The Skor lam and the Long March: Notes on the
Transformation of Tibetan Ritual Territory in Southern A
mdo in the Context of Chinese Developments
Toni Huber
Humboldt University
Abstract: Following Chinese occupation, all types of ritual territories recognized
by Tibetans across the Tibetan plateau either became defunct or went into abeyance
and then revived – often spectacularly – in modified forms. This study deals with
an example of non-revival and strategic withdrawal from one regionally- and
locally-important Tibetan ritual territory. It provides a case study of developments
up to 1996 at the mountain known as Eastern Conch Mountain (Shar dung ri) in
A mdo Shar khog. The study documents why all major pilgrimage activities around
the mountain were left in abeyance in spite of the real possibilities Tibetans had
for reviving them once again. Important factors in this process are identified in
the dynamics of the local post-1980 revival of Tibetan religion in Shar khog,
changing attitudes towards demanding ritual practices, and the regime of modern
developments that have been vigorously promoted around Eastern Conch Mountain
by the Chinese state, including the banishment of lepers, tourism, mountaineering,
nature conservation, and efforts to inscribe seminal aspects of modern Chinese
nationalism, such as the Long March, upon an older Tibetan cultural landscape.
Introduction1
In ethnographic Tibet prior to the 1950s, there were various categories of territory
defined and maintained specifically with reference to both ritual practice and certain
1
Acknowledgments: the fieldwork on which this research is based was undertaken together with
Mona Schrempf from January to August 1996, and then during a solo journey to neighboring parts of
A mdo during 1999. I am most grateful for the help and hospitality of my local informants and field
assistants in Shar khog. Samten Karmay, Tsebo, and Jon Meisler kindly provided additional information.
I thank Janet Upton, Shuchen, Jacob Eyferth, and Duncan Campbell for help with Chinese sources and
pinyin. The faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University (Wellington) also assisted
me to complete the research and writing. This paper was originally presented at the conference “Myth,
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 2 (August 2006): 1-42.
www.thdl.org?id=T2718.
1550-6363/2006/2/T2718.
© 2006 by Toni Huber, Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies.
Distributed under the THDL Digital Text License.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
2
classes of associated narratives that we often simply call “myths.” Such areas of
ritual territory were most frequently (but not exclusively) set aside for ritual
purposes, as opposed to domestic uses. At the very least, human activities within
these ritual territories were subject to certain sets of rules or customary laws. While
there is no exact Tibetan category corresponding to the general designation “ritual
territory,” we can mention several common examples of what I mean to employ
the term for here: the special precincts around holy mountains (gnas ri) of
pilgrimage and meditation; areas surrounding the abode and ritual cairn (la btsas)
of local territorial deities (gzhi bdag, yul lha, etc.); various zones of sealed hills
and river valleys (ri rgya klung rgya sdom pa);2 and temple or retreat sites defined
within certain marked boundaries (mtshams, tho, etc.). Of course, areas so
designated in the Tibetan world exhibit all the general characteristics of what we
usually call “territory” in any context. They are never arbitrary, their extent and
boundaries have to be defined, signaled, and renewed. They are burdened with
discourse, always having the narratives and practices of the claimant(s) attached
to them. And they are always subject to competition, and even defined by it in
many instances.
Following over four decades of modern Chinese state policies and practices in
Tibetan areas, all such types of ritual territories either became defunct or went into
abeyance, and then revived in modified forms or were superseded entirely. At the
very least, Tibetan ritual territories now exist parallel to new and alternative
categories of territory which in some cases challenge their continued existence.
Based upon ethnographic and historical research in the Shar khog region of
southern A mdo, this paper specifically investigates what happened to one type of
traditional, mythically and ritually defined territory after the Chinese state occupied
and began to directly administer the region during the 1950s. After 1980, the
opportunity for local Tibetans to revitalize and reconstitute their ritual territories
became available in the wake of state policy liberalizations concerning religious
and other cultural expressions. In order to investigate just such a case, I will discuss
the area surrounding Eastern Conch Mountain (Shar dung ri), a mountain classified
regionally as a holy mountain (gnas ri) by both Bon po and Buddhist A mdo
Tibetans, but also treated by local inhabitants of Shar khog as the cult mountain
of a type of territorial protective deity. The aim of this preliminary study of Eastern
Conch Mountain is to reveal certain transformations in Tibetan popular ritual and
attitudes towards ritual territory during the twentieth century, especially in relation
to the advent of Chinese-inspired developments in A mdo Shar khog up until the
mid-1990s. During my final field work in 1996, Shar khog was on the verge of
massive economic and infrastructural changes, driven largely by the booming
Chinese domestic tourism market. It is my hope that these notes will provide some
Territoriality and Ritual in Tibetan Areas,” Vienna, December 1999, hosted by the Austrian Academy
of Sciences.
2
On ri rgya klung rgya territories, see T. Huber, “Territorial Control by ‘Sealing’ (rgya sdom-pa):
A Religio-Political Practice in Tibet,” Zentralasiatische Studien 33 (2004), 127-52.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
3
useful background for more thorough ethnographies of local Tibetan life in the
region during the past decade and beyond.
Following a brief introduction to the region of Shar khog and the location of
Eastern Conch Mountain within it, I will investigate respectively the traditional
Tibetan Bon po, Tibetan Buddhist, and Han Chinese cultural discourses about the
site. The modern transformations around the mountain will then be considered in
detail, in particular the dynamics of the post-1980 Tibetan religious revival in the
area and its relationship with concurrent Chinese economic and political agendas
and developments.
Shar khog, the location of the Eastern Conch Mountain gnas ri and the
ethnographic setting of this study, is an area of mountains and valleys surrounding,
but mainly north of, the Chinese county-town of Songpan. The whole area and its
Tibetan inhabitants, the Shar ba, fall under the administration of Songpan County,
or Zung chu rdzong as it is known in Tibetan. Up until the 1950s most of Shar
khog comprised various Tibetan areas independent from both the Chinese and
Lhasa states.3 Since the armed Chinese occupation of the area, which was largely
completed by the end of 1958, Shar khog has been administered as part of the
Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Chi. Aba Zangzu Qiangzu
Zizhizhou) of northwest Sichuan Province.
Shar khog lies right at the margins of the A mdo Tibetan plateau (latitude 33°,
longitude 103°), mostly above three-thousand meters, and is one of the easternmost
Tibetan populated areas. Being on the ethnic border, local Tibetans have lived here
for centuries in close proximity with Qiang, Han, and various Chinese-speaking
Muslim communities mostly grouped under the label Hui today. The Shar ba
population speak an A mdo Tibetan dialect, and are predominantly followers of
the organized Bon religion, although there is a minority Buddhist presence in the
south and west of the region. Shar khog is a relatively fertile and well-to-do
agricultural area, and the farmers also maintain small herds and engage in the
3
For ethno-historical notes on Shar khog prior to the Chinese occupation, see S. G. Karmay and P.
Sagant, “La place du rang dans la maison shar-wa (Amdo ancien),” in Architecture, milieu et société
en Himalaya, ed. D. Blamont and G. Toffin (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche
scientifique, 1987), 229-60; S. G. Karmay and P. Sagant, Les Neuf Forces de l’Homme: Récits des
confins du Tibet (Nanterre: Société d’ethnologie, 1998); S. G. Karmay, “Amdo, One of the Three
Traditional Provinces of Tibet,” Lungta 8 (1994): 2-8; S. G. Karmay, “Mountain Cults and National
Identity in Tibet,” in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. R. Barnett and S. Akiner (London: Hurst &
Co., 1994), 112-20; T. Huber, “Contributions on the Bon Religion in A-mdo (1): The Monastic Tradition
of Bya-dur dGa’-mal in Shar-khog,” Acta Orientalia 59 (1998): 179-227; T. Huber, “Ritual Revival
and Innovation at Bird Cemetery Mountain,” in Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture
During the Post-Mao Era, ed. T. Huber (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 113-45; M. Schrempf,
“Ethnisch-religöse Revitalisierung und rituelle Praxis in ein einer osttibetischen Gemeinschaft im
heutigen China,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Freie Universität, 2000); M. Schrempf, “Victory Banners, Social
Prestige and Religious Identity: Ritualized Sponsorship and the Revival of Bon Monasticism in Amdo
Shar-khog,” in New Horizons in Bon Studies, Bon Studies 4, ed. S. G. Karmay and Y. Nagano (Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology, 2000), 317-57; M. Schrempf, “The Earth-Ox and the Snowlion,” in
Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture During the Post-Mao Era, ed. T. Huber (Leiden:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 147-71; M. Schrempf, “Hwa shang at the Border: Transformations
of History and Identity in Modern A mdo,” JIATS, no. 2 (August 2006): www.thdl.org?id=2721.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
4
seasonal collection of natural products (medicinal herbs, etc.). Formerly, the Shar
ba were well known throughout southern A mdo for their role as middlemen in
border trade. Today some Shar ba remain traders or have businesses related to
local tourism, and a few work in public and private sector service occupations.
Although Songpan itself was always a Chinese town, the number and distribution
of Han and Hui in the county as a whole has increased significantly since the 1950s.
In particular, various settlements with non-Tibetan populations are now found
along main roads throughout the area, especially north of Songpan town. There is
also a seasonal influx of non-Tibetans into the region during the summer period.
Another profound change is the considerable development of modern infrastructure
(transportation, energy, services, etc.) undertaken by the state throughout the area.
This has, for example, brought major Chinese urban centers such as Chengdu, the
Sichuan provincial capital, within an easy day’s travel by bus or a short flight away.
The eastern geographical
boundary of Shar khog, and the
border between high Tibetan
plateau lands and the Sichuan
lowlands, is formed by the Min
Shan mountain range. About
twenty kilometers east of Songpan
county town there lies the highest
summit in the Min Shan range,
the imposing snow peak of
Eastern Conch Mountain (5588
m, fig. 1).4 This mountain is well
known to the Chinese as
Xuebaoding, or “Snow Treasure
Peak,” and has the distinction of
1. Eastern Conch Mountain peak and the Min Shan
being the eastern-most glaciated Fig.
range.
area in modern China. The
heavily forested northern valleys of the mountain also contain a unique and
spectacular system of karst limestone terraces and pools. Because of its yellowish
coloring, this geological formation is known to local Tibetans as the Golden Lakes
(Gser mtsho, fig. 2), while Chinese-speakers refer to it as the Huanglong, or “Yellow
Dragon.” Largely because of its outstanding natural features, the mountain and its
environs came to the attention of both state and provincial governments. During
the 1980s and 1990s, the area became the focus for major developments in
environmental protection and tourism. These developments followed closely after
the beginning of a period of intensive Tibetan cultural revival in Shar khog. During
this revival, the Shar ba and other Tibetan populations in the region began to openly
recognize, celebrate, and reconstitute many ritual institutions that had been strictly
4
The name is often more fully rendered as Shar phyogs dung ri dkar po, Dung ri dkar po, or Shar
gyi dung ri. Tibetans consider the glaciated summit resembles a white conch (dung dkar po) when seen
at a distance during summer.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
5
proscribed by the state since the mid-1950s. To understand how Eastern Conch
Mountain was effectively lost to Tibetans as a ritual territory in relation to both
this modern Tibetan revival process and subsequent Chinese developments at the
site, we must first describe the complex significance the mountain had as a ritual
territory during the pre-modern period.5
Eastern Conch Mountain in Traditional Tibetan Cultural
Discourse
Up until the 1950s, Eastern Conch Mountain was a popular holy mountain of
pilgrimage and the site for meditation retreats. Together with the Golden Lakes,
the site formed an example of the classic mountain-lake sacred landscape dyad
recognized universally by Tibetan peoples. As a type of ritual territory, its features
were completely in conformity with the Tibetan cultural pattern of holy mountains,
which has now been quite well studied.6
Fig. 2. Golden Lakes terraces and Eastern Conch Mountain peak.
