TIBET

TIBET. – A large and elevated plateau (averaging 5,000 m) situated between the Himalayas and the Kuen Lun, entirely desert in the west, with some pastureland in the southeast and slightly less inhospitable in the east, but everywhere difficult of access and hitherto very imperfectly known.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Its eastern section forms the two Chinese provinces of Tsinghai or Chinhai and Sikang; the rest is only formally dependent on the Chinese government. A country of herdsmen and locally of farmers, Tibet has a primitive economy, with very limited trade, and a population of barely one million souls over an area of 1.2 million sq km. The conditions of the soil (mountains, lakes, deserts) and of the climate (extreme continentality, scarcity of rainfall, violent storms) render life there difficult and precarious. Although governed by an oligarchy headed by the Dalai Lama, Tibet has been a theocracy, all authority being in the hands of Buddhist priests scattered through the numerous monasteries. The most notable inhabited centre is the capital Lhasa (ca. 20,000 inhabitants), which stands at 3,536 m above sea level.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

Tibet (in Tibetan: Bod, pronounced P'ö) has been inhabited at least since the 2nd century by groups of semi-nomadic peoples speaking Tibetan or related languages. There was no centralized state organism, and the country was divided into a series of small states dominated by an aristocracy largely of Central Asian origin. At the end of the 6th century the princes of Yar-khun (Yarlung) unified the country, giving it a monarchical-feudal structure.

King Sron-btsan-sgam-po (ca. 620–49) entered into political relations with China and Nepal, and as a result during his reign religious and cultural influences from China and India began to penetrate the country. Under his successors Tibet became a great Asian power, contending on equal terms with China on one side and the caliphate on the other. Central Asia, already occupied from 670 to 692, was definitively conquered, together with vast portions of western China, by K'ri-sron-lde-btsan (755–97); his reign also saw the final victory of Indian religious-cultural influence over that of China, and the adoption of Mahayanist Buddhism as the state religion in place of the ancient Bon-po religion. In the following decades Buddhism made ever greater progress, provoking the reaction of the Bon-po party (the assassination of King Ral-pa-can in 838). There then ascended the throne Glah-dar-ma, a fierce persecutor of the new religion, who was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 842. The succession was disputed and the monarchy collapsed never to rise again, while the external possessions were lost. The following centuries saw Tibet fragmented into many small states, until at the beginning of the 11th century a second wave of Indian influence revived Buddhism in the particular form it assumed in Tibet (v. LAMAISM). The influence of the solid religious-economic organisms of the great monasteries began to extend also into the political sphere. When in 1247 Tibet was on the point of being invaded by the Mongols, the abbot of Sa-skya (Sakya) succeeded in obtaining from the Tibetan aristocracy and monasteries the mandate to negotiate with the invader. From these negotiations emerged the recognition of the temporal dominion of the abbot of Sa-skya under the high sovereignty of the Mongols. With the decline of the Mongol dynasty of China (Yuan) in the first half of the 14th century, the power of Sa-skya also declined; on its ruins there emerged around 1350 the supremacy of the hierarchs of P'ag-mo-gru. The Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which succeeded the Mongols, exercised no power in Tibet, confining itself to reaffirming its nominal rights by granting high-sounding titles to Tibetan princes. This period saw the reforming work of Tson-k'a-pa; the sect he founded, the dGe-lugs-pa, spread ever more widely, despite the hostility of the older red sects. In the 15th century the power of P'ag-mo-gru declined, while that of the princes of Rinspun (Rinpung) grew, though they too failed to gain a predominant position. It was a period of obscure struggles, in which religious antagonisms were intertwined with secular rivalries. P'ag-mo-gru supported the dGe-lugs-pa; Rin-spun on the other hand supported the red sects, as did the rulers (sde-pa) of T'san (Tsang), who rose to great power in the 16th century as zealous followers of the Karma-pa sect. The power of the rulers of T'san was such that the head of the dGe-lugs-pa, the III Dalai-Lama bSod-nams-rya-mts'o (1543–88), sought support outside Tibet. His journey to Mongolia procured in 1578 the conversion of that nation to Lamaism. This policy bore fruit in the time of the V Dalai-Lama Blo-bzan-hrya-mts'o (1617–82), who succeeded in obtaining the support of Gusri Khan, chief of the Khoshot Mongols, between 1640 and 1642. The Khoshot overthrew the various Tibetan princes, the most important of whom was that of gTsah, seized control of the country, and made it over to the Dalai-Lama, reserving for themselves the military protectorate. Tibet thus became the theocratic state that has lasted down to our own day. In the last years of his life the V Dalai-Lama appointed as regent (sde-srid) his natural son Sahs-gryas-gryats-mts'o and retired into private life. His death was kept secret by the Regent, who only in 1697 proclaimed the name of his successor. This was the VI Dalai-Lama Ts'ah-dbya-hs-grya-mts'o, a pleasure-loving man, an excellent love poet and a poor religious figure, whose conduct provoked such discontent that in 1705 the chief of the Khoshot, Lha-bzah Khan, marched on Lhasa, killed the Regent, and in the following year eliminated the Dalai-Lama, replacing him with a creature of his own. The legitimate incarnation, the VII Dalai-Lama bsKal-bzah-grya-mts'o (1708–57), took refuge in Kokonor under Chinese protection. In those years grave events followed one another with phantasmagoric rapidity. In 1717 the Dsungarian Mongols occupied Tibet, putting an end to Khoshot rule. In 1720 a Chinese army drove out the Dsungarians, brought the VII Dalai-Lama to Lhasa (though without any temporal power) and established Chinese protectorate. The Tibetan government installed by the Chinese collapsed in 1727, and from a brief civil war there emerged as lay ruler of Tibet P'o-lha-nas (1728–47), well received by China; he restored peace and prosperity to the country. His son, the tyrannical and capricious Gyur-meda-rnam-gryal (1747–50), was assassinated by the Chinese, and in 1751 the Emperor again conferred temporal power on the Dalai-Lama, but placed beside him two Chinese residents (ambans). This regime lasted without serious shocks for a century and a half; it was a period of stagnant calm under the onerous imperial protectorate, disturbed only by the war with Nepal (1791–92), which ended victoriously thanks to Chinese intervention.

