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Reimagining the Buddhist Universe: Pilgrimage and Cosmography in the Courtof the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933)

Wen-shing Chou

The Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 73 / Issue 02 / May 2014, pp 419 - 445DOI: 10.1017/S0021911813002441, Published online: 15 April 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911813002441

How to cite this article:Wen-shing Chou (2014). Reimagining the Buddhist Universe: Pilgrimage and Cosmography inthe Court of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933) . The Journal of Asian Studies, 73, pp419-445 doi:10.1017/S0021911813002441

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Reimagining the Buddhist Universe: Pilgrimage andCosmography in the Court of the Thirteenth DalaiLama (1876–1933)

WEN-SHING CHOU

During his exiles from Lhasa in the 1910s, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama visited the holy placesof Wutai Shan in China and Bodh Gaya in India. After his return, he commissioned paint-ings of these two places in cosmological mural programs of his palaces. While conforming toearlier iconographic traditions, these paintings employed empirical modes of representationunprecedented in Tibetan Buddhist paintings, revealing a close connection to the DalaiLama’s prior travels. This essay traces how these “modernized” renditions were incorpor-ated into an existing pictorial template, and examines the deft rearticulation of a Buddhistcosmology in light of the Dalai Lama’s own encounter with the shifting geopolitical terrainsof the early twentieth century. I show that painting served as a powerful medium throughwhich the Dalai Lama asserted his spiritual sovereignty and temporal authority over mod-ernity’s work of boundary making. The study elucidates a sphere of agency and creativity inthe court of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that has evaded historical inquiries to date.

AFTER PERIODS OF EXILE in Mongolia, China, and India between 1904 and 1912, theThirteenth Dalai Lama Tupten Gyatso returned to Tibet to instigate several large-

scale social, economic, political, legal, and religious reforms. These reforms wereaimed at reviving the Gelukpa institution and transforming Tibet into a modern, indepen-dent nation-state, and included the establishment of major institutions (Tibet’s military,currency, postal system, electricity network, and schools for medicine and astrology),the abolishment of capital punishment, and restorations of major temples and palacesin and around Lhasa.1 But because the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s efforts were not ulti-mately met with political success, historians have attributed this failure to forces ofimperialism and hindrances posed by conservative factions in his own government(Anand 2009; Bell 1946; Goldstein 1989; Mehra 1976; Shakabpa 2010; Walt van Praag1987). This singular focus on the Dalai Lama’s lack of political agency not only failedto understand his modern reforms on their own terms, but also undermined the impor-tance of cultural and artistic patronage in the Dalai Lama’s vision of a modern Tibet.2

Wen-shing Chou (chouwenshing@gmail.com) is Assistant Professor of Art History at Hunter College, City Uni-versity of New York.1Many characterized these reforms as Tibet’s first step toward modernization (Kapstein 2006, 172;Tuttle 2005, 54).2Gyeten Namgyal (1994) remains the only published work that discusses in detail the ThirteenthDalai Lama’s patronage of the arts.

The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 73, No. 2 (May) 2014: 419–445.© The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2014 doi:10.1017/S0021911813002441

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s scrupulous supervision of renovation projects of majormonasteries and palaces in and around Lhasa is best documented in three catalogues ofrenovations of temples, paintings, and images he authored (Thub bstan rgya mtsho [1922]1981–82, 4:761–96, 5:667–90, 5:691–708).3 In them he emphasized repeatedly that hisdiligence toward temple restorations and reconsecrations were necessary measures tokeep away harm, maintain the teachings of the Buddha, and fulfill the wishes of allTibetan people during a time of tremendous change (Alexander 2005, 295–307; Phurlcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:226b–227b).4 In other words, temple renovation projectswere part and parcel of the religious and institutional reform of the Thirteenth DalaiLama.

Recognizing these projects as necessary foundations for the Dalai Lama’s reforms,this essay examines two cosmological painting programs in the Potala and the NorbuLingka, commissioned by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama between 1922 and 1928. It paysparticular attention to two paintings of sacred sites, Bodh Gaya in India and WutaiShan in China. While they belong to a familiar Buddhist cosmology of holy places,Bodh Gaya and Wutai Shan are also sites that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama visitedduring his exiles abroad. They are depicted in what I will call empirical modes of rep-resentation unprecedented in Tibetan Buddhist paintings, while all other paintingsfollow the precise iconographic prescriptions of an existing paradigm of vision, what Iwill call a visionary mode of representation. What gave rise to these new depictions,and how do they fit into the existing paradigm?

The question of how new modes of knowledge and production enter into and sustainan image-making tradition that is based on iconographic precision became especially rel-evant in early twentieth-century Tibet, when images often played an urgent role in bothclaiming and articulating authority in the climate of political uncertainty and ambiguity.In her recent study of a series of Panchen Lama portraits produced from mechanicallooms in 1930s Hangzhou, Patricia Berger (2008, 2:731) shows that “the precision ofmechanical reproduction and its ability to reliably capture an extremely complicatedpast” invested modern textiles with the power and authority of the original icon. Similarly,the appearance of modern paradigms of vision and experience in the cosmological paint-ing programs of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama further validated and articulated the visionaryworldview in a time when it was greatly challenged. These painting programs skillfullywove the empirical system of knowledge and representation into an existing visionaryworld, rather than being altered by it. The selective employment of radically differentmodes of seeing and depicting reality in the sphere of artistic practice reveals what isotherwise buried in legal, institutional, and religious sources—the role of pilgrimageand sacred geography in the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s encounter with geopolitical trans-formations of the early twentieth century. Examining the pictorial programs in light ofaccounts of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s travels, I argue that this particular mapping ofa Buddhist universe may be seen as a direct response to modernity’s technologies and

3It is also described extensively in his biography by Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin (1940) and by Charles Bell(1946) during his 1921 visit to Lhasa.4The Dalai Lama supervised restorations of the outer corridor of the Jokhang (Tsug lag khang), theRamoche Temple, the Samye (Bsam yas) Monastery, the stupa shrine of Tsongkhapa at GandenMonastery, and many other sites in and around Lhasa.

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vocabularies of identity and place-making, and that painting served as a medium throughwhich the court of the Dalai Lama asserted his spiritual sovereignty and temporal auth-ority. Centered on the reading of images and texts from within the tradition of Tibetancosmological and biographical genres, this study reveals a sphere of agency and creativityin Tibet’s nuanced negotiation with modernity that has evaded historical inquiries to date.

THE MURAL PROGRAM AT THE EASTERN SUNLIGHT HALL IN THE POTALA

In 1923, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama personally dictated and supervised (Tib. ljagsbkod kyi lam nas)5 the rebuilding and enlargement of the upper part of the EasternWhite Palace (Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:231b). The main room on the top floor ofthe White Palace, known as the Eastern Sunlight Hall, served as the Thirteenth andlater the Fourteenth Dalai Lamas’ audience hall, where state affairs and meetings withforeign representatives were conducted.6 Attached to this hall are chapels of protectordeities and living quarters of the Dalai Lama. An array of compositions and narrativescovers the walls of the Eastern Sunlight Hall, each of them accompanied by small butneatly legible inscriptions identifying the main subject and its subsidiary details (seefigure 1). On the south end of the west wall is the image of the sacred mountain rangeof Wutai Shan, the earthly abode of Mañjusrı, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, located innortheastern China. Adjacent to it on the other side of the entrance is the Kingdom ofShambhala, a mytho-historical kingdom famed for having preserved the profound teach-ing of the Kalacakra Tantra (lit. Time-Wheel Tantra). To its right on the northern end ofthe west wall is the Dhanyakataka Stupa, a site in northern India where the KalacakraTantra is known to have been first taught by the Buddha Sakyamuni. The north wall

Figure 1. Mural Program of the Eastern Sunlight Hall, Audi-ence Room of the Dalai Lama, Potala Palace, Lhasa, 1922–24(after Jiang 1996, 1:147).

5Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.6The full name of the hall is Nyiwö Shar Ganden Nangsel, or Eastern Sunlight, the LuminousHolder of Happiness (Blo bzang thub bstan 1982, 26).

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features narratives of the life of Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), the founder of the Gelukschool of Tibetan Buddhism. The paintings, displaying Tsongkhapa’s eminent career asa teacher, philosopher, reformer, and prolific receiver of dharma transmissions, arevisible on either side of the central throne and scripture cases. At the northeasternend of the hall is a small balcony, inside of which are images of Abhirati, the paradiseof Buddha Aks.obhya of the Eastern Direction, and the paradise of Avalokitesvara, theBodhisattva of compassion. Along the east wall, there is a portrait of the enthroned Thir-teenth Dalai Lama, and the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha Sakya-muni attained enlightenment (see figure 2). On the first and second stretches of the southwall are the fifteen miracles of Sakyamuni, events that have been celebrated at the annualFestival of Great Miracles on the fifteenth day of the Tibetan New Year in Lhasa since

Figure 2. Mural of the Mahabodhi Temple of Bodh Gaya,south end of East Wall, Eastern Sunlight Hall, Potala Palace,Lhasa, 1922–24 (Leoshko 1988, 145).

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Tsongkhapa created the festival in 1409.7 Completing the third stretch of the south wall is avisualization of the frequently recited Tashi Tsekpa from the Collection of Dharanis in theTibetan Buddhist Canon.8 In the middle of this painting, a palatial structure encloses atwo-armed Avalokitesvara, while a smaller palace on the upper left corner is presidedover by his consort Tara. On the upper right section of the painting is a cosmologicaldiagram ofMt.Meru and the FourContinents, the basic structure of the Buddhist universe.

THE MURAL PROGRAM AT THE KELSANG DEKYI PALACE AT NORBU LINGKA

A similar array of heavenly realms and holy sites is found on the second story ofKelsang Dekyi Palace at Norbu Lingka, constructed a few years later, between 1926and 1928 (Nor bu gling ga chags tshul, n.d., 66–67). Kelsang Dekyi Palace became oneof the primary residence and reception spaces during the later years of the ThirteenthDalai Lama’s life. It is a small, two-story structure adjacent to the larger ChenselPalace, which the Thirteenth Dalai Lama also restored and expanded. The upper storyof this structure contains almost identical but larger and more elaborate images ofWutai Shan, the Mahabodhi Temple, and Dhanyakataka Stupa, Avalokitesvara’s Paradise,and more depictions of the life of Tsongkhapa. In addition to these is Maitreya’s PreachingGround in Tus. ita. The arrangement of the sacred abodes also differs from the tightlyassembled panels in the Eastern Sunlight Hall. Largely conforming to the design ofthe space, each panel of sacred sites in the Eastern Sunlight Hall was rendered in identicalsizes and shapes, while episodes from Sakyamuni and Tsongkhapa’s careers mirror eachother on long stretches of the south and north walls. In the Kelsang Dekyi Palace,these panels of sacred abodes are enlarged and expanded to cover a wall of their own.The effect is a more complete integration of the pictorial space of sacred sites and thephysical space of the throne room.

COSMOLOGICAL SCHEMES

The central theme that surfaced in the Eastern Sunlight Hall and at Kelsang DekyiPalace is that of sacred time and place. While calendrical and hagiographical narrativeschart the temporal axis, the assembly of sacred sites brings order and structure to thespace of the Buddhist universe.9 Among them, many sites depicted belong to a familiar,but rarely pictorialized, ensemble of five directional sites of empowerment that becamefirmly established in Tibetan sacred geography by the eighteenth century at the latest(Bka’ ‘gyur ba blo bzang tshul khrims 1989, 1579–84; Lcang skya 1993, 1). Accordingto this scheme, Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya occupies the center of earth

7Scriptural reference to these episodes can be found in the Sutra of the Wise and Foolish (Tib.Mdzangs blun zhes bya ba’i mdo). See Mdzangs blun zhes bya ba’i mdo (n.d., A:74, 161a4–164b1, 321.4–328.1). For an English translation of the Mongolian text, see Frye (1981, 48–63).8Almost identical compositions are published in Zla ba tshe ring et al. (2000, 4:107) and in theRubin Museum of Art.9Festivals of Tibetan Buddhism, as Matthew Kapstein (2006, 239) pointed out, “serve to organizetime much as the pilgrimage routes organize space.”

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(Jambudvıpa), while Wutai Shan of China stands as the most exalted place in the east,Shambhala in the north, the Potala Mountain in the south, and Ud.d. iyana of the Landof Dakinis in the west. In the Potala and the Norbu Lingka, all but Ud.d. iyana is depicted.

This cosmography itself is developed from the classical Indian Buddhist world systemmost widely studied in Tibet through Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosabhasyam, an extre-mely influential treatise that became one of the core texts in the Gelukpa monastic curri-culum (Kloetzli 1987, 4:114). The universe described therein centers around Mt. Merurising from a Great Ocean. In each direction of Meru are four continents, of which onlythe southern one is accessible to humans. This southern continent, known as Jambudvıpa,corresponds to the physical earth that humans inhabit. It was within this system thatTibetan Buddhist exegetes further mapped the above-named five sacred places onto thefive directions of Jambudvıpa. These exalted places are therefore both supreme andwithin worldly reach. This cosmological structure ofMt.Meru, which is frequently depictedby itself opposite theWheel of Becoming at the entrance of temples and prayer halls, is alsoseen in the background of the image of Potalaka on the south wall of the Eastern SunlightHall, and directly adjacent to theWutai Shan image, as if to serve as a locational coordinatefor the two earthly paradises. Its pivotal location on the wall between the paradises of Ava-lokitesvara and Mañjusrı reinforces the coherence of this directional sacred scheme andunderscores the geographical correspondence between two otherwise very different depic-tions. Even though the assembly of holy places did not always remain a fixed and stable set,the concept of empowered earthly sites can always be differentiated from paradises ofBuddha depicted in the mural programs, such as Maitreya’s Tus. ita, Amitabha’s Sukhavatı,or Aks.obhya’s Abhirati, which are situated in other realms (Gomez 1996). Among them,Tus. ita bears the closest proximity to Jambudvıpa, since it is understood as situatedwithin the deva realm of the Mt. Meru system, and it is to Jambudvıpa that this futureBuddha Maitreya will descend (Kloetzli 1987, 4:115). Aks.obhya and Amitabha’s paradiseswould have been seen as belonging to the family of the Five Directional Buddhas locatedoutside of the Mt. Meru system (Gomez 1996, 36; Nattier 2000).

