Butter Lamps & Modern Thangka

Part VI & Souvenir Series #6

Just a stroll along the main shopping streets and the market area is enough to confirm for the curious that Kangding 康定 (དར་རྩེ་མདོ། Dartsendo) is still very much a frontier town. It seems like you can buy almost anything here: Electronic goods, clothes, food, pharmaceuticals, hardware and building supplies. Souvenirs are not hard to come by either. There are several shops dealing in Tibetan antiques and curios, everything from cheap tourist trinkets to genuine works of art. I perused a few of these shops and bought several strings of prayer beads before I came across the shop that really grabbed my interest.

 

The shop was run by two Nyingma nuns and was filled with all sorts of religious paraphernalia. Evidently this was a kind of outfitter’s store for everything a Nyingma monk or nun might need. It seemed to sell everything from robes and headgear to butter lamps and prayer beads. I’d wanted to buy some presents for my family back home, but I was keen to buy them something which seemed relevant to my trip rather than something which might risk becoming confused with family heirlooms already acquired from this particular place almost a hundred years ago. Consequently I found myself, rather appropriately, looking through a set of modern thangka. These small scrolls were a far cry from the wonderful hand painted thangkas you will find in the temples of Central Asian Buddhist countries or in a number of museums around the world (Incidentally, at the end of my trip I saw a particularly fine display of thangkas at the Sichuan University Museum in Chengdu). But, nevertheless, even though these modern printed thangkas aren’t of quite the same exquisite hand-crafted quality of those paintings now extant in many museum collections, they still rather appealed to me in their roughly glued and wonky nylon kind of way as everyday objects of the here and now. The little prints mounted on them are actually very detailed and well made. And no doubt, setting the everyday simplicity of their materials and manufacture aside, they are still very much objects of religious significance and undoubtedly just as precious as objects for genuine devotion and veneration for believers of the faith. As I leafed through them one of the nuns came over and helped me sort out the various types of deities depicted, and all the while she was devoutly mumbling prayers under her breath. These are three which I finally selected for myself:

Now, to be sure, I am no expert on Tibetan Buddhism or Buddhist iconography in general, but I suspect that some of this blog’s regular readers might be – so I’d very much appreciate any comments, corrections, or clarifications which my speculations here might merit! … My best guesses are that these thangka might depict: a) Red Tara, b) Hayagriva, and, c) Green Tara (?). Each scroll measures roughly 35cms / 13¾ inches height, 27cms / 10½ inches max. width, with the image being similar in size to a postcard, roughly 15cms / 6 inches height, 10cms / 4 inches width.

I also bought two brass butter lamps (roughly 7cms / 2¾ inches max. diameter; 10cms / 4 inches height, each very simply turned on a metalworking lathe). Such butter lamps are an important part of day-to-day Tibetan Buddhism as well as its various festivals, and they can be found in all Buddhist temples. The light of these lamps is akin to the spiritually transformative process sought by Buddhists seeking enlightenment, symbolised by the physical illumination of a flame arising out of an otherwise ordinary ‘everyday’ substance such as yak butter. In Louis King’s time there would have been many of these devotional butter lamps burning inside the temples, indeed there is a sublime but very small and difficult to make-out photograph taken by Louis himself inside what I suspect might be Dorje Drak (Jingang Si) which seems to show banks of butter lamps burning beneath a large thangka painting which is partly obscured by a shaft of strong sunlight entering the temple, with what looks like a row of seated statues high in the roof beams overhead. Nowadays these butter lamps are more commonly found inside special cabinets standing outside in the temple courtyards, this is presumably done as a safety precaution against fire – although as a recent fire at Lithang late last year has heartbreakingly demonstrated ordinary electrical accidents can be just as devastating. These photographs are of the butter lamp cabinet found in the courtyard of Lhamotse Gompa (Nanwu Si).