In 1875 the 13th Dalai Lama, T'ub-ldnam-grya-mts'o, was born; he was one of the ablest of the series. In 1904 an English mission, which had been denied entry into the country, forced its way by armed might as far as Lhasa and compelled the local authorities to enter into diplomatic relations with the government of British India. The Dalai Lama, who had taken refuge in China, returned to Lhasa only to flee again, this time to India, in the face of the advance of a Chinese expedition that occupied Lhasa in 1910. Two years later, with the fall of the Empire, the Chinese occupation collapsed as well, and for T. there opened a period of nearly forty years of de facto independence. The Dalai Lama, having returned to Lhasa, governed the country firmly and wisely, relying (within well-defined limits) on England. After his death in 1933, the search for his reincarnation was long and difficult, and the 14th Dalai Lama was formally enthroned only in 1940. The regents who held power from 1933 to 1950, the incarnations of Rva-sgren (Reting) and then of Brag-k'ra (Taktra), proved weak and unpopular, and English support came to an end with India’s independence in 1947. Thus, when in 1949 China passed under Communist rule, the political and military pressure exerted by the government of Peking easily overcame the scant capacity for resistance of the Tibetan government. By the Treaty of 23 May 1951, T. became an integral part of the People’s Republic of China, with extensive local autonomy under the government of the Dalai Lama. China reserved to itself foreign affairs, military matters, and the development of the country’s resources.

In September 1951 Communist troops entered Lhasa. Although the Chinese, on the whole, proceed with tact and prudent slowness, the end of the old Lamaist and theocratic T. is now only a matter of time.

Luciano Petech

III. EVANGELIZATION

The first missionary to penetrate into T. was António de Andrade, S.J. It is now established that neither Marco Polo nor Odorico da Pordenone, O.F.M., actually entered it, but only skirted its bordering provinces. Andrade succeeded in opening a mission in 1624 at Tsaparang, capital of the western Tibetan kingdom of Guge; however, in 1630 the mission was destroyed after this kingdom was occupied by the king of Ladakh. The attempts of Fr. Francisco de Azevedo, S.J., to open a mission in the kingdom of Ladakh failed, as did those of Frs. Estevão Cacella and João Cabral, S.J., in the southern kingdom of Tsang. Nor did the journey of Frs. Johann Gruber and Albert d’Orville from Peking, via Lhasa, to India in 1661 have any missionary effect. In 1703 the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith entrusted the Tibetan mission to the Capuchins. The first arrived in Lhasa in 1707, remaining until 1712. In 1716 other Capuchins went to Lhasa, where they found the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri, sent by the archbishop of Goa. To him we owe the best description of T. at that time. By order of the Sacred Congregation he was compelled to leave Lhasa in 1721. Under the direction of the Prefect of the mission, Francesco Orazio della Penna di Billi, O.M. Cap. (1720–1745), the Capuchins managed to build a church and a convent in Lhasa, but the numerical result of conversions was very meagre. In 1742 a persecution broke out, and in 1745 the Capuchins were forced to leave T. for good, settling in Nepal and northern India. The name of T., however, was retained for this mission, even though no real missionary activity could be carried on there.

During the course of the 19th century the two Lazarists Évariste Huc and Joseph Gabet penetrated as far as Lhasa in 1844, but after six weeks they were expelled. Heroic efforts and attempts at penetration were made by the missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, to whom the mission of T. had been entrusted in 1846, both from the Chinese and the Indian side. But Frs. Nicolas Michel Krick and Augustin Étienne Bourry were massacred on 1 September 1854. Charles René Alexis Renou succeeded in 1854 in settling at Bonga in a deserted valley of the kingdom of Lhasa; in 1864, after Renou’s death, Auguste Desgodins was definitively expelled from Bonga.

From that time the T., properly speaking, remained closed to Catholic missions. Only in the bordering provinces, in the so-called Tibetan Marches to the east