A PANORAMIC VISION

Various holy places and momentous events in Buddhist history displayed in theEastern Sunlight Hall and at the Kelsang Dekyi Palace represent the much-aspired-toand potentially traversable realms of the divine in an encyclopedic fashion, so thattheir appearance does not so much induce the experience of entering the realms ortimes as bring the time-space into an organized collection, in a way that is perfectly inkeeping with the Buddhist penchant for categorizing knowledge. This practice can beseen in everything from the compilation of sacred texts and the creation of scripturalcanons to the visualization of deity mandalas, the formation of pantheons that continueto incorporate indigenous and subjugated deities, and the Indian cakravartin ideal, inwhich a universal king, owing to his vast stores of spiritual merit, justly rules over expan-sive territories.10 The ideal of a divine Buddhist sovereign, or a cakravartin, is precisely

10For the origins of the Cakravartin ideal, see Davidson (2002, 330–33). On its development inTibet, see Davidson (2005). On its spread in East Asia, see Orzech (1998).

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what gave rise to the depiction of cosmological diagrams and systems visible in theEastern Sunlight Hall and at Kelsang Dekyi Palace. The court of the Thirteenth DalaiLama, by articulating his connection to the marvelous deeds of the historical Buddha,and to those of Tsongkhapa, the founder of his religious lineage, and by bringing togethersacred realms of different directions, illustrates the all-pervading domains of his religioussovereignty. In continuing this tradition of cosmography, however, the Thirteenth DalaiLama seems to be attempting something very specific in bringing together these differentworlds of Buddhas, Buddhist saints, and teachings.

EMPIRICAL INTRUSIONS

While much of the pictorial program clearly followed the visual and textual templatesof a received tradition, depictions of the Mahabodhi in Bodh Gaya in India and WutaiShan in China appear in unprecedented manners. As the only two sacred abodes in a cos-mology of sacred times and places that can be physically revisited, and, as I will show inthe latter half of this essay, that the Dalai Lama had indeed visited a decade earlier, theyemploy visual strategies that are guided by modern, empirical concerns. The MahabodhiTemple, or the Temple of Supreme Enlightenment, marks the place where Buddha’s ulti-mate enlightenment was attained. Its depiction comprises several representational modes(see figure 2): the central temple itself en grisaille, a semi-monochrome painting, whichat times seems to imitate the light and shadows in a photograph, and at others the trans-lucent quality of the rocks that make up the stone monument; the temple is planted in acolorful rectangular garden of smaller funerary shrines, rendered in a combination ofsemi-profile and bird’s-eye perspectives. The oversized Mahabodhi Temple, with its tipjutting out beyond the border of the garden enclosure, appears strikingly illusionisticin the company of rigid, color-coded trees, shrines, and Buddha images. Providing aclue is a framed early photograph of the Mahabodhi Temple, still propped up on atable as an object of devotion in the next room, capturing the stupa shrine from thesame direction as the wall painting (see figure 3).11 What is more revealing than theperspectival inconsistencies is that they both feature the western face of the MahabodhiTemple, in front of which are the discernible diamantine throne of the Buddha andthe then-young branches of the Bodhi tree reintroduced from Sri Lanka in the latenineteenth century.12 The exact vantage point was reproduced in a later painting ofthe Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s visit to the Mahabodhi Temple that appears in his mauso-leum (see figure 4), a work that will be revisited at the end of this paper. Given itsearly date, the photograph was likely brought back from India by the ThirteenthDalai Lama, and presumably served as a source for the painting. The lack of precedencefor this photographically derived depiction stems from a fundamental shift in represen-tation. Tibetan paintings of the Mahabodhi Temple had previously not aimed toreproduce the physical structure or capture the perceivable materiality of the

11In this new medium of mass production, the photograph continues a tradition of worshippingarchitectural replicas of the temple that began in the early thirteenth century (Oldham 1937;San. kr.tyayana 1937).12I am grateful to Lobsang Nyima Laurent for obtaining this photograph.

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Figure 3. Early photograph of theMahabodhi on display in theZurchung Rabsel, Potala Palace. Approximately 25 x 18 inches.Photograph by L. N. Laurent.

Figure 4. Pilgrimage to Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya,Mausoleum of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Potala Palace,1933–35 (Phun tshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000, 194).

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temple.13 Instead, such representations had been a way to mark and recall the event ofthe Buddha’s ultimate awakening. In standard depictions of the Mahabodhi Temple, theBuddha is seated in the earth-touching gesture, calling the earth to witness his resolve togain enlightenment. He is enshrined in a large funerary monument that vaguely carriesthe geometric semblance of the temple itself (see figure 5). They employ what can bereferred to as a schematic mode of representation, in which a received template isrehearsed to describe both the site and the event of the Buddha’s awakening. This con-ventional way of painting the Mahabodhi Temple was certainly known to the ThirteenthDalai Lama’s painters, as they still followed the tradition in part by rendering the gardenitself in much the same fashion. But the effect of inserting a temple en grisaille into thefamiliarly anonymous garden enclosure is a stark juxtaposition between the central image

Figure 5. Mahabodhi Temple of Bodh Gaya, colors on cloth.In the collection of the Potala Palace, eighteenth to nineteenthcenturies, Central Tibet (Xizang zizhi qu wenwu guanli weiyuan-wei 1985, 106).

13Sculpted replicas were based on the architectural exterior of the temple, but not paintings. Seenote 11.

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and the ground. Employing two modes of representation, one photographically driven,the other schematic, this painting suggests a sacred place that is at once tangible andtimeless. As the first representation of its kind seen in Tibet, it also invents for theviewer a notion that the iconicity of the site rests on the external, perceptual appearanceof the stupa, as may be seen through a photographic lens, rather than on its conceptualand cosmological characteristics.

AN EYEWITNESS REPRESENTATION OF WUTAI SHAN

The Dalai Lama’s first-hand knowledge and experience was translated into yet adifferent mode of representation in the Wutai Shan painting. The painting in theEastern Sunlight Hall, which was repeated and expanded in the Kelsang Dekyi Palaceto cover a larger stretch of wall a few years later, depicts a panoramic view of the moun-tain range filled with monasteries, landmarks, pilgrims, and apparitions, all preciselylabeled with Tibetan inscriptions. Besides being larger and more completely inscribed,the layout and content of the Kelsang Dekyi Palace image are almost identical to thoseof the earlier painting in the Eastern Sunlight Hall, suggesting that the latter wasbased on the former, or that two paintings had both been copied from a source image.In the earlier painting from the Eastern Sunlight Hall, while the more than forty sitesdepicted were well-known at Wutai Shan through other representations and textualrecords, about thirty more names of monasteries had not appeared in earlier survivinggazetteers. These comprise sites with largely Tibetan names, some with alternate spel-lings, in marked contrast with the well-known names that were translations or translitera-tions of Chinese. In other words, this representation of the mountain range lay outside ofthe well-established Chinese canons.

This appears as an anomaly if one looks solely within the canonical Tibetan traditionof recordingWutai Shan from the eighteenth century onward, which was closely based onChinese records.14 But in fact, the inscriptions corroborate closely with a list of templesthe Thirteenth Dalai Lama visited at Wutai, which has been recorded in his biography.Moreover, on the Wutai Shan mural in Kelsang Dekyi Palace, a monk figure inside atemple compound is labeled as “Yi ching si dge bshe sa ma,” or Master Sama fromYiching Temple. A Buryat lama by the name of Geshe “Sama” or “Soma” also appearsfrequently in the biography of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940,2:39b, 43b, 44a, 46b, 47a, 48b, 53b). According to the biography, Geshe Sama repeatedlycame to meet with the Dalai Lama at Wutai Shan, and is said to have made elaborateofferings for temple constructions and restorations, which were finished in time forthe Dalai Lama to bestow blessings and conduct consecration ceremonies while still atWutai Shan. The inscription of alternate temple names and a contemporaneous figurepoint toward a representation of the mountain range that is closely linked to the DalaiLama’s personal experiences at Wutai Shan, some fifteen years before the paintingswere commissioned.

