"Lamaism" and the Disappearance of Tibet Author(s): Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 3-25 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/179336 Accessed: 30/05/2010 18:59
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"Lamaism"and the Disappearance of Tibet

DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR. Universityof Michigan for the Buddhism of is an undesirable 'Lamaism' therefore, designation Altogether, out of use. Tibet,andis rightly dropping L. A. Waddell (1915) of India,China,andJapan with of theesoteric Buddhism wasa combination Lamaism nativecultsof the Himalayas. National Brochure (1991) Gallery At an exhibition in 1992 at the NationalGalleryin Washington,D.C., "Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration,"one room among the four devoted to Ming China was called "LamaistArt." In the coffee-tablebook producedfor and descriptionsof over 1,100 of the works the exhibition, with reproductions displayed, however, not one painting, sculpture,or artifactwas describedas being of Tibetanorigin. In commentingupon one of the Ming paintings, the well-known Asian art historian, Sherman E. Lee, wrote, "The individual [Tang and Song] motifs, however, were woven into a thicket of obsessive design produced for a non-Chinese audience. Here the aesthetic wealth of China was placed at the service of the complicatedtheology of Tibet."' This complicatedtheology is namedby Lee with the term "Lamaism,"an abstract noun thatdoes not occur in the Tibetanlanguagebut which has a long history in the West, a history inextricablefrom the ideology of explorationand discovery that the National Gallery cautiously sought to celebrate. Lee echoes of Lamaismas somethingmonstrous,a comthe nineteenth-century portrayal of the spirit of original Buddhism (as devoid of unnatural lineage, posite constructedby EuropeanOrientialists).Lamaismwas a deformityunique to Tibet, its parentagedenied by India(in the voice of BritishIndologists)andby so unique in fact that China (in the voice of the Qing empire), an aberration it would eventually float free from its Tibetan abode, an abode that would vanish. In the discourse of the ChristianWest, the term Lamaismoften appearsin syntactical proximity to the term Roman Catholicism. For example, Philip Zaleski wrote recentlyof TibetanBuddhismthat"it has justly been called the
1 ShermanE. Lee, "TheLuohan in Jay A. Levenson, ed., Circa 1492; Art in Cudapanthaka," NationalGallery of Art and Yale University Press, 1991), the Age of Exploration(Washington: 459.

0010-4175/96/1169-1708 $7.50 + . 10 ? 1996SocietyforComparative Studyof SocietyandHistory

DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

and mystiRomanCatholicismof the East:ancientand complex, hierarchical cal, with an elaborateliturgy,a lineage of saints, even a leader addressedas His Holiness."2 Zaleski, a senior editor of Parabola (a publication of the devotedto the particular brandof Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition cross-culturalcomparisonfound in the work of Jung, HeinrichZimmer, and Joseph Campbell), seems unaware, however, that this particularcomparison has a long history. It is as if a certain amnesia has set in, under which the association of TibetanBuddhism, called Lamaism, with Roman Catholicism seems somehow free, somehow self-evident, to be later construedas somehow also objective by recourseto projectedtheories of causation, influence, borrowing,and diffusion.3But this associationof Lamaismand Catholicism, like all associations, is not free. Europewould posit no legitimateancestorsfor Lamaismin Asia; it seemed unlike anything else, and it is from this state of genealogical absence that Lamaismwas most susceptibleto comparison,that it could begin to look like Catholicism. The use of the term Lamaismin Europeandiscourse as a code word for Popish ritualismand as a substitutefor Tibet is, in its own way, not of Tibet as a nation. During the nineunrelatedto the recent disappearance and contestedby Britainand China. teenthcentury,Tibet was both threatened And in the twentieth century, the absence of Tibet became manifest in art exhibitioncataloguesand in maps of Asia, as the nationof Tibet was forcibly into China. The historyof these effects begins with the particular incorporated vicissitudes that led to the formationof the term Lamaismthrougha process that Max Miiller might have termed, "the decay of language."4
LA AND LAMA

The Tibetanterm 'lama' (bla ma) is derivedfrom two words, la and ma. The notion of la, generally translatedas "soul," "spirit,"or "life," predates the introductionof Buddhisminto Tibet. The la is said to be an individual'slife force, the essential supportand vitalityof the physicaland mentalconstitution of the person;the la is mobile, can leave the body and wander,or be carried off by gods and demons, to the detrimentof the person it animates, who will become either ill or mentally unbalancedas a result. There are, thus, rites designed to call the la back into the body.5Even when it is properlyrestoredto its place in the body, the la may simultaneouslyreside in certain external
2 Philip Zaleski, review of The TibetanBook of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rimpoche,New YorkTimesBook Review (27 December 1992), 21. 3 See Jonathan Z. Smith, ImaginingReligion:FromBabylon to Jonestown(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982), 22. 4 For a recent readingof Miiller, see TomokoMasuzawa,In Search of Dreamtime:The Quest for the Origin of Religion (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1993), 57-75. 5 For a discussion of this rite, see FerdinandLessing, "Callingthe Soul: A LamaistRitual, Semiticand OrientalStudies, 11 (1951), 263-84 and, more recently,RobertR. Desjarlais,Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas (Philadelphia; University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1992), 198-222.

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abodes, such as a lake, tree, mountain,or animal. The personin whom the la resides standsin what Frazerwould call a sympatheticrelationshipwith these phenomena: If the la mountain is dug into, the person will fall sick. The Tibetan epic hero, Gesar, in his attemptto conquera certaindemoness, cuts down her la tree and empties her la lake but fails because he does not kill her la sheep. The identity of these external la are thus often kept secret, and portable abodes of the la, usually a precious object of some kind (often a turquoise), are kept in special receptacles and hidden by the person who sharesthe la.6 Perhapsin relationto the concept of this soul, the term la also has the common meaning of 'above' or 'high.' When Buddhism was introduced in the seventh and eighth centuries, Tibetan monks and visiting Indianpanditasundertookthe task of translating Buddhisttexts from Sanskritinto Tibetan, inventinghundredsof neologisms in the process. When these exegetes decided upon a Tibetanequivalentfor the Sanskrit term for teacher, guru, the translatorsdepartedfrom their storied the meaning of the Sanskritand opted instead to penchantfor approximating combine the term la with that of ma to form the word lama. The latterhad at least threemeanings:a negative particle,a substantiveindicator,and the word for mother. SubsequentBuddhistetymologies, drawingon the meaningof la as "high"ratherthan its pre-Buddhistusage as "soul"were then construed, which explained la ma as meaning either "highest"(literally, "above-not," that is, "none above") or as "exalted mother."7One Western scholar has as la ma to mean "mother to the soul" in order arguedthat guruwas translated to "facilitate assimilation of the 'role' of the guru in Buddhism into the existing shamanic beliefs of the Tibetan people."8 WhetherTibetan beliefs
6 For a general discussion of bla, see R6ne de Nebesky-Wojkowitz,Oracles and Demons of Tibet (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1956), 481-3; R. A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 226-9; Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 190-3; Erik Haarh, The Yar-luhDynasty (K0benhavn:G. E. C. Gad's Forlag, 1969), 315 and 378; and, especially, Samten G. Karmay, "L'ame et la turquoise:un rituel Tib6tain,"L'Ethnographie,83 (1987), 97-130. On the related notion of the sku Iha duringthe dynastic period, see Ariane Macdonald,"Une lecture des P. T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047, et 1290. Essai sur la formationet l'emploides mythespolitiquesdans la religion royale de Sron-bcansgam-po," in Etudes TibetainesDedies a la Memoirede Marcelle Lalou (Paris: AdrienMaisonneuve, 1971), 297-309. 7 The of bla ma as the renderingfor guru is attestedby the presence of early standardization the term in the eighth-centurycompendiumof Buddhist terminology,the Mahdvyutpatti.The term bla itself was not used in the Buddhistvocabulariesas a translation for any notion of a soul but to renderthe Sanskrittermspati (lord) and urdhvam (elevated). For a citationof usages from the Mahdvyutpatti,see Lokesh Chandra, Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary, vol. 2 (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Company, 1976), 1680. 8 Turrell V. Wylie, "Etymologyof Tibetan:Bla ma," CentralAsiatic Journal, 21 (1977), 148. Wylie seems to derive this etymology from an unnamedinformantfor SaratChandraDas in the Das, A Tibetan-English compilationof his dictionary.See SaratChandra Dictionarywith Sanskrit Book Depot, 1902), s.v. bla ma. Thatsuch a readingdoes Synonyms(Calcutta:Bengal Secretariat not appearin traditional etymologies of the term could, alternately, suggest that the termbla was intentionally not renderedas "soul" by the early Buddhist translatorsso as to discourage the Tibetan belief in such a soul, somethingthat Buddhismis known to reject. The modernTibetan

DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

or not, the more likely possibility is that lama meant "one were "shamanic" endowed with the soul."9 What is noteworthy,however, is that this meaning Buddhism is lost in the Buddhistetymologies, thatin the processof introducing into Tibet, the "original,"primitivemeaningof la as life or soul disappears.
LAMA JIAO

As Tibetan Buddhistteachersmade their way to the centers of power of the Mongols and the Chinese, they seem to have been referredto not as lamas but in terms derivedfrom the languagesof theirhosts. For example, Marco Polo refers to the Tibetans at the court of Kublai Khan as Bacsi (bakshi, the Mongolianword for teacher),"Thesorcererswho do this [preventstorms]are TEBET and KESIMUR [Kashmir],which are the names of two nations of
idolaters. . . . There is another marvel performed by those BACSI of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments. . . . These monks

dress more decently than the rest of the people, and have the head and the beardshaven."10 At the Chinesecourtof the early Ming, Tibetanmonks were called seng, as were Chinese monks, and the religion of Tibet was simply described simply as Buddhism(fo jiao). 1 In 1775 duringthe reign of the ManchuQianlongemperor,we find perhaps the first official usage of the Chinese term lama jiao, from which Lamaism is derived. Jiao is the standardChinese term for teaching, being employed in such terms as dao jiao (the teaching of the dao, "Daoism"),ru jiao (the
scholar, Samten Karmay,has recently argued that Buddhism was never able to suppress the concept of a soul in Tibet and that over the course of centuries, the concept was gradually reintegratedinto popularrites, despite being at odds with the Buddhistdoctrine of no-self (see Karmay,"L ame et la turquoise,"99). This would suggest that at some point in Tibetanhistory, the philosophicaldoctrineof no-self exerciseda markedinfluenceover popularreligiouspractice, in any Buddhistculture. something that has yet to be demonstrated It may be significantthat the other standard Tibetan-English dictionary,that of Jaschke, also in offering"strength,power, vitality"as one of the definitionsof bla. cites an "oralexplanation" See H. Jaschke,A Tibetan-English Dictionary(Delhi: MotilalBanarsidass,1992); reprintof 1881 London edition, s.v. bla). The recently published three-volumeTibetan, Tibetan and Chinese dictionarydefines bla as "thatwhich is above" (steng) or "thatwhich is fitting"(rung) but also mentions that bla is "the supportof life explained in astrology"(dkar rtsis las bshad pa'i srog rten). See Bod rgya tshig mdzodchen mo (Mi rigs dbe skrunkhang, 1984), vol. 2, s.v. bla. 9 In this reading,ma would be takenas a substantivemarker (as, for example, in tshad ma and srung ma). 10 The Book of Ser Marco Polo the VenetianConcerningthe Kingdomsand Marvels of the East, 2 vols., Sir HenryYule, trans.and ed. 3rded., revisedby HenriCordier(New York:AMS, 1986; rpt., Londonedition, 1926, vol. 1, 301-3. For a discussion of the termbakshi, see Yule's in Tibetan"included in his note 10, page 314, and, especially, BertholdLaufer's"Loan-Words Sino-TibetanStudies, 2 vols., collected by HarmutWalravens(New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1987), vol. 2, 565-7, in which Lauferidentifies bakshi as being of Uighur origin and dismisses the connection, reportedby Yule, between bakshi and the Sanskritbhiksu (monk). 11 See Elliot Sperling, "The 5th Karma-paand Some Aspects of the RelationshipBetween Tibet and the EarlyMing," in MichaelAris and Aung San Suu Kyi, TibetanStudiesin Honourof England.:Aris and Phillips, Ltd, 1980), 283. Hugh Richardson(Warminster,

"LAMAISM" AND TIBET'S DISAPPEARANCE

teaching of the literati, "Confucianism"),and fo jiao (the teaching of the Buddha, "Buddhism"). By the reign of Qianlong, lama had come to be used as an adjective to describe Tibetan religion in contexts which in the past would have simply used the termBuddhist. 2 In 1792 Qianlongcomposed his on Lamas), preservedin a tetraglotinscription Lama Shou (Pronouncements (in Chinese, Manchu,Mongol, andTibetan)at the Yonghegong(todayknown to tourists as the "Lama Temple") in Beijing. Here Qianlong defends his patronageof a Tibetansect thatthe Chinesecalled the "YellowHats"(the dGe lugs pa) against his Chinese critics by claiming that his supporthas been merely expedient: "By patronizingthe Yellow Church we maintain peace task we cannotbut protectthis among the Mongols. This being an important [religion]. [In doing so] we do not show any bias, nor do we wish to adulate the Tibetanpriests as [was done duringthe] Yuan dynasty."13 Here are some of Qianlong's comments on the term lama: aretraditionally knownas Lamas. ThewordLama does [Buddhism's] foreign priests
not occur in Chinese books. ...

thatla in Tibetmeans"superior" andma means"none." So la-mameans"without Lamaalso just as in Chinesea priestis calleda "superior" (shang-jen). superior," stands for YellowReligion.14 TibetanBuddhistgloss of the term Qianlonghad clearly learnedthe standard as "highest"(as Europeanscholarswould not). He seems determinedto place the term lama at some distancefrom his reign, to declareto the subjectswho speak the four languages of his realm that lamas are foreigners and that his patronageof them has been motivatedby political expediency.We see also in Qianlong's discussion an example of the implicationof the term lama and, later, Lamaism in Manchu imperialprojects directed toward Tibet. Further implicationswould follow from otherimperialprojectsoriginatingin Europe. Europeanideologues, however, would be far less explicit about the political connotationsof their use of the term than the Manchuemperorhad been.
Warwhereinappearsthe phrase,"Jinchuan and Qianlongemperorto generalsduringthe Jinchuan Chosijiabuhave hithertofully supportedand spreadyour Lamaism[lamajiao]. See Gu Zucheng, et al., Qing shilu Zangzu shiliao (Lhasa: 1982), 2586. I am indebted to Elliot Sperling for discovering and translatingthis reference and for providing me with the other information contained in this paragraph. 13 See Ferdinand Diederich Lessing, Yung-ho-kung: An Iconographyof the Lamist Cathedral in Peking with Notes on Lamaist Mythology and Cult, vol. 1., Reports from the Scientific Provinces of China Under the Leadershipof Dr. Sven Hedin, Expeditionto the North-Western Publication 18 (Stockholm, 1942), 59. This readingis drawnfrom Lessing's comments and his translation, based on the Chinese and the Manchu. The parentheticalremarks are added by Lessing. 14 Ibid., 58. In the Lama Shou,"lama" is renderedin phoneticallyequivalentChinese characters, ratherthan translated,a convention that had been in use since the Ming dynasty. I have here. His last sentencereads, withoutjustification,"Lama(ism)also adaptedLessing's translation stands for Yellow Religion."
12 In the Records the of Qing (Qing shilu) of June24, 1775, one finds a commandgiven by the

I have carefullyponderedover its meaningand found

DONALD S. LOPEZ, JR.

LAMAISM AND CATHOLICS

By the end of the eighteenth century, we find mention in a European account of "les trois sectes idolatriques des Tao-see, des Bonzes, des Lamas."15 In 1825 we find Abel Remusat, in his "Discours sur l'origine de la hierarchie lamaique," using the term "des lamistes"16; and in the account of his travels in western Ladakh from 1819-25, William Moorcroft refers to "those places where Lamaism still predominates."17 Hegel discusses Lamaism in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion of 1824 and 1827 and in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History delivered between 1822 and 1831. There he finds the notion of a living human being worshipped as God, as he describes the Dalai Lama, as something paradoxical and revolting: "The Abstract Understanding generally objects to this idea of a Godman; alleging as a defect that
15 See JosephMarie Amiot, MemoiresconcernantL'Histoire,Les Sciences, Les Moeurs, Les

