Tibetan Precis by Richardson
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SECRET. For Official Use only. TIBETAN PRECIS BY H.E. RICHARDSON. Indian Political Service. Note The following pages have been set in such a way as to retain the original pagination. The page references contained in the table of contents and the index refer to those found in square brackets at the top of each page. For the maps accompanying the Tibetan Precis, see the Introduction, p. xii above. The following abbreviations are used in references to authorities cited in the Appendices: A.P.O. Assistant Political Officer B.T.A. British Trade Agent D.O. Demi-Official E.A.D. External Affairs Department, Government of India F. and P. Foreign and Political Service, Government of India F.D. Foreign Department, Government of India F.O. Foreign Office, London G. of I. Government of India H.M.A. His Majesty's Ambassador H.M.M. His Majesty's Minister P.O.S. Political Officer, Sikkim S. of S. Secretary of State [1] TIBETAN PRECIS Chapter I -History Down to the Close of the XIXth Century 1. Early History The history of relations between Tibet and India before the arrival of the East India Company is sketchy and obscure. Up to the Seventh and Eighth Centuries A.D. Tibet was a great military power, waging with varying success a constant warfare against the neighbouring Chinese, suffering at least once Chinese penetration as far as Lhasa, but able for long periods to maintain some degree of control over Gilgit, Baltistan, Kashgar, Nepal and Bhutan, and to carry terror and conquest even into the capital of China. Northern India, although largely protected by its climate, did not escape Tibetan invasion and, after the death of Harsha, a Tibetan force harried the kingdom of Magadha. Tibetan inscriptions up to the end of the Eighth Century continue to claim some sort of domination over "India". From the Seventh Century A.D. a strong religious connection between the two countries came into being. In fact, Tibetan Buddhism was founded by the Indian Tantric priest Padma Sambhava and was reformed some four centuries later by another Indian pandit, Atisha. Many other distinguished Buddhist teachers went from India to Tibet; and Tibetan scholars and pilgrims visited India. Great libraries of Indian religious books, both in original and in translations, accumulated in Tibetan monasteries; and there was a constant exchange of pilgrims, which still continues although probably on a smaller scale, between Mt. Kailas in Tibet, and the holy places of Buddhism in India. But by the time British influence first struck root in India the rise of Muslim power and the decline of Buddhism had reduced the former extensive intercourse to the pilgrim traffic and the small but constant trade exchanges between the hill states of the Himalaya, and Tibet. 2. First British Contact As British territorial possessions increased, the duty of protecting ever- growing boundaries brought about the inevitable contact with the Himalayan kingdoms. The occasion was provided by the Bhutanese, whose incursions into the plains and harrying of Cooch Behar appeared to Warren Hastings, then Governor of Bengal, as a threat to his Presidency. A force was sent to expel the raiders and drive them back to the hills. The Bhutanese seem to have appealed to the Tashi Lama who wrote to Warren Hastings, the first example on our records of the stately and picturesque Tibetan official correspondence; asking as a favour that hostilities against Bhutan should cease. Hastings, with far-sighted genius, replied offering a treaty of friendship between Bengal and Tibet and asking for a passport for an officer to negotiate with the Tibetans. About the same time (April 1774) he concluded a treaty with Bhutan, and shortly afterwards, George Bogle set out on his mission to Tibet. Bogle's account of his visit to Shigatse is full of interest, but it must suffice to say here that, although he established relations of intimate friendship with the Tashi Lama, his success was limited by that obstacle which, in different forms, has ever since overshadowed British intercourse with Tibet, the influence of China. 