In trying to draw a distinction between cult mountains worshipped as local
territorial deities and those of the holy mountain type, one can readily observe that
the major holy mountain cults have often been a focus for more extensive
pan-Tibetan religio-political and sectarian identities and interests. As such, they
were sites around which sectarian disputes, large-scale rituals, missionary activities,
and the involvements of the state were often centered. These aspects too are typical
of the way Eastern Conch Mountain was understood and treated as a cult centre.
Traditionally it has been the intersection for a wide range of Tibetan interests, not
5
At this point in time, Eastern Conch Mountain, and a whole network of other popular Bon po holy
mountains in A mdo remain completely unstudied (an exception being Huber, “Bird Cemetery
Mountain”). Some textual materials for future research are now available in Rnga ba khul gyi gnas yig/
deb dang po (n.p.: Rnga ba khul sgrig rgyur khang, n.d.) and A blon bstan ’phel and Dri med ’od zer,
comp., Mdo smad shar phyogs su thog ma’i g.yung drung bon gyi lo rgyus mdor bsdus (n.p., 1995).
6
For the only monographic study of a major holy mountain territory, see T. Huber, The Cult of Pure
Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
6
to mention those of neighboring Han and Qiang populations. While Shar khog and
surrounding regions abound in local territorial cults, each being based upon different
mountain deities and separate human communities, Eastern Conch Mountain itself
enjoyed a very wide ranging regional popularity as a pilgrimage site. Although the
majority of pilgrims visiting the mountain were Shar ba and their immediate
neighbors, the site served as a common ritual focus for pilgrim visitors from both
pastoralist (’brog pa) and farming (rong pa) districts throughout southern A mdo
over a large area, regardless of whether they were Bon po or Buddhist.7 Part of the
focus on the site must be attributed to its location near a major highland-lowland
trade corridor, via Songpan township, along which peoples from distant Tibetan
areas passed for reasons other than pilgrimage.
It is typical of many holy mountains
that their worshippers also tend to regard
them at times like local territorial cult
mountains. During my research, I have
found this ritual and representational
ambivalence to be particularly strong in
A mdo. Thus, simultaneously Eastern
Conch Mountain also had a certain local
status among the Shar ba as a type of
territorial deity, a mountain god named
Shar gnyan dung ri (fig. 3). The deity’s
iconography is martial, local stories about
him indicate a violent and unforgiving
character, and he is offered ritual
weapons, fumigation (bsang), and printed
paper wind horse symbols (rlung rta) in
some places close to the mountain. Yet
his identity as a form of domesticated
protector is indicated by his title “owner Fig. 3. Woodblock print icon of the owner of the
of the holy place” (gnas bdag), and his holy place (gnas bdag) Shar gnyan dung ri.
name Gnas srung dam can lha gnyan dung ’od ’dzin found in his invocation, and
also by the fact that he appears in the ritual dance (’cham, fig. 4) at the local Bon
monastery of Mkhar chung at the mountain’s base. Occasional paintings of the
god are found in local monasteries, and block printed icons with his invocation
are still used in Shar ba houses near the mountain, along with his worship at local
shrines. Shar gnyan dung ri is generally considered to be something of a regional
territorial protector deity for the Shar ba in a wider sense. This general traditional
identity of the mountain appears to be the only ritual aspect of its cult to survive
the impact of Chinese modernity at the site.
7
I collected records of visits by both individual pilgrims and family groups during the 1950s or earlier
from Dmu dge, Khod po, ’Phen chu, Rnga ba, Rme ba, Mdzod dge, The bo, most Mgo log regions,
Gser thar, and some northern districts of Rgyal rong. Traveling in the region in 1905, Tafel reported
pilgrims visiting the mountain “...fern aus dem ngGolokh-Land und von Ta tsien lu.” See A. Tafel,
Meine Tibetreise (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1914), 2:277.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
7
In addition to the Tibetan relationship
with the mountain, local Han Chinese
have also had a ritual interest in the area.
To fully appreciate the complexity of
pre-modern discourse about Eastern
Conch Mountain and Golden Lakes as a
ritual territory, I will briefly summarize
what can be reconstructed of the Tibetan
Bon po and Buddhist ideas, practices, and
claims which were focused on the site, as
well as those of local Han.
The Bon po Perspective
Since organized Bon has had a long-term
presence in the Shar khog area, the Bon
po discourse concerning Eastern Conch
Mountain is the most developed of all
Tibetan perspectives.8 The mountain is
claimed by Bon pos primarily as an abode
of the major Tantric meditational deity Fig. 4. Ritual dance mask of Shar gnyan dung
(yi dam) Ma rgyud, alias Gsang mchog ri.
mthar thug rgyal po, and his divine host
of three hundred and sixty deities. It is thus perceived as a sublime divine mansion
or maṇḍala palace environment containing this particular pantheon, and for this
reason it is empowered as a source of sacred power (byin gyis brlabs) worthy of
making ritual contact with. Characteristic of such arrangements, various peaks and
other landscape features are identified with the deities and their abode, and this
level of the mountain’s reality is available directly only as visionary experience
for advance practitioners. Local Bon sources claim the first visitor to the region
was an ancient magician named Rgya bon chen po zing ba mthu chen, who is said
to have arrived about 3,300 years BP. This fantastically early dating perhaps makes
more sense when seen in relation to certain Chinese historical traditions about the
mountain to be discussed below. Zing ba mthu chen is associated with certain types
of hidden religious treasure (gter ma) activities throughout the district.
The classic narrative of “opening the doors of the holy place” (gnas sgo phye
ba) at Eastern Conch Mountain is actually set during the earth-tiger year (1158),
on the fifteenth day of the sixth Tibetan month. At this time, a twelfth-century bla
8
The following details are summarized from Gnas chen shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag shel dkar
me long, comp. A gling bstan ’phel, et al. (Zung chu rdzong, 1993), 9-33; Shar dung ri’i dgon gsang
chen smin grol gling gi dkar chag tho yig bzhugs, in Zing chu rdzong dgon pa so sogs dkar chag, comp.
A gling bstan ’phel, et al. (Zing chu, 1993), 172-80; Bstan ’dzin rnam dag, Bod yul gnas kyi lam yig
gsal ba’i dmigs bu (Dolanji: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Community, 1983), 52; and Gnas chen dung ri’i
dkar chag zur tsam bzhugs (hand copy of inscription from Ri dgon bkra shis lhun grub gling, A stong,
Shar khog, July 1996), also published as: Gnas chen dung ri’i dkar chag zur tsam bzhugs, in Rnga ba
khul gyi gnas yig/ deb dang po (n.p.: Rnga ba khul sgrig rgyur khang, n.d.).
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
8
ma hero and revealer of hidden treasures (gter ston), Gyer mi skyang ’phags chen
po,9 opened both the mountain and sacred lakes at Golden Lakes for the benefit of
all beings. As is common in all these types of holy mountain origin narratives, the
saint further empowers the area by meditating in certain caves on the mountain’s
flanks, leaving his hand- and footprints and other magical traces on local rocks,
and revealing various hidden religious treasures throughout the area. It is worth
noting here that all Bon holy mountains in the region were originally places for
hiding and revealing hidden religious treasures. Skyang ’phags also “tames” nature
in various ways at the mountain, for example at lakes into which he inserts ritual
cake (gtor ma) offerings to reduce the water level. During his transit around the
mountain and the Golden Lakes he effectively performed the first anticlockwise
Bon ritual circuit (bon skor) which all pilgrims (including all Buddhists) later
follow around the peak as a ritual re-enactment of his original journey.
We currently have no way of independently assessing the sources or antiquity
of the various narratives about Skyang ’phags’s activities at Eastern Conch
Mountain. This is because many earlier sources were systematically destroyed
during the Chinese occupation and the extant documentation is all recently
composed, apparently to a large extent on the basis of memory. However, walking
around the mountain’s environs one can still hear herders singing songs about
Skyang ’phags, and local inhabitants are able to identify sites associated with his
deeds. One such site of historical import is the Mkhar chung monastery, also known
colloquially as Shar dung ri dgon pa, and in the texts as Mkhar skyong dgon pa or
Gsang chen smin grol gling. It was founded in the earth-ox year (1169) by Skyang
’phags himself, then entrusted to his disciple G.yung drung bstan rgyal and his
descendents.10 It is from this monastery, in the valley to the south of the mountain,
9
Skyang ’phags (b. 1126) is the most important Bon founder-bla ma in local Shar ba history. He is
said to be one of the three different ’Phags pa of Mdo smad, the other two being Do ’phags, alias Snang
zhig do ’phags chen po, and Gtso ’phags. Accordingly, certain monasteries identified as “seats of
descent lineages” (gdung rgyud gdan sa) are linked with them throughout Shar khog. Skyang ’phags
is also said to have opened two other holy mountains in the region, Byang bya dur and Brag bya rgod
to the north. His name also appears in local place names, such as Skyang tshang. Skyang ’phags is also
found spelled Spyang ’phags, and it is of interest that an old name for Shar khog is Khri spyang, also
spelled Khri skyang; see Huber, “Bon Religion in A-mdo,” 182-84, 189n21.
10
See Gsang gling dkar chag, 172-74. On modern Chinese maps and documents this site is named
Shangnamisi, and is part of Dazhai Xiang. It is the “Ka tschung gomba” visited by Tafel. See A. Tafel,
Meine Tibetreise, 2:277. The current building, damaged but not destroyed in the Cultural Revolution,
is an early twentieth century foundation. During the mid-19th century, Mkhar skyong dgon pa was
destroyed in a disastrous flood. It was rebuilt and renamed as Gsang chen smin grol gling in 1919 by
Bya ’phur bla ma phun tshogs dbang rgyal (b. 1879), a Bya ’phur ’og ma lineage bla ma from Rnga
ba snang zhig monastery. See P. Kværne, “The Monastery of Snang-zhig of the Bon Religion in the
Rnga-ba District of Amdo,” in Indo-Sino-Tibetica: Studi in Onore di Luciano Petech, ed. P. Daffiná
(Rome: Bardi Editore, 1990), 218. The site was subsequently administered by Bya ’phur tsha bo tshul
khrims bstan ’dzin (d. 1955), Bya ’phur sprul sku phun tshogs ngag dbang bstan ’dzin (d. 1959), and
most recently by Bya ’phur bla ma shes rab blo ldan. This Shar dung ri monastery is not to be confused
with a site named Dung ri dgon pa which is also in Shar khog, but located in the southwest. The so-called
Dung ri Monastery was founded in 1840 by the bla ma Dung ri rin chen rgyal mtshan at Zhang ngu
(Dpal gshen bstan nyi ma ’bum gling gi dkar chag gsal ba’i me long, in Zing chu rdzong dgon pa so
sogs dkar chag, comp. A gling bstan ’phel, et al. [Zing chu, 1993], 273). The Dung ri bla mas were
also closely associated with the Bya ’phur lineage from Snang zhig, and Dung ri nam mkha’ bstan
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
9
that one starts to gradually climb the steep slopes of Eastern Conch Mountain and
to begin the main route for pilgrimage (skor lam), known as the “inner circuit”
(nang skor), around the high peak.