During his first stay at Tachienlu (Kangding / Dartsendo) Louis Magrath King collected a number of religious objects, including some thangka paintings, prayer wheels, a dagger, and a number of vajra, as well as several small statues – such as this wonderful 17^th century Hevajra with his consort. He donated these objects to the British Museum, presumably when he passed through London on his way to or from serving in France as a Captain assigned to the Chinese Labour Corps around 1918-1919. I’ve not been able to trace any archived correspondence at the British Museum relating to Louis’s donation, but amongst Louis’s own papers he did keep hold of an official letter of thanks from the then Director and Principal Librarian, Sir Frederic Kenyon (1863-1952), whom it’s not clear (but perhaps unlikely) that Louis met; as well as a ‘Deposit Receipt’ for the five thangka paintings he donated which was signed by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), who was then Deputy Keeper of Oriental Prints and Drawings and a well-known poet, now best remembered for his poems on the Great War. Given Louis’s own literary ambitions it's interesting to think of these two men meeting in this way. Several of the statues which Louis gave to the British Museum are of such quality that they remain on permanent display in the British Museum’s Asia Gallery (Room 33). 

During his second stay at Tachienlu after the First World War Louis was given a remarkable object by the Kalon Lama, Champa or Jamba Tendar (c.1870-1922), who was a senior state official and Governor-General of the Tibetan province of Kham (note: the link above is to a French Wikipedia entry for Champa Tendar; there is a biographical entry for Champa Tendar in English here on The Tibet Album, but be aware all the photos this entry currently links to are actually of the subsequent Kalon Lama who succeeded Champa Tendar after he passed away in 1922). Louis and Champa Tendar seem to have got along very well with one another, and Louis gives his own account of the Kalon Lama’s life in his book, China in Turmoil (1927). The object which was given as a personal gift from the Kalon Lama to Louis as a mark of their personal friendship was a silver teapot which was said ‘to have been in use by the 11^th Dalai Lama.’ Louis duly reported the gift to his superiors in the Consular Service and the Foreign Office and was subsequently given permission to retain the gift for himself. I don’t know where the teapot is now, but I know for certain that Louis did not donate it to the British Museum even though there are similar teapots in the BM’s collection donated by some of Louis’s contemporaries, notably Sir Charles Bell (1870-1945).

Many such objects acquired during traveller’s journeys have found their way into various museum collections throughout the world. It was Louis’s small but significant collection which started me off on this long and continuing journey of research when I was first asked to write about him for the British Museum Magazine. I’ve always been fascinated by these often rather anecdotal stories connected to objects. We can learn a lot about cultures and technologies in different time periods from such artefacts, but it’s also these side stories which can tell us as much about how such objects have been perceived and used in later eras. Sometimes these stories in themselves can make what might otherwise be relatively ordinary or mundane ‘everyday objects’ uniquely special in their own right. I recall once whilst noseying around in a museum store room I came across one such extraordinary-ordinary object. It was a small prehistoric flint arrowhead, much like any other prehistoric flint arrowhead – there are hundreds upon thousands of these in museum collections everywhere – but this one was accompanied in its drawer by a neat little handwritten note which said that this particular arrowhead had apparently been discovered by woodman whilst he was felling a tree, the arrowhead presumably having embedded itself in the tree trunk which (if true) had continued to grow around it. Such anecdotal side stories are often as (or even more) fragile than the actual objects they accompany - for instance, how might we perceive that little arrowhead without its accompanying note? ... This is one of the key reasons why museums as repositories of such folk knowledge, as much as the actual artefacts themselves, are such important cornerstones upon which our human history sits, in which our history can be preserved and shared across time. Every object, whether it is old or new, whether it is a priceless work of art or an ordinary, common everyday utensil, has its own significance and its own unique story to tell.

To be continued … Part VII

The Tibetan Gompas of Old Tachienlu

Part V

“The morning of the 10^th [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 7^th 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 20^th 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.

  

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

  

Lhamotse Gompa by Ernest Henry Wilson, 1908

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.”

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)'