14This is due to the work of Rölpé Dorjé, the Monguor polymath of the Qing court whose trans-lation works standardized the Tibetan names of many sites at Wutai Shan within a circle of Tibetan-language scholars.

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A comparison between this “updated” picture of Wutai Shan and earlier Tibetandepictions of the mountain range at Samye reveals its unorthodoxy. The painting ofWutai Shan at Samye renders a landscape with five symmetrically arranged peaks,each topped with an image of a specific form of the resident deity Mañjusrı (seefigure 6). Here, the primacy of experience and first-hand encounter does not seem toplay any role. Wutai Shan exists insofar as it completes a systematic rendering of theworld in accordance with a Tibetan Buddhist cosmology. Such depictions of WutaiShan are also frequently seen in Tibetan thangka paintings of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, where the same set of five Mañjusrıs appear on five peaks with corre-sponding inscriptions. Because Wutai Shan is rendered in such generic and abstractterms, the mountain appears just as distant and out of this world as any other depictionsof exalted places. By contrast, the Wutai Shan images commissioned by the ThirteenthDalai Lama focus on the recollection of specific visions, persons, sites, and monasteries.

As what might be considered the most direct testaments to his stay at Wutai Shan,the Thirteenth Dalai Lama composed two praise poems in honor of Mañjusrı at therequest of two visiting monk scholars toward the end of his six-month-long residenceat Wutai Shan in 1908 (Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:50a–50b; Thub bstan rgya mtsho[1922] 1981–82, 3:395.1–404.2, see also 3:392.1–394.7). The poems in fact capturevery little “personalized experience” of the sort seen in the paintings at the Eastern Sun-light Hall and Kelsang Dekyi Palace. Like the Samye painting, the Thirteenth DalaiLama’s written poetry, though professing to record the sensory experience of his pilgrim-age, emphasized the timeless quality of Wutai Shan. True to its genre, it rehearses earlierpraises in ornate terms and reiterates the history of the founding of Wutai Shan with anabundance of references to early Chinese legends directly drawn from Rölpé Dorjé’sauthoritative guidebook to Wutai Shan (Lcang skya 1993). The image of Wutai Shan itconjures up is of a wisdom paradise that seems impervious to historical transformations.

Figure 6. Mural of Wutai Shan, east-facing side of the outermost cor-ridor, first floor of the main assembly hall, Samye Monastery, CentralTibet. Photograph by W. Chou.

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Elsewhere I have explored in depth the affinities between pictorial representationsof Wutai Shan and their textual counterparts in Chinese and Tibetan languages, both intheir visually evocative qualities and in their capacity as substitutes for the mountainrange (Chou 2011). Seen as an instance within a larger tradition of eulogizing thesacred mountain range in Tibetan Buddhism, the Wutai Shan paintings in the EasternSunlight Hall and Kelsang Dekyi Palace validated empirical experience in an unprece-dented way by attending to contemporaneous geography and personalities.

TIMELINESS AND TIMELESSNESS

In essence, the Dalai Lama incorporated his own encounter with the sacred sites,both by newly acquired photographically driven means and by the insertion of personalexperience, into a tradition of sacred cosmography that saw these places as timeless,divine, and impervious to external transformations. This pictorial diversity and thedecision not to follow schematic formulas suggest that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama wasinterested in not only rehearsals of familiar cosmology but also the specific reasons forthe choice of scenes and sites. While it is easy to perceive the ability of these new, empiri-cal modes of representation to evoke externally visible presence and personal experience,it is equally important to recognize that the existing rhetoric of vision and truth had alwaysbeen imbued with multiple temporal and spatial layers. In contrast to empirical represen-tations, the existing tradition follows precise visualizations of the prescriptions fromguidebooks. This mode of representation, what I refer to in general as a visionarymode, is equally equipped with means to express physical and temporal proximity, andthe choice to follow it reflected as much intention as did the choice to follow their empiri-cal counterparts.

As a case in point, the paintings of the Fifteen Great Miracles (chontrül düchen) onthe eastern stretch of the southern wall comprise fifteen episodes in which the Buddhaperforms miraculous deeds to overcome six Brahmanical heretics. The depictions simul-taneously recall and collapse multiple instances of the Fifteen Great Miracles’ history,commemoration, and celebration. They not only reiterate stories in the life of theBuddha Sakyamuni, but also recall Tsongkhapa, the illustrious founder of the GreatPrayer festival (mönlam chenmo) who first created a public commemoration of thesemiracles, and whose biographical narrative is depicted on the opposite wall. They alsorecall the Fifth Dalai Lama, under whose rule the festival once came under the fullcontrol of the Gelukpa reign. Above all, contemporary viewers of the paintings wouldhave recognized them as referring to the joyous occasion of the Great Prayer festivalthey themselves witnessed in the 1920s, owing to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s ownefforts to restore the festival to its former glory after his return from exile in 1913(Bell 1946, 57–58). The revival of the festival, centered on narratives of the Buddhaovercoming heretics, is itself an evident reassertion of the Geluk monopoly of powerand Buddhist victory over other religions (Huber 2008, 361; Richardson 1993, 20–55;Rigzin 1993, 8–14; Tucci 1980, 147–53). There is every reason to see a similarintention in the depiction of these narratives and the central message of the GreatPrayer festival—to conflate Lhasa in the 1920s with previous moments of prosperity inthe Gelukpa rule.

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That the Thirteenth Dalai Lama saw his own work of renewing and reforming Tibetas a continuation of acts carried out by his greatest predecessor, the Fifth Dalai Lama, inan unbroken fashion through the various incarnations since the seventeenth century, iscountlessly attested to in his own writings, in the well-circulated household legends inLhasa, and in the very renovation projects these wall paintings were part of.15 Imagesof the Fifteen Great Miracles can be seen as another form of this assertion. The FifthDalai Lama expressed in his autobiography that an aspiration to paint the FifteenGreat Miracles on the walls of the Red Palace in the Potala could not be realized(Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 1979, 284:2). Having been deeply familiar with thewritings of the Fifth Dalai Lama, and indeed having commissioned a reprinting of theautobiography in 1925, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama could have seen the paintings onthe Eastern Sunlight Hall in part as a fulfillment of an aspiration of the Fifth DalaiLama (Xizang wenshi ziliao xuanji 2004, 166).

Expressions of “historical time” are equally visible in depictions of timeless and semi-mythical places, such as the millennial kingdom of Shambhala and the DhanyakatakaStupa. Standard depictions of Shambhala usually feature the kingdom in the shape ofan enormous eight-petaled lotus in the center of the composition, surrounded, in thelower corners, by the prophesized battle of the future Shambhalan king, and in theupper corners, by the Kalacakra deity and kings of Shambhala (see, e.g., HimalayanArt Resources 2014). But in the painting in the Eastern Sunlight Hall, the circularkingdom of Shambhala is relegated to the upper right corner, while the battle scenetakes center stage (see figure 7) (Kollmar-Paulenz 1992–93). The scene illustratesthe promised descent of the twenty-fifth king of Shambhala who, leading an incon-ceivably large army, is to conquer all forces of evil in Jambudvıpa at a time when thisworld is overrun by greed and chaos (Bernbaum 2001, 205–55). Dominated in the fore-ground by a large figure of the king in shining armor, riding a flaming black horse, thecomposition transforms the promised hidden kingdom from what was once an iconic,devotional image to mere background scenery.16 The kingdom now serves the purposeof illustrating the territory of the king’s dominion, similar to the function of topographicallandscapes in monumental tapestries of battle scenes commissioned by Europeanaristocracy.

