Ippolito Desideri 1

Ippolito DesideriIppolito Desideri (21 December 1684 – 14 April 1733) was an Italian Jesuit missionary in Tibet and the firstEuropean to have successfully studied and understood Tibetan language and culture.

BiographyDesideri was born in 1684 to a fairly prosperous family in Pistoia, Tuscany. He was educated from childhood in theJesuit school in Pistoia, and in 1700 was selected to attend the Collegio Romano (Roman College) in Rome. From1706 to 1710 he taught literature at the Jesuit colleges in Orvieto and Arezzo, and later at the Collegio Romanoitself.

Journey to TibetHis application for the Indies mission was accepted by the Father-General of the Society of Jesus, MichelangeloTamburini, in 1712, and he was assigned to reopen the Tibetan mission, which was under the jurisdiction of theJesuit Province of Goa. Desideri left Rome on 27 September 1712, and embarked for the East in Lisbon on aPortuguese vessel, arriving in Goa one year later. From Goa he traveled to Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajasthan and Delhi,arriving in Agra (the seat of the Jesuit mission in Northern India) on 15 September 1714. From there he returned toDelhi, where he met his superior and travel companion, the Portuguese Jesuit Manoel Freyre. Together they traveledfrom Delhi to Srinagar in Kashmir (where they were delayed for six months, and Desideri suffered a nearly fatalintestinal illness), and from Kashmir to Leh, capital of Ladakh, arriving there at the end of June, 1715. According toDesideri, they were well received by the king of Ladakh and his court, and he wished to remain there to found amission, but he was forced to obey his Superior, Freyre, who insisted that they travel to Central Tibet and Lhasa.They thus undertook a perilous seven months winter journey across the Tibetan plateau; ill-prepared andinexperienced, their very survival was likely due to the help they received from Casal, the Mongol governor (andwidow of the previous governor of Western Tibet), who was leaving her post and returning to Lhasa. They journeyedwith her armed caravan, and finally arrived in Lhasa on 18 March 1716. After a few weeks Freyre returned to India,via Kathmandu and Patna, leaving Desideri in charge of the mission. He was the only European missionary in Tibet,at that time.

Settling down in LhasaSoon after arriving in Lhasa Desideri was received in audience by the Mongol ruler of Tibet, Lajang (Wylie: Lhabzang) Khan, who gave him permission to rent a house in Lhasa and to practice and teach Christianity. After readingDesideri's first work in Tibetan, on the basics of Catholic doctrine, Lajang Khan advised him to improve his Tibetanand learn the Tibetan Buddhist religious and philosophical literature. After some months of intensive study heentered the Sera monastic university, one of the three great seats of learning of the politically involved Gelukpa.There he studied and debated with Tibetan monks and scholars, and was permitted to have a Christian chapel in hisrooms. He learned the language (unknown to Europeans before) and became a voracious student of the culture.At the end of 1717 he was forced to leave Lhasa due to the unrest caused by the invasion of the Dzungar Mongols.He retired to the Capuchin hospice in Dakpo province, in South Central Tibet, although he did return to Lhasa forconsiderable periods during the period 1719-1720. Between 1718 and 1721 he composed five works in literaryTibetan, in which he taught Christian doctrines and attempted to refute the Buddhist concepts of rebirth (which hereferred to as "metempsychosis") and 'Emptiness' (Wylie: stong pa nyid; Sanskrit: śunyatā). In these books Desideriutilized the Tibetan Buddhist techniques of scholastic argumentation, and accepted parts of Buddhism that he did notsee as contradictory to Catholic teaching, especially Buddhist moral philosophy.

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Conflict with the CapuchinsItalian missionaries of the Capuchin Order had been granted the Tibetan mission in 1703 by the Propaganda Fide, thebranch of the Church administration that controlled Catholic missionary activity worldwide. Three Capuchinsarrived in Lhasa in October, 1716, and promptly presented documents to Desideri that they claimed confirmed theirexclusive right to the Tibetan mission by the Propaganda. Desideri contested the charge of disobedience to thePropaganda Fide, and both sides complained to Rome. In the meantime Desideri helped his Capuchin co-religionistsin acclimating to Tibet. While the Capuchins had no quarrel with Desideri personally, they feared that other Jesuitswould follow and displace them from Tibet and Nepal, and they petitioned for his expulsion from the country. InJanuary, 1721, Desideri received the order to leave Tibet and return to India. After a long stay in Kuti, at theTibetan-Nepali border, he returned to Agra in 1722.

