TIBET. - A vast and elevated plateau (5,000 m. on average), enclosed between the Himalayas and the Kuen Lun, entirely desert in the west, with some pasture in the southeast and somewhat less inhospitable in the east, but everywhere of difficult access and until now quite imperfectly known.
I. GEOGRAPHY
Its eastern section constitutes the two Chinese provinces of Tsinghai or Chinhai and of Sikang; the rest is in a condition of only formal dependence on the Chinese government. A country of herders and locally of farmers, Tibet has a primitive economy, with very limited trade, with a population of barely 1 million souls over an area of 1.2 million sq km. Conditions of soil (mountains, lakes, deserts) and of climate (extreme continentality, scarcity of rainfall, violent storms) make life there difficult and precarious. Although governed by an oligarchy headed by the Dalai Lama, Tibet has been theocratic, since authority is entirely in the hands of the Buddhist priests, scattered among the numerous monasteries. The most sizable inhabited center is the capital Lhasa (ca. 20,000 inhabitants), which rises at 3536 m. above sea level.
Bibliography2 works
Giuseppe Caraci
II. HISTORY
Tibet (in Tibetan: Bod, pron. P'ō) was inhabited at least since the 2nd century by semi-nomadic groups speaking Tibetan or related languages. It lacked a centralized state organization, 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-kluns (Yarlung) unified the country, giving it a monarchical-feudal structure.
King Sroñ-btsan-sgam-po (ca. 620-49) entered into political relations with China and with Nepal, and consequently during his reign the religious and cultural influences of China and India began to penetrate the country. Under his successors Tibet became a great Asian power, struggling on equal terms with China on the one hand and with 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-sroñ-ide-btsan (755-97); his reign also saw the definitive victory of the religious-cultural influence of India over that of China, and the adoption of Indian Mahāyāna 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 (murder of King Ral-pa-can in 838). Glan-dar-ma then ascended the throne, a fierce persecutor of the new religion, assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 842. The succession was disputed and the monarchy fell apart, never to rise again, while the external possessions were lost. The following centuries saw Tibet fragmented into many small states, while at the beginning of the 11th century a second wave of Indian influence brought Buddhism back into vogue, in the particular form it assumed in Tibet (v. LAMAISM). The influence of the solid religious-economic organisms of the great monasteries began to be exercised in the political field as well. When in 1247 Tibet was on the point of being invaded by the Mongols, the abbot of Sa-skya (Sakya) managed to obtain from the Tibetan aristocracy and monasteries the mandate to negotiate with the invader. From these negotiations came the recognition of the temporal dominion of the abbot of Sa-skya under Mongol high sovereignty. With the decline of the Mongol dynasty of China (Yūan) in the first half of the 14th century, the power of Sa-skya also declined; on its ruins, around 1350, the supremacy of the hierarchs of P'ag-mo-gru made headway. The Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644), which succeeded the Mongols, exercised no power in Tibet, limiting itself to reaffirming its nominal rights by granting high-sounding titles to the 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 Rinspuns (Rinpung) grew, though they too failed to gain a preponderant position. It was a period of obscure struggles, in which religious antagonisms were joined to secular competitions. P'ag-mo-gru supported the dGe-lugs-pa; Rin-spuns instead supported the red sects, and so did the sovereigns (ide-pa) of gTsan (Tsang), who rose to great power in the 16th century as zealous followers of the Karma-pa sect. The power of the sovereigns of gTsan was such that the head of the dGe-lugs-pa, the III Dalai Lama bSod-nama-rgya-mts'o (1543-88), sought support outside Tibet. His journey to Mongolia procured for him in 1578 the conversion of that nation to Lamaism. This policy bore fruit in the era of the V Dalai Lama Blobzan-rgya-mts'o (1617-82), who managed to obtain the support of Gusri Khan, chief of the Khoshot Mongols;
between 1640 and 1642 the Khoshot overthrew the various Tibetan princes, the principal among them that of g'Tsañ, took possession of the country and made a gift of it to the Dalai Lama, reserving for themselves the military protectorate. Tibet thus became the theocratic state that lasted until our own days. In the last years of his life the V Dalai Lama appointed as regent (sde-srid) his natural son Sāhs-rgyas-rgya-mts'o and retired to private life. His death was kept hidden by the Regent, who only in 1697 proclaimed the name of his successor. The latter, the VI Dalai Lama Ts'añs-dbyāhs-rgya-mts'o, pleasure-loving, an excellent love poet and a wretched religious, provoked such discontent that in 1705 the chief of the Khoshot, Lha-bzañ Khan, marched on Lhasa, killed the Regent and in the following year did away with the Dalai Lama, replacing him with a creature of his own. The legitimate incarnation, the VII Dalai Lama bsKal-bzañ-rgya-mts'o (1708-57), took refuge in Kulunor under Chinese protection. In those years grave events followed one another with phantasmagoric rapidity. In 1717 the Dsungar Mongols occupied Tibet, putting an end to the government of the Khoshot. In 1720 a Chinese army drove out the Dsungars, led the VII Dalai Lama to Lhasa (though without any temporal power) and established the Chinese protectorate. The Tibetan government installed by the Chinese collapsed in 1727, and from a brief civil war emerged, as lay sovereign of Tibet, P'o-lha-nas (1728-47), acceptable to China; he restored peace and prosperity to the country. His son, the tyrannical and capricious 'Gyur-med-rnam-rgyal (1747-50), was assassinated by the Chinese, and in 1751 the Emperor once again conferred temporal power on the Dalai Lama, placing alongside him however two Chinese residents (amban). This regime lasted without grave shocks for a century and a half; it was a period of stagnant calm under the burdensome imperial protectorate; a calm interrupted only by the war with Nepal (1791-92), which ended victoriously through Chinese intervention.
