本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Mythological Beginnings
Little is known of the beginnings of the Tibetan people. They originated from the nomadic, warlike tribes known as the Qiang. Chinese records of these tribes, which harried the borders of the great Chinese empire, date back as far as the 2nd century BC. However, the people of Tibet were not to emerge as a politically united force to be reckoned with until the 7th century AD.
Like all peoples, the Tibetans have a rich corpus of myths concerning the origin of the world and themselves. In the beginning, according to a Tibetan creation myth, the void was filled with a wind that gathered in force until storm clouds brewed and unleashed a torrential rain, forming in time the primeval ocean. After the cessation of the rains, the wind continued to blow over the ocean, churning it like cream, until lands, like butter, came into existence.
According to myth, the Tibetan people owe their existence to the union of an ogress and a monkey on Gangpo Ri at Tsetang (anticipating Darwin by over a millennium!). Another legend tells of how the first Tibetan king descended from heaven on a sky cord. These early myths are no doubt Bon in origin, but have been appropriated by Buddhism, so that the monkey is seen as a manifestation of Chenresig (Avalokiteshvara), the Bodhisattva of Compassion. The ogress and the monkey had six children, who are seen as the ancestors of the six main tribes of Tibet.


Yarlung Valley Dynasty
As early myths of the origin of the Tibetan people suggest, the Yarlung Valley was the cradle of the civilisation of central Tibet. The early Yarlung kings, although glorified in legend, were probably no more than chieftains whose domains extended not much further than the Yarlung Valley area itself. A reconstruction of Tibet’s first fortress, Yumbulagang, can still be seen in the Yarlung Valley, and it is here that the 28th king of Tibet is said to have received Tibet’s first Buddhist scriptures in the 5th century. According to legend, they fell on the roof of Yumbulagang.
Credible historical records regarding the Yarlung Valley dynasty date only from the time when the fledgling kingdom entered the international arena in the 6th century. By this time the Yarlung kings, through conquest and alliances, had made significant headway in unifying much of central Tibet. Namri Songtsen (c. 570-619), the 32nd Tibetan king, continued this trend and extended Tibetan influence into inner Asia, defeating the Qiang tribes on China’s borders. But the true flowering of Tibet as an important regional power came about with the accession to rule of Namri Songtsen’s son, Songtsen Gampo (r. 630-49).
Under Songtsen Gampo, central Tibet entered a new era. Tibetan expansion continued unabated. The armies of Tibet ranged as far a field as northern India and emerged as a threat to the Tang dynasty in China. Both Nepal and China reacted to the Tibetan incursions by reluctantly agreeing to alliances through marriage. Princess Wencheng, Songtsen Gampo’s Chinese bride, and Princess Bhrikuti, his Nepali bride, became important historical figures for the Tibetans, as it was through their influence that Buddhism first gained royal patronage and it foothold on the Tibetan plateau. The king went as far as passing a law making it illegal not to be a Buddhist.
King Songtsen Gampo’s reign saw the establishment of the Jokhang and Ramoche temples and the construction of a fort on the site of what much later was to become the Potala palace in Lhasa. Contact with the Chinese led to the introduction of the sciences of astronomy and medicine, and a Tibetan script was developed from Indian sources. It was used in the first translations of Buddhist scriptures, in drafting a code of law and in writing the first histories of Tibet.
For two centuries after the reign of Songtsen Gampo, Tibet continued to grow in power and influence. By the time of King Trisong Detsen (r. 755-97), Tibetan influence extended across Turkestan, northern Pakistan, Nepal and India. In China, Tibetan armies conquered Gansu and Sichuan and controlled the great Buddhist cave complex of Dunhuang. In 763, Tibetan armies overran Chang’an (present-day Xi’an), the Chinese capital, forcing the Chinese to conclude a treaty that recognised new borders incorporating most of the Tibetan conquests.
A further Sino-Tibetan treaty was signed in 821 during the reign of King Tritsug Detsen Ralpachen (r. 817-36). It was immortalised in stone on three steles: one in Lhasa, outside the Jokhang; one in the Chinese capital of Chang’an; and one on the border of Tibet and China. Only the Lhasa stele still stands (see Barkhor Square in the Lhasa chapter). Signatories to the treaty swore that “... the whole region to the east… being the country of Great China and the whole region to the west being assuredly that of the country of Great Tibet, from either side of that frontier there shall be no warfare, no hostile invasions, and no seizure of territory... ”. The treaty went on to herald a new era in which “Tibetans shall be happy in Tibet and Chinese shall be happy in China”.


Introduction of Buddhism
By the time Buddhism first arrived in Tibet during the reign of Songtsen Gampo, it had already flourished for some 1100 years and had become the principal faith of all Tibet’s neighbouring countries. Buddhism was initially slow to take hold in Tibet.
Early missionaries, such as Shantarakshita from the Indian Buddhist centre of Nalanda (in modern-day Bihar), faced great hostility from the Bon-dominated court. The influence of Songtsen Gampo’s Chinese and Nepali wives was almost certainly limited to the royal court, and priests of the time were probably Indian and Chinese, not Tibetan.
It was not until King Trisong Detsen’s reign that Buddhism began to make any real progress. Trisong Detsen was responsible for founding Samye Monastery, the first institution to carry out the systematic translation of Buddhist scriptures and the training of Tibetan monks.
Still, the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet was no simple matter of adopting a prescribed body of precepts. By the 9th century many schools of Buddhism had evolved from the original teachings of Sakyamuni (Sakya Thukpa), and Tibetans were in no way presented with a coherent unified body of beliefs.
Contention over the path that Buddhism was to take in Tibet culminated in the Great Debate of Samye, in which King Trisong Detsen is said to have adjudicated in favour of Indian teachers who advocated a gradual approach to enlightenment, founded in scholastic study and moral precepts, There was, however, much opposition to this institutionalised, clerical Buddhism, largely from supporters of the Bon faith. The next Tibetan king, Tritsug Detsen Ralpachen, fell victim to this opposition and was assassinated by his brother, Langdharma, who launched an attack on Buddhism. In 842, Langdharma was himself assassinated - by a Buddhist monk disguised as a Black Hat dancer, during a festival - and the Tibetan state soon collapsed into a number of warring principalities. In the confusion that followed, support for Buddhism dwindled and clerical monastic Buddhism experienced a 150-year hiatus.


