Hill, Nathan W.

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Nathan W. Hill

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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Buddhism and Empire. By Michael Walter. pp. xxvii, 311. Leiden, Brill, 2009.

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Reviews of Books 5591–5 of the Princeton translation in pocket-sized editions, with the English in full paragraphs, withthe colophon formulae omitted, with parallel Sanskrit text on the left-hand facing page, with notesomitted, and with pruned introductions. The ideal companion-volume to the Princeton Yuddhakān. d. ais seemingly not to be.As for the narrative contents, the Rāmāyan. a is one of the most extraordinary, most brilliant, mostterrible, and most loved of humankind’s literary creations, and those who have not yet done so shouldstart with the Bālakān. d. a. In the Yuddhakān. d. a Rāma’s enmity with Rāvan. a comes to a head: theirarmies fight at length (hence the title), and Rāma kills Rāvan. a. Despite his misgivings in terms of theresults for his and his family’s reputation, Rāma takes his abducted wife Sı̄tā back. His term of exilecompleted, he returns to Ayodhyā and rules it in proverbially righteous fashion; and if the story wereto end there, he would live happily ever after.Many scholars have imagined that the story once did end there, as it does in the Mahābhārata version(Mahābhārata 3.258–275). Some of the same scholars have imagined that Rāma was once just a man,and that his also being an avatāra of Vis.n. u was a later addition. One significant contribution of thePrinceton team has been their having taken a hard line against this latter idea, showing through theircumulating introductions that Rāma’s dual character and his forgetting his divine identity are vitalaspects of the drama (see for example pp. 50–51; at Rāmāyan. a 6.105, now that he has killed Rāvan. aand discharged his divine mission, Rāma is told who he really is). With regard to the former idea, wenow await the Princeton Uttarakān. d. a.Simon BrodbeckCardiff UniversityBuddhism and Empire. By Michael Walter. pp. xxvii, 311. Leiden, Brill, 2009.doi:10.1017/S1356186310000350Walter puts forth two bold and thought-provoking theses: that the Tibetans have been significantlyinfluenced by the Indo-Europeans in prehistory and that the Tibetan empire was Buddhist already atthe dawn of history. To treat these two ideas within the covers of one volume was a mistake. Notonly does Walter fail to provide detailed treatment of the primary sources and full consideration ofprevious scholarship, his work employs a highly idiosyncratic system for citations, and is peppered withspelling errors and inconsistencies.1 Neither argument comes across as careful and persuasive. Walter’sanalysis relies on new interpretations of a number of key concepts in Old Tibetan religion and politicalphilosophy. While always interesting his proposals are seldom convincing. I discuss two terms bla andsku-bla in detail.Walter sees his suggestion of Indo-European influence as in opposition to the Tibeto-Burmanhypothesis. Many of Walter’s methodological objections to Tibeto-Burman linguistics as currentlypractised are spot on.2 However, his total despondency regarding the potential of Tibeto-Burmanlinguistics is unwarranted. While he is correct that Tibeto-Burman studies “cannot [ . . . ] be said tohave any import for the study of the intersection of early Tibetan, Chinese and Burmese cultures”,1The Sanskrit word sam. gha is misspelled sangha throughout. Mongolian altan ordo is written altan ordu (p. 291).‘Géza Uray’ becomes ‘Geza Uray’ (p. 125). The famous 16th century historian is Dpa’-bo Gtsug-lag on page 124but Dpa’-bo Gtsug Lag on the facing page (p. 125). Works in the bibliography are not ordered chronologically, e.g.Beckwith’s publications are listed in the order 1984, 2006, 2006, 1983, 1977, 1993 (p. 297). The dictionary Dag yiggsar bsgrigs was not published in Dharamsala in 1990 (p. 114) but rather in Xining in 1979 (Bsam-gtan 1979).2In particular his scepticism concerning Matisoff’s ‘allofams’ (p. 83).560 Reviews of Books(p. 84) this is simply due to a lack of research. Walter’s theory of the post mortem deification of theTibetan emperor is used to demonstrate links to the Indo-Europeans. China and Burma share sucha tradition, and indeed share the practice of deifying heir bearing queens as well as kings (Itō andTakashima 1996: p. 102, Aung-Thwin 1985: pp. 52, 159).Like his opponents Walter is mesmerised by the status of Chinese. He does not consider thepossibility that the study of other Tibeto-Burman languages, such as Tangut, Newar, Methei ormodern languages could shed light on Tibetan cultural history. Demonstrating the value of such anapproach, Brandon Dotson has drawn attention to parallels between Old Tibetan funerary rituals andthose of