Usages, &c. des Chinois: Par les Missionairesde Pekin, Tome 2 (Paris: 1777), 395. 16 See Jean PierreAbel R6musat,Melanges Asiatiquesou Choix de MorceauxCritiqueset de Pere et Fils, 1825), 134, note 1. Memoires, Tome 1 (Paris:LibrairieOrientalede Dondey-Dupre He says in this article(p. 139) thatthe word lama means "priest" (pretre)in Tibetan. Sven Hedin interpolatesthe term Lamaism into Abel R6musat'stext. He translates,"The first missionaries who came into contact with Lamaism . . ., whereas the Abel R6musat'sFrench text (p. 131) reads, "Les premiersmissionariesqui en ont eu connaissance,"with the referentbeing simply "cette religion." See Sven Hedin, Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, vol. 3 NinthNew CollegiateDictionarygives (London:MacmillanandCompany,1913), 325. Webster's the date 1817 (withoutreference)to the first appearance of lamaism in English. L. A. Waddell, then, is mistakenwhen he writes in 1915 thatthe termappearsto have been used first in Koppen's 1859 LamischeHierarchieundKirche. In the same article, Waddell,in sharpcontrastto his 1895 The Buddhismof Tibet, or Lamaism(discussed below), says that the term Lamaismis "in many and undesirable" and "is rightlydroppingout of use." See L. A. ways misleading, inappropriate, Waddell, "Lamaism,"Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1915), vol. 7:784. 17 William Moorcroftand George Trebeck,Travelsin the HimalayanProvincesof Hindustan and the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara, vol. 1 (London:John Murray,1841), 346. Moorcroftdied of fever in Turkestan in 1825, his paperseventuallybecoming the propertyof the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.They were only publishedin 1841 afterbeing compiled and edited by the Oxford Sanskritist,HoraceHaymanWilson. There are indicationsthat the term Lamaism may not have been used by Moorcroftbut, rather,was introduced by Wilson. Of his task, Wilson writes, "I have, in fact, been obliged to re-writealmost the whole, and must thereforebe held Moorcroftreports responsiblefor the greaterpartof its composition"(Travels,liii). Furthermore, that all of his informationon the religion of Ladakhwas received from Alexander Csoma de Koros (Travels, 339) In his extensive writingson Tibetanliteratureand religion, Csoma speaks only of Buddhismand does not use the term Lamaism. Perhaps the first Europeanto attemptto consider the etymology of the word lama was the Jesuit, EmanoelFreyre,who accompaniedIppolitoDesiderion his arduoustripto Lhasa, arriving on March 18, 1716, only to returnalone to Indiaafteronly one monthbecause he could not bear the climate. In his reporton his journey,he wrote that "havingspoken here and thereof 'lamas', before proceeding, I will say somethingabout the etymology of their name, their clothing, the temples, their recitations, of prayers, and their Superiors, "Lamo"in Botian [Tibetan]means "way";whence comes "Lama"-"he who shows the way." Freyrehere mistakenlyattemptsto derive lama fromthe Tibetanlam, meaningpath. See Filippode Filippi, ed., An Accountof Tibet: The Travelsof Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S. J., 1712-1727, rev. ed. (London:George Routledge and Sons, 1937), 356.

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the form here assigned to the Spirit is an immediate[unrefined,unreflected] one-that in fact it is none otherthanMan in the concrete. Here the character of a whole people is bound up with the theological view just indicated."18 But to tracethe movementsof Westerndiscourseon Lamaism, we must go back before the late Qing and the early nineteenthcentury,to the periodof the first Europeanvisitors to the Chinese court during the Yuan, where we observe the first recitationsof the similaritiesbetween Tibetan Buddhism and RomanCatholicism.The trope is employed differentlyby two distinctgroups of Europeanexegetes of the Orient-the Catholic and the Protestant.One of the earliest Catholic observerswas the DominicanJourdain Catalanide Sevand wrote: erac, who visited the empire of the "GrandTartar" Inthatempire, therearetemples of idolsandmonasteries of menandwomen,as there of prayers, areathome,withchoirs andthesaying likeus, thegreat of exactly pontiffs the idolswearing redrobesandredhats,likeourcardinals. Suchluxury, suchpomp, suchdance,suchsolemnceremony is incredible in the sacrifices to idols.19 Once such a similaritywas observed, it had also to be accountedfor; and Catholic missionariesto China and Tibet turnedto both history and theology to explain why Tibetanlamas looked like priests of the Holy MotherChurch. The Vincentian missionaries, Evariste-Regis Huc and Joseph Gabet, who traveledin Chinaand Tibet in 1844 to 1846, note the affinitiesbetween what they call "Lamanesqueworship"and Catholicismand recount a story about of the dGe lugs sect, the sect Tsong khapa (1357-1419), the deified "founder" which had held political controlover Tibet for two centuriesby the time of the Vincentians'visit. They tell of an encounterof the young Tsong kha pa with a lama "from the most remote regions of the West," who took him as his disciple and "initiatedhis pupil into all the doctrinesof the West"in the few years before his peaceful death. What was remarkableabout this lama, besides his unfathomablelearning, were his gleaming eyes and his large nose. Huc and Gabet predictablyspeculate that this strangerwith the prominent
18 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, J. Sibree, trans. (New York:Dover Publications, 1956), 170. 19 Translationof the passage cited in Henri de Lubac, La Recontre du Bouddhismeet de L'Occident (Paris: Aubier, 1952), 45. For an even earlier observation of similarity, see the commentsof the Flemish Franciscan friar,Williamof Rubruck,who visited the courtof Mongke between 1253-55:

All theirpriestsshave the head and beardcompletely,dress in saffroncolour, and observe chastity from the time they shave their heads, living togetherin communitiesof a hundredand even two hundred. . . . Whereverthey go, they also have constantlyin theirhandsa stringof a hundredor two hundredbeads, like the rosarieswe carry,and keep repeatingOn mani battam,which mean "God, you know." See Willem van Ruysbroek, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, Peter Jackson, trans. to note the (London:The HakluytSociety, 1990), 153-4. In additionto being the first Westerner existence of the mantra,ommanipadme hum, William may also have been the first to encounter an incarnatelama, "a boy was broughtfrom Cataia, who to judge by his physical size was not three years old, yet was fully capable of rationalthought:he said of himself that he was in his third incarnation,and he knew how to read and write"(p. 232).

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nose was a Catholicmissionary."Itmay be furthersupposedthat a premature death did not permitthe Catholicmissionaryto complete the religious education of his disciple, who himself, when afterwardshe became an apostle, merely appliedhimself, whetherfrom havingincompleteknowledge of Christian doctrine, or from havingapostatizedfrom it, to the introduction of a new The implicationandregret,of course, is thatif the CathoBuddhistliturgy."20 lic missionaryhad only lived longer, Tsong kha pa would have received full instructionin the dogmas of the Churchand so could have convertedTibet to Christianity. We see here perhaps the most common strategy for accounting for simin anthropolilarity,that of using "genealogy"(also known as "diffusionism" ogy) to explain the coincidence of a phenomenonor trait by an appeal to historicalinfluence. The recourseto genealogy not only attemptsto establish a direct historical relation but also a hierarchybased on the chronological proximityof the influencingagent to the originaryancestor.Hence, Huc and in Tsong kha pa's Gabet could lay claim to all that they found "authentic" Buddhismby ascribingits origin to one of theirown while dismissing Tibetan Buddhism as deficient because Tsong kha pa's instructionin the Gospel remainedincomplete, theirown mission legitimatedtherebyas the fulfillment work. The Europeans thus claimeda position of of the mysteriousWesterner's of over kha indeed the origin, Tsong pa, whom they perceived power power, as the most importantfigure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.21
20 Evariste-RegisHuc and JosephGabet, Travels in Tartary,Thibet, and China 1844-1846, William Hazlitt, trans., 2 vols. boundas one (New York:Dover Publications,1987). Max Muller notes that "the late Abb6 Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonialswith such naivete, that, to his surpirise,he found his delightful Travels in vol. I of Essays on Thibetplaced on the 'Index. " See Muiller's Chipsfrom a GermanWorkshop, the Science of Religion (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985; rpt., CharlesScribnerand Company, 1869), 187. 21 It is perhapsnoteworthy that he of the prominentproboscisappearsin none of the standard Tibetanbiographiesof Tsong kha pa. In addition, Desideri, the first Catholic missionaryto live for an extended period of time in Tibet, duly noted the resemblancesin the ceremonies, institubut makes no attempt maxims, moralprinciples,andhagiographies tions, ecclesiasticalhierarchy, to accountfor it. He commentedthat, in his readingof Tibetanhistory,he had found no "hintthat our Holy Faithhas at any time been known, or that any Apostle or evangelical preacherhas ever lived here"(see de Filippi, An Accountof Tibet, 302). See also C. J. Wessel's informativenote to this passage. In Huc and Gabet's explanationof the presence in Tibet of practicesdeservingtheir approbation, anotherelement is also at play here:The persistentEuropeanassumptionthat those whose whereaboutscannotbe accountedfor, whetherit be Jesus himself duringthe "lost years," Prester John, or Sherlock Holmes, must have been in Tibet, and that otherwise inexplicable"parallels" discoveredin Ladakhpurporting may be explainedby theirpresence. Fora documentpurportedly to describe Jesus' travels in Tibet, see L. Huxley, The Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 2 vols. (London:John Murray,1918), 2:334-5. See also Nicolas Notovitch, The Unof a manuscript knownLife of Jesus Christ (Chicago:RandMcNally, 1894) for the "translation" discoveredby the authorin Ladakh,"TheLife of Saint Issa," which describesJesus' activities in India and Nepal. In "The Adventureof the Empty House," the great detective accounts for his whereabouts deathafterplungingwith ProfessorMoriartyover Reichduringthe years following his apparent

