibetan civilizational sphere, focusing upon that which has at least the appearance of greatest universality within it. If I have chosen to stress in this context primarily the main lines of Tibetan history, language, and religion, as well as the Tibetan plateau itself and the special environmental conditions that obtain there, it is because these seem to me to be foremost among the factors that define the Tibetan world, despite very considerable variation in each of these areas. Ideally, in order to balance my account, the present volume would be supplemented by one or more works treating, for example, the Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples of the Himalaya, the Sino-Tibetan frontiers, and so on. Excellent volumes on The Mongols by David Morgan (Blackwell 1986) and The Manchus by Pamela Kyle Crossley (Blackwell 1997) may be recommended as introductions to two of the neighboring peoples with whom the Tibetans have long sustained political and cultural ties, and among whom Tibetan religion and learning have at times played significant roles.
A second restriction that I have imposed upon this work concerns the time-frame it covers. My primary interest throughout has been to introduce the traditional Tibetan world as it was before the mid-t wentieth century, when revolutionary China asserted its control of Tibet. The tumultuous period that followed, during which time great political, economic, and cultural upheavals transformed many aspects of Tibetan life, has been treated primarily in the last chapter, and no claim is made that this offers anything more than the briefest glimpse of a complex and much-contested history. It may appear therefore that I have skirted some of the compelling and difficult issues that most interest readers about Tibet: the tragic events surrounding Tibet’s absorption into the People’s Republic of China, the flight of the Dalai Lama and many of his compatriots to South Asia, and the very recent “globalization” of Tibetan culture. Because a number of readily available and excellent works (noted in the Bibliography) deal with these and other aspects of modern Tibet, I have not attempted to reproduce their contribution here: Melvyn C. Goldstein’s fine essay, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, may be recommended in particular as providing an accessible, but nuanced, introduction to recent events. The final chapter, accordingly, is intended just to orient those who are new to Tibet to the most essential and pertinent information.
In its general outlines, this book primarily concerns Tibetan cultural history. I have used the historical chapters to introduce not just the conclusions of recent research, but also salient features of traditional accounts, which often are legendary in character. These are of value to us for their testimony regarding Tibetan conceptions of Tibet’s past. As such they form a fundamental aspect of the Tibetan cultural background, with implications for Tibetan literature, law, politics, and religion. For similar reasons I have quoted liberally from Tibetan writings so as to convey something of the manner in which Tibetans have themselves spoken of their land, its history, and their civilization. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Tibetan works are my own. While I have always aimed to represent the texts chosen within reasonable bounds of accuracy, I have refrained from burdening them here with the technical apparatus required in more specialized contexts. A more comprehensive anthology of translated Tibetan text selections will be found in the forthcoming Sources of Tibetan Tradition, which will complement the present work.
The Western-language sources from which this book has benefited may be found entered in the Bibliography. This follows the organization of the book overall and therefore indicates for each section the works that I have consulted and that I recommend to those who wish to explore in greater depth topics raised here. For those familiar with this literature, my many intellectual debts will be sufficiently obvious so that I may be excused, I trust, from the obligation to add extensive annotation throughout. Direct quotations, of course, are another matter and full citations are provided in the notes that accompany them. The references to Tibetan works given there will balance, to some extent, the emphasis on secondary literature in the Bibliography. To all those past masters and present colleagues whose writings have contributed to this work, I extend heartfelt thanks.
Matthew T. Kapstein
Paris, November 2005
Acknowledgements
My reflections on Tibetan history are indebted throughout to four of the great modern Tibetan historians with whom it was my privilege to have discussed many of the topics surveyed in these pages: Dudjom Rinpoche Jikdrel Yeshe Dorje (1904–87), Deshung Rinpoche Kunga Tenpei Nyima (1905–87), Dungkar Rinpoche Losang Tinley (1927–97), and Tsepon Shakabpa Wangchuk Deden (1908–89). Their counsel and their works, together with their erudition and humility, have long stood before me as models of the particular excellences of Tibetan learning.
