CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TRUE SON OF TIBET GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN Vol.1

CALLED FROM OBSCURITY:
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TRUE SON OF TIBET

GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN
Volume One
H. Louis Fader
Excerpts from Dalai Lama X I V ' s Foreword to
Called from Obscurity:
Tharchin Babu-la was a man of many [commendable]

qualities and in his long life was an inspiration and
example to many other Tibetans. My predecessor, the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama, counted him as a friend and it
was my privilege to regard him in the same way too.
I met Tharchin Babu-la a few times. What I admired

in him was his independence of mind and his quiet
integrity. Here was a man who had decided that,
even though most of the people around him were
Buddhist, the Christian faith was best for him. As a
result he put a great deal of effort into revising the
Tibetan edition of the Bible.
Another of Tharchin Babu-la's qualities that I

greatly appreciated was his unshakable loyalty to
Tibet and the Tibetan people. He was farsighted
enough to understand right from the beginning the
tragedy that was befalling Tibet and launched his
own fierce campaign to protect our freedom through
the pages of [his] Tibet Mirror newspaper. I take
encouragement too from his later philosophical view
that nothing lasts forever, no tyranny is eternal and
eventually Chinese rule in Tibet will come to an end.
After 1959 and the establishment of the Tibetan

community in exile, Tharchin Babu-la became
something of a model and inspiration to a new
generation of Tibetans who wished to reconcile
aspects of the modern world with a Tibetan outlook,
particularly in the realm of secular literature.
[The Babu] made an important contribution to

Tibetan affairs and in his long life observed most of
the significant events of the twentieth century in our
part of the world.... I welcome the publication of this
exhaustive account of his life and achievements,
which no doubt will enthral readers eager to know
more about Tibet.
pAT
L A L Li i FH 17DHMHR^rTTDTTV*
l i J JT KUIVI UDDL Uxvl I I I
The Life and Times of Gergan Dorje Tharchin
I
The Life and Times of Gergan Dorje Tharchin
In Three Volumes
Chapters 1 - 1 1
Chapters 1 2 - 2 0
Chapters 21 - 30
»
GERGAN THARCHIN (1890-1976)
Circa 1937
i
This painting of the famed Indo-Tibetan Babu
was executed at the Star Studio, location unknown (Calcutta, India ?)
The Life and Times of a True Son of Tibet,
God's Humble Servant from Poo
GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN
With Particular Attention Given
to His Good Friend
and Illustrious Co-Laborer in the Gospel
SADHU SUNDAR SINGH
of India
I
By
H. LOUIS FADER
Washington DC USA
With a Foreword by
His Holiness
DALAI LAMA XIV
ofTibet
And
An Introduction by
DAWANORBU
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi
Published by
TIBET MIRROR PRESS
Kalimpong, India
Copyright ©2002
TIBET MIRROR PRESS
Kalimpong, India
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 99933-732-0-6
Available from the Press at:

10th Mile Rishi Road
Kalimpong-734301
Dt Darjeeling, West Bengal
India
Printed in Nepal
lifW
SADHU SUNDAR SINGH, 1920 '

,, Greater Asia and the West
4
The second best known Christian in the world after the Pope himself." So said a
prominent American clergyman in introducing the Sadhu at a religions gathering
in Boston MA USA, June 1920.
The overleaf illustration of Sundar Singh is a
reproduction, reduced in size, of one of the original
studio portraits made at Dunne Photo, Hartford CT
USA in early June 1920. The original, sent by the
Sadhu shortly afterwards to his co-laborer in the
Christian gospel, Gergan Dorje Tharchin, had hung
for the longest time on the wall of the latter 5s Tibet
Mirror Press newspaper office in Kalimpong, NE
India. It was later found among the Tharchin Papers
by the present author.
Somewhat reluctant to have his photograph taken,
the Sadhu had allowed it in this instance most likely
at the urging of his American preaching tour
organizer and. initial tour companion, the
world-renowned founder of the Moral Rearmament
Movement, Dr. Frank Buchman, then Lecturer at
Hartford Theological Seminary. Wrote Buchman of
Sundar Singh after traveling with him for two weeks
through northeastern United States: "He spells
reality. He has a message for material America.,..
A number of men, just worldly men, have said this
last week that he was nearer the Christ than any
man they have ever met." Quoted in A.J. Appasamy,
Sundar Singh a Biography (Madras, 1970), 149,
153.
The photograph, incidentally, was widely
reproduced in some of the world's religious and
secular journals of the time, for example, in the
Literary Digest for 3 July 1920, p. 43.
To
The Tibet
That Will Yet Arise:
Unshackled
At Last
in
Body
Soul
and
Spirit
A True Son of Tibet
W H E N ASKED by a Western anthropologist on fieldwork assignment among Tibetan refugees
in India during the 1970s, "What do you mean when you say, T am a Tibetan'?,55 an eleventh-
grade English class student in one of India's Tibetan schools gave as his answer to this
probing English composition exercise the following revealing response:
In my opinion, to be a Tibetan means firstly one should be a Tibetan by birth, or his
parents should be Tibetans. One should know what are his/her duties towards one's
motherland. He should love his country. He should know the precious culture and
traditions of his nation and should respect them. He should make some changes in the
field of culture and tradition which suit the modern way of living. One of the most
important things is that we should know our Tibetan language and literature. It is really
shameful and unbecoming to a Tibetan if one doesn't know his language perfectly,
being a citizen of Tibet. We should try to unite ourselves to make our nation strong.
Even if our country is not independent these days, we should preserve our religion,
culture and traditions and should respect them at any cost. We should never forget
that we are Tibetans and we will get our country back from the clutches of the Red
Chinese, since Tibet belongs to Tibetans.*
Given this set of self-defined credentials, this Tibetan youth, had he thought to say it, would
have had no hesitation in adding to his statement as did another student in his own response,
the singular declaration: "I am a true son of Tibet."
Let it be said here that in all respects save one—that of religion—Gergan Tharchin's long
and eventful life, when measured against the above criteria, proved to be a deep reflection of
what in the best definition of the term constitutes a Tibetan. Though born in Indo-Tibet and
early converted to the Christian faith from his family religion of Buddhism, he was nonetheless
a Tibetan through and through, as the pages of this biography will abundantly demonstrate.
Babu Tharchin loved the Land of Snows, became an enthusiastic student of her language,
culture and traditions, sought at all times the highest and best for her people, and stood—in
the hour of greatest peril to her freedom and independence—as one of Tibet's strongest
advocates in his near-legendary journalistic defense against the machinations of the frightful
Invader from the East: the aggrandizing hordes of the so-called People's Liberation Army of
Communist China. And for these and other noteworthy contributions to the welfare of Tibet
this humble-born Tibetan from Northwest India eventually came to be respected, loved and
admired by all and sundry among his fellow ethnic countrymen-—whether ruler or ruled, rich
or poor, educated or ignorant, Buddhist or non-Buddhist. He was even a friend of the two
most recent ruling Pontiffs of the Tibetan Buddhist Church: the Great Thirteenth and the
currently reigning Fourteenth Dalai Lama. As one of his younger Tibetan admirers was
wont to say about Rev. Tharchin, his Christian affirmation never seemed "to get in the way
* Quoted from anthropologist Margaret Nowak's remarkable study, Tibetan Refugees; Youth and the New
Generation of Meaning (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 87-8.
xxviii CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
[of his] relations with all sections of the Tibetan Community," who "held him in such high
esteem."* His was a life lived for all, but especially for those whom he counted his blood
brethren from the Roof of the World.
In short, then, it can be asserted without fear of contradiction whatsoever that Gergan
Dorje Tsering Tharchin was indeed A TRUE SON OF TIBET!
* Dawa Norbu, "G. Tharchin: Pioneer and Patriot," Tibetan Review (December 1975):20. Dr. Norbu was the
then editor-in-chief of the Review, is currently Professor of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi, India, and is the author of the highly-acclaimed semi-autobiographical work, Red Star Over Tibet\
first published in 1974.f
f Where full publication details are not given in the footnotes, these will be found in the Bibliography at
the end of the present volume.
THE DALA! LAMA
FOREWORD
Tharchin Babu la was a man of many qualities and in his long life was an
inspiration and example to many other Tibetans. My predecessor, the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama, counted him as a Mend and it was my privilege to
regard him in the same way too.
I met Tharchin Babu la a few times. What I admired in him was his
independence of mind and his quiet integrity. Here was a man who had
decided that, even though most of the people around him were Buddhist, the
Christian faith was best for him. As a result he put a great deal of effort into
revising the Tibetan edition of the Bible. Perhaps it was these literary
endeavours that led to his other major achievement, the launch, in 1925, of one
of the first newspapers to be published in Tibetan, the Tibet Mirror. Among
the readers of the fifty copies of the early editions that he sent to Lhasa, was
my predecessor the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. He was sufficiently impressed to
write personally to express his appreciation of the news of the world outside
Tibet contained in its pages. He went on to encourage Tharchin la to continue
his efforts, because it would greatly improve his understanding of world
events. Not only was the Tibet Mirror almost the only source of news in Tibet,
but, in a country whose entire literature was mostly devoted to religious
affairs, its publication represented the beginnings of secular writing in Tibetan.
This was a major and significant development in our relatively conservative
society.
In due course, with my own recognition as Dalai Lama, I inherited my