3. China and Tibet Even before the height of Tibetan military power in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries A.D. the Tibetans had from time to time raided China. The earliest record is of an obscure period several centuries B.C.; again in the Fourth Century A.D. Tibetan tribes contributed to the downfall of the Tsin dynasty. After the Eighth Century, the destinies of China and Tibet continued to be interwoven, but it was the foreign conquerors of China, themselves greatly influenced by Buddhism, who exerted the most active influence on Tibet. By the Thirteenth Century the military spirit of the Tibetans seems to have become softened, perhaps by the influence of Buddhism, which took hold in Tibet in the Seventh Century A.D.; and the conquests of Ghengiz Khan, even if he did not actually invade Tibet, reduced Tibetan influence which had suffered from the breaking up of what had been a strong unified kingdom into a number of small principalities. But Khublai Khan, the grandson of Ghengiz and the Mongol Emperor of China, was converted to Lamaism, and some time towards the end of the Thirteenth Century he established the High Priest of Sakya as ruler of Central Tibet. Thereafter, when the Mongol Yuen dynasty had been evicted by the Chinese Ming, Mongol chieftains continued to act as king-makers in Tibet by their support of one or other of rival hierarchies of Lamas. The most decisive intervention was that of Altan Khan, the scourge of the declining power of the Ming Emperors, who established the High Priest of Drepung monastery as Dalai Lama, and ruler of Central Tibet, in the place of the successors of the Sakya dynasty whose power had dwindled. The new line of rulers was confirmed and still further empowered in 1645 by the Mongol Gusri Khan who, offended by an appeal by the Regent of Tibet to the newly established Manchu dynasty of China for help against the Mongols, made a clean sweep of the petty Tibetan princelings, and then set up the Dalai Lama as an independent ruler; and it was not until the time of the Emperor K'ang Hsi that dissension and fighting between Tibetans and Mongols about the succession to the office of Dalai Lama, and a consequent invasion of Lhasa by Dzungarian Tatars, gave the Chinese the opportunity of active intervention in Tibetan affairs. A Chinese army eventually established the Seventh Dalai Lama in 1720, and along with him introduced effective Chinese rule at Lhasa. The events of these years may be read in the contemporary accounts of the Jesuit Father Ippolito Desideri, and the Capuchin, Orazio Della Penna. From that time until the Chinese Revolution of 1911 the Ch'ing dynasty maintained its. officers and military force in Lhasa but the gradual decline of Manchu vitality allowed the spirit of Tibetan independence to emerge again; and it appears that the last two Dalai Lamas under the Manchu regime were sufficiently powerful to refuse new seals of office from the Emperor. The above account is intended to bring out that the purely Chinese dynasty of the Ming, although it did issue formal acknowledgement of such Tibetan rulers as the Si Tu successors of the Sakya Lama and also of the Dalai Lamas who were supported by the Mongols, never controlled the country; and that it was the foreign Manchu dynasty, taking advantage of the Mongol religious tie with Tibet which the Manchus shared in a lesser degree, that first brought Tibet within the Chinese Empire. 4· Hastings and Tibet To return to the situation at the time of Warren Hastings' attempt to establish friendly relations with Tibet, it may be observed from Bogle's account of his mission that, although a Tibetan of the standing of the Tashi Lama was able to enter independently into negotiations with a foreigner, it was not possible for him to conclude any agreement without reference to Lhasa and Peking. Although Bogle noticed signs that the Tibetans disliked the Chinese, the Lhasa deputies who came to talk to him had to admit that they were subject to the Emperor of China. Bogle's request for the right of trade between India and Tibet was never answered but the foundations of friendly intercourse had been laid, and although both Bogle and his friend the Third Tashi Lama died soon after their meeting, Hastings sent further missions to Bhutan in 1775 and 1777, and in 1782 despatched Captain Samuel Turner to congratulate the Regent of Tibet on the re-incarnation of the Tashi Lama. Turner did not reach Lhasa but he obtained from the Regent of Tashi Lhunpo a promise of "encouragement to all merchants, natives of India, that may be sent to traffic in Tibet on behalf of the Government of Bengal". He reported subsequently (1786) that many natives of Bengal were trading at Shigatse without obstruction. Turner also noted the power of the Chinese, but he found the Tibetans unwilling to acknowledge their dependence on the Chinese Emperor. It is also interesting to read that Russia under the Czarina Catherine was said to have been making overtures at this time for trade in Tibet. The promising seed of British friendship with Tibet sown by these missions was brought to nothing shortly after Hastings had left India by a Nepalese invasion of Tibet in 1792. Suspicion arose in Lhasa that this attack had been encouraged by the British, and the immediate result was a complete ban on traders and visitors, including even Indian pilgrims, from India to Tibet.