In grappling with the problems inherent in the interpretation of traditional sources in the light of contemporary approaches to historical and cultural study, I am grateful for ongoing conversations over many years with fellow Tibetanists including the late Michael Aris, Anne-Marie Blondeau, Ronald Davidson, Georges Dreyfus, David Germano, Janet Gyatso, Yoshiro Imaeda, David Jackson, Samten Karmay, Leonard vander Kuijp, Per Kværne, Fernand Meyer, Elliot Sperling, Heather Stodd-ard, Tashi Tsering, and Roberto Vitali. Since the early 1970s E. Gene Smith has constantly encouraged, and through his bibliographical activities materially contributed to, all aspects of my research. More recently it has been a pleasure to see some of the discussions in the field taken up and advanced by a new generation of scholars of Tibet, among whom Bryan Cuevas, Kurtis Schaeffer, and Gray Tuttle have particularly contributed to my thinking on Tibetan cultural history.
For their specific advice and responses to queries in connection with this book I am indebted to Cynthia Beall, Lawrence Epstein, Melvyn Goldstein, and Daniel Miller. A number of organizations and individuals have assisted my research in Tibet and China over the years in ways that also furthered its development. The Committee for Scholarly Communication with China sponsored travel and fieldwork in 1990, 1992, and 1998, on which occasions I enjoyed the cooperation of the Sichuan Academy of Social Science (SASS) in Chengdu and the Tibetan Academy of Social Science (TASS) in Lhasa. The Tibetan-Himalayan Digital Library (THDL) project based at the University of Virginia, aided by a grant from the US Department of Education, permitted documentation of central Tibetan historical sites in 2002 in collaboration with the TASS. In connection with these fruitful visits, I thank, in particular, the current president of the TASS, Tsewang Gyurme, and researchers including Pasang Wangdu, Buchung, Dongbu Lhagyal, Drongbu Tsering Dorje, and Tsering Gyalpo. Thanks, too, to the noted historian Chen Qingying, of the Center for Tibetan Studies in Beijing. For its support of my translation work, from which extracts are given here, I acknowledge the National Endowment of the Humanities, under translation grant number RL-22065.
The publishers and editors of the following among my previous work have graciously permitted me to use extracts from them here:
“The Royal Way of Supreme Compassion,” “The Guide to the Crystal Peak: A Pilgrim’s Handbook,” “The Journey to the Golden Mountain,” “The Sermon of an Itinerant Saint,” and “Turning Back Gossip: A Village Ritual of Exorcism,” in Tibetan Religions in Practice, ed. Donald Lopez, Jr. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, ed. Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
“The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet,” in Literary Cultures in History: Perspectives from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
“A Thorn in the Dragon’s Side: Tibetan Buddhist Culture in China,” in Governing China’s Multi-ethnic Frontiers, ed. Morris Rossabi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).
I am grateful, too, to Morris Rossabi for his invitation to make this addition to the Peoples of Asia series, and to Tessa Harvey, Angela Cohen, Gillian Kane, and Helen Lawton at Blackwell, for patiently but persistently urging me to get it done. David Williams and his colleagues at The Running Head efficiently effected its production, with the careful editorial contribution of John Gaunt. Christine Mollier has long urged me to address non-Tibetanists in my writing on Tibet; I hope that this at least in part responds to the charge. It goes without saying that I am solely responsible for the faults herein, in awareness of which, as Tibetan writers like to put it, I ask that the protectors be patient.
A Note on Transcription and Translation
Because the exact transcription of written Tibetan offers little guide to the actual pronunciation of the language, Tibetan is given in the main body of this book in simplified phonetic spellings. The scheme employed here is based on that used in my The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), modified so as to confirm to the usage recently adopted by the Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library. For a detailed description of this, one may refer to the article by David Germano and Nicolas Tournadre, “THDL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan” (http://iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet/xml/showEssay.php?xml=/collections/langling/THDL_phonetics.xml).
