Session 39: Bureaucratic Incorporation, the Rise of a Local Star and Buddhist Scriptures Printing: Vicissitudes of Qing-Tibetan Relations in Khams (Eastern Tibet)

Organizer: Xiuyu Wang, Carnegie Mellon University

Chair and Discussant: Elliot Sperling, Indiana University

Keywords: Tibet, Khams, Nyag rong, Derge, Zhao Erfeng, Mgon po rnam rgyal, Sde-dge Par khang, gaitu guiliu, administrative incorporation, Sutra printing, Tibetology, regionalism, frontier.

Research on Qing China’s multi-dimensional relations with Tibet has recently begun to go beyond awkward-fitting generalizations by documenting the rich regional and chronological variations. This panel contributes to this effort, examining in detail the factors behind two kinds of power ascendancy, state-initiated and locally rooted, which often affected each other. In the case of Khams reforms in the 1900s, Qing bureaucracy sought to displace Khams’ entrenched powers, monasteries and local officials, by inserting itself in the arenas of law and land reclamation, and by expanding state control over taxation and the corvée labor market. Regulations concerning these aspects, varying in levels of detail and scope, sought both to align frontier governance with interior bureaucratic procedure and to accommodate Khams’ particular geographical and social conditions. The state-initiated reform had its impetus in local disturbance, responded to local conditions, and was constrained by local powers while it tried to curtail them. A nineteenth-century local leader in Nyag rong performed brilliantly in conquering most of Khams by rallying fighters around the cause of revenge and exploiting the disadvantages of Qing and Central Tibet in a decentralized Khams. Power relations between localities and centers were fluid and did not always operate in fixed units of decision making. Examining the printing and dissemination of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures is thus important for illuminating changes in such power relations. As shown in the case of the Derge Sutra Printing Academy, monastic printing houses nourished regional cultural identity from quite early on while maintaining connections with the bordering empires.

Khams Administrative Regularization in the Last Qing Decade: Precedents, Patterns, Substance

Xiuyu Wang, Carnegie Mellon University

Departing from the common understanding of Qing’s regularization (gaitu guiliu) of Khams in the 1900s as primarily modernizing and nationalistic, this examination of its precedents and measures shows that the movement is better seen as a violent bureaucratic incorporation of formerly out-of-reach frontiers, using interior-style legal and economical norms not to produce a "modern" Tibet but to buttress the new Han rule. In terms of the use of force, the kinds of preparatory measures prior to gaitu guliu, the measures concerning monasteries and local Tibetan officials, Qing official activities in Khams, which were implemented and financed by Sichuan’s provincial interests, imitated earlier attempts which hardly pursued modernization or nationalistic agendas. Rather, its primary concerns seemed to be greater bureaucratic control over local political power, jurisprudence, land reclamation, and the corvée labor market (ula), with a desire to implement these more uniformly and systematically. Aside from a small number of drastic measures, the majority of the Qing gaitu guiliu policies either reiterated earlier concerns or streamlined the procedures for realizing them. In this sense, what Sichuan officials habitually called "new policies" (xinzheng) in Khams were only "new" relative to traditional Khams political patterns but were hardly unprecedented in the context of Qing frontier statecraft history. If it could be said to have set off any "modernization syndrome" or "responded to" British India’s overtures in Tibet at all, then its forcible bureaucratic implementation of earlier goals would have to be the salient cause, not any genuinely modernizing or nationalistic impulse.

The Rise to Power of Khams Chieftain Mgon po rnam rgyal in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Historical, Social and Political Factors

Yudru Tsomu, Harvard University

By focusing on salient historical, social and political factors, this paper explores the striking success of Mgon po rnam rgyal, the leader of a small Khams polity, in his conflicts with two great imperial powers sandwiching his region, Qing China and Central Tibet. Although he was relatively unknown as the chieftain of the small Middle Nyag rong, he was able to conquer most of the Khams region, over which the two imperial powers also claimed control. After briefly reviewing the circumstances in Qing China, Central Tibet and other Khams polities of the time, I concentrate on the repercussions of past Qing failure to effectively suppress local disturbances in Nyag rong and the particular historical situation in Nyag rong during his lifetime. Social factors include the availability of ready fighters for Mgon po rnam rgyal due to particular social circumstances exemplified by local inclinations to admire bravery and attitudes supporting revenge-seeking against personal enemies, as well as a strong sense of tribal and regional cohesion. Political factors such as Khams’ decentralized power structure precluded a strong supra-tribal alliance by other polities in the region against a major outside power like Nyag rong. And any cooperation among other local chieftains that might arise was inherently weak and ineffective in its capacity to oppose this astute tribal leader.

Historical Materials Related to the Establishment of the Derge Sutra Printing Academy

Cynthia Col, Graduate Theological Union

An in-depth study of the Sde dge Par khang (Derge Sutra Printing Academy) has yet to be undertaken in western languages. This talk will examine the body of primary materials in Tibetan and Chinese languages that forms a basis for such a study. The Derge Printing Academy was first conceived in the early eighteenth century, and in 1744 it produced the influential Derge Kangyur and Tengyur. I will focus on information provided in the Khams phyogs dkar mdzes khul gyi sde so so’i to rgyus gsal bar bzad ba nang bstan gals ba’i me long zhes bya ba bzhugs (A clear and exhaustive mirror of the history of the monasteries in Dkar mdzes county of Khams) published by the China Tibetology Culture Research Center in Beijing in 1995. Produced to provide a definitive history of the monasteries of Khams, this compilation draws on oral tradition, as well as facts taken from local gazetteers and monastery records. My discussion will consider problems concerning the scholarly use of this material such as relating information provided in this collection with primary sources. Situated in the Northwest corner of Khams, Derge enjoyed a cordial but hands-off relationship with the Qing. In contrast to other Khams polities, the Derge tusi fostered and maintained relations with monastics from all Tibetan Buddhist schools as well as Bon clerics. This openness set the stage for the subsequent flourishing of the ris-med (non-sectarian) movement in the nineteenth century.