Second Diffusion of Buddhism
The collapse of the Tibetan state in 842 put a stop to Tibetan expansion in Asia; Tibet was never again to rise to arms. Overwhelmed initially with local power struggles, Buddhism gradually began to exert its influence again, giving the Tibetan mind a spiritual bent and turning it inward on itself. As the tide of Buddhist faith receded in India, Nepal and China, Tibet slowly emerged as the most devoutly Buddhist nation in the world.
While Tibetan Buddhist tradition holds that the collapse of the Tibetan state corresponds with the systematic persecution of Buddhism, many Western scholars believe that this was probably not the case. It is more likely that Buddhist institutions, such as Samye Monastery, which were brought into being by the state, fell into neglect with the collapse of central power. There is evidence that Buddhism survived in pockets and received the patronage of some noble families in the 150 years that passed before the resurgence of monastic Buddhism.
The so-called second diffusion of Buddhism (also referred to as the dharma) corresponded with two developments. First, Tibetan teachers who had taken refuge in Kham, to the east, returned to central Tibet and established new monasteries in the late 10th century. Second, and not long after, the kingdom of Guge in western Tibet invited the Bengali scholar Atisha (Jowo-je; 982-1054) to Tibet in the mid-11th century. Disciples of Atisha (Jowo-je), chiefly Dromtonpa, were instrumental in establishing the Kadampa order, and monasteries such as Reting in Ü.
This resurgence of Buddhist influence in the 11th century led to many Tibetans travelling to India to study. The new ideas they brought back with them had a revitalising effect on Tibetan thought and produced other new schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Among them was the Kagyupa order, established by Milarepa (1040-1123) who was the disciple of Marpa the translator (1012-93). Meanwhile, in Sakya, the Kon family established a monastery in 1073 that was to emerge as the seat of the Sakyapa order.


Sakyapa Order Ascendancy & Mongol Overlordship
With the collapse of a central Tibetan state, Tibet’s contacts with China dwindled. By the time the Tang dynasty reached the end of its days in 907, China had already recovered almost all the territory it had previously lost to the Tibetans. Throughout the Song dynasty (960-1276) the two nations had virtually no contact with each other and Tibet’s sole foreign contacts were with its southern Buddhist neighbours.
This was all set to change when Genghis Khan launched a series of conquests in 1206 that led to Mongol supremacy in the form of a vast empire that straddled central Asia and China. China was not to fall to the Mongols until 1279, but in the meantime the Mongols made short work of central Asia. Preoccupied with other matters, the Mongols did not give Tibet serious attention until 1239, when they sent a number of raiding parties into the country. Numerous monasteries were razed and the Mongols almost reached Lhasa before turning back.
Tibetan accounts have it that returning Mongol troops related the spiritual eminence of the Tibetan lamas to Godan Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and ruler of the Kokonor region (modern-day Qinghai), and in response Godan summoned Sakya Pandita, the head of Sakya Monastery, to his court. The outcome of this meeting was the beginning of a priest-patron relationship between the deeply religious Tibetans and the militarily adventurous Mongols. Tibetan Buddhism became the state religion of the Mongol empire in east Asia, and the head Sakya lama became its spiritual leader, a position that also entailed temporal authority over Tibet. Many monasteries converted (or were converted) to the Sakya school.
The Sakyapa ascendancy lasted less than 100 years. It was strife-tom from the start. The Sakyapa relationship with the Mongol court and its rule of Tibet aroused the jealousy of other religious orders. Political intrigue, power struggles and violence were the order of the day. By 1350, Changchub Gyaltsen, a monk who had first trained in Sakya and then returned to his home district in the Yarlung Valley as a local official, contrived, through alliances and outright confrontation, to overturn the Sakya hegemony. Just 18 years later, the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China lost its grip on power and the Chinese Ming dynasty was established.


Tibetan Independence
Certain Chinese claims on Tibet have looked to the Mongol Yuan dynasty overlordship of the high plateau, and the priest-patron relationship that existed at the time, as setting a precedent for Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Pro-independence supporters state that this is like India claiming sovereignty over Myanmar (Burma) because both were ruled by the British.
In fact, Tibetan submission was offered to the Mongols before they conquered China and it ended when the Mongols fell from power in that country. When the Mongol empire disintegrated, both China and Tibet regained their independence. Sino-Tibetan relations took on the form of regular exchanges of diplomatic courtesies by two independent governments.
After defeating the Sakyapas, Changchub Gyaltsen undertook to remove all traces of the Mongol administration. In doing this he drew on the tradition of the former Yarlung kings: Officials were required to dress in the manner of the former royal court; a revised version of King Songtsen Gampo’s code of law was enacted; a new taxation system was enforced; and scrolls depicting the glories of the Yarlung dynasty were commissioned (although Changchub Gyaltsen claimed they were “discovered”. The movement was nothing short of a declaration of Tibet’s independence from foreign interference and a search for national identity.
Changchub Gyaltsen and his successors ruled Tibet until 1435 from Nedong, near the Yarlung Valley. Their rule was succeeded by the princes of Rinpung, an area south-west of Lhasa. In 1565, the kings of Tsang became secular rulers of Tibet from Shigatse. Spiritual authority at this time was vested in the Karmapa, head of a Kagyupa suborder at Tsurphu Monastery.