Most of the letters used may be pronounced according to their common English values. The exceptions to this rule are:
ö and ü, which are pronounced as in German
e and é, which are both pronounced like the French é, the accent being used here only at the end of words, to remind readers that a final e is not silent: e.g. dorjé
z and zh, which resemble s and sh; thus Zhalu sounds rather like Shalu
In a few cases, however, I have retained current conventional spellings for proper names, instead of phonetic transcriptions; for instance, Shigatsé instead of phonetic Zhigatsé (for literary Tibetan gzhis-ka-rtse), and Reting for Radreng (lit. rwa-sgreng). The Tibetan spelling glossary given at the end of the book provides the exact literary orthography for all Tibetan names and terms used herein. It includes also the Tibetan equivalents of certain Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian words used in the text, as well as of book titles for which I give only English translations.
Sanskrit words are given here without diacritical marks. I have followed the Sanskrit pronunciation, except in those instances in which a Sanskrit word is embedded in a Tibetan name, e.g. Padmasambhava (in accord with the Sanskrit), but Pema Jungné (where pema represents the Tibetan pronunciation of the Sanskrit word padma).
For Chinese, I use the standard Pinyin transcriptions throughout, though for a small number of proper names, such as Sun Yat-sen, I have retained the forms that will be recognized by most anglophone readers.
“Tibet” means many things. Geographically, it designates the vast uplift, popularly referred to as the “roof of the world,” that extends from the Himalaya to the great deserts of Inner Asia. Linguistically, it embraces those regions, from northern Pakistan to China’s Gansu Province, in which varieties of the Tibetan language are spoken. In its socioeconomic dimensions Tibet may be thought of in terms of its dominant modes of production: high-altitude pastoralism and a barley-based agriculture. Culturally Tibet is distinguished by the use of classical Tibetan as a literary medium, by shared artistic and craft traditions, and by the important role of the religious system of Tibetan Buddhism. Politically, according to one’s ideological standpoint or historical frame of reference, Tibet may be a particular administrative unit of the contemporary People’s Republic of China, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), or else the much vaster territory that, nominally at least, came under the rule of the Fifth Dalai Lama during the seventeenth century, which many Tibetans still see as defining their rightful political domain. Depending upon the story one wishes to tell, therefore, one must first choose among several distinct, but nevertheless overlapping, Tibets.
Though cultural and historical Tibet will be our main concern throughout this book, it is impossible to consider this apart from the distinctive geographical and ecological zone formed by the Tibetan plateau and its equally distinctive population of farmers and nomads, whose livelihoods are based respectively on the cultivation of highland barley and the husbandry of sheep and yak, and who for the most part speak languages that are part of the tightly knit linguistic system of Tibetan. These people have not always considered themselves to be Tibetans, and do not always so consider themselves today, but in most cases they regard their culture and history as intimately tied to Tibet under one description or another. We will begin, therefore, with a general sketch of the Tibetan environment and its inhabitants – the “vessel and its contents” according to a traditional locution – and also of the language through which the Tibetan cultural sphere is in some measure defined.