predecessor's subscription and I ismember that my childish enthusiasm for the
puzzle page soon matured into a fascination for its description of events in the
fast changing world beyond our borders.
Another of Tharchin Babu la's qualities that I greatly appreciated was his
unshakeable loyalty to Tibet and the Tibetan people. He was farsighted
enough to understand right from the beginning the tragedy that was befalling
Tibet and launched his own fierce campaign to protect our freedom through
the , pages of the Tibet Mirror. I take encouragement too from his later
philosophical view that nothing lasts forever, no tyranny is eternal and
eventually Chinese rule in Tibet will come to an end.
After 1959 and the establishment of the Tibetan community in exile, Tharchin
Babu la became something of a model and inspiration to a new generation of
Tibetans who wished to reconcile aspects of the modern world with a Tibetan
outlook, particularly in the realm of secular literature. He made an important
contribution to Tibetan affairs and in his long life observed most of the
significant events of the twentieth century in our part of the world. Therefore,
I welcome the publication of this exhaustive account of his life and
achievements, which no doubt will enthral readers eager to know more about
Tibet.
December 15,2001
Introduction
The Rev. G. Tharchin was a pioneer in several fields: the first Tibetan journalist in the entire
Tibetan-speaking world, a towering modern man of letters in a field traditionally dominated by
lamas, a lone modernizer in a tradition-bound society, and above all the most articulate spokesman
for Tibet's freedom. It is no exaggeration to say that if the ruling classes in Lhasa and New
Delhi had heeded what Tharchin Babu was saying, Tibet's modern fate might have been different.
In the long course of his multi-faceted career, Gyegyen (or Gergan) Tharchin was to explode
several Tibetological myths. Tibetan literature has been so much associated with Buddhism that
it is almost impossible for the general public to conceive of any secular Tibetan literature
independent of that religion. He exploded that myth. As a modern man of letters, he was
interested primarily in non-Buddhist, yet Tibetan, areas of inquiry: secular literature, especially
journalism, grammar and poetry—to which he immensely contributed; and history and politics,
which since 1925 he propagated with skill in his pioneering newspaper, the Tibet Mirror. He
remained right up to 1950 the sole Tibetan window to the outside world for the isolationist
Tibetans.
At a time when Lhasa remained a forbidden city to most foreigners, Tharchin Babu managed
to make four or five trips to the Tibetan capital. As a result of these and other shorter visits of
his to Tibet and no less through his numerous publications in Tibetan, he became a close friend
of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The Lama greatly appreciated the publications of the Tibet Mirror
Press and showered extraordinary favors on this Tibetan pioneer from the cis-Himalayas.
Tharchin Babu exploded another Tibetan myth: that in order to be a man of Tibetan letters
and a fighter for Tibet's freedom, one had to be a Buddhist. He was neither a lama nor even a lay
Buddhist. He remained a profoundly sophisticated Christian throughout his life, despite his love
for Tibetan literature and culture. He was perhaps the most eminent Christian in the Tibetan-
speaking world. He was one of the revisers of the Tibetan translation of the Bible—especially
the New Testament section—and the immediate pastoral successor to the founder of the
Kalimpong Tibetan Church.
How he reconciled the diverse sources of his complex personality—a practicing Christian
yet a lover of Tibetan language and literature, an Indian national by birth yet a relentless fighter
for Tibet's freedom, etc.-—into a harmonious integration might appear a modern mystery. But
to those of us who knew him intimately this was not so difficult to fathom. Seeing was
comprehending; seeing was believing.
I recall rather vividly my first visit to Tharchin Babu in the mid-1960s when I was a young
student at Dr. Graham's Homes, Kalimpong. He was already quite advanced in age, being
assisted by his son S. G. Tharchin. The Babu at once welcomed me with open arms before I
could even properly introduce myself. He said he was glad that a/new generation of educated
young Tibetans was in the making. "This," he added idiomatically, "is a good effect of the bad
event"—the latter an allusion to the Chinese takeover of Tibet.
Tea and Tibetan cookies were quickly served. What I remember most about this act of
hospitality was the extempore grace which he improvised for the occasion. He offered it up in
modern literary Tibetan, of which he was a master, but with a deep sense of conviction,
sincerity and straightforwardness that comes through an activist approach to religion. Tharchin
Babu had truly integrated into the Tibetan cultural fabric into which he was born those Christian
values he had adopted. There was neither any sign of identity crisis nor confusion of values. He
was at peace, and shared peace and wisdom with whomever he came in close contact.
In his drawing-room there hung a huge portrait of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Tharchin Babu
told me with a smile while pointing towards the picture, "He was a great friend of mine. I, of
xxvii CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
course, considered him the King of Tibet, but not a Lama [to be reverenced or worshiped]. I am
Christian, you know."
The Babu was an institution in and of himself during his lifetime. In his adopted home town
of Kalimpong he was to the Tibetan or Bhutia community what Paras Mani Pradhan was to the
Nepalese.* However, in this age of information explosion, even Gergan Tharchin's remarkable
achievement faces the danger of popular forgetfulness. We—all the Tibetan-speaking peoples
in the Himalayas and Inner Asia—are deeply grateful to H. Louis Fader. Mr, Fader has resurrected
the saga and legend of Tharchin Babu for our own generation and posterity. Here was a great
Christian soul in his charming native Tibetan costume who felt his 'calling was to educate the
larger community to which he belonged into the ways of modernity. Otherwise, he concluded,
his beloved tribe would vanish from the fast-changing modern world.
There have been attempts in the past to set down Gergan Tharchin's biography by Indian
and Tibetan writers but they never really got around to completing his long life-history. Now,
though, I am glad to say that this important task has gracefully fallen into the able and careful
hands of Mr. Fader. The author had free access to the entire Tharchin family records and the
pertinent Christian missionary documents on Tibet that had scarcely been researched before.
He has also spared no pains to engage in extensive research on Tibetan history, culture and
politics, within whose broad context he has empathetically placed the life and times of Tharchin
Babu. The result is not only a highly researched biography Aas manifested by the fact that
roughly one-fourth of the three volumes consists of learned footnotes and copious documentation;
it is also a significant contribution to Tibetan Church History woven around the spirit and
activity of a great Tibetan Christian. Truly, Fader's work is a labor of love and piety.
The author is an American writer, but the model of his prose is not Hemingway as is the
usual case today in the United States. His literary style belongs to an universal tradition of pious
literature that is rare in our materialistic and secular world. Thus he begins each chapter with an
appropriate quotation from the Christian Bible. It is also interesting to note that Mr. Fader's
initial interest had been centered around the life of a famous Christian convert from Sikhism,
Sadhu Sundar Singh of India, which opened the door to the author to the world of Tharchin
Babu.
Such a style not only suits the sacred subject matter of the present work; it is also highly
appropriate in revealing the Tibetan character that fascinates the author. After all, literate Tibetans
used to express themselves with care, dignity and seriousness—and with a ceremonial slowness.
Although Tharchin Babu may be considered one of the pioneers of modern Tibetan language,
he was certainly no exception to this genre; for example, many of the Babu's letters, quoted in
the present work, amply illustrate this. Hence Fader's convoluted style beautifully reflects the
slow-moving times in traditional Tibet. In so doing, it lends an Asian authenticity to the fascinating
and inspiring life story of Gergan Tharchin.
As a Tibetan, I personally thank the present author for resurrecting the life and times of this
eminent Tibetan Christian. As a fellow writer, I congratulate Mr. Fader for his wonderful book.
Jawaharlal Nehru University DAWA NORBU, Ph.D. (UC, Berkeley)
New Delhi Professor of International Studies
December 1999
* Indeed, like the Babu, Dr. P. M. Pradhan had been a printer and publisher in Kalimpong, too, having founded
the well-known Mani Press that is still flourishing today. Dr. Pradhan was also a prominent literary figure in
Kalimpong and the rest of the Darjeeling hill area, having authored anumber of school textbooks in Nepali as well
as several volumes of fiction. Unlike the Christian Babu, however, Dr. Pradhan remained a staunch Hindu
throughout his life.—The Present Author
Note of Appreciation
by
the Late G. Tharchin s Son
Today is a day of joyful thanksgiving for me and my family. For into the reader's hands
at last has come the long-awaited inaugural volume of what is anticipated will be a three-
volume narrative on the life and times of my beloved father. It therefore gives me immense
pleasure and joy to be able to express my profound gratitude for this biographical work,
talên up at various times by friends and acquaintances past and present, that when
completely published will reflect upon my father's long and eventful life, including the
many labors and responsibilities he humbly and gladly took upon his shoulders.
My father, Rev. G. Tharchin, with whom I had an extremely close and loving relationship
from my earliest young years, was a person who wanted his life to be very meaningful, to
count for something. This desire, I believe, was fulfilled beyond measure. He stood for his
ideals and convictions, and was a person who never compromised on what he believed
was the truth. He dedicated his entire adult life to a number of noble causes, not least of
which were the freedom and independence of Tibet, the advancement of education and
learning, and the dissemination of knowledge and information through his newspaper and
Press not only among the members of his ethnic Tibetan community at home and abroad
but also among those within the general community at large. Like his heavenly Father, he
was no respecter of persons, but treated everyone, regardless of background, as possessing
equal value before God. As you go through this first volume of my father's biography and
the others which will soon follow, I believe you will be impressed, as I have been, with the
particular causes for which he unswervingly stood, the high aims and objectives which
marked his event-filled career, as well as with the way he struggled to meet the challenges
which at times confronted him. Indeed, I believe that by the time you reach the narrative's
end many of you will be greatly inspired by the example of his strength, courage, compassion
and faith.
In seeing this first volume of my father's biography finally brought out, I would very
sincerely like to mention the name of its principal author, Mr. H. Louis Fader, whom I
happily came to know many years ago now and under the most unusual circumstances.
He had traveled all the way from America to our hill town of Kalimpong, yet without his
ever having heard the name of my father before meeting acquaintances of ours at nearby
Ghoom. Moreover, I must mention that from my perspective his coming into contact with
me back then was a sovereign act planned by the Almighty. In any event, Mr. Fader has
taken great pains, in the course of many years of devoted study, research and writing, to
bring out this work in its final form. His research has been quite extensive—in fact, one
could say exhaustive; and the results have been most accurate in content, with attention
given to the very last detail. For this kind labor of love my heartfelt gratitude goes out to
him in deep appreciation for his countless efforts on behalf of this literary achievement.
Finally, I would also like to express my thanks to all other friends, well-wishers and other
individuals, in whatever capacity, who have contributed in one way or another towards the
realization of this book about my father and the exciting times in which he lived. In addition, I
XxvIii CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
must thank all the concerned archives, libraries and information centers, each of which has
been an invaluable source from which the author was able to derive relevant material for the
completion of this worthwhile endeavor.
May the Lord God bless you all.
S. G. Tharchin
THARCHINS' N E S T
Kalimpong INDIA
Author's Preface xvii
LIKE MOST AMERICANS, if not Westerners in general, I knew little about the country and people
of Tibet prior to 1959. Although I had spent some time in the Orient as a member of America's
military occupation forces in Japan between 1949 and 1951, my knowledge and understanding
of the rest of Asia was minimal at best. Indeed, until the late 1950s my interest in this vast
region of the earth's surface was fairly well limited to its geography, due only to the fact that the
latter was my favorite subject from elementary school onward. It was in 1958 that I ultimately
broke loose from my intellectual isolation towards Asia, for that was when 1 became identified
with a church congregation in New York City whose composition was nearly half Chinese!
And as a consequence my interest in the East was greatly reawakened. This interest continued
to grow and expand over the next two decades while I continued to reside in this crowded
American cosmopolis of the world's cultures.
It required my first of many journeys to the teeming Indian subcontinent, however, for Asia to
have any real and lasting impact upon my thinking and outlook. This initial visit occurred in late
1982 when by this time I had moved my residence to the area of America's capital, Washington,
DC What prompted the journey was a growing desire within me to identify more closely with the
world's less fortunate both at home and abroad. And as it turned out, the centerpiece of this first
visit to the Asian land mass proved to be an unforgettable hands-on experience in Calcutta of
working very closely for nearly two weeks with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity
among the poorest of the poor in that sprawling, seemingly fathomless "City of the Dreadful
Night," as Rudyard Kipling once called it. It was a rewarding but shattering experience for me,
and one that shall always remain a watershed in my life.
Long before this, of course, India and the other members of the Himalayan arc of nations
had already witnessed the influx onto their soil of wave upon wave of Tibetan refugees fleeing
across the frontiers from their homeland in the face of an unrelenting and devastating put down
by their new Chinese Communist overlords of the ill-fated Tibetan Uprising of 1959.* One of
the Himalayan kingdoms which provided timely asylum to thousands of these Tibetan refugees
was Nepal. Its capital and some of the mountainous areas around it I had also visited on my first
odyssey to the lands of the economically poor and less fortunate (whose societies, it must
quickly be added, were nonetheless rich in other ways). And it was while in the beautiful
Kathmandu Valley that ^ experienced my first exposure to the people and culture of the Roof of
the World. It was a pleasure for me recently to review once again the few colored slides I had
taken while visiting briefly among some of the one thousand Tibetans who were housed and
working at a camp that the compassionate and courageous Nepalese king had established in Old
Kathmandu in 1960 to accommodate those Tibetans who sought refuge in Nepal. Moreover, I
had learned that another nine thousand Tibetans were by that time (1982) living in their own
community which over the years since 1960 had sprung up in the outskirts of the Nepalese
capital not far from the camp. Despite their seemingly tragic transplanted existence, I found
them to be some of the happiest, most likable and industrious people I have ever met anywhere
in the world. Little could I have then imagined that just a few years hence would find me deeply
immersed in a serious study of their history and culture.
Included in the itinerary of this initial journey of mine to Central and Southern Asia had also been
visits to refugee camps of other Asian nationalities in both Hong Kong and Thailand, and to the East
Asian countries of Communist China and Japan. I returned to America a radically changed man. No
longer was my overseas focus to be Europe; without apology, it would henceforth be Asia.
* This cataclysmic event, together with the clandestine exit from Lhasa of Tibet's youthful Dalai Lama who
himself became a refugee in India, captured the front-page headlines of major newspapers around the world
throughout much of that year.
Now it so happened that shortly after returning home from the Orient in 1982 I became
acquainted for the first time with the life of the renowned Punjabi Sikh, Sadhu Sundar Singh. My
reading about the remarkable conversion to the Christian faith of this devout Sikh at the young age
of fourteen and about his subsequent attempts to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to remote non-