Rise of the Gelugpa & the Dalai Lamas
In 1374, a young man named Tsongkhapa set out from his home near Kokonor in eastern Tibet to central Tibet, where he undertook training with all the major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. By the time he was 25 years old, he had already gained a reputation as a teacher and a writer, although he continued to study under eminent lamas of the day.
Tsongkhapa established a monastery at Ganden near Lhasa, and it was here that he had a vision of Atisha (Jowo-je), the llthcentury Bengali scholar who had been instrumental in the second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet. At Ganden, Tsongkhapa maintained a course of expounding his thinking, steering clear of political intrigue, and espousing doctrinal purity and monastic discipline. Although it seems unlikely that Tsongkhapa intended to found another school of Buddhism, his teachings attracted many disciples, who found his return to the original teachings of Atisha (Jowo-je) an exciting alternative to the politically tainted Sakyapa and Kagyupa orders.
Disciples of Tsongkhapa, determined to propagate their master’s teachings, established monasteries at Drepung (1416) and at Sera (1419). In 1447 yet another monastery (Tashilhunpo) was established at Shigatse, and the movement came to be known as the Gelugpa (Virtuous) order. The founder of Tashilhunpo, Genden Drup, was a nephew of Tsongkhapa, and shortly before his death he announced that he would be reincarnated in Tibet and gave his followers signs that would enable them to find him. His reincarnation, Genden Gyatso, served as the head of Drepung Monastery, which was now the largest in Tibet, and further consolidated the prestige of the new Gelugpa order.
By the time of the third reincarnated head of the Gelugpa, Sonam Gyatso (1543-88), the Mongols began to take an interest in Tibet’s new and increasingly powerful order. In a move that mirrored the 13th-century Sakyapa entrance into the political arena, Sonam Gyatso accepted an invitation to meet with Altyn Khan near Kokonor in 1578. At the meeting, Sonam Gyatso received the title of dalai, meaning “ocean”, and implying “ocean of wisdom”. The title was retrospectively bestowed on his previous two reincarnations, and Sonam Gyatso became the third Dalai Lama.
The Gelugpa-Mongol relationship marked the Gelugpa’s entry into the turbulent waters of worldly affairs. Ties with the Mongols deepened when, at the third Dalai Lama’s death in 1588, his next reincarnation was found in a great-grandson of the Mongolian Altyn Khan. The boy was brought to Lhasa with great ceremony under the escort of armed Mongol troops.
It is no surprise that the Tsang kings and the Karmapa of Tsurphu Monastery saw this Gelugpa-Mongol alliance as a direct threat to their power. Bickering broke out, and in 1611 the Tsang king attacked Drepung and Sera Monasteries. The fourth Dalai Lama fled central Tibet and died at the age of 25 (he was probably poisoned) in 1616.


The Great Fifth Dalai Lama
A successor to the fourth Dalai Lama was soon discovered, and the boy was brought to Lhasa, again under Mongol escort. In the meantime, Mongol intervention in Tibetan affairs continued in the guise of support for the embattled Gelugpa order.
In 1621 a Mongolian invasion was turned back at the last minute through mediation by the Panchen Lama of Tashilhunpo Monastery. This suggests that there were probably elements of the Gelugpa order that preferred a truce with the kings of Tsang to outright conflict.
Whatever the case, it seems that proponents of Gelugpa domination had the upper hand, and in 1640, Mongol forces intervened on their behalf, defeating the Tsang forces. The Tsang king was taken captive and later executed, probably at the instigation of Tashilhunpo monks.
Unlike the Sakya-Mongol domination of Tibet, under which the head Sakya lama was required to reside in the Mongol court, the fifth Dalai Lama was able to carry out his rule from within Tibet. With Mongol backing, all of Tibet was pacified by 1656, and the Dalai Lama’s control ranged from the Mt Kailash area in the west to Kham in the east. The fifth Dalai Lama had become both the spiritual and temporal sovereign of a unified Tibet. The Dalai Lamas are shown in wall paintings holding the Wheel of Law (Wheel of Dharma) as a symbol of their new-found political power.
The fifth Dalai Lama is remembered as having ushered in a great new age for Tibet. He made a tour of the monasteries of Tibet, and although he stripped most Kadampa monasteries - his chief rivals for power - of their riches, he allowed them to re-establish afterwards. A new flurry of monastic construction began, the major achievement being Labrang Monastery (in what is now Gansu province). In Lhasa, work began on a fitting residence for the head of the Tibetan state: the Potala. The Dalai Lama also invited Indian scholars to Tibet, and with Mongol financial support saw to the renovation and expansion of many temples and monasteries.


Manchu Intervention
Reincarnation lineages were probably first adopted as a means of maintaining the illusion of a continuous spiritual authority within the various monastic orders of Tibet. With the death of the fifth Dalai Lama in 1682, however, the weakness of such a system became apparent. The Tibetan government was confronted with the prospect of finding his reincarnation and then waiting some 18 years until the boy came of age. The great personal prestige and authority of the fifth Dalai Lama himself had played no small part in holding together a newly unified Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s regent decided to shroud the Dalai Lama’s death in secrecy, announcing that the fifth lama had entered a long period of meditation (over 10 years!).
In 1695 the secret was leaked and the regent was forced to hastily enthrone the sixth Dalai Lama, a boy of his own choosing. The choice was an unfortunate one. The sixth Dalai Lama soon proved himself to be more interested in wine and women than meditation and study - he would often sneak out of the Potala to visit the brothels at its base. A resident Jesuit monk who met him noted that “no good-looking person of either sex was safe from his unbridled licentiousness”. The enthronement of an inept head of state chosen by a dubious process requiring the child contender to select specific auspicious tokens could not have come at a worse time.
In China, the Ming dynasty had fallen in 1644 and the Manchus from the north had swiftly moved in to fill the power vacuum, establishing the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1912). The events that followed were complicated. Basically, Tibet’s ineffectual head of state, the Qing perception of the threat of Tibetan relations with the Mongols, disunity within the ranks of Tibet’s Mongol allies and Qing ambitions to extend their power into Tibet led to a Qing intervention that was to have lasting consequences for Tibet.
Tibet’s dealings with the new Qing government went awry from the start. Kangxi, the second Qing emperor, took offence when the death of the fifth Dalai Lama was concealed from him. At the same time, an ambitious Mongol prince named Lhabzang Khan came to the conclusion that earlier Mongol leaders had taken too much of a back-seat position in their relations with the Tibetans and appealed to Emperor Kangxi for support. It was granted, and in 1705, Mongol forces descended on Lhasa, killed the Tibetan regent and captured the sixth Dalai Lama with the intention of delivering him to Kangxi in Beijing. The sixth died en route at Litang (he was probably murdered) and Lhabzang Khan installed a new Dalai Lama in Lhasa.
Lhabzang Khan’s machinations backfired. The Mongol removal, possible murder and replacement of the sixth Dalai Lama aroused intense hostility in Tibet. Worse still, it created enemies among other Mongol tribes, who saw the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader.
In 1717 the Dzungar Mongols from central Asia attacked Lhasa, killed Lhabzang Khan and deposed the new Dalai Lama. Not that this solved anything in particular. The seventh Dalai Lama, who had been discovered according to a prophesy by the sixth in Litang (present-day Sichuan), was languishing in Kumbum Monastery under Chinese “protection”.
The resulting confusion in Tibet was the opportunity for which Emperor Kangxi had been waiting. He responded by sending a military expedition to Lhasa in 1720. The Chinese troops drove out the Dzungar Mongols and were received as liberators by the Tibetans. They were unlikely to have been received any other way: With them they brought the seventh Dalai Lama.
Emperor Kangxi wasted no time in declaring Tibet a protectorate of China. Two Chinese representatives, known as Ambans, were installed at Lhasa along with a garrison of Chinese troops. It was the thin end of the wedge, leading to two centuries of Manchu overlordship and serving as a convenient historical precedent for the Communist takeover nearly 250 years later.


