Foreign Explorers and the Policy of Seclusion.
During the first decade of November, 1901, I returned to Lhasa to enjoy
as before the hospitality of the ex-Minister. At that time the Finance
Minister of the day was somewhat less occupied, and being, as I stated
before, a nephew of the nun who was mistress of the house where I was a
guest, and a gentleman of refined and affable manners, he used often to
call on and be invited to sit with the ex-Minister, the nun and myself,
and to take part in our chats. Sometimes I called upon the Minister
of the day in his apartments to talk with him. On one occasion our
conversation touched on the subject of a British female missionary, who
attempted to visit Lhasa.
“I wonder why British people are so desirous to come to our country,”
observed the Minister in the course of our talk. “I cannot at all
understand their motive. For instance, a British woman arrived some
eight or nine years ago at a place called Nakchukha on the boundary
between Tibet and China. She came there with two servants determined to
enter Tibet.”
It at once occurred to me that the Minister was referring to the case
of one Miss Annie R. Taylor, a missionary, who attempted to travel
from northern China to Darjeeling via Lhasa. My host did not know, or
could not remember, her name, but I knew it very well, having been
told of her bold venture while I was staying at Darjeeling, where I
accidentally met with one of the guides who had accompanied her. But I
prudently kept what I knew to myself, and listened to the Minister as
one eager to hear a strange and interesting story. The Minister went
on to tell me how the lady was stopped by the natives of the place
from proceeding further. It was very fortunate that the chieftain of
the local tribe was a man of a merciful turn of mind, as otherwise
she would have been murdered there and then. A report on the matter
was soon forwarded to Lhasa by the magistrate of the district, and my
host was then ordered by his Government to hasten to the spot, and
deal with the foreign adventuress in a suitable manner. In other words
his commission was to cause the lady at once to quit Tibetan soil.
The Minister took with him two of his servants, besides a number of
coolies, the party altogether numbering about thirty.
Arrived at Nakchukha, he at once caused the lady to be brought to him;
but when he saw her, he at first could not understand what she was
saying, for although she spoke Tibetan, it was in a dialect differing
from that in vogue at Lhasa. At last he succeeded in gathering the
drift of what she had to say, which was to this effect. She had come to
Tibet in order to acquaint herself with the sacred teachings of Tibetan
Buḍḍhism. With that object she wanted to make a pilgrimage to Lhasa and
to return home by way of Darjeeling. She then showed to the Minister a
passport she had obtained from the Emperor of China. The Minister told
her that personally he highly appreciated the lady’s purpose, but he
was under strict orders from the Grand Lama’s Government to forbid the
entrance of the lady and of any other foreigner within his dominions.
Should she, in disregard of this intimation, dare to push her way into
the interior, she would be sure to meet with some terrible mishap,
perhaps death, for the Grand Lama’s Government could not extend its
protection to a foreigner who, in defiance of its well-meant warning,
should attempt a journey through the wild districts of Tibet. His
Government did not like the idea of being entangled needlessly in
trouble with another country, and therefore absolutely demanded the
withdrawal of the lady from Tibet. As a messenger of the Grand Lama’s
Government, especially despatched for this purpose, he must ask the
lady to retrace her steps. The Minister dwelt on this point courteously
but firmly.
The lady on her part equally remained unyielding in her original
declaration, and persisted on repeating her request, not for one or
two days only, but even for four or five days in succession. When the
Minister pointed out how foolhardy she was in her desire, and why she
should rather return the way she had come under the protection of the
Grand Lama’s Government, which would, in that case, escort her back as
far as some safe place, the lady demanded an explanation as to why a
person, possessing a passport obtained from the Emperor of China, could
not travel through Tibet, which was a protectorate under that Emperor.