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II

The first European encounters with Tibetan Buddhism occurred long before the rise of the science of philology and notions of an ancestral heritage of the family of "mankind" in which parallel developments could manifest in different parts of the globe. Thus, if the apparent similarities could not be explained by appealing to the work of one of their own, it must be the work of an Other, a cause not for the delight expressed by Huc and Gabet, but for a deep anxiety, reflected in the words of the Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, who in 1670 described the adulation afforded the Dalai Lama: Here are plainly evident the wiles of the Devil. To make mock of holy things and rob God of the honour due unto Him the Evil One has by a trick of his usual cunning caused these barbarians to imitate us, and induced them to pay to a humanbeing the reverencedue to God and Jesus Christalone. He profanesthe most holy mysteries of the CatholicChurchby forcing these poor wretchedcreatures to celebratethese mysteries at the place where they keep hideous idols. Because he has observed that Christians call the Pope Fatherof Fathers, he makes these idolatrousbarbarians call that false god GrandLama or high priest.22 This is an extreme form, stated with significant hyperbole, of the theory of demonic plagiarism articulated by Justin Martyr and other church fathers during the second and third centuries, in which any similarity between ritual elements of the Church that are observed in rival cults is attributed to the work of the devil. In many cases, such elements had been derived from these very same rival cults, such that the doctrine of demonic plagiarism served as a
enbachFalls, telling Watson,"I travelledfor two years in Tibet, therefore,and amusedmyself by visiting Lhassa, and spendingsome days with the head lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorationsof a NorwegiannamedSigerson, but I am surethatit neveroccurredto you that you were receiving news of your friend." The presence of an internationalbrotherhoodof enlightened masters in Tibet, congregated from aroundthe world, is an importantelement of Theosophicaldoctrine: From time immemorialtherehad been a certainsecret region in Tibet, which to this day is quite unknown to and unapproachable by any but initiatedpersons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of the countryas to any others, in which adeptshave always congregated.But the country generally was not in the Buddha'stime, as it has since become, the chosen habitationof the great brotherhood.Much more than they are at presentwere the Mahatmasin formertimes distributed about the world. The progress of civilization, engenderingthe magnetismthey find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing-the fourteenthcentury-already given rise to a generalmovementtowardsTibet on the partof the previouslydissociatedoccultist. Farmore widely than was held to be consistentwith the safety of mankindwas occult knowledge and power then found to be disseminated.To the task of putting it under the control of a rigid system of rule and law did Tsong-ka-paaddresshimself. See Alfred Percy Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism(Boston: Houghton,Mifflin, and Company,1895), 227-8. Sinnett's fantasy, a probableinspirationfor James Hilton's Lost Horizon, is yet another effect of Tibet never coming under Europeancolonial domination. 22 Cited by Sven Hedin in Trans-Himalaya,318. For numerouscases of the comparisonof elements of Tibetan Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, see pages 310-29. For Kircher's full account of Tibetan religion, see the appendixto Jan Nieuhof, An Embassyfrom the East India Companyof the United Provinces to the Grand TartarCham, Emperorof China, John Ogilby, trans., reprinted. (Menston: Scholars Press, 1972), 40-43.

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means of appropriating the purity of the origin, consigning the other to the state of the derivative.23 corrupt be demonic?The answerderivesin partfrom the Why mustthis appearance claim to the historicaland ontologicalparticularity of the ChristianChurch.It is the task of the missionaryto transmitthe word of thatparticularity to those realmswhere it has not yet spread,to diffuse it fromits uniquepoint of origin. To carryits accouterments from Rome to a time and place where it could not possibly have been taken before, then to find it alreadythere, suggests the workingsof a power beyond historythatcould only be seen as demonic. But what is describedin this passage is a visual image; the dress and the liturgy have been derived from their authenticsource: They are a copy. It is as if the priest in distant China arrivedonly to see himself reflected in a mirror, with the inversionof the image so typically ascribedto the demonic. He sees the very aim of his long journey,what he hopes will have been when the last domainof the globe has been broughtto the truefaith, namely,thatas a result of his ministrythe bodies of the Other will have worn the vestments of the Christianfatherand performedthe liturgy of the holy church. The image of the Buddhistmonk appearsto be alreadywhat, for the priest, it can only later become. This distantgoal, a mirageof the maturation of his power,24he sees now presentbefore him, as if he were looking in a mirror. Unlike the infant in Lacan's "mirrorstage" who regards the integrated vision of his body in the mirrorwithjubilation,for the priestit is a momentof dread, recognizingthe reflected image, as the child does not, as a trap and a decoy. What is monstrousis not the presence of the Buddhistmonk but the priest's identificationwith its image, "with the automatonin which, in an ambiguousrelation,the worldof his own makingtends to find completion."25 The priest sees identitywhere it is absent:The dress and liturgiesof a Buddhist, whetherChinese or Tibetan, are not identicalto those of a RomanCatholic priest. For such a perceptionto take place, the fragmentedbody of the church must see before itself the image of its completion already present before its arrival, in the form of Lamaist priest's regalia. The original has arrivedtoo late, afterits image; and this late arrivalhas as its effect both selfconstitutionand alienation.The Catholicpriestsimultaneouslyidentifies with and armorshimself against it by conthe image of his foreign counterpart demning it as demonic. It is as if the image of the Buddhist,the counterpart,
23 See, for example, JustinMartyr,I Apology,LIV, 7-8; LXII, 1-2; LXVI. 1-4. I am grateful to ElizabethClarkfor providingthese references.It is significantto note that not all the Catholic priests who encounteredBuddhistmonks believed that they looked exactly like themselves. The Flemish friar, William of Rubruck,thought they looked like French:"So on entering the idol temple to which I have referred,I found the priests sitting at the outer gate. When I saw them, I took them for Franks,being clean-shaven,but the mitresthey were wearingon their heads were of paper."See Ruysbroek, The Mission of Friar Williamof Rubruck, 154. 24 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, Alan Sheridan, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 2. 25 JacquesLacan, Ecrits, 3.

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disseminationof the throws the priest forwardin time, out of the "natural" of conversion. The missionary's out of the him word, projecting process is then, like the mirrorstage, "high with the Tibetancounterpart confrontation tragedy:a brief moment of doomed glory, a paradiselost."26 In 1878, two centuriesafterAthanasiusKircher,a Portugesemissionaryto Chinawas quoted as saying that, in Tibetanritualsat the Qing court, "thereis not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotalfunction, not a ceremonyof the courtof Thus, this Roman Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country."27 Catholic genealogy of Tibetan Buddhism was not merely a case of preEnlightenmentdemonology but persistedinto the Victorianage, to which we now turn.
LAMAISM AND PROTESTANTS

Duringthe last half of the nineteenthcentury,the comparisonbetweenTibetan Buddhismand Roman Catholicismwas again drawn,but this time by Protestants and for a different purpose. In 1877, Thomas W. Rhys Davids, the founderof the Pali Text Society, prepareda manual,publishedby the Society for PromotingChristianKnowledge in its "Non-Christian Religious Systems" series, on Buddhismfor popularconsumption.Nearthe end of the book, Rhys in doctrine"beyondthose which occur in the Davids considers"developments Pali canon, the locus of what was termed interchangably "primitiveBuddhism," "trueBuddhism,"or "originalBuddhism": whichhastaken of Buddhist doctrine Thedevelopment placein thePanjab, Nepal,and andveryvaluable fromthe similarity it bearsto the Tibetis exceedingly interesting, in theRoman whichhastaken Catholic It countries. placein Christianity development a religionnotonly in at last in the complete establishment of Lamaism, has resulted from, but actuallyantagonistic to, the primitivesystemof manypoints different butalso in its church andthis is not only in its doctrine, Buddhism; organization.28 Two types of comparisonare drawn here, one of similarityand one of contrast. The value of developmentsin Buddhistdoctrinelies in theirsimilarityto changes that Christianityhas undergonein those countriesremainingRoman Catholic. At the same time, a contrastis drawnbetween Lamaismand primitive Buddhism, in which Lamaismis seen not merely as differentbut somehow inimical to the doctrine and organizationof primitive Buddhism, now long past. As Monier-Williamsstated more succinctly, "In truth, Tibetan Buddhismis so differentfrom every other Buddhisticsystem that it ought to be treatedof separatelyin a separatevolume."29
26 Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1985), 85. 27 Cited in Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism(Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 124. 28 Thomas W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism:Being a Sketchof the Life and Teachingsof Gautama, the Buddha, rev. ed. (London: Society for PromotingChristianKnowledge, 1903), 199. 29 Sir MonierMonier-Williams, and Hinduism, Buddhism,In Its ConnexionwithBrdhmanism and In Its Contrastwith Christianity(Varanasi: CowkhambaSanskritSeries Office, 1964), 261.

