Table Of ContentUNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN
UNIVERSITY LECTURES, No. 13
TIBET:
PAST AND
PRESENT
HUGH E. RICHARDSON
TIBET:
PAST AND
PRESENT
HUGH E. RICHARDSON
UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN
UNIVERSITY LECTURES, No. 13
\
- \
A public lecture given at the University of Saskatchewan
© 1967 by the University of Saskatchewan
PRINTED IN CANADA
MR. HUGH E. RICHARDSON
MR. HUGH E. RICHARDSON, who is an outstanding authority
on Tibetan history, culture and language, was a member
of the Civil Service of India from 1929 to 1950. During
this period he spent nine years in Tibet, and was the last
British Resident in Lhasa (Tibet). He has worked under
the auspices of both the Ford and the Rockefeller Foun
dations. These foundations sent him to India to examine
the state of Tibetan studies and to see whether some of the
best Tibetan scholars among the refugees there could be
of use in Western Universities. As a result, the foundations
sponsored the employment of Tibetans in several European
universities, in Seattle and in Tokyo.
MR. RICHARDSON has published several articles on Tibetan
inscriptions as well as a short general history of Tibet. He
has also collaborated on studies of the Tibetan language.
TIBET: PAST AND PRESENT
I have chosen an ambitious, even forbidding, tide for this talk. The
history of Tibet covers more than 13 centuries, and to do any sort of
justice to that would need what is known on the other side of the border
as a "teach in" or a "sit in." I have selected, therefore, only some of
the features from Tibet's exciting and litde known past which are most
relevant to Tibet's present—and it is the present which matters to the
Tibetans.
I suppose that the general view of Tibet is still summed up in some
romantic phrase like "The Roof of the World" or "Secret Tibet." These
labels are far from definitive but there is something in them, and the
words "Tibet Past" fill me with nostalgic sadness because die Tibet you
have read about in travellers' tales, the Tibet I knew myself—picturesque,
paradoxical, easy-going, friendly, breath-takingly beautiful, vivid with
life and colour, profoundly religious—that Tibet, within the last 15 years,
is being crushed out of existence into a pattern of dull communist
conformity. The Tibet of the present is in danger of becoming little
more than a geographical expression: its strange, compelling personality,
its own unique attributes, have vanished.
Tibet Past was a self-contained civilization confined to some four or
five million people of whom about half lived under the rule of the Dalai
Lama; the rest were distributed through the borderlands of China and
of northern India. The Tibetans are unlike either the Chinese or Indians,
in racial characteristics, language, customs, and mentality. They are of
course an eastern race but die Chinese have for two millenia regarded
them as quite un-Chinese.
During their 1,300-year history, the Tibetans developed a unique
civilization with its own driving force and its own values, widely different
from those of the rest of the world. And this development was uninter
rupted. The Tibetans have lived in the same area for all their recorded
history; their racial composition has not been diluted by foreign invasion;
5
their language, first written in the seventh century, has changed so little
that records of that time can be read and, for the most part, understood
by anyone today. They have an ancient literature, long-established
traditions of government, and above all a long-established deeply
venerated religion which has produced persons of great sanctity, pro
found learning, devotion, and subtlety of thought. Yet, they were not
as isolated from the rest of the world as may be supposed. In the seventh
to ninth centuries Tibet was an aggressive military power with influence
throughout Central Asia, from deep inside China to Kashmir and even
Samarkand, and into northern India.
Tibetans, then, were in touch with the three great civilizations of the
day: Persia, India, and China. They borrowed from these wealthy,
sophisticated neighbours not only skills and luxuries but also humane
ideas and, most important, the religious teachings of the Buddha. Their
own land was protected by formidable natural barriers of mountain,
river, and desert which discouraged the entry of foreigners although not
the infiltration of foreign ideas. Ever since those distant days of conquest,
Tibetans have gone out into the world around them as traders and
pilgrims. Whatever they borrowed from outside they have made their
own and imposed an unmistakable Tibetan stamp on it. Silks and
ornaments borrowed from China have been converted into their own
rugged masculine fashions: a Tibetan need only move to be at once
distinguished from a Chinese. Tibetan tea comes from China but no
Chinese would regard it as the same thing. They borrowed artistic motifs
and methods from Persia, India, Nepal, and China but no one is likely to
mistake a Tibetan work of art for that of any other country. They
borrowed Buddhism from India; no one is likely to be unable to
distinguish its practice in Tibet from that elsewhere. Tibetan architec
ture seems to be their own and it is a revealing expression of the Tibetan
spirit. It rises from massive foundations, slopes back and tapers towards
its summit with windows too narrow at the top, usually accented in
black against a white wall; thus it combines the appearance of a firm
solid base with a soaring upward aspiration. Like other things Tibetan,
it is individual. The long survival of this distinct Tibetan culture would
not have been possible if the country had been subjugated by either of
its great neighbours. For the greatest part of its history Tibet was,
however, independent.
