Tibet

Sherab Gyatso of Ghoom Monastery Postcard

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Identified as a “Buddhist priest” and holding a prayer wheel, a figure such as this would have passed for a generic Tibetan lama in the visual language of the early 20th century. In this case, however, we also know this monk’s name: Sherab Gyatso.

Scholar Clare Harris discovered an albumen print of the original photograph taken by Thomas Parr during the 1890s in Darjeeling; the negative was inscribed with the name “She-reb.” The monk was the head of the Geluk Monastery at Ghoom (Ghum) and was well known among the British as the “Mongol Lama.”

Gyatso’s image appears in a wide range of media, including travel guides, published travelogues, and postcards between 1890 and the 1910s. As noted by Harris, this monk emerged as a “poster-boy for Tibetan Buddhism” around the area of Darjeeling in northern India.

When posed for this portrait in Parr’s studio, the symbols of Tibetan ritual culture are clearly foregrounded, with one hand thumbing mala beads and the other holding a prayer wheel upright and ready for use.

Notably, a Tibetan-style painting and clay statue of Sherab Gyatso grace Ghoom’s monastery today, both derived from Paar’s photograph.

For further information of Sherab Gyatso and the history of early photography in Northern India and Tibet, see Clare Harris’ Photography in Tibet (2017).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Bourne and Shepherd’s “Native of Thibet” Postcard

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The first photographs of Tibet were not actually taken in Tibet, but were staged in British colonial India. To meet consumer demand, enterprising commercial photographers outfitted their subjects with stereotypical objects to create an easily identifiable “Tibetan” type.

In the Victorian era, material markers of religion were often used by colonial photographers to establish “ethnic types.” The material culture of Tibetan Buddhism emerged as a clear visual sign for Tibet; here we find a “Thibetan native” holding a Buddhist prayer wheel and monastic long horn.

Charles Shepherd and Samuel Bourne formed a photography business in 1866 in Kolkata, producing prize-winning photographs of the Himalayan landscape. By the 1890s, commercial tourist photography was transferred to a new popular pictorial format: postcards.

One of the most commonly seen objects in Victoria era photographs of Tibetans is the hand-held Buddhist prayer wheel. The common portrayal of Tibetans holding ritual implements helped further embellish the fantasy of an enduring Tibetan mysticism.

Once one of the oldest operating studios, a 1991 fire destroyed much of the Bourne & Shepherd archives. For more on early photography in the Himalayas, see Clare Harris’ “Photography in the ‘Contact Zone’: Identifying Copresence and Agency in the Studios of Darjeeling” (2017).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Joseph Rock’s Photographs of Zhouni (Choni) Monastery

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Joseph Rock took stunning photographs of the Tibet-China borderlands between 1922 and 1935, funded in part by the National Geographic Society. During this span, Rock wrote nine article for National Geographic; some were illustrated with gorgeous hand-colored prints.

Rock arrived in Zhuoni, China in April 1925 and stayed for two years, during which he wrote “Life among the Lamas of Choni” published in November 1928. Zhouni, then a Tibetan ruled chiefdom in Gansu province, was home to a bustling Buddhist monastery with hundreds of monks in residence.

The visual centerpiece of Rock’s article were photos of the Tibetan “Old Dance,” held on the sixth day of the sixth month. Eight agile skeleton dancers were part of the festivities, representing “departed spirits” as described by Rock.

The climax of the Old Dance feature the appearance of Yama, the “grim ruler of the nether world.”

As recounted by Rock, the left-most figure here is Palden Lhamo, the wife of Yama who killed their son, seen dangling from her mouth. According to Rock, due to the British invasion of Tibet decades earlier, it was believed Queen Victoria was a reincarnation of this demon goddess.

Rock developed his own black and white glass negatives and sent them back to the United States. Artists then hand-colored the images according to detailed descriptions furnished by Rock (later, Rock would use potato starch based Autochrome color plates).

Rock was able to purchase a complete set of the Tibetan Buddhist canon printed at Choni Monastery before the printing blocks were destroyed in 1929. To read a digital version of Rock’s account of Choni Monastery in National Geographic, see tinyurl.com/4dwe2tmb.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Liebig Dalai Lama Advertising Card

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The first photograph of the Dalai Lama in Tibet was taken in 1921; it depicts “the Great Thirteenth,” Tubten Gyatso (1876–1933). The image was published in various Western media, even making its way on to a multicolor lithograph trade card for the German company Liebig in 1935.
*The first photograph of the Dalai Lama was taken in India in 1910 following the incursion of the Qing army into Tibet.