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Rhys Davids' most sustainedcomparisonof RomanCatholicismand Lamaism appearsin his 1881 HibbertLectures,entitled"Lectures on the Originand Growth of Religion as Illustratedby Some Points in the History of Indian Buddhism."Therehe provides a full page of parallelsthattogetherconstitute "one of the most curious facts in the whole history of the world." "Each with its services in dead languages, with choirs and processions and creeds and incense, in which the laity are spectatorsonly; each with its mystic rites
and ceremonies performed by shaven priests in gorgeous robes; . . . each,

even ruled over by a Pope, with a triple tiaraon his head and the sceptre of on earthof an eternalSpirit in temporalpower in his hand, the representative the heavens!"30 The litanyof parallelsis now quite familiar.Whatis differentis thatthe late of Buddhismto the West, especially the British and the Victorianinterpreters no Americans, longer held to the view that the apparentsimilaritiesbetween Lamaism and Romanism were due to direct historical contact between the two. Instead, Rhys Davids explains, in a vocabularyof violation, mixing begets mixing: hordes of at a timewhenthenewfaithwasadopted Eachhadits origin by theinvading in uponanolder,a moreadvanced civilization-whenmenin menbursting barbarian andimpregnated withAnimistic in intellect, quickto feel emotion, body,butchildren and the pupilsof men who had passed fallacies,becameat once the conquerors in religious Thendo we a longtraining feelingandin philosophical reasoning. through andemotional of earnest mixture acuteness of speculative findthatstrange ignorance; of real in erroneous and the blindestconfidence devotionto edification, methods; andthemost love of power; of unhesitating anda priestly self-sacrifice, philanthropy, the earlycenturies of whichcharacterize forpersonal selfishstruggles pre-eminence, andTibetan alike.31 Roman Catholicism Lamaism If the genealogical view put forward by the Roman Catholic missionaries anticipatedthe anthropologicaltheory of diffusionism, the Protestantinterpreters held firmly to a variationof the theory that diffusionism briefly replaced, the "comparativemethod"made famous by Frazer,in which it was postulatedthat all societies develop accordingto a similarpattern,with societies being distinguished by the stage they occupied in the continuum of development and the rate at which they progressed along it. This became known as the comparativemethod because it claimed that societies at the same stage of development, regardlessof their location in space and time, sharedthe same characteristics, allowing knowledgeof one to informanalysis of another. Such a theory portrayedprimitive societies as contemporaryremindersof the archaicstages throughwhich Westerncivilization had passed and support and from which the savages themselves, with the encouragement
30 T. W. Rhys Davids, Lectureson the Origin and Growthof Religion as Illustratedby Some Points in the History of Indian Buddhism (The Hibbert Lectures, 1881) (New York: G. P. Putnam'sSons, 1882), 192-3. 31 Ibid.,

194.

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of Western civilization, would eventually emerge. That Frazer's comparative method made its mark on Buddhist Studies is evident from this 1896 statement by T. W. Rhys Davids: For it is precisely in Indiathatfor us Westernsthe evolutionof religious beliefs is most instructive. It can be tracedthere with so much completeness and so much clearness; we can follow it there with so much independenceof judgement and so great an and it runs, in spite of the many differences,on generallines so similarto impartiality; the history of religion in the West, that the lessons to be learntthere are of the highest value. . . . Yet nowhereelse do we find a system at once so similarto our own in the stages and mannerof its growth, and so interestinglyand absolutelyantagonisticto our own in the ultimate conclusions it has reached.32 The same observation had been made a year earlier, this time about Tibet, by L. Austine Waddell in his The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism: "For Lamaism is, indeed, a microcosm of the growth of religion and myth among primitive people; and in large degree an object-lesson in their advance from barbarism toward civilization. And it preserves for us much of the old-world lore and petrified beliefs of our Aryan ancestors."33 The particular evolutionary model to which Rhys Davids and Waddell subscribed saw Buddhism as a rationalist and humanist reaction against the priestcraft of sixth-century B.C.E. India, subsumed under yet another of the "isms" of the Western study of Asia, "Brahmanism." "Being opposed to all sacerdotalism and ceremonial observances, it abolished, as far as possible, the sacrificial system of the Brahmans, and rejected the terrible methods of selftorture, maintaining that a life of purity and morality was better than all the forms and ceremonies of the Vedic ritual."34 During the late nineteenth century, early Buddhism was consistently, and mistakenly, portrayed as lacking any element of ritual. As Monier Williams described it in his 1888 Duff Lectures, "It had no hierarchy in the proper sense of that term-no church, no priests, no true form of prayer, no religious rites, no ceremonial observances."35 Among the factors contributing to such a portrayal is the almost exclusive reliance on the texts selected and edited by the Pali Text Society (and then translated in Max Miiller's "Sacred Books of the East" and the Pali Text Society's "Sacred Books of the Buddhists" series) as constituting the canon of primitive Buddhism. Such a portrayal also served the interests of the Victorian interpreters' comparative model, in which the Buddha's rejection of
32 Thomas W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism:Its History and Literature,5th ed. (Calcutta:Susil Gupta Private Ltd., 1962), 4. 33 Cited from the 1972 Dover reprintissued underthe new title, TibetanBuddhism:WithIts Mystic Cults, Symbolismand Mythology(New York:Dover Publications, 1972), 4. In later life, Waddellwould turnhis researchmore explicitly to his Aryanancestors,claiming an Aryanorigin for Sumerianand Egyptiancivilization in such works as his 1929 The Makers of Civilizationin Race and History (reprint,Delhi: S. Chand, 1968). 34 Elizabeth A. Reed, PrimitiveBuddhism:Its Origin and Teachings(Chicago: Scott, Foresman, and Co., 1896), 16. 35 Sir MonierMonier-Williams, and Hinduism, Buddhism,In Its ConnexionwithBrahmanism and In Its Contrast with Christianity(Varanasi: CowkhambaSanskritSeries Office, 1964), 253.

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sacerdotalismcould be representedto foreshadowa similar rejection in the West duringthe Reformation.As Miiller himself wrote, "The ancienthistory of Brahmanismleads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which JamesFreemanClarke, in his mediaeval Romanismled to Protestantism."36 of "Buddhism: or the Protestantism the East," made the point more essay, in like in Europe, is a revolt of Protestantism "Buddhism Asia, emphatically: natureagainstspirit, of humanityagainstcaste, or individualfreedomagainst the despotism of an order, of salvation by faith against salvation by sacraThe rise of interestin Buddhismin Englandduringthe last half of ments."37 the nineteenthcenturycoincidedwith the "No Popery"movement, markedby the Murphy Riots of 1866-71 and the wide popularityof works such as RichardWhately'sEssays on the Errorsof Romanism (1856) and The Confessional Unmasked,distributedto each memberof Parliamentin 1865 by the Protestant EvangelicalMission and ElectoralUnion.38It is againstthis setting discourse on Lamaismmust be placed: Lamaism, with its that the Protestant devious and corruptpriests and vapid sacerdotalism, is condemned as the most degenerateform of Buddhism(if it be a form of Buddhismat all) at the moment when Roman Catholicismis being scourged in England.39 Here, the Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism, figured prominently as the endpoint in the Victorian vision of the history of Buddhism, according to
36 Max vol. 1 of Essays on the Science of Religion Miiller, Chipsfrom a GermanWorkshop, (Chico, CA: ScholarsPress, 1985), 220. 37 Cited by Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism(London:CambridgeUniverand sity Press, 1988), 74. For other instancesof the comparisonof Buddhismwith Protestantism of the Buddhawith Luther,as well as the cautionsagainstsuch comparisonsby scholarssuch as by socialists, see Rhys Davids andOldenberg,notablywhen the Buddhabeganto be appropriated Almond (pp. 71-77). The popularityof Buddhismamongthe Frenchat roughlythe same period is satirized by Flaubertin Bouvard and Pecuchet, where Pecuchet declares the superiorityof Buddhismto Christianity: "Verywell, listen to this! Buddhismrecognizedthe vanity of earthlythings betterand earlier Its practicesare austere, its faithfulare more numerousthan all Christiansput than Christianity. together, and as for the Incarnation,Vishnu did not have one but nine! So, judge from that!" "Travellers' lies," said Madamede Noaris. by Freemasons,"added the cure. "Supported

