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Pacific Rim Report No.36 Copyright 1988 -2005 USF Center for the Pacific Rim The Occasional Paper Series of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim :: www.pacificrim.usfca.edu Pacific Rim Report No. 36, December 2004 When Christianity and Lamaism Met: The Changing Fortunes of Early Western Missionaries in Tibet by Hsiao-ting Lin Hsiao-ting Lin, a native of Taiwan, received his doctoral degree from the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, where he also held an appointment as tutor in modern Chinese history. In 2003-04 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley. In 2004 he was a Kiriyama Fellow at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. He is currently a stipendiary Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he undertakes research based on the newly declassified T. V. Soong Papers and Kuomintang Archives there. Lin's academic interests include ethnopolitics and minority issues in Greater China, history of modern China's Central Asian peripheries, and the PRC's border security and strategy. He received the 2002 Royal Asiatic Society's Barwis-Holliday Award for his article, "The 1934 Chinese Mission to Tibet: A Re-examination." His articles have appeared in many international journals in the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and Taiwan. Lin is completing a book-length project, tentatively entitled Power Struggles, State Building, and Imagined Sovereignty: Tibet in Nationalist China's Ethnopolitics and Frontier Intrigues, 1928-1949. We gratefully acknowledge The Kiriyama Chair for Pacific Rim Studies at the USF Center for the Pacific Rim that has made possible the publication of this issue of Pacific Rim Report. The study of Western missionary activity in Tibet and the interactions between Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism (otherwise known as Lamaism) is as yet a relatively ignored topic in Chinese-Western cultural history. For decades, Chinese histories on this topic have interpreted modern and early modern era Western missionary activities in the Tibetan region as further evidence of the West's 'imperialist designs' on Chinese territory. From a Sino-centric perspective, the eventual 'failure' of Western missionaries to establish a solid religious base in Tibet and nearby regions serves as a clear demonstration of the Tibetan people's 'anti-imperialist' and 'patriotic' proclivities vis-à-vis foreign encroachments. Other works attribute the meteoric and temporary nature of the Christian phenomenon in Lamaist Tibet to the incompatibility of the two religions in doctrinal, ritual, and intellectual terms.1 Indeed, in past centuries Western missionaries time and again took the perilous and time-consuming journey to the forbidden kingdom at the roof of the world, only to be frustrated by the poor number of native converts, to be expelled from the area, or even to be killed or to die. But at different stages of Tibetan history secular rulers and religious leaders such as the Dalai Lama have been eager to protect Western missionaries and their tasks of preaching Christian beliefs to the local Tibetans. What motivated the Tibetan high authorities to support missionary activities in their Lamaist realms during our period? And what were the key factors that lead to the eventual withdrawal of Western missionaries from Tibet? Further, what are the implications of the early encounter between Christianity and Lamaism in terms of a macro-historical perspective on Tibetan history? This paper seeks to answer such questions first by tracing the history of Western missionary activities in Tibet from the 1620s through the eve of the collapse of the Qing dynasty, and then by contextualizing the above questions in the broader historical, religious, and socio-political contexts of early modern and modern Tibetan society. The Jesuits and Their Missionary Enterprises in the Guge Kingdom The first Western missionary known to have reached Lhasa was the Jesuit Father Antonio de Andrade. By 1601 King Philip III of Spain and the Pope in Rome were both feverish about exploring Cathay (China) and reclaiming for the Church the peoples "lying between India and Cathay." Their grandiose scheme did not materialize until the 1620s, when Antonio de Andrade, then Portuguese Superior of the Jesuit Mogul mission at Goa on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent, decided to launch an adventure to China, traveling overland by Kashmir and Tibet. In early 1624, accompanied by Fratello Manuel Marques, a remarkable lay brother who subsequently figured prominently in the exploration of western Tibet, Andrade set out from the Mogul imperial court at Agra in north India on a reconnaissance tour of Tibet. By the autumn of 1624, after an arduous journey across the Himalayan crest, Andrade and Marques reached Tsaparang on the Upper Sutlej River. Tsaparang was then the seat of Guge, a historic Lamaist kingdom whose territory covered approximately