Manchu Overlordship
The Manchu overlordship was characterised by repeated military intervention in reaction to crises rather than a steady hand in governing Tibetan political affairs. Such interventions typically resulted in a reorganisation of the Tibetan government. The Manchus appointed a king at one stage, but temporal rule reverted to the seventh Dalai Lama in 1750.
The seventh Dalai Lama ruled successfully until his death in 1757. However, at this point it became clear that another ruler would have to be appointed until the next Dalai Lama reached his majority. The post of regent was created, and it was decided that it should be held by a lama.
It is perhaps a poor reflection on the spiritual attainment of the lamas appointed as regents that few were willing to relinquish the reins once they were in the saddle. In the 120 years between the death of the seventh Dalai Lama and the majority of the 13th, actual power was wielded by the Dalai Lamas for only seven years. Three of them died very young and under suspicious circumstances. Only the eighth Dalai Lama survived to his majority, living a quiet, contemplative life until the age of 45.
The last Chinese military intervention took place in reaction to a Gurkha invasion from Nepal in 1788. As usual there was an administrative reshuffle with short-lived consequences, and from this time Manchu influence in Tibet receded, although the post of Amban continued to be filled until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Perhaps the one significant outcome of the 1788 intervention was a ban on foreign contact, imposed because of fears of British collusion in the Gurkha invasion.


Barbarians at the Doorstep
Early contact between Britain and Tibet commenced with a mission to Shigatse headed by a Scotsman, George Bogle, in 1774. Bogle soon ingratiated himself with the Panchen Lama - to the extent of marrying one of his sisters. With the death of the third Panchen Lama in 1780 and the Gurkha invasion of Tibet in 1788, however, Britain lost all official contact with Tibet.
Meanwhile, Britain watched nervously as the Russian empire swallowed up central Asia, pushing the borders of its empire 1000km further towards India. The reported arrival of Russian “adviser” Agvan Dorjieff in Lhasa exacerbated fears that Russia had military designs on Britain’s “jewel in the crown”.
Dorjieff was a Buryat Buddhist monk from near Lake Baikal who had studied at Drepung Monastery for 15 years before finally becoming one of the spiritual advisers of the 13th Dalai Lama. Dorjieff seems to have convinced both himself and the Dalai Lama that the Russian empire was the home of Shambhala, the mythical kingdom from the north whose king (or tsar) would come to save Tibet from its enemies.
When Dorjieff led embassies from the Dalai Lama to Tsar Nicholas II in 1898, 1900 and 1901, and when British intelligence confirmed that Lhasa had received Russian missions (while similar British advances had been refused), the Raj broke into a cold sweat. There was even wild conjecture that the tsar of Russia was poised to convert to Buddhism.
It was against this background that Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, decided to nip Russian designs in the bud. In late 1903, an expedition led by Colonel Francis Younghusband entered Tibet via Sikkim. After several months waiting for a Tibetan delegation, the British expedition moved on to Lhasa, where it was discovered that the Dalai Lama had fled to Mongolia with Dorjieff. However, an Anglo-Tibetan convention was signed following negotiations with Tri Rinpoche, a lama from Ganden whom the Dalai Lama had appointed as regent in his absence. British forces withdrew after spending just two months in Lhasa. (For more on the story of the British invasion, see the boxed text “Bayonets to Gyantse” in the Tsang chapter.)
The missing link in the Anglo-Tibetan accord was a Manchu signature. In effect the accord implied that Tibet was a sovereign power and therefore had the right to make treaties of its own. The Manchus objected and in 1906 the British signed a second accord with the Manchus, one that recognised China’s suzerainty over Tibet. In 1910, with the Manchu Qing dynasty teetering on the verge of collapse, the Manchus made good on the accord and invaded Tibet, forcing the Dalai Lama once again into flight - this time into the arms of the British in India.