See Gustave Flaubert,Bouvard and Pecuchet, A. J. Krailsheimer,trans. (New York:Penguin Books, 1976), 251. Monier-Williamswent to some lengths to argue that there were not more Buddhists than on the CommonErrorin Regardto the Comparative Christiansin the world. See his "Postscript Prevalenceof Buddhismin the World,"in his Buddhism,pp. xiv-xviii. 38 On this period, see EdwardR. Norman,Anti-Catholicism in VictorianEngland (New York: George Allen and Unwin, 1968); WalterRalls, "The Papal Aggression of 1850: A Study in ChurchHistory,43:2 (June 1974), 242-56; and, especially, Walter VictorianAnti-Catholicism," L. Arnstein,Protestantversus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England:Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia, MO: Universityof MissouriPress, 1982). The middle nineteenthcenturywas also a time of stronganti-Catholicsentimentin the United States, led by such groupsas the Orderof the Star SpangledBanner.See TylerAnbinder,Nativismand Slavery: The NorthernKnowNothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York:Oxford University Press, 1992). 39 One might wonder how High ChurchAnglicans could condemn Lamaismand, by extension, Romanism, for its sacerdotalism.But it appearsthat many of those who indulged in such condemnationwere not membersof the Churchof England.Rhys Davids was the son of a Welsh

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which, after the early centuries of the brotherhood,Buddhism in India followed a course of uninterrupted deteriorationfrom its origins as a rational, agnostic faith to a degeneratereligion rife with ritual and superstition.The specific course that the British Buddhologistschartedwas as follows: With the rise of Mahayana,the agnostic idealism and simple moralityof primitive Buddhismwas replacedby "a speculativetheistic system with a mysticism of sophistic nihilism."40Yet anotherdegenerationoccurredwith the rise of the Yogacaraschool, which, for reasons that remainunclear, was regardedwith particularantipathy:"And this Yoga parasite, containing within itself the germs of Tantrism, seized strong hold of its host and soon developed its monster outgrowths, which crushed and cankeredmost of the little life of Werethis not enough, the purely Buddhiststock yet left in the Mahayana."41 progress of the contaminationcontinued as the pure essence of primitive Buddhism was once more polluted in India with the rise of tantrism. (The author of these statements, L. Austine Waddell, conducted his researches while serving as assistant sanitarycommissioner for the Darjeeling district and in 1889 had published, "AreVenomousSnakes Autotoxic?"in the Scientific Memoirs by Medical Officers of the Army of India.)

This mere shadowof originalBuddhismwas belatedlytransmitted to Tibet, where it was furtheradulterated with the demon worshipof the Tibetans:"The
Lamaist cults comprise much deep-rooted devil-worship. . . . For Lamaism is

only thinly and imperfectlyvarnishedover with Buddhistsymbolism, beneath which the sinister growth of poly-demonist superstitiondarkly appears."42 Once again, the discourseof the demoniccomes into play, as the superstitions of the non-Buddhistreligions, both Indian and Tibetan, portrayedas parasites, eventually overwhelm the Buddhist host. Lamaism thus stands at the nadir of a long process of contaminationand degenerationfrom the origin. But once identified as an endpoint, Lamaism seemed also to creep backward in time. In discussing the Mahayanasutrasin his 1877 Buddhism,Rhys Davids writes: Thelaterbookswereafterwards translated intoTibetan, anda newdoctrine in attained Tibetto so greata development thatTibetan or rather hascome Buddhism, Lamaism, to be the exactcontrary of the earlier Buddhism. It hasbeenworked up thereintoa
and L. Austine Waddellwas the son of minister;Miillerwas a GermanLutheran; Congregational a Scotch Presbyterian minister. 40 Waddell, TibetanBuddhism, 10. 41 Ibid., 14. 42 Ibid., xi. It is noteworthythat Desideri, writing 150 years earlier, offers a very different assessment: "Thoughthe Thibettansare pagans and idolaters, the doctrine they believe is very different from that of other pagans of Asia [meaning India]. Their Religion, it is true, came originally from the ancient country of Hindustan,now usually called Mogol, but there, in the lapse of time, the old religion fell into disuse and was ousted by new fables. On the other hand, the Thibettans, intelligent, and endowed with a gift of speculation, abolished much that was to comprisetruthand goodness." See unintelligiblein the tenets, and only retainedwhat appeared Filippo de Filippi, An Account of Tibet, 225-6.

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regularsystem which has shut out all of the earlierBuddhism, althougha few of the earlier books are also to be found in Tibetantranslations.43

It is perhaps noteworthy that in this work, Rhys Davids subsumes all of MahayanaBuddhism, the Buddhismsof China, Japan, and Tibet under the Buddhismis thus absorbed heading, "TibetanBuddhism."All "subsequent" underthe categoryof Lamaism,as if the contagionidentifiedby Waddellhad spreadretroactivelyto infect all Buddhismsthat existed in a form other than the texts preservedin Europeanlibraries,all Buddhismsthat were not under Europeancontrol. TibetanBuddhismwas thus regardedas doubly Otherin a complex play of Orientalistideologies: After the Sanskritand Pali texts were discovered and translated,Buddhismis invented and controlledby the West as the mimetic Otherof RomanticOrientalismand is called "originalBuddhism,"representing it as a "religionof reason"in VictorianBritain. Europeanand American philologists thus became the true and legitimateconservatorsof Buddhism's classical tradition.TibetanBuddhismthen is constructedas the other of this Other ("originalBuddhism").It is a productnot of the religion of reason but of the degenerationof the Indiantextualtradition,namely,the Mahayanaand tantra.44 There is, thus, a nexus of forces broughtto bearto create Lamaism, this degenerateform of Buddhismfound in Tibet. This history,from pristine origin in the distant past to the present state of decay and corruption, is thatareboth controlledby derivedfrom two differentmodes of representation The representation of early Buddhism, of primitive the EuropeanOrientalist: Buddhism, of true Buddhismis based on texts, while "modemBuddhism"is derived from "directobservation."Again, Monier Williams from the Duff Lectures, "For it is certain that without any practical experience of what Buddhismhas become in modem times-I mean such as experience as can only be gained by residing or traveling in countries where Buddhism now prevails-the mere study of ancient scripturesis likely to be misleading."45 true Buddhism,but "practical That is, texts are sufficientto understand experience," that is, the representation by the missionaryand the colonial officer, the currentstate of what Buddhism"has become." is essential to understand The relation between original Buddhism and Lamaism was portrayedin various ways. For those connected with the missionaries, such as MonierWilliams, the root cause of the corruptionlay in the Buddhahimself, who denied the existence of humanaspirationsto the transcendent,who rejected force to aid in the strugglefor salvation, and the possibility of a supernatural who could find no place in his system for a Ruler of the Universe. Thus,
43 Thomas W. Rhys Davids, The History and Literatureof Buddhism, 139. 44 "Tantra," a notoriously vague term used generally to designate a movement in Indian religion that made use of traditionallyproscribedactivites in the religious path (most notably Orientalistsas the most depravedof sexual intercourse),was regardedby nineteenth-century abominations. 45 Monier-Williams,Buddhism, 147.

