School WP5 17th-22nd February 2019 EPHE, Paris Handbook 1 Summary A treasure of Tibetan culture: the Alexander W. Macdonald archives at the Centre de documentation sur l’aire tibétaine (CDAT) ................................................. 3 Fonds Paul Ricoeur, Institut Protestant de Théologie ........................................................ 8 EPHE Wladimir Golenischeff Egyptology Research Center and Library ............................. 10 Chinese Epigraphy at the École française d’Extrême-Orient, Maison de l’Asie ................. 15 The so-called Labat collection: 600 cuneiform texts in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes .............................................................................................................. 51 Henry Corbin and the EPHE’s Shiite Archive ...................................................................... 64 A scholar’s little museum. The Byzantine and Christian collection of Gabriel Millet at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes ........................................................................... 74 The collections of the Institut Français d’Études Byzantines (IFEB, French Institute for Byzantine Studies) .............................................................................................................. 77 2 A treasure of Tibetan culture: the Alexander W. Macdonald archives at the Centre de documentation sur l’aire tibétaine (CDAT) Emanuela Garatti (EPHE) – Jean-Marc Fontaine (Ministère de la Culture) Besides its collections of monographies, Tibetan format books, and a large photographic fund, the CDAT (Centre de Documentation sur l’Aire Tibétaine) of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes holds a unique archive: 54 magnetic tapes recorded by the late Alexander W.Macdonald between 1959 and the beginning of the 70s in Northern India and Nepal. These tapes contain different kinds of material: records of religious ceremonies, theater and, most importantly, a huge corpus of the Tales of the Corpse (Tibetan: RO sgrung), a Tibetan version of the Indian Vetâlapanchavimshatika (The tales of the Vampire). The importance of this tape lies in the fact that this version of The Tales of the Corpse, chanted by a Tibetan Buddhist monk, is the oldest existing record of this corpus, and it greatly differs from the written versions. Recently digitalized, the Alexander W.Macdonald archive is not only composed by magnetic tapes, but also by notebooks and pictures taken by Macdonald, items that are accompanied by two French scholars’ recent first analysis of the content of the tapes. Alexander W. Macdonald (1923-2018) 1. Alexander Macdonald (1923-2019) Alexander Macdonald was one of the pioneers of Himalayan ethnology. His intellectual influence has been considerable on a whole generation of European researchers. Born in Scotland in 1923, the young Alexander Macdonald dreamed of travelling. During the Second World War, he enlisted as soon as he could in the Indian army because, in his words: 3 “From what I read, India seemed like a fascinating country; I wanted to experience for myself other forms of war than being bombed by the Germans in England.” In 1942, he arrived in Bangalore, South India, and in June 1943 he was sent to a regiment of Nepalese of the Gurkha ethnic group, then stationed in the Kangra Valley in northwest India, now Himachal Pradesh. This was his first contact with Nepalese people. He learned their languages through daily gorkhali classes given by the army. In September 1943 he was sent with his unit to Burma, where he served until the end of the war. After the war, he settled in Paris where he followed the teaching of the prestigious orientalists then in activity. He joined the CNRS and started working under the direction of Rolf A. Stein, then professor at the EPHE. He began to translate two Tibetan manuscripts of the “Tales of the Dead Man”, which we will discuss later. In September 1958, he left for a two-year mission to Kalimpong, in northern India, where a Tibetan community had long been established and where he intended to study the economic and social functioning of a monastery. The map shows the different places where Macdonald went: Himachal Pradesh, Burma and Nepal, where he would make many field trips afterwards. The red mark indicates the location of Kalimpong, where Mcdonald met an almost illiterate bard named Tenzin Trinlé in 1958. Tenzin Trinlé was originally from eastern Tibet. He had made monastic studies in central Tibet where he became a warrior monk (dobdob). He had been living in Kalimpong since 1957, after fleeing Tibet where he had committed a murder. Although he was still drunk, this bard agreed to record, for Macdonald, episodes of Gesar's famous Tibetan epic, but also his version of the Tales of the Dead Man. Macdonald recorded it for 11 months and then the bard suddenly disappeared. During his later missions, mainly to Nepal, Macdonald continued his recordings, with other interlocutors and other content: mostly Nepalese storytellers and singers of different ethnic groups, but also Tibetan Buddhist rituals. Even today, most of these recordings remain unpublished. 