Organizer: Jann Ronis, University of Virginia
Chair: Karl Debreczeny, Rubin Museum of Art
Discussant: Kurtis R. Schaeffer, University of Virginia
The brilliant polymath Situ Panchen Chökyi Jungné (1700-1774) was influential in multiple domains of cultural and institutional life in 18th-century Tibet. Situ made major contributions to the fields of painting, religious literature, the literary arts, and astro-medicine. He was also a deft manager of the Karma Kagyü sect during a particularly volatile period and the senior court chaplain in the Dergé kingdom during its golden age. This panel of scholars with expertise in the above-mentioned topics will offer sustained analyses of several facets of Situ's cultural productions and engagement with the social world of his time, many of which have hitherto not been adequately studied. Individual paper topics will include 1) Situ's involvement with early Buddhist narratives, 2) medical traditions associated with Situ, 3) his artistic legacy in Yunnan, and 4) his role in sectarian relations in Dergé. This panel's far-reaching and incisive treatment of one of the luminaries of Tibetan arts and letters will constitute a significant contribution to Tibetan intellectual history and understanding of the pivotal 18th century.
From the mid-seventeenth century, resurging interest in two complementary subjects—Sanskrit literary culture and the Indic roots of Buddhism—swept the Tibetan cultural sphere for more than a century. At the heart of these developments was Situ Panchen, who edited early Buddhist sources that comprised the Dergé Kangyur; published on Sanskrit grammar, orthography, and poetics; maintained contacts with Newar Buddhists from the Kathmandu Valley; and educated a generation of scholars at Pelpung Monastery. In this paper I will discuss Situ's re-enactments of the historical origins of Buddhism through his work on Shakyamuni Buddha's life and previous-life narratives. My evidence is based primarily on Situ's unabridged catalogue of the Dergé Kangyur and his paintings of the Buddha's life narratives, and is also drawn from his diaries, local historical sources, and other textual and visual materials. I will argue that these sources point to Situ's investments in the ordering and authentication practices of knowledge production, in scholarly and institutional authority, and in the charisma of personal and regional identities. In addition, I will locate his work in the contexts of patronage and the politics of regional and sectarian relations. With a view toward analyzing Situ within broader cultural trends, I will conclude by comparing Situ's engagement with early Buddhist narratives with those of prominent contemporaries from eastern and central Tibet.
Famous for his contributions to Tibetan art, grammar, and canonical literature, Situ Panchen was also a major supporter of the medical tradition, reprinting important medical works and establishing a medical college at Pelpung monastery. Identifying Situ’s position in the distinctive Drigung tradition of medicine, this paper will begin with a survey and assessment of Situ’s medical teachings. Several works on medicine are attributed to Situ Panchen himself, and a number of other works, said to represent Situ’s teachings, are attributed to his immediate students; this paper will characterize the content and orientation of these works within the context of Tibetan medical literature more broadly. Aiming to understand better Situ’s particular contributions to medical literature, the paper will then focus on how he and his students responded to local historical conditions. The special attention paid in his tradition to treatment of serious epidemic disease, for example, may be seen as a reaction to the rising occurrence of plague in southeastern Kham, which passed along the Pu’er-Tibetan tea trade routes during the eighteenth century, and to the smallpox epidemics that swept Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The paper will examine treatments for epidemic disease in works such as Situ’s 'Brum bcos sogs rgya bod kyi sman bcos sna tshogs, and the Si tu sman bsdus e wam by his student, Karma Ngelek Tendzin Trinlé Rapgyé. In addition to commenting on Situ’s legacy, the paper will emphasize the importance of a localized and historically particular understanding of Tibetan medicine.
The influence of brilliant scholar and painter Situ Panchen reached far beyond the kingdom of Dergé, extending even into Yunnan Province of southwestern China, where Situ traveled three times, over a thirty-year period from 1729 to1759. Almost from the moment that Situ established his seat— Pelpung Monastery—until his death, he became increasingly involved and invested in Lijiang (Jang Satham). I will use several Tibetan sources to reconstruct Situ’s engagement in Lijiang, foremost being Situ Panchen’s own diaries. These Tibetan accounts will be corroborated and fleshed out using local Chinese records, such as contemporary gazetteers, royal genealogies, and temple records. Within both Tibetan and Chinese sources, one sees Situ engaged in asserting his authority over monasteries in northern Yunnan, through his participation in their founding, consecration, ordination of monks, assignment of liturgies, and recognition of local incarnate lamas. Situ also arrived during a critical period of transition for the area: the kingdom of Lijiang had just been abolished and Situ cultivated the new imperial authority in the region, the Qing-appointed magistrates, as new local patrons. Visual evidence from the eighteenth century also suggests that the formerly vibrant local painting workshops ceased to exist, and the monasteries looked to Pelpung Monastery, with its prominent artistic traditions, as their new center. Using visual evidence gathered in situ during fieldwork, I will demonstrate Lijiang’s new incorporation into the Pelpung artistic orbit in surviving wall paintings, which I argue drew directly from Situ commissions that art historians are only now able to reconstruct.
Situ Panchen's cultural and religious endeavors in Dergé also had ramifications for the kingdom's storied ecumenicism. The relative harmony between the sects in Dergé and generous court patronage to lamas of all stripes has been analyzed in earlier scholarship. However, much of this work has taken a somewhat anachronistic approach, reading back into Dergé history the ethos of the late 19th-century's so-called Ecumenical Movement (Rimé). Yet a close examination of Situ's life reveals that sectarian relations in 18th-century Dergé were fraught with old hostilities and new strategies for conciliation. This paper explores the personal and institutional levels of Situ's sectarian relations – especially with the Nyingma sect – and their impact on Dergé more broadly.
Situ had a complicated relationship with Nyingma teachings and lamas throughout his life and the resolution of his concerns constitutes one of the major sub-themes of his Autobiography. After covering these acts of self-representation the paper will chronicle Situ's campaign to promote celibate monasticism at regional Nyingma and Kagyü monasteries. Situ's monastic revival helped create anew strong bonds between the Kagyü sect and some, but not all, of Dergé's major Nyingma monasteries. The paper will conclude with an analysis of a little known event in Situ's life in which an attempt at the fusion of Nyingma and Kagyü traditions at a single monastery backfired, threatening to derail positive relations he had formed with one of Dergé's largest Nyingma monasteries. Overall, it will be shown that Situ's impact on sectarian relations was significant and largely positive.
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