This image is placed side-by-side with the Dhanyakataka Stupa, the site believed tobe in present-day Andhra Pradesh, India (see Phun tshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000, 187).17

It matches closely the description of the stupa in an annotated record of labels of paint-ings and sculptures in selected rooms of Norbu Lingka, Potala, and the Ramoche, datingto the mid-1920s and attributed to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Thub bstan rgya mtsho[1922] 1981–82, 4:761–96). The text not only transcribes the labels of wall paintings,but also provides excursions into how the original Dhanyakataka Stupa looked,adorned with marble pillars, vaidurya gems, and mandala arrangements, as well as the

15This is also no less apparent in the arduous negotiation of protocol at the meeting with theEmpress-Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor (Dhondup 1986, 28; Jagou 2009; Rockhill1910, 77–89).16For a similar composition, see Niu (2002, 56–57).17Tibetans “rediscovered” Amaravati as the Dhayankataka Stupa and the site of the first teachingafter Amdo Gendun Chophel’s travel writings were published (Huber 2008, 372; Macdonald 1970).

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various devotional activities at the site shared by people of all faiths.18 The description isfollowed by a chronology of the lineage of the kingdom’s rulers, and their affinity to theDalai Lamas through shared identity as the reincarnations of Avalokitesvara.

The Dalai Lama’s specific interest in the details of the Shambhalan myth coincidedwith a brief but widespread propagation of the idea that Shambhala was located in theRussian Empire, a belief that the Dalai Lama himself possibly shared in the decade ofthe 1900s (Berzin 2003; Kollmar-Paulenz 1992–93, 86–87; Tada 1965, 39–40). TheBuryat Mongol monk Agvan Dorjiev (1854–1938), who became the Dalai Lama’smaster debate partner and at times a most trusted political advisor, argued for thisbelief based on the fact that the tsar was protecting the Geluk tradition among theBuryats, Kalmyks, and Tuvinian Turks of the Russian Empire.19

Could the image of the apocalyptic battle depicted in the Potala be taken literally asaffirming an aspiration for, or belief in, Tibet’s eventual “liberation” through the triumphof a Buddhist holy war? It seems very likely given the explicit and worldly deployment ofKalacakra imageries in Mongolia and other parts of Buddhist Central Asia in the war-torndecades to follow (Berger and Bartholomew 1995; Berzin 2003). Regardless of howwidely shared this belief was in early twentieth-century Lhasa, it suffices to say that

Figure 7. Mural of the Battle of Shambhala, northern side ofwest wall, Eastern Sunlight Hall, Potala Palace, 1922–24 (Phuntshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000, 186).

18The Sixth Panchen Lama (1738–80), who was eager to locate Shambhala, wrote the authoritativeguidebook to Shambhala in 1775 (Blo bzang dpal ldan ye shes [1775] 1975–78).19For more on Agvan Dorjiev, see Thubten and Martin (1991), Snelling (1993), and Andreyev(2001).

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images of the Kalacakra were brought forth, along with other previously discussed imagesin the Eastern Sunlight Hall, by a vested interest in reviving, remembering, and recon-necting with these specific moments, realms, and places. Together, the images representa selection and a conflation of key moments and places that at once continued the tra-dition of Gelukpa Buddhism, and had acquired special urgency in the tumultuousperiod of the early twentieth century.

TOWARD NEW TEMPORALITIES

An in-depth consideration of selected paintings in the Eastern Sunlight Hall hasrevealed the coexistence of two epistemological realities. On the one hand is the new,empirical one—a method of affirming reality by the physiological eye via photographi-cally driven and eyewitness representations.20 Instead of resorting to more familiarschemas or templates, representations of Bodh Gaya and Wutai Shan incorporatedempirical experiences into a system of knowledge that previously established itself onreceived texts and images. On the other hand, we witness the persistence and versatilityof a visionary reality made up of depictions of cyclical festivals and the apparition of divinekingdoms and emanations. The question thus arises: if the existing system was perfectlycapable of articulating the complexity of time and eternity, dimensions of space and speci-ficity, then why did the new mode of vision surface at all? The remainder of this essayattempts to locate the primacy of empirical experience in the life of the ThirteenthDalai Lama, to show that it was through a new form of contact with the world, namelyhis wandering exile, that this new cosmology was mapped.

AN ACCIDENTAL PILGRIM

Just as canonical depictions of the Fifteen Great Miracles convey Lhasa’s peace andstability under the rule of the Dalai Lama in the 1920s, and paintings of the kingdom ofShambhala and the Dhanyakataka Stupa express a real and timely aspiration for their dis-covery and recovery, representations of Bodh Gaya and Wutai Shan that embracedempirical observations served as a record or souvenir of the two pilgrimages the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama undertook a decade earlier. If one goes back to accounts of the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama’s travels, one discovers that the pilgrimages themselves were asembroiled in the simultaneity of different epistemological realities as their pictorialcounterparts. In 1904, then twenty-nine years of age, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama fledfrom Lhasa on the eve of the British military invasion. He and his entourage first travelednortheastward toward Mongolia in an attempt to secure protection from tsarist Russia,whose purported espionage in Lhasa was the justification for the British invasion ofTibet in the first place. But when the Russo-Japanese war that ended in 1905 stripped

20While a belief in photographic veracity in the West has taken theoreticians more than a century todeconstruct, within Tibetan artistic production, by contrast, photographic semblance and paintingfrom contemporary experience were just beginning to be accepted and incorporated into thesystem of truth-making in the 1920s.

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Russia of its military might and internal control, Russia slowly withdrew an already faintpromise to bring Tibet under its protection (Andreyev 2003, 43–45).21 In a dramatic shiftof the power balance, Britain and Russia jointly urged the Thirteenth Dalai Lama toreturn to Lhasa, to which the Dalai Lama responded by doing just the opposite—goingeastward toward Beijing, the capital of the Manchu empire (Shakabpa 2010, 621–716).

At this juncture of uncertainty and compromise, Wutai Shan emerged as a supremedestination. As the earthly abode of Mañjusrı, the mountain range is conveniently locatedsome 200 miles southwest of the capital Beijing, just a few days’ journey away from thepolitical activities and summer heat of the capital. It had become an important place ofpilgrimage for all Tibetans and Mongolians traveling to and from the Yuan, Ming, andQing courts in Beijing from the time when the capital was first established there by Khu-bilai Khan in the thirteenth century. From the early seventeenth century onward, WutaiShan had served as the meeting place for Chinese court officials and representatives fromthe outlying Tibetan andMongolian regions, because of its proximity to Mongolia and thecapital in Beijing, its perennially cool climate, which was more tolerable for Tibetans andMongolians, and most importantly, its distinction as a shared place of pilgrimage anddevotion among these various groups of people (Tuttle and Elverskog 2011).