the present-day Gartok district of west Tibet.2 The first encounter between the Western missionaries and the Tibetans seemed an auspicious one. The Tibetans greeted Andrade and Marques with surprising friendliness. During the course of their meeting, the king and queen of Guge consented to daily religious lessons and gratefully received from the Jesuits an image of the Virgin and Child. So impressed was this petty monarch with Andrade that on the eve of his departing for Goa, before the mountain passes would be closed by winter snows in late 1624, he insisted that the missionary return the following year. In a letter to this effect, the king (Kri-bKra-Sis-grags-pa-lde), also promised to protect them on their way back to north India. Andrade arrived back in Goa in early 1625 where he wrote up his experiences for the benefit of the Jesuit Provincial. In his analysis Andrade felt the court of Guge provided a particularly good environment for propagating the faith. So well did Andrade make his case that before long, three additional priests were named to join him in establishing a permanent mission at Tsaparang.3 By August 1625 Andrade, Marques, and Father Gonzales de Sousa arrived in Tsaparang again as an advance contingent to open the mission. They began to construct a permanent church on Easter Day of the very next year for which the king of Guge himself had donated the necessary funds and had officiated at the cornerstone ceremony. Before the new church was completed, the remaining priests arrived: Fathers João de Oliveira, Alano dos Anjos and Francisco Godinho. A branch mission was established soon afterwards in Rudok, 300 miles north of Tsaparang, run by the newly arrived priests. According to the Jesuits' own account, by 1627 there were about a hundred local converts in the Guge kingdom, including the queen, the crown prince, and some other important royal members. Even the king himself had pledged to Andrade that he might be baptized in the near future.4 It became a marvel that the Jesuits were able to establish a missionary foothold in the Gartok district, a place that had a long tradition of following the Bon religion as well as Lamaism. Andrade may have looked upon Tsaparang as a gate to many other Lamaist kingdoms in the Tibetan ethnic area. From Guge the Jesuits probed both northward to Rudok and westward to Ladakh. Jesuit correspondence also referred to mission activity as far north as Kashgar, in Chinese Turkestan. Yet perhaps the most significant initiative taken by Andrade and his fellows was that which led in 1626 to the establishment of a Jesuit outpost at Shigatse, then the seat of the Tsang kingdom. The betrothal of a daughter of the king of Tsang with the crown prince of Guge may have offered Andrade, who was maintaining cordial friendship with the Guge royals, a possibility to further his missionary task in Shigatse.5 In the summer of 1626 Andrade reported to Goa that he had received a royal decree and a letter of invitation from Tsang's monarch. In early 1628, at Andrade's request and recommendation, Fathers Estevão Cacella and João Cabral undertook the journey from Goa to Tsang. Cacella and Cabral made their strenuous journey from north India across the Himalayas to Shigatse, where they were warmly received by Karma Tenkyong, then ruler of Tsang. When meeting with his unusual Jesuit guests, the friendly Karma Tenkyong gave permission to the friars to propagate Christianity within his Lamaist domain and generously provided the priests with handsome stipends so that they could sustain their daily necessities and carry on their work in Shigatse. The supportive king of Tsang even approved Cacella's bold suggestion that a new route be developed connecting Shigatse and north India with a view to facilitating the possible flourishing of missionary activities.6 Christianity and Tibetan Politics Why were the rulers of these Lamaist kingdoms so enthusiastic about introducing the Christian belief into their realms? What prompted their compliance with and courtesy towards the Jesuits? There may well have been strong political motivation behind the support of missionary enterprises by the Tibetan monarchs and their courts. At the time Andrade and Marques had reached Tsaparang, the king of Guge was plagued with increasingly unruly and obstinate monastic communities in his domain. The whole situation worsened when this monastic upheaval was clandestinely encouraged by the king's own family members. By the early 1620s the Yellow Hat reformists, known more formally as the Gelugpa sect of Lamaism, had the upper hand not only in Guge, but also widely in the whole of Tibet. With the growing numbers of Yellow Hat adherents throughout Guge, the monastics were able to extract considerable resources from their followers. For instance, as Chief Lama the king's brother had long antagonized the king by taking the best of Tsaparang's young men for the Gelugpa monasteries, thereby depriving the army of their services.
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