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despite the high order of his moral precepts, the system of the Buddhawas destined to turn into its opposite: thattookplace,buta recoil-like therecoilof Inpointof factit wasnota development Andthisresulted hand andthenreleased. a spring helddownfora timeby a powerful on making of humanity, whichinsisted instincts of theeternal fromthesimpleworking hadsubrestraint to whichthe Buddha the unnatural felt notwithstanding themselves he taught so thateverydoctrine by a kindof ironyof fateintoa developed jectedthem;
complete contradictionof itself.46

Lamaismwas the collective embodimentof those contradictions.For others, those more sympatheticto theircreationof true Buddhism,Lamaismwas not a naturaloutcome of the founder'soriginal faith but a deviation from it. In either case, however, comparisonsto Roman Catholicismserve as a further form of condemnation,with Lamaismbecoming a substitutefor Papism. The Tibetans, having lost the spirit of primitiveBuddhism, now suffer underthe oppressionof sacerdotalismand the exploitationof its priests, somethingthat England had long since thrown off. But it is not simply a case of analogy, that Pali Buddhism (which by the end of the nineteenthcentury was largely under British control) is to TibetanBuddhism(which at the end of the nineis to teenth century,Britainwas actively seeking to control) as Protestantism Roman Catholicism. It is, rather,a strategythat debases the distant and yet unsubjugatedOther by comparingit to the near and long subjugatedOther, subjugatedboth by its relegationto England'spast and to England'spresent Europeanrivals and Irish subjects. Lamaismthus served as a code word for of the Otherwithout thatused its representation 'Papism' in a masternarrative to attack the Other within. This was not the first time in which Protestant polemics had figured in scholarshipon other religions; such polemics had shaped the study of the religions of Late Antiquity,sometimes referredto as "Pagano-papism."47
46Ibid., 151. Others saw Lamaismmore simply as the naturaldevelopmentof IndianBuddhism. In his address to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists,James Legge declared: Buddhismhas been in Chinabut a disturbinginfluence, ministeringto the element of superstition which plays so large a partin the world. I am farfrom saying the doctrineof the literatiis perfect, nevertheless, it has kept the people of Chinatogetherin a nationalunion, passing throughmany revolution,but still enduring,after at least four or five millenniumsof its existence, and still not without measureof heartand hope. Europeand Americacan give it somethingbetterthan India did, in sending it Buddhismin our first century,and I hope they will do so. You must not look to the civilization of China and Japanfor the fruitsof Buddhism.Go to Tibet and Mongolia, and in the bigotry and apathyof the population,in their prayerwheels and cylinders you will find the achievementof the doctrineof the Buddha. Cited in ElizabethReed, PrimitiveBuddhism,30. A studyof the stereotypicalOrientalistfascination and revulsionconcerningthe mechanismof the TibetanBuddhistprayerwheel remainsto be written. See William Simpson's The Buddhist-PrayingWheel (London: Macmillan and Co., (Buddhism,378) remarks,"It is to be hoped that when Europeaninven1896). Monier-Williams tions find their way across the Himalayas, steam-powermay not be pressed into the service of these gross superstitions." 47 See Jonathan Z. Smith, DrudgeryDivine: On the Comparisonof Early Christianitiesand

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At the end of both of his tomes on Tibet, L. Austine Waddelloffers his vision of Tibet's future in which "its sturdyovercredulouspeople are freed from the intolerable tyranny of the Lamas, and delivered from the devils whose ferocity and exacting worship weigh like a nightmareupon all."48 There is reason for hope, he argues, when one considers that in the twelfth century the Catholic Church seemed in hopeless decay, but then Dante appeared and then the Renaissance. Indeed, Waddellclaims, a knowledge of Buddhismmight have saved the CatholicChurchfrom the degenerationthat it sufferedsoon after"thedisappearance of its immortalfounder." Waddell,with apparentmagnanimity,next demonstrateshis possession of true Buddhism (which the Tibetans lack) by claiming that Christiansare finally coming to understand that the teachings of Jesus are more akin to those of the Buddha than they are to Paul, Augustine, or Luther.Completingthe gesture of control, he ends by proclaiming,that, ratherthanburyingTibetanBuddhismas a decadentcult, it is the mission of England"to heraldthe rise of new starin the East, which may for long, perhapsfor centuries,diffuse its mild radianceover this charmingland and interestingpeople. In the University,which must ere long be establishedunderBritishdirectionat Lhasa, a chief place will surely be assigned to studies in the origin of the religion of the country."49 Waddell wrote these words not from a position of imperiallonging at the borderbut at the conclusion of his account of the British invasion of Tibet from 1903 to 1904, in which he served as chief medical officer. Lamaism thus serves as a fundamentaltrope in the historicism of late Victoriancolonialism. Like all historicisms, it has its fantasyboth of pristine origin, as it representstrue Buddhism, and of the end, as it portraysTibetan Buddhism,called Lamaism(whetherit is seen as a perversionof the Buddha's intentionor as its fulfillment)as an inevitableendpoint.WhetherTibet is to be curedby the restoration of trueBuddhismor by conversionto Christianity, the cure is possessed by the West, and the colonization of Tibet seems the sole means of its administration. By designatingTibetanBuddhismas something apart, as disconnectedfrom the other Buddhismsof Asia, all of which were under strong Westerninfluence by the end of the nineteenthcentury, Tibet could be more easily portrayedas entirely other and hence incapable of its own representation. These nineteenth-century denotationsof Lamaism are succinctly captured in the entry (under the more archaic "Lamanism")in the current Oxford
English Dictionary:

the Religions of LaterAntiquity(JordanLecturesin Comparative Religions, XIV) (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1990). 48 Waddell, TibetanBuddhism,573. 49 Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries (New York:Dover Publication, 1905), 447-8.

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+ lamanism. Obs. [After F. lamanisme(Huc).] = LAMAISM. So la'manical a. = LAMAIC 1852 Blackw. Mag. LXXI. 339 The Tibetanportion .. is inhabitedby a rough beneaththe engraftedLamanism.1867 race, . . retainingmany primitivesuperstitions M. JONES Hue's Tartary243 The foundationof the lamanicalhierarchy,framed in imitation of the pontifical court. Ibid. 252 It is with this view [of enfeebling the strengthof the Mongol princes] that the Emperorspatroniselamanism. In the 1852 reference, Lamaism is somehow not native to Tibet but has been at some point "engrafted" to the primitive superstitions of the Tibetans. In the first 1867 reference, the Lamaist church is a copy of the original Roman Catholic hierarchy. And in the third reference, reminiscent of Qianlong's declaration, there is disavowal of allegiance; the Chinese emperors' support has been a pretense. In each of the three cases, Lamaism is portrayed as somehow inauthentic, with that inauthenticity determined in relation to what is more original and more real: In the first case, Lamaism is a false appendage to Tibetan superstition; in the second, it is a late copy of an original; in the third, it is the object of the pretense of realpolitik. By the nineteenth century, Lamaism had become so particular, so peculiar, that it seemed almost to lose its site and float freely, displaced from all locations. As is the case with so many of the "isms" in the study of religion, those designated by the term only come to use it when they enter into the fray of defining their "lost culture" and are confronted by the definitions of the West, definitions created by competing ideologies of authenticity. As stated at the outset, there is no term in the Tibetan language for Lamaism; Tibetans refer to their religion as the "Buddhist religion" (sangs rgyas pa'i chos) or, more commonly, "the religion of the insiders" (nang pa'i chos). The use of the term Lamaism has been condemned by the spokesman for Tibetan culture, a figure whose own name recalls the circumstances of its coinage, the current Dalai Lama. At the conclusion of his first book on Tibetan Buddhism (1963), composed in part for foreign consumption, he wrote: Some people say thatthe religion of Tibet is "Lamaism" [literally,"religionof lamas," bla ma'i chos], as if it were a religion not taughtby the Buddha,but this is not so. The originalauthorof the sutrasandtantrasthatare the root sourceof all schools of Tibetan Buddhism is the teacher SakyamuniBuddha.... Tibetan lamas took these as the basis and root and then listened to them, contemplatedthem, and meditated upon them; among the main points they did not fabricate a single doctrine that does not accord with [the teachings of the Buddha].50
50 Tenzin Dalai Lama, Openingthe Eye of New Awareness,Donald S. Gyatso, the Fourteenth Lopez, Jr., trans. (London:Wisdom Publications, 1985), 117-8. The use of the term lamaism is also condemnedin an article publishedin Tibetanin 1982 at the behest of the Chinese Peoples' in 1986. See Political ConsultativeCommitteeand publishedin an inadequate English translation Tseten Zhabdrung,"Researchon the Nomenclatureof the Buddhist Schools in Tibet," Tibet Journal, 11:3 (Autumn 1986), 43-44.