Therefore, when the Thirteenth Dalai Lama arrived in Wutai Shan in 1908, it sig-naled to the Manchu court that he had tacitly accepted the court’s invitation to visitBeijing, although he stayed for six more months at Wutai Shan, meeting with various del-egations and paying visits to a mountain full of temples, until finally making his way to theManchu court.22 As soon as he arrived in Beijing, a big argument ensued between himand the Qing court as to whether the Dalai Lama should perform prostrations at thefeet of the emperor.23 A month after they finally settled on genuflection, a bending atthe knees, the Guangxu Emperor and Empress-Dowager Cixi both died, but notbefore replacing the Dalai Lama’s old title “The Most Excellent, Self-Existent Buddhaof the West” (Chengshun zanhua xitian dashan zizai fo) with a new one—“The SincerelyObedient, Reincarnation-helping, Most Excellent, Self-Existent Buddha of the West”(Xitian dashan zizai fo) (First National Archive of Beijing 2002, 168; Mehra 1976, 20).

The Dalai Lama witnessed the last gasp of the Qing Empire and saw neither reasonnor facility to rekindle the priest-patron relationship between his forebears and the

21The potential priest-patron relationship between the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and Tsar Nicholas IIis witnessed in the much-cited story in which the Thirteenth Dalai Lama engendered a son for TsarNicholas II and his wife Tsarina Alexandra, who was said to look just like the Dalai Lama (Phur lcogyongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:50b; Shakabpa 2010, 687, 710).22Most Chinese sources say he was not allowed to go to Beijing until six months later, and mostTibetan and British sources say he purposely delayed his trip to Beijing for six months (JagchidSechin 2004; Jagou 2009, 349–50).23Jagou (2009, 358) hypothesizes that the Dalai Lama’s refusal to follow the Qing court’s requiredprotocol might have to do with his Western advisors at Wutai Shan, who disapproved of such prac-tices. His disagreement would also have much to do with protocols of earlier meetings between theShunzhi Emperor and his predecessor, the Fifth Dalai Lama, and between the Qianlong Emperorand the Sixth Panchen Lama (Bell 1946, 83–84; Jagchid Sechin 2004, 147; Rockhill 1910, 77–89);Shenbao (1908) reported that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama refused to make prostrations based on thefact that when he sojourned in Mongolia and Wutai Shan, officials and high lamas all prostratedtoward him.

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Manchu court that had been in place since the seventeenth century. He quickly leftBeijing and arrived back in Lhasa in December 1909. What remained of any mutualunderstanding between the Qing court and the Dalai Lama dissolved when a Manchuarmy from the southwestern province of Sichuan invaded Lhasa that same year,forcing the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to flee again, this time to India with the aid ofBritish Indian officers (Shakabpa 2010, 717–53). During his second forced exile, hevisited important pilgrimage sites of the life of the Buddha Sakyamuni, including theMahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya. He stayed in India until 1912, when the revolutionthat overthrew the Qing Empire also brought an end to Chinese control in centralTibet. The Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa in 1913, and governed central Tibet for twodecades until his death in 1933 (Shakabpa 1967, 246–48).

COLLIDING WORLDS AT WUTAI SHAN

That the Dalai Lama’s forced exodus and subsequent pilgrimages of convenience hadbeen a product of modern imperialism meant they were closely observed by representa-tives and journalists of major powers. The multiplicity of narratives about the ThirteenthDalai Lama’s sojourn at Wutai Shan collectively expresses an unease symptomatic of themeeting of different worlds. When he arrived at Wutai Shan in March 1908, his retinue ofaround eighty was described by the New York Times as consisting of “priests, personalservitors, high officials of the church, and a motley crowd of doubtful-looking soldiersarmed with rifles” and on another occasion as “a wild, disorderly, unkempt-lookingcrew, giving no impression of their religious affiliations” (New York Times, July 13,1908; September 29, 1908).24 Later, the Dalai Lama’s six months at Wutai Shan wouldbe recounted by his Tibetan biographer as having fulfilled prophecies of the previouscenturies and conjured miraculous visions, by many visiting Europeans as curious spec-tacles belonging to an archaic time and place, by visiting monks from Japan as a feast ofBuddhist scholasticism, and by the local Chinese officials as mostly a financial andadministrative liability (Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:40a–52b; Shenbao 1908; Shirasu2007).25 But whether the excesses were of miracles, monastic learning, monetaryburdens, or motley crowds, various versions of the Dalai Lama’s exile at Wutai Shan astold from Tibetan, European, Japanese, and Chinese perspectives poignantly revealthe colliding worlds of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. At once a divine incarnation heldin the highest esteem and accorded with absolute temporal authority by his Tibetanand Mongolian subjects, the head of a religious order best known in Buddhist Asia forits scholarly rigor, and an astute politician struggling to gain support for his peoplefrom a world driven by imperial and nationalist agendas, the Thirteenth DalaiLama resided in a mountain range that was as much endowed with timeless spiritualpotency as it was plagued by poverty and political turmoil of an empire on the brink ofcollapse.26

24C. G. Mannerheim (2008, 758) numbers his suite and other attendants at 300.25One thing that all accounts did enumerate was the sumptuous exchanges of gifts.26Jagchid Sechin preserves a telling document issued by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to his fatherLobsanchoijur, who served as his secretary in Chinese-language affairs at Wutai Shan. This

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Still and all, the unique diplomatic promise that Wutai Shan afforded to the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama can be witnessed in frequent meetings with representatives fromthe capital in Beijing, Tibetan and Mongolian regions, Great Britain, America, Russia,France, Germany, and Japan, who were able to meet with him without the close moni-toring of the Qing court (Tada 1965, 95).27 Accounts by the American diplomatWilliam Rockhill (1854–1914), who traveled from Beijing to Wutai Shan specifically tomeet with the Dalai Lama, reveal that the latter was clearly aware of and fully utilizedthe fluid nature of the sacred grounds (Mehra 1976, 19). During their meetings, the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama deeply impressed and later befriended Rockhill, who described himas a charismatic leader uncertain of his future, distrustful of his surroundings, and despe-rately seeking benevolent council (Rockhill 1910; see also Meinheit 2011; Sperling 2011).Rockhill’s heartfelt sympathy and admiration for the Dalai Lama exposed the extraordi-nariness of the circumstances that allowed two different worlds to intersect.

Parallel to meetings of diplomatic urgency were gatherings of a different kinddescribed only in the Tibetan biography. Throughout descriptions of the Dalai Lama’sstay at Wutai Shan, what his biographer took the greatest poetic care to record were themiraculous and profound meetings between the two principal deities, Avalokitesvara,the Bodhisattva of compassion, which refers to none other than the Dalai Lamahimself, and Mañjusrı, Wutai Shan’s resident Bodhisattva of wisdom. In light of the factthat the Dalai Lama was on his way to see the Manchu emperor, and that this was seenas a continuation of a priest-patron relationship that had existed since the time of theShunzhi emperor (r. 1638–61) and the FifthDalai Lama, onemight consider both the reli-gious and political potency of such a happy meeting. In the seventeenth century, thispriest-patron relationship was established upon the acknowledgment that while theDalai Lamas are the physical worldly embodiment or incarnations of Avalokitesvara, thesuccessive Manchu Qing emperors were in turn worldly manifestations of the Mañjusrıof Wutai Shan (Farquhar 1978).