Tibetan Independence Revisited
In 1911 a revolution finally toppled the decadent Qing dynasty in China. The spirit of revolt soon spread to Tibet, which was still under occupation by Manchu troops. In Lhasa, troops mutinied against their officers, and in other parts of the country fighting broke out between Tibetans and Manchu troops. By the end of 1912, the last of the occupying forces were escorted out of Tibet via India and sent back to China. In January 1913 the 13th Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa.
The government of the new Chinese republic, anxious to maintain control of former Qing territories, sent a telegram to the Dalai Lama expressing regret at the actions of the Manchu oppressors and announcing that the Dalai Lama was being formally restored to his former rank. The Dalai Lama replied that he was uninterested in ranks be stowed by the Chinese and that he was hereby assuming temporal and spiritual leadership of his country.
Tibetans have since read this reply as a formal declaration of independence. It certainly was in spirit if not quite in letter. As for the Chinese, they chose to ignore it, reporting that the Dalai Lama had responded with a letter expressing his great love for the motherland. Whatever the case, Tibet was to enjoy 30 years free of interference from China. What is more, Tibet was suddenly presented with an opportunity to create a state that was ready to rise to the challenge of the modern world, and, if needs be, protect itself from the territorial ambitions of China. Sadly, the opportunity foundered on Tibet’s entrenched theocratic institutions, and Tibetan independence was a short-lived affair.


Attempts to Modernise
During the period of his flight to India, the 13th Dalai Lama had become intimate friends with Sir Charles Bell, a Tibetan scholar and political officer in Sikkim. The relationship was to initiate a warming in Anglo-Tibetan affairs and to see the British playing an increasingly important role as mediators in problems between Tibet and China.
In 1920 Bell was dispatched on a mission to Lhasa, where he renewed his friendship with the Dalai Lama. It was agreed that the British would supply the Tibetans with modern arms providing they agreed to use them only for self defence. The Dalai Lama readily agreed and a supply of arms and ammunition was set up. Tibetan military officers were trained in Gyantse and India, and a telegraph line was set up linking Lhasa and Shigatse. Other developments included the construction of a small hydroelectric station near Lhasa and the establishment of an English school at Gyantse. Four Tibetan boys were sent to public school at Rugby in England. At the invitation of the Dalai Lama, British experts conducted geological surveys of parts of Tibet with a view to gauging mining potential.
It is highly likely that the 13th Dalai Lama’s trips away from his country had made him realise that it was imperative that Tibet begin to modernise. At the same time he must also have been aware that the road to modernisation was fraught with difficulties. The biggest problem was the Tibetan social system itself.
Since the rise of the Gelugpa order, Tibet had been ruled as a theocracy. Monks, particularly those in the huge monastic complexes of Drepung and Sera at Lhasa, were accustomed to a high degree of influence in the Tibetan government. And for the monks of Tibet, the principal focus of government was the maintenance of the religious state. Attempts to modernise were seen as inimical to this aim, and before too long they began to meet intense opposition.
Perhaps as much as anything else, the large monastery complexes of central Tibet feared the increasing empowerment of lay elements in Tibetan society. The establishment of an army, for example, was seen as a direct threat to the monasteries rather than as a means of self defence against external threats to the nation. Most monasteries kept their own small armies of fighting monks, and the presence of a well-equipped state army posed the threat of state intervention in monastic disputes. In fact, such fears proved to be well founded when the Dalai Lama brought the newly established army into action to quell a threatened uprising at Drepung Monastery.
Before too long, the 13th Dalai Lama’s innovations fell victim to a conservative backlash. Newly trained Tibetan officers were reassigned to nonmilitary jobs, causing a rapid deterioration of military discipline; a newly established police force was left to its own devices and soon became ineffective; the English school at Gyantse was closed down; and a mail service set up by the British was stopped.
However, Tibet’s brief period of independence was troubled by more than just an inability to modernise. Conflict sprang up between the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama over the autonomy of Tashilhunpo Monastery and its estates. The Panchen Lama, after appealing to the British to mediate, fled to China, where he was kept for 14 years until his death. In 1933 the 13th Dalai Lama died, leaving the running of the country to the regent of Reting. The present (14th) Dalai Lama was discovered at the village of Pari Takster near Xining in Amdo, but was brought to Lhasa only after the local Chinese commander had been paid off with a huge “fee” of 300,000 Chinese dollars. The boy was renamed Tenzin Gyatso and he was installed as the Dalai Lama on 22 February 1940, aged 4 1/2.
In 1947 an attempted coup d’etat, known as the Reting Conspiracy, rocked Lhasa. And in 1949 the Chinese Nationalist government, against all odds, fell to Mao Zedong and his Communist “bandits”.


Liberation
When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered throughout the world and the Dharma will come to the land of red men.
Guru Rinpoche
Unknown to the Tibetans, the Communist takeover of China was to open what is probably the saddest chapter in Tibetan history. The Chinese “liberation” of Tibet was eventually to lead to 1.2 million Tibetan deaths, a full-on assault on the Tibetan traditional way of life, the flight of the Dalai Lama to India and the large-scale destruction of almost every historical structure on the plateau. The chief culprits were Chinese ethnic chauvinism and an epidemic of social madness known as the Cultural Revolution.
On 7 October 1950, just a year after the Communist takeover of China, 30,000 battlehardened Chinese troops attacked central Tibet from six different directions. The Tibetan army, a poorly equipped force of some 4000 men, stood little chance of resisting the Chinese, and any attempt at defence soon collapsed before the onslaught. In Lhasa, the Tibetan government reacted by enthroning the 15-year-old 14th Dalai Lama, an action that brought jubilation and dancing on the streets, but did little to protect Tibet from advancing Chinese troops.
An appeal to the United Nations (UN) was equally ineffective. To the shame of all involved, only EI Salvador sponsored a motion to condemn Chinese aggression, and Britain and India, traditional friends of Tibet, actually managed to convince the UN not to debate the issue for fear of incurring Chinese disapproval.
Presented with this seemingly hopeless situation, the Dalai Lama dispatched a mission to Beijing with orders that it refer all decisions to Lhasa. As it turned out there were no decisions to be made. The Chinese had already drafted an agreement. The Tibetans had two choices: Sign on the dotted line or face further Chinese aggression.
The 17-pointAgreement on Measuresfor the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet promised a one-country two-systems structure much like that offered later to Hong Kong and Macau, but provided little in the way of guarantees that such a promise would be honoured. The Tibetan delegates protested that they were unauthorised to sign such an agreement and anyway lacked the seal of the Dalai Lama. Thoughtfully, the Chinese had already prepared a forged Dalai Lama seal, and the agreement was ratified.
Initially, the Chinese occupation of central Tibet was carried out in an orderly way, but tensions inevitably mounted. The presence of large numbers of Chinese troops in the Lhasa region soon depleted food stores and gave rise to massive inflation. Rumours of massacres and forced political indoctrination in Kham began to filter through to Lhasa. In 1954 the Dalai Lama was invited to Beijing, where, amid cordial discussions with Mao Zedong, he was told that religion was “poison”.
In 1956 the Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet (Pc art) was established. Although headed by the Dalai Lama, a majority of its seats were filled by Chinese puppets. In any case, real power lay in the hands of the committee of the Communist Party in Tibet, which claimed no Tibetan representatives at all.
In the same year, uprisings broke out in eastern Tibet (see History in the Kham (Eastern Tibet) chapter); and in 1957 and 1958, protests and armed revolt spread to central Tibet (with covert CIA assistance). With a heavy heart, the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa in March 1957 from a trip to India to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha. It seemed inevitable that Tibet would explode in revolt and equally inevitable that it would be ruthlessly suppressed by the Chinese.