The Minister admitted the suzerainty of the Chinese Emperor, but said
that, at the same time, they were not obliged to obey the Emperor’s
will in everything, and that especially in the matter of seclusion they
were determined to oppose even the Emperor, should he try by force to
set aside this traditional policy. He further added, as he told me,
that if the lady should still persist in her intention, he would be
constrained to put her two Tibetan guides under arrest, and punish them
according to the laws of the land. This punishment would be waived,
however, if the lady desisted from her purpose and withdrew from Tibet.
After all these protracted negotiations, the lady was at last induced
to give up her point, and in about half a day’s time after their last
meeting she came to acquaint him with the change in her resolution. As
it was ascertained that the lady and her guides were subject to much
discomfort, having suffered robbery on the way, the Minister kindly
gave her some necessaries before she left Tibet for China.
After having narrated all these things the Minister once more gave
vent to his feeling of wonder at the inexplicable eagerness which
foreigners were wont to show in their desire to visit his country. I
for my part replied discreetly that neither did I know why they should
wish to enter it, but that I had heard that such attempts on the part
of foreigners were not a novelty. The Minister himself knew that cases
of strangers making attempts similar to that of the British lady were
not rare, and our conversation next turned to this part of Tibetan
history.
The first authentic story of the arrival of a foreigner in Tibet is
recorded in the year 1328, when a priest of Pordenone, named Friar
Odoric, entered Tibet as a propagandist of the Roman Catholic Church.
His attempt failed, chiefly because the Tibetans of the time had
nothing in particular to learn from Odoric, for Tibet possessed many
priests of its own, who were able to perform many things differing
little from those recorded of Jesus Christ in their miraculous
character. Indeed Odoric himself seems to have profited by what he
saw in Tibet, instead of imparting anything new to the natives. He
took notes of many wonderful things performed by Tibetan priests, and
took them home, but he burnt most of those notes, for fear that their
publication might compromise the interests of his own religion. So only
a fragment of the account of his travels was preserved.
Some persons attribute this destruction of his own notes by Odoric
to the inaccuracies which he had subsequently discovered, and claim
that he destroyed them in order not to mislead future generations.
This explanation has generally been accepted in preference to the
other--that the Tibetan Buḍḍhism of the fourteenth century possessed a
larger number of miracles than those of Christianity. That the latter
was the more correct explanation of the two may be inferred, however,
from the fact that the Roman Catholic Church, while devoting great
energy to propagating its doctrines in China, kept itself aloof from
Tibet, having come to the conclusion that that country was beyond its
evangelising power.
In 1661 two brothers named Grueber and D’Orville, probably Frenchmen,
entered Tibet. It is doubtful whether they proceeded as far as Lhasa,
though it is stated that they went from Pekin to Lhasa and thence
through Nepāl to India. When Warren Hastings was the Viceroy of India,
he conceived the idea of establishing a regular trade connexion between
India and Tibet, and dispatched a commissioner, named George Bogle,
to the latter country in the year 1774. Bogle was accompanied by his
wife. He failed to reach Lhasa, but remained at Shigatze, and his
account of the journey is still extant in print. In 1781 Hastings again
dispatched a commissioner, this time under Captain Turner, who stayed
in Tibet for two years. Only one English explorer reached Lhasa from
India. That man was Thomas Manning, and it was in 1811.
About that time trade between India and Tibet had grown active, but
with the termination of Hasting’s viceroyalty and his return to England
the trade began to flag for lack of encouragement, till it ceased
altogether. All channels of communications have since that time become
almost closed between the two countries. Meanwhile other Christian
missionaries had begun pushing on their work with great activity, even
up to Lhasa, which they entered freely, and also to other places,
some of them not far from that city, and this movement on the part of
foreign propagandists put the Grand Lama’s Government on its guard.