A famous wall painting of the meeting between Shunzhi and the Fifth Dalai Lamaillustrates well the Manchu-Tibetan understanding of the gathering as a mytho-historicalone, in which two kingly deity-emanations animate the mandala-like space of the Forbid-den City, demonstrating their dual role as rulers atop a worldly palace, and as deities atthe center of the celestial palace of the mandala. As Phurchok Yongzin writes,

At the supreme pilgrimage place of the Five-Peaked Mountain, established bythe magical play of Mañjusrı . . . the Supreme Lotus Holder [epithet for Avalo-kitesvara] and the Venerable One With Five Locks of Knotted Hair [epithet forMañjusrı], met face to face on their thrones, and engaged happily in a deep andwide dharmic debate and enjoyed delightfully the inconceivable display of theliberations of the three secret bodies. As though in the shapes of steps and

document, written in both Tibetan and Mongolian, expressed that “spreading the dharma for thebenefit of all sentient beings” remained his most important priority (Jagchid Sechin 2004, 149).27Reginald Johnston (1874–1938), who became the tutor of the last emperor, Puyi, detailed tricksthe Dalai Lama played on the local Chinese official and the lengths to which local monks and offi-cials had gone to both entertain and contain the wishes of the Dalai Lama (Irving 1919, 161).

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lions, rainbows and clouds in the clean sky in front of the Mountain of the GreatBlack Deity were gathered as special adornments by the protector deities. Andfrom the side of the rainbow clouds were emitted countless offering deities likean orderly procession of monks in golden robes. Such a multitude of breathtak-ing displays of cloud and rainbow light appeared to all Chinese and Tibetans.Having seen with their very eyes, truly, without doubt, these extremelystrange and rare marvels, they exclaimed “a là là” and talked joyously. (Phurlcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:40a–b)

In a later passage in the same text, the debate between the two was so excellent that eventhe dharma protectors rejoiced by sprinkling raining flowers down from the clear sky,thus making the occasion visible to all beings (45a–b).

Neither the ornamental style nor the wonderful content of Phurchok Yongzin’sdescriptions is unusual in Tibetan biographical writings. More akin to Christian hagiogra-phy than Western biographical writings that primarily recount historical events and char-acters in the life of an individual, the genre of Tibetan biographical writing often containselaborate descriptions of miraculous visions that were highly experiential but no less openand public. Precisely because the marvelous qualities were witnessed by all, the accountof the divine meeting can be considered real and authentic.

That the Dalai Lama’s distressed and tortuous journeys across Asia in search of pol-itical allies were also seen and remembered as a spectacular religious pilgrimage and therealization of age-old prophecies indicates a fully operative visionary dimension even at atime when many other ways of seeing were present.28 Indeed, it is important to note thatduring the visit to Wutai Shan, and throughout his time in Mongolia and China, the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama staunchly refused to be photographed, even as he sought council fromrepresentatives of Western countries and graciously accepted their offerings of rifles andillustrated manuals of modern instruments of warfare.29 Instead, many drawings of theThirteenth Dalai Lama from this period survive in Western collections, such as those pre-sented to Tsar Nicholas II in lieu of photographs (see Brauen 2005, 238).30 This insis-tence upon preserving his more traditional forms of representation paralleled hisrefusal to engage in any direct dialogue with the British, whose goal was to pressurehim into signing lengthy treatises that would delineate, albeit with maximum ambiguity,the identity of Tibet in accordance with the national interests of the British Empire

28In his study on Pemalingpa and the Sixth Dalai Lama, Michael Aris (1989, 9) remarked on theimportance of travel within the Indo-Tibetan tradition of yogi-teachers, observing that “travellingwas absolutely integral to their whole existence, whether for study or teaching, alms begging or pil-grimage, the construction or restoration of temples. . . . The rhythms of this peripatetic existencewere punctuated by periods of stillness and immobility. . . . But the lives of many of them give theimpression that their retreats were secondary to their travels.” This observation can be applied tothe later understanding of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s decade of travel.29These were common, if not customary, gifts from foreign emissaries who came to act as his advi-sors. Given the prominence of the legend of the battle of Shambhala around the Thirteenth DalaiLama’s court, it is apt to see the gifts of weapons beyond their conventional significations as instru-ments of defense and modern technology.30While photography was strictly forbidden, photographic likeness had been deemed by the DalaiLama to be an acceptable mode of representation.

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(Anand 2009, 236). This articulation of the new geopolitical status of Tibet was not onethat the Thirteenth Dalai Lama wished to consent to, as he sought support instead in themore traditional and familiar model of a priest-patron relationship with powers likeRussia, Japan, and China. It was only later in India, at the same time that the DalaiLama eventually embraced the idea of building a modern nation, that he also finallyaccepted the truth-effects of photography (see Brauen 2005, 156).

This long and difficult shift to accepting new paradigms of vision and modern nation-hood appeared as seamless and natural as any other transition in theDalai Lama’s biography.From the visionary perspective of the narrative, the Dalai Lama’s encounter with Mañjusrıand later pilgrimage to the sites of the Buddha Sakyamuni’s life in India fulfilled the time-honored prophecies of treasure-revealers, deepened his karmic connection with the mostimportant spiritual teachers of his lineage, and widened his sphere of discipleship outsideof Tibet, all of which greatly enhanced the status and credibility of his religiouspersona.31 The fact that his travels greatly exposed him to a world of rapid economic, tech-nological, and political transformations only further legitimated his supreme omniscience—they armed him with a renewed understanding of the geopolitics of his time and allowedhim to institute a number of instrumental reforms after his return to Tibet.

PICTORIAL BIOGRAPHY

Both the religious and political potency of the journeys were understood in his pic-torial biography as well. Almost immediately after the death of the Thirteenth DalaiLama in 1933, construction began on his mausoleum, the Serdung Gelek Döjo, or theAuspicious Wish-granting Golden Reliquary, which was completed in 1935 under thesupervision of his chief minister Kalon Trimon Norbu Wangyal (1874–1945), a trustedsenior cabinet official (Dhondup 1986, 99–100; Phun tshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000,294). Inside the mausoleum is an extraordinary array of wall paintings and inscriptionsthat document his life in 1,227 interlinked episodes on 175 square meters of wallspace that envelops the central golden reliquary of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Phuntshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000). Each episode is defined by an appearance of the ThirteenthDalai Lama and an accompanying inscription. As such, it constitutes the earliest postmor-tem retrospective on the life of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, predating Phurchok Yongzin’sbiography by five years.

Regard for the truthfulness of the Dalai Lama’s time in exile was so genuine thatmaster painter Tsering Gyu (1872–1935), who was in the Dalai Lama’s entourageduring those wandering years in Mongolia, China, and India, was hired specifically tocompose scenes from that period.32 Published images of the murals reveal a clear juxta-position between episodes from the period of exile and those from the rest of his life (seePhun tshogs tshe brtan et al. 2000, 194–207). Scenes from the period of his exile include

31His travels to India and China, as well as his “unlocking the doors (sgo ‘byed)” of treasures atWutai Shan, were seen as fulfilling two prophecies from Padmasambhava recorded in the biography(Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 1:384b–386a).32While in the entourage of the Dalai Lama in exile, Tsering Gyuis was said to have also studied “thepainting techniques of the Chinese and other ethnicities” (Benca Dawa 2008, 69–70).

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the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s arrival in Beijing, his meetings with the Empress-DowagerCixi and the Guangxu Emperor, and his performance of prayer offerings in front of theMahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, India (see figure 4).33 Other sections of the pictorialbiography include the prophecy at Lake Lhamo, by which the Thirteenth Dalai Lama wasfound and chosen, and various major holidays and religious events in the Tibetan calendartaking place at the Potala, Jokhang, Ramoche, and Norbu Lingka. While the appearancesof gigantic torma offerings (butter-barley dough sculptures), operatic performances,mask dances, and parading deities are all familiar spectacles in Tibetan history painting,images of the Mongolia-China-India interlude appear like fantastical intrusions into thetimeless web of temples, mountains, and worshipping crowds that dominate the rest ofhis biographical narrative.