In 1875 was born the XIII Dalai Lama T'ub-idan-rgya-mts'o, one of the ablest of the series. In 1904 an English mission, which had been forbidden entry into the country, opened its way by force of arms as far as Lhasa and compelled the local authorities to enter into diplomatic relations with the English government of India. The Dalai Lama, having taken refuge in China, returned to Lhasa only to flee from it again, this time to India, in the face of the advance of a Chinese expedition which in 1910 occupied Lhasa. Two years later, with the fall of the Empire, the Chinese occupation also collapsed, and for Tibet there opened a period of almost 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 XIV Dalai
Lama was formally enthroned only in 1940. The regents who held power from 1933 to 1950, the incarnate of Rva-agren (Reting) and then that of Brag-k'ra (Taktra), proved weak and unpopular, and English support came to an end with the independence of India in 1947. And so, when in 1949 China passed under communist government, the political-military pressure exercised by the government of Peking easily overcame the scant possibilities of resistance of the Tibetan government. With the Treaty of 23 May 1951 Tibet became an integral part of the Chinese People's Republic, with ample local autonomy under the government of the Dalai Lama. China reserved for itself foreign affairs, military affairs and the development of the country's resources.
In Sept. 1951 the communist troops entered Lhasa. Although the Chinese on the whole proceed with tact and prudent slowness, the end of the old Lamaist and theocratic Tibet is by now no more than a question of time.
Bibliography7 works
Luciano Petech
III. EVANGELIZATION
The first missionary to penetrate into Tibet was Antonio d'Andrade, S.J. It is by now established that neither Marco Polo nor Odorico da Pordenone, O.F.M., actually penetrated there, but only skirted its bordering provinces. D'Andrade succeeded in opening the mission in 1624 in 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 also those of Frs. Estevão Cacella and João Cabral, S.J., in the southern Kingdom of Tsang. Even the journey of Frs. Johann Grueber and Albert d'Orville from Peking, via Lhasa, toward India in 1661 had no missionary effect. In 1703 Propaganda entrusted the Tibetan mission to the Capuchins. The first ones arrived in Lhasa in 1707, remaining there until 1712. In 1716 other Capuchins went to Lhasa where they found the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri, sent by the archbishop of Goa. To him is owed the best description of Tibet in that era. By order of Propaganda he was forced 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 succeeded in building a church and a convent in Lhasa, but the numerical result of the conversions was very scanty. In 1742 a persecution broke out and in 1745 the Capuchins were forced to leave Tibet definitively, settling in Nepal and northern India. The name of Tibet was, however, retained for this mission without any real missionary activity being able to be carried on in the place.
In the course of the 19th century the two Lazarists Evariste Huc and Joseph Gabet penetrated in 1844 as far as Lhasa, but after six weeks they were expelled. Heroic efforts and attempts at penetration were undertaken by the Missionaries of the Seminary of Paris, to whom in 1846 the mission of Tibet had been entrusted, both from the side of China and from that of India. But Frs. Nicolas Michel Krick and Augustin Etienne Bourry were murdered on September 1, 1854. Charles René Alexis Renou succeeded in 1854 in establishing himself at Bonga in a deserted valley of the Kingdom of Lhasa; in 1864, after the death of Renou, Auguste Desgodins was definitively expelled from Bonga.
From that time Tibet, properly so called, remained closed to Catholic missions. Only in the bordering provinces, in the so-called Tibetan Marches in the East and in northern India on the borders of Sikkim, were the Fathers of the Foreign Missions of Paris able to found some stations as advanced posts.
For the religion of Tibet: v. LAMAISMO.
- See plates VII-VIII.
