He wrote further, "I favour forward policy, which simply recognises that great civilized Powers cannot by any possibility permanently ignore and disregard semi-civilized peoples on their borders, but must inevitably establish, and in time regularize, intercourse with them, and should therefore seize opportunities of humanizing that intercourse "(Younghusband 1910, 428; emphases added).
Youngblood justified the mission, asserting that the Tibetans had "asked me to take them under British protection-having come to the conclusion from what they had seen of us, that we were preferable to the Chinese" (IOR: MSS EUR/F197/108 n.d., 3). While Younghusband was criticized by his own government as well as a large section of the press (see Mehra 2005), he had his defenders. At a lecture delivered in London by a member of the Tibet mission, Douglas Freshfield, the chairman of session assured the audience that the natives whose sensitivities had been hurt by the invasion "would eventually come to see the English were right" and quoted a poem:
TIBET: A LAND OF RELIGION
Tibet's association with religion can be traced back to the early modern age when the first Western travelers were mostly Christian missionaries. [34] The Western assessment of religion as the main, if not the sole, defining feature of Tibetan life and culture has differed over time. Western missionaries as well as many travelers, especially in the beginning of the twentieth century, considered Tibetan culture barbaric and degenerate. However, as the century progressed and the merits of Christianity as well as secularism came under scrutiny in the West, Tibetan Buddhism [35] came to be idealized.
For most Western commentators until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Tibetan "preoccupation" with religion was irrational, superstitious, and downright degenerate, at least when compared to classical Buddhism. This unfavorable comparison between Tibetan and classical Buddhism is not surprising: the latter is a hypostatized phenomenon, created by Europe and controlled by it. It was against this classical Buddhism that all Buddhisms of the modern Orient were to be judged and found lacking (Lopez 1998, 7; see also Lopez 1995). Lamaism was the most degenerate and inau-thentic of all. This sentiment is clearly reflected in Waddell's work, which is characterized by modes of stereotyping and essentialism and representational strategies of gaze, classification, debasement, negation, moralization, and self-affirmation. In contrast, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is marked by modes of stereotyping, essentialism, and exoticism along with the strategies of differentiation, idealization, affirmation, gerontification, and self-criticism.
Waddell, the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century, bolstered widespread negative images of Tibet ostensibly based on scientific and ethnographic foundations. He had the right credentials to be an expert: he had learned the Tibetan language, he sought to study the religion systematically [36] and scientifically, and most important, he was a white European male.
Waddell's accounts of his journey into Tibetan religion (The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, 1895/1972) as well as into the Tibetan landscape (Lhasa and Its Mysteries, 1905) are filled with references to a degenerate form of Buddhism, an exploitative priesthood, and a superstitious peasantry. He writes, "The bulk of the
Lamaist cults comprise much deep-rooted devil -worship and sorcery… for Lamaism is only thinly and imperfectly varnished over with Buddhist symbolism, beneath which the sinister growth of poly-demonist superstition darkly appears" (1972, xi). In Tibet, the impure form of Buddhism became "a disastrous parasitic disease which fastened on to the vitals of the land… a cloak to the worst form of oppressive devil-worship" (1905, 25). At the same time, "lamaism" is not all bad as "it preserves for us much of the old-world lore and petrified beliefs of our Aryan ancestors" (1972, 4). In a typical blind imperialist un-self-reflexivity, Waddell finds the Tibetan Regent "hopelessly biased" about the religion of the British (1905, 408), while viewing his own biases about the religion of the Tibetans as objective.
The account of the visit to Lhasa is filled with contradictions. While the text is replete with criticism of the "vampire priests," "parasitic priesthood," and "sheer barbarians," it also expresses nostalgia for the enigma supposedly lost with the invasion and considers Tibet's "charming land and interesting people" (1905, 448). When visiting Yamdok Lake, Waddell mentions his pleasure at leaving warlike surroundings and entering "again the world of dreams and magic which may be said to be ever with us in the mystic Land of the Lamas" (292-93). Upon approaching Lhasa, he compares his excitement and anticipation to "the emotions felt by the Crusaders of old on arriving within sight of Jerusalem, after their long march through Europe" (326) and exclaims: "Here at last was the object of our dreams!-the long-sought, mysterious Hermit City, the Rome of Central Asia, with the residence of its famous priest-god-and it didn't disappoint us!" (330).
Taking a dig at the theosophist imagination of Tibet as the land of the mahatmas, he writes, "Thus we are told that, amidst the solitude of this 'Land of the Supernatural' repose the spirits of 'The Masters,' the Mahatmas, whose astral bodies slumber in unbroken peace, save when they condescend to work some petty miracle in the world below" (1972, 3). In fact, he writes, the Tibetans were entirely ignorant of any mahatmas living in Tibet, nor had they heard of any secrets of the ancient world being preserved in their country (1905, 409-10). Many commentators disclaimed the theosophist idealization of Tibet and deployed the trope of debasement and negation along the lines of Waddell's assertions, but the idealization of
Tibetan religion gained wider currency during the middle and later half of the twentieth century.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead has significantly contributed to the valorization of Tibetan religion and to the Western imagination of Tibet as a land of spirituality. It was allegedly written in the eighth or the ninth century and discovered in the fourteenth. It organizes the experiences of the bar-do, the "in-between"-usually referring to the state between death and rebirth. It was introduced to the West by Evans-Wentz (1949) for the first time in 1927 (and since then it "has taken on a life of its own as something of a timeless world spiritual classic"; Lopez 1998, 47).
The most idealized version can be found in Thurman's translation that seeks to represent Tibetan Buddhism as scientific rather than religious. Thurman dedicates the book
to the brave and gentle people of Tibet, who have suffered and are suffering one of the great tragedies of our time… [and prays] May the Tibetan people soon regain the sovereign freedom they have enjoyed since the dawn of history! And may the sunlight of Tibetan Spiritual Science once again shine brightly upon a freshened world! (1998; emphasis added).
[34] Missionaries had their own romantic vision of Tibet, often emphasizing the darker aspects of Tibetan culture in order to highlight the country's need for Christian enlightenment. Petrus and Susie Rijnhart expressed the goal of their missionary travel as "perpetuating and deepening the widespread interest in the evangelization of Tibet" for "much has [been] written of the heathen in other countries… but the Tibetans with their monstrous butter Buddha occupy a unique place in the world's idolatry" (1901, 1, 119). After all, Lhasa is not "only a city of metaphysical mysteries and the mummery of idol-worship; it is a secret chamber of crime; its rock and its road, its silken flags and its scented altars, are all stained with blood" (Carey 1902, 58). Monastic rapacity and domination along with criticisms of Tibetan sexual morality were common themes in missionary writings. Missionaries saw themselves as "soldiers of Christ" and Tibet as a citadel under siege (Bray 2001, 28). However, by the late twentieth century, missionary accounts show much greater empathy and sometimes a deep cultural understanding.
[35] Though Tibet is mainly associated with a variant of Buddhism or "Lamaism," there were quite a few practicing Muslims living in Lhasa. In most of the studies on Tibetan culture, the contribution of Tibetan Muslims is largely ignored. For exceptions, see Sheikh 1991; Siddiqui 1991; Tibet Journal 1995.