Ernst Steinkellner & Helmut Tauscher, eds., Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture: Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981, vol. 1. Ernst Steinkellner & Helmut Tauscher, eds., Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy: Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981, vol. 2. Review in Acta Orientalia, vol. 57 (1997), pp. 259-262.
For a link to the review in the form of a PDF delivered by Dropbox, tap on these words. (Dropbox link has been dropped, unfortunately, July 2014).
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Ernst Steinkellner & Helmut Tauscher (eds.): Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture. Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981. Vol. 1. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1995. Reprint of the 1983 edition, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien. Pp. xviii, 455, xviii plates.
Ernst Steinkellner & Helmut Tauscher (eds.): Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy. Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös Symposium Held at Velm-Vienna, Austria, 13-19 September 1981. Vol. 2. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1995. Reprint of the 1983 edition, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien. Pp. vii, 332.
Faced with the duty of briefly reviewing the group of nearly fifty articles contained in this quite finely made reprint edition, it will be necessary to narrow our remarks to but a few of the highlights from the perspective of our own main interests, interests which might be described as cultural-historical, including religion, but neither philosophy per se nor linguistics per se. Authors disappointed that their contributions have been passed over in silence will not take offense when none is intended.
Considering the fast pace of Tibetological research during the last 25 years, it is remarkable in retrospect that so much of the work (including, we stress once more, much that is unmentioned here) remains topical and repays rereading nearly fifteen years later. To be sure, in some particular areas rapid evolutionary changes have taken place. For example, Kanjurforschung, a sub-discipline which, in its modern incarnation, was largely inspired and formed by H. Eimer, has been obliged to alter its grand stemma from year to year in order to accommodate newly accessible Kanjur editions.
J. Karsten's piece about annual secular festivals in Lhasa, admirably combining oral and literary sources, has now been nicely complemented — by no means replaced — by a new book by H. Richardson (Ceremonies of the Lhasa Year, Serindia Publications, London 1993).
Some of the articles have inspired responses from other scholars. To give one example, S. Karmay's contribution, a solid study – with a photographically reproduced text, a transcription and a translation – of a Dunhuang text which, as he points out, demonstrates contra some of the critical theories of certain twentieth-century Tibetologists, that the Bon/Chos polarity is indeed attested in an Old Tibetan document. R. A. Stein, a holder of one of the theories thereby placed in question, responded in a recent article ("Tibetica Antiqua V," BEFEO, vol. 77 [1988], pp. 27-56, at p. 40). Although it would lead us too far afield were we to explore the nuances of their differences here, we should point out the potential value of such scholarly discussions for bringing greater clarity and precision to the kinds of questions we might want to ask, as well as for motivating greater research effort. If statements of hope may be allowed to translate into prophecy, eventually we will see a book-length study of all the Old Tibetan documentary evidence relative to Bon.
A number of contributors have meanwhile penned dissertations and monographs on subjects closely related to those of their papers in these volumes. To give a few examples only, from C. Beckwith we now have the most important study ever of the political and military history of the Tibetan imperial period (The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1987). M. Helffer has gone on to publish a large book about Tibetan musical instruments (mChod-rol: Les instruments de la musique tibétaine, CNRS Éditions, Paris, 1995). E. Sperling completed a dissertation on the same subject as his contribution.
It is sad to be reminded that a few of the writers in these volumes have meanwhile passed on. But rather than dwell on a justifiable sense of bereavement, we might allow ourselves to be heartened by the literary inheritance their works represent for us and future generations of Tibet-students to study and ponder. We will give one small example of a possible insight that came from a second reading of the late Géza Uray's paper entitled "Tibet's Connections with Nestorianism and Manicheism in the 8th-10th Centuries." He argues against the idea that the form "Mar Ma-ne," which occurs in a late-eighth-century Tibetan text to represent Mar Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, would have been borrowed from Chinese. As part of this argument he reconstructs what a Tibetan transcription from a northwestern Chinese dialect of the period would have looked like, yielding the hypothetical forms *'bar 'ba 'ji and *'bar man 'ji. It occurred to us that the first of these hypothetical Tibetan forms of the name Mani, namely *'Ba-'ji, might very well explain a very difficult term used twice in the tenth-century anti-tantric polemic of the king Lha bla-ma Ye-shes-'od. In the latter we encounter the form 'ba'-'ji-ba, further qualified as mu-stegs, 'heretics'. Final -ba is a Tibetan suffix (also, incidentally, sometimes taking the form -pa) which is frequently used to form human collectivities (on the basis of common place, ancestry, religious or philosophical school, etc.).[1]
This would lead to further questions, of course, including, 'Why would a tenth-century ruler of western Tibet use a Chinese-derived word for Manichaeans to describe a local Tibetan phenomenon?' Surely he didn't intend to state that they were in fact of the Manichaean faith. It is much more likely that he was just searching for another generic term for 'heretic' to add rhetorical force to the usual word mu-stegs[-pa], in his disparaging characterization of the 'village masters' (grong-gi mkhan-po), the lay tantra practitioners of his time. This is not the place to go into this interesting subject with rigor and detail, and so just let us say in closing that those who have not yet taken the plunge – and needless to say those who might be thinking of plunging in once more – will definitely surface with pearls of their own.
Dan Martin
Senter for høyere studier, Oslo
[1]Experienced readers of Tibetan will know that the presence or absence of the second 'a-chung (represented in transcription with an apostrophe) is of no real consequence. Hence, 'ba-'ji is really equivalent to 'ba'-'ji. For the term in the context of the polemic, see S. Karmay, "The Ordinance of Lha bla-ma Ye-shes-'od," contained in: M. Aris & A. S. Suu Kyi, eds., Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, Warminster, Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1980, pp. 150-162 at pp. 156 and 162 and also p. 152, where he notes an occurrence in the sBa-bzhed of an alternative form 'ban-'dzi-ba (but also note that this word does not seem to occur in any form in the recent edition of the sBa-bzhed [=sBa-bzhed ces bya-ba-las sBa gSal-snang-gi bZhed-pa], ed. by mGon-po-rgyal-mtshan, Mi-rigs dpe-skrun-khang, Lhasa, 1980 and 1982). For the name in the context of the Tibetan work by Ye-shes-'od on which Karmay based his study, see The Collected Writings of Sog-bzlog-pa Blo-gros-rgyal-mtshan, New Delhi, Sanje Dorji, 1975, vol. 1, p. 439, line 6.