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Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

"Lamaism" and the Disappearance of TibetAuthor(s): Donald S. Lopez Jr.Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 3-25Published by: Cambridge University Press

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"Lamaism"and the Disappearance

of TibetDONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

Universityof Michigan

Altogether,herefore,Lamaism's an undesirableesignationortheBuddhism fTibet,and s rightlydroppingut of use.

L. A. Waddell1915)

Lamaism as a combinationf theesotericBuddhismfIndia,China,andJapanwithnativecultsof theHimalayas.

NationalGalleryBrochure1991)

At an exhibitionin 1992 at the NationalGalleryin Washington,D.C., "Circa

1492: Art in the Age of Exploration,"one room among the four devotedto

Ming Chinawas called "LamaistArt."In the coffee-table book produced or

theexhibition,withreproductions nddescriptionsof over 1,100 of theworks

displayed, however, not one painting,sculpture,or artifactwas describedas

being of Tibetanorigin. In commentinguponone of the Ming paintings,thewell-known Asian art historian, ShermanE. Lee, wrote, "The individual

[Tangand Song] motifs, however, were woven into a thicket of obsessive

design producedfor a non-Chineseaudience. Here the aesthetic wealth of

Chinawas placed at the service of the complicated heology of Tibet."' This

complicatedtheology is namedby Lee withthe term"Lamaism,"an abstract

nounthatdoes notoccur in the Tibetan anguagebut which has a long historyin the West, a historyinextricable rom the ideology of explorationand dis-

covery that the NationalGallery cautiouslysought to celebrate. Lee echoes

the nineteenth-century ortrayal f Lamaismas somethingmonstrous,a com-posite of unnatural ineage, devoid of the spirit of original Buddhism (asconstructedby EuropeanOrientialists).Lamaism was a deformityuniqueto

Tibet, its parentagedeniedby India(in the voice of BritishIndologists)andbyChina(in the voice of the Qing empire),an aberration o uniquein fact thatit would eventually float free from its Tibetanabode, an abode that would

vanish.In the discourseof the ChristianWest, the term Lamaismoften appears n

syntactical proximityto the term Roman Catholicism. For example, Philip

Zaleskiwroterecentlyof TibetanBuddhism hat"ithasjustly been called the1 ShermanE. Lee, "The LuohanCudapanthaka,"n JayA. Levenson,ed., Circa 1492; Art in

the Age of Exploration (Washington:NationalGalleryof Art and Yale UniversityPress, 1991),459.

0010-4175/96/1169-1708 $7.50 + .10? 1996Society orComparative tudyof SocietyandHistory

3






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4 DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

Roman Catholicismof the East:ancientandcomplex, hierarchical ndmysti-cal, with an elaborate iturgy,a lineage of saints, even a leader addressedas

His Holiness."2Zaleski, a senior editor of Parabola (a publicationof theSociety forthe Studyof Mythand Traditiondevotedto theparticular randofcross-cultural omparison oundin the work of Jung, HeinrichZimmer,and

JosephCampbell),seems unaware, however, that this particular omparisonhas a long history.It is as if a certain amnesia has set in, under which theassociationof TibetanBuddhism,called Lamaism,with Roman Catholicism

seems somehow free, somehow self-evident, to be later construedas some-

how also objective by recourseto projected heoriesof causation, influence,

borrowing,and diffusion.3But this associationof LamaismandCatholicism,

like all associations, is not free.

Europewouldposit no legitimateancestors orLamaism n Asia; it seemedunlike anythingelse, and it is from this state of genealogical absence thatLamaismwas most susceptible o comparison, hat it couldbegin to look like

Catholicism.The use of the termLamaism n Europeandiscourse as a codewordfor Popishritualismand as a substitute or Tibetis, in its own way, notunrelated o the recentdisappearance f Tibet as a nation. Duringthe nine-

teenthcentury,Tibetwas boththreatened nd contestedby Britainand China.

And in the twentiethcentury,the absence of Tibet became manifest in artexhibitioncataloguesandin mapsof Asia, as the nationof Tibet was forcibly

incorporatednto China.Thehistoryof theseeffectsbeginswith theparticularvicissitudesthat led to the formationof the termLamaism hrougha processthat Max Miillermighthave termed,"thedecay of language."4

LA AND LAMA

The Tibetanterm 'lama' (bla ma) is derivedfrom two words, la andma. The

notion of la, generallytranslatedas "soul," "spirit,"or "life," predatesthe

introductionof Buddhism nto Tibet. The la is said to be an individual's ifeforce, the essentialsupportandvitalityof thephysicalandmentalconstitutionof the person;the la is mobile, can leave the body andwander,or be carried

off by gods anddemons, to the detrimentof the personit animates,who will

become either ill or mentallyunbalancedas a result. There are, thus, rites

designedto call the la backinto thebody.5Even whenit is properly estored oits place in the body, the la may simultaneouslyreside in certainexternal

2 PhilipZaleski, reviewof TheTibetanBookof LivingandDying by Sogyal Rimpoche,NewYorkTimes Book Review(27 December1992), 21.

3

See JonathanZ. Smith, ImaginingReligion:FromBabylonto Jonestown(Chicago:Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1982), 22.

4 For a recentreadingof Miiller,see TomokoMasuzawa,In Searchof Dreamtime:TheQuest

for the Origin of Religion (Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1993), 57-75.5 For a discussion of this rite, see FerdinandLessing, "Callingthe Soul: A LamaistRitual,

Semiticand OrientalStudies, 11 (1951), 263-84 and, morerecently,RobertR. Desjarlais,Bodyand Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas (Philadelphia;Universityof PennsylvaniaPress, 1992), 198-222.






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"LAMAISM" AND TIBET'S DISAPPEARANCE 5

abodes, such as a lake, tree, mountain,or animal.The personin whom the laresides stands n what Frazerwould call a sympathetic elationshipwiththese

phenomena:If the la mountain is dug into, the person will fall sick. TheTibetanepic hero, Gesar, in his attempt o conquera certaindemoness, cutsdown her la tree andemptiesher la lake butfails because he does not kill herla sheep. The identity of these external la are thus often kept secret, and

portableabodes of the la, usually a precious object of some kind (often a

turquoise), are kept in special receptacles and hidden by the person whoshares the la.6 Perhaps n relationto the conceptof this soul, the termla alsohas the common meaningof 'above' or 'high.'

When Buddhism was introduced in the seventh andeighth centuries,Tibetan monks and visiting Indianpanditasundertook he task of translating

Buddhisttexts from Sanskrit nto Tibetan,inventinghundredsof neologismsin theprocess. Whentheseexegetes decidedupona Tibetanequivalent ortheSanskrit term for teacher, guru, the translatorsdepartedfrom their storied

penchantfor approximatinghe meaningof the Sanskritandopted insteadtocombinethe termla with that of ma to formthe wordlama. The latterhad atleast threemeanings:a negativeparticle,a substantivendicator,andthe wordfor mother.SubsequentBuddhistetymologies, drawingon the meaningof la

as "high"ratherthan its pre-Buddhistusage as "soul"were then construed,which explained la ma as meaning either "highest"(literally,"above-not,"that is, "none above") or as "exalted mother."7One Western scholar has

argued hatguruwas translated s la ma to mean"mothero the soul"in orderto "facilitate assimilation of the 'role' of the guru in Buddhism into the

existing shamanic beliefs of the Tibetanpeople."8WhetherTibetan beliefs

6 For a generaldiscussion of bla, see R6ne de Nebesky-Wojkowitz,Oracles and DemonsofTibet (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1956), 481-3; R. A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization(Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, 1972), 226-9; Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet

(Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1980), 190-3; Erik Haarh, The Yar-luhDynasty(K0benhavn:G. E. C. Gad's Forlag, 1969), 315 and 378; and, especially, Samten G. Karmay,"L'ameet la turquoise:un rituelTib6tain,"L'Ethnographie,83 (1987), 97-130. On the relatednotion of the sku Ihaduringthe dynasticperiod, see ArianeMacdonald,"Une lecture des P. T.1286, 1287, 1038, 1047, et 1290. Essaisur la formation t l'emploides mythes politiquesdans lareligion royale de Sron-bcansgam-po,"in Etudes TibetainesDedies a la Memoirede MarcelleLalou (Paris:AdrienMaisonneuve, 1971), 297-309.

7 The early standardization f bla ma as the rendering or guruis attestedby the presenceofthe term in the eighth-centurycompendiumof Buddhistterminology,the Mahdvyutpatti.Theterm bla itself was not used in the Buddhistvocabulariesas a translation or any notion of a soulbut to render he Sanskrit ermspati (lord)and urdhvamelevated).For a citation of usages fromthe Mahdvyutpatti, ee Lokesh Chandra,Tibetan-SanskritDictionary, vol. 2 (Kyoto: Rinsen

Book Company,1976), 1680.8 TurrellV. Wylie, "Etymologyof Tibetan:Bla ma,"CentralAsiaticJournal,21 (1977), 148.Wylie seems to derive this etymology from an unnamed nformant or SaratChandraDas in thecompilationof his dictionary.See SaratChandraDas, A Tibetan-EnglishDictionarywithSanskritSynonyms Calcutta:BengalSecretariatBookDepot, 1902), s.v. bla ma. Thatsuch a readingdoesnot appear n traditional tymologiesof the termcould, alternately, uggestthatthe term bla wasintentionallynot renderedas "soul"by the early Buddhisttranslators o as to discouragetheTibetan belief in such a soul, somethingthatBuddhism s knownto reject.The modernTibetan






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were "shamanic" r not, the morelikely possibility is that lama meant "oneendowedwith the soul."9 What is noteworthy,however,is that this meaningis lost in theBuddhist tymologies,that n theprocessof introducingBuddhisminto Tibet, the "original,"primitivemeaningof la as life or soul disappears.

