Part
V
“The
morning of the 10th [August 1924] broke fine; and about 9 o’clock we joined the happy throng that
wandered leisurely out of town and up alongside the mountain torrent to Dorje
Drag. The level sward in front of the lamasery was already covered with tents,
the Tibetans being quite unable to resist the idea of a picnic; and the
brightly striped canvas and gaily coloured clothes of men and women made a
pretty picture against the rows of sombre poplars in the background. As we made
our way through the crowd, now and then one more polite than his neighbours
would stand aside, bow with out-stretched hands, and protrude a tongue of
monstrous size and usually healthy colour, the polite form of salutation in
Tibet. […] Passing through the
vestibule with its great Mani drums, revolved by devotees as they go by, and
entering the courtyard, we saw stretched opposite us, concealing the entrance
to the main temple, an enormous painting on cloth of Dedma Sambhava.” (G. A.
Combe, H.B.M. Consul at Chengtu).
Almost 86 years to the day, on
August 7th 2010, I walked through the vestibule described above into
the same Gompa – Dorje Drak in དར་རྩེ་མདོ། Dartsendo (Tachienlu, or Kangding 康定 , as it is
presently known in Chinese). Except I wasn’t greeted by anyone poking their
tongue out at me, nor by the sight of a huge thangka painting unfurled from the roof of the main temple building
to the courtyard floor, instead the Gompa was rather quiet with just a few
monks and local people lolling about or sitting on the grass. It was all very
calm and relaxed. I wandered round, exploring all the temple halls. The place
was filled with prayer wheels, and, in the main hall in front of the image of
Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) I saw a man performing a full set of devotions –
pressing his palms together first over his head, then in front of his forehead,
then in front of his chest before kneeling, and then, leaning forward with his
palms placed on two small squares of cloth which, pushing forward, he would
then use to make himself lie completely flat upon the floor by sliding forward,
his face then flat to the floor, forehead touching the floorboards. He’d then
reverse the procedure to stand up again, before repeating the whole process.
I’ve no idea how many prostrations he made in total, but it was clear that it
was likely to have been many.
Visiting the Tibetan Gompas at
Dartsendo/Kangding was one of the main research objectives of my trip. I’d
managed to thoroughly confuse myself with a range of old and modern photographs
found in Louis King’s private papers as well as those of some of his
contemporaries, along with a multitude of other more up-to-date images, mostly
published on the internet. It was clear that there are three main Gompas in the
town, with other lesser shrines and religious buildings (Taoist and Confucian
too) dotted around the surrounding hillsides. Of these three main Gompas, in
Louis King’s time, there was one situated in the centre of the town – Ngachu
Gompa (Anjue Si) – with two outside the south gate, Dorje Drak Gompa (Jingang
Si) and Lhamotse Gompa (Nanwu Si), which have since been absorbed into the
expanded town (the three town gates are now all long gone).
Ngachu Gompa (Anjue Si), which was under-going massive architectural alterations, 2010
Dorje Drak Gompa (Jingang Si), 2010
Lhamotse Gompa (Nanwu Si), 2010
These last two Gompas
are both situated fairly close to one another, and have apparently been
confused and conflated by commentators from the early 20th century
right up to this very day. Several of the accounts of early Western travellers
through the town wisely remain rather vague, whereas more modern books (even
English language books by Chinese publishers), and an array of websites mix the
two up with bold and confident frequency! (N.B.
– Naturally, not wanting to throw stones too readily, I’d welcome any
comments or corrections on anything I might have inadvertently skewed or got
plain wrong in any of the posts here which make up the glass house of my own
blog!)
And so, having long pored over this
issue with a crossword puzzler’s determination to crack the clues and
definitively complete the conundrum I’m now about to boldly venture my own
theory as to how these mistakes may have arisen! … The root of the problem is
possibly a photograph taken by Joseph Rock published in the National Geographic Magazine in October
1930, or rather – it’s not Rock’s fault (he gets it right), it’s someone’s
misinterpretation of his photo which has gained currency and run like silent,
slow burning wildfire. This is the photograph:
Its original caption reads: Plate XVI – “Prayer flags adorn a shrine of
the yellow sect.”
Joseph Rock’s description of this Gompa
as belonging to the “Yellow Sect” (Gelugpa) indicates that it is most likely
Lhamotse Gompa (Nanwu Si), yet Rock’s photo is frequently reproduced with the
confident assertion that it is Dorje Drak Gompa (Jinggang Si), yet Dorje Drak
in fact belongs to the “Red Sect” (Nyingma). A photograph of the exterior of
Dorje Drak features on the same page with the caption: “Thunderbolt Monastery, a stronghold of the Red Lamas near Tatsienlu”,
hence perhaps the possible origins of this misattribution.