Coming down as late as 1871, a Russian Colonel named Prejevalsky
entered Tibet across its eastern border through Kham, and reached
a place about five hundred miles from Lhasa. But he was compelled
to return thence homeward, at the bidding of Tibet’s hierarchical
Government. Apparently he at first passed through the Chinese region
of Tibet, but was stopped as soon as he had set his feet in the Dalai
Lama’s dominions. This Russian Officer, undaunted by his first failure,
next tried to enter Tibet from the north, and this time he reached a
place about one hundred and seventy miles from Lhasa on the boundary
line between the Chinese and the Tibetan territories, but was again
obliged to withdraw.
In 1879 an Englishman named Captain Hill entered Tibet from the
direction of Ta-chien-lu, but he also had to withdraw from Ba-lithang
on the boundary between the Chinese and Tibetan dominions. It was at
this place also that the Japanese priests, Messrs. Nōmi and Teramoto,
were driven back. My host the Minister once incidentally referred to
Mr. Nōmi’s attempt, and said that two priests from a country named
Japan reached Ba-lithang some years ago, but they were ordered to
withdraw, as it was not sufficiently clear whether they were really
Buḍḍhist priests or persons of other callings.
The last exploration I would mention here is that undertaken in 1881
and 1882 by Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās, my own teacher, of whom mention has been
made several times already. This Hinḍū had obtained in a very ingenious
way a pass from the Tibetan Government, and, armed with it, he first
proceeded as far as Shigatze, where he remained for two months; after
awhile he returned to India. That was in 1881. The result of his
exploration was reported to the British Government, and he was for a
second time asked to undertake another trip into Tibet in the following
year, having secured as before a Tibetan passport. On his second visit
he first reached Shigatze and afterward entered Lhasa. As I heard
from a Tibetan, he conducted his mission with extreme caution, seldom
venturing abroad in the daytime, and when obliged to do so he took
every care to avoid attracting the attention of the natives. He spent
most of his time in a room of a temple, and there secretly carried out
his investigations. In this way he stayed in Lhasa for twenty days;
then he went back to his sphere of work in other parts of Tibet and at
last returned to Darjeeling after an absence of less than a year.
I have mentioned, in a preceding chapter that when the real nature
of the mission of Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās had become known to the Tibetan
Government, it caused extraordinary disturbance, involving all the
officials who had been on duty at the barrier-gates through which the
Hinḍū had passed, as well as all the persons who had extended any sort
of hospitality to him during his stay in the country. All these persons
were thrown into prison and their property was confiscated. A number
of those whose complicity, unwitting though it was, was judged more
serious than that of the others were condemned to death and executed.
After this memorable occurrence, Tibet resolved more than ever to
enforce strictly the policy of exclusion against all foreigners.
In 1886 a Secretary of the American Legation at Peking, Mr. Rockhill,
tried to enter Tibet, only to repeat the failure of others, and all
other Christian missionaries who made similar attempts about that time
were also unsuccessful. The number of abortive Tibetan explorers must
be quite large; I myself heard of some twenty-five or twenty-six. I
should not wonder if the number would reach forty or even fifty, when
all the would-be explorers are taken into account. I have frequently
seen in our Japanese magazines and newspapers articles about Tibet,
which are highly misleading and often fictitious. The fact must be
that those articles are written on the incorrect information found in
most works on Tibet, and that the inaccuracy is further aggravated
by the inventive brains of the writers of the articles. One of the
most conspicuous instances of this kind is furnished in the case of
A. Csoma de Körös, a Hungarian, who first compiled a Tibetan-English
dictionary, having learned the language from a Lama in Ladak, a
district on the south-western boundary of Tibet, next to British India,
where the compiler resided for more than three years. The author
wanted to study the Tibetan language on its native soil and for that
reason attempted to enter Tibet. He found it impossible to carry out
his plan from Ladak, as the Tibetan frontier guards there forbade the
entry into their country of a stranger. Then it occurred to him that
he might succeed in his project if he started from Darjeeling, and
thither he went. Unfortunately, he caught jungle-fever while travelling
in the neighborhood of Darjeeling and died there, never having put
his foot on Tibetan soil. His tomb even now stands at a place near
Darjeeling, probably at the place where he fell ill. Writers on Tibet,
both Japanese and Western, mostly represent this Csoma as having spent
many years in Lhasa, and that is where the fiction comes in. Another
lexicographer, Jaeschke, compiled a Tibetan dictionary based on, but
much better than Csoma’s. Jaeschke never entered Tibet, and yet he is
generally credited with having successfully crossed the border and
reached Lhasa, and lived there for a considerable period. All such
errors being made by Western writers as well as by the Japanese, I do
not of course mean to blame the latter alone.