LAMA JIAO

As Tibetan Buddhistteachersmade theirway to the centersof power of the

MongolsandtheChinese,theyseem to havebeenreferred o not as lamas but

in terms derivedfrom the languagesof their hosts. For example,Marco Polo

refers to the Tibetans at the court of Kublai Khan as Bacsi (bakshi, the

Mongolianword forteacher),"The sorcererswho do this [prevent torms]areTEBET and KESIMUR[Kashmir],which are the names of two nations of

idolaters. . . . There is another marvel performed by those BACSI of whom I

have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments. . . . These monks

dress more decently thanthe rest of the people, and have the head and the

beardshaven."10At theChinesecourtof theearlyMing, Tibetanmonks were

simply called seng, as were Chinese monks, and the religion of Tibet was

describedsimply as Buddhism(fojiao). 1

In 1775 during hereignof theManchuQianlongemperor,we findperhaps

the first official usage of the Chinese termlamajiao, fromwhich Lamaismis derived. Jiao is the standardChinese term for teaching, being employedin such termsas dao jiao (the teachingof the dao, "Daoism"),rujiao (the

scholar, Samten Karmay,has recently arguedthat Buddhism was never able to suppressthe

concept of a soul in Tibet and that over the course of centuries, the concept was graduallyreintegratednto popularrites, despite being at odds with the Buddhistdoctrineof no-self (seeKarmay,"L ame et la turquoise,"99). This would suggestthatat some point in Tibetanhistory,thephilosophicaldoctrineof no-selfexercised a marked nfluenceoverpopular eligiouspractice,somethingthat has yet to be demonstratedn any Buddhistculture.

It may be significantthatthe other standardTibetan-English dictionary, hat of Jaschke,also

cites an "oralexplanation"n offering "strength,power,vitality"as one of the definitionsof bla.See H. Jaschke,A Tibetan-EnglishDictionary(Delhi:MotilalBanarsidass,1992);reprintof 1881

London edition, s.v. bla). The recentlypublishedthree-volumeTibetan, Tibetan and Chinese

dictionarydefines bla as "thatwhich is above"(steng)or "thatwhich is fitting" (rung)but alsomentionsthat bla is "thesupportof life explainedin astrology" dkarrtsis las bshadpa'i srog

rten). See Bod rgya tshig mdzodchen mo (Mi rigs dbe skrunkhang, 1984), vol. 2, s.v. bla.9 Inthisreading,mawould be takenas a substantivemarkeras, forexample, in tshadma and

srung ma).10 The Book of Ser Marco Polo the VenetianConcerningthe Kingdomsand Marvels of the

East, 2 vols., SirHenryYule, trans.and ed. 3rded., revisedby HenriCordier New York:AMS,1986;rpt., Londonedition, 1926, vol. 1, 301-3. For a discussionof the termbakshi, see Yule's

note10, page 314, and, especially,

BertholdLaufer's"Loan-Wordsn Tibetan" ncludedin his

Sino-TibetanStudies, 2 vols., collected by HarmutWalravens New Delhi: AdityaPrakashan,1987), vol. 2, 565-7, in which Laufer dentifiesbakshi as being of Uighuroriginand dismissesthe connection, reportedby Yule, betweenbakshiand the Sanskritbhiksu(monk).

11 See Elliot Sperling, "The 5th Karma-paand Some Aspects of the RelationshipBetween

Tibet andtheEarly Ming,"in MichaelAris andAungSan SuuKyi, TibetanStudies nHonourofHugh Richardson(Warminster,England.:Aris and Phillips, Ltd, 1980), 283.






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teaching of the literati, "Confucianism"),and fo jiao (the teaching of the

Buddha,"Buddhism").By the reignof Qianlong, lama had come to be used

as an adjective to describe Tibetan religion in contexts which in the pastwould havesimplyused the termBuddhist. 2In 1792QianlongcomposedhisLamaShou (Pronouncements n Lamas),preserved n a tetraglot nscription(in Chinese, Manchu,Mongol, andTibetan)at theYonghegong todayknownto tourists as the "LamaTemple")in Beijing. Here Qianlong defends his

patronageof a Tibetansect thattheChinesecalledthe "YellowHats" thedGe

lugs pa) against his Chinese critics by claiming that his supporthas been

merely expedient: "By patronizingthe Yellow Church we maintainpeaceamongthe Mongols. This being an importantask we cannot butprotectthis

[religion]. [Indoing so] we do not show anybias, nor do we wish to adulatethe Tibetanpriestsas [was done duringthe] Yuandynasty."13Here aresomeof Qianlong'scomments on the term lama:

[Buddhism's]oreignpriests re raditionallynownas Lamas.ThewordLamadoesnotoccurin Chinesebooks. ... I havecarefullyponderedover its meaningandfoundthat a in Tibetmeans"superior"ndmameans"none." o la-mameans"withoutsuperior,"ustas in Chinesea priest s calleda "superior"shang-jen). amaalsostands or YellowReligion.14

Qianlonghadclearlylearnedthe standardTibetanBuddhistgloss of the termas "highest" as European cholarswouldnot). He seems determined o placethe term lama at some distance from his reign, to declare to the subjectswho

speak the four languagesof his realm that lamas are foreignersand that his

patronageof them has been motivatedby politicalexpediency.We see also in

Qianlong'sdiscussion an example of the implicationof the term lama and,later, Lamaism in Manchuimperialprojectsdirected towardTibet. Further

implicationswould follow fromother mperialprojectsoriginating n Europe.European deologues, however,would be far less explicit aboutthe political

connotationsof their use of the term thanthe Manchuemperorhad been.12 In the Recordsof theQing (Qingshilu)of June24, 1775, one finds a commandgiven by the

Qianlongemperor o generalsduring he JinchuanWarwhereinappears hephrase,"Jinchuan nd

Chosijiabuhavehitherto ully supported ndspreadyourLamaism[lama iao]. See Gu Zucheng,et al., Qing shilu Zangzu shiliao (Lhasa: 1982), 2586. I am indebted to Elliot Sperling for

discovering and translatingthis reference and for providing me with the other informationcontained in this paragraph.

13 See FerdinandDiederichLessing, Yung-ho-kung: nIconographyof theLamistCathedralin Peking with Notes on Lamaist Mythologyand Cult, vol. 1., Reports from the Scientific

Expeditionto the North-Western rovinces of China Underthe Leadershipof Dr. Sven Hedin,Publication 18 (Stockholm, 1942), 59. This

readings drawnfrom

Lessing'scomments andhis

translation,based on the Chinese and the Manchu. The parentheticalremarks are added byLessing.

14 Ibid., 58. In the LamaShou,"lama"s renderedn phoneticallyequivalentChinesecharac-ters, ratherthan translated,a conventionthat had been in use since the Ming dynasty. I haveadaptedLessing'stranslation ere. His lastsentencereads,without ustification,"Lama(ism)alsostands for Yellow Religion."






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LAMAISM AND CATHOLICS

By the end of the eighteenth century, we find mention in a European accountof "les trois sectes idolatriques des Tao-see, des Bonzes, des Lamas."15 In

1825 we find Abel Remusat, in his "Discours sur l'origine de la hierarchie

lamaique," using the term "des lamistes"16;and in the account of his travels in

western Ladakh from 1819-25, William Moorcroft refers to "those placeswhere Lamaism still predominates."17 Hegel discusses Lamaism in his Lec-

tures on the Philosophy of Religion of 1824 and 1827 and in his Lectures on

the Philosophy of History delivered between 1822 and 1831. There he finds

the notion of a living human being worshipped as God, as he describes the

Dalai Lama, as something paradoxical and revolting: "The Abstract Under-

standing generally objects to this idea of a Godman; alleging as a defect that

15 See JosephMarieAmiot, MemoiresconcernantL'Histoire,Les Sciences, Les Moeurs,Les

Usages, &c. des Chinois: Par les Missionaires de Pekin, Tome 2 (Paris:1777), 395.16 See Jean PierreAbel R6musat,MelangesAsiatiquesou Choix deMorceauxCritiqueset de

Memoires,Tome 1 (Paris:LibrairieOrientalede Dondey-DuprePereet Fils, 1825), 134, note 1.He says in this article(p. 139) thatthe wordlama means"priest" pretre) n Tibetan. Sven Hedin

interpolates he termLamaism into Abel R6musat's ext. He translates,"Thefirst missionarieswho came into contact with Lamaism . . ., whereas the Abel R6musat'sFrench text (p. 131)reads, "Les premiersmissionariesqui en ont eu connaissance,"with the referentbeing

simply"cettereligion."See Sven Hedin, Trans-Himalaya:Discoveries andAdventures n Tibet, vol. 3(London:MacmillanandCompany,1913), 325. Webster'sNinthNewCollegiateDictionarygivesthe date 1817 (withoutreference)to the firstappearance f lamaism in English. L. A. Waddell,then, is mistakenwhen he writesin 1915 thatthe termappears o have beenused first in Koppen's1859 LamischeHierarchie und Kirche. Inthe samearticle,Waddell, n sharpcontrast o his 1895TheBuddhismof Tibet,or Lamaism discussedbelow), says that the term Lamaism s "inmanyways misleading,inappropriate, ndundesirable" nd "isrightlydroppingout of use." See L. A.Waddell, "Lamaism,"Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, JamesHastings, ed. (New York:Charles Scribner'sSons, 1915), vol. 7:784.