The photograph was taken by Charles Bell and Rabden Lepcha at Norbulingka, the summer palace of the Dalai Lama. Previously, images of the Dalai Lama were only spread through devotional tapestries (thangka) and gilt statues; now photographs could be shared among faithful Tibetans.

The Liebig company started printing colorful advertising cards in 1872, helping to support a popular collector’s hobby. This set from 1935 focused on Lhasa and included six cards, including an image of Potala Palace and large Tibetan prayer wheel, both iconic images in popular consciousness.

The original black and white photograph shows the Dalai Lama sitting on a throne behind an ornate dais. On the back wall hangs nine silk thangka depicting the Buddha, but the lithographic artist only loosely renders them as Buddhist images.

For a brief account of the Dalai Lama photograph and discussion on the impact of photography in Tibet, see Riga Shakya’s Lenses of Modernity: Photography in Tibet and the Himalayas, viewable here: tinyurl.com/bdzzcw4m.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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The “Dancing Lamas” and Epic of Everest (1924) Prologue Newspaper Illustration

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The arrival of the first Tibetan monks in Europe was surrounded with controversy, deeply straining Anglo-Tibetan relations. One group of monks, arriving in 1924, performed Buddhist rituals before showings of the silent film Epic of Everest, sparking the “Dancing Lamas” affair.

The director, John Noel, filmed the British Everest expedition where George Mallory and Andrew Irvine lost their lives. The first half of the film looks at Tibetan life in and around Rongbuk Monastery at the foot of Everest, including several brief scenes showing monastic ritual.

To help advertise the film in London, Noel brought several monks from Tibet and had them perform informal rituals as part of a “live prologue” (seen here). Newspapers report the monks chanted while playing long trumpets and beating drums and cymbals; some claimed they performed “devil dances.”

These reports were received in Tibet with furor; the Dalai Lama viewed the spectacle as disrespectful to Tibetan Buddhism and exploitative of Tibetan people. Consequently, a British Everest expedition the next year was refused by the Dalai Lama; the next British attempt at Everest came in 1932.

Noel toured Europe with his film accompanied by the Tibetan monks, but the controversy caused him to send the monks home before touring the United States. Noel’s silent film, Epic of Everest, is viewable here: tinyurl.com/3df4axfn.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Alain Mallet’s Dalai Lama Engraving

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Earliest European depiction of the Dalai Lama? In 1683 Alain Mallet published his illustrated five-volume set entitled Description de l’univers. The second volume, devoted to Asia, contained an illustration of the Grand Lama, a “living and true God.”

Mallet copied an earlier illustration of Althanius Kircher from 1667 with minimal changes. The engraving shown here was hand colored (possibly after publication), giving the Dalai Lama a dark red robe.

While not named in the text, the original illustration was published during the lifetime of the famed Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso. Information about the Dalai Lama was gleaned from the reports of Jesuit missionary Johann Grueber who visited Lhasa in 1661.

The Fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682, a year before Mallet’s publication, but his passing was concealed for more than a decade. Mallet reports on the process of reincarnation, describing it as a “deception.”

To read Mallet’s text associated with this image, see the digitized scan provided by the University of Ottawa here: https://tinyurl.com/37895xc9

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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Argosy’s Jungle Justice Pulp Magazine Cover

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Pulp Fiction Buddhas: When editor Frank Munsey switched to inexpensive wood pulp paper in 1896, his publication, Argosy, was the first of what came to be known as pulp magazines. With over 150 publications in press by the 1930s, cover art was a critical driver for sales.

Argosy often featured episodic action and adventure stories, here starring Gillian Hazeltine as a crime solving lawyer in Jungle Justice. The cover of Paul Stahr vividly portrays the tropical setting and captures the tension between the hero and villain.

A closer look reveals a mélange of visual “Oriental” tropes: a grotesque Tibetan-style idol, a Japanese torii gate as shrine backdrop, and a turbaned menace hiding in the shadows.

The text is equally stereotypical, noting the location as “the Orient” (we are later informed its Saigon) and the villain as the “devil worshiper,” the Sultan of Senang.

The idol’s face, likely intended to signal the Sultan’s devil worship, resembles a Tibetan Buddhist cham dance mask. Various issues from Argosy, including Jungle Justice, can be read here: https://www.pulpmagazines.org/the-argosy/.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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