Historical Background

chapter 5 Historical Background 5.1 British Exploration of Tibet in the Mid-nineteenth Century Because of Tibet’s strategic location in Central Asia as a scene of the Great Game between the British and Russian empires, and increasing economic interests and mer- I do not begin the book with the map itself, for there are many other things to think cantile investments, Europeans edged closer to Tibet during the nineteenth century. about before we ever get to the Selden map. We have to dig in other fields, in part Hence knowledge production was important for the competing empires of Russia and because there exists basically no documentation that can tell us anything about the British India. The seeking and acquisition of systematic knowledge of Tibetan land- map. scapes and societies became an important goal for both empires. In addition to rep- Timothy Brook, Mr. Selden’s Map of China resentatives of these empires, other parties involved themselves in the acquisition of knowledge about Tibet. These included European missionaries, traders, adventurers, botanists and geologists. William Edmund Hay, a colonial officer, was such a person. ∵ The intentions of these groups were characterized by an encyclopaedic approach: they wanted to gather all available knowledge on Tibet. The flora, fauna and phys- ical features were surveyed, collected and appraised usingWestern scientific methods. If you work on historical maps, you become involved with the period in which they Knowledge and scientific specimens flowed back to Europe and supported the devel- were made. In the case of the Wise Collection, we find ourselves in the mid-nineteenth opment of sciences like geography, geology, cartography and natural history. century. The maps were made in 1857—the year of the Indian Mutiny. This rebel- Although the British were experienced in surveying mountainous regions, enter- lion is closely connected to the creation of the collection because a travelling lama ing Tibet was no easy undertaking for them, mainly because Tibet was diffi- from Lhasa interrupted his journey after hearing of the uprising and decided to stay cult for Europeans to reach until the early twentieth century. Not only were the in the Western Himalayas. Here he met William Edmund Hay, the British Political Chinese present in the area, but theTibetans themselves—suspicious of Europeans— Officer responsible for the district of Kullu, who commissioned him to produce the persistently defended their borders. Hence British knowledge of Tibet was not always maps that ended up as the Wise Collection in the British Library. An intense interest the result of direct observation of nature and society, but often depended on indig- in Tibet was not unusual during this period, so it is not surprising that Hay took enous people. As a result, the region was occasionally culturally represented and visu- the opportunity of asking the Tibetan lama to draw and describe the region for alized by locals—as was the case of the Wise Collection. These drawings were made him. in the late 1850s, at a time when the mapping of British India was largely complete, In the mid-nineteenth century, the surveying of the world’s major coastlines and but before (or around the time) Indian pundits,3 the “spies” of the British Empire, first great rivers was nearing completion, and Europeans shifted their attention to the ter- mapped Tibet. restrial exploration of continental interiors. The Tibetan Plateau remained one of the It was Thomas George Montgomerie (1830–1878), British surveyor and participant last blank areas on the maps of areas beyond European control. Tibet was perceived in in the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, who developed in 1862 the idea of train- very different ways in Asia and Europe. Although Tibetan societies in this region had ing “natives of Hindostan” as “trans-Himalayan explorers” to make route surveys in been deeply involved with, and influenced by, other cultures throughout its history, Central Asia. The plan was to train Indians to determine heights, observe latitude and until the late-nineteenth century early Western explorers considered and depicted measure distances. Approval was given in 1863, after which a small number of pun- Tibet as an isolated region. Little was known about the area. In contrast to this, Tibet dits were sent to carry out a secret exploration of Tibet—as travellers in disguise.4 In was well known in Asia as part of a multi-cultural, trans-Himalayan exchange and his A Memoir on the Indian Survey, Clements R. Markham described the expedition transit region. The Himalaya Mountains not only formed natural barriers but also of a pundit whose journey to Lhasa began in January 1865: “He was obliged to con- important points of trading contact between the Islamic World, India, Central Asia ceal his