Christian regions like Tibet stirred within me a keen interest to know more regarding this singular
servant of Christ I therefore set about reading as much as I was then able to collect on his life and
ministry. As a result there developed within me such profound respect and admiration for Sundar
Singh that I was determined, if ever the opportunity presented itself, to have the experience of
retracing the Sadhu's steps along one of the many trails he had used when trekking as a messenger
of the Cross of Christ. I did not have long to wait for the opportunity to arise. Surprisingly, and it
is for this reason that I relate the story at all, it was the fulfillment of this desire which led to my
ultimate involvement in the present literary enterprise now in the reader's hands.
It all came about in the following manner. Through contacts made since my earlier travels in
the East, I had the privilege of serving—in various capacities—my fellow Christian brethren in
both South India and Nepal for three months each. This occurred between November 1984 and
early May 1985. In the Nepal experience I assisted a most engaging Hindu headmaster in the
English classes of a school that drew daily to its precincts not only a thousand local commuting
students but some 250 other youngsters from many distant parts of the country who were
housed immediately adjacent to the school itself. For the latter was situated on a 300-acre farm
located in Nepal's Terai region not far north of the Indian border. Both farm and school were
owned and administered by a well-known citizen of Nepal whose desire was to see these young
people equipped with the basic tools of learning so that, if once converted and they chose to,
they could carry the Christian message of love and forgiveness back to their own communities
in the remote corners of this staunchly Hindu Himalayan kingdofh.
Since my farm host had been converted to Christ at the hill station of Darjeeling in nearby
Northeast India, he, was fairly well acquainted with some of the Christians and churches in
much of the Darjeeling District. Because of an unusual experience he had had in the early years
of his Christian ministiy in Nepal before settling down in the Terai, my host had himself been
made aware of the life of Sundar Singh for the very first time. And one evening at the farm/
school he chose to relate the story to me in great detail. (It is briefly summarized.in Chapter 10
of the present biography) He was pleasantly surprised to learn of my own keen interest in the
Sadhu and of my great desire to retrace Sundar's steps on a particular trail in East Nepal once
used by him when evangelizing there in 1914. And when asked if he might assist me, at my
expense, in organizing a small trekking party from among those older high school-age students
at the school who hailed from that region of Nepal, who knew the trails adequately enough, and
who spoke sufficient English, my Nepalese host quickly agreed to the plan that would take me
through the edges of mountainous East Nepal and across the border into India's famous Darjeeling
District of West Bengal.
But my host also supplied me with the name of a Bhutanese Christian minister who pastored a
local church in the hill station of Ghoom just south of Darjeeling Town. In the early days this had
been a predominantly Tibetan congregation that met in a church structure which even today still
stands where it has always stood for nearly a century now. This that my host told me was
certainly interesting, but what intrigued me and excited me the most was when he added that here
in this very same chapel at Ghoom was where the Sadhu had preached in 1914 and from whence
he had subsequently traveled on foot over to Elam, the largest town in East Nepal, and back again
to Ghoom: all of it along the very route that I myself now planned to trek! Needless to say, I was
beside myself with joy at the thought that the hope I had nursed for some little while would soon
be realized. I was eager to be up and away to Elam.
Stepping down at last from off a rickety bus along a dirt road in the higher Himalayan
foothills just east of Elam, I and my two student companions were soon on the trail that would
take us in two days to the border checkpoint of Manebhanjang and by jeep from there to
Ghoom. To say the least, it was a most exhilarating and inspiring experience and one I shall
always cherish.
Warmly taking us in unannounced, our most hospitable hosts at Ghoom—who spoke
fluent English—could only answer a few of my many questions put to them with regard to
the Sadhu's visit in these parts. Even so, when the Bhutanese pastor and his Nepali wife
recognized my intense interest in the life and ministry of Sundar Singh, the pastor responded
to my further inquiries by saying, "If you really want to know about the Sadhu, you should
go to nearby Kalimpong and speak with my older 'spiritual uncle' in the faith, Rev. Sherab G^
Tharchin. For his famous father, the late Gergan Tharchin, had been a very close friend of
Sundar Singh from their boyhood days." "What is more," the pastor added quite matter-of-
factly, "he had gone on an evangelistic trek with the Sadhu into Sikkim on their way to
Tibet."1
I could hardly believe my ears! In fact, it was all I could do to contain my emotions within
reasonable bounds upon hearing this bit of information. I determined on the spot that I would
now attempt, as I had originally planned to try doing anyway, to gain a permit from the local
Indian authorities to go and spend two days in the "restricted area" of Darjeeling's sister hill
station to the east. Our party met with success in doing so on our very first attempt when
visiting the appropriate Government office in Darjeeling Town.
Taking my two helpful Nepalese companions with me (for their native tongue was the
lingua franca throughout this entire multilingual District), I set out by jeep to Kalimpong on the
8th of April, the day after Easter Sunday, 1985. This thirty-mile drive took us over some of the
most beautiful and stunning mountainous terrain to be found anywhere among the Himalayan
foothills, dominated as the area is by the massive and awesome range of the Kanchenjunga
peaks that boast the earth's third highest summit. It would be a rewarding two days in this
historic hill town, a visit which would ultimately determine how I was going to spend nearly all
my spare time during the next two decades.
My Tibetan host and his Bhutanese wife proved to be really quite as gracious and hospitable
as had been the pastor and his family at Ghoom. At the proper moment I broached to the
Tharchins the primary subject I wished to discuss: the late Rev. Tharchin and the Sadhu. I was
not at all prepared, however, for what was about to transpire. Indeed, I was left almost speechless
wlien at one point in our conversation—they, too, speaking good English—the younger Tharchin
plafced into my hands a lengthy portion of an unpublished manuscript on the life of his father
that contained five chapters alone on the latter's relationship with Sundar Singh!
Furthermore, later that afternoon at the Tharchin home I met a close acquaintance of the
late Rev. G. Tharchin. He was one who at the Babu's request had received by dictation at the
ailing elder Tharchin's bedside what has since been described as the so-called dictated memoirs
of the deceased pastor: the facts, dates, events and other data of his life which this helpful
amanuensis then prepared for future publication. This close acquaintance of the late Rev. Tharchin
had brought with him that afternoon—at the request of my host who had phoned him—the final
portion of this unpublished manuscript on the life of Tharchin Babu. It, too, was the result of
th&work of this helpful amanuensis, he having, as before, assembled together in narrative form
the rest of the dictations of the Babu. This, like the first portion, was also shown to me.*
* See the section immediately following this Preface (The Tharchin Unpublished "Memoirs"— Further
Clarification) for an important discussion of some additional details surrounding this unusual two-part manuscript
Indicating to my host my extensive editing background, I asked the late Tharchin's son if he
would be willing to let me take to America a copy of the first portion of the narrative he had
shown me earlier, declaring as I did so that if I liked what I read, and thought it worthy to be
published, I would strongly consider offering my help in underwriting the cost of its publication.
This offer had only been made because it now seemed quite possible that other Westerners—
who in past years had shown interest in seeing the manuscript published and who were mentioned
to me that afternoon by my host and the amanuensis—would in the end choose for whatever
reason to be no longer interested or involved in the project. I added in my remarks to Rev.
Tharchin that if in my opinion it required further editing beyond what had been done already,
and he wished to entrust this task into my hands, I would be more than happy to do so as a
labor of love. Since there was but one copy of the second portion then available, that could be
photocopied later if the other Westerners indeed dropped out of the picture and if he wished to
send it to me by registered post for my review and editing,
My Kalimpong host agreed to these arrangements, but with the clear understanding between
us that no final decision at his end or at mine could at that moment be made. We parted
amicably, thus beginning a friendship that has grown and deepened over the years since that
momentous encounter. Interestingly enough, it should be added, Rev. Tharchin, who is not
often given to voicing such declarations, had confided in me that on the previous day, at the
Easter Service, he had shared publicly with his congregation a premonition he had received
earlier that very morning to the effect that the following day—the day of my arrival at his
doorstep—the Lord would send someone special to visit him! Let me be quick to say here that if
/proved to be someone special to him and his family, he and they, and the many less fortunate and
orphaned children under their care, have come to be special and very precious people to me.
Within a month thereafter I found myself ensconced in easterniava for a month's visit with
a very dear Indonesian Christian friend of mine. There, as it developed, I had time to go through
the Tharchin "memoirs" and to read as well a volume I had "by chance" picked up at a bookstall
in Kathmandu. It was Heinrich Harrer's harrowing tale of high adventure in the heart of Asia,
his Seven Years in Tibet. The so-called memoirs turned out to be intensely interesting reading,
especially the sections delineating Tharchin's friendship with Sundar Singh and their labors
together in the Christian gospel. On the other hand, Harrer's celebrated book, besides being
extremely exciting reading fare, proved to be most enlightening to one who had heretofore
known absolutely nothing about Tibet save a few of its geographical details.
To my great surprise and joy, moreover, I came across a lengthy passage in Harrer's work
that dealt, of all things, with Tharchin Babu and his legendary Tibetan newspaper published at
Kalimpong! I could scarcely believe my eyes!! As a matter of fact, it almost seemed as if it
were a confirmation to me that I should somehow become involved in the publication of the
Tharchin biography were the green light to flash from Kalimpong (which eventually it did),
because even thougn I had not yet read the second and final portion of the manuscript, I now
had little doubt that here was a story worthy to be publicized for the benefit of a reading public
which I had been assured by my Tibetan host would be substantial if the document were ever
to see the light of day.
It had not, of course, been my original intention, when the go-ahead signal from Kalimpong
finally did come, to add much to the existing two segments of the "memoirs" that were in time
made totally available to me. After all, in the "Citation" read out at the late Rev. Tharchin's
funeral in early 1976, this unusual manuscript had been referred to as "his official biography";*
* Termed this, by the way, as I much later learned, not by members of the Tharchin family but by the Babu's
amanuensis. See the next section on the Tharchin unpublished "Memoirs."
I was therefore quite reticent at first to add much further to such a document. My aim at the
outset was simply to perform what from my perspective was some very necessary editing,
reworking and polishing up, to undertake a small amount of background research that, added to
the manuscript here and there, could enhance the final result, and then to assist in whatever
way I could in rushing it to publication as soon as practicable. This third aspect appeared to me
at that moment to be particularly important to address since by the time the complete unpublished
document had fallen into my hands in mid-1985, it was already over a decade old. Indeed, quite
a number of keenly interested people had long since been inquiring as to when its publication
could be expected.
Yet it must be acknowledged that as I approached the task now before me, it quickly
became obvious that there existed huge gaps in people's knowledge of Gergan Tharchin's life
which if left unfilled would weaken the impact and effectiveness of the final result when
published. Two quite significant examples (and there were others) come quickly to mind as I
pen this Preface. One was the dearth of knowledge which existed among even his relatives,
closest friends and associates with regard to the early years of Tharchin Babu's life. For when
I would question them about it, my inquiries would invariably draw a near total blank from
them. The second revolved around an important aspect of his later life's work that by its very
nature had remained quite hidden from view. I have in mind here the Babu's covert involvement
in British intelligence-gathering efforts, intimations of which I had myself begun to detect early
on in my research. Until recently, however, I could never corroborate his involvement; but it
has now been confirmed in the most unambiguous terms.
In addition, as I pondered the kaleidoscopic dimensions of this man, as 1 considered the
particular period in Asian history his long life covered that was so full of ferment and change,
and as I reviewed the various, significant historical and cultural currents which ebbed and
flowed about him and which even quite meaningfully "lapped at the sliores" of his own life and
work at several key points, I was forced to conclude that the so-called official biography—in
the limited though valuable form in which it was handed me—-just could not do justice either to
the life of its protagonist or to the incredible times in which he had lived. For I gradually but
inexorably came to see that both were inextricably bound up with each other in a manner and to
an extent which are just not that integral with most of us who have lived on this planet.
In one very natural sense, it is true, Gergan Dorje Tharchin, like all other human beings, was
molded and shaped by his times. In another quite opposite sense, however, he himself helped to
mold and to shape his times: at least insofar as his life and work impinged upon the history and
culture of his ethnic countrymen. The name of Gergan Tharchin appeared too many times in
too extensive a variety of books, articles, newspapers, letters and reports written by rather
prominent individuals for me to ignore for very long the truth and relevance of the statement
just enunciated. His was a life that was marked by association and even close friendship with
numerous influential men of his time. These were important and in some instances highly
placed political, social, cultural, intellectual, literary and religious figures in Tibet, India, Japan,
America and Great Britain. Moreover, the Babu made some significant contributions in several
of these fields of endeavor, some of which are only now beginning to receive their due recognition.
In sum, then, though it must be acknowledged that when compared to others of his
contemporaries his influence proved more limited, it is nonetheless plain that this lowly individual
who was called by his God from near total obscurity, made history as well as history made him.
In short, Gergan Dorje Tharchin was an important man of his era. And consequently, a person of
his stature, it seemed to this writer, required a much further fleshing out of his life and times than
was manifest in the pages of his unpublished "memoirs." Accordingly, in due course the writer
was given permission by the Tharchin family to proceed to rectify this lack.
The reader will therefore notice that the present work on the life of Babu Tharchin is more
than pure biography. What the author has attempted to do, in more than perfunctory fashion, is
to set this important Indo-Tibetan's long span of years (1890-1976) within the context of the
social, political and religious milieu of Tibetan life and culture. Similar treatment has likewise
been given to relevant aspects of history, religious activity, life and culture in both British and
Independent India during the turbulent and eventful nineteenth and twentieth centuries; for it
must be pointed out that the several places where this ethnic Tibetan lived out most of his years
happened to have been located at both ends of the Himalayan arc of mountains that forms the
Indian subcontinent's northern frontiers with her neighbors. And hence, because of these attempts
to integrate more suitably Gergan Tharchin's life within his total environment, the work has
grown to three volumes in length.
As indicated earlier, .five chapters alone—several of which constitute fresh and original
material nowhere else to be found—are devoted to the renowned Sikh convert to Christ, Sadhu