The misconception that Tibet was always part of China rises partly
from the self-imposed silence of Tibetans in the past, partly from a
self-centred western idea that the dicta of Oppenheim must necessarily
have universal application even to the diplomatic methods of medieval
6
Central Asia, partly to a dazed acceptance by western Sinophiles of the
admittedly impressive Chinese myth. For reasons of geography contact
between Tibet and China was inevitable. For although India is the
nearer neighbour to Lhasa, the routes across the Himalayan barrier are
far more formidable than the long upland tracks to the far distant China
border, and the Indian climate is devastating to Tibetans and the animals
on which they depended. India was, and still is, to Tibetans the Holy
Land, the Land of the Buddha. China was always a political neighbour
with whom there were centuries of a love-hate relationship.
The ancient, self-assured, intellectual and aesthetic supremacy of
China—its wealth, elegance, skills, sophistication and pragmatic dip
lomacy—exacted genuine admiration from all its Asian neighbours, but
they were and still are resentful of the arrogant superiority of the Chinese
and fearful of Chinese political ambitions and interference. In fact at no
time until 1950 was a Han Chinese ever in a position to dominate
Tibet. They were not even seen in the country until 1935. It was
Mongols and Manchus who, as Emperors of China, imposed periods of
overlordship; and even then relations were of a special nature based on
a semi-mystical personal relation between rulers which left the Tibetans
free to manage their own affairs under the "Protectorship" of the
Emperor. But the Chinese defined the nature of the relationship. And in
their self-centred State philosophy equal relations were impossible: any
country which had contact with them was regarded as the willing vassal
of the ruler of the whole world. This was only a game to other Asian
countries, and one they knew how to play to their own advantage. It had
no appeal to the matter-of-fact western world; and the Chinese had to
learn this by bitter experience in the nineteenth century. We can smile at
the theatrical pretensions by which they recorded the Ambassadors of
Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, even the Pope himself, as humble
tribute-bearers, but we are strangely reluctant to apply that lesson to the
relations of China with Tibet. The Chinese kept the old pack of cards
up their sleeve for use in Asia; and neither the west nor Tibet paid
much attention to that. Even if the Tibetans had realized the existence
of this double standard, I doubt if they could have done anything
about it; the influence of their ancient customs and religious faith was
too strong.
This is where the western mind has to make an effort of under
standing: it must be accepted that Tibet was sincerely and completely
dominated by religious faith. We have become so used to Marxist dogma
and materialism that it may seem that unquestioning faith by a whole
people was an "opiate" contrived for the convenience of a clerical
7
1RBH
dictatorship. Some may therefore attempt to portray Tibetan life as a
harsh medieval feudalism where serfs with no rights groaned under the
heel of arrogant priests and oppressive nobles, ready fuel for rebellion.
This is how the communists try to justify their actions in Tibet and with
their arguments they have succeeded in winning some soft hearts and
soft heads. But in practice it was not like that. Certainly there were
differences in wealth and social status but there were no extremes like
those in nineteenth century Britain or the U.S.A. or India today. There
was a small population with no cities, permitting closer human relation
ships and understanding between master and servant than exist in most
of die west. Of course there were instances of cruelty and exploitation.
But, in some fifteen years of acquaintance with Tibet, I saw that there
was a deep, almost religious, respect for the rights of each stratum of
society. These rights were based on and protected by ancient custom.
There was practically no army, no police force, no bands of armed
feudal retainers, and yet in 13 centuries of recorded history there was
never a hint of a peasant revolt or even of widespread discontent. The
system was an integrated whole in which even the lowest accepted his
position not merely with dull resignation but with positive cheerfulness.
Arab travellers from the ninth century wrote of the pervasive feeling of
contentment and well-being which they experienced on entering the
country, and later travellers have confirmed the picture of Tibet as a
land of cheerful contentment in spite of a stern climate and a rugged
way of life. The system produced a people who in the upper levels were
self-controlled, intelligent, often deeply learned, capable, unpretentious,
dignified, humane and friendly; and whose lower levels were self-reliant,
had unaffected good manners which did not deny a sturdy self-respect
and, when real friendship had been won, reliable and loyal beyond mere
duty. They were not angels of course: they had their black sheep. But
I have never seen less evidence of envy, hatred, malice and uncharitable-
ness.
Tibet was not dependent on any country. It was virtually self-support
ing. It produced more than enough of its staple food, barley. Exports of
wool, hides, and musk more than covered the cost of imported neces
saries and luxuries; and the standard of nourishment was higher than,
for example, in an Indian village. There was no elaborate administrative
machine and no army to swallow up revenue. Tibetans were bom
traders: to them trade and gain were something of a sport. To make more
than the other man was as good as winning a game. Wealth, however,
was often spent for the greater glory of religion, devoted to some such
grand gesture as gilding a venerated image or sponsoring the Great
8