Among the pageantry in Beijing to welcome the arrival of the Dalai Lama were rowsof dandily clad Manchu soldiers with shiny, state-of-the art artillery. The Dalai Lamahimself can be seen inside a caravan of festive four-wheeled automotive vehicles. Likethe Mahabodhi Temple in the Eastern Sunlight Hall discussed earlier, the image ofthe Mahabodhi Temple in the biography strives for a perspectival shape and observesa pale gray stone color, while the surrounding figures, clouds, rivers, flora, and faunaare all saturated with color and motion (see figure 4). At the foot of the MahabodhiTemple in Bodh Gaya, in front of the diamantine throne on which the Buddha satuntil he gained enlightenment, a composition that clearly references the painting andphotograph discussed earlier, the Dalai Lama is seen performing a prayer offering.The Dalai Lama and the four senior monks who traveled with him are dressed in royalrobes, receiving Westerners in polka-dot pants and wide-brim hats, bearing white cere-monial scarves and presents. This echoes vividly detailed textual accounts of the DalaiLama’s 1910 pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, where he is recorded to have conducted elaborateritual offerings and recitations (Phur lcog yongs ‘dzin 1940, 2:98a–99b). In the scene ofthe ritual offering, illegible foreign characters adorn equally strange apparitions of build-ings in the background. At the same time, there are also depictions of wild animalsroaming in wooded areas, which would not have been present except in idealized descrip-tions of Bodh Gaya passed down from earlier texts, creating a simultaneously idealizedand observed environment that serves to authenticate both the cosmic perfection ofBodh Gaya and the Dalai Lama’s international travel and exposure.34

The Dalai Lama’s meetings with the Manchu Guangxu Emperor and Empress-Dowager Cixi are depicted separately in several episodes. Each time, the small assemblyis enshrined and dwarfed by the imposing and rigid symmetry of the Chinese-lookingarchitecture, in stark contrast with depictions of Tibetan buildings in and aroundLhasa, which seems to stretch indefinitely and organically to embrace whatever festivitiesare taking place. In one scene, the Dalai Lama, who is easily recognizable by his darkcomplexion, is shown presenting the gift of a jeweled wheel of the law to Empress-Dowager Cixi. Turned toward Cixi in a three-quarter view, his figure is ever so slightlylower than Cixi, but his pointed hat saves the day by rising above the level of Cixi’sfloral headdress. Their meetings echo famous depictions of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s visit

33His pilgrimage to Wutai Shan would presumably have been rendered in several episodes. Untilpaintings are made accessible, the study of this pictorial biography remains fragmentary.34See Rwa Ye shes Seng ge ([12th c.] 1905, 33b 1-4), cited and translated by Toni Huber (2008, 64).

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with the Shunzhi Emperor in the Sizhi Phuntsok Hall of the Red Palace in the Potala,seen earlier, but share none of their mandala-like spaciousness and sundry gathering ofsupporting characters (see Jiang 1996, 362). However, busy patterns on every surfaceof the painting, from walls and tiles to foliage and clothing, allow no space for the eyesof the viewer to rest or to wander, making the Manchu capital appear as confining as itprobably had been for the Thirteenth Dalai Lama during his visit.

This pictorial disjuncture between biographical representations of the Dalai Lama athome and abroad is essentially a disjuncture between, on the one hand, the stable, tra-ditional, and indispensable elements of the narrative, and on the other, the unpredictable,foreign, and modern. The decision to render foreign sites using technologically modernmodes of representation, such as photography, and the choice to locate the exiledmoments materially in the technological modern (guns and motorcade) stand in starkcontrast with an equally absorbing interest in capturing the material reality that defendeda more traditional Tibet (sacred images and monuments, butter-dough offerings, colorfulritual masks, etc.). The entire pictorial biography culminated in the final image of theDalai Lama as Avalokitesvara, in a seamless transition between his political identityand duties, as pictured on the peripheries of the main icon by his various activities inMongolia and Beijing, and in the center, as the divine, all-knowing, thousand-armedand thousand-eyed deity (see figure 8). Here again is a merging not only of two identities,

Figure 8. Mural of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama as theThousand-eyed, Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara, Mausoleumof the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, 1933–35 (Phun tshogs tshebrtan et al. 2000, 204).

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but of two modes of representation, one absorbed in the details of the exterior vision, andthe other, in the inner, but no less public vision of divine emanation, coming together toprovide a full rendering of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s life.

USE OF BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES

The seamless weaving together of the Dalai Lama’s secular and religious identities byhis chief disciples and officials in their textual and pictorial narratives explored above canbe read as both “descriptive” and “prescriptive” of the Dalai Lama’s life. It is with thisdouble relation with their subject that these sources must be read and understood.The narratives not only reveal how the Dalai Lama’s immediate successors saw andremembered his life, they also reflect the roles he was expected to fulfill and the identitieshe was required to assume by his people as the thirteenth incarnation of the Dalai Lama.While these sources cannot project the Dalai Lama’s own voice, they serve as the frame-work within and guidelines by which the Dalai Lama was to fulfill expectations of his lifeand deeds, much like musical scores or dramatic scripts to be played by their performers.Therefore, even though they reveal the views or intentions of their writers, rather thanthose of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, they provide coordinates for mapping out the inter-secting dimensions of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s life. In particular, the retrospectiveweight upon the Dalai Lama’s sacred peregrinations and political exiles in his biographiesreveals a correspondence between earthly geography and sacred cosmography that is fun-damental to the worldviews of his contemporaries, and within the genre of Tibetan bio-graphical writing and painting at large; they shed light on why Bodh Gaya andWutai Shanwere incorporated into cosmographical programs of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s palacesin ways that display his personal connection with them.

MAPPING A MORE PERFECT WORLD

The Dalai Lama’s exposure to a vastly different world in his travels, as well as his rec-ognition and incorporation of the photographic vision, prepared the way for the collage-like murals in the audience hall in the Potala, in which empirical representations areinserted into and juxtaposed with a visionary system of representation. As acts of collect-ing, remembering, reimagination, and self-fashioning, the mural projects reflect the Thir-teenth Dalai Lama’s awareness of the spatial and temporal disjunctions in his life. At atime when the Dalai Lama continuously sought help from, and at the same timeguarded himself against, his potential allies or enemies in all directions—China andJapan to the East, Russia to the north, British India to the west, and Gurkhas (Nepal)to the south—it is no wonder that he mapped the cosmography of holy places to reiteratehis own historical legitimacy over a vast stretch of territories that were both vulnerable toimperialist contests and inherently numinous. Mapping the distant and the divine ontothe tangible experiences of here and now can be seen as a project through which theDalai Lama asserted his spiritual sovereignty, his temporal omniscience, and ultimatelyhis expanding worldview.

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Acknowledgments

I am especially grateful to Patricia Berger, Raoul Birnbaum, Benjamin Bogin,Chokey Drolma, Giovanni Careri, Damchö Diana Finnegan, Fabienne Jagou, LobsangNyima Laurent, Kelsang Lhamo, Nancy Lin, Zhu Lishuang, the late Gene Smith, JeffWasserstrom, and an anonymous reader for their insights, help, and suggestions atvarious stages of research for this essay.

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