The Buddhist Perspective
Tibetan Buddhists from A mdo and Rgyal rong also worshipped Eastern Conch
Mountain, but maintained their own interpretations of its sanctity and history.
Representatives of the minority Sa skya pa lineage in Shar khog claim that in the
thirteenth century Sga a gnyan dam pa, a disciple of ’Gro mgon ’phags pa
(1235-1280), was told by his teacher to “go to the great holy place (gnas chen)
Dung ri dkar po in the Mdo smad borderlands.”11 He meditated in the area and is
credited with founding the small Sa skya pa site of Ri bo dgon pa bkra shis lhun
grub gling, also colloquially called Rus sbal dgon. Its location in A stong, to the
west of the mountain, is also on the initial part of the pilgrimage itinerary to Eastern
Conch Mountain. A short pilgrim’s guide for the mountain is today found painted
on a wall inside the vestibule of the main protector’s shrine (mgon khang) at the
rebuilt complex of Ri dgon, and together with informants’ reports gives a clear
indication of the Buddhist status of the site. Internally, the mountain is another
sublime Tibetan abode of the major meditational deity Bde mchog and his retinue,
and is associated with other Buddhist Tantric deities. As is claimed for literally
hundreds of other sites across the Tibetan plateau, the mountain is said to have
been visited by Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra, and other saints who left their
magical traces behind there, and the local landscape is described in terms of these
spots and the presence of other deities. Eastern Conch Mountain is also said to be
related to A myes rma chen, the other major holy mountain of A mdo, and they
are often called “brothers.” In the Ri dgon guidebook, the Buddhist account of the
mountain is then mixed equally with a Bon po presentation, after the fashion of
the eclectic movement (ris med), and we find statements such as, “There are many
profound treasures of both Buddhism and Bon, and countless supports of body,
speech and mind. If you make one circumambulation around this holy mountain,
you are certain to get the benefits – one hundred million fold – of doing such things
as ma ṇi or ma tri [practices].”12 However, a spirit of mutual respect among the
traditions has not always prevailed at this shared site. In the past, intense sectarian
competition and conflicts of interest have been focused around the ritual territory
’dzin (b. 1918) was a disciple of the thirty-fifth Snang zhig lineage holder Nam mkha’ blo gros (b.
1891). See Kværne, “Monastery of Snang-zhig,” 216-18. Also, Dpal ldan tshul khrims, G.yung drung
bon gyi bstan ’byung (Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre, 1972), 2:637, lists Mkha’ skyong bya ’phur
dgon with two hundred monks, and Nya yid [gnyan yul?] shar dung ri dgon with two hundred monks.
11
Ri dgon bkra shis lhun grub gling gi bla rabs mi tig phreng mdzes, in Zing chu rdzong dgon pa so
sogs dkar chag, comp. A gling bstan ’phel, et al. (Zing chu, 1993), 182-84. On Sga a gnyan dam pa in
eastern Tibet see E. Sperling, “Some Remarks on sGa A-gnyan dam-pa and the Origins of the Hor-pa
Lineage of the dKar-mdzes Region,” in Tibetan History and Language: Studies Dedicated to Uray
Géza on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. by E. Steinkellner (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und
Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 1991), 455-65.
12
Dung ri’i dkar chag zur tsam bzhugs, 2, 53.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
10
of Eastern Conch Mountain just as they have around other popular Tibetan holy
mountains.
There is a significant Dge lugs pa presence in the southwest of Shar khog, in
the region between Songpan town and Dmu dge, and adherents of this tradition
have also shown a strong interest in the mountain. There is no specific history of
Dge lugs pa saints and bla mas claimed for the mountain. However, its general
ritual territory is eulogized by local Dge lugs pas as being particularly sacred, as,
for example, by its members from Brag rwa in the Khrims rgyal (or Khrom rje)
Valley some thirty kilometers to the west (shar dung gi ri bo dang gser gyi mtsho’i
gnas byin rlabs can gyi sa). Because circumambulation of the mountain is only
performed in the anticlockwise Bon po direction, I asked Shar ba lay Buddhists
who had performed pilgrimage around it in the past if this mattered to them. Their
unanimous reply was that there was no problem doing it the Bon po way, because
that was “customary” or “in keeping with tradition” (srol ’dzin). For them, it was
another popular ritual at an important holy mountain that could generate spiritual
benefits. However, a politically important incarnate Dge lugs pa bla ma from
Khrims rgyal, immediately west of Songpan town, was adamant that Buddhists
did not like to perform the Eastern Conch Mountain pilgrimage because they had
to go around in the Bon po direction and that this was offensive to them.
Such statements are just a hint at a deeper mutual animosity and distrust that
exists below the surface between some sections of the Buddhist and Bon po
communities in Shar khog. In part this relates to the recent history of Chinese
occupation during which certain Shar ba Buddhist communities collaborated with
the Communists against the Bon majority, and thereby earned positions of influence
that continue today. But it also relates to a much longer history of religious conflict
in the region.13 While this longer history is of great interest, our present concern
lies exclusively with this sectarian conflict as it has been focused specifically
around Eastern Conch Mountain as a ritual territory.
13
Much of this history relates to Dge lugs pa conversion of Bon pos in the Dmu dge region under
the Stong skor hierarchs, their spread south- and eastwards toward the main Zung chu Valley, and the
involvement of Bla brang monastery to the north in Gansu. For notes on these issues, see A blon bstan
’phel, Zing chu rdzong dmu dge sa khul grub mtha’ brtsod kyi lo rgyas (unpublished cursive Tibetan
manuscript, 1995); Dmu dge bsam gtan, “Bod kyi lo rgyus kun dga’i me long,” in Rnga ba bod rigs
cha ’ang rigs rang skyong khul gyi rig gnas lo rgyus dpyad yig bdams bsgrigs, Bod yig Book 2 (Rnga
ba bod rigs cha ’ang rigs rang skyong khul rig gnas lo rgyus dpyad yig zhib ’jug u yon khang, 1987),
283-84; Kun bzang sgrol ma, “Dmu dge bsam grub gling,” Bod ljongs gtsug lag (August 1995): 37.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
11
Fig. 5. Mkhar skyong monastery, alias Shar dung ri monastery.
A major Bon-Buddhist dispute erupted during the 1930s when Buddhists decided
to erect a large multi-story Buddhist reliquary shrine (mchod rten) on the mountain’s
slopes, and around which circumambulations could be performed.14 The site chosen
was upstream from the Bon monastery of Mkhar chung (i.e., Shar dung ri dgon
pa, fig. 5), at the pasture known as Mar khu gshong, a place right at the beginning
of the main Bon po route for pilgrimage around Eastern Conch Mountain. For the
Bon po, this site was also a provocative choice since Mar khu gshong already had
strong associations with the opening of the mountain and the activities there of the
Bon bla ma hero Skyang ’phags. In 1933, under the influence of an unidentified
Buddhist missionary bla ma from outside the region and the administrative influence
of the Dge lugs pas from Gansu, the Shar ba Buddhist headmen and their
communities from southwest Shar khog raised the funds and resources for their
ambitious shrine-building project. The Bon po headmen objected, claiming the
shrine would bring about misfortune for the Bon po. In response to these Bon po
concerns, the Chinese garrison commander of Songpan town confiscated the funding
and intended to penalize the Buddhist missionary bla ma behind the project. The
bla ma fled, but returned again in 1936, and together with the Buddhist headman
of A stong successfully petitioned the Sichuan provincial government in Chengdu
for the return of the funding, permission to build the shrine, and also for a Sichuan
government order protecting the site. Following completion of the project, a large
party of Dge lugs pa followers were attacked by Bon supporters and this resulted
in some loss of life.
The imposing remains of this reliquary shrine, neglected since its destruction
during the Cultural Revolution by Bon po villagers, can still be visited at Mar khu
gshong (fig. 6). Local Bon pos report that when the shrine’s central chamber was
breached it was found to contain weapons and other ritual devices installed by the
14
The main written source here is a report by the Religious Affairs Bureau of Songpan County,
Songpan Zang Zhuan Fojiao Gaikuang (Songpan Xian: 1987), 7-8. It, however, differs in some detail
from accounts gathered from local Bon po historians and from interviews with residents in the A stong
and Mkhar chung areas.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
12
Buddhists and aimed at harming Bon po fortunes through black magic. This incident
is of interest as it reveals a local Tibetan strategy whereby one party made both an
explicit magico-ritual and symbolic counter-claim over the same ritual territory
that was being claimed by the other. The reliquary shrine itself is often employed
by Tibetans as a kind of geomantic device for “taming” negative or harmful forces
in a particular area. The remote site of Mar khu gshong high on the mountain was
a point past which every single pilgrim would have to walk, and it is walking
around the route for pilgrimage itself which defines and reconstitutes the ritual
territory of a holy mountain. Additionally, the shrine and its location offered a
chance for all Buddhist pilgrims who were forced to walk a “customary”
anticlockwise Bon ritual circuit around this mountain to perform clockwise circuits
before beginning their otherwise unorthodox ritual regime.
Fig. 6. Ruined reliquary shrine at Mar khu gshong.
Pilgrimage Around Eastern Conch Mountain
By virtue of its proximity to the main summit, the inner circuit (nang skor or rtse
skor) is considered the most important of the three different ritual circuits (skor
lam) which pilgrims can use to circumambulate Eastern Conch Mountain.15 As
already noted, Buddhist pilgrims undertook exactly the same anticlockwise inner
circuit pilgrimage as the Bon pos, although they did so while maintaining their
own interpretation of the mountain’s sites and sanctity. During the traditional
15
Based on textual sources (Shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag, 36-37) and oral accounts, the
reconstructed itinerary is as follows: [Day 1] From the main Zung chu Valley via A stong village >
Mkhar chung dgon pa (i.e., Shar dung ri dgon pa); [Day 2] to the retreat site and reliquary shrine at the
pasture of Mar khu gshong > ascend past the sites of Mi mgon brag, Mtsho me tog, Mtsho dung tse,
Brag yig rtsig, and Brag nag gshong kha > ascend snow-covered approximately 5000 m pass of Dung
ri brag skas > descend and cross the river of Gshin chu rab med > descend to Dung ri chu mdog; [Day
3] ascend Chu tsa la skas > cross approximately 4500 m pass of Gshin gyi la bo che > descend to Mtsho
taṃ las (or Mtsho tar mnyan) > cross the approximately 4500 m pass of Srid rgyal la > decend to Golden
Lakes.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
13
period, the short three-day inner circuit was the most popular route for pilgrimage,
despite it being highest in altitude, often snow covered, dangerously rugged in
parts, and very physically demanding. The nature of the terrain around Eastern
Conch Mountain contrasts markedly with other regionally important mountain
routes for pilgrimage in A mdo. I was surprised to find on a visit in 1999 how
relatively easy the route for pilgrimage around A myes rma chen is compared to
Eastern Conch Mountain, as the former site offers lower, more even terrain around
which prostration circuits can readily be made and horses easily ridden. Hard foot
travel and climbing is the only option at Eastern Conch Mountain. The very
strenuous and sometimes hazardous conditions of this pilgrimage are well known
to local Tibetans, and partly account for its popularity since the actual bodily effort
required to complete it is thought to both generate and test faith and ritually cleanse
embodied moral defilements (sdig sgrib). One Buddhist nomad family I met in the
Mdzod dge pasturelands during 1999 had the curious nickname “The Family [Who]
Displayed Genitals to Eastern Conch Mountain” (Shar dung rir zhabs ston tshang).