17 William MoorcroftandGeorgeTrebeck,Travels n theHimalayanProvincesof Hindustanand the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir;in Peshawar,Kabul, Kunduz,and Bokhara, vol. 1

(London:JohnMurray,1841), 346.Moorcroftdied of fever in Turkestann 1825, his paperseventuallybecomingthe propertyoftheAsiaticSocietyof Calcutta.Theywereonly published n 1841 afterbeingcompiledand editedby the OxfordSanskritist,HoraceHaymanWilson. There are indications hat the termLamaismmaynot have been usedby Moorcroftbut, rather,was introduced y Wilson. Of his task, Wilsonwrites, "I have, in fact, been obliged to re-writealmost the whole, and must thereforebe heldresponsible or thegreaterpartof its composition" Travels, iii). Furthermore,Moorcroftreportsthat all of his informationon the religion of Ladakhwas received from Alexander Csoma deKoros(Travels,339) In his extensive writingson Tibetan iteratureandreligion, Csoma speaksonly of Buddhismand does not use the termLamaism.

Perhapsthe first European o attemptto consider the etymology of the word lama was theJesuit,EmanoelFreyre,who accompanied ppolitoDesiderion his arduous ripto Lhasa,arriving

on March18, 1716, only to returnalone to India afteronly one monthbecause he could not bearthe climate. In his reporton his journey,he wrote that"having pokenhere and there of 'lamas',beforeproceeding,I will say somethingabout the etymology of theirname, theirclothing, thetemples, theirrecitations,of prayers,and their Superiors,"Lamo" n Botian [Tibetan]means"way";whence comes "Lama"-"he who shows the way." Freyrehere mistakenlyattempts oderive lama fromthe Tibetan am, meaningpath.See Filippode Filippi,ed., AnAccountof Tibet:The Travelsof IppolitoDesideri of Pistoia, S. J., 1712-1727, rev. ed. (London:GeorgeRout-ledge and Sons, 1937), 356.






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the form here assignedto the Spiritis an immediate[unrefined,unreflected]one-that in fact it is none otherthan Man in the concrete. Here thecharacter

of a whole people is boundup with the theologicalview just indicated."18Butto trace the movementsof Westerndiscourseon Lamaism,we mustgo

back beforethe late Qingand theearlynineteenth entury, o theperiodof thefirst Europeanvisitors to the Chinese courtduringthe Yuan, where we ob-serve the first recitationsof the similaritiesbetween TibetanBuddhism andRoman Catholicism. The tropeis employeddifferentlyby two distinctgroupsof Europeanexegetes of the Orient-the Catholic andthe Protestant.One ofthe earliest Catholic observers was the DominicanJourdainCatalanide Sev-

erac, who visited theempire

of the "GrandTartar" nd wrote:

In that mpire,hereare emples f idolsandmonasteriesf menandwomen,as thereareathome,withchoirs nd hesayingofprayers,xactlyikeus,thegreatpontiffs fthe idolswearingedrobesandredhats, ikeourcardinals. uch uxury, uchpomp,suchdance,suchsolemn eremonys incrediblen thesacrificeso idols.19

Once such a similaritywas observed, it had also to be accountedfor; andCatholic missionariesto China and Tibetturned o bothhistoryandtheologyto explain why Tibetan amas looked like priestsof the Holy MotherChurch.The Vincentian missionaries, Evariste-RegisHuc and Joseph Gabet, who

traveled n China and Tibet in 1844 to 1846, note the affinitiesbetweenwhatthey call "Lamanesqueworship"and Catholicismand recount a story about

Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the deified"founder" f thedGelugs sect, the sectwhichhadheldpoliticalcontrolover Tibet fortwo centuriesby thetime of theVincentians'visit. Theytell of anencounterof theyoungTsongkhapa with alama "from the most remote regions of the West," who took him as his

disciple and "initiatedhis pupil into all the doctrinesof the West" n the few

years before his peaceful death. What was remarkableabout this lama, be-sides his unfathomableearning,were his gleamingeyes andhis large nose.

Huc and Gabet predictably speculate that this strangerwith the prominent18 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History,J. Sibree, trans. (New York:Dover Publica-

tions, 1956), 170.19 Translationof the passage cited in Henri de Lubac, La Recontre du Bouddhismeet de

L'Occident(Paris: Aubier, 1952), 45. For an even earlier observation of similarity, see thecomments of the FlemishFranciscanriar,William of Rubruck,who visitedthe courtof Mongkebetween 1253-55:

All theirpriestsshave the head and beardcompletely,dressin saffroncolour,andobservechastityfrom the time they shave theirheads, living together n communitiesof a hundredandeven twohundred.. . . Wherever hey go, theyalso haveconstantly n theirhands a stringof a hundredortwo hundredbeads, like the rosaries we carry,andkeep repeatingOn manibattam,which mean"God, you know."

See Willem van Ruysbroek,The Mission of Friar Williamof Rubruck,Peter Jackson, trans.(London:The HakluytSociety, 1990), 153-4. In addition o beingthe firstWesterner o note theexistence of the mantra,ommanipadmehum, Williammay also have been the first to encounteran incarnate ama, "a boy was brought rom Cataia, who to judge by his physical size was notthreeyears old, yet was fully capableof rational hought:he said of himself that he was in histhirdincarnation,and he knew how to read and write"(p. 232).






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IO DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

nose was a Catholicmissionary."Itmaybe further upposed hat a prematuredeath did not permitthe Catholicmissionary o completethe religiouseduca-

tion of his disciple, who himself, when afterwardshe became an apostle,merelyappliedhimself, whether romhaving ncompleteknowledgeof Chris-tiandoctrine,or fromhaving apostatized romit, to the introduction f a newBuddhist iturgy."20 he implicationandregret,of course, is that f the Catho-lic missionaryhadonly lived longer, Tsong khapa would have received fullinstruction n the dogmasof the Churchand so could have convertedTibetto

Christianity.We see here perhapsthe most common strategyfor accountingfor sim-

ilarity,thatof

using "genealogy"also known as "diffusionism"n

anthropol-ogy) to explain the coincidence of a phenomenonor traitby an appeal to

historical nfluence. The recourseto genealogynot only attempts o establisha direct historical relation but also a hierarchybased on the chronological

proximityof the influencing agentto the originaryancestor.Hence, Huc and

Gabet could lay claim to all that they found "authentic" n Tsong kha pa'sBuddhismby ascribing ts originto one of theirown while dismissingTibetan

Buddhism as deficient because Tsong kha pa's instructionin the Gospelremained ncomplete,theirown missionlegitimated herebyas the fulfillment

of the mysteriousWesterner'swork. TheEuropeanshus claimed a positionofpower, indeed the powerof origin, over Tsongkhapa, whomthey perceivedas the most important igure in the historyof Tibetan Buddhism.21

20 Evariste-RegisHuc and JosephGabet, Travelsin Tartary,Thibet,and China 1844-1846,WilliamHazlitt,trans.,2 vols. boundas one (New York:DoverPublications,1987). Max Mullernotes that "the late Abb6 Huc pointed out the similaritiesbetween the Buddhist and RomanCatholicceremonialswith such naivete, that, to his surpirise,he found his delightfulTravels inThibetplacedon the 'Index." See Muiller'sChips roma GermanWorkshop, ol. I of Essays onthe Science of Religion(Chico, CA: ScholarsPress, 1985;rpt., CharlesScribnerandCompany,1869), 187.

