XPost: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, cn.culture.buddhism, talk.   
   eligion.buddhism   
   XPost: tw.bbs.soc.religion.buddhism, uk.religion.buddhist   
   From: peter.terpstra7@gmail.com   
      
   New research challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and   
   inward-looking society before the British and Chinese   
   arrived.   
   University of Cambridge  · Jun 21, 2015 · 07:30 pm   
      
   A study by Tibetan scholar Lobsang Yongdan revisits a long-ignored section of   
   a historic text to reveal how Tibetans were   
   engaging with western scientific knowledge two centuries ago.  His research   
   into a geography of the world, first published by a   
   lama in 1830, challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and   
   inward-looking society.   
      
   Early in the 1800s, a Tibetan lama travelled from Drepung monastery in Lhasa   
   to Beijing.  The journey of more than 2,000 miles   
   would have taken him around four months. As an important Buddhist leader, he   
   may well have been conveyed most of the way   
   in   
   a sedan chair. On the way, his retinue would have fallen in with travellers   
   from other lands and heard unfamiliar languages.   
   Perhaps this journey wakened the young lama’s natural curiosity about the   
   world’s geography and its peoples, their customs and   
   characteristics.   
      
   No-one knows why Btsan po no mon han wrote the remarkable Tibetan text, the   
   Dzam gling rgyas shad , referred to as DGRB,   
   which translates as The Detailed Description of the World. First published in   
   Mongolia in 1830, the book is in several parts,   
   divided by continent and country. The section that describes Tibet, which   
   comprises less than a quarter of the text, has been   
   translated into European languages and has become one of Tibet’s most-read   
   classics. The remainder of the text, however, has   
   not been widely researched in the west.   
      
   Entire text   
      
   Research by Lobsang Yongdan, a PhD candidate in the Department of Social   
   Anthropology, now sets the entire text of the   
   DGRB into a more deeply informed historical, political, anthropological   
   context. In particular, Yongdan shows through his tracing   
   of the many influences apparent in the book just how widely its author   
   interacted with other thinkers in the intellectual circles of   
   early 19th-century Beijing which was host to missions, trading posts and   
   diplomats from many parts of the world.   
      
   “As a Tibetan, I come from a country that has been a magnet for western   
   anthropologists who are drawn to the integrity and   
   ‘otherness’ of its culture.  I began my academic career as a historian of   
   Tibet but in studying the DGRB within a western   
   framework, I have taken an anthropological approach in order to look at the   
   text from multiple viewpoints in terms of spiritual   
   belief systems and history of science as well as national and cultural   
   identities,” said Yongdan.   
   “I am myself the ‘otherness’ because I am that ‘native’ or ‘local   
   informant’ on whom anthropologists rely to conduct interviews   
   and to obtain information. Returning to the places where I was born, grew up   
   and was educated is not the typical model for   
   conventional anthropological inquiry. However, I considered that by going to   
   back to Tibet and conducting my inquiries at   
   Kumbum monastery, I was carrying out ‘anthropology at home’, an approach   
   that is making an increasingly important   
   contribution.”   
      
   Patchy interest   
      
   Historically, interest in the DGRB has been patchy. From the later 19th   
   century onwards, Europeans focused on the section of   
   the   
   text that deals with Tibet as a useful source of information. Tibetans, on the   
   other hand, were much more intrigued by the   
   sections   
   that describe the world beyond their borders.   
      
   Yongdan is uniquely qualified to research the DGRB and its author. He was   
   raised in Dobi in Amdo, north east Tibet. As a boy   
   he   
   joined a monastery and it was there that he first read the DGRB. Fluent in   
   Tibetan, Chinese and English and conversant with the   
   practice and literature of Tibetan Buddhism, Yongdan brings a multi-cultural   
   viewpoint to his study of the text. “I first studied   
   Btsan po’s work as a young Tibetan monk trying to understand the history of   
   my country and how Tibetans studied world   
   geography in earlier times,” he said. “I’ve spent the past four years   
   looking in detail at the geographical conceptualisation, the   
   creation of, and responses to the work.”   
      
   Lama's life   
      
   Only the sketchiest of details are known about Btsan po. He was born in 1789   
   in U lan mu ru in Amdo. Identified as a fourth   
   reincarnation of third Btsan po no mon han, Ngag dbang ’phrin las rgya   
   mtsho, he may have entered the Gser khog monastery as   
   young as two. As a child, he would have been taught Buddhist logic, literature   
   and cosmology.  From 1808, he studied at Drepung   
   monastery, one of the largest monasteries in Lhasa.  He passed away in Beijing   
   1839, the year that marked the first Opium War   
   between the Manchu and the British.   
      
   Around 1814, Btsan po travelled to Beijing to become a spiritual leader to the   
   Qing emperor. During his long residence in Beijing,   
   Btsan po read early Jesuit works of geography and became friendly with members   
   of the Russian orthodox mission in Beijing.   
   He   
   met European scholars and diplomats, scientists and conversed with them on   
   matters of world geography and the events of the   
   day. The country-by-country descriptions in the book contain evidence of his   
   encounters.   
      
   Yongdan reveals that Btsan po embarked on the compilation of a detailed world   
   geography of his own volition, and as a Tibetan   
   intellectual engaged with western knowledge on an equal footing with Europeans   
   and others. In this respect, his research   
   challenges the accepted view of geography – as a rational or scientific way   
   to study lands, their inhabitants, and features of the   
   physical world – as an exclusively European enterprise shared with the rest   
   of the world.   
      
   He said:   
   “Western discourse tends to make a sharp distinction between ‘religious’   
   and ‘scientific’ geography. Geography compiled with   
   religious motivations is often regarded as ‘cosmography’ and depicted as   
   belonging to the super-terrestrial realms, with little or no   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)