I was told that a senior male member of the family had undertaken the inner circuit
earlier in the twentieth century, and had found the steep passes and deep snow
extremely difficult. Out of exhausted frustration he had lifted his robe and exposed
himself to the mountain’s peak! Several informants stated that after completing
this challenging pilgrimage route it would be easy for one to pass though the
frightening intermediate state (bar do) after death, and one precipitous trail high
on the pilgrimage route is indeed named “Narrow Path of the Bardo” (Bar do
’phrang lam).16
The inner circuit was exclusively used as the route for an annual pilgrimage
staged just before the full moon of the sixth Tibetan lunar month (mid-summer),
and had to be completed by the auspicious fifteenth day.17 There was also a much
larger twelve-yearly pilgrimage staged around it once every tiger year at exactly
the same time. The year, month, and days are considered to be those of Skyang
’phags’s original opening of the site, but from a practical point of view this is also
the time when snow and weather conditions are best on the several steep
five-thousand meter passes which must be negotiated. Many informants clearly
remember their participation in the 1950s, and the annual pilgrimage is reported
to have attracted over one thousand pilgrims who traveled throughout the three-day
journey in family or village parties. The twelve-yearly events are said to have been
even larger, and therefore procession-like in nature, and included more pilgrims
from distant areas.
Another significant dimension of the pilgrimage was its finish in the Golden
Lakes Valley area, which the exhausted pilgrims reached at the end of their third
day. In the upper valley of Golden Lakes there are some very large and impressive
underground limestone caverns, with stalactites which were believed to be the
16
17
See Shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag, 37.
This ritual calendar has been used at least since the start of the twentieth century. See Tafel, Meine
Tibetreise, 2:277.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
14
self-manifested forms of deities, and so on. Pilgrims visited these caves, and the
upper lakes themselves, and worshipped there. The fumigation rite (bsang) was
performed here in honor of the mountain god, Shar gnyan dung ri. The practice of
reverence to Golden Lakes is credited in contemporary writings with ensuring the
rains on which Shar ba farmers depended for their livelihoods. After the bla ma
hero Skyang ’phags opened Eastern Conch Mountain, he presented offerings to
the assembly of owners of the holy places (gnas bdag), local territorial deities (gzhi
bdag), and female protector deities (brtan ma) in the manner of priest to patron,
and it is maintained that due to such offerings they produce rain.18 At the bottom
of the Golden Lakes Valley the pilgrims rested and camped, and some were met
by their families and friends who had not performed the circuit, but who had set
up tents in advance to receive them. For the pilgrims it was a time to relax in the
evening, to sing songs and perform folk dances. My informants are clear this final
gathering was not a religious occasion but rather a purely social one. Various
informants reported that at this time, some neighboring Qiang people from Pingwu
(Phan rbod) district not far to the east of Golden Lakes, and a few Chinese merchant
families from Songpan town, would come to the area to sell food stuffs, such as
fruits, to the gathered Tibetans. Both Chinese and Qiang also worshipped the
mountain and its environment at Golden Lakes, although they did not undertake
the demanding ritual of circumambulation.19
Snow Treasure Peak in Traditional Chinese Cultural Discourse
There is no doubt that Han Chinese have also maintained a traditional claim over
the mountain they call Snow Treasure Peak (Xuebaoding) as a ritual territory,
although it was far more localized than the Tibetan claims we have documented
above. The Han focused exclusively upon the site of the Golden Lakes, or Yellow
Dragon (Huanglong) as it is known in Chinese. The Yellow Dragon Valley, in
which historically there were no Tibetan shrines or monasteries, contained a series
of Chinese temples, several of which have been rebuilt in the upper valley since
1980. The most popular Chinese site was Huanglong Housi at the top of the valley
near the limestone pools and caves. In the Aba Prefecture gazetteer,20 Yellow
Dragon is listed as a Daoist temple, and is reported to have been built by a monk
from Nanjing during the late Ming period. This claim may be exaggerated. D. C.
Graham, a naturalist who visited the site in 1924, was explicitly told by Chinese
temple officials there that the first temple was only built in the 1820s during the
Daoguang imperial era (1821-50).21 In 1996, I found it to be rebuilt and still classed
18
Shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag, 36.
19
Some Shar ba have mentioned that a few Chinese Buddhists, particularly from the gold mining
settlement of Zhangla in the central Zung chu Valley, had performed the inner circuit. Others dispute
this, but in any case if it happened it must have been a minority phenomenon. Chinese Buddhist pilgrims
typically climb holy mountains rather than circumambulate them.
20
21
Aba zhou zhi (Chengdu: Minzu Chubanshe, 1994), 3:2494, 2563.
D. C. Graham, “A Collecting Trip to Songpan,” Journal of the West China Border Research Society
2 (1924-25): 42.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
15
as a Daoist temple, although expressing the typical Chinese Three Teachings
(Sanjiao) syncretism, and housing one Daoist priest. Parallel with Tibetan interest
in the lakes, the traditional Chinese ritual focus here is on water, and the temple
commemorates the Yellow Dragon God. The so-called Yellow Dragon True Man
(Huanglong Zhenren), who is represented as an old white-bearded man, is
considered the chief divinity presiding over the lakes and mountain. The general
catchment area of the mountain is of course one source of the important Min Jiang
River which is vital to Sichuanese Han agriculturalists dwelling downstream. A
Tibetan fumigation oven (bsang thab) stands right outside the temple and is in use
by Tibetan visitors today, just as it was when Graham visited here in 1925, while
Bon po flags with the eight-syllable Bon mantra oṃ ma tri mu ye sa le ’du printed
on them are hung over its courtyard entrance. In contrast, Chinese visitors only
worship inside the courtyard, and the temple receives a steady flow of worshippers
from both Songpan town and other local settlements, and now of course, also many
tourists from other areas of China.
Modern Transformations
Since 1980, in Shar khog and other adjacent Tibetan areas, there has been a most
vigorous revitalization of local religious and cultural institutions. The actual
revitalization process, studied carefully in terms of what had existed in the past
and also how, why, and by whom it has been revived or otherwise, is only just
becoming understood in A mdo with any degree of detail.22 However, it is clear
that the process conforms to a general threefold pattern also found in Central Tibet:
continuity with past traditions; adaptation of past traditions; and complete loss of
past traditions.23 In A mdo, and in other Tibetan areas, pilgrimage to holy mountains
was often one of the first popular rituals to be revived when the state allowed new
freedoms to local communities. A large part of the reason for their rapid revival
was that mountain pilgrimage required neither the rebuilding of formerly destroyed
structures nor the intercession of any clergy. Given this fact, together with the
former importance of Eastern Conch Mountain as both a locally and regionally
significant ritual territory, one would have expected an early and full revival – or
at least a revived adaptation – of the once important circumambulation of the
mountain. Surprisingly, such a revival did not take place. The Eastern Conch
Mountain inner circuit pilgrimage is now completely defunct, and has not been
performed, except by a handful of individuals, since the late 1950s. Why?
22
For various case studies, see L. Epstein and Peng Wenbin, “Ritual, Ethnicity, and Generational
Identity,” in Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, ed. M. C.
Goldstein and M. Kapstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 120-38; Huber, “Bird
Cemetery Mountain”; C. E. Makley, “Embodying the Sacred: Gender and Monastic Revitalization in
China’s Tibet” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1999); Peng Wenbin, “Tibetan Pilgrimage
in the Process of Social Change: The Case of Jiuzhaigou,” in Pilgrimage in Tibet, ed. A. McKay
(Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998), 184-201; Schrempf, “Ethnisch-religöse Revitalisierung”; and Schrempf,
“Hwa shang at the Border.”
23
M. Goldstein, “The Revival of Monastic Life in Drepung Monastery,” in Buddhism in Contemporary
Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, ed. M. C. Goldstein and M. Kapstein (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 11.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
16
Like the Eastern Conch Mountain inner circuit pilgrimage, other large
pilgrimages in Tibetan areas, such as the famous Tsa ri rong skor chen mo, have
also become defunct since the 1950s. In the case of Tsa ri, the answer as to why
is very straightforward: the route crossed what is now a highly disputed and
militarized international border and thus the ritual has become politically impossible.
And what of Tibetan claims over Eastern Conch Mountain as a ritual territory?
Are these not now being expressed in alternative terms and in adapted forms? The
answers to these questions are complex and I do not claim to have any definitive
response, although I will now analyze some of the principle factors I consider to
be important for a better understanding of the present situation.
The Dynamics of Religious Revival in Shar khog
Do popular rituals die suddenly or gradually? In the case of the Eastern Conch
Mountain pilgrimage I think the answer to this question is “yes” because both
options appear true. During the 1950s, the initial process of Chinese occupation
already began to kill the pilgrimage, but ironically the actual local dynamics of the
post-1980 Tibetan religious revival in Shar khog continued this process. The
so-called Democratic Reforms undertaken by the state, which began in the region
around 1955, triggered a popular Tibetan uprising and subsequent Chinese military
response that raged throughout 1956-58. Many Shar ba males lost their lives during
the fighting, or fled the district. It was a time of profound social upheaval, and one
during which the first active repression of religious life by the Chinese state began.
The last Eastern Conch Mountain inner circuit pilgrimage any informants recall
took place during the summer of 1957. In 1958, after the Tibetan uprising was
defeated, both the state’s collectivization policy and the anti-superstition campaign
came into force locally, and pilgrimage and other religious activities were effectively
prohibited. Being bound by the new communist system of earning work points for
food, and under the intensified scrutiny of state communalism, it became impossible
for Tibetans to contemplate even a clandestine pilgrimage to Eastern Conch
Mountain.24 This situation only intensified during and after the Cultural Revolution.
With freedom to revive pilgrimage and other popular rituals after 1980, local
Tibetans made certain strategic decisions which had a negative impact on the
possibility of reviving the Eastern Conch Mountain inner circuit. The focus for the
initial religious revival in Shar khog was directed by choice towards the north of
the region, to a site at the foot of another locally important Bon po holy mountain,
Byang bya dur, and the ruins of the former monastery of Dga’ mal.25 A series of
factors in the history of Bon monasticism in the region made the site of Dga’ mal
seem like a compelling religious choice for establishing the first revived Bon po
monastery in Shar khog.26 However, Tibetans only acted upon these existing
24
Peng finds the same in neighboring Jiuzhaigou, although clandestine pilgrimage was possible there
since the journey was local and short (Peng, “Tibetan Pilgrimage,” 190-92).
25
On this site see Huber, “Bird Cemetery Mountain,” and Huber, “Bon Religion in A-mdo.”
26
These are discussed in detail by Schrempf, “Ethnisch-religöse Revitalisierung.”