1959 Uprising
The Tibetan New Year of 1959, like all the New Year celebrations before it, attracted huge crowds to Lhasa, doubling the usual population of the city. In addition to the usual festival activities, the Chinese had added a highlight of their own - a performance by a Chinese dance group at the Lhasa military base. The invitation to the Dalai Lama came in the form of a thinly veiled command. The Dalai Lama, wishing to avoid offence, accepted.
As preparations for the performance drew near, however, the Dalai Lama’s security chief was surprised to hear that the Dalai Lama was expected to attend in secrecy and without his customary contingent of 25 bodyguards. Despite the Dalai Lama’s agreement to these conditions, news of them soon leaked, and in no time simmering frustration at Chinese rule came to the boil among the crowds on the streets. It seemed obvious to the Tibetans that the Chinese were about to kidnap the Dalai Lama. Large numbers of people gathered around the Norbulingka (the summer palace of the Dalai Lama) and swore to protect him with their lives.
The Dalai Lama had no choice but to cancel his appointment at the military base. In the meantime the crowds on the streets were swollen by Tibetan soldiers, who changed out of their People’s Liberation Army (PLA) uniforms and started to hand out weapons. A group of government ministers announced that the 17 -point agreement was null and void, and that Tibet renounced the authority of China.
The Dalai Lama was powerless to intervene, managing only to pen some conciliatory letters to the Chinese as his people prepared for battle on the streets of Lhasa. In a last-ditch effort to prevent bloodshed, the Dalai Lama even offered himself to the Chinese. The reply came in the sound of two mortar shells exploding in the gardens of the Norbulingka. The attack made it obvious that the only option remaining to the Dalai Lama was flight. On 17 March, the Dalai Lama left the Norbulingka disguised as a soldier. Fourteen days later he was in India.


Bloodshed in Lhasa
With both the Chinese and the Tibetans unaware of the Dalai Lama’s departure, tensions continued to mount in Lhasa. Early on the morning of 20 March, Chinese troops began to shell the Norbulingka and the crowds surrounding it, killing hundreds of people. Later, as the corpses were searched, it became obvious that the Dalai Lama had escaped –"abducted by a reactionary clique” went the Chinese reports.
Still the bloodshed continued. Artillery bombed the Potala, Sera Monastery and the medical college on Chagpo Ri. Tibetans armed with petrol bombs were picked off by Chinese snipers, and when a crowd of some 10,000 Tibetans retreated into the sacred precincts of the Jokhang, that too was bombed. It is thought that after three days of violence, 10,000 to 15,000 Tibetans lay dead in the streets of Lhasa.


Socialist Paradise on the Roof of the World
The Chinese quickly consolidated their quelling of the Lhasa uprising by taking control of all the high passes between Tibet and India. Freedom fighters were put out of action by Chinese troops, and able-bodied young men were rounded up, shot, incarcerated or put to work on Chinese work teams. As the Chinese themselves put it, they were liberating Tibet of reactionary forces and ushering in a new socialist society. Naturally they did not bother to ask the Tibetans themselves whether they wanted a socialist paradise.
The Chinese abolished the Tibetan government and set about reordering Tibetan society in accordance with their Marxist principles. The educated and the aristocratic were put to work on menial jobs and subjected to struggle sessions, known as thamzing, which sometimes resulted in death. A ferment of class struggle was whipped up and former feudal exploiters some of whom the poor of Tibet may have harboured genuine resentment for - were subjected to punishments of awful cruelty.
The Chinese also turned their attention to Tibet’s more than 6000 “feudal” monasteries. Tibetans were refused permission to donate food to the monasteries, and monks were compelled to join struggle sessions, discard their robes and marry. Monasteries were stripped of their riches, Buddhist scriptures were burnt and used as toilet paper, and the vast wholesale destruction of Tibet’s monastic heritage began in earnest.
Notable in this litany of errors was the Chinese decision to alter Tibetan farming practices. Instead of barley, the Tibetan staple, Tibetan farmers were instructed to grow wheat and rice. Tibetans protested that these crops were unsuited to Tibet’s high-altitude conditions. They were right, and mass starvation resulted. It is estimated that by late 1961, 70,000 Tibetans had died or were dying of starvation.
By September 1961, even the Chinese groomed Panchen Lama began to have a change of heart. He presented Mao Zedong with a 70,000-character report on the hardships his people were suffering and also requested, among other things, religious freedom and an end to the sacking of Tibetan monasteries. Four years later he was to disappear into a high-security prison for a 10year stay. For the Chinese, he was the last obstacle to be cleared away in the lead up to the establishment of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).
On 1 September 1965 the TAR was formally brought into being with much fanfare and talk of happy Tibetans fighting back tears of gratitude at becoming one with the great motherland. The tears were set to keep on coming. In China, trouble was brewing in the form of a social movement that came to be known as the Cultural Revolution.