Sundar Singh, and to his very close relationship at times with Dorje Tharchin. In addition,
significant parts of two other chapters are similarly devoted to the relationship between this
extraordinary high-born servant of God and the humble Tibetan from Poo. All such chapters
further help to explain this expanded biography's exceptional length. But several other reasons
must be mentioned to account for the extensive nature of the present work. Five of them are
enumerated here.
(1) Because the Babu had either close association or friendship with so many of the outstanding
personalities of his era it was felt that due space should be given—in either the Text of the
narrative or in the End-Notes—to their life and accomplishments. But space has also been
allotted to brief or longer summaries of the lives of other important individuals whose careers
date from the Babu's era and which either directly or indirectly affected him.
(2) Certain controversies likewise impinged themselves either directly or indirectly upon the
Babu, such as those which swirled around the Sadhu and around the Russian journalist Nicholas
Notovitch. These needed to be thoroughly researched and reported on in an effort, if possible,
to resolve them by the submission of valuable corroborative evidence heretofore unpresented,
unknown or ignored.
(3) The present writer also felt it would be helpful to the reader to provide some background
on the founding, growth and development of the work of three particular Western Christian
Missions with which Gergan Tharchin was so intimately involved. These were (a) the West
Himalaya Moravian Mission in Indian Tibet within which the Babu had been baptized and nurtured
in the Christian faith; (b) the Scandinavian Alliance (and later Finnish) Mission outreach to the
Tibetans at Ghoom and its vicinity; and (c) the Scots Mission at Kalimpong that included the
establishment and growth of this Mission's work among the Tibetan community throughout
the Kalimpong subdivision of the Darjeeling District.
(4) The story of the creation of the Tibetan Bible and its several subsequent revisions, at
various stages of which Tharchin Babu was himself closely identified, has never—to the knowledge
of the present author—ever been presented in one single narrative in one single place in all the
pertinent literature available on the subject. Snatches and patches of the story have indeed been
published here and there (e.g., by Chandu Ray and Allen Maberly), yet only one attempt (but that
an admirable one by John Bray) at a more thorough narration of it exists.2 Though certainly far
from claiming to be exhaustive in its treatment, the present writer thought it would be useful and
instructive for the reader to know in greater detail this most interesting and dramatic chapter in
Tibetan religious history to which Rev. Tharchin made some important contributions.
And (5) the massive gaps in knowledge, alluded to already, which existed regarding two
very important aspects of the Babu's life and career. No one other than the Babu himself, the
present author soon learned to his dismay, knew anything more than a few scant details
concerning the first twenty years of Gergan Dorje Tharchin's life, which necessitated the
greatest amount of the writer's research time and required the most concentrated effort in
gathering original as well as relevant secondary sources that could assist in filling this particular
gap. Consequently, the amount of space which had to be given over to the narration and
documentation of the first four or five chapters of the biography is more than the author would
have wished. Yet given the unusual circumstances with which he was confronted, it is hoped
that the reader will understand. On the other hand, the paucity until recently of data about
Tharchin Babu's undercover activity for the British generated a desire in the author to provide,
if he could, a credible account of this important but heretofore relatively unknown facet of the
Babu's remarkable career. The result was the inclusion of an additional chapter devoted entirely
to this aspect of Tharchin's life—a chapter which would not otherwise have appeared in the
present-work.
The present author nevertheless realizes the obvious disadvantages to the reader of having
to peruse such an extensive work as this biography has become. It is therefore his intention to
produce for future interested readers a short, single-volume work on Rev. Tharchin's life,
unencumbered by the documented scholarship which perforce had to go into the making of
this initial longer effort. Indeed, credit for the inspiration which has led to this intention must go
to Professor Dawa Norbu's brother, Kesang Tenzing, formerly an instructor in history and
English at Graham's Homes in Kalimpong (but beginning in 1993 for several years Principal of
this hill station's Central School for Tibetans). For it was a casual remark which this dear
Tibetan had made to the author, after reviewing for him the first four chapters of this multi-
volume narrative, that unknowingly to Mr. Tenzing provided the author the seed-thought for the
ultimately formed idea of producing a simpler volume on the Babu's life. It is anticipated that
such a volume may be able to be published in the not too distant future. In the meantime, some
of the readers of the present work may merely wish to read the Text and ignore completely the
extensive End-Notes of documentation.
Before concluding this Preface brief reference must be made to the section that immediately
follows, which provides some further words of clarification with respect to the unpublished
"life" of Tharchin Babu and the use to which it has been put in the creation of the present
biography. This clarification has been deemed necessary because the Babu had not had an
opportunity before his death to direct the typesetting of all the contents of this unpublished
material—specifically its final twelve chapters. It has been deemed necessary as well because
in the absence of such clarification questions might conceivably arise (in fact, some have arisen
already in one particular quarter) concerning the integrity, accuracy or authenticity of such a
document. It is therefore hoped that what follows by way of explanation will be of great
assistance to the reader in understanding the somewhat unusual circumstances which brought
this unique document into being and in assessing its character and reliability.
Lastly, it needs to be stated here that the Tharchin readership owes a great debt of gratitude
to the helpful amanuensis earlier mentioned for the indefatigable efforts he put forth so long ago
in the patient recording, tireless preparation and final reworking of these so-called memoirs of
the Babu. On behalf of that readership the author wishes to extend to this talented Indian an
immense vote of thanks for helping in a most significant way to make possible at last the
publication of a long-awaited biography of an important man of action and of letters whose
lifelong passion was the upliftment of his ethnic countrymen both within and without the
borders of Tibet.
Here was an outstanding Indo-Tibetan personality who, though far from faultless, was
nonetheless a man of great character and integrity, of intense courage and boldness, unquestioned
loyalty and patriotism, deep sensitivity and compassion, and, not least, a man of faith, hope and
love. Indeed, it has been the fundamental aim of the present author that throughout his research
and writing, these and other commendable facets of character which this lowly Tibetan from
Poo so evidently possessed would be clearly made manifest in the pages of this biography. It is
therefore to be hoped that those who read this work will come away from it with a profound
understanding and^ appreciation of just who Gergan Dorje (Taschi) Tserima (Zering) Tharchin
was and what he meant to so many.
BABAKUL
Pokhara N E P A L
Novembeir 1999*
* The publication of this and the concluding second and third volumes of the Tharchin biography has been
unavoidably delayed.
The Tharchin Unpublished "Memoirs "—Further Clarification xxvii
THE READER will readily note from a perusal of the Text and End-Notes of the present work
that in terms of both factual data and quotations the writer has drawn heavily upon this
unpublished "official biography." As mentioned earlier it had been prepared by a longtime
latter-day acquaintance of Gergan Tharchin. This individual, who can rightly be referred to
as Tharchin's amanuensis, had several times urged the Babu many years before his death to
set down the recollections of his life story. Actually, the Babu had much earlier made a
serious effort at doing this very thing, for the present author recently found among the late
Tharchin's personal papers an undated, short, typewritten narrative of his life.* This document
had obviously been intended for eventual though perhaps limited publication and circulation
by the Babu's Press; but it remained in typewritten form. It had unquestionably been reviewed
by him once it had been typed since on several of its pages can be found black-colored inked
insert additions in his own unmistakably identifiable handwriting.*!* Essentially, however, this
brief biography only extends to the year 1924. Yet from internal evidence it is quite certain
that this document, its pages now beginning to crumble and to yellow with age, had to have
been composed sometime between July 1946 and early 1955, thus meaning that it more than
likely predated the urgings of his future amanuensis. Moreover, the document, as brief and
incomplete as it is, has^provided a considerable amount of useful data on the Babu's life not
available from any other source known to the present author.
What is further known for certain is that over a lengthy period of time Tharchin's longtime
acquaintance kindly sat by the bedside of the ailing Tibetan pastor and took down copious
notes as the latter dictated—mostly from his phenomenal memory for one so old, but frequently
also from his personal papers that were often scattered about his bedside area—what could
informally be termed his "memoirs." Tharchin's helpful bedside literary companion
subsequently put together these notes into narrative biographical form in preparation for its
eventual publication by the Tibetan newspaper publisher's own Press; with the first sixteen
chapters of it constituting the bulk of the narrative, followed by the concluding twelve chapters:
in all, twenty-eight of uneven length.
Now for a variety of reasons this narrative document, which ran to over 170 typeset
pages for the first sixteen chapters, with the text line count on each page averaging between
twenty-five and thirty, was in the end never completely printed in any final form and published.
In fact, the contents of the concluding twelve chapters to the document never really got
much beyond, if at all, the typewritten stage. J Yet, though remaining even to this day in its
unpublished state, this so-called official biography put together so conscientiously by Tharchin's
devoted amanuensis stands as an invaluable source of information concerning not only the
main character of its pages but also other personalities whose lives intersected with his. But
it also serves as a document which pointedly reflects the personal feelings, attitudes, viewpoints
* It is entitled, "Brief Biography of the Editor of the Tibetan Newspaper Yul-chhog-So-soi Sangyur Melong [i.e.,
the Tibet Mirror] Printed and Published at Kalimpong, District Darjeeling."
f The present writer did find in the late Tharchin's files a nearly complete second typewritten draft of the same
document, typed on obviously more recent typewriter paper, and which had incorporated the inked insert
additions of the earlier draft; again, however, the document has remained in an unpublished typewritten form.
J The amanuensis has claimed to the present writer that to his best recollection one or more of these chapters
were typeset after the Babu's death. However, both the Manager of the Press (who remained at that post for two
more years following the Press publisher's passing) and the Chief Typesetter have categorically denied to the
writer that such ever occurred.
and perceptions which over time Tharchin Babu came to possess towards people, events,
historical and political movements, and those personal circumstances of life which he
continually encountered throughout his long and illustrious career. As such, these "memoirs"
can be of tremendous value to any researcher who would seek to lay out before an interested
reading public the life and times of this outstanding Tibetan personality.
Just here, though, the critical reader may justifiably raise some pertinent questions. How
reliable are these unpublished "memoirs"? Can it be asserted with a reasonable measure of
confidence that what is found in this two-part document accurately represents what Gergan
Tharchin thought and dictated? What about controversial issues, debatable statements of
fact, or even discussions of controversial personalities that verily do appear in its pages; can
what was recorded by the amanuensis of all which Gergan Tharchin uttered with regard to
these matters be accepted as gospel? These are legitimate inquiries which need to be
addressed.
According to the testimony given to this writer personally by a group of involved individuals
who had firsthand knowledge of the situation,* the creation of this unpublished narrative came
about in the following manner. In late 1972 or early 1973 during the 572-'73 winter season, the
bedridden Babu began to dictate his life story to his amanuensis.1 Such dictation—along with the
attendant preparation and typing by the amanuensis of the narrative manuscript and the necessary
typesetting, proofreading and printing of the copies of the sixteen-chapter segment—continued,
noted this group of individuals, for two years thereafter (and even perhaps a bit longer, into early
1975). The dictation itself was carried forth on almost a daily basis. Only when the ailing Tharchin
temporarily became too ill-disposed or when visitors to his home would automatically interrupt the
* These individuals were four in number: Rev, Peter Rapgey, who at the time of the events to be related above was
the Manager of the Tibet Mirror Press and directly under the supervision of Gergan Tharchin the Publisher; Mr.
Norbu Tshering Moktan, a Christian and at that time one of the chief typesetters at the Press, having originally
joined the Press staff in 1950; Rtfv. S. G. Tharchin; and his wife Nini. These all—together with Tharchin Babu's
grandson David Tharchin, the current Supervisor of the Press—gathered together in the Tharchin home with the
present author, and at the latter's initiative, on 3 February 1992 for a lengthy discussion on the matters to be set
forth above. The author had requested such a meeting because he had himself heard it asserted over and over again
from one particular individual in Kalimpong (and not numbered among those gathered at the present meeting),
that the Babu had failed to affix his signature to the dictated "memoirs" of his life at any appropriate place or to
any official document; and that therefore an issue could be raised as to whether or not the Babu had ever approved
of its contents as finally typeset and printed (in the case of the first segment), or even just typewritten (in the
case of the second segment). Hence, this meeting was felt necessary to try to verify beyond any doubt that
Tharchin Babu had indeed expressed his approval by some means or other.
It should be noted here in addition that in the presence of Rev. and Mrs. Tharchin on the morning of 6 February
1992, this writer had a further lengthy discussion with Mr. Moktan on these same matters to be set forth above
for the reader. His absolute certainty with regard to the typesetting, proofreading and ultimate approval by the
late Tharchin Babu to proceed to print portion after portion of the sixteen-chapter segment of the biographical
document was voluntarily reinforced by Mr. Moktan by his testifying, as a concluding statement to the discussion,
that he was more than willing to assert, and did indeed assert, before this writer and the Tharchins, that those
declarations made by him that very morning and those he made on the 3 rd of February 1992 concerning all matters
now to be related above were true beyond any doubt.
Furthermore, at the conclusion of a similar lengthy discussion on these very same issues which the writer then
had the next morning, the 7th, with Rev. Rapgey in the presence of the Tharchins, Pastor Rapgey, like Mr. Moktan
the day before, was also willing to declare, and did indeed declare, before this writer and the Tharchins, that all of
his testimony given on both the 3rd and the 7th of February 1992 was true beyond any doubt whatsoever.
Finally, the same was the case with the Tharchins, S. G. and Nini, on the 8th of February 1992. They asserted,
in the presence of this writer and Mr. Moktan, that all the conclusions drawn from the various discussions held
on the 3rd, 6th and 7lh of February 1992 and now to be set forth above for the reader, are true beyond any doubt.
proceedings for that day or when the amanuensis would be out-of-station would this daily habit
not be true. Tharchin's helpful aide would generally arrive each morning at the Babu's home to
receive dictation, each session lasting for several hours.
The entire group of individuals heretofore mentioned all vividly recall seeing and often
overhearing—throughout the period involved—the dictation taking place at the bedside of the
Babu (or elsewhere in the Tharchin home, if he felt better on any given day), such dictation, with
very few exceptions, having been delivered in English. Following a given day's dictation, the