Besides the attempts at Tibetan exploration already referred to,
there have from time to time been a number of missionaries or spies
despatched by either Russia or England, who have frequently appeared at
Tibetan frontier stations only to arouse the suspicions of the Grand
Lama’s Government, until the latter has become irrevocably committed
to the policy of absolute seclusion. To do justice to the Tibetans,
they were originally a people highly hospitable to strangers. This
sentiment was superseded by one of fear and even of antipathy, as the
result of an insidious piece of advice which, probably prompted by some
policy of its own, the Government of China gave to Tibet; it was to
the effect that if the latter allowed the free entrance of foreigners
into her territories, they would destroy her Buḍḍhism, and replace it
with Christianity. The simple-minded Tibetan became dreadfully alarmed
at this warning; but even then he did not all at once put the policy
of exclusion into full force. The absolute exclusion dates from the
discovery of Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās’ mission. Since then, the enforcement of
the exclusion policy has become so strict that it now seems as though
Tibet has been converted into a nation of detectives and constables.
Especially for European people, with such visible marks of racial
distinction on the surface and also because they are accustomed to make
their attempts on a large scale, it has become morally impossible to
enter Tibet. Dr. Sven Hedin, for example, tried to enter repeatedly
from the north, while I was staying at Lhasa, but each time the
renowned explorer was baffled in his attempt, and he finally gave it
up altogether[3]. In view of such repeated attempts on the part of
foreigners, both the Lamas and ordinary people could not but suspect
the motive of these adventurers, and they have therefore naturally
come to the conclusion that all those foreigners must be entertaining
some sinister designs on Tibet. The popular idea about the supposed
designs of England is interesting, for the natives attribute it to
the desire on the part of English people to take possession of gold
mines which are plentifully found in their country. This is of course
a very superficial view, so far as the interest England seems to feel
toward Tibet is concerned; for the Tibetan policy of that country, in
my own humble opinion, comes from the desire to prevent Russia from
bringing Tibet under her sway and from using that highland as a base of
operations in carrying out her ambitious projects on India, for it is
evident that, with Russia securely established up there, England would
hardly be able to feel secure about the safety of India.
[3] Dr. Sven Hedin succeeded in entering Tibet from Kashmir in 1906.
The Tibetan Minister of the Treasury once said to me that it would
indeed be a great humiliation to Tibet if ever she were reduced to
being a tributary of another country, but that there might be another
calamity far more disastrous and unbearable in its effect, and that
was the danger of her national religion being superseded by a strange
faith. Therefore, the Minister continued, Tibet must oppose, at all
costs, any plans made by foreigners against her, and consequently the
latter should be prevented from hearing of the existence of factious
rivalries in the Hierarchy, for should they get an inkling of this
state of affairs, it would not take them long to turn this internal
dissension to serve their own mischievous ends. Hence it was absolutely
necessary for Tibet that she should forbid the entry of all foreigners
and keep them in the dark as to the real condition of the country. It
will thus be seen that the seclusion policy, which primarily originated
in religious motives, has since acquired a greater force from political
considerations, and it is not strange that no foreigners have been
allowed to enter Tibet since the revelation of the secret mission of
Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās. That incident, the then Minister of Finance told
me in referring to it, impressed the Tibetans more strongly than ever
with the necessity of locking their door against the intrusion of all
foreigners.