The Cultural Revolution
Among the writings of Mao Zedong is a piece entitled “On Going Too Far”. It is a subject on which he was particularly well qualified to write. What started as a power struggle between Mao and Liu Shaoqi in 1965 had become by August 1966 the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a movement that was to shake China to its core, trample all its traditions underfoot, cause countless deaths and give running of the country over to mobs of Red Guards. All of China suffered in Mao’s bold experiment in creating a new socialist paradise, but it was Tibet that suffered most dearly.
The first Red Guards arrived in Lhasa in July 1966. Two months later, the first rally was organised and Chinese-educated Tibetan youths raided the Jokhang, desecrating whatever religious objects they could get their hands on. It was the beginning of the large-scale destruction of virtually every religious monument in Tibet, and was carried out in the spirit of destroying the “Four Olds”: old thinking, old culture, old habits and old customs. The Buddhist “om mani padme hum” (“hail to the jewel in the lotus”) was replaced by the communist mantra “long live Chairman Mao”. The Buddha himself was accused of being a “reactionary”.
For more than three years the Cultural Revolution went about its destructive business of turning the Tibetan world on its head. Tibetan farmers were forced to collectivise into communes and were told what to grow and when to grow it. Merrymaking was declared illegal, women had their jewellery taken from them, and the traditional plaits of Tibetan men were cut off by Red Guards in the street. Anyone who objected was arrested and subjected to thamzing. The Dalai Lama became public enemy number one and Tibetans were forced to denounce him as a parasite and traitor. The list goes on: a harrowing catalogue of crimes against a people whose only fault was to hold aspirations that differed from those of their Chinese masters.
By late 1969, the PLA had the Red Guards under control. Tibet, however, continued to be the site of outbreaks of violence. Tibetan uprisings were brief and subdued brutally. In 1972, restrictions on Tibetans' freedom of worship were lifted with much fanfare but little in the way of results. In 1975, a group of foreign journalists sympathetic to the Chinese cause were invited to Tibet. The reports they filed gave a sad picture of a land whose people had been battered to their knees by Chinese-imposed policies and atrocities that amounted to nothing less than cultural genocide. In the same year the last CIA-funded Tibetan guerrilla bases, in Mustang, northern Nepal, were closed down.


The Post-Mao Years
By the time of Mao’s death in 1976 even the Chinese themselves must have begun to realise that their rule in Tibet had taken a wrong turn. Rebellion was ever in the wings, and maintaining order on the high plateau was a constant drain on Beijing’s coffers. Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, decided to soften the government’s line on Tibet and called for a revival of Tibetan customs. In mid-1977, China announced that it would welcome the return of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees, and shortly afterwards the Panchen Lama was released from more than 10 years of imprisonment.
The Tibetan government-in-exile received cautiously the invitation to return to Tibet, and the Dalai Lama suggested that he be allowed to send a fact-finding mission to Tibet first. To the surprise of all involved, the Chinese agreed. As the Dalai Lama himself remarked in his autobiography, Freedom in Exile, it seemed that the Chinese were of the opinion that the mission would find such happiness in their homeland that “they would see no point in remaining in exile”. In fact, the results of the mission were so damning that the Dalai Lama decided not to publish them.
Nevertheless, two more missions followed. Their conclusions were despairing. The missions catalogued 1.2 million deaths, the destruction of 6254 monasteries and nunneries, the absorption of two-thirds of Tibet into China, 100,000 Tibetans in labour camps and extensive deforestation. In a mere 30 years, the Chinese had turned Tibet into a land of nearly unrecognisable desolation.
In China, Hua Guofeng’s short-lived political ascendancy had been eclipsed by Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power. In 1980, Deng sent Hu Yaobang on a Chinese fact-finding mission that coincided with the visits of those sent by the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Hu’s conclusions, while not as damning as those of the Tibetans, painted a grim picture of life on the roof of the world. A six point plan to improve the living conditions and freedoms of the Tibetans was drawn up, taxes were dropped for two years and limited private enterprise was allowed. The Jokhang was reopened for two days a month in 1978; the Potala opened in 1980. As was the case in the rest of China, the government embarked on a program of extended personal freedoms in concert with authoritarian one-party rule.


The Deng Years
The early 1980s saw the return of limited religious freedoms. Monasteries that had not been reduced to piles of rubble began to reopen and some religious artefacts were returned to Tibet from China.
Importantly, there was also a relaxation of the Chinese proscription on pilgrimage. Pictures of the Dalai Lama began to reappear on the streets of Lhasa. Not that any of this pointed to a significant reversal in Chinese thinking on the question of religion, which remained an opiate of the masses. Those who exercised their religious freedoms did so at considerable risk.
Talks aimed at bringing the Dalai Lama back into the ambit of Chinese influence continued, but with little in the way of results. A three-person team sent to Beijing from Dharamsala, India, in 1982 heard lectures on how Tibet was part of China and was told in no uncertain terms that the Dalai Lama would be given a desk job in Beijing if he were to return. By 1983 talks had broken down and the Chinese had decided that they did not want the Dalai Lama to return after all Tibet became the “front line of the struggle against splittism”, according to the Chinese government.
Perhaps most dismaying for Tibetans, however, was the emergence of a Chinese policy of Han immigration to the high plateau. Sinicisation had already been successfully carried out in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai, and now Tibet was targeted for mass immigration. Attractive salaries and interest-free loans were made available to Chinese willing to emigrate to Tibet, and, in 1984 alone, more than 100,000 Han Chinese took advantage of the incentives to “modernise” the backward province of Tibet.
In 1986 a new influx of foreigners arrived in Tibet. The Chinese began to loosen restrictions on tourism, and the trickle of tour groups and individual travellers soon became a flood. For the first time since the Chinese takeover, visitors from the West were given the opportunity to see first hand the results of Chinese rule in Tibet.
For the Chinese, the foreigners were a mixed blessing. The tourist dollars were appreciated, but foreigners had an annoying habit of sympathising with the Tibetans. They also got to see things that the Chinese would rather they did not see.
When in September 1987 a group of 30 monks from Sera Monastery began circumambulating the Jokhang and crying out “Independence for Tibet” and “Long live his Holiness the Dalai Lama”, their ranks were swollen by bystanders and arrests followed. Four days later, another group of monks repeated their actions, this time brandishing Tibetan flags.
The monks were beaten and arrested. With Western tourists looking on, a crowd of some 2000 to 3000 angry Tibetans gathered. Police vehicles were overturned and Chinese police began firing on the crowd.
The Chinese response was swift. Communications with the outside world were broken and foreigners were evicted from Lhasa. It was still too late, however, to prevent eyewitness accounts of what had happened from reaching newspapers around the world. A crackdown followed in Lhasa, but it failed to prevent further protests in the following months.
The Monlam festival of March 1988 saw shooting in the streets of Lhasa, and in December of the same year a Dutch traveller was shot in the shoulder; 18 Tibetans died and 150 were wounded in the disturbances.