A popular legend provides a useful entry into the “land of snows.” At some time in the distant past, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, gazed upon our world with the intention of saving the creatures of Tibet. He looked and looked, but could find no hint that the Buddha had visited that land, or that his teaching had ever reached it. What Avalokiteshvara saw, as he continued his inspection, was a great area of darkness, which seemed to him to be without doubt the worst place on earth. Not long before, it had been a vast sea, but now that the waters had receded it appeared that the high regions of western Tibet were encircled by glacial mountains and fractured by ravines. Herds of hoofed animals roamed wild there. With its glaciers and lakes, feeding the rivers that flowed from the high plateau, this region resembled a reservoir. In the middle elevations of the plateau were grass-covered valleys interrupted by rocky massifs, where apes and ogresses made their lairs in caves and sheltered hollows. Broken up by the great river valleys, this part of Tibet seemed like the fractured terrain surrounding an irrigation canal. And following the plateau’s descent to the east, the bodhisattva saw forests and pasturelands, where birds of all kinds and even tropical creatures were to be found. This looked to him like land made fertile by irrigation. Still, with all the power of his divine sight, Avalokiteshvara could find no candidates for discipleship in Tibet, for no human beings were yet to be seen there.1
The tale of the bodhisattva’s first glimpse of Tibet serves to direct our vision to several key features of the Tibetan landscape. For much of Tibet was indeed formerly at or beneath sea level; in this the legend accords with geological fact. Roughly forty-five million years ago, as the Indian tectonic plate collided with and began to be drawn underneath Southern Tibet, then the south coast of continental Asia, the bed of the ancient Tethys Sea that had separated the continents began to rise. The ensuing uplift gave birth to the Himalaya and contributed to the formation of the other great mountain ranges of Inner Asia: Karakorum, Pamir, Tianshan, and Kunlun. During subsequent cycles of glaciation, many lakes, large and small, were also formed on the rising plateau. Following the last great Ice Age, these began to recede – in some places one finds ancient shorelines as much as 200 meters above present water levels – and, because they were frequently without outlet, they became rich in salts and other minerals, trade in which has played an essential role in the traditional economy. So not without reason do the old legends speak of a primordial ocean covering Tibet. The ongoing subduction of the Indian subcontinent, moreover, means that the Tibetan plateau (also called the Tibet-Qinghai plateau) is still in formation and is especially prone to earthquake. With a mean elevation of over 12,000 feet and an area of some 1.2 million square miles, it is by far the most extensive high-altitude region on earth. Roughly speaking, the Tibetan plateau embraces one-third of the territory of modern China and is the size of the entire Republic of India, or nearly half the area of the lower forty-eight among the United States. To appreciate Tibet as a human habitat, therefore, its sheer immensity must first clearly be grasped.
Tibet is further depicted in our tale as a wilderness, a place that came to be peopled and tamed only at a relatively late date through the divine agency of the bodhisattva, a civilizing influence originating from beyond the frontiers of Tibet itself, perhaps a mythical reflection of the fact that much of Tibet was settled in comparatively recent times. Indeed, in some Himalayan districts, Tibetan settlement dates back only a few centuries. The origins of the Tibetan people will be considered in more detail in the following chapter, but here we should note that populations on the plateau were always comparatively thin. If the current ethnic Tibetan population of China, about 5.5 million, offers any indication, the population density of the Tibetan plateau could seldom have been much more than three or four persons per square mile, and for most of Tibet’s history even less. Of course, the population is concentrated in habitable areas that comprise only a fraction of the Tibetan geographical region overall; it has been estimated, for instance, that only about 1 percent of the Tibetan plateau sustains regular agricultural activity. Still, the dispersal of the populace over a vast, inhospitable terrain was clearly a factor inhibiting early civilizational development.
When Avalokiteshvara gazed upon Tibet, he saw three main geographical zones. The tripartite division of the Tibetan plateau into its high and harsh western reaches, the agricultural valleys of its mid-elevations, and the rich pasturage and forested lowlands as one descends towards China schematically depicts the topography of the land as one moves from west to east. In comparing the land to an irrigation system, with its reservoir, channel, and fields, the story underscores the central role of the control of water resources in the emergence of civilization in Tibet. Indeed, the Tibetan term for governmental authority (chapsi), literally “water-regime,” derives from the polite and honorific word for water, chap.