21

It is perhapsnoteworthyhathe of the

prominentproboscis appearsn none of the standard

Tibetanbiographiesof Tsong khapa. In addition, Desideri, the first Catholicmissionary o livefor an extendedperiodof time in Tibet, duly noted the resemblances n the ceremonies, institu-

tions, ecclesiasticalhierarchy,maxims,moralprinciples,andhagiographies ut makes no attemptto account for it. He commented hat, in his readingof Tibetanhistory,he had foundno "hint hatourHoly Faithhas at any time been known, or thatany Apostleor evangelical preacherhas ever

lived here" see de Filippi,An Accountof Tibet,302). See also C. J. Wessel's informativenote to

this passage.In Huc andGabet'sexplanationof the presencein Tibetof practicesdeservingtheirapproba-

tion, anotherelement is also at play here:The persistentEuropeanassumption hatthose whosewhereabouts annotbe accounted or, whether t be Jesus himselfduring he "lostyears,"Prester

John, or SherlockHolmes, must have been in Tibet, andthat otherwiseinexplicable "parallels"

maybe explainedby theirpresence.Fora documentpurportedly iscovered n Ladakhpurportingto describe Jesus' travels in Tibet, see L. Huxley, The Life and Lettersof Sir JosephDalton

Hooker, 2 vols. (London:JohnMurray,1918), 2:334-5. See also Nicolas Notovitch, The Un-knownLife of Jesus Christ(Chicago:RandMcNally, 1894) for the "translation"f a manuscriptdiscoveredby the author n Ladakh,"The Life of SaintIssa,"which describesJesus' activitiesin

India and Nepal.In "The Adventureof the EmptyHouse," the great detective accountsfor his whereabouts

duringthe yearsfollowing his apparentdeathafterplungingwithProfessorMoriartyover Reich-






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"LAMAISM" AND TIBET'S DISAPPEARANCE II

The first European encounters with Tibetan Buddhism occurred long before

the rise of the science of philology and notions of an ancestral heritage of the

family of "mankind" in which parallel developments could manifest in differ-ent parts of the globe. Thus, if the apparent similarities could not be explained

by appealing to the work of one of their own, it must be the work of an Other,a cause not for the delight expressed by Huc and Gabet, but for a deep anxiety,reflected in the words of the Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, who in 1670 de-

scribed the adulation afforded the Dalai Lama:

Here areplainlyevident the wiles of the Devil. To make mock of holy thingsand robGod of the honour due unto Him the Evil One has by a trick of his usual cunningcaused these barbarians o imitateus, and induced them to pay to a humanbeing the

reverencedue to God and Jesus Christalone. He profanes he most holy mysteriesoftheCatholicChurchby forcingthesepoorwretchedcreatures o celebrate hesemyste-ries at the place where they keep hideous idols. Because he has observed thatChris-tians call the Pope Fatherof Fathers,he makes these idolatrousbarbarians all thatfalse god GrandLama or high priest.22

This is an extreme form, stated with significant hyperbole, of the theory of

demonic plagiarism articulated by Justin Martyr and other church fathers

during the second and third centuries, in which any similarity between ritual

elements of the Church that are observed in rival cults is attributed to the work

of the devil. In many cases, such elements had been derived from these verysame rival cults, such that the doctrine of demonic plagiarism served as a

enbachFalls, tellingWatson,"Itravelled ortwo yearsin Tibet, therefore,and amusedmyself byvisiting Lhassa, andspendingsome days with the head lama. Youmay have read of the remark-ableexplorationsof a NorwegiannamedSigerson,but I am sure that t never occurred o you that

you were receivingnews of your friend."The presence of an internationalbrotherhoodof enlightenedmasters in Tibet, congregated

from around he world, is an important lement of Theosophicaldoctrine:

Fromtime immemorial here had been a certainsecretregionin Tibet, which to this day is quiteunknown to and unapproachable y any but initiatedpersons, and inaccessible to the ordinarypeople of the countryas to anyothers,in whichadeptshavealways congregated.Butthecountrygenerallywas not in the Buddha's ime, as it has sincebecome, the chosenhabitationof the greatbrotherhood.Much more thantheyare at presentwere the Mahatmasn former imes distributedabout the world. The progressof civilization, engendering he magnetismthey find so trying,had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing-the fourteenthcentury-alreadygiven riseto a generalmovement owardsTibet on thepartof thepreviouslydissociatedoccultist.Far morewidely thanwas held to be consistentwith the safetyof mankindwas occultknowledgeand power then found to be disseminated.To the task of puttingit underthe control of a rigidsystem of rule and law did Tsong-ka-paaddress himself.

See AlfredPercySinnett,Esoteric Buddhism Boston:Houghton,Mifflin, andCompany,1895),227-8. Sinnett'sfantasy,a probable nspiration or James Hilton's Lost Horizon, is yet anothereffect of Tibet nevercoming underEuropeancolonial domination.

22 Cited by Sven Hedin in Trans-Himalaya,318. For numerouscases of the comparisonofelements of Tibetan Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, see pages 310-29. For Kircher's fullaccount of Tibetanreligion, see the appendixto JanNieuhof, An Embassy rom the East IndiaCompanyof the United Provinces to the Grand TartarCham, Emperorof China, JohnOgilby,trans., reprinted. (Menston:ScholarsPress, 1972), 40-43.






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means of appropriatinghe purityof the origin, consigningthe other to the

corruptstate of the derivative.23

Whymust thisappearance e demonic?Theanswerderives in part romtheclaimto the historicalandontologicalparticularity f the ChristianChurch.Itis the task of the missionary o transmit he wordof thatparticularityo thoserealmswhere it has notyet spread, o diffuse it fromits uniquepointof origin.Tocarryits accouterments romRome to a time andplace where it could not

possibly have been taken before, then to find it alreadythere, suggests the

workingsof a power beyondhistorythat could only be seen as demonic. Butwhat is described n this passage is a visual image;the dress andthe liturgyhave been derived from their authenticsource:

Theyare a

copy.It is as if

the priest in distant China arrivedonly to see himself reflectedin a mirror,with the inversionof the image so typicallyascribed o the demonic. He seesthe very aim of his long journey,whathe hopes will havebeen when the lastdomainof theglobe has beenbrought o the truefaith, namely,that as a resultof his ministrythe bodies of the Otherwill have worn the vestments of theChristian ather andperformed he liturgyof the holy church. The image ofthe Buddhistmonkappears o be alreadywhat, forthepriest, it can only laterbecome. This distantgoal, a mirageof the maturation f his power,24he sees

now presentbefore him, as if he were looking in a mirror.Unlike the infant in Lacan's "mirrorstage" who regardsthe integratedvision of his bodyin the mirrorwithjubilation,for thepriest t is a momentof

dread,recognizingthe reflectedimage, as the child does not, as a trapand a

decoy. What is monstrous s not the presenceof the Buddhistmonk but the

priest's identificationwith its image, "with the automaton n which, in an

ambiguousrelation,the world of his own making ends to findcompletion."25The priestsees identitywhereit is absent:The dress andliturgiesof a Buddh-

ist, whetherChineseor Tibetan,are not identicalto those of a RomanCatho-

lic priest. For such a perceptionto take place, the fragmentedbody of thechurch must see before itself the image of its completion already presentbefore its arrival, in the form of Lamaistpriest's regalia. The original hasarrived oo late, after its image;andthis late arrivalhas as its effect bothself-constitutionand alienation.The Catholicpriest simultaneouslydentifies withthe image of his foreign counterpart nd armorshimself against it by con-

demningit as demonic. It is as if the imageof the Buddhist,the counterpart,23 See, forexample,JustinMartyr, Apology,LIV, 7-8; LXII, 1-2; LXVI. 1-4. I amgrateful

to ElizabethClarkforproviding hese references. It is significant o note that not all the Catholic

priestswho encounteredBuddhistmonks believedthatthey lookedexactly like themselves.TheFlemish friar,William of Rubruck,thought they looked like French:"So on enteringthe idol

templeto which I havereferred,I found the priestssittingat the outergate. When I saw them, Itook them for Franks,being clean-shaven,but the mitrestheywere wearingon their headswereof paper."See Ruysbroek,The Mission of Friar Williamof Rubruck,154.

24 JacquesLacan, Ecrits: A Selection, Alan Sheridan, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton,1977), 2.

25 JacquesLacan,Ecrits, 3.






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throwsthe priest forwardin time, out of the "natural" isseminationof the

word, projecting him out of the process of conversion. The missionary'sconfrontationwiththeTibetancounterparts then, like the mirror tage, "high

tragedy:a brief momentof doomed glory, a paradise ost."26

In 1878, two centuriesafterAthanasiusKircher,a Portugesemissionary o

Chinawas quotedas sayingthat, in Tibetanritualsat the Qingcourt,"there s

not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal unction,not a ceremonyof the courtof

Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country."27 hus, this Roman

Catholic genealogy of Tibetan Buddhism was not merely a case of pre-

Enlightenmentdemonologybutpersisted nto the Victorianage, to which we

now turn.

LAMAISM AND PROTESTANTS

Duringthe last half of thenineteenth entury, hecomparisonbetween Tibetan

BuddhismandRoman Catholicismwas againdrawn,but this time by Protes-

tants and for a differentpurpose. In 1877, Thomas W. Rhys Davids, thefounderof the Pali TextSociety,prepareda manual,publishedby the Societyfor PromotingChristianKnowledgein its "Non-ChristianReligiousSystems"series, on Buddhism orpopularconsumption.Nearthe endof thebook, Rhys

Davidsconsiders"developmentsn doctrine"beyondthose which occur in thePali canon, the locus of what was termedinterchangably"primitiveBuddh-

ism," "trueBuddhism,"or "originalBuddhism":

Thedevelopmentf Buddhist octrinewhichhas akenplace n thePanjab,Nepal,andTibet s exceedinglynteresting,ndveryvaluable rom hesimilarityt bears o the

development hichhastakenplace nChristianityntheRomanCatholicountries.thas resulted t last in thecomplete stablishmentf Lamaism, religionnotonlyinmanypointsdifferentrom,but actuallyantagonistico, the primitive ystemofBuddhism;ndthisis notonlyin its doctrine, ut alsoin its church rganization.28

Two types of comparisonare drawnhere, one of similarityand one of con-trast.Thevalueof developments n Buddhistdoctrine ies in theirsimilarity o

changes thatChristianityhas undergone n those countriesremainingRomanCatholic. At the sametime, a contrast s drawnbetweenLamaismandprimi-tive Buddhism,in which Lamaism is seen not merely as differentbut some-how inimical to the doctrineand organizationof primitiveBuddhism, now

long past. As Monier-Williamsstated more succinctly, "In truth, TibetanBuddhism is so different romevery otherBuddhisticsystem that it ought tobe treatedof separately n a separatevolume."29

26 JaneGallop, ReadingLacan (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1985), 85.27 Cited in Philip Almond, The BritishDiscovery of Buddhism Cambridge,UK: Cambridge

UniversityPress, 1988), 124.28 Thomas W. Rhys Davids,Buddhism:Beinga Sketchof theLifeand Teachingsof Gautama,

the Buddha, rev. ed. (London:Society for PromotingChristianKnowledge, 1903), 199.29 Sir MonierMonier-Williams,Buddhism, n Its ConnexionwithBrdhmanism ndHinduism,

and In Its Contrast withChristianity Varanasi:CowkhambaSanskritSeriesOffice, 1964), 261.