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
17
religious-historical imperatives because they were congruent with a set of
contemporary social, political, and developmental forces at play during this time.
In 1980, after years of persecution and prohibitions, there was a deep feeling of
Tibetan mistrust in the state’s sudden announcement of new religious freedoms.
Local agents of the revival considered the prospect that the one monastery they
had initially been given official permission to rebuild might indeed be the only
one, and they needed to select a commonly agreed upon and publicly accessible
site. But they also sought a site that was as remote as possible from the large
Chinese administrative presence in the county town of Songpan. Dga’ mal, and
the already well recognized ritual territory of Byang bya dur, being situated at the
extreme north of the county and now with a modern road passing by them, met all
these requirements. The first major revival of any popular ritual in Shar khog took
place in precisely this area. From the tenth to the fifteenth day of the fifth Tibetan
month of 1980, hundreds of former Bon po bla mas and monks assembled there
with over eight thousand lay people and did the easy one-day circumambulation
of the Byang bya dur mountain and the monastery site.27 It was a momentous event
that remains alive as a landmark in the community’s consciousness of its recent
history.
Attention now became firmly focused upon the area of Dga’ mal and Byang
bya dur as the premiere religious institutional base and ritual territory for the Bon
po majority in Shar khog. It was to be another decade before any other locally
revived monastic site in Shar khog was able to also attract the attention of significant
numbers of worshippers, and in the face of these developments the administrators
at Dga’ mal have continued to work hard to maintain their monopoly over local
religious patronage. Another vital development of local revival is the annual
performance of large communal pilgrimage processions around Byang bya dur at
least twice a year. These coincide with major public ritual events staged at the
Dga’ mal monastery and are fully encouraged by the monastic body, who even
participate in them in large numbers on occasion. This revival is a major and
unprecedented adaptation of the former practice of pilgrimage at Byang bya dur
mountain. The former pilgrimage used to be of low frequency, an individual
practice, almost entirely a lay affair, and conducted right throughout the year. I
have discussed this adaptation more fully elsewhere,28 and it is enough to note here
that one-day communal visits to Byang bya dur have become the modern popular
pilgrimage of the Shar ba Bon pos. The effects this has on continually undermining
the possible revival of ritual at Eastern Conch Mountain are significant and ongoing.
New Attitudes to Ritual
During the revival period there have been a few Tibetan initiatives to perform the
Eastern Conch Mountain pilgrimage once again. In 1984 a small group of older
27
Zing chu bya dur dga’ mal dgon chen nam/ dpal gshen bstan kun khyab bde chen gling gi dkar
chag lung rig chu shel dbang po’i bdud rtsi’i rgyun, in Zing chu rdzong dgon pa so sogs dkar chag,
comp. A gling bstan ’phel, et al. (zing chu, 1993), 54.
28
For a detailed study see Huber, “Bird Cemetery Mountain.”
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
18
people from the villages southwest of the mountain attempted the inner circuit
again for the first time since the late 1950s. They found it a difficult trip, partly
because the route was hard to find, the condition of the path was poor, and because
of deep snow during that year, but they did successfully complete a circuit.
Apparently nobody has done so again since. However, during the 1990s a few
small groups of older men have also performed the much longer and lower altitude
alternative intermediate circuit (bar skor) traversing the more distant outer valleys
around the mountain during autumn.29 Despite the fact that the once popular inner
circuit can actually be performed – and the single example mentioned here is not
widely known throughout Shar khog – Shar ba perceptions about it are
overwhelmingly negative. Most Shar ba consider that the Eastern Conch Mountain
inner circuit pilgrimage is impossible nowadays, or, if possible, far too dangerous
or too demanding for them to attempt. When asked in 1996 why nobody did the
inner circuit anymore, Shar ba below the age of about fifty years gave a wide range
of justifications for this. Examples include claims that an earthquake completely
destroyed the pilgrimage path in 1976, or that the Chinese are mining on the
mountain and have destroyed the path and evicted people, or that people who went
on the mountain died because it was so difficult, or that the Chinese authorities
did not allow it anymore, and so on. When asked if they would do the pilgrimage
if it were possible, the same people answered negatively or stated “probably not.”
The reasons given were that they did not have time during the summer to spend
the total of about five days needed to get to and from the peak and perform the
circuit, or because it was too physically demanding, or that it was too dangerous
and not worth the risk. Older people who had done the pilgrimage in the 1950s
unanimously confirmed these attitudes by stating that the younger generation would
find it too hard, or would not be prepared to make the sacrifices involved, or did
not have time to do it. Nomads in Rnga ba, Rme ba, and Mdzod dge I spoke with
in 1999 said they would not have time, and would go only if everybody else was
going to do it as well. In Shar khog at least, the idea that time is precious during
the summer is now a modern reality for many. Summer is not only the season for
agricultural work but also a period when many Shar ba with free time travel around
the county and beyond collecting wild medicinal herbs, or are engaged in other
economic activities. The Chinese demand for certain local natural products is high,
and herb collecting is a good source of supplementary income for many. Other
Shar ba also now avail themselves of many different summer employment
opportunities created by the region’s fast growing seasonal tourist industry.
In addition to new economic realities, there seems to be a clear shift in attitude
among local Tibetans away from undertaking strenuous acts of lay asceticism like
the Eastern Conch Mountain inner circuit. I hardly find this surprising. It is a fact
that many Shar ba are becoming more used to technological innovation in their
29
Based on textual (Shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag, 37) and oral accounts, the reconstructed 6-8
day intermediate circuit itinerary is as follows: Songpan town > down Min Jiang Valley > Gdong sna
> Rdo ma ṇi > A stong > east up a side valley to ’Bur ri sde > climb to ’Bur ri kha pass > Mtsho khra
bo and Mtsho ljang khu > descend to Ja ri rong khog > cross Lcags thag zam pa bridge > circumambulate
Rigs drug ’khor lo Bon po monastery in Phan rbod > ascend to Golden Lakes.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
19
lives, such as electricity, telephone, radio, television, motorized transport, and
many consumer goods which are changing the way they live as well as their
expectations and aspirations. This is not to mention decades of Chinese attempts
to make them view their own traditional cultural practices negatively, and the more
recently available modern education that is transforming the worldview of a whole
generation. There was a certain fervor and pride associated with the novelty of
newly revived popular rituals in Tibetan communities during the 1980s. But with
the passage of time and routine this enthusiasm appears to have settled down into
a steady but lower level of active public engagement in such events. As far as
decline or loss of religious traditions goes, I found nobody in Shar khog who
expressed the slightest regret about this fact, although they did express regret about
a lot of other things that happened as a result of recent Chinese rule. The attitude
exists that there is now enough revived religious activity available for those who
want to participate, and there is a good holy mountain circuit at Byang bya dur
which everyone can easily undertake pilgrimage around in just one day, thanks to
bus and truck transport to and from the site. Having said all this, it must be pointed
out that Eastern Conch Mountain is still significant to the Shar ba and neighboring
Tibetan populations. They still regard it as a holy mountain, although not an object
of active ritual. Today it has assumed the status of a respected emblem or renowned
symbol of their region, a “unique” place outsiders know of and visit. And this shift
in attitude has also been largely a response to other profound changes fostered in
Shar khog by the Chinese state, namely tourism and environmentalism.
Chinese Innovations At Eastern Conch Mountain
In stark contrast to Tibetan withdrawal from the ritual territory of Eastern Conch
Mountain, the Chinese state and its local organs have greatly increased their
activities around the mountain in recent decades, and significantly redefined its
public identity. This territorial takeover by the state has also had negative effects
upon Tibetan decisions to revive pilgrimage there or to adapt other ritual
relationships with the mountain. The Chinese state’s high level of interest in the
mountain arose only in the early 1980s. Initially during the occupation period, the
mountain and its environs were considered remote and unproductive by the
Communist authorities. What could be gained there was considered free to be
extracted. Thus hunting and digging medicinal roots on the mountain’s slopes,
which were stigmatized activities in the past because of Tibetan religious beliefs,
were not regulated in any way by the authorities during the first three decades of
occupation. Moreover, in the 1960s the authorities rounded up all persons in
Songpan County who suffered from leprosy, and regardless of ethnic background,
exiled them all to live around the start of the inner circuit at Mkhar chung monastery
on the mountain’s southern slopes, an area full of sacred significance for the
mountain’s religious history and for the pilgrimage itself.30 There were about 120
lepers in the colony, and today Chinese still call the area Leper Settlement (Mafeng
30
On leprosy in pre-modern southern A mdo, see R. B. Ekvall, Cultural Relations on the
Kansu-Tibetan Border (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 78-79.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
20
cun), and this name also appears on modern Chinese maps of Eastern Conch
Mountain (fig. 7). It remains a question as to whether local Tibetans consider that
this recent history has left a stigma on the area.
Fig. 7. Chinese tourist map of Eastern Conch Mountain showing “Base
Camp” for mountaineering and “Leper Settlement” (Mafeng cun).
By the time of the Dengist economic reforms of the 1980s, the state’s views of,
and intentions for, Eastern Conch Mountain were radically different. Surveys of
the Min Shan range area by Chinese natural scientists alerted the state to the
impressive geological and biological features of the Golden Lakes, or Yellow
Dragon, valley and other places in neighboring counties, such as Gzi rtsa sde dgu,
or Jiuzhaigou as it is known by Chinese, immediately to the north in Khod po
(Nanping County). In 1983 the peak and high slopes of Eastern Conch Mountain,
Golden Lakes Valley, and various adjacent areas were designated as the 640
square-kilometer Yellow Dragon Valley Scenic District and Protection Zone,
sometimes now referred to as a “National Park.”31 The goals of this new reserve
were to preserve intact the unique natural features of the region, but allow for
carefully planned and environmentally sensitive tourism development (fig. 8).
Because of the Yellow Dragon reserve, and a similar one located to the north in
Jiuzhaigou, the state proceeded to invest heavily in building the required
infrastructure to allow mass tourism to develop in the area. These innovations have
had a profound effect on life in Shar khog, which is now part of a major summer
bus-tour route through northwest Sichuan. Since this research was undertaken, a
new airport and runway have also been constructed in Shar khog in order to further
enhance the flow of mass tourism.
31
Ministry of Construction of the P.R.C., Natural Heritage: China. Huanglong Valley (World Heritage
Conservation, c. 1992); Li Wenhua and Zhao Xianying, China’s Nature Reserves (Beijing: Foreign
Languages Press, 1989), 155-56, 182.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
21
In 1996, Yellow Dragon reserve itself
already received tens of thousands of
Chinese domestic tourists per year, and
this number has surely increased
significantly since then. On one
mid-summer day at the Golden Lakes in
1996, I counted over two thousand
tourists walking up to the Yellow Dragon
Daoist temple and upper lakes. That
particular day was actually the fifteenth
of the sixth Tibetan lunar month, the exact
time in the pre-occupation period when
one to two thousand Tibetan inner circuit
pilgrims would have reached the lakes
after descending from the mountain.