In traditional Tibetan geographical terms, the three zones described by the bodhisattva correspond to the three great divisions of Tibet: (1) the “three circuits” of Ngari in the west, (2) the “four horns” of Ü (the “Center”) and Tsang, and (3) the “six ranges” or “three realms” constituting the eastern provinces of Amdo and Kham. The first embraces the territories of the ancient Zhangzhung and later Gugé kingdoms, centered in the areas around Mt. Kailash (alt. 6,714 meters) that now constitute the Ngari Prefecture (Ch. Alizhou) of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The “three circuits” (whose exact enumeration is treated variously in different sources) also include the regions of Ladakh and Zangskar, now in India’s Jammu and Kashmir State, and neighboring locations in Himachal Pradesh, as well as in former times Baltistan in far northern Pakistan. (Baltistan was in most respects removed from the Tibetan cultural sphere following its conversion to Islam after the fifteenth century.) The area as a whole is characterized by high desert and pasture, with numerous salt lakes, and is subject to very severe winter conditions, temperatures in some places regularly plunging to minus 50° Fahrenheit. Irrigated river valleys, whose fresh waters spring from glacial sources in the high mountains, permit crops to be grown, though there is evidence that desiccation during the past millennium has reduced the land available for agriculture in some parts of Ngari. Indo-European peoples were among the early inhabitants in this area – so, for instance, the Dardic-speaking populations of ancient Ladakh – and the region as a whole was integrated into the Tibetan cultural sphere only gradually following the seventh-century expansion of the Tibetan empire. The “three circuits” of Ngari are at present the most thinly populated part of the Tibetan world, the home of not more than four or five percent of all Tibetans. The barren beauty of the desert, dominated by endlessly varying formations of rock and mountain, was nicely captured in the remark of a leading lama in Ladakh on recalling the impression made by news of the Apollo moon landing in 1969: “We Ladakhis have never been motivated to visit the surface of the moon because we had it here all along.”2
The provinces of Ü (often referred to simply as “central Tibet”) and Tsang (the region to the west of Ü, with the town of Shigatsé as its main center) form the traditional Tibetan heartland, whose chief arteries are the Yarlung Tsangpo River (often just “Tsangpo”), which in India becomes the Brahmaputra, and its tributaries. (The “four horns” into which these parts of Tibet are subdivided are ancient administrative divisions, as will be explained in Chapter 3 below.) Alluvial plains support relatively prosperous farming in many places here, such as the Nyang River valley in the vicinity of Gyantsé in Tsang, and the Yarlung Valley in Ü. Lhasa, the capital of Tibet in modern times, is located in one such valley, that of the Kyi River in Ü. The climate in the central river valleys is relatively mild, with warm summers and temperatures rising above freezing on sunny days even during the coldest months of the year. Higher valleys in the mountains separating the tributaries of the Tsangpo permit grazing in relatively close proximity to arable land, so that a mixed agricultural-pastoral economy is often the norm. To the north of Ü-Tsang, extending west into Ngari and northeast toward Amdo, is the high plateau called the Jangtang (the “northern plain”), whose inhabitants are exclusively pastoralists. The imposing Nyenchen Tangla range, the highest summit of which soars to 7,088 meters, traverses central Tibet and is regarded as the abode of that region’s principal protective divinity, while two of Tibet’s greatest lakes, Nam Tso (or Tengri Nor, “Heaven’s Lake,” as it is known in Mongolian) and Yamdrok Tso, are prominent among the waters of the central region.