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RhysDavids' most sustainedcomparisonof RomanCatholicismand Lama-ism appears n his 1881 HibbertLectures,entitled"Lectures n theOriginand

Growthof Religion as Illustratedby Some Points in the Historyof IndianBuddhism."Therehe providesa full page of parallels hattogetherconstitute"one of the most curious facts in the whole history of the world." "Eachwith its services in dead languages, with choirs andprocessionsand creedsand incense, in which the laity are spectatorsonly; each with its mystic ritesand ceremonies performed by shaven priests in gorgeous robes; . . . each,even ruled over by a Pope, with a tripletiara on his head and the sceptreof

temporalpowerin his hand,the representative n earthof an eternalSpiritin

the heavens!"30The litanyof parallels s now quitefamiliar.What s different s thatthe late

Victorian nterpreters f Buddhism o the West,especiallythe Britishand the

Americans,no longerheld to the view that the apparent imilaritiesbetween

Lamaism and Romanismwere due to direct historical contact between thetwo. Instead, Rhys Davids explains, in a vocabularyof violation, mixing

begets mixing:

Eachhad tsorigin t a timewhen henew aithwasadopted ythe nvading ordes fbarbarian enburstingnuponanolder,a moreadvancedivilization-whenmen n

body,butchildrennintellect,quick o feelemotion,nd

mpregnatedith

Animisticfallacies,becameat once the conquerorsndthe pupilsof men who hadpassedthrough long rainingnreligiouseelingand nphilosophicaleasoning. hendo wefind hat trangemixturef speculativecutenessndemotionalgnorance;f earnestdevotion o edification, nd the blindest onfidencen erroneousmethods; f real

philanthropy,ndapriestlyoveof power; f unhesitatingelf-sacrifice,nd he mostselfishstrugglesorpersonal re-eminence, hichcharacterizeheearlycenturies fRomanCatholicismndTibetanLamaismlike.31

If the genealogical view put forwardby the Roman Catholic missionaries

anticipated he anthropological heory of diffusionism, the Protestant nter-

pretersheld firmly to a variationof the theorythat diffusionismbriefly re-placed, the "comparativemethod"made famous by Frazer,in which it was

postulated hat all societies develop according o a similarpattern,with soci-

eties being distinguished by the stage they occupied in the continuumof

developmentand the rate at which they progressedalong it. This became

known as the comparativemethod because it claimed that societies at the

same stage of development,regardlessof their location in space and time,shared he samecharacteristics, llowingknowledgeof one to informanalysisof another. Such a theoryportrayedprimitivesocieties as contemporary e-

mindersof the archaicstages throughwhich Westerncivilizationhad passedandfromwhichthe savagesthemselves, with the encouragement ndsupport

30 T. W. Rhys Davids, Lectureson the Originand Growthof Religionas Illustratedby SomePoints in the History of Indian Buddhism(The HibbertLectures, 1881) (New York: G. P.

Putnam'sSons, 1882), 192-3.31 Ibid., 194.






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of Western civilization, would eventually emerge. That Frazer's comparativemethod made its mark on Buddhist Studies is evident from this 1896 state-

ment by T. W. Rhys Davids:

Forit is preciselyin Indiathat for us Westerns he evolutionof religiousbeliefs is mostinstructive. It can be tracedtherewith so muchcompletenessand so muchclearness;we can follow it there with so much independenceof judgement and so great an

impartiality; ndit runs, in spiteof the manydifferences,on general ines so similartothe historyof religionin the West,that the lessons to be learnt here areof the highestvalue. . . . Yet nowhere else do we find a systemat once so similarto our own in the

stagesandmannerof its growth,and so interestinglyandabsolutelyantagonistic o ourown in the ultimate conclusions it has reached.32

The same observation had been made a year earlier, this time about Tibet, byL. Austine Waddell in his The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism: "For Lamaism

is, indeed, a microcosm of the growth of religion and myth among primitive

people; and in large degree an object-lesson in their advance from barbarism

toward civilization. And it preserves for us much of the old-world lore and

petrified beliefs of our Aryan ancestors."33

The particular evolutionary model to which Rhys Davids and Waddell sub-

scribed saw Buddhism as a rationalist and humanist reaction against the

priestcraft of sixth-century B.C.E. India, subsumed under yet another of the

"isms" of the Western study of Asia, "Brahmanism." "Being opposed to allsacerdotalism and ceremonial observances, it abolished, as far as possible, the

sacrificial system of the Brahmans, and rejected the terrible methods of self-

torture, maintaining that a life of purity and morality was better than all the

forms and ceremonies of the Vedic ritual."34During the late nineteenth centu-

ry, early Buddhism was consistently, and mistakenly, portrayed as lacking anyelement of ritual. As Monier Williams described it in his 1888 Duff Lectures,"It had no hierarchy in the proper sense of that term-no church, no priests,no true form of prayer, no religious rites, no ceremonial observances."35

Among the factors contributing to such a portrayal is the almost exclusivereliance on the texts selected and edited by the Pali Text Society (and then

translated in Max Miiller's "Sacred Books of the East" and the Pali Text

Society's "Sacred Books of the Buddhists" series) as constituting the canon of

primitive Buddhism. Such a portrayal also served the interests of the Victo-

rian interpreters' comparative model, in which the Buddha's rejection of

32 Thomas W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism:Its History and Literature,5th ed. (Calcutta:Susil

GuptaPrivateLtd., 1962), 4.33 Cited from the 1972 Dover reprint ssued underthe new title, TibetanBuddhism:With ts

MysticCults, Symbolismand Mythology(New York:Dover Publications,1972), 4. In laterlife,Waddellwould turnhis researchmoreexplicitlyto his Aryanancestors,claiminganAryanoriginfor Sumerianand Egyptiancivilization in such works as his 1929 The Makersof Civilization nRace and History (reprint,Delhi: S. Chand, 1968).

34 ElizabethA. Reed, PrimitiveBuddhism: ts Originand Teachings Chicago:Scott, Fores-

man, and Co., 1896), 16.35 Sir MonierMonier-Williams,Buddhism, n Its ConnexionwithBrahmanism ndHinduism,

and In Its Contrast withChristianity Varanasi:CowkhambaSanskritSeriesOffice, 1964), 253.






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i6 DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

sacerdotalismcould be represented o foreshadowa similarrejectionin theWestduringthe Reformation.As Miiller himself wrote, "The ancienthistoryof Brahmanism eads on to Buddhism,with the same necessity with whichmediaeval Romanism ed to Protestantism."36amesFreemanClarke, in his

essay, "Buddhism:or the Protestantismof the East," made the point more

emphatically:"Buddhismn Asia, like Protestantismn Europe,is a revolt of

natureagainst spirit,of humanityagainstcaste, or individual reedomagainstthe despotismof an order,of salvationby faith against salvationby sacra-

ments."37The rise of interest n Buddhism n Englandduringthe last half of

the nineteenthcenturycoincided with the "NoPopery"movement,markedbythe

MurphyRiots of 1866-71 and the wide

popularityof works such as

RichardWhately'sEssayson the ErrorsofRomanism1856) and TheConfes-sional Unmasked,distributed o each memberof Parliamentn 1865 by the

ProtestantEvangelicalMission andElectoralUnion.38 t is against his settingthat the Protestantdiscourseon Lamaismmust be placed:Lamaism,with its

devious and corruptpriests and vapid sacerdotalism,is condemned as the

most degenerate ormof Buddhism(if it be a formof Buddhismat all) at the

moment when RomanCatholicism s being scourgedin England.39Here, the Buddhismof Tibet, or Lamaism, figured prominentlyas the

endpoint in the Victorianvision of the history of Buddhism, accordingto36 Max Miiller,Chips rom a GermanWorkshop, ol. 1 of Essays on the Science of Religion

(Chico, CA: ScholarsPress, 1985), 220.37 Citedby PhilipAlmond, TheBritishDiscoveryof Buddhism London:CambridgeUniver-

sity Press, 1988), 74. For other instancesof thecomparisonof Buddhismwith Protestantism nd

of the BuddhawithLuther,as well as the cautionsagainstsuchcomparisonsby scholars such as

RhysDavids andOldenberg,notablywhen theBuddhabeganto be appropriatedy socialists, see

Almond (pp. 71-77). The popularityof Buddhismamongthe Frenchat roughlythe sameperiodis satirizedby Flaubert n Bouvardand Pecuchet, where Pecuchetdeclaresthe superiorityof

Buddhismto Christianity:

"Verywell,listen to this! Buddhism

recognizedthe

vanityof

earthlythingsbetter and earlier

thanChristianity. ts practicesare austere,its faithful are morenumerous han all Christiansputtogether,and as for the Incarnation,Vishnudid not have one but nine! So, judge from that!"

