The Ninth Panchen Lama (1883-1937): A Life at the Crossroads of Sino-Tibetan Relations

359 Pages·2012·59.772 MB·English

by  Fabienne Jagou

THENINTH
PANCHEN LAMA
(1883-1937)
A LIFE AT THE CROSSROADS OF
SINO-TIBETAN RELATIONS
FABIENNE JAGOU
Translated by
REBECCA BISSETT BUECHEL
ECOLE FRAN<;AISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT
PARIS
SILKWORM BOOKS
CHIANG MAI
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments . vii
Preface ................. b:
Note on Transliteration xvii
Prologue .. 1
TIBET (1883-1923)
1. Childhood ...... ················· ...... 7
2. Flight from Tibet ... ············ ................. 23
CHINA (1924-1935)
3. Religious Affairs ................................. 61
4. Chinese and Asian Politics .............................. 79
AT THE SINO-TIBETAN MARGINS (1934-1937)
5. Abortive Return to Tibet ········ ................................ 133
6. Transfer of Mortal Remains to Tashilhunpo .. .. ........................... 177
Appendixes
A. Ecclesiastical Lineages and Successions ...... .... .. . . .. ..... . ..... ····· ............ 191
B. Political Role of the Panchen Lamas in Tibet.. ................ . .. 195
c. Chronology of the Ninth Panchen La.ma's Life... . .. 205
o. Establishment of China Bureau Offices of the Panchen Lama ...................2 11
E. Administration of Tashilhunpo Monastery ................................................. 213
F. Tibetan Place-names. . ........ 223
G. Tibetan Spellings ........ 225
H. Chinese Sinography. . .......................... 239
Notes. .. .. 247
Bibliography ... .. . 289
Index ....................... 325
W 294.3923092-13-1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book represents the culmination of research that Professor Pierre-Etienne
Will from the College de France kindly consented to direct. May he find here the
expression of my sincerest gratitude for his standards of excellence, intellectual
rigor, and sense of history he so ably imparted. An equally warm thank you
goes to Mr. Fernand Meyer, director of research at France's Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifique, whose open-mindedness, infinite patience, and fine
scholarship contributed decisively to the accomplishment of this work, as well
as to Ms. Anne Chayet, director of research at Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, for her enthusiastic encouragement and precious advice. This study
could simply never have existed without the confidence that the late Yonten
Gyatso, researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and
Tashi Tsering, director of the Amnye Machen Institute in Dharamsala, placed in
me. My intellectual debt to them is truly vast given the knowledge they shared
and the orientation they lent to the inquiry.
The documentation that I had access to in Taiwan, China, and India would
have been far more limited without the assistance of many individuals. In Taiwan,
ZhangJunyi, professor at Taipei's Zhengzhi University, helped me take my first
steps in Academia Sinica. In China, Li Pengnian, employee at Archive Number
Two in Nanjing, and Ran Guangrong, history professor at the University of
Sichuan in Chengdu, guided me through the recesses of the archives there. In
India, Lobsang Shastri, head of the Tibetan Works and Archives at the Library
of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, enabled me to consult a number
of essential Tibetan documents. My immense appreciation goes to all of them,
in addition to the library staff at these institutes as well as the staff at the India
Office in London and Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolu-
tion and Peace in California.
In the same way, I would like to thank those who allowed the use of their
private libraries, especially Katia Buffetrille, cultural anthropologist and Tibe-
tologist, and Frani;oise Aubin, director of research at the Centre d'Etudes des
Relations lnternationales in Paris.
I am exceedingly grateful to the numerous people who consented to be inter-
viewed. They did not hesitate to delve into their past and contribute their time
to this effort. Particularly notable are the testimonies of the late KachenJangpa
Thubten, disciple of the Ninth Panchen Lama and abbot of the Tashilhunpo
monastery in Bylakuppe, India, and Yeshe Dorje, former bodyguard of the Ninth
Panchen Lama. Ngachen Darba Hutuktu's facilitation with the interviews in
South India was likewise invaluable.
Further, I would especially like to thank the official and private associations
who generously gave funds without which this work would not have been pos-
sible: The French Ministere de l'Education, de la Recherche et de la Technologie,
vilijACKNOWLEDGMENTS
the French and Chinese (People's Republic of China) Ministries of Foreign Affairs,
Taiwan's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, and the Chiang Ching-kuo
Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, as well as the Institut National
des Langues Orientales in Paris.
Franciscus Verellen, director of the Ecole Fran-;aise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO ),
Yves Goudineau and Fran-;ois Lachaud, former vice-directors, Valerie Liger-Belair,
administrative chief, Astrid Aschehoug and Geraldine Hue from EFEO Editions,
and Jacques Leider, my colleague in charge of the EFEO office in Chiang Mai,
were most supportive and helpful in working with me on this English edition
and I thank them very sincerely.
Without the graciousness of Rebecca Bissett Buechel, my patient translator,
this English version would have never come into being. I am extremely grate-
ful. Alex McKay and Peter Zarrow were also very helpful in reviewing certain
parts of the English manuscript. And finally, but not least, the enthusiasm of
TrasvinJittidecharak from Silkworm to publish this book in English and the
thorough copyediting of the final manuscript by Lisa S. Keary also earned my
undying gratitude.
Lastly, I truly hope that the Chinese and Tibetans who so aided in this research
will, in turn, give their opinions on this work, which reflects a Western view of
their history. If this study may in some way help enhance their understanding of
their own past and serve to find ways to live in mutual peace, then my dearest
aim will have been achieved.
PREFACE