There were only a handful of Tibetans
present on that day in 1996. Park
administrators told me the 1996 takings
from the park hotel in the lower Golden
Lakes Valley, plus park entrance fees and
restaurant turnover was more than half a
million yuan, and was expected to double
the following year. In a separate
innovation, the state also encouraged
mountaineering on Eastern Conch
Mountain; the first ascent of the main Fig. 8. Chinese tourist map of Golden Lakes
peak was made by a Sino-Japanese team Valley.
in 1986. The summit is listed as a climbing peak in tourist literature for Sichuan
and in climbing guidebooks for China, and advertised as such by tourist agencies
in Chengdu.32 The climbers route to base-camp now goes up to the site of the
Mkhar chung monastery (fig. 7), and follows the old inner circuit path past Mar
khu gshong.
It is difficult to ascertain the direct impact this hugely successful tourism
development around the mountain has had on Tibetan attitudes about the possible
revival of the inner circuit. No Tibetan informant directly mentioned tourism as a
perceived impediment at the mountain. In fact, in 1996, in the nearby Tibetan
villages in the Zung chu Valley many Shar ba were happy to derive extra income
from various forms of tourism related service industries, which are by no means
monopolized by Han or Hui. No informant mentioned that the state directly
discouraged the performance of pilgrimage at the site. The Yellow Dragon reserve
management plan contains articles and regulations relevant to this issue, but their
wording is ambiguous. These articles seem to leave open the possibility of officially
32
Shi Zhang-chun, A Guide to Mountaineering in China (Chengdu: Chengdu Map Publishing House,
1993), 148-51.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
22
permitting and encouraging local ritual at the site, but could also be used against
the revival of ritual or to control it.33
As local Tibetans have already shown an explicit preference for revived
mountain pilgrimage at Byang bya dur, a relatively remote site in Shar khog that
is somewhat removed from any presence of Chinese modernity, let alone tourists
or mountaineers, one can well imagine that they would not relish becoming objects
of curiosity for the mass tourist gaze by descending upon Golden Lakes from their
inner circuit on a busy day in the summer tour-bus season. But one can also well
imagine that the Yellow Dragon administrators would very much welcome a revival
of the inner circuit to add a new dimension to the experience of exotic, local
nationality culture on offer to visitors as paying consumers of the site, and would
regard this as a significant asset in their marketing of the area. This has in fact
become a major policy of state orchestrated tourism development all over Sichuan
in ethnic Tibetan areas of the Rnga ba (Chi. Aba) and Dkar mdzes (Chi. Ganzi)
Prefectures. Initially, major monasteries in accessible areas all over the Tibetan
plateau were heavily funded for restoration by the state with the aim of opening
them to mass tourism, and tourism has in fact become an important source of
revenue for some of them.34 But currently in eastern Tibet, in an effort by provincial
governments to revive declining local economies, a concerted effort is underway
to add a host of “ethnic culture” experiences to tourist itineraries. Such innovations
have all been based upon aspects of Tibetan lay life, folk traditions, and popular
ritual. The commercialized advent of the “Horserace Festivals” in Li thang and
Skye dgu mdo, the “ancient” Rgyal thang khams pa “Arts Fair,” and displays of
Tibetan village life in Jiuzhaigou are all typical examples of this development.35
Tibetan withdrawal of ritual interest from Eastern Conch Mountain and Golden
Lakes may therefore also be viewed as a strategic form of protection of their own
33
Ministry of Construction, Natural Heritage, 90, 98-99:
1. The Sichuan Provincial Government decreed that Huanglong Scenic District is listed as a
key scenic district of the state because it “displays scenes of the life of different nationalities.”
2. “The administration [of the area] should be exemplary in following the state’s policies
concerning national minorities, respect the traditions of the minority people...and continuously
improve the local people’s material and cultural life.”
3. “Take special measures to protect the Huanglong Temple in the Huanglong Valley. Enhance
management especially during the annual fair at the temple, to prevent damage caused by
the large number of pilgrims during the fair.”
4. “The following activities should be approved beforehand...climbing the snow mountains.”
34
For example, on ’Bras spungs see Goldstein, “Drepung Monastery”; on Bla brang see Makley,
“Embodying the Sacred.”
35
Gyurme Dorje, Tibet Handbook (Bath: Footprint Handbooks, 1999), 436; Peng, “Tibetan
Pilgrimage,” 194-200. Another example is that of ritual dance performances, especially in Himalayan
areas, which have long been targeted as objects of mass tourism; see M. Shackley, “Visitor Management
and Monastic Festivals of the Himalayas,” in Culture as the Tourist Product, ed. M. Robinson, N.
Evans, and P. Callaghan (Newcastle: University of Northumbria, 1996), 409-21; M. Shackley, “Managing
the Cultural Impacts of Religious Tourism in the Himalayas, Tibet and Nepal,” in Tourism and Cultural
Conflicts, ed. M. Robinson and P. Boniface (Oxon: CABI Publishing, 1999), 95-111.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
23
cultural identity and interests, and also boundaries, and an implicit form of control
over what they perceive as their own cultural property and rights.
New “Myths” For New Territorial Claims
The assumptions I have just formulated above may not be too wide of the mark.
Tibetan associations with Eastern Conch Mountain have already become something
that the state and its agents have appropriated and manipulated as they see fit,
without any reference to the Tibetans themselves. New territorial claims are
established by new myths and defined and reiterated with new rites and markers.
The modern Chinese colonial interest is to mark out occupied Tibetan areas as
being integral and undeniable parts of the Chinese Motherland, and as partaking
in the national history. One noticeable strategy, common to nearly all colonial
contexts, is the widespread renaming of landscapes and places in ethnic Tibetan
areas with Chinese names. Another is representation on maps, and it is now common
for general Chinese maps of Songpan or Eastern Conch Mountain to only show
locations to the east, i.e. in Han provinces proper, as external points of reference,
while Tibetan points of reference to the west are neglected. More profound is the
way in which Chinese territorial claims about Eastern Conch Mountain have
systematically erased Tibetan discourse about the mountain from their narratives,
and replaced it with their own modern “myths.” For example, the narrative of the
“cultural history” of the site of Golden Lakes Valley found in the state’s
management plan for Yellow Dragon reserve gives the following account: i. First,
the area was neglected by both Han and Tibetan peoples; ii. It was then regarded
as a site of the Yellow Dragon of the East China Sea when he was aiding Yu the
Great in controlling the flood in ancient China; iii. Chinese poets eulogized it in
the Tang Dynasty; iv. In the Ming Dynasty, the Yellow Dragon Temple was built
and later became a sacred place commonly worshipped by the Tibetans, the Han,
the Qiang, as well as other nationalities. After the building of the Yellow Dragon
Temple during the Ming dynasty, this area became “a celestial paradise.”36 The
site has now gained an illustrious Chinese history without a mention of Tibetan
discourse about it or the mountain behind.
Another interesting new Chinese “myth” about the area created by state agencies
is that of the “temple fair.” Its purpose is to give a local example of how the diverse
nationalities (minzu) which make up the polity of modern China come together
harmoniously in a shared cultural event at Eastern Conch Mountain. Since it is
deployed in various contexts related to tourism, it clearly is also intended to make
the site more exotic for prospective visitors. The state applied for the Yellow
Dragon area to become a World Heritage site under the auspices of UNESCO in
its 1991 management plan. In its justification statement for the application it wrote
that at Yellow Dragon: “There is a tradition of an annual temple fair, which attracts
people of the Tibetan, Han, and Qiang nationalities, some even from the
36
Ministry of Construction, Natural Heritage, 7-8.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
24
north-western provinces.”37 The mountain is thus presented as a harmonious
multi-ethnic territory, a miniature of the ideal modern Chinese polity itself. What
is, or was, the “temple fair” exactly? I asked many Tibetan informants about this
and they were puzzled, unable to recall anything like it within living memory, as
far back as the 1940s or 1950s. The idea of a “fair” on the mountain appears to be
an exaggerated elaboration on various pieces of information. Songpan township
itself is well known for its former trade “fairs” with peoples from different ethnic
groups attending and trading with the Chinese merchants stationed there. William
Gill already witnessed these events within the walled town in 1877.38 In the past,
at the finish of the traditional inner circuit pilgrimage on the fifteenth day of the
sixth lunar month, when Tibetan pilgrims assembled to rest at a camp below Golden
Lakes Valley, a few local Qiang traders came to sell them fruit, as reported by
informants. Chinese worship rituals during mid-summer at Huanglong Housi were
on the nineteenth day of the sixth lunar month,39 and Han from Songpan and Pingwu
probably arrived for this about the middle of the month. These facts may all have
fed the creation of the myth of the “temple fair” in which various ethnic groups
converged upon the site.
Whatever the origins of this image of “temple fair” may be,40 of greater interest
is the way the territory of Eastern Conch Mountain has come to be more and more
obscurely and erroneously defined in terms of this Chinese image. Two years
following the appearance of the image in the state’s application for World Heritage
status, it also appeared in a local Tibetan text. In 1993, the Songpan County
Religious Affairs Bureau staff put together a compilation of short Tibetan
guidebooks to Eastern Conch Mountain and adjacent holy places. The second text
in the booklet, which obviously draws part of its material from the state management
plan, or a similar document, mentions the many rare species of plants and animals
protected by the reserve, the visits of foreign tourists, and also that there is a fixed
festival time at Golden Lakes, the fifteenth day of the sixth lunar month, during
which the various nationalities, Han, Tibetans and Qiang, all worship together at
the site.41 After reading this text a vexing research puzzle was solved for me, since
several Tibetan informants had told me of just such an event at Golden Lakes, in
stark contradiction to all other reports. On re-examination it turned out none had
actually witnessed the event they described. Their Tibetan “local knowledge” of
37
Ministry of Construction, Natural Heritage, 91.
38
“[In Sung-P’an-T’ing] in the month of July there is an annual fair, when the Si-fan [i.e. Tibetans],
the Mongols of the Ko-Ko-Nor, and the Man-Tzu bring in their produce to sell. Skins of all kinds,
musk, deer-horns, rhubarb, and medicines are the chief articles brought down, for which they take up
in exchange crockery, cotton goods, and little trifles” (W. Gill, The River of Golden Sand: Being the
Narrative of a Journey Through China and Tibet to Burmah [London: John Murray, 1883], 128-29).
39
Aba zhou zhi, 3:2494.
40
In considering this question, one should note that at Yellow Dragon in 1924, D. C. Graham was
told of, but did not witness, “a great annual festival attended by thousands, at which were hunting, bla
ma dances, and worship of the gods, and which lasts about three days” (Graham, “Collecting Trip to
Songpan,” 45). The close links the nearby Bon monastery at Rin spungs had with the Chinese community
in Songpan also need to be further investigated; see Schrempf, “Hwa shang at the Border.”
41
Shar dung ri dkar po’i dkar chag, 36.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
25
ritual at Eastern Conch Mountain had been gained from reading the 1993 guidebook
produced by the Songpan County Religious Affairs Bureau!
Chinese tourist propaganda aimed at both the domestic and international markets
has disseminated the myth of the “temple fair” to an audience of many millions.
It has, in fact, become the only feature of the entire mountain territory of Eastern
Conch Mountain to be related in countless publications on tourism in China. In
leading Chengdu tourist hotels I purchased locally produced Chinese and English
language tourist books that described my fieldwork area. One had a section entitled
“The Customs of Sichuan Province,” listing festivals for tourists to attend on their
tours, and in which the entry “Huanglong (Yellow Dragon) Temple Fair” reads
(text unedited):
The ancient people described the Huanglong Temple Fair. The tents were
distributed as the campsite, the flame were lighted and went out as the flash lamps.