"Travellers'ies," said Madamede Noaris.

"Supportedby Freemasons,"addedthe cure.

See GustaveFlaubert,Bouvardand Pecuchet, A. J. Krailsheimer, rans. (New York:PenguinBooks, 1976), 251.

Monier-Williamswent to some lengths to argue that there were not more Buddhists than

Christians n the world. See his "Postscript n the CommonError n Regard o the ComparativePrevalenceof Buddhism n the World," n his Buddhism,pp. xiv-xviii.

38 On this period,see EdwardR. Norman,Anti-Catholicismn VictorianEngland(New York:

George Allen and Unwin, 1968); WalterRalls, "The Papal Aggression of 1850: A Study in

VictorianAnti-Catholicism,"ChurchHistory,43:2 (June 1974), 242-56; and, especially,WalterL. Arnstein,Protestantversus Catholicin Mid-VictorianEngland:Mr.Newdegateand theNuns

(Columbia,MO:Universityof MissouriPress, 1982). The middlenineteenthcenturywas also a

timeof stronganti-Catholic entiment n the UnitedStates, ledby suchgroupsas the Orderof the

StarSpangledBanner. See TylerAnbinder,NativismandSlavery:The NorthernKnowNothingsand the Politics of the 1850s (New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992).

39 One might wonderhow High ChurchAnglicanscould condemn Lamaismand, by exten-

sion, Romanism,for its sacerdotalism.But it appears hatmanyof those who indulgedin such

condemnationwere not membersof the Churchof England.RhysDavidswas the son of a Welsh






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which, after the early centuriesof the brotherhood,Buddhism in India fol-lowed a course of uninterrupted eterioration rom its origins as a rational,

agnostic faith to a degeneratereligion rife with ritualand superstition.Thespecific course that the BritishBuddhologistschartedwas as follows: Withthe rise of Mahayana,the agnosticidealism andsimplemoralityof primitiveBuddhismwas replacedby "aspeculative heisticsystemwith a mysticismof

sophistic nihilism."40Yet anotherdegenerationoccurredwith the rise of the

Yogacara chool, which, for reasonsthat remainunclear,was regardedwith

particularantipathy:"And this Yoga parasite, containing within itself the

germs of Tantrism,seized strong hold of its host and soon developed itsmonsteroutgrowths,which crushed and cankered most of the little life of

purelyBuddhiststock yet left in the Mahayana."41Werethis not enough, the

progress of the contaminationcontinued as the pure essence of primitiveBuddhismwas once more polluted in India with the rise of tantrism.(Theauthor of these statements, L. Austine Waddell, conducted his researcheswhile serving as assistantsanitarycommissioner for the Darjeelingdistrictand in 1889 hadpublished,"Are VenomousSnakesAutotoxic?" n the Scien-

tific Memoirs by Medical Officers of the Army of India.)This mere shadowof originalBuddhismwas belatedly ransmitted o Tibet,

where itwas furtheradulteratedwiththe demonworshipof theTibetans:"TheLamaist cults comprise much deep-rooted devil-worship. . . . For Lamaism is

only thinlyandimperfectlyvarnishedover withBuddhist ymbolism,beneathwhich the sinister growth of poly-demonistsuperstitiondarkly appears."42Once again, thediscourseof thedemoniccomes intoplay,as the superstitionsof the non-Buddhistreligions, both Indianand Tibetan, portrayedas para-sites, eventuallyoverwhelmthe Buddhist host. Lamaismthus stands at thenadirof a long process of contaminationand degeneration rom the origin.

But once identifiedas an endpoint,Lamaismseemed also to creep back-

ward in time. In discussingthe Mahayana utras n his 1877Buddhism,RhysDavids writes:

The aterbookswereafterwardsranslatedntoTibetan, nda newdoctrinettainednTibet o so greata developmenthatTibetanBuddhism,rrather amaism, ascometo be the exactcontraryf theearlierBuddhism.thas beenworked pthere nto a

Congregationalminister;Miiller was a GermanLutheran; ndL. AustineWaddellwas the son ofa Scotch Presbyterianminister.

40 Waddell,TibetanBuddhism,10.

41 Ibid., 14.42 Ibid., xi. It is noteworthy hat Desideri, writing 150 years earlier,offers a very different

assessment:"Thoughthe Thibettansare pagansand idolaters,the doctrinethey believe is verydifferent from that of other pagans of Asia [meaningIndia]. Their Religion, it is true, cameoriginally from the ancientcountryof Hindustan,now usually called Mogol, but there, in thelapse of time, the old religionfell into disuse and was oustedby new fables. On the otherhand,the Thibettans, intelligent, and endowed with a gift of speculation,abolished much that wasunintelligible n the tenets,andonly retainedwhatappearedo comprisetruthandgoodness."SeeFilippo de Filippi, An Accountof Tibet, 225-6.






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I8 DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

regularsystemwhich has shut out all of the earlierBuddhism,althougha few of theearlierbooks are also to be foundin Tibetantranslations.43

It is perhapsnoteworthythat in this work, Rhys Davids subsumes all of

MahayanaBuddhism,the Buddhisms of China, Japan,and Tibet underthe

heading, "TibetanBuddhism."All "subsequent"Buddhism s thus absorbedunderthe categoryof Lamaism,as if the contagion dentifiedby Waddellhad

spreadretroactively o infect all Buddhisms hatexisted in a formother thanthe texts preserved n European ibraries,all Buddhisms hat were not under

Europeancontrol.TibetanBuddhismwas thusregardedas doublyOther n a complex play of

Orientalist deologies: After the Sanskritand Pali texts were discovered andtranslated,Buddhism s invented and controlledby the West as the mimeticOtherof RomanticOrientalismand is called "originalBuddhism,"represent-ing it as a "religionof reason" n VictorianBritain.Europeanand American

philologists thus became the true and legitimateconservatorsof Buddhism'sclassical tradition.Tibetan Buddhismthen is constructedas the other of thisOther("originalBuddhism"). t is a productnot of the religionof reason butof the degenerationof the Indian extualtradition,namely,the Mahayanaandtantra.44Thereis, thus, a nexusof forces brought o bear to createLamaism,

this degenerate orm of Buddhismfoundin Tibet. This history,frompristineorigin in the distant past to the present state of decay and corruption,is

derivedfromtwo differentmodes of representationhat areboth controlledbythe EuropeanOrientalist:The representation f earlyBuddhism,of primitiveBuddhism,of true Buddhism s based on texts, while "modem Buddhism" s

derived from "directobservation."Again, Monier Williams from the Duff

Lectures, "For it is certain that without any practical experience of whatBuddhism has become in modem times-I mean such as experienceas can

only be gained by residing or travelingin countries where Buddhism now

prevails-the mere studyof ancientscriptures s likely to be misleading."45Thatis, texts are sufficientto understand rueBuddhism,but"practical xpe-rience,"thatis, the representation y the missionaryand the colonial officer,is essential to understand he currentstate of what Buddhism"has become."

The relation between original Buddhism and Lamaismwas portrayed n

various ways. For those connected with the missionaries, such as Monier-

Williams, the root cause of the corruption ay in the Buddhahimself, whodenied the existence of humanaspirations o the transcendent,who rejectedthe possibilityof a supernaturalorce to aid in the strugglefor salvation,and

who could find no place in his system for a Ruler of the Universe. Thus,43 ThomasW. Rhys Davids, TheHistoryand Literatureof Buddhism, 139.44 "Tantra," notoriously vague term used generally to designate a movement in Indian

religion that made use of traditionallyproscribedactivites in the religious path (most notablysexual intercourse),was regardedby nineteenth-centuryOrientalistsas the most depravedofabominations.