group agreed, the amanuensis would leave the Babu and presumably put that day's dictated
material in narrative form and then type it up: most likely as a first of several drafts. The next day,
according to these same witnesses, all of whom at one time or another were variously present
nearby to observe, the amanuensis would begin the daily session by reading to the Babu what had
been prepared from the previous day's dictated notes, thus giving Rev. Tharchin an opportunity to
correct, further amplify on, or delete anything in the typewritten draft of the amanuensis. The
Babu would then continue with the new day's dictation, and so on day after day.
As the time approached when the great bulk of the twenty-eight chapters of the Babu's
life was nearing completion as a result of the yearlong, and most probably longer, labor of
love by the amanuensis, typesetting at the Tibet Mirror Press began as soon as possible in
early 1974 (most likely in the spring),2 the typesetting staff being personally handed by the
Babu himself a chapter of the manuscript at a time—beginning with Chapter 1.3 Despite the
Babu having especially ordered a new supply of English-language type for the composition,
there was still an insufficient quantity of it to enable the Press staff to prepare more than a
few text pages of typeset at a time. Accordingly, the typesetting of the biography, together
with the cqnsequent proofreading and eventual printing, were continually limited to but one
four-page set of typeset at a time. Proofreading of the initial sixteen chapters of the document
always went through four separate stages: first, it was superficially performed by the
typesetters themselves; second, more thoroughly by the Press Manager who worked out of
the Babu's Press office then maintained at the latter's home; third, by the amanuensis at the
Press, or else it was delivered at his home for him to do there (or wherever); and finally, by
the late Rev. Tharchin himself, who was presented each day or so with a clean four-page set
of typeset matter that had had incorporated into it all the corrections which had been identified
during the previous three stages of proofreading.
Now because the Tibetan publisher was so strict in his printing requirements, if he was
not satisfied with the way his typesetters would follow through on his own final proofreading
corrections of the biography, he would demand—recalled the Press Manager and Chief
Typesetter—to review a given four-page set of typeset proofs as many as three or four
times more until he was completely satisfied. Only then would he, and he alone, give the
order personally to his typesetters to proceed to print the said four pages. (Indeed, his Chief
Typesetter indicated to the present author that the Press staff would under no circumstances
print any material, whether in English or Tibetan or whatever other language, unless the
order came from the Babu himself. That the publisher was adamant on this point was
dramatically illustrated when on one occasion many years ago now the staff had disobeyed
this procedure and had run off a price list without his order; whereupon Babula immediately
burned the resultant printed material in the presence of his astonished typesetters!) As
though to underscore the absolute necessity for the Tibetan publisher to have in fact proofread
his own "memoirs," the group of involved individuals testified in no uncertain terms that had
he not been able to proofread the document's typeset matter, and to his own final satisfaction,
then the first sixteen chapters of the document could never ever have been printed, since,
they asserted, the Babu would under no circumstances have given the order to proceed to
print unless he had proofread the matter himself first. That, they concluded with obvious
feeling, was Tharchin-la's strict nature!
Now according to both the Press Manager and the Chief Typesetter, by the time of the
publisher's own proofreading participation—four-page set by four-page set, whatever changes
or corrections he did indeed make were minor in nature and few in number. And once all
such proofreading corrections were at last incorporated into a given four pages of typeset
matter, the final, approved page proofs of each four-page set of text of the biographical
narrative's first sixteen chapters were printed in 500 copies. And when at last the printing of
all such four-page sets of text were finished, several completed sets of this initial sixteen-
chapter segment of the biography were shortly afterwards collated into "book"-like but
unpublished form simply by means of string and the semblance of an unprinted cover that
was neatly hand-wrapped around one or more of them. The rest of the 500 copies still
remain to this day where they have always been: at the Tharchin compound in an uncollated
state, they never having been assembled and distributed at all because the typesetting and
printing of the Babu's entire life story remained unfinished.
Thus, for these first sixteen chapters, the late Rev. Tharchin had two or more opportunities
to review and correct, amend or alter the text of the document; and for the final twelve
chapters, which as noted earlier were never typeset, he had just one opportunity, but an
opportunity nonetheless, if the testimony of the members of the aforementioned group of
witnesses can be accepted; for it is their settled conviction that what they have described—
of the amanuensis beginning each daily session with the Babu by reading to the latter the
previous day's dictation that was now no longer in note but in narrative form—was true not
only of the first sixteen chapters of the biography but of the last twelve chapters as well. Yet
according to these same individuals, there were three main reasons why the typesetting and
printing did not continue with the twelve-chapter segment of the unpublished biography
either before, or subsequent to, the Babu's death: (a) there developed at about this time a
severe shortage of paper at the Press due to its unavailability; (b) the Press became increasingly
involved in undertaking a large contract with the Sikkim government to produce an extensive
number of publications, paper for which was supplied to the Press by that Government; and
(c) a continuing lack of funds which plagued the Press from that time onward.4
One can therefore justifiably conclude, from all the testimony received concerning the
history of dictating, typesetting and proofreading activity which Tharchin Babu either directed
or performed himself, that he unquestionably approved of the contents of the entire narrative
as put together by his faithful amanuensis. * This conclusion is supported by a specific statement
which appeared in two documents found among the Tharchin Papers, both having been
prepared by none other than the amanuensis himself. The first of these is the "Citation" read
out at the late Tharchin's funeral service in February 1976; and the second is a commemorative
citation entitled "In Memoriam" that was read out late the following year on the occasion of
the unveiling of a memorial plate installed on the main sanctuary wall of the Macfarlane
Memorial Church building and presented by the Tibetan Church of Kalimpong in honor of its
* He may not have been able to see and review—from among the concluding twelve chapters—a second, third or
even fourth draft through which the amanuensis has asserted to the present writer he put most if not all of these
chapters; even so, the Babu certainly did have the opportunity to hear read to him daily by his amanuensis the
first draft, which the Babu on the spot would then correct, change or amend.
late pastor, Rev. Tharchin. In both citations the wording of the statement in question is
almost precisely the same. The statement in the funeral citation reads: "Prior to his death
and under his guidance his official biography was completed by his close friend ... Two-
thirds of the biography [i.e., the first sixteen chapters] have already been printed." This
assertion by the amanuensis that under G. Tharchin Is guidance the biography had been
entirely completed some one or two years before his death in 1976 would justify most
anyone concluding that the Babu had certainly approved of the contents of "his life story as
dictated by him and set forth by his amanuensis.
A few pages earlier it was observed that Tharchin's longtime acquaintance had
"conscientiously" put together the Babu's life story. The choice of this word was not lightly
made, because in this writer's view not only had the amanuensis carefully recorded the
material dictated to him by the bedridden Tharchin but he had also remained scrupulously
faithful to the material received as he then proceeded in preparing it for subsequent publication.
The writer came to this conclusion as a result of the frequent discussions about the unpublished
manuscript he has himself had with the late Babu's helpful amanuensis. For in his many
conversations with the latter over the years since 1985, all of them quite lengthy, the writer
invariably came away from them with two distinct impressions concerning the manner in
which Tharchin's able aide had handled the dictated material.
First, that he was one who always gave careful attention to detail, being most meticulous
in accurately setting down all data received. And second, that he never altered the substance
of any statement of fact or observation, opinion or conclusion which fell from the lips of Rev.
Tharchin and which found its way into the manuscript, even though he has since then intimated
to the present writer that he has had questions—nay, even misgivings—in his own mind
concerning a number of the remarks and/or opinions recorded in the manuscript that were
expressed by the Babu about an issue here or a personality there, or about an action or
comment alleged by the Babu to have been taken or voiced by others. Far from having
altered, or having attempted to alter, more to his liking the substance of any of the Babu's
recorded dictation, the amanuensis exercised great objectivity towards everything uttered by
Gergan Tharchin in the course of the dictation and which subsequently was i ncluded in the
resultant manuscript. Furthermore, the fact that the Babu made very few changes— all of
them of a non-substantive nature—in his review of the typeset draft of the first sixteen
chapters of his literary assistant's narrative preparation adds considerable weight to this
writer's unqualified conclusion he came to that the amanuensis was most conscientious
indeed in his handling of all material which came to his hand.
Yet if the Babu made few changes in this initial and larger segment of the narrative
prepared by his amanuensis, thus demonstrating confidence in him, this fact has led the
present writer to conclude further that Rev. Tharchin would most likely have also made few
changes or corrections in the typewritten draft of the final twelve chapters, had this concluding
segment of the manuscript, like the earlier one, reached the typeset stage.
Hence, in the light of all which has been said, this writer, like the late Babu himself, had no
difficulty in reposing confidence in the integrity of the amanuensis or in the accuracy and
authenticity of the overwhelming preponderance of what is set forth in the Tharchin
"autobiography." That someone might disagree with an opinion, interpretation, conjecture or
even an assumed statement of fact expressed by Babu Tharchin as set forth in the unpublished
manuscript of his life in no way undermines the reliability of this twenty-eight-chapter
document nor vitiates its value as a research source in the creation of any expanded biography
of the Tibetan from Poo. To the contrary, such disagreement merely suggests that each
person is entitled to hold a different opinion or conclusion from that held by Tharchin on any
given issue, individual, event or circumstance; that is to say, there may be, and there almost
always is, in human affairs another side which needs to be taken into account. Yet the
reader, whoever He may be, must nonetheless be tolerant or charitable or broadminded
enough to grant the Babu the right to speak his own mind, even if the reader may differ with
him most vigorously. Accordingly, wherever appropriate or deemed called for, this very
possibility of a differing conclusion, interpretation, side or position which could be held or
taken on any issue or individual has been carefully noted in the present work in all those
instances of material derived from this unpublished document that lend, or could lend,
themselves to controversy or difference of opinion. Furthermore, in those instances of what
proved to be ificorrect recollections by the Babu of certain factual data, such as dates,
places or events, these have been checked and rechecked against other available sources;
and where warranted, they have been corrected in the Text and documented in the End-
Notes of the present work.
In sum, then, the author wishes it to be known that he has not in the slightest hesitated in
leaning very considerably upon this unique unpublished resource, yet being careful always to
give proper credit wherever use has been made of this dictated material. Even so, and as is
the case with all other sources used, the present author obviously must assume sole responsibility
for the manner in which he himself has treated any data or quotations of fact or opinion
derived from this unpublished material and that appear in the pages of the expanded three-
volume work on the life of Gergan Tharchin that will eventually be in the reader's hands. But
it must also be added that the author assumes sole responsibility for all of his own expressed
statements of fact, conjecture, interpretation or conclusion wherever found throughout the
present biography. For here he must humbly acknowledge total agreement with that giant of
Tibetan linguistic scholarship, Heinrich Jaeschke, when he wrote in the Preface to his
celebrated Tibetan-English Dictionary (London, 1881, p. vi): "One word more of apology.
Of publications in general it has been said that 'where human care has done its best, there
will [still] be found a certain percentage of error.5 And the probability is but too great that this
dictionaiy will exhibit a number of deficiencies and faults ..." The author would therefore
hasten to add that despite his best efforts to avoid any errors of fact or judgment, the present
work will doubtless exhibit its own litany of "deficiencies and faults," for which responsibility
rests entirely with him.
THARCHINS' N E S T
Kalimpong INDIA
December 1994*
* The publication of this and the concluding second and third volumes of the Tharchin biography has been
unavoidably delayed.
Recognition of Particularly Useful
Published and Unpublished Source Materials
The author consulted and used hundreds of relevant published primary and secondary
sources, including some written and published by Gergan Tharchin (GT) himself. These
many sources have taken the form of books, monographs, articles in both newspapers and
periodicals, and various kinds of reports. All uses to which these have been put have been
indicated in the Notes at the end of each volume of the present work. Seven of these
published works in particular, all containing more than a minimal amount of primary source
material dealing directly with the Babu himself, were of special significance to the author in
his research and writing and should therefore be given special mention here:
(1) Theos Bernard's Penthouse of the Gods (New York: Scribner's, 1939).
(2) Hisao Kimura's Japanese Agent in Tibet (London: Serindia Publications, 1990).
(3) Henrietta (Sands) Merrick's Spoken in Tibet (New York/London: G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1933).
(4) Dawa Norbu's "G. Tharchin: Pioneer and Patriot" (Tibetan Review, Dec. 1975).
(5) Oskar Plister's Die Legende Sundar Singhs (Berne/Leipzig: P. Haupt, 1926).
(6) Various issues of the Tibet Mirror newspaper published by GT at Kalimpong 1925-62.
In both Tibetan and English.
(7) Margaret Urban's Jesus unter Tibetern (Berghausen, Gmy: Evangelisationsverlag, 1967).
Besides these valuable published works, however, the following unpublished primary
sources proved to be extremely helpful to the author as well, most of them being absolutely
indispensable in the creation of the present biography. Their uses have likewise been
documented throughout the End-Notes.
(1) The so-called dictated memoirs of GT.
(2) "Brief Biography of the Editor of the Tibetan Newspaper Yul-chhog-So-soi Sangyur
Melong Printed and Published at Kalimpong, District Darjeeling" (a typewritten document
composed in the third person by GT).
(3) All extant personal papers, documents, and letters to and from GT that were made
available to the author by GT's son.
(4) Letters, other than those in (3) above, of GT and of several prominent contemporaries of
GT and which are located in Libraries, Archives and elsewhere.
(5) Letters from GT's son, S. G. Tharchin, to the author.
(6) Letters to the author from Dr. Elizabeth Marx, Winston-Salem, North Carolina (USA).
(7) Personal interviews, conducted in Kalimpong, Darjeeling, Gangtok (Sikkim), Kathmandu
(Nepal) and America, with acquaintances and other contemporaries of GT.
(8) A variety of German-language materials housed in the Archiv der Brüder-Unitat (i.e.,
the Moravian Archives) at Herrnhut, Germany (see Special Thanks below for further
information).
(9) A few additional German-language Moravian materials housed in the Moravian Archives
at Winston-Salem NC (again see Special Thanks below for additional details).
American Library Collections Consulted
The author would like to express his appreciation to the Libraries of the following
institutions and to their professional staffs for enabling him to conduct extensive research
among the materials found in their collections:
Columbia University, New York City, Butler Library