various Tibeto-Burman speaking groups of Nepal (Dotson 2008: pp. 46–47).Both of Walter’s theses may be correct.3 His emphasis on Indo-European elements in Tibetanculture draws attention to an important area that deserves to receive more attention. Unfortunately,although in earlier studies of riṅ and noṅs Walter has demonstrated himself to be a careful and competentphilologist (1998a, 1998b, 2004), he does not bring these skills to bear in this monograph. The bookis physically a noticeable step down in quality from volumes in the same series.blaIn Old Tibetan texts the spellings bla, brla and rla are generally identified with Classical Tibetan bla.Walter appears unaware of this variation; he suggests that bla means ‘government’ and “in Old Tibetandocuments it never means ‘soul’ or the like” (n. 51 p. 153). However, in a sentence such as the followingfrom the medical text PT 1044 a translation ‘soul’ is much more sensible than ‘government’.(53) . . . .mye btsa dpyad h. di ni // tshes (54) graṅs-te sbyar-te / brla ga-la gnas-pa / brtags-nas / thog-du mabab byah. o //one needs to calculate the time, determine where the brla is residing [at that time] and not apply[moxibution] there (translation follows Yoeli-Tlalim 2008: 231).4In PT 1146 the bla leaves a boy’s body and he dies (Karmay 1998: p. 316); in the funerary text IOL TibJ 734 the compounds rla-khyim ‘soul house’ and rla-lam ‘soul path’ are equally hard to make sense ofin Walter’s theory (cf. Dotson 2008: pp. 44–45). Finally, the coincidence of Classical Tibetan bla ‘soul’with Burmese prā ‘soul’ would be shocking if in Old Tibetan bla meant only ‘government’.sku-blaDismissing with broad strokes the consensus that the term sku-bla refers to a class of divinities(Macdonald 1971: p. 304, Stein 1983: pp. 201–205), Walter follows the earlier suggestion of Thomasthat the sku-bla are men (Thomas 1951: p. 16). Walter’s argument relies primarily on the self-evidencethat gods are strictly carnivorous.If one were considering offerings to spiritual beings alone, most likely meat would be used [ . . . ]When meat is mentioned as provisions for them [i.e the sku-bla], it is in a list with other foods [ . . . ]indicating it is to be consumed, not offered. (n. 39 p. 143).3The case for continuities between religion in the imperial and post-imperial period is made in a moreconvincing way in his own earlier article (Walter 2004).4Yoeli-Tlalim demonstrates that brla in this context is equivalent to bla in post-imperial medical texts.Reviews of Books 561The dichotomy which Walter sets up between ‘consumed’ and ‘offered’ belies a lack of familiarity withsacrifice. Does he believe that the Tibetans, in contrast to peoples the world over, did not consumethe meat they sacrificed? Although cross-culturally meat is the ritual offering par excellence, the fruits ofthe earth, and indeed water, are not uncommon worldwide as ritual offerings. Although I myself donot feel “hard-pressed to consider radishes suitable offerings for spiritual beings” (p. 99) the questionis moot because M.I.ix.4 (IOL Tib J 484) contains no word for ‘radish’. Thomas interprets lha-phug asla-phug ‘radish’ (Thomas 1951: p.387). This interpretation is not plausible.5 The word lha ‘god’ in thiscitation may well support the sku-bla as divine.In Walter’s interpretation of the Rkoṅ-po inscription a human being has sexual relations with asku-bla. Since sexual relations between mortals and immortals are otherwise unattested in Old Tibetantexts, he concludes that the sku-bla are human. The interpretation of the inscription however relies ona misunderstanding of the grammar. In fact, the text says that Kar-po served as chaplain to the godwho has been born of the union of the sku-bla of the imperial family with the local mountain deityDe-mo (gcen Kar-po nı̆ [ . . . ] sku-bla De-mo-daṅ bśos-pah. i lha bdag bgyı̆d, ll. 5–7).6 Walter’s best piece ofevidence that the sku-bla are men, that one appears to be “dispatched to a particular location” (p. 99),relies on M.I.iv.44 (IOL Tib N 199), where however the bla of sku-bla is an editorial emendation of(Thomas 1951: p. 354).From a number of Old Tibetan texts it is clear the sku-bla are gods. Walter admits that in the Envoysof Phywa to Dmu (PT 0126) the sku-bla are presented as gods, but argues (citing Macdonald 1971:p. 305), that this text presents a divine mirror image of the mundane world, in which all the dramatispersonae are divine (p.100). However, in the text itself neither the envoys of Phywa nor the lord ofDmu are explicitly identified as divine. In contrast, the sku-bla is identified with the dgah. lha ‘god ofbliss’, the phrase sku-bla gsol paralleling dgah. lha byed. In the Shangshu paraphrase (PT 0986), for thepurposes of translation the sku-bla has been identified with the and , Chinese divinities(Coblin 1991: p. 523). The sku-bla are quite clearly gods, and not