4 The Bard Tenzin Trinlé (bsTan 'dzin 'Phrin las), 1959 2. The CDAT sound archive In 2003, Alexander Macdonald, who was 80 years old, deposited 42 magnetic tapes recorded by him on his first mission in 1958-1959 and, for some, on his second mission to Nepal a few years later. He also submitted 22 handwritten notebooks. Subsequently, new tapes were brought to the CDAT by Alexander Macdonald and later by his wife, Anne Vergati. Other audio documents recorded by A. Macdonald are currently spread over several Parisian documentary sites. The Nanterre Ethnomusicology Laboratory (CREM) has digitized and put online the recordings kept at the Musée de l'Homme. They are mainly recordings of music, songs and rituals. The documents are of very varied nature and content; recorded in different parts of Asia, particularly in North India or Nepal, with different speakers and from different backgrounds (bards, monks, laity), speaking different languages or dialects. The tapes contain material spoken in Central Tibetan from Lhasa, Tibetan from Khams, in Eastern Tibet, but also songs in Nepalese languages, such as Tamang or Yolmo dialect. These recordings have a diverse content: theatre pieces, including A che lha mo (Tibetan Sung Theatre), music excerpts, songs, Buddhist ceremonies, episodes of an epic, and stories. The first donation in 2003, of 42 bands, was composed as follows: 35 tapes of the “Tales of the Dead Man” (“Les Contes du Cadavre”), 4 tapes with episodes of the Gesar epic, 3 tapes of Nepali songs. The following donation, the date of which is unknown, consists of 3 tapes entitled "Padmasambhava Ceremony" and a tape entitled "Tibetan Sung Theatre" (A che lha mo). The 2017 donation consists of 8 strips of Tales of the Dead Man that exactly complement the corpus of Tales of the Dead Man from the 2003 donation. In addition, there is a recent addition of 7 Nepali magnetic tapes, which are currently on deposit at CDAT. 5 All these tapes were recorded by A. Macdonald in the field, using, at least for some of them, a Butoba tape recorder. The tapes, recorded on two tracks, are still quite well preserved and can still be played if you have the appropriate equipment. 3. The different versions of the Tales of the Dead Man The title “Tales of the Dead Man” (in Tibetan Ro sgrung) refers to a cycle of tales in Tibetan. These tales are arranged together on the model of the 1001 nights: a prologue opens the corpus, an epilogue closes it, and both form the "framework narrative". Between the two, a variable number of unrelated tales follow one another, but linked together by the same transition. Emanuela Garatti has identified 27 different versions of the Tales of the Dead Man. The variant versions differ in their prologue. The epilogue varies little. We know two major prologues which, although different, have enough in common to be summarized here. A beggar (or a child, depending on the version) is chased by evil beings who are after his life. The beggar (or child) ends up taking refuge with Nāgārjuna, a meditator in a cave, who saves his life. The beggar (or child) ask Nāgārjuna how to thank him. Nāgārjuna asks him to bring back an enchanted corpse housed in a tree in a famous mass grave in northern India. Indeed, Nāgārjuna, who is also an alchemist, will be able to transform this corpse endowed with magical powers into gold and thus solve the problem of poverty (or longevity, depending on the versions). Nāgārjuna provides his protégé with the necessary accessories to catch the corpse (a rope, a bag, an axe...). Above all, he ordered him never to speak to the corpse, because at the slightest word, the corpse escapes and returns to its tree. The beggar (or child) sets off. When he arrived at the mass grave, he managed to capture the body, put it in a bag and began to bring it back to Nāgārjuna. The corpse begins to tell a story - this is the first tale. At the end of this first tale, the corpse interrupts its narrative and asks the beggar (the child) who transports him what he thinks of this or that character in the tale, or asks him a riddle. The beggar (child), captivated, forgets the instructions of Nāgārjuna and answers. Immediately, the corpse escapes from the bag and returns in the blink of an eye to its mass grave. The beggar (child) is good to go back to looking for him. Thus ends the first tale. 6 The second tale opens with the beggar who returns to the mass grave, grabs the body, puts it on his back and sets off again. The corpse tells a story, at the end of which the beggar talks, etc. This is as many times as there are stories. At the end of the last tale, the beggar (child) finally remembers the warning from Nāgārjuna, keeps quiet and manages to bring him the body. Nāgārjuna carries out a transmutation operation of the corpse into gold, more or less successful depending on the version.