After the Huanglong Temples were built, the local people gradually formed the
custom that they go to the temple fair. From the 10th day of the 6th lunar month
every year, the people of Zangzu, Qiangzu, Huizu and Hanzu go to Huanglong
Temple to visit natural sight, watch performance, develop sport activities and do
business.42
Remarkably, another Chinese book for tourists in Sichuan actually includes two
color plates entitled “Temple Fair” in its photo essay about the mountain.43 Both
photographs are clearly staged purely for promotional purposes. One shows a circle
of Tibetan monks in ceremonial attire watching a group of monk dancers performing
a ritual dance known as the Hwa shang ritual dance (’cham). In Shar khog, a form
of this normally Buddhist ritual dance is only performed by the Bon monastery at
Rin spungs, not far to the west at the base of the mountain. It celebrates a unique
historical link between Rin spungs monastery and the Qing administration in the
past.44 In the photograph in question, the monk dancers, upon instructions from
local administrators, performed parts of the Hwa shang ritual dance directly in
front of the Daoist temple of Huanglongsi, with no public audience in attendance,
although several camera-wielding professional photographers are to be seen in the
frame filming them (fig. 9). The second photograph purportedly depicting the
“Temple Fair” shows two rows of replica Tibetan ceremonial tents pitched along
a road and lit with electric lights, and an electric power pole in the foreground.
The site is actually an “ethnic” tent hotel, a camping experience put on for Chinese
bus-tour tourists who pay to spend one night living like the natives (fig. 10).
42
Sichuan Overseas Tourist Company, Sichuan Tourist Traffic Maps (Chengdu: Tourism & Culture
Newspaper Office of Sichuan Overseas Tourist Company, 1992), 73.
43
World Natural Legacy, China Special Scenic Spot: Houng Long (Chengdu: World Natural Legacy,
1993), 26.
44
Schrempf, “Hwa shang at the Border.”
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
26
Fig. 9. The “Temple Fair.” World Natural Legacy, China Special Scenic
Spot: Houng Long (Chengdu: World Natural Legacy, 1993).
Fig. 10. The “Temple Fair.” World Natural Legacy, China Special
Scenic Spot: Houng Long (Chengdu: World Natural Legacy, 1993).
Perhaps the most effective, not to say disturbing, evidence of the success of the
Chinese state sponsored myth of the “temple fair” in erasing Tibetan discourse
and Tibetans completely from the presentation of Eastern Conch Mountain is the
entry on the site by the globally multi-million selling Lonely Planet guide-book
series. The fourth edition of their China: Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit for
planning exotic adventures in the area states that “An annual Temple Fair (Miao
Hui) held here around the middle of the sixth lunar month (roughly mid-August)
attracts large numbers of traders from the Qiang minority.”45
Versions of the myth of the “temple fair” use Tibetans at the mountain to signal
various features of the state’s newly claimed territory there, although ultimately
Tibetans can be totally dispensed with when other exotic signifiers like “the Qiang
45
See M. Buckley, et al., China: Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit, 4th edition (Hawthorn, Australia:
Lonely Planet Publications, 1994), 844. See also Dorje, Tibet Handbook, 654, which also perpetuates
another version of the “temple fair” myth.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
27
minority” will do. The state also has another potent new myth about the area around
Eastern Conch Mountain, one that has never had any need for Tibetans to feature
in it at all. This is what I call the myth of the Long March at Eastern Conch
Mountain. The Long March was one of the epic foundation events in the struggle
to form the modern Communist state in China, and its representation, evocation,
or memorializing in China is the epitome of nationalist discourse. The state, in the
form of its provincial and local governmental organs, has recently appealed to the
symbolic power of the Long March in order to deeply anchor both Shar khog and
the territory of Eastern Conch Mountain within the national historical consciousness
of the great Chinese Motherland.
Fig. 11. Sculptures depicting the Long March with Tibetan village behind.
Branches of the Long March, as is well known, did traverse some eastern Tibetan
plateau areas during the 1930s. However, the Long March never went near Eastern
Conch Mountain or the heart of Shar khog. The closest it ever got was in passing
though Dmu dge to the far west of Songpan County, and also Rme ba, 170
kilometers to the west.46 Regardless of these historical facts, in the early 1990s
Chinese authorities built a remarkable monumental sculpture park (fig. 11) and
towering golden pillar (fig. 12) depicting and memorializing the Long March right
at the entrance to the territory of Eastern Conch Mountain.
46
Rme ba itself was renamed Red Plain County (Dmar thang rdzong, Hongyuan Xian) to recall the
visit of the Long March through this Tibetan pastoral area.
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
28
The site of this Long March “theme
park,” across the river from the rapidly
growing tourist service town of
Chuanzhusi, right in the heart of Shar
khog, is one which every single tourist or
traveler who arrives by road to visit the
mountain and lakes must pass through.
Its location was carefully planned to catch
tour buses as they travel the main tourist
route between Songpan, Yellow Dragon,
and
Jiuzhaigou.
Chinese
state
presentations of this incongruous
development are at pains to blend it
harmoniously into the mountain landscape
over which it now stands as sentinel. The
Yellow Dragon management plan points
out that “...the monumental park in
memory of the Long March by the Red
Army...and the natural surroundings are
organically linked together, adding
Fig. 12. Long March memorial behind Tibetan
splendor and beauty to each other and
folk festival, Chuanzhusi.
reflecting the intimate affinity between
Man and nature.”47 The portable eulogy for the site, in Chinese and English, carried
away by countless tourists on the wrapper of the mass produced postcard series
The Monument to the Long March of the Red Army, which are available everywhere
in Shar khog, puts this once holy mountain where it is now considered to belong,
in the enormous modern shadow (or radiance?) of human achievement (text
unedited): “It is of far-reaching significance to build the monument here. Behind
it stands fairyland Huanglong. The golden monument shines brilliance over the
surrounding mountains and rivers and the merit stands high in the human world.”
The success of new myths can be sobering. The myth of the Long March at
Eastern Conch Mountain has now entered – as “history” – the pages of
internationally best-selling popular guidebooks for Tibet, one of which recently
described the route leading from the Long March theme park to Eastern Conch
Mountain as that “which was once followed by the PLA during the Long March.”48
At the Long March theme park enormous stone sculptures, in the style of Socialist
Realism, depict scenes of epic battle and human struggle. These Communist
historical colossi now dwarf the milling tourists who halt here briefly for souvenirs
and photo opportunities just before they enter the modern Chinese territory of
Snow Treasure Peak and Yellow Dragon, the lost Tibetan ritual territory of Eastern
Conch Mountain and Golden Lakes.
47
Ministry of Construction, Natural Heritage, 6.
48
Dorje, Tibet Handbook, 653.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
Map
Map by Norma Schulz and Tina Niermann.
29
30
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
Glossary
Note: Glossary entries are organized in Tibetan alphabetical order. All entries
list the following information in this order: THDL Extended Wylie transliteration
of the term, THDL Phonetic rendering of the term, English translation, Sanskrit
and/or Chinese equivalent, dates when applicable, and type.
Ka
Wylie
Phonetics
kun bzang sgrol ma
Künzang Drölma
dkar mdzes
Kardzé
skor lam
korlam
skyang ’phags
Kyangpak
skyang tshang
Kyangtsang
skye dgu mdo
Kyegudo
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Author
Chi. Ganzi
Place
route for
pilgrimage; ritual
circuit
Term
b. 1126
Person
Place
Chi. Yushu
Place
Kha
Wylie
Phonetics
khod po
Khöpo
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Place
khyung dkar sman ri
slob dpon
Khyungkar Menri
Loppön
Author
khri skyang
Trikyang
Place
khri spyang
Trichang
Place
khrims rgyal
Trimgyel
Place
khrom rje
Tromjé
Place
mkha’ skyong bya
’phur dgon
Khakyong Jampur
Gön
Monastery
mkhar skyong dgon pa Kharkyong Gönpa
Monastery
mkhar chung
Monastery
Kharchung
Type
Ga
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
gyer mi skyang ’phags Gyermi Kyampak
Chenpo
chen po
Person
dga’ mal
Gamel
Monastery
dge lugs pa
Gelukpa
Organization
dgon khag dkar chag Gönkhak Karchak
mgo log
Golok
mgon khang
gönkhang
’gro mgon ’phags pa Drogön Pakpa
Text
Place
protector’s shrine
Term
1235-80
Person
rgya bon chen po zing Gya Bön Chenpo
Zingwa Tuchen
ba mthu chen
Deity
rgyal thang khams pa Gyeltang Khampa
Person
rgyal rong
Gyelrong
Place
sga a gnyen dam pa
Ga Anyen Dampa
c.