King's College, Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, New York
Library of Congress, Washington DC:
Reference Division
Geography and Map Division
Newspapers and Periodicals Division
Asian Division (with particular thanks to Robert Dunn and Susan Meinheit for their kind
and helpful assistance)
Law Liberary
New York Public Library, New York City
Union Theological Seminary, New York City
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Sterling Library
Divinity School Library
%
Special Thanks
The author wishes to express particular thanks to the following individuals and/or institutions
for unusual kindnesses and services rendered to him during the course of his lengthy research
and preparation for publication of the present biography:
Ingeborg Baldauf, Director, Archiv der Brüder-Unität (i.e., the Moravian Archives) at
Herrnhut, Germany, for searching, transcribing, photostating and transmitting to the author
relevant portions of various German-language materials dealing with the early years of Gergan
Tharchin (GT), his mother and stepfather, his other relatives and acquaintances, and his
missionary mentors at Poo, Kyelang and elsewhere among the Moravian Mission stations in
Lesser Tibet of Northwest India. The inclusion here of a brief historical sketch of the Moravian
Archives in relation to the Moravian West Himalaya Mission, written by Director Baldauf,
will perhaps be helpful to the reader:
The Central Archives of the Unitas Fratrum (the Moravian Church) was founded in 1764 and
has been situated at Herrnhut since 1820.
In regard to the [recorded] history of the Moravian Mission in the Western Himalaya
Region, it [includes]—besides informative letters and reports of the missionaries to their relatives,
friends and acquaintances in the native country and the preparing of studies for publications—
communications to the Central Mission Board of the whole Moravian Church in Europe. The
main part of these resources was established within the Mission Department of the Unity
Elders' Conference (1769-1899), that since 1791 was situated at Berthelsdorf near Herrnhut. In
1913, the Mission Board—which in 1899 superseded the Mission Department—moved to
Herrnhut. Only as a result of World War I were the functions relating to North India shifted to
the British Mission Board of the Unity in London....
In connection with all these documents there are a finding- (register-) book and other
catalogs in the possession of the Archives. In addition, within the Archives Library and the
Archives collections themselves there are printed matters, picture- and map-materials as well
as ethnographical objects. All these resources are available for research use until today.*
Dr. Elizabeth Marx, of Winston-Salem NC USA, herself born at Poo of missionary
parents, for translating into English the transcribed and photostated German-language materials
sent the author from Herrnhut by Director Baldauf, for searching through and translating
pertinent portions of a lesser number of important German-language materials housed at
Winston-Salem in the Moravian Archives there (Director: Thomas J. Haupert), and for
rendering additional translations from the German of other miscellaneous yet significant
materials relevant to the present work.
John Bray, of London, for alerting the author to certain relevant published and unpublished
sources and for providing either transcriptions or photocopies of materials housed in the
Moravian Church House Archives, London; The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh;
the Oriental and India Office Collection and Records, British Library, London; and the British
and Foreign Bible Society Archives, Cambridge University Library, England. The author is
also indebted to Mr. Bray for his critical review of several chapters of the present work
* I. Baldauf, "Quellen zur Geschichte der Brüdermission im West-Himalaya-Gebiet im Archiv der Brüder-Unität
in Herrnhut," in L. Icke-Schwalbe and G. Meier, eds.5 Wissenschaftsgeschichte und gegenwärtige Forschungen in
Nordwest-Indien, Papers Delivered at the Third International Conference on Ladakh in Herrnhut, GDR, 9-13
March 1987 (Dresden, 1990), 58-9.
which has thus helped the author avoid making several major as well as some minor errors
in either fact or judgment. A former superintendent of the Moravian School in Leh, Ladakh
and a teacher for two years in India (one in Leh, the other at the Moravian Institute at
Raj pur, Dehra Dun, in Uttar Pradesh), Mr. Bray, who is a graduate of Cambridge University,
currently serves as an Asian affairs analyst in London. He has published a number of papers
and longer works dealing with the Moravians in Ladakh, as well as an English translation of
Samuel H. Ribbach's Drogpa Namgyal, Ein Tibeterleben (Culture and Society in Ladakh,
New Delhi, 1986). One of his later works, A Bibliography of Ladakh (with Nawang
Tsering Shakspo) was published jointly in 1988 by Aris and Phillips, Warminster, England and
Oxford Book Co., New Delhi. Bray is presently working on a comparative study of Christian
Missions on Tibet's western, southern and eastern borders. Since 1997 he has also been
serving as Honorary Secretary of the International Association of Ladakh Studies.
Anthony Aris, owner and publisher, Serindia Publications, London, for preparing the way
for the author to make contact by letter with Eric Lambert in Dublin, the British intelligence
officer with whom GT was closely associated in recruiting at Kalimpong a number of
individuals to serve as intelligence agents on behalf of the British Indian government and, by
extension, on behalf of the fortunes of Tibet in opposition to the aggrandizing efforts of the
Chinese.
Phurbu Tsering, of Kalimpong, for his invaluable assistance in expertly translating into
English a variety of letters, papers and other documents in the Tibetan language which were
found among the Tharchin Papers. He also proved extremely helpful to the present author in
arranging for, and then serving as interpreter in, a number of interviews with certain Tibetan
townspeople of Kalimpong. When only 5 years old, Mr. Tsering, with his parents and other
family members, escaped to freedom to India from Shigatse, Tibet in 1961. Receiving his
I.A. degree from Kalimpong's Scottish Universities' Mission Institution, he went on to achieve
his B.A. at St. Joseph's College, Darjeeling. In the late 1970s Mr. Tsering served as President
of Kalimpong's Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, and since 1973 he has been the Secretary
of Kalimpong's Tibetan Welfare Office. Further, since 1987, Mr. Tsering, who is a longtime
friend of the S. G. Tharchin family, had served till recently as the Tibetan teacher for the
children cared for in the Himalayan Children's Home, a compassionate program on behalf of
the needy first founded by Rev. G. Tharchin and his wife in 1962.
Domnica Filotti Ghimus, formerly of Romania but now residing in America's capital,
Washington, for her tireless, faithful and accurate computerization of the various initial drafts
of the manuscript prior to preparation of its final computerized draft for eventual printing. In
addition, she, like Dr. Marx, also served the author by translating—in whole or in part;—a
number of important sources consulted that were published in either German or French.
Without her timely, unstinting aid and assistance, the present biography could never have
appeared in the more complete form which it now possesses.
Robert Huffman, of Gaithersburg MD USA, for translating from the German a substantial
portion of the very important work by Margaret Urban already mentioned, Jesus unter
Tibetern (1967).
Rev. S. G. Tharchin and David Tharchin, son and grandson, respectively, of the late G.
Tharchin, for their constant personal encouragement and assistance, and for David's help
Special Thanks xxxiii
and counsel in various aspects involved in the publishing of the biography. How fitting and
appropriate, in fact, that the publisher of this work is the Tibet Mirror Press in Kalimpong:
the very Press which Tharchin Babu had himself founded so many years ago and which had
produced many literary and educational works that have proven so beneficial to so many
Tibetans everywhere.
Daniel Tharchin and his wife Joni, together with Daniel's brother David, for so willingly
and immediately forming themselves into a computer team in meeting a dire emergency
which arose when at the last moment no one else with the necessary expertise and command
of English was available to undertake the task this ad hoc team was asked to do. This task,
which the team members fulfilled with great accuracy and precision, required them to
computer-keyboard and preliminarily format to a very considerable degree all End-Notes,
Bibliography and Book Jacket/Cover texts for the present volume. This labor of love,
performed almost literally around the clock for one solid week under the author's general
supervision at the Tharchin family compound in Kalimpong, thus enabled the professional
computer formater (see below) to complete his work just in time to meet the deadline set for
submission of all concluding camera-ready material to the Printers.
Aagam Printers, Baneshwor, Kathmandu, Nepal, its Board Chairman G. N. Paudel, his
helpful fellow Board member and Marketing Officer for the Printers Mr. Heli N. Paudel,
and the rest of their able staff, for the very fine printing, photographic reproduction and
binding work which went into producing the present volume. Special recognition and thanks
must also be extended to Mr. Deepesh Shrestha, likewise of Kathmandu. Without his skills
in computer desk-top book publishing, the final camera-ready draft of the book's text pages
could never have been presented to the Printers in the finished high-quality form that it was.
His patience in fulfilling the meticulous demands and requirements of the author is very
greatly appreciated. Yet so, too, is his expertise in handling, refining, and even enhancing—
as required—all photographs and other illustrations for this first volume, including the cover
design and overall formating of the book. He is to be commended for a job well done. But
very special thanks must also go to the author's "Kathmandu son" of many years, the quite
capable, thorough and faithful supervisor over the entire printing project at Nepal's capital,
Mr. Neeraj Koirala, without whose constant assistance in coordinating and overseeing the
total endeavor would have made it impossible to bring to fruition this book that is now in the
reader's hands. The author therefore looks forward to working further with both Aagam
Printers and Messrs. Koirala and Shrestha in producing the remaining two volumes which
are yet to be published.
David S. Alden, of Kensington MD for making available his extensive technical expertise
in the computer communications field, gained over a thirty-year period, that enabled the
author to inaugurate and maintain continued electronic transmission between himself and
relevant individuals in Nepal and India. These transmissions have included various personal
messages and materials related to the eventual printing of the book, including when necessaiy
the transmission by attachment file of part or all of the manuscript text itself.
Kul Prasad Paudel, of Taprang Village and now of Pokhara Municipality, Nepal whose
faithful and loyal service to the author over many years as the latter's "Pokhara son" made
it possible for the author to devote nearly all of his time to the research, writing and final
editing that was necessary to create the present work. Despite his responsibilities as graduate
student and husband and father to his own family, Mr. Paudel rendered invaluable help to the
author in countless practical ways. Not least of them was his unremitting supervision over
the construction of Babakul, the author's Pokhara residence, where all remaining phases in
completing this biography have been carried on. Indeed, without Mr. Paudel's continual
indispensable assistance during the past decade, the author could never have accomplished
this literary task.
But a very particular expression of thanks must unquestionably be offered to Baikuntha
N. Shrestha, founder and proprietor of Shristi Furniture, Kathmandu. For it was this highly
intelligent and capable Newari Nepalese craftsman and his skillful carpentry crew who
created for this writer the perfect living quarters and study area at Babakul that have been
most conducive to the further research and writing of the Tharchin biography. Indeed, had
the finer aspects of interior carpentry been left in the hands of the original carpentry contractor
(a non-Nepali), the author's overseas "writing retreat" would most surely have ended up a
complete disaster. In the quite able hands of Mr. Shrestha, however, the end result emerged
a complete and most satisfying success. Moreover, upon discovery of this craftsman's equally
talented ability in interior design and decoration, the writer sought and freely received his
wise advice and counsel, eventually granting Mr. Shrestha wide latitude in decision-making
on these artistic concerns as well. How fortunate it thus was for the author to have fortuitously
made the acquaintance four years ago of this gifted Nepali, whose many talents in so many
directions—not least of which, his ability to speak and communicate in absolutely flawless
English—made him indispensable in the establishment of the author's study-residence abroad.
Daw a Norbu, Professor in the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, for his eloquent, insightful, and tremendously personal Introduction
he so willingly agreed to write. He is a Tibetan and scholar for whom over the years the
author has come to have such high regard; and the latter considers it a privilege to be
counted among his friends. The Introduction by this younger generation Tibetan, who in his
earlier days came to know the protagonist of this biography so well, has accurately and with
great feeling set the tone for the entire biography. The present writer owes a great debt of
gratitude to Professor Norbu for his extended comments with regard to the late G. Tharchin's
character and personality and his place in Tibetan letters, history and culture, as well as for
the kind and gracious words he penned concerning this author's contribution in resurrecting
the memory of Tharchin Babu from "the danger of popular forgetfulness."
And last, but certainly not least, the present author's very special thanks and appreciation
must be extended to the current reigning head of all Tibetan people everywhere, the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He has graciously provided a most appropriate Foreword to this
biography of a man he was so well aware of and whom His Holiness and other Tibetan
leaders have indeed recognized as a great and sincere friend and defender of the Tibetan
nation. As an American, the author wishes to express his deepest respect towards one for
whom he has had the greatest admiration and highest regard for some years now. That the
present work is graced with a personal Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama has
brought great joy to the entire Tharchin family who, along with the author, deem it a very
high honor to have been granted such an addition to its pages.
Abbreviations Used in Documenting
Gergan Tharchin's Unpublished "Memoirs "
As pointed out and discussed at some length in the section above which provides further
clarification beyond that given in the Author's Preface, Tharchin Babu had had set down in
narrative form by his amanuensis what to the latter he had dictated of his life story. For a
variety of reasons this two-part typeset/typewritten biography was never published. Some
ten years later, however, it was made available to the present author in preparing his own
greatly expanded biographical treatment of the Babu's life, one important facet of which
was to draw considerably upon this unique unpublished resource in creating the present
narrative. Accordingly, most of what is found in the earlier unpublished document—nearly
all of which first required substantial editing, refining and rechecking by the present writer—
has been incorporated into the present larger work in either direct quote or paraphrastic
form, the latter being the case in the overwhelming majority of instances. But as stated in his
"Further Clarification," the author has been most careful throughout this multi-volume work
to give proper credit whenever use has been made of this dictated material that had been
prepared as a biography some twenty-five years ago now by Rev. Tharchin's faithful aide.
The reader must therefore be advised ofthe following abbreviations which have been employed
in the Footnotes and End-Notes for documenting the use that has been made of this unpublished
material in the present Text. The first of these two abbreviations listed below has reference to the
initial sixteen-chapter typeset portion ofthe Tharchin "memoirs"; while the second has reference
to the concluding twelve- chapter typewritten segment:
GTUM TsMs Gergan Tharchin's Unpublished "Memoirs"—Typeset Manuscript
(covering continuous typeset pagination of pp. 1-176 and cited in
the Footnotes and End-Notes documentation only by typeset
page(s) and not by chapter as well; e.g., GTUM TsMs, 22-3)
GTUM TwMs Gergan Tharchin's Unpublished "Memoirs"—Typewritten Manuscript
(covering Chs. 17-28, typewritten, separately paged within each chapter,
and cited in the Footnotes and End-Notes by both chapter and page(s);
e.g., GTUM TwMs, Ch. 2, p. 4)
Abbreviation Used in Documenting Gergan Tharchin's