.jpg)
Dorje Drak (left) and Lhamotse (right) Gompas by
Ernest Henry Wilson, 1908.
Similar view of Dorje Drak and Lhamotse Gompas, 2010.
Both Gompas have been heavily
altered since Rock’s time, but a bit of time spent comparing Rock’s image with
those of Ernest Henry Wilson (1908) and Louis Magrath King’s photographs (c.1920-1922) make
the distinction quite clear for me (looking at the roofs of the side
buildings), and even when compared to these two modern views of the same part
of the Gompa in Rock’s photo which I took during my visits to each (the
relative position of the slope of the hillside in the background is one key
indication).
Dorje Drak Gompa
Lhamotse Gompa
“Prayer flags adorn a shrine of
the yellow sect.” (Lhamotse Gompa) by Joseph F. Rock, 1930
.jpg)
Lhamotse Gompa by Ernest Henry Wilson, 1908
.jpg)
Dorje Drak Gompa by Ernest Henry Wilson, 1908
George Combe’s description quoted
at the start of this post is possibly one of the most well known descriptions
of a religious dancing festival held at Dartsendo. Rinchen Lhamo, who was Louis
King’s wife, calls it the ‘Ya-chiu’ or ‘Summer Prayer’ – Combe, however,
euphemistically calls it ‘The Devil Dance.’ Rinchen gently takes issue with
this description: “I do not know why they
should call it so, for it has nothing to do with devils, but is a service of
worship of Heaven, of intercession with Heaven on behalf of the whole people.
It is our equivalent of your Christmas and Easter festivals.
Everybody goes to the Ya-chiu. It is
the principal fête of the whole year, and lasts
three days in succession, taking four or five hours each day from morning to
afternoon. It is held in the court-yard of the Gompa. Awnings are erected on
each side of the entrance to the church-hall. Under them, on each side of the
entrance, sit the priests clad in full sacerdotal robes, amongst them those who
with trumpet, clarionette, cymbal, drum and bell, take the place with us of
your organs and orchestras. The chief officiating priest, the Living Buddha if
there is one in the Gompa, sits on a raised dais under a canopy. The people
occupy points of vantage, such as the balconies, the flat roofs, and the
courtyard itself, in which latter they form a circle linking up the rows of
priests. This circle is the arena where the dancing takes place.”
.JPG)
Louis and Rinchen’s first daughter,
who was born at Dartsendo (Kangding) in 1921, was given the Tibetan name
“Sheradrema (She(s)-rab (s)Gröl-ma)”
by Runtsen Chimbu, the Living Buddha of Dorje Drak. And according to a note
made by Louis this name means ‘transcendent wisdom’ combined with the Tibetan name
of the Goddess of Mercy – Drolma; Tara in Sanskrit, or Kuan Yin in Chinese.
Rinchen was certainly a devout Buddhist, but whether this means she was a
follower of Nyingma Buddhism I’m not entirely sure. I suspect she was, as there
is a picture of a Tibetan priest, a “Ge-she or Doctor of Divinity”, in
Rinchen’s book We Tibetans (1926), to
whom she was related and whom the monks at Dorje Drak seemed to recognise when
I showed them his photograph. But at present it’s hard to know for sure.
Lhamotse Gompa by Louis Magrath King - Then & Now (c.1920 & 2010)
There are a number of photographs
taken by Louis of some kind of festival at Lhamotse Gompa (some look religious in nature, possibly connected to the 'Ya-Chiu', others appear to be traditional Tibetan opera). I’ve seen a similar
set of photographs, presumably of the same events, taken by another of
Louis’s consular colleagues several years later, taken from quite a reserved
distance whereas Louis’s were for the most part taken very much in the thick
of it all (... I suspect he’d have made quite an affable anthropologist had he been
so inclined!). It was remarkable to wander into Lhamotse and spend some time
matching his views from the 1920s with the present day. I was extremely lucky
as I discovered from one of the Lamas, Lobsang Yeshe, that the building works I
had encountered surrounding the Gompa were being undertaken to enlarge the
monks’ living quarters – had I arrived a month later he said, the old living
quarters (which feature so prominently in Louis’s old photographs) would have all been
gone! – Involuntarily I couldn’t help expressing my sadness at this fact, but the
young Lama smiled at me and said very simply: “Nothing lasts forever, everything changes.” I have to admit I was
struck by his words quite deeply, and, with a little amusement, I thought to
myself that if I had climbed these mountains in search of an epiphany – this
was certainly it. Perhaps the ardent pursuit of history (even if it is one’s
own extended family history) is an ultimately futile exercise? … Why cling to
the past?