Traveling to the east and southeast, one reaches some of Tibet’s lowest elevations as one descends towards eastern India from the districts of Dakpo, Kongpo, and Powo. Here one finds rich forest and abundant water resources. The dietary importance of fish in some places, and the cultivation of such crops as rice and millet in the lower valleys, distinguishes the way of life in these parts from the basic economy as known elsewhere. This is a transitional zone communicating with the adjacent territories of South Asia, including Bhutan and India’s Arunachal State, regions where Tibetan culture has long been influential. The great bend of the Tsangpo River, which turns here to dive into India, forms the deepest gorge in the world, dominated by the great summit of Namchak Barwa (alt. 7,756 meters), the “blazing meteor.” Further descent leads to the region of Pemakö, a “hidden land” that came to be regarded in Tibetan legend as a paradise on earth. Its subtropical environment was described by Chögyam Trungpa (1939–87), a celebrated teacher from Kham who passed this way en route to exile in India in 1959:
We crossed … a slender bamboo bridge and, beyond it, found ourselves on steep hard ground. There were no rocks, but footholds had been cut on the stony surface in a zig-zag pattern to make the climb easier. As we went further up we could see the Brahmaputra again, now on its southwestward course: the ranges on its south side looked very beautiful with patches of cloud and little groups of houses dotted about. These foothills of the Himalayas have a continual rainfall and everything looked wonderfully green. We could not recognize most of the plants here for they were utterly different from those which grow in East Tibet.3
The eastern reaches of traditional Tibet are the vast expanses of Kham and Amdo, now divided among five provinicial units in China. Kham today comprises the western parts of China’s Sichuan Province, together with adjacent districts in the Tibet Autonomous Region and northern Yunnan; Amdo corresponds to Qinghai Province, with some neighboring parts of Gansu and northern Sichuan. Both Kham and Amdo are characterized by abundant, rich pastureland, making their nomads some of the most prosperous Tibetans. To the west and north of Amdo, the steppe becomes desert as one approaches Gansu and Xinjiang, while to its southeast, as well as in the river valleys throughout Kham, wheat, barley, and other crops may be cultivated. Intervening between the eastern districts of Kham and Amdo, in the Jinchuan river system of Sichuan, is the region known in Tibetan as Gyelmorong, whose people, though speaking a group of distinct languages, have nevertheless long considered themselves Tibetans and are adherents of the Tibetan Bön or Buddhist religions. To one degree or another, similar patterns of Tibetanization of originally non-Tibetan populations may be found throughout the eastern reaches of Amdo and Kham. Among the Yi of Sichuan, the Naxi of Yunnan, and the Tu of Qinghai, for instance, Tibetan culture has long played an important role. Other groups – the Minyakpa of Chakla in far eastern Kham are an example – would be indistinguishable from neighboring Tibetan populations were it not for the non-Tibetan origin of their local language.
The metaphor of the reservoir and irrigation canal, which we have seen applied to Tibet in particular, pertains too to the Tibetan plateau in its relation with South and East Asia. The Indus and one of its major tributaries, the Sutlej, rise in Ngari and bring their waters to the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent in Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, and the Punjab. Other major rivers originating in Ngari, including the Gandaki, which descends to join the Ganges, and the Tsangpo, figure prominently among the essential water resources of northeastern India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. The origins of these rivers in the area around Mt. Kailash led early on to that mountain’s becoming analogically regarded as Himavat, the legendary mountain of ancient Indian Buddhist cosmology, adjacent to the Anavatapta lake, from which, in spiral courses, four great rivers descend. As we read in verses attributed to the poet-saint Milarepa (1040–1123):
The lord of glacial peaks
Resembles a divine mound of white butter
At the head of four rivers:
To the east, the mountain of incense perfume,
Where the turquoise lake Mapam’s waters are gathered;
To the south, the defile of the golden ledge;
In the west is the eight-peaked mountain king;
And in the north, the indigo meadow, the meadow of gold.4
Proceeding east from the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra gorges, southeastern Tibet and Kham are scored by a series of important rivers that sustain life throughout Southeast Asia and southern China. The Salween (Tib. Ngülchu), rising in Tibet’s northern plain in the region of Nakchu, descends into Burma, while the Mekong (Tib. Dachu) wends its way from Nangchen in Kham down through Laos and Vietnam. As they leave Tibetan territory, the parallel courses of these two great rivers are separated by the summits of the Kawa Karpo range (6,740 meters), prominent among Tibet’s sacred mountains. Further east, the two major tributaries of the Yangzi, the Jinsha River (Tib. Drichu) and Yalong River (Tib. Dzachu), define the principal regions of Kham. Along the length of the Jinsha, from north to south, lie many of Kham’s major centers, including Jyekundo, Ling, Dergé and Batang. Situated in the area between the rivers are the districts of Ganze, Nyarong, and Litang. East of the Yalong one approaches the Chinese cultural sphere in Sichuan via the still Tibetanized regions of Gyelmorong and Minyak Chakla, the latter dominated by the massif of Minyak Gangkar (7,555 meters). It is here that the town of Dartsedo (Ch. Kangding, formerly Dajianlu), serves as an entrepôt linking the Tibetan and Chinese worlds.