"Brief Biography of the Editor of the Tibetan Newspaper.. "
As also indicated in "Further Clarification" above, the Babu had attempted to write and
publish a life story of himself sometime between 1946 and 1955, but it was quite brief,
incomplete, and never got beyond the typewritten stage. Yet it has proved quite helpful in
supplying data on his early years. The following abbreviation has been employed in the
Footnote and End-Notes for documenting the use that has been made of this additional
unpublished material in the present Text:
BB TwMs "Brief Biography of the Editor of the Tibetan Newspaper Yul-chhog-So-
soi Sangyur Melong Printed and Published at Kalimpong, District
Darjeeling"—Typewritten Manuscript (composed in the third person by
Gergan Tharchin and consisting of five long pages)
Abbreviation Used in Documenting the

Collected Papers of Gergan Tharchin, Kalimpong
The present author is greatly indebted to the S. G. Tharchin family for granting unlimited
access to all the private papers of Gergan Dorje Tharchin, which are identified whenever
referenced in the present work by the abbreviation, ThPaK.
Abbreviation Used in Documenting various GT-Related Materials

Housed in the Archiv der Broder-Unitat at Herrnhut, Germany
Either complete texts or else excerpts of these materials were transcribed from the original
German and than photostated for, and forwarded to, the present author by Director Ingeborg
Baldauf. They were subsequently translated for the author by Dr. Elizabeth Marx, the Poo-
born daughter of the late Hermann B. Marx, missionary at Poo mission station in its latter years
of existence. The abbreviations which have beeen employment in the End-Notes for
documenting the use that has been made of these materials in the present Text are as follows :
PCRH (1) Poo Church Register, now housed at Herrnhut and

