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On the Meaning of Old Tibetan Rje-Blon During the Tibetan Empire Period

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On the Meaning of Old Tibetan Rje-Blon During the Tibetan Empire Period ON THE MEANING OF OLD TIBETAN RJE-BLON DURING THE TIBETAN EMPIRE PERIOD BY CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH AND MICHAEL L. WALTER* The compound rje-blon occurs many times in Imperial period Old Tibetan texts. According to Tibetan rules of derivation it may mean ‘lord minister’, ‘lord’s minister’, ‘lords and ministers’, etc. It has traditionally been interpreted to mean ‘a lord and his ministers’, with the first element rje referring to the ruler—in most cases, the Tibetan emperor. That is, the term has hitherto been taken to include the paramount ruler (usually the Tibetan emperor, the btsanpo) and put him on the same level with his ‘ministers’. As shown below, the violence this traditional interpretation of rje-blon does to Imperial period Old Tibetan rulership terminology is extreme. It also necessitates extremely odd grammatical reference when the compound is used, as it often is, linked by the coordinative conjunc- tion dang to the name or title btsanpo, as in a sentence of the SAMYE inscription, lines 18-20 (Li and Coblin 1987: 188): | btsan po yab sras dang rje blon gun gyis dbu snyung dang bro | bor ro | Richardson (1985: 30), following the above interpretation, translates this as: The btsan-po, father and son, ruler and ministers all have so sworn. Li and Coblin (1987: 190) translate it even more oddly as: The btsan-pos, father and son, and the ruler and ministers have all sworn on their heads and avowed it. Despite the strange results typically produced when this interpretation is followed, it has been applied to all instances of rje-blon’s occurrence, includ- * Indiana University, Bloomington. Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548 doi: 10.2143/JA.298.1.2062443 993806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd3806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd 535535 114/02/114/02/11 009:159:15 536 C.I. BECKWITH – M.L. WALTER ing the Tibetan version of the bilingual portion of the Sino-Tibetan Treaty inscription (henceforth, ‘the TREATY inscription’) erected in 823 in Lhasa. Scholars who have worked on the TREATY inscription have almost completely ignored the parallel Chinese text1. In the Tibetan version of the concluding portion of the inscription rje-blon corresponds to the Chi- nese version’s 君臣 jun-chén. This has been interpreted as support for the received translation of rje-blon as ‘a lord and his ministers’2 or, even more extremely, in Li and Coblin’s glossary, as “rulers and subjects”, even though the glossary reference is precisely to the one with the explicit Chinese equivalent3. In their translation of the passage in which the Tibetan term occurs, Li and Coblin (1987: 80) give it as “sovereigns and ministers”, following the usual explanation. This passage of the TREATY inscription, West face lines 71-72 (Li and Coblin 1987: 40), reads: || ‘dï ltar bod rgya gnyïs kyï rje blon gyis kha cïg bshags4 mná bor te || gtsïgs kyï yï ge zhïb mor brïs nas || rgyal po chen po gnyïs kyï ni phyag rgyas btab || This is translated by Li and Coblin (1987: 80) as: Thus the sovereigns and the ministers of both Tibet and China together declared and swore an oath. After the text of the treaty was accurately writ- ten, the two rulers affixed their seals. Richardson (1985: 127) translates it as: Thus the rulers and ministers of both Tibet and China declared, and swore the oath; and the text having been written in detail it was sealed with the seals of both great kings. 1 Li and Coblin (1987) do not even bother to translate it. See also note 4. 2 Li and Coblin (1987: 399). 3 Li and Coblin (1987: 399). For all other citations listed in their glossary they translate it as ‘rulers and ministers’. 4 Scholars’ readings of this portion of the text (given here in Roman type) do not agree. Richardson (1985: 126) has zhal gyïs bshags for these three syllables, and he glosses the hapax legomenon bshags as “avow, declare” (Richardson 1985: 177). Although his read- ing and interpretation may seem better, his text is very far from being a critical edition. We have given the text verbatim as it is in Li and Coblin (1987: 40) and repeat here (see Walter and Beckwith, forthcoming) that we have no access to photographs or rubbings of the inscriptions other than the execrable samples provided by Richardson (1985) and oth- ers. We hope that one of the many Tibetologists, including Tibetans, Chinese, and others, who now live in or frequent Tibet will eventually ameliorate the situation somewhat. Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548 993806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd3806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd 536536 114/02/114/02/11 009:159:15 OLD TIBETAN RJE-BLON DURING THE TIBETAN EMPIRE PERIOD 537 The corresponding Chinese text of this passage of the TREATY inscrip- tion, West face (lines 27-28 as presented in Li and Coblin 1987: 77) reads5: 蕃漢君臣並稽告立誓周細爲文 二君之驗證以官印 This may be translated as: The lords and ministers of Tibet and China prostrating themselves declared and standing upright swore [the oath]. They accurately wrote the text [of the treaty]. They used their official seals to mark its verification by the two lords. Are we to envisage the emperors of Tibet and China kowtowing (稽), performing the menial task of “carefully writing the text” of the treaty, and finally checking it and affixing their official seals to mark their veri- fication of the text? Did the Tibetan and Chinese emperors actually meet in person somewhere at some point in time—perhaps in another dimen- sion, so their meeting went unnoticed by the fastidious Chinese chroni- clers—and do all these things? The extreme unlikelihood of any of this compels us to argue that the traditional interpretation of rje-blon is wrong. In order to solve the problem it is first necessary to discuss the indi- vidual Old Tibetan terms for some members of the Imperial ruling class. It has been pointed out long ago that there is a sharp distinction between btsanpo and rgyalpo in Imperial period Old Tibetan documents. Contem- poraneous early medieval international linguistic evidence confirms that btsanpo meant ‘emperor’, not ‘king’6, and recent work has only rein- forced our understanding of the differences between them7. The use of 5 According to the text as presented by Li and Coblin, there is a long space before 蕃, a long space between 文 and 二, and no space after 印. However, it is uncertain if the stone is so inscribed, because the authors (both well-known Sinologists) give no explicit statements as to to the actual line layout of the original, and in fact say nothing else what- soever about the Chinese text of the West face, except for a few indirect comments in their discussion of the Tibetan text of the West face. Li (1956) also says nothing about the Chinese text per se. He and Coblin use it almost exclusively as a sort of glossary for the Old Tibetan text. Richardson (1985), not being a Sinologist, does not discuss the Chinese text, but explicitly remarks that he has relied entirely on Li’s (1956) edition and translation of the TREATY inscription for information on the Chinese text. 6 Beckwith 1993: 14-15 n. 10. 7 Walter (2009); Beckwith (2009, and forthcoming). The distinction is preserved even in some early post-Imperial texts such as the RKONGPO inscription, though most post- Journal Asiatique 298.2 (2010): 535-548 993806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd3806_JA_2010_2_CS5_08_.indd 537537 114/02/114/02/11 009:159:15 538 C.I. BECKWITH – M.L. WALTER rgyalpo in the Sino-Tibetan Treaty inscription might seem to be an exception, but it actually is not. The text never uses the word alone to refer to the Tibetan and Chinese emperors. It always occurs together with chenpo ‘big, great’ in the expression rgyalpo chenpo ‘great king’, which is clearly an innovative title used in this text to indicate diplomatically the status of equality between the emperors of China and Tibet. According to the early medieval world view, which was shared by all the great empires across Eurasia, the title ‘emperor’ actually referred to ‘the one legitimate ruler over the entire world’8. As a result, neither the title btsanpo in Tibetan nor the title 皇帝 huángdì in Chinese could be used for any other empire’s ruler. The titles were unique and culturally specific: the Tibetan title could only be used in official documents for the Tibetan ruler, and similarly the Chinese title could only be used for the Chinese ruler. Indeed, Chinese texts always refer to the Tibetan supreme ruler as btsanpo (in Chinese transcription usually 贊普 zànpu), the Türk supreme ruler as kaghan (Chinese 可汗 kehán), etc. Because neither huángdì nor btsanpo are neutral titles—they were used exclu- sively for the paramount ruler of their respective countries—it was dip- lomatically necessary to find culturally neutral titles for ‘emperor’ to use in the bilingual TREATY inscription. Chinese 君 jun ‘lord’ is a neutral term that can be used for any ‘lordly person’, regardless of rank, includ- ing an emperor, so it was unnecessary to create a new term to refer to an ‘emperor’ in Chinese. In Tibetan, the solution was rgyalpo chenpo—lit- erally, ‘great king’—meaning ‘emperor [of any empire]’. It must be emphasized that btsanpo is never, ever used in Tibetan, Chinese, or any other language for any other ruler except the Tibetan emperor. In accord- ance with the early medieval political worldview shared by all the great empires of Eurasia, to the Tibetans all other rulers were (or should have been) by rights the subjects of the Tibetan emperor, regardless of whether or not they actually were under the political control of the Tibetan Empire.
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