The Dalai Lama & the Search for Settlement
By the mid-1970s, the Dalai Lama had become a prominent international figure, working tirelessly from his government-inexile in Dharamsala, India, to make the world more aware of the plight of his people. His visits to the USA led to official condemnation of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. In 1987 he addressed the US Congress and outlined a five-point peace plan.
The plan called for Tibet to be established as a “zone of peace”; for the policy of Han immigration to Tibet to be abandoned; for a return to basic human rights and democratic freedoms; for the protection of Tibet’s natural heritage and an end to the dumping of nuclear waste on the high plateau; and for joint discussions between the Chinese and the Tibetans on the future of Tibet. The Chinese denounced the plan as an example of “splittism”. They gave the same response when, a year later, the Dalai Lama elaborated on the speech before the European parliament at Strasbourg in France, conceding any demands for full independence and offering the Chinese the right to govern Tibet’s foreign and military affairs.
Protests and crackdowns continued in Tibet through 1989, and despairing elements in the exiled Tibetan community began to talk of the need to take up arms. It was an option that the Dalai Lama had consistently opposed. If there was to be any improvement in the situation in Tibet, he reasoned, it could only be achieved through nonviolent means. The Dalai Lama’s efforts to achieve peace and freedom for his people were rewarded on 4 October 1989, when he was awarded the Nobel peace prize. It must have seemed a small consolation for the civilised world’s notable failure to put any real pressure on China regarding its activities in Tibet.


Tibet Today
Tibetans have won back many religious freedoms, but at great expense. Monks and nuns, who are often the focus of protests and Tibetan aspirations for independence, are regarded suspiciously by the authorities and are often subject to arrest and beatings. Nuns in particular, considering their small numbers, have been very active, and accounted for 55 out of the 126 independence protests in the mid-1990s. Regulations make it impossible for nuns, once arrested and imprisoned, to return to their nunneries.
Religious institutions have recently been the focus of “patriotic education” and “civilising atheism” campaigns, and strict quotas have been imposed on the numbers of monasteries and their resident monks and nuns. Monks in Drepung were recently forced to sign a form denouncing the Dalai Lama on pain of imprisonment. Tibetan guides educated in India have been banned from working. Religious crackdowns were continuing at the time of research.
The Chinese officially deny any policy of Han immigration to Tibet, but for visitors who have made repeated trips to Tibet the increased numbers of Han Chinese are staggering. The extent of immigration poses the grave danger that the Tibetans will become a minority in their own country. The Dalai Lama has described the policy as cultural genocide.
It must be said that great effort has been made to curb the worst excesses of the Chinese administration and that a comparatively softened line on “minorities” has improved conditions for many Tibetans. There are now over 2000 functioning monasteries in Tibet. But the basic problems remain. Protests and government crackdowns have continued into the new millennium. The Chinese government has in no way relented in regarding Tibet as a province of China and is no closer to reaching an agreement of any kind with the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama continues to be vocal in the Tibetan struggle for independence in some form. He has abandoned any hope of nationhood, but continues to strive for a system of Tibetan cultural, religious and linguistic autonomy within the Chinese state. In Western political circles covert sympathy rarely translates into active support, and foreign governments are careful not to receive the Dalai Lama in any way that recognises his political status as the head of an exiled government. The Chinese government continues to protest regularly against the Dalai Lama’s international activities. In February 2000, celebrations were held in Dhararnsala for the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s enthronment.
In recent years the Dalai Lama has quietly admitted to a growing sense of failure in his dealings with the Chinese and there is a small but growing split within the Tibetan community on the best way forward. A series of small bombs were detonated at night in Lhasa in 1996 and 2000 (one next to a courthouse near the Banak Shol hotel), suggesting that at least some Tibetans are moving away from the Dalai Lama’s overtly pacifist stand.
As the Chinese authorities trumpet rapid advances in industrial and agricultural output, there is a growing feeling among observers that China has switched from systematic persecution to a second, far more sophisticated phase in assimilating Tibet into the motherland. Foreign investment, Han immigration and an education system that exclusively uses the (Mandarin) Chinese language at higher levels ensures that only Sinicised Tibetans will be able to actively participate in Tibet’s economic advances. Chinese economic control, coupled with large numbers of Chinese settlers, makes the Tibetan dream of independence ever harder to realise.
On the positive side, the US government appointed a “special Coordinator for Tibet” in 1997, and in 1998 the United Nations human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, visited Tibet. It is even hoped that talks might begin between the Dalai Lama and Chinese premier Jiang Zemin; the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalo Thondub visited Beijing in October 2000. Don’t hold your breath though. In many ways the status quo suits the West: As long as there are no bloody crackdowns in Lhasa, foreign countries can continue to trade with China while quietly criticising its human-rights record well out of China’s earshot. The 50th anniversary of the “liberation” of Tibet in 2001 offered a sobering moment of reflection on half a century of tragedy for the Tibetan people.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net