45 Monier-Williams,Buddhism,147.






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"LAMAISM" AND TIBET'S DISAPPEARANCE I9

despite the high orderof his moralprecepts, the system of the Buddhawas

destinedto turninto its opposite:

Inpointof fact t wasnotadevelopmenthat ookplace,buta recoil-like therecoilofa spring elddown or a timebya powerful and nd henreleased.And hisresultedfrom hesimpleworkingf theeternalnstinctsfhumanity, hichnsisted nmakingthemselveseltnotwithstandinghe unnaturalestrainto which he Buddha adsub-

jected hem; othat verydoctrineetaught eveloped ya kindof ironyof fate ntoa

complete contradictionof itself.46

Lamaismwas the collective embodimentof those contradictions.Forothers,those moresympathetic o theircreationof trueBuddhism,Lamaismwas not

a naturaloutcome of the founder'soriginal

faith but a deviation from it. In

eithercase, however, comparisons o Roman Catholicismserve as a further

formof condemnation,with Lamaismbecominga substitute or Papism.The

Tibetans,havinglost the spiritof primitiveBuddhism,now suffer under the

oppressionof sacerdotalismandthe exploitationof its priests, somethingthat

Englandhad long since thrownoff. But it is not simply a case of analogy,thatPali Buddhism(which by the end of the nineteenthcenturywas largelyunderBritishcontrol)is to TibetanBuddhism(which at the end of the nine-

teenthcentury,Britainwas actively seekingto control)as Protestantism s to

RomanCatholicism.It is, rather,a strategythat debases the distant and yetunsubjugatedOtherby comparing t to the near and long subjugatedOther,

subjugatedboth by its relegationto England'spast and to England'spresentEuropeanrivals and Irishsubjects. Lamaismthus served as a code word for

'Papism'in a masternarrativehat used its representationf the Otherwithout

to attackthe Other within. This was not the first time in which Protestant

polemics had figured in scholarshipon other religions; such polemics had

shapedthe studyof the religionsof LateAntiquity,sometimesreferred o as

"Pagano-papism."47

46Ibid., 151. Otherssaw Lamaismmoresimply as the naturaldevelopmentof Indian Buddh-ism. In his address to the Ninth InternationalCongressof Orientalists,JamesLegge declared:

Buddhismhas been in Chinabut a disturbingnfluence,ministering o the elementof superstitionwhichplays so largea part n the world. I am far fromsayingthedoctrineof the literati s perfect,nevertheless,it has keptthe people of Chinatogether n a nationalunion, passing throughmanyrevolution,but still enduring,afterat least four or five millenniumsof its existence, and still notwithout measureof heartandhope. EuropeandAmerica can give it somethingbetterthan India

did, in sendingit Buddhism n ourfirstcentury,andI hope theywill do so. Youmust not look tothe civilizationof ChinaandJapan or the fruits of Buddhism.Go to Tibet andMongolia, andinthe bigotryand apathyof the population, n theirprayerwheels andcylinders you will find theachievementof the doctrine of the Buddha.

Citedin ElizabethReed, PrimitiveBuddhism,30. A studyof the stereotypicalOrientalist ascina-tion and revulsionconcerning he mechanismof the TibetanBuddhistprayerwheel remains o bewritten. See William Simpson's The Buddhist-PrayingWheel (London: Macmillan and Co.,1896). Monier-WilliamsBuddhism,378) remarks,"It is to be hopedthatwhenEuropeannven-tions find theirway across the Himalayas, steam-powermay not be pressedinto the service ofthese gross superstitions."

47 See JonathanZ. Smith, DrudgeryDivine: On the Comparisonof Early Christianitiesand






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At the end of both of his tomes on Tibet, L. Austine Waddelloffers hisvision of Tibet's futurein which "its sturdyovercredulouspeople are freed

from the intolerabletyrannyof the Lamas, and delivered from the devilswhose ferocity and exacting worship weigh like a nightmareupon all."48There is reason for hope, he argues, when one considersthat in the twelfth

centurythe CatholicChurchseemed in hopeless decay, but then Dante ap-peared and then the Renaissance. Indeed, Waddellclaims, a knowledge ofBuddhismmighthavesaved theCatholicChurch romthedegeneration hat itsufferedsoon after"thedisappearance f its immortal ounder."Waddell,with

apparentmagnanimity,next demonstrateshis possession of true Buddhism

(which the Tibetanslack)by claiming

that Christiansarefinally coming

tounderstand hatthe teachingsof Jesus are more akinto those of the Buddhathanthey are to Paul, Augustine, or Luther.Completingthe gestureof con-

trol, he endsby proclaiming, hat,rather hanburyingTibetanBuddhismas adecadentcult, it is the missionof England"toherald he rise of new star n the

East, whichmayforlong, perhaps orcenturies,diffuse its mildradianceoverthis charming and and interestingpeople. In the University,which mustere

long be establishedunder Britishdirectionat Lhasa,a chief place will surelybe assignedto studiesin the originof the religionof the country."49Waddell

wrote these words not froma positionof imperial ongingat the borderbut atthe conclusion of his account of the British invasionof Tibet from 1903 to

1904, in which he served as chief medicalofficer.Lamaism thus serves as a fundamental rope in the historicism of late

Victoriancolonialism. Like all historicisms,it has its fantasyboth of pristineorigin, as it represents rueBuddhism,and of the end, as it portraysTibetan

Buddhism,called Lamaism whether t is seen as a perversionof the Buddha'sintentionor as its fulfillment)as an inevitableendpoint.WhetherTibet is to becuredby therestoration f true Buddhismorby conversion o Christianity,he

cure is possessed by the West, and the colonization of Tibet seems the solemeans of its administration.By designatingTibetanBuddhismas somethingapart,as disconnectedfrom the otherBuddhismsof Asia, all of which wereunder strongWestern nfluence by the end of the nineteenthcentury,Tibetcould be more easily portrayedas entirelyother and hence incapableof itsown representation.

These nineteenth-century enotationsof Lamaism are succinctlycapturedin the entry (under the more archaic "Lamanism")n the currentOxfordEnglish Dictionary:

theReligions of LaterAntiquity JordanLectures n ComparativeReligions, XIV) (Chicago:The

Universityof Chicago Press, 1990).48 Waddell,TibetanBuddhism,573.49 Waddell,Lhasa and Its Mysteries(New York:Dover Publication,1905), 447-8.






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+ lamanism. Obs. [AfterF. lamanisme(Huc).] = LAMAISM. So la'manical a. =LAMAIC

1852 Blackw.Mag. LXXI. 339 The Tibetanportion.. is inhabitedby a roughrace, . . retainingmany primitivesuperstitionsbeneath heengraftedLamanism. 1867M. JONESHue's Tartary243 The foundationof the lamanicalhierarchy, ramedinimitationof the pontifical court. Ibid. 252 It is with this view [of enfeebling the

strengthof the Mongol princes]thatthe Emperorspatronise amanism.

In the 1852 reference, Lamaism is somehow not native to Tibet but has been

at some point "engrafted" to the primitive superstitions of the Tibetans. In the

first 1867 reference, the Lamaist church is a copy of the original Roman

Catholic hierarchy. And in the third reference, reminiscent of Qianlong's

declaration, there is disavowal of allegiance; the Chinese emperors' supporthas been a pretense. In each of the three cases, Lamaism is portrayed as

somehow inauthentic, with that inauthenticity determined in relation to what

is more original and more real: In the first case, Lamaism is a false appendageto Tibetan superstition; in the second, it is a late copy of an original; in the

third, it is the object of the pretense of realpolitik. By the nineteenth century,Lamaism had become so particular, so peculiar, that it seemed almost to lose

its site and float freely, displaced from all locations.

As is the case with so many of the "isms" in the study of religion, those

designated by the term only come to use it when they enter into the fray of

defining their "lost culture" and are confronted by the definitions of the West,

definitions created by competing ideologies of authenticity. As stated at the

outset, there is no term in the Tibetan language for Lamaism; Tibetans refer to

their religion as the "Buddhist religion" (sangs rgyas pa'i chos) or, more

commonly, "the religion of the insiders" (nang pa'i chos). The use of the term

Lamaism has been condemned by the spokesman for Tibetan culture, a figurewhose own name recalls the circumstances of its coinage, the current Dalai

Lama. At the conclusion of his first book on Tibetan Buddhism (1963),

composed in part for foreign consumption, he wrote:

Some people say that thereligionof Tibet is "Lamaism"literally,"religionof lamas,"bla ma'i chos], as if it were a religionnottaughtby theBuddha,butthis is not so. The

originalauthorof the sutrasand tantras hatare the root sourceof all schools of TibetanBuddhism is the teacher SakyamuniBuddha.... Tibetan lamas took these as thebasis and root and then listened to them, contemplated hem, and meditateduponthem; among the main points they did not fabricate a single doctrine that does notaccordwith [the teachingsof the Buddha].50

50 TenzinGyatso, the FourteenthDalaiLama,OpeningtheEye of NewAwareness,Donald S.

Lopez, Jr., trans.(London:WisdomPublications,1985), 117-8. The use of the term lamaism isalso condemned n an articlepublished n Tibetan n 1982 at the behest of the ChinesePeoples'Political ConsultativeCommitteeandpublished n an inadequateEnglishtranslationn 1986. SeeTseten Zhabdrung,"Researchon the Nomenclatureof the Buddhist Schools in Tibet," Tibet

Journal, 11:3 (Autumn 1986), 43-44.