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Here we see anotherideology of authenticityat work. The responseto Lamaism by Tibetans has not been unambiguous, however. The first Tibetan Buddhist monasteryin the United States, founded by the Mongolian monk, Geshe Wangyal,in FreewoodAcres, New Jerseyin 1955, took as its name the LamaistBuddhistMonasteryof America.51 In the 1960s and 1970s, the earlier Buddhologicalvaluation of Tibetan Buddhism (still sometimes called Lamaism)reachedits antipodes, as young scholarscame to exalt Tibet,just at the momentof its invasionand annexation by China, as a pristinepreserveof authenticBuddhistdoctrineand practice. Unlike the Buddhismsof China, Japan,and SoutheastAsia, TibetanBuddhism was uncorrupted because it had been untaintedby Westerndomination. The value of Tibet to scholars of Buddhism was no longer simply as an of IndianBuddhism,long lost in the originalSanskrit archiveof the scriptures but held in highly accurateTibetantranslation.52 The Tibetandiasporaafter the Dalai Lama'sflight to India in 1959 made a great flood of autochthonous Tibetan Buddhism literature,heretofore unstudied, widely available to the universitiesof Europeand North America (largely throughthe efforts of the Libraryof Congressoffice in New Delhi). This literature,scornedby Waddell at the end of the last centuryas "contemptible was now hailed by mummery," Orientalistsof a New Age, both professionaland amateur,as a repositoryof ancientwisdom whose lineage, as the Dalai Lamahimself claimed, could be tracedback to the Buddhahimself.53 What is the site of Lamaismin 1996, a centuryafter the Orientalistswith whom we have thus far been concerned used Lamaism for the rhetorical of Tibet in the unfulfilledanticipation of its colonial subjugation? subjugation The Victorians'view that Lamaismwas a mixing of Buddhistelements from India with primitiveTibetananimismpersists. ShermanLee defines the SanBuddhismwith an admixture skrittermvajraydnaas "Tantric of pre-Buddhist deities anddemons."54 Tibetan'B6n' worshipof nature Beyondthis definition,
51 Wangyalhad come to the United Statesto serve a communityof KalmykMongols, refugees from Stalin who had left their homelandin Russia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. AlthoughWangyal,like other KalmykBuddhistmonks, had been trainedin Tibet, he was not a Tibetan nor was his community;but they were ethnically Mongols and nationallyRussians. He had no interesttherefore, in calling his monastery,"TibetanBuddhist."However, he wanted to evoke in the name of his institutionthe traditionof Buddhismto which he and his community adhered, a traditionthat historically had spread as far west as the Black Sea, as far north as Siberia, as far east as Sichuan, and as far south as Nepal. The only alternative adjective, apparently,was Lamaist. 52 On British of Tibet as an archivestate in a variety of literaturesof the late representations nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies,see ThomasRichards,"Archiveand Utopia,"Representations, 37 (1992), 104-33. 53 For an analysis of TibetanBuddhiststudies duringthis period, see my essay, "Foreigner at the Lama's Feet," in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Curatorsof the Buddha: Orientalismand the Study of the Buddhism(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1995). 54 Levenson, Circa 1492, 472.

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the arthistorianratherproudlyexcludes knowledgeof the complicatedtheology of Lamaismfrom his narrative.In describingthe final Lamaistpiece in the National Gallery volume, "PortableShrine in TriptychForm," he begins, withinthe confines of this of the twenty-onedeities represented "Identification small folding shrineis beyondthe competenceof this writer."Afteridentifying who one of the figures as that of the Indiantantricmaster, Padmasambhava, visited Tibet in the late eighth century,Lee devotesthe greaterpartof his entry one (not includedin the to a descriptionnot of this portableshrinebutof another exhibition),a "perfectlypreserved" JapaneseShingonshrinethatKukaireportedly broughtfrom China in 806. Lee notes that the iconographiesof the two of shrinesare quite different:"TheKongobu-jishrineis a classic presentation the historical Buddha Sakyamuni,"whereas "the present Lamaist shrine is founderof a complex faith who, by the time this centeredon a quasi-historical shrinewas made, had acquiredwholly legendarystatusandattributes." Again, Lamaismmust suffer in comparison.The Japanesepiece depicts an historical figure in a classical style; the Lamaist piece depicts a figure only "quasihistorical." Were this not enough, this figure was the founder, again, of a becauseit was somehowcomposite, in "complex"faith-complex presumably contrastto the imaginedsimpleethicalteachingsof the historicalBuddha,who, This Lee would seem to imply, did not acquire"wholly legendarystatus."55 complexity of the Lamaist shrine marks its great distance, its differentiation from the plenum present at the origin. This depictionof TibetanBuddhismin the sixty-dollarbook is simplifiedin the brochuredispensed free of charge to those who attended"Circa 1492" at the National Gallery in 1992, in which the following definition is provided: "Lamaismwas a combinationof the esoteric Buddhismof India, China, and Among the many observations Japanwith native cults of the Himalayas."56 thatmay be made aboutthis sentence, it is initiallynoteworthythatthe verb is in the past tense, that Lamaismand hence its substitute,TibetanBuddhism, no longer exist but inhabit a static past, victims of the "chronopolitics" described by JohannesFabian. Beyond the tense of the verb, there is little to suggest that this sentence was not composed a century ago. There are the from true Buddhism;Lamaismis not Buddhism same subtle differentiations or even esoteric Buddhism(a "late development") but a combinationof various forms of esoteric Buddhism with native cults. (The Victorian scholars of any Japaneseinfluence on would have correctedthe erroneousattribution Tibetan Buddhism.) Lamaism is thus a hybrid, a mixture, a concoction of outside influences and nativeprimitivism.It follows, therefore,thatthe signifier, Tibet, should occur nowhere in the definition.
55 Ibid., 472. 56 Jay A. Levenson, Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration(Washington,D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 13.

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Although the power of representationdid not lead to Western political dominationof Tibet, that same power has been appropriated by the state that was finally able to bringTibet undercolonial dominion, a process that began with the invasion of Tibet by the People's LiberationArmy in 1950. The rhetoricaltrajectorythat began when lama jiao became Lamaism has thus come full circle, as Lamaism, invested with two centuries of Orientalist discourse, has once again become lama jiao and been returnedto the Orientals. This is not to suggest thatthe Chinese do not have theirown long history of denigratingTibetanculture. Yet the term that had been coined duringthe Qing and employed to isolate Tibet from Chinese culture is now used to dissolve it into the motherland.In post-1959 Chinese publicationson Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism is easily subsumedunder the criticism of Buddhism and of the masses. Nonethereligion in generaland condemnedfor its suppression of TibetanBuddhismas Lamaism, a corrupless, the Westernrepresentation tion of original Buddhism, has been appropriated by the Chinese as part of their justification to the West for invading and colonizing Tibet. Stuartand Roma Gelder's 1964 book, The TimelyRain: Travelsin New Tibet notes: inheritance to somewhofearCommunism The richspiritual more which,according is beingdestroyed thantheyunderstand Tibetan wasin fact Buddhism, by theChinese, It existedonlyin theimaginations notthere to be destroyed. of thosewhomistook the of ritual andreligious customfor spiritual mechanical observance experience.57 Coined in the West, the abstractnoun Lamaismhas become naturalizedas of which has effects beyond if it were an empiricalobject, the manipulation the realm of rhetoric. Eventually,Lamaismbecomes so particular,so different, so often describedas not this and not that, thatit becomes unboundedand startsto float freely, like "Zen"or "mysticism."In the process, the "original" site of Lamaism, Tibet, also lost its boundariesand was declared missing, dissolved into the People's Republic of China. Tibet, unexploredand uncolonized by the European(and hence a screen for the projectionof European fantasies), is absorbedinto China. The very use of the term Lamaism is a andthe unassimilated,used first by gestureof controlover the unincorporated the Qing over Tibet, then as a code word for Papism by the British over Catholic Irelandand Europe, and finally by EuropeanBuddhology over the uncolonized and unreadTibet. Long the blank spot on the map, markedonly by the word "Thibet,"the contourshave now been drawn,the riverstracedto their sources, the mountainsmeasured,only to have the borderlines, as well as the name "Tibet,"effaced. Even among the partisansof the Tibetancause, the focus remainslargely on the unsited, on the etherealand transhistorical,
57 Stuartand Roma Gelder's The TimelyRain: Travelsin New Tibet (London:Hutchinsonof of Tibetan Buddhism by British officers such as London, 1964), 129. The characterizations Landon and Waddell are quoted as authoritative by the Gelders as well as by anotherChinese apologist who wrote for Western consumption, Han Suyin. See her Lhasa: The Open City (London:JonathanCape, 1977).

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on Tibetanreligion as the sole legacy, even the irreducible essence, of Tibetan culture. There is now, and never was Tibet, there was only Lamaism. The term used to mark off Tibet remains;Tibet is absent. Tibetans are said to believe that if the la, the soul, leaves the body, the person becomes unbalancedor insane. With the formationof lama from la, the original meaning of la left lama, setting off a loss of equilibriumthat Ourpurposehere has been to attempta belated resultedfinally in "Lamaism." ritual of "calling the la" back to its lost abode.