The controversy arising in May 1995 regarding the selection of the reincarnation
of the deceased Tenth Panchen Lama (in which Chinese authorities took into
custody the child chosen as the Eleventh Panchen Lama by the current Four-
teenth Dalai Lama and imposed their own choice on the Buddhist community,
all the while cloaking the affair in dubious historical arguments) has made it all
the more urgent to clarify the tormented history of relations between China and
Tibet at the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, the flight of the Ninth
Panchen Lama from Tibet and his exile and death in China directly opened the
door for Chinese Republican, and then Communist, control over the Tenth
Panchen Lama, who passed away on January 28, 1989, with repercussions even
today over the polemical selection of his successor.1
An earlier study, which I conducted for a postgraduate degree at Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, revealed that the N"mthP anchen Lama's flight
was not only the most intense episode in his life, but that it had a determining
effect on the history of contemporary Tibet.2 Due to the audacity of the flight and
its final destination, both Indian and American authors have characterized the
prelate as an opponent to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's regime.3 Yet their analyses
differ greatly when describing the man himself. While the American scholar
Melvyn C. Goldstein is reluctant to position himself on the Ninth Panchen Lama's
temperament, his analysis shows the Panchen Lama to be very determined to set
up the independence of his province and ready to re-examine the very founda-
tions of the Tibetan political system. Pars!i_o_taMm e~ on the contrary, portrays "'~
the Panchen Lama as being "weak and timid," "gullible," "far from sure of his
ground," as opposed to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama whom he considers a "clever,
astute manager and manipulator of men," knowing how to handle people and
turn circumstances to his benefit. All the accounts from travelers and explorers
who met the Panchen Lama in person describe him as courteous, benevolent,
detached from ambition, and solely focused on Buddhist philosophical study.4
Chinese authors, when analyzing the particular actions of the Ninth Panchen
Lama, invariably conclude that he was a "great Chinese patriot." Tuey feel that his
actions "contributed to the unification of the Motherland." More recently, Jiang
Ping recognized the Pan ch en Lama's preponderant role in the spread of Tibetan
Buddhism. Before him, Shi Dongchu, a Taiwanese historian, had also analyzed
the importance of the religious role the Panchen Lama played by examining the
funeral orations given upon the death of the prelate. Following the example of
continental Chinese, he recognized that the Buddhist work accomplished by
the Ninth Panchen Lama in China contributed to unification and peace.5
Such a divergence in the analyses of Western and Chinese authors can, in
part, be explained by the respective sources of information used. One group
uses documents from the British government and the other group from Chinese
x/
PREFACE
government archives. Admittedly, though, the British sources used by both
Goldstein and Mehra do not prevent them from having diverging opinions of
the Ninth Panchen Lama.
Chinese authors show particular interest in the years that the Panchen Lama
spent in China, neglecting the causes for his departure from Tibet and the reasons
he failed to return. On the other hand, Western researchers have tended to be
unacquainted with the activities of the Pan ch en Lama in China.
The contradictions in these points of view left me wanting to know more. An
initial look at the available works in Parisian libraries offered no new elements
to the question.6 No biography of the Ninth Panchen Lama in any language was
referenced there. Moreover, other sources concerning the Panchen Lama that
were mentioned were press articles inaccessible from Paris.
As for the English translation of the work by the Tibetan historian Shakabpa
Wangchuk Deden, it is silent on the fourteen years spent by the Panchen Lama
in China. In general, the Tibetan sources translated into English were insuf-
ficient. Learning Tibetan (in addition to knowing Chinese) turned out to be
indispensable to delving deeper into the subject.
Toe exile of the Ninth Panchen Lama in China took place during the Repub-
lican regime. Faced with the dearth of information on his life during this period,
it became necessary first to go to Taiwan to consult the Nationalist govern-
ment's archives. Toe correspondence of the Foreign Office of the Qing dynasty
(1644-1911) found at Academia Sinica revealed nothing more than a few par-
tial bits of information about the period of the Panchen Lama's life up to 1923,
when he was still residing in Tibet. 7 I discovered that most of the documents
concerning the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, which was created
by the Republican government in 1928, are currently located in Nanjing in the
People's Republic of China.
From the outset, research undertaken in China in 1992 and 1993 turned out
to be problematic due to the political situation in Tibet, since all requests for
historical documents covering this country are considered suspicious. For the
Chinese, Tibet represents such a sensitive topic that it precludes them from
having any objectivity on the issue. In this context, research in China proved
to be a real obstacle, which explains why it was necessary to spend a year in
the field before obtaining any significant results. Only tenacity and patience
allowed me to bring together a great number of documents that until then had
been unexploited, study them firsthand, and present them herein.
First of all, there are two hagiographies written by disciples of the Ninth
Panchen Lama entitled Banchan da shi quanji (Complete Works of the Great
Master Panchen) and Banchan da shi dong lai shiwu nian dashiji (Main Events
during the Fifteen Years the Great Master Panchen Spent in the East), both
published in Chongqing in 1943. Their respective authors, Liu Jiaju (Kelzang
Chonjor) and Chen Wenjian, who remains unidentified, retrace the prelate's
life from 1923 to 1937. Kelzang Chonjor was both secretary and interpreter to