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Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937: The Conflict between the 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen; A

Case Study by Parshotam MehraReview by: Elliot SperlingJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Jul. - Oct., 1980), pp. 395-396Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601851 .Accessed: 26/10/2012 16:32

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Reviews of Books 395

'above' (p. 88) = Mo. ogede 'upward', etc. However, thereare cases which disagree with the Mongolian data. Thus,*6ni- 'to smell' (p. 89) = MMo. hunir 'smell',7 *poril'children' (p. 90) = MMo. hare 'child, descendant', etc. Insome cases the vowel reconstructed as *o is actually *e,e.g., *orka 'door' (p. 85) = Mo. eruke 'opening in the roof,through which smoke escapes' from Mo. era- 'to dig'. As for*nolgi- 'to nomadize' (p. 88) and Ma. neo-, they go back toMMo. ne'u-, Mo. nega-, Kh. ni- 'to nomadize', Kh. nuiga-'to make nomadized'. Consequently, Ev. u corresponds toMo. o, e, MMo. e'u (= Mo. egu, Kh. it), and must haveoriginated from several different vowels.

Doerfer's article is followed-and supplemented-bythat of Wolfram Hesche, "Urtungusisch *0 in erster Silbe(=*o,) im Lamutischen" (pp. 11 7ff.) The vowel in questionhas yielded, in different positions, o, u, e.

Next to this is Hiu Lie's valuable article, "SolonischesMaterial aus Huin-Gol" (pp. 125ff.) which contains aSolon glossary of approximately 1000 words and a briefgrammar. It has been written on the basis of Kamimaki'smaterial published, in Japanese, in 1940, and deals with adialect slightly different from the Hailar dialect investigatedby the author of these lines,8 Huin-Gol being located about120 km to the southwest of Hailar.

The last article in the volume under discussion is HiuLie's "Uber die Benennung Udihe" (pp. 179ff.). The authordiscusses the previous etymologies of the ethnonym inquestion and mentions, i.a., the Wu-je "Forest People" ofthe Liao as a possible etymon (p. 198). In general,convincing etymologies of ethnonyms are few, and in this

particular instance no evidence corroborating this or thatidentification can be produced.

The overall impression of the volume reviewed isfavorable. It contains valuable material for future studies

pi-shi), Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen, Wiesbaden,1962, p. 126, cf. also M. Lewicki, La langue mongole destranscriptions chinoises du XIVe siecle, Le Houa-yi yi-yude 1389, II, Vocabulaire-index, Wroc4aw, 1959, p. 69.Likewise, Turkic oz 'the best part of something, inside,marrow, self', which corresponds regularly to Mo. oro < 'orihas also a vowel at the onset in all Turkic languages, see M.

Rasanen, Versuch eines etymologischen Worterbuchs derTurksprachen, Helsinki, 1969, p. 376, cf. also B. V.Sevortjan, Etimologiceskij slovar' tjurkskix jazykov,Moskva, 1974, pp. 506-508.

7 Comparison to MMo. hunur 'smell' raises some doubtsbecause of lack of h- in Evenki, which is found, however, inhungukte- 'to smell, to perceive a smell', cf. Sravnitel'nyjslovar' tunguso-man 'c.urskix jazykov, p. 349.

8 N. N. Poppe, Materialy po solonskomu jazyku,Leningrad, 1931.

and convincing solutions of some problems of Tunguslinguistics.

NICHOLAS POPPE

SEATTLE

Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937. The Conflict Between the 13thDalai Lama and the 9th Panchen; A Case Study. ByPARSHOTAM MEHRA. Pp. XII + 94. Asiatische For-schungen, XLIX. Wiesbaden: OTTO HARRASSOWITZ.1976. DM 30.

Parshotam Mehra is well known for his works dealingwith Tibet's foreign contacts in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries. His researches into British and British Indianrecords have been thorough and enlightening, and in thisregard the present volume is no exception. Within its pageshe traces the vicissitudes of the relationship between the13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen Lama as reflected inBritish archival materials and other English languageworks. This relationship developed into a harsh conflict andled to the flight of the Panchen Lama from Tibet to China inlate 1923 and early 1924. Mehra's treatment of this topic islargely based on previously unexamined documents storedin London and New Delhi and as a consequence, thestudent of modern Tibetan history will find much in thisbook that is not in print elsewhere.

Mehra focuses on the significant events and changes inpolicy at the courts of Lhasa and Shigatse to show the shiftsin relations between them and the two concerned foreignpowers, British India and Republican China, as well as thegrowth of suspicions between the Dalai Lama and thePanchen Lama. The narrative that Mehra reconstructsencompasses the Dalai Lama's flights to and residences inChina (1904-1910) and India (1910-1912); the Chineseattempts to bolster the Panchen Lama in his stead; thedevelopment of mistrust between Lhasa and Bkra-shis-lhun-po; the numerous attempts at obtaining mediation of thedispute; the Panchen Lama's flight into exile; and theabortive efforts aimed at resolving the differences betweenthe two hierarchs and bringing the Panchen Lama back toTibet.

Mehra's account is nicely constructed, especially sincehe provides extensive documentation at most turns of thestory. He provides facsimiles, in whole or in part, for nine ofthe documents that he cites. Even so, the documents uponwhich he has based his book largely reflect the perspectiveof officials within the British Foreign Office, and this in turnreveals itself in Mehra's narrative. Thus, for instance,although it is known from Chinese accounts that the

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396 Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.3 (1980)

Panchen Lama was rather active in asserting his positionamong powerful co-religionists beyond the political sway ofthe Dalai Lama's government, such as the officials at the TeWang court and in other parts of Inner Mongolia, suchactivities are barely alluded to at all by Mehra, significantthough they might have been. In addition, his assessment ofTibet as a "lama-ridden, tradition-bound land which forcenturies had been a cesspool of political, if also religiousstagnation" (p. 42) would be hard to sustain if one were torefer to any of the relevant Tibetan and Chinese accounts ofTibet during the last few centuries.

Nevertheless, Mehra's book is the first work to explorethis well-known conflict. As such it provides the onlyreasonably reliable account of it and it will certainly beuseful to students of modern Tibetan history. The utility ofthe book would have been increased, however, by theimprovement of two items, the index and the method of

romanization used for Tibetan names. The index is quiteincomplete and omits many of the persons referred to in the

narrative. It seems to be composed of only the mostimportant personal and place names, taken from the book'stext, and cannot really be considered an adequate tool. Asfor the romanization of Tibetan names, Mehra providesphonetic renderings that are arbitrary and inconsistent, bothin quotations from documents (in which case they might beacceptable) and in the narrative and commentary, Thefailure to provide scientific transliterations of Tibetannames, and the rendering of some syllables in more than oneway make it sometimes difficult to determine the trueTibetan form of a name, and thus to use other sourcesalongside of Mehra's work.

All in all, however, Mehra has done a creditable job ofexamining what British'archival materials have to say onthis topic, and Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937 may still beregarded as a contribution to the study of modern Tibet.

ELLIOT SPERLINGINDIANA UNIVERSITY