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Here we see another deology of authenticityat work. Theresponseto Lama-ism by Tibetans has not been unambiguous,however. The first Tibetan

Buddhistmonastery n the United States, foundedby the Mongolianmonk,GesheWangyal, n FreewoodAcres, New Jersey n 1955, took as its name theLamaist BuddhistMonasteryof America.51

In the 1960s and 1970s, the earlierBuddhologicalvaluation of TibetanBuddhism(still sometimes called Lamaism)reached ts antipodes,as youngscholarscameto exaltTibet,just at themomentof its invasion andannexation

by China, as a pristinepreserveof authenticBuddhistdoctrine andpractice.Unlike the Buddhismsof China,Japan,and SoutheastAsia, Tibetan Buddh-ism was uncorrupted ecause it had been untaintedby Westerndomination.The value of Tibet to scholars of Buddhism was no longer simply as anarchiveof the scriptures f IndianBuddhism, ong lost in theoriginalSanskritbut held in highly accurateTibetantranslation.52 he Tibetandiasporaafterthe Dalai Lama'sflight to India in 1959 made a greatflood of autochthonousTibetan Buddhismliterature,heretoforeunstudied, widely available to theuniversitiesof Europeand North America(largely through he efforts of the

Libraryof Congressoffice in New Delhi). This literature, cornedby Waddellat the end of the lastcenturyas "contemptiblemummery,"was now hailedbyOrientalistsof a New

Age,both

professionaland

amateur,as a repositoryofancientwisdom whose lineage, as the Dalai Lama himselfclaimed, could betracedback to the Buddhahimself.53

What is the site of Lamaism n 1996, a centuryafter the Orientalistswithwhom we have thus far been concernedused Lamaism for the rhetorical

subjugation f Tibetin theunfulfilledanticipation f its colonial subjugation?The Victorians'view that Lamaismwas a mixingof Buddhistelements fromIndia with primitiveTibetananimismpersists. ShermanLee defines the San-skrittermvajraydnaas "TantricBuddhismwith an admixture f pre-Buddhist

Tibetan B6n' worshipof naturedeities anddemons."54Beyondthisdefinition,51 Wangyalhad come to the United States to serve a communityof KalmykMongols, refugees

from Stalinwho had left theirhomeland n Russia between the Black Sea and the CaspianSea.

Although Wangyal, ike otherKalmykBuddhistmonks, had been trained n Tibet, he was not aTibetan nor was his community;but they were ethnically Mongols andnationallyRussians. Hehad no interesttherefore,in calling his monastery,"TibetanBuddhist."However,he wantedtoevoke in the name of his institution he traditionof Buddhism o which he and his communityadhered,a tradition hat historicallyhad spreadas far west as the Black Sea, as far north as

Siberia, as far east as Sichuan, and as far south as Nepal. The only alternativeadjective,apparently,was Lamaist.

52 On Britishrepresentations f Tibet as an archive state in a varietyof literatures f the late

nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies,see ThomasRichards,"ArchiveandUtopia,"Represen-tations, 37 (1992), 104-33.

53 For an analysisof TibetanBuddhiststudiesduring his period, see my essay, "Foreigner tthe Lama'sFeet," in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Curatorsof the Buddha: Orientalismand the

Studyof the Buddhism Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress, 1995).54 Levenson, Circa 1492, 472.






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the arthistorianratherproudlyexcludesknowledgeof thecomplicated heolo-

gy of Lamaism romhis narrative. ndescribing he final Lamaistpiece in the

National Gallery volume, "PortableShrine in TriptychForm," he begins,"Identification f thetwenty-onedeitiesrepresentedwithinthe confines of this

smallfoldingshrine s beyondthecompetenceof this writer."Afteridentifyingone of the figures as that of the Indiantantricmaster, Padmasambhava,who

visited Tibetin the lateeighthcentury,Lee devotes thegreaterpartof his entryto adescriptionnotof thisportable hrinebutof another ne (notincluded nthe

exhibition),a "perfectlypreserved" apaneseShingonshrine hatKukaireport-

edly brought romChinain 806. Lee notes that the iconographiesof the two

shrines arequite

different:"TheKongobu-ji

hrine s a classicpresentation

f

the historicalBuddhaSakyamuni,"whereas "the presentLamaistshrine is

centeredon a quasi-historicalounderof a complexfaithwho, by the time thisshrinewas made,hadacquiredwholly legendary tatusandattributes."Again,Lamaismmust sufferin comparison.The Japanesepiece depictsan historical

figure in a classical style; the Lamaistpiece depicts a figure only "quasi-historical." Werethis not enough, this figure was the founder, again, of a

"complex" aith-complex presumablybecause t was somehowcomposite, in

contrast o theimaginedsimpleethicalteachingsof the historicalBuddha,who,

Lee would seem to imply,did not acquire"wholly legendarystatus."55Thiscomplexityof the Lamaistshrine marks its greatdistance, its differentiationfrom the plenumpresentat the origin.

This depictionof TibetanBuddhism n the sixty-dollarbook is simplifiedin

the brochuredispensedfree of chargeto those who attended"Circa1492" atthe NationalGalleryin 1992, in which the following definitionis provided:"Lamaismwas a combinationof the esoteric Buddhismof India, China, and

Japanwith native cults of the Himalayas."56Among the many observationsthatmaybe made aboutthis sentence, it is initially noteworthy hatthe verb is

in the past tense, that Lamaism and hence its substitute,TibetanBuddhism,no longer exist but inhabit a static past, victims of the "chronopolitics"de-scribedby JohannesFabian. Beyond the tense of the verb, there is little to

suggest that this sentence was not composed a century ago. There are thesame subtle differentiations rom trueBuddhism;Lamaism is not Buddhismor even esotericBuddhism(a "latedevelopment")but a combinationof vari-ous forms of esoteric Buddhism with native cults. (The Victorian scholarswould have corrected he erroneousattribution f any Japanese nfluence onTibetanBuddhism.) Lamaism is thus a hybrid, a mixture, a concoction of

outside influences and nativeprimitivism.It follows, therefore,thatthe signi-fier, Tibet, shouldoccur nowhere in the definition.

55 Ibid., 472.56 JayA. Levenson, Circa 1492: Art in theAge of Exploration Washington,D.C.: National

Galleryof Art, 1991), 13.






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Although the power of representationdid not lead to Westernpoliticaldominationof Tibet, thatsamepowerhas been appropriated y the state that

was finally able to bringTibetundercolonial dominion,a processthatbeganwith the invasion of Tibet by the People's LiberationArmy in 1950. Therhetoricaltrajectory hat began when lama jiao became Lamaismhas thuscome full circle, as Lamaism, invested with two centuries of Orientalist

discourse, has once againbecome lamajiao andbeen returned o the Orien-tals. This is not to suggestthat the Chinese do nothave theirown long historyof denigratingTibetan culture. Yet the termthat hadbeen coined duringthe

Qing and employed to isolate Tibet from Chinese culture is now used todissolve it into the motherland. n

post-1959Chinese

publicationson

Tibet,Tibetan Buddhismis easily subsumed under the criticismof Buddhismand

religionin generaland condemned or its suppression f the masses. Nonethe-

less, the Westernrepresentation f TibetanBuddhismas Lamaism,a corrup-tion of originalBuddhism,has been appropriated y the Chinese as partoftheirjustificationto the West for invadingand colonizing Tibet. Stuart andRoma Gelder's 1964 book, The TimelyRain: Travels n New Tibetnotes:

The richspiritualnheritance hich,accordingo somewho fearCommunism orethan heyunderstandibetan uddhism,sbeingdestroyed ytheChinese,was n factnotthere o be

destroyed.t existed

onlynthe

maginationsf thosewhomistookhe

mechanical bservancef ritual ndreligious ustom orspiritualxperience.57

Coinedin the West, the abstractnounLamaismhas become naturalizedasif it were an empiricalobject, the manipulation f which has effects beyondthe realm of rhetoric.Eventually,Lamaismbecomes so particular, o differ-

ent, so often describedas not this and notthat,that t becomes unboundedandstarts o float freely,like "Zen"or "mysticism." n the process, the "original"site of Lamaism, Tibet, also lost its boundariesand was declaredmissing,dissolved into the People's Republicof China.Tibet, unexploredand uncol-

onized by the European and hence a screen for the projectionof Europeanfantasies), is absorbed nto China. The very use of the term Lamaism is a

gestureof controlover theunincorporatedndtheunassimilated,used firstbythe Qing over Tibet, then as a code word for Papism by the British overCatholicIrelandand Europe,and finally by EuropeanBuddhologyover the

uncolonizedand unreadTibet. Long the blankspoton the map,markedonlyby the word"Thibet," he contourshave now been drawn,the rivers traced o

theirsources, the mountainsmeasured,only to have the border ines, as wellas the name"Tibet,"effaced. Even amongthepartisansof the Tibetancause,

the focus remainslargelyon the unsited,on the etherealand transhistorical,57 Stuartand Roma Gelder'sTheTimelyRain: Travels n New Tibet(London:Hutchinsonof

London, 1964), 129. The characterizations f Tibetan Buddhismby British officers such asLandon and Waddell are quotedas authoritativeby the Geldersas well as by anotherChinese

apologist who wrote for Westernconsumption, Han Suyin. See her Lhasa: The Open City(London:JonathanCape, 1977).






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on Tibetanreligionas the sole legacy,even the irreducible ssence, of Tibetan

culture. There is now, and never was Tibet, there was only Lamaism. The

term used to markoff Tibet remains;Tibet is absent.

Tibetansare said to believe that if the la, the soul, leaves the body, the

person becomes unbalancedor insane. With the formationof lama from la,the original meaning of la left lama, setting off a loss of equilibriumthat

resulted inally in "Lamaism."Ourpurposeherehas been to attempta belated

ritual of "callingthe la" back to its lost abode.

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