The northeastern province of Amdo is the source of the Yellow River (Tib. Machu) and is dominated by the heights of Amnyé Machen (6,282 meters). Amdo Tso-ngön, the “blue lake of Amdo,” known as Kokonor in Mongolian and Qinghai in Chinese, lends its name to the region as whole. The Yellow River valley to the east of the Kokonor includes the richest agricultural lands in the region and is a zone of considerable ethnic diversity, with Tu, Salar, Chinese Muslim (Hui) and other populations. Amdo also has long had a substantial Mongol presence, particularly in the prairies to the north and southwest of the Kokonor. In the southeast of Amdo are the Tibetan districts of Repkong (Ch. Tongren) and Luchu (Ch. Gannan, “southern Gansu”). One reaches the northeastern extremity of the Tibetan world in the district of Pari (Ch. Tianzhu) in Gansu, famed for its herds of white yak. Like the far west of Tibet, the northeast is subject to remarkably harsh winter conditions. Here, as throughout much of the Jangtang, summer snow is a regular occurrence.
Tibetan geographical nomenclature distinguishes several kinds of terrain in terms of natural features and human use. The main agricultural areas are known by the term for cultivated fields, zhing, while tang, “plain,” generally designates the high plateau on which only pastoral activity is possible. “Highland,” gang, describes the elevated ridges and ranges dividing river systems and agricultural terrain, and drok is used for the pasturage found in the uplands. Farmers are zhingpa, “those of the fields,” while the nomads are drokpa, “those of the pastures.” A special term sometimes refers to those who pursue a mixed agricultural and pastoral livelihood, samadrok, literally, “neither earth nor pasture.” The deep valleys to the south and east of Tibet, leading into South Asian and Chinese territories respectively, are frequently called rong and the term rongpa, “valley folk,” often applies to the non-Tibetan peoples inhabiting these lower regions.
Though the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was concerned that the Tibet he inspected was still unpopulated, he took note nevertheless of its rich wildlife. Among the hoofed animals whose herds he observed he would have remarked several species of wild sheep, including bharal sheep and argali, as well as deer, gazelle, and the so-called Tibetan antelope (chiru). The Tibetan wild ass (kyang) would have been especially plentiful, as indeed it was until the mid-twentieth century, when large-scale extermination greatly reduced populations in the TAR. Seeking what was most iconic of Tibet, he might have gazed with admiration and awe upon the wild yak, or drong, described here in the words of the naturalist George Schaller:
While walking in the Chang Tang [Jangtang], I occasionally met several yak bulls ponderously at rest on a hillside. They would rise and face me with their armored heads before fleeing. Their mantles of hair almost obscured their feet. Black and massive, they conveyed power and mystery … Supremely well adapted to the harsh highlands with their thick coats, great lung capacity, and ability to clamber nimbly over rough terrain like giant goats, they are marvels of evolutionary perfection. Even their blood cells are designed for high elevations in that they are about half the size of those of cattle and are at least three times more numerous per unit volume, increasing the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.5
Besides the drong, argali, and other ungulates, Tibet is home to an abundance of distinctive species of many kinds. Small mammals, including varieties of pika, marmot, and hare, are numerous in many places, pika indeed to such an extent that their burrows can be a major cause of erosion. These smaller species afford a rich source of nutrition to both birds of prey and mammalian carnivores, including foxes, wolves, and lynx. Among them, the rare and elusive Tibetan snow leopard continues to survive in the fastness of mountains and cliffs, where its spoor and its kill sometimes betray its furtive presence.