Later yearsAt Agra Desideri was appointed head pastor of the Catholic community in the Mughal capital of Delhi. He organizededucation and services for the community, and had a new church built to replace the former dilapidated edifice. In1725 he went to the French Jesuit Malabar mission in Pondicherry, located in the present Indian state of Tamil Nadu,and set to work learning the Tamil language and carrying on the mission there. In 1727 he was sent to Rome topromote the cause of the beatification of John de Brito, a Jesuit who had died a martyr in South-India. He took alonghis very extensive notes on Tibet, its culture and religion, and began work on his Relation, which in its latestmanuscript was called "Historical Notices of Tibet" (Notizie Istoriche del Tibet) while still homeward bound on aFrench vessal. He landed in France in August, 1727, and after a stay in that country, where he met with importantcardinals and aristocrats and had an audience with King Louis XV, he arrived in Rome in January 1728. He took upresidence in the Jesuit professed house, and his time was fully occupied in the legal proceedings at the PropagandaFide between himself, representing the Jesuit order, and Fr. Felice di Montecchio, who fiercely prosecuted theCapuchin case; Desideri wrote three Defenses of the Jesuit position. On 29 November 1732, the Propaganda issuedits final terse order on the matter, confirming the exclusive right of the Capuchins to the Tibet mission, andforbidding any further discussion on the subject. Desideri had been working during this time on revising the Relationand was preparing it for publication, which was forbidden by the Propaganda order.Manuscripts of this monumental work, comprising the first accurate account of Tibetan geography, government,agriculture, customs, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and belief, were buried in the Jesuit archives and a privatecollection, and did not come to light until the late 19th century; the Relation finally appeared in a complete editionby Luciano Petech which was published in the 1950s. An abridged English translation was published in 1937, and acomplete translation in 2010.

Main works• Ippolito Desideri: An Account of Tibet. The Travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J., 1712-1727. Edited by

Filippo de Filippi, with an introduction by C. Wessels, S.J. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 1932 (TheBroadway Travellers)

• Opere Tibetane di Ippolito Desideri S.J. Edited by Giuseppe Toscano (4 vol., 1981–1989)• Historical Notices of Tibet and Recollections of My Journeys, and the Mission Founded There (Relation), and

other works, edited by Luciano Petch (1954–1957, in Petech,"Missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal" vol. 5-7.•• "Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri S.J." Trans. by

Michael Sweet, Ed. by Leonard Zwilling (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010)

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References• Wessels, C. (1921). Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia 1603-1721. The Hague. ISBN 81-206-0741-4.• de Filippi, F. (1932). An Account of Tibet: the travels of Ippolito Desideri (1712-1727).• Petech, L. (1954-57). I Missionari italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal. Rome.• Castello Panti, S., Ippolito Desideri e il Tibet (1984). Pistoia.• Rauty, N (1984). Notizie inedite su Ippolito Desideri e sulla sua famiglia tratte dagli archivi pistoiesi. Pistoia.• Luca, A. (1987). Nel Tibet Ignoto. Lo straordinario viaggio di Ippolito Desideri. Bologna.• Bargiacchi, E.G. (February 2003). "La 'Relazione' di Ippolito Desideri fra storia locale e vicende internazionale".

Storia locale: quaderni pistoiesi di cultura moderna e contemporanea: pp. 4–103.• Bargiacchi, E.G. (2006). Ippolito Desideri S.J. alla scoperta del Tibet e del buddhismo. Pistoia.• Bargiacchi, E.G. (2007). Ippolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e bibliografia. Rome.• Sweet, M.J. (August, 2006). "Desperately Seeking Capuchins: Manoel Freyre's 'Report on the Tibets and their

Routes (Tibetorum ac eorum Relatio Viarum)' and the Desideri Mission to Tibet". Journal of the InternationalAssociation for Tibetan Studies (2): pp. 1–33.

•• Sweet, M.J. "The Devil's Stratagem or Human Fraud: Ippolito Desideri on the Reincarnate Succession of theDalai Lama" Buddhist-Christian Studies, 29, 2009, 131-140.

• Pomplun, R.T. (2006). "Divine Grace and the Play of Opposites". Buddhist-Christian Studies (26): pp. 159–163.•• Pomplun, T. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2010).

External links• Ippolito Desideri, Il Tibet e il buddhismo (http:/ / www. ippolito-desideri. net/ index. html)

Article Sources and Contributors 4

Article Sources and ContributorsIppolito Desideri  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=516944693  Contributors: Attilios, B9 hummingbird hovering, Bangalorius, Bobblehead, Brian0324, CanisRufus, Entropy,Iridescent, John Hill, Lopakhin, Mhockey, Michele Dolce, Milly722, Multichill, Neddyseagoon, PL290, Padananda, Randomblue, Rich Farmbrough, Rjwilmsi, RogDel, Rédacteur Tibet, SunCreator, The Ogre, Tibetologist, Uxbona, Zerged, 14 anonymous edits

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