The building works at Lhamotse Gompa, 2010
Well, maybe not entirely futile as
my trip was certainly more than a mere fact-finding mission, it was in many
ways also an exercise of self-fulfilment in itself. I found a lot more than
just history during this trip. I think the most abiding thing I took away with
me was in fact the kindness of all the people I met. There’s no denying that my
stack of old black and white photos helped prompt smiles and a sense of
connection. Indeed, I spent quite a bit of time over several visits at both
Dorje Drak and Lhamotse, where I was very much welcomed in by the Lamas who
were fascinated by the old photos I’d brought with me. Some of the Lamas spoke
a little English, and, with many of the others who didn’t, we managed to converse
with the aid of some well-thumbed copies of rather antiquated-looking
Tibetan-English dictionaries, which I understood had originally come by way of
India (and which contained some quaintly old fashioned English colloquialisms).
In turn they taught me a few phrases of Tibetan. One monk, named Sonam Topden,
very kindly invited me into his tiny room and introduced me to that famous
Tibetan staple tsamba which I’d often
read about but never before tasted. I made a marvellous mess making it! We
chatted away for quite some time with the help of his old dictionary and he wrote
the name of Lhamotse Gompa in Tibetan for me. He was also quite an accomplished
draughtsman as I saw several beautiful drawings he’d sketched of a seated
bodhisattva – much like one I’d seen carved on a mani stone in another part of the town.
By the time I left Lhamotse that
evening the gates had been closed and the monks were all loudly reciting texts
in the courtyard. I wondered if they were chanting sutras but was told that
this was something more like ‘philosophy’ disputation (?). The monks all smiled
warmly as I passed by, and, as one young monk drew nearby he grinned and whilst
looking at me quietly slipped the word “Demo” (hello) in amongst his recitations.
As I’ve said, the Gompas have all
been architecturally altered or elaborated and expanded over time. Looking at
them it was hard to tell how old some parts were. The living quarters of
Lhamotse clearly matched Louis’s old photos as did the large flagstones of the paved
courtyard, yet the balcony lattice-work had been replaced and the staircases,
as Lobsang Yeshe observed, were no longer quite so steep. I read in a recently
published travel guide that Dorje Drak had been completely destroyed in 1959
(no reason given as to why) and so later rebuilt. A final happy discovery I
made at Dorje Drak related to two old photos of the Gompa’s exterior, one taken
by Louis King and the other by Joseph Rock (as well as another of Ernest Wilson’s
too, if you have a very keen eye) –
which was that there had once been two large chortens or stupas
standing in the open fields just outside the Gompa. They are now both gone, and
the Gompa is today surrounded by houses with little gardens, but when lining up
a modern view of one of Louis’s old photos I noticed a number of mani stones
piled along a garden wall. It was clearly evident that these had been dug up
with the vegetables! They lined the top of the overgrown wall and yet more were
propped alongside a nearby hut. A trace of the old chortens it seemed remains.
I wondered how many of these old mani stones might have been there and
witnessed Louis taking the very same photograph as me some 90 or so years
before?
Dorje Drak by Louis Magrath King, c.1920
Dorje Drak, 2010
“Thunderbolt Monastery, a stronghold of the Red Lamas near Tatsienlu”
Dorje Drak, by Joseph Rock (published 1930)
To be continued … Part VI
References:
“The
Devil Dance at Tachienlu (Dartsendo)” by G. A. Combe in ‘The Journal of the
West China Border Research Society, Vol. II, 1924-1925’ – a more commonly available version of this article can be found in: "A Tibetan on Tibet" by Paul Sherap & George Combe (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926)
“We Tibetans” by Rinchen Lhamo (London: Seeley Service Co., 1926)
“The
Glories of Minya Konka” by Joseph F. Rock in ‘The National Geographic Magazine,
Vol. LVIII, No. 4, October 1930’
“Mapping the Tibetan World” edited by Gavin Allright & Atsushi Kanamaru (Tokyo:
Kotan Publishing Inc., 2004)
“Edge of Empires” by Tim Chamberlain in 'The British Museum Magazine, No. 66 (Spring/Summer, 2010)'
“Edge of Empires” by Tim Chamberlain in 'The British Museum Magazine, No. 66 (Spring/Summer, 2010)'