Though the low human population density of Tibet would seem to leave ample space for other animal species, the protection of wildlife from hunting and environmental degradation has in some instances become urgent in recent years. In the case of the snow leopard, its naturally small numbers leave it vulnerable even to relatively modest poaching by hunters and trappers, eager to profit from the prize of its magnificent coat. Natural rarity, however, is not a sole, decisive factor driving the need for species conservation; the chiru, for instance, which resembles a graceful East African antelope, was once plentiful throughout much of the Tibetan plateau, but has been hunted almost to extinction, mercilessly and stupidly, for the sake just of its wool. This fiber, called shahtoosh in Kashmir, is finer than pashmina and, despite the classification of the chiru as an internationally protected species, it has been eagerly sought for ladies’ scarves in the fashion houses of New York, Paris, and Milan, where astronomical prices (US$10,000 or more for a single shawl) have fueled a trade that gives poachers every incentive to slaughter entire herds.
Although harsh conditions prevail on large parts of the Tibetan plateau, the environment has permitted relative prosperity within a narrow range of productive activities. The cultivation of barley, together with some wheat, buckwheat, and peas, and the herding of domestic yak, horses, goats, and sheep, emerged early on as the predominant livelihoods and are generally complementary. Nevertheless, though most agriculturists had access to at least some animal produce, it was by no means unknown for nomads far removed from farming communities to live almost entirely on a dairy and meat diet, supplemented by whatever edible plants could be gathered, such as nettles or the wild sweet potato called droma.
In the popular imagination, including not least the Tibetan imagination, nomads are generally regarded as the archetypical Tibetans. There is reason to believe, however, that in many parts of Tibet, as in the ancient Near East, nomadism began as an extension of agricultural settlement, as the herds and flocks kept by settled populations were grazed ever farther afield. This pattern of mixed agriculture and animal husbandry, that of the samadrok, still persists throughout large parts of the Tibetan world, and wherever it is possible it is generally considered the preferred mode of production. The primacy of agriculture in the early development of Tibetan civilization is suggested both by early agricultural sites, such as the Neolithic village of Karo (to be examined in the following chapter), and the legendary and historical traditions of the Tibetans, which always locate the birth of Tibetan society in the fertile valleys of Southern Tibet. That the control of the waters and the construction of irrigation channels played central roles in the emergence of the early Tibetan state is underscored, we have seen, by one of the main Tibetan words for “government.” If, however, Chinese paleoanthropologists are correct in their supposition that the yak was first domesticated by the Qiang peoples to China’s northwest, that is, in or around northeastern Tibet, then it is imaginable that the dominant Tibetan patterns of sustenance emerged from the interactions among agricultural and pastoral peoples whose origins were in fact independent.
The grains grown on the Tibetan plateau, primarily barley and wheat, were probably ultimately derived, via Iran and Inner Asia, from Anatolia or Upper Mesopotamia, the home of many of the Eurasian cultivated grasses, but the exact time and source of their introduction to Tibet remains uncertain. In some low-lying valleys in southeastern Tibet, rice cultivation, relating those regions to Southeast Asia, is also known. Nevertheless, the staple grain for most Tibetans has long been barley, usually roasted in sand (which is sifted out once the roasting is done) and then ground into a very fine flour, called tsampa. This nutritious food, which has a distinctive, nutty taste, may be consumed without further cooking, when mixed with tea and butter to give it body and moisture, sometimes with additional flavouring agents such as powdered dry cheese. Grain may be also used to make breads, dumplings, and pastas of various sorts, as well as the alcoholic beverages known as chang, thick ales made from the fermented mash of all types of cereals. Distilled alcohol is a rarer grain product whose Arabic name, arak, betrays its relatively late appearance in Tibet.
sangtab,