object, and profess devotion to Buddhism. In his hand, he carried a prayer and China. Commercial life and cultural interactions between these zones and cul- wheel, which consists of a hollow cylindrical copper box revolving around a spindle, tures involved significant transfers of knowledge in such fields of science as medicine, one end of which is the handle. But inside, instead of the usual scroll with a prayer on astrology and cartography. As a nexus of many trade and pilgrimage routes, Lhasa was it, the cunning pundits had slips of paper for entering his bearings and distances.”5 As mentioned in Arabic geographical books already in the ninth century and Tibet was well as the prayer wheel, a rosary was used for counting paces, one bead for every 100 shown on Arabic and Persian maps of the tenth century.1 In the twelfth century, the paces. Whereas the usual Buddhist rosary has 108 beads, the pundits’ rosaries only had Chinese began mapping and describing their own and neighbouring areas, including Tibet.2 3 “Pundit” means a learned or wise man, from the Sanskrit word paṇḍita. In nineteenth-century Brit- ish India, the term “pundit” was used for Indian trans-Himalayan explorers who were directed by the officers of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. In the public documents of the Survey of India, these men came to be called “pundits” or “native explorers,” but in the closed files of the government 1 Norwick 1988: 306. For further information on Tibet in Islamic Geography and Cartography, see of British India, they were given their true designation as spies or secret agents (see Waller 2004: 1). Akasoy 2011. 4 Waller 2004: 26–29. 2 Norwick 1988: 307. 5 Markham 1871: 117. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004416888_006 historical background 39 one hundred, every tenth bead being of a different material and much larger than the who made the maps was not trained in surveying and he was not commissioned to others to make the counting process easier.6 After being drilled in the use of sextant, explore a specific geographical region. He was commissioned to “draw and describe compass and other Western surveying instruments and techniques, the pundits were Tibet.” And in further contrast to the pundits, he drew his maps himself. It was Hay ready for their mission—human travellers became instruments for the British.7 The who made most of the explanatory notes, writing them on the drawings themselves pundits did not produce maps; rather, they made accurate route surveys, including and on separate sheets of papers. The lama, again in contrast to the pundits, added records of the terrain over which they passed. In addition, they acquired information only Tibetan captions but no explanatory texts. We do not know the circumstances about the people of the area, their customs, economy, military resources and other under which the two men met in 1857, but Hay took the opportunity to engage the aspects of life. Based on this information, the British wrote reports and made aston- lama, who had just come from Lhasa, to draw a map of the zhunglam, or “main artery ishingly accurate maps of the area.The real explorers were kept anonymous in the first of Tibet.” reports; they were simply called “the pundit.” These secretive men entered Tibet from We do not know if Montgomerie was aware of the set of detailed maps showing different places: from Dehra Dun and Garhwal in the west, and from Darjeeling and the “great road” between Lhasa and Gartok made by a Tibetan “insider”—eight years Kathmandu in the south. The survey conducted by Nain Singh in 1865–1866 covered before the pundits even started their exploration tours. almost the same route as that shown on the maps in the Wise Collection. This is also true for the routes that were surveyed in 1868 by Kalian Singh and in 1879 by Sarat Chandra Das and Ugyen Gyatso. 5.2 The Tibetan Perspective The pundits were sent by Montgomerie to “trace the great road that traverses the country from west to east, from the commercial city of Gartok8 to Lhasa.”9 The British Many books have been written on Tibetan history, in particular the period of the regarded this route—the zhunglam—as the “main artery of Tibet ensuring the flow of Tibetan Ganden Podrang, namely the time between the mid-seventeenth and mid- most of the country’s trade and civil-military communications.”10 This route follows twentieth centuries.13 The production of the Wise Collection maps and drawings falls the Yarlung Tsangpo, the river that flows north of, and parallel to, the Himalayas. At in this period, and thus at this point a brief overview of that period is appropriate, that time, neither source nor outlet of this river were known.11The travelling lama who with a focus on the time the maps were made by the lama in the late 1850s.

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