men.ReferencesMichael Aung-Thwin, Pagan: the origins of modern Burma. (Honolulu, 1985).Bsam-gtan, Editor. Dag yig gsar bsgrigs. (Xining: Mtsho sṅon mi rigs dpe skrun khaṅ, 1979).W. South Coblin, “A Study of the Old Tibetan Shangshu Paraphrase.” Journal of the American OrientalSociety, 111.2: pp. 303–322, 111.3: (1991), pp. 523–539.Brandon Dotson, “Complementarity and Opposition in Early Tibetan Ritual”, Journal of the AmericanOriental Society, 128.1 (2008), pp. 41–67.Nathan Hill, “Aspirate and non-aspirate voiceless consonants in Old Tibetan.” / Languagesand Linguistic 8.2 (2007), pp. 471–493.Itō, Michiharu and Takashima Ken’ichi. Studies in early Chinese civilization: religion, society, language, andpalaeography. (Osaka, 1996).Samten G. Karmay, The arrow and the spindle: studies in history, myths, rituals and beliefs in Tibet(Kathmandu, 1998).Adriane Macdonald, “Une lecture des P.T. 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047, et 1290. Essai sur la formationet l’emploi des mythes politiques dans la religion royale de Sroṅ-bcan sgam-po”. Études tibétainesdédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou (Paris, 1971), pp. 190–391.5With laterals ‘h’ represents not aspiration, which is sub-phonemic, but rather devoicing, which is phonemic(Hill 2007: p. 474).6For the construction bśos-pah. i ‘born of the union’ particularly as used with gods cf. PT 1286 l. 45 andnumerous instances in the Ldeh. u chos h. byuṅ (Mkhas-pa-ldeh.u 1987: 230ff, 2003: 258ff, folio 129bff).562 Reviews of BooksMkhas-pa-ldeh.u, Mkhas-pa-ldeh. us mdzad-pah. i Rgya Bod-kyi chos-h. byuṅ rgyas-pa. (Lhasa, Bod ljoṅs midmaṅs dpe skrun khaṅ, 1987).Mkhas-pa-ldeh.u, : Diwu zongjiao yuanliu: fukan jiao biao. (Lanzhou, ,Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, 2003).Rolf Stein, “Tibetica Antiqua I: Les deux vocabulaires des traductions indo-tibétaines et sino-tibétainesdans les manuscrits Touen-Houang”. Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient 72 (1983), pp. 149–236.Frederick William Thomas, Tibetan literary texts and documents concerning Chinese Turkestan. Vol 2.(London, 1951).Michael Walter, “From Old Tibetan ring to Classical Tibetan ring-bsrel.” Acta Orientalia AcademiaeScientiarum Hungaricae 51 (1998a), pp. 1–2, pp. 63–68.Michael Walter, “The significance of the term ring-lugs.” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae51.3 (1998b), pp. 309–319.Michael Walter, “The persistence of ritual: continuities in the execution of political religion inTibet”. Edited by C. Cüppers, The Relationship Between Religion and Politics (chos srid zung’brel) in Traditional Tibet. (Lumbini, Lumbini International Research Institute, 2004), pp. 159–88.Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, “Tibetan Medical Astrology.” Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West.Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, eds. (Florence, Micrologus’ Library, 2008),pp. 223–236.Nathan W. HillSchool of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonThe Monkey and the Inkpot. Natural History and its Transformation in Early Modern China.By Carla Nappi. pp. xiv, 234. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2009.doi:10.1017/S1356186310000465This short book opens with a long “Ex-Voto” in which the author expresses her thanks to variousinstitutions, persons and Habibna, her cat. The intellectually somewhat unusual introduction followingthese pages makes it clear what the book is about: simply put, it deals with Li Shizhen and hisfamous Bencao gangmu . Its seemingly enigmatic title, The Monkey and the Inkpot, is derived fromthe English version of Jorge Luis Borges’ El libro de los seres imaginarios, which contains an entry called“El Mono de la Tinta”. The Spanish description of the mono, or monkey, goes back to Wang Dahai’sHaidao yizhi (1791), a book on the countries and islands of the Southern Seas, withsome paragraphs on strange creatures, plants and objects (on this work, see, for example, Études chinoises13.1–2, 1994). Wang has named his “simiolus” mohou , with good reasons: “Es muy aficionado a latinta china, y cuando las personas escriben, se sienta con una mano sobre la otra y las piernas cruzadasesperando que hayan concluido y se bebe el sobrante de la tinta. Después vuelve a sentarse en cuclillas,y se queda tranquilo.” – Well, why did Wang add such a creature to his text, how did Borges perceivethe issue, and which was the real reason for Nappi to choose the mohou for the title of her book? Theanswer would be a multi-layered endeavour and possibly somewhat too long for inclusion in a shortreview (in spite of the author’s explanations . . . ). Suffice to say, the mohou, sometimes associated with

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Buddhism and Empire. By Michael Walter. pp. xxvii, 311. Leiden, Brill, 2009.

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