Person
1231-1303
31
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
Nga
Wylie
Phonetics
rnga ba
Ngawa
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Chi. Aba
Type
Place
rnga ba khul gyi gnas Ngawa Khülgyi
Neyig, Dep Dangpo
yig/ deb dang po
Text
rnga ba snang zhig
Ngawa Nangzhik
Monastery
rnga ba bod rigs cha
’ang rigs rang skyong
khul gyi rig gnas lo
rgyus dpyad yig
bdams bsgrigs
Ngawa Börik Cha’ang
Rangkyong Khulgyi
Rikné Logyü Cheyik
Damdrik
Text
rnga ba rme ba
Ngawa Mewa
Place
Ca
Wylie
Phonetics
lcags thag zam pa
Chaktak Zampa
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
Cha
Wylie
Phonetics
chu tsa la skas
Chutsa Laké
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
mchod rten
chöten
reliquary shrine
Term
’cham
cham
ritual dance
Term
Wylie
Phonetics
English
ja ri rong khog
Jari Rongkhok
Place
Ja
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
Nya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
nya yid [gnyan yul?] Nyayi [Nyayül?] Shar
Dungri Gön
shar dung ri dgon
Type
Monastery
Ta
Wylie
Phonetics
English
gter ston
tertön
revealer of hidden
treasures
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
gter ma
terma
hidden religious
treasure
Term
gtor ma
torma
ritual cake
Term
stong skor
Tongkor
brtan ma
tenma
Place
female protector
deity
Term
bstan ’dzin rnam dag Tendzin Namdak
Author
Tha
Wylie
Phonetics
the bo
Tewo
English
tho
to
boundary
Wylie
Phonetics
English
dung dkar po
dung karpo
white conch
dung ri
Dungri
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
Term
Da
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
Monastery
32
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
dung ri dkar po
Dungri Karpo
Place
dung ri dgon pa
Dungri Gönpa
Monastery
dung ri chu mdog
Dungri Chudok
dung ri nam mkha’
bstan ’dzin
Dungri Namkha
Tendzin
dung ri brag skas
Dungri Drakké
Place
dung ri bla ma
Dungri Lama
Lineage
Place
b. 1918
Person
dung ri rin chen rgyal Dungri Rinchen
Gyeltsen
mtshan
Person
dung ri’i dkar chag
zur tsam bzhugs
Dungri Karchak
Zurtsam Zhuk
Text
do ’phags
Dompak
gdung rgyud gdan sa dunggyü densa
gdong sna
Dongna
bde mchog
Dechok
mdo smad
Domé
Person
seat of descent
lineage
Term
Place
San. Samvara
Deity
Place
Domé Sharchoksu
mdo smad shar
phyogs su thog ma’i Tokmé Yungdrung
g.yung drung bon gyi Böngyi Logyü Dordü
lo rgyus mdor bsdus
Text
rdo ma ṇi
Domani
sdig sgrib
dikdrip
embodied moral
defilement
Wylie
Phonetics
English
nang skor
nangkor
inner circuit
nam mkha’ blo gros
Namkha Lodrö
gnas sgo phye ba
nego chewa
opening the doors
of the holy place
Term
gnas chen
nechen
great holy place
Term
gnas chen dung ri’i
dkar chag zur tsam
bzhugs
Nechen Dungri
Karchak Zurtsam
Zhuk
Place
Term
Na
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
b. 1891
Person
Text
gnas chen shar dung Nechen Shardung Ri
ri dkar po’i dkar chag Karpö Karchak
Shelkar Melong
shel dkar me long
Text
gnas bdag
nedak
owner of the holy
place
Term
gnas ri
neri
holy mountain
Term
gnas srung dam can
lha gnyan dung ’od
’dzin
Nesung Damchen Lha
Nyen Dung Ö Dzin
Deity
snang zhig
Nangzhik
Monastery
Lineage
Place
snang zhig do ’phags Nangzhik Dopak
Chenpo
chen po
Person
33
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
Pa
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
dpal ldan tshul khrims Penden Tsültrim
Author
dpal tshul
Author
Peltshül
dpal gshen bstan nyi Pel Shenten Nyima
ma ’bum gling gi dkar Bum Linggi Karchak
Selwé Melong
chag gsal ba’i me
long
Text
spyang ’phags
Person
Champak
Pha
Wylie
Phonetics
phan rbod
Penbö
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
’phags pa
Pakpa
Name
’phen chu
Penchu
Place
Chi. Pingwu
Type
Place
Ba
Wylie
Phonetics
English
bar skor
barkor
intermediate circuit
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Term
bar do
bardo
intermediate state
Term
bar do ’phrang lam
Bardo Tranglam
Narrow Path of the
Bardo
Term
bod kyi lo rgyus kun
dga’i me long
Bökyi Logyü Küngé
Melong
Text
bod ljongs gtsug lag
Böjong Tsuklak
Text
bod yul gnas kyi lam Böyül Nekyi Lamyik
yig gsal ba’i dmigs bu Selwé Mikbu
Type
Text
bon
Bön
bon skor
bönkor
bon po
Bönpo
bya ’phur
Jampur
bya ’phur sprul sku
phun tshogs ngag
dbang bstan ’dzin
Jampur Trulku
Püntsok Ngawang
Tendzin
d. 1959
Person
bya ’phur bla ma
phun tshogs dbang
rgyal
Jampur Lama Püntsok
Wanggyel
b. 1879
Person
Organization
anticlockwise bön
ritual circuit
Term
Organization
Lineage
bya ’phur bla ma shes Jampur Lama Sherap
Loden
rab blo ldan
bya ’phur tsha bo
tshul khrims bstan
’dzin
Jampur Tsawo
Tsültrim Tendzin
bya ’phur ’og ma
Jampur Okma
byang bya dur
Jang Jadur
byin gyis brlabs
jingyi lap
Person
d. 1955
Person
Lineage
Place
sacred power
Term
brag nag gshong kha Draknak Shongkha
Place
brag bya rgod
Drak Jagö
Place
brag yig rtsig
Drakyiktsik
Place
brag rwa
Drakra
Place
34
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
bla brang
Labrang
Monastery
’bur ri kha
Burrikha
Place
’bur ri sde
Burridé
Place
’bras spungs
Drepung
’brog pa
drokpa
pastoralist
Wylie
Phonetics
English
ma rgyud
Magyü
Deity
ma tri
matri
Term
ma ni
mani
Term
mar khu gshong
Markhushong
Place
mi mgon brag
Migöndrak
Place
dmar thang rdzong
Martang Dzong
dmu dge
Mugé
Place
dmu dge bsam grub
gling
Mugé Samdrup Ling
Text
dmu dge bsam gtan
Mugé Samten
Author
rme ba
Meba
Place
Monastery
Term
Ma
Red Plain County
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Chi. Hongyuan
Xian
Type
Place
Tsa
Wylie
Phonetics
tsa ri
Tsari
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
tsa ri rong skor chen Tsarirong Korchenmo
mo
Place
gtso ’phags
Tsompak
rtse skor
tsekor
inner circuit
Wylie
Phonetics
English
mtshams
tsam
boundary
mtsho khra bo
Tso Trawo
Place
mtsho ljang khu
Tso Jangkhu
Place
mtsho taṃ las
Tso Tamlé
Place
mtsho tar mnyan
Tso Tarnyen
Place
mtsho dung tse
Tso Dungtsé
Place
mtsho me tog
Tso Metok
Place
Person
Term
Tsha
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
Dza
Wylie
Phonetics
mdzod dge
Dzögé
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
Zha
Wylie
Phonetics
zhang ngu
Zhangngu
gzhi bdag
zhidak
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
local territorial
deity
Term
35
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
Za
Wylie
Phonetics
zing chu
Zingchu
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Place
zing chu bya dur dga’
mal dgon chen nam/
dpal gshen bstan kun
khyab bde chen gling
gi dkar chag lung rig
chu shel dbang po’i
bdud rtsi’i rgyun
Zingchu Jadur Gamel
Gönchen Nam, Pel
Shenten Künkhyap
Dechen Linggi
Karchak Lungrik
Chushel Wangpö
Dütsi Gyün
Text
zing chu rdzong dgon Zingchu Dzong
pa so sogs dkar chag Gönpa So Sok
Karchak
Textual
Collection
zing chu rdzong dmu Zingchu Dzong Mugé
Sakhül Drupta Tsökyi
dge sa khul grub
Logyé
mtha’ brtsod kyi lo
rgyas
Text
zing ba mthu chen
Zingwa Tuchen
Deity
zung chu
Zungchu
zung chu rdzong
Zungchu Dzong
gzi rtsa sde dgu
Zitsa Degu
Place
Songpan County
Place
Place
Ya
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
yi dam
yidam
meditational deity
Term
yul lha
yullha
local territorial
deity
Term
g.yung drung bstan
rgyal
Yungdrung Tengyel
Person
g.yung drung bon gyi Yungdrung Böngyi
Tenjung
bstan ’byung
Text
Ra
Wylie
Phonetics
ri dgon
Rigön
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Monastery
ri dgon bkra shis lhun Rigön Trashi
Lhündrup Ling
grub gling
Place
ri dgon bkra shis lhun Rigön Trashi
grub gling gi bla rabs Lhündrup Linggi
mi tig phreng mdzes Larap Mitik Trengdzé
Text
ri dgon bla rabs
Rigön Larap
Text
ri rgya klung rgya
sdom pa
rigya lunggya dompa sealed hills and
river valleys
Term
ri bo dgon pa bkra
shis lhun grub gling
Riwo Gönpa Trashi
Lhündrup Ling
Place
rigs drug ’khor lo
Rikdruk Khorlo
Monastery
rin spungs
Rinpung
Place
ris med
rimé
rus sbal dgon
Rübel Gön
rong pa
rongpa
farming
Term
rlung rta
lungta
printed paper wind
horse symbol
Term
eclectic movement
Term
Place
36
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
La
Wylie
Phonetics
English
la btsas
latsé
ritual cairn
li thang
Litang
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Term
Place
Sha
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
shar kyi dung ri
Sharkyi Dungri
Place
shar khog
Sharkhok
Place
shar gnyan dung ri
Sharnyen Dungri
Deity
Shardung Riwo dang
shar dung gi ri bo
dang gser gyi mtsho’i Sergyi Tsö Né Jinlap
gnas byin rlabs can Chengyi Sa
gyi sa
shar dung ri
Shardung Ri
shar dung ri
Shardung Ri
Type
Place
Monastery
Eastern Conch
Mountain
Place
shar dung ri dkar po’i Shardung Ri Karpö
Karchak
dkar chag
Text
shar dung ri dgon pa Shardung Ri Gönpa
Monastery
shar dung ri’i dgon
gsang chen smin grol
gling gi dkar chag tho
yig bzhugs
Shardung Ri Gön
Sangchen Mindröl
Linggi Karchak Toyik
Zhuk
Text
shar dung rir zhabs
ston tshang
Shardung Rir Zhap
Tön Tsang
shar phyogs dung ri
dkar po
Sharchok Dungri
Karpo
Place
shar ba
Sharwa
Clan
gshin gyi la bo che
Shingyi Laboché
Place
gshin chu rab med
Shinchu Rapmé
Place
The Family [who]
Displayed Genitals
to Shar Dungri
Organization
Sa
Wylie
Phonetics
sa skya pa
Sakyapa
srid rgyal la
Sigyel La
srol ’dzin
söndzin
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Organization
Place
in keeping with
tradition
Term
gsang gling dkar chag Sangling Karchak
Text
gsang
chen smin grol gling
Sangchen Mindröl
Ling
Monastery
gsang mchog mthar
thug rgyal po
Sangchok Tartuk
Gyelpo
Deity
gser thar
Sertar
gser mtsho
Sertso
Golden Lakes
Place
bsang
sang
fumigation
Term
bsang
sang
fumigation rite
Ritual
bsang thab
sangtap
fumigation oven
Term
Place
37
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
Ha
Wylie
Phonetics
hwa shang ’cham
Hashang Cham
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
Ritual
A
Wylie
Phonetics
a stong
Atong
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Place
a mdo
Amdo
Place
a blon bstan ’phel
Alön Tempel
Author
a myes rma chen
Amnye Machen
Place
om ma tri mu ye sa le om matri muyé salé
du
’du
Type
Term
Non-Tibetan
Wylie
Phonetics
English
Sanskrit/Chinese
Dates
Type
San.
Padmasambhava
Deity
San. Vimalamitra
Deity
Ngawa Tibetan and Chi. Aba Zangzu
Qiang Autonomous Qiangzu Zizhizhou
Prefecture
Place
Chi. Aba zhou zhi
Text
Chi. Chengdu
Place
Chi. Chuanzhusi
Place
Chi. Daoguang
Organization
Chi. Dazhai Xiang
Place
Chi. Gansu
Place
Chi. Hanzu
Place
Chi. Huanglong
Place
Chi. Huanglong
Housi
Place
Chi. Huanglong
Zhenren
Deity
Chi. Huizu
Place
Chi. Jiuzhaigou
Place
Leper Settlement
Chi. Mafeng cun
Place
Temple Fair
Chi. Miao Hui
Festival
Chi. Min Jiang
Place
Chi. Min Shan
Place
Chi. Ming
Organization
Chi. minzu
Term
Chi. Nanjing
Place
Chi. Nanping
Place
Chi. Pingwu
Place
Chi. Qiangzu
Place
Chi. Sanjiao
Term
Chi. Shangnamisi
Monastery
Yellow Dragon
Yellow Dragon
True Man
nationalities
Three Teachings
38
Huber: The Skor lam and the Long March
Snow Treasure
Peak
Chi. Sichuan
Place
Chi. Songpan
Place
Chi. Songpan Xian
Place
Chi. Songpan Zang
Zhuan Fojiao
Gaikuang
Text
Chi. Xuebaoding
Place
Chi. Zangzu
Place
Chi. Zhangla
Place
Chi. Zungchu
Place
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2 (August 2006)
39
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