" (2) consisting of four titled sections: (1) "Baptisms
" (3) & Register of Adults & Such Children As Were
" (4) Not Born in the Christian Church," (2) "Births &
Baptisms within ¿he [Poo] Mission
Congregation," (3) "Confirmations," and (4)
"Weddings."
PARH (1865-1900) Annual Reports of the Moravian Mission Station
at Poo, now filed in the Herrnhut Archives under
the classification R. 15.U.b. Nr. 2.a. (1865-1900).
PDH(1864-1920) Diary of the Moravian Mission Station at Poo
(1864-1920), now housed in the Herrnhut
Archives, and consisting of one volume of
unnumbered pages.
KARH (1854-1897) Annual Reports of the Moravian Mission Station
at Kyelang, now filed in the Herrnhut Archives
under the classification R. 15.U.b. Nr. l.a.
(1854-1897). It should be noted that sometimes,
instead of the term Annual Report, the
nomenclature employed may also be either Diary
of or Diary and Annual Report of.
Abbreviations Used in Documenting Materials Quoted

That Are Part of the Moravian Church House Archives, London
When material from these Archives is quoted, such will be referred to by the abbreviation,
MCHA. Whatever the particular documents consulted and used from these Archives, they were
either photostated or transcribed for the author and kindly sent him by John Bray of London.
Romanization of Tibetan Words
This issue has more often than not presented a knotty problem for writers on Tibetan
themes. The opinion and practice put forward on this matter by three well-known scholar-
writers on Tibet have thus proved helpful to the present author. In one of his many valuable
works Giuseppe Tucci observed that the spelling generally adopted in his book "differs widely
from the strict transliterations of Tibetan orthography which are used when writing for
specialists familiar with the written language. These more scientific forms give the uninitiated
layman no guidance to pronunciation." Scott Berry explained in one of his books that he had
tried to employ "the most conventional spellings" he could find "for common words, place
names, and personal names, but often there seems to be little agreement about what is
'correct'." As but one example of many he could have cited, Berry pointed out in^4 Stranger
in Tibet that the word for the Tibetan ceremonial greeting scarf is "commonly romanized as
variously as [khadar,] kata, [khata,] khatag, or khataghr What the author has therefore
generally done in the present work is to adopt the simple practice which Alexandra David-
Neel, in her book My Journey to Lhasa, enunciated with regard to the romanization of
Tibetan terms and names. There she wrote: "I have merely given them phonetically, without
tiying to follow the Tibetan spelling, which is veiy misleading for those who are not acquainted
with that language and [therefore not] capable of reading it in its own peculiar characters."
As an instance which she cited of the problem that would otherwise confront the general
reader, Madame David-Neel added that "the word pronounced naljor is written rnal byor,
the name of dolma is written sgrolma, and so on." Indeed, the practice she followed in her
volume was little different from that which Tucci opted to pursue for his own work, Tibet:
Land of Snows, where he concluded his statement of explanation to his readers by saying
that they would find "that most Tibetan names and terms used" in his work were "spelt
phonetically, utilizing an approximation to the spoken values of standard Central Tibetan."
This, then, is what the present author has attempted to do wherever possible throughout the
three-volume work on the life and times of Gergan Dorje Tharchin.
Finally, a word needs to be appended here in deference to a worthwhile observation
which the British writer Patrick French made in his brilliant biography of Sir Francis
Younghusband (1994): "Words and phrases which now sound offensive ("coolie" and "Native
State" for example) have been retained in my writing, since I felt it would be inaccurate to
substitute later alternatives." As much as possible, and for the same reason, this very practice
has been adopted throughout the present narrative.
List of Maps for Volume I
(All Can Be Found at End of Volume)
The World of Gergan Dorje Tharchin: Showing Poo, Kalimpong and Tibet
The Northwest Indo-Tibetan Frontier Showing in Greater Detail Tharchin's Flome Area
of Poo
Where the Moravians Settled and Expanded in Europe
Lesser Tibet and NW India: Where Gergan Tharchin and Sundar Singh Were Born, Grew
Up, and Labored in Their Early Years
Hindustan-Tibet Road (from Poo to Kalka) in NW India
Detail Map of Bengal's Darjeeling District in NE India: Where Tharchin Spent Most of
His Life
Locale of Tharchin's Trekking in Sikkim from Ghoom in 1912 (to Lachen) and in 1914
(with Sadhu Sundar Singh)
CONTENTS—Volume I
Frontispiece—Gergan Tharchin, c.1937 {opp. p. //)

Frontispiece—Sadhu Sundar Singh, 7 9 2 0 C/TF />.)
^ True Son of Tibet vii
Foreword by His Holiness Dalai LamaXIV ix
Introduction by Professor Dawa Norbu xi
Note of Appreciation by Tharchin Babu's Son xiii
Author's Preface xv
The Tharchin Unpublished "Memoirs"—Further Clarification xxiii
Recognition of Particularly Useful Source Materials xxix
American Library Collections Consulted xxx
Special Thanks xxxi
Abbreviations Used to Document Various Primary Source Materials xxxv
Romanization of Tibetan Words xxxvii
List of Maps for Volume I xxxviii
Scripture Passages and Chapter Titles xl
1 Early Childhood and Preparation: Humble Beginnings at Poo 1
2 Early Childhood and Preparation (Concl'd): The Moravians, Buddhism,
and Momentous Years of Youth at Poo 37
3 Training at Poo and Kotgarh: First Encounter with Sadhu Sundar Singh 117
4 Young Manhood at Simla and Delhi: Second Encounter with the Sadhu
and Impressions of Delhi Durbar 153
5 At Ghoom: New Dimensions 185
6 Along the Teesta Valley: Proclamation of the Gospel 229
7 Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet 237
8 Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Cont'd)—Preaching through
the State of Sikkim 273
9 Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Concl'd)—Disappointment:
Return Trip through Western Sikkim 289
10 Sadhu Sundar Singh (Cont'd): a Critical Study 299
11 Sadhu Sundar Singh (Concl'd): Controversy and Clarification 357
Photographs and Other Illustrations—Volume I {beg. opp. p. 386)
Photographic Essays and Photo/Illustration Credits 387
End-Notes 415
Select Bibliography 529
Abbreviations Used for Frequently Cited Periodicals 535
Personal Interviews—Volume I 537
Appendix 539
Index 543
Maps for Volume I
Scripture Passages and Chapter Titles
The reader will notice that each chapter of this biography of Gergan Tharchin has been
graced at its head with one or more relevant passages taken from the Christian Bible.
Collectively they can betoken much concerning the gospel of Christ to both the Christian and
non-Christian mind alike. The author wishes to acknowledge that a number of these passages
are the result of his having retained at the head of quite a few of this present work's various
chapters some of the same Bible passages which had previously been selected by Tharchin
Babu's amanuensis to introduce the twenty-eight chapters which comprise the Babu's
unpublished "memoirs." Nevertheless, numerous other passages heading up the chapters of
this newer endeavor have been freshly selected from the Christian Scriptures by the author
himself.
With respect to the present biography's chapter titles, it needs to be observed that because
of the generally excellent quality of the titles created by the amanuensis for the chapters of
the so-called Tharchin memoirs, the present author must confess his own inability to improve
much upon many of them; especially is this true with regard to chapters in the earlier document
which generally parallel in content several of the chapters in the present work. Accordingly,
for a number of the latter the author wishes to acknowledge borrowing in their original word-
form some ten of the twenty-eight chapter titles that are found throughout the pages of the
earlier Tharchin "autobiography." But it should be noted as well that to many of the other
chapters of this new multi-volume work on the Babu the present author has assigned titles
which, though likewise borrowed from the unpublished document prepared by the amanuensis,
were altered in wording to one degree or another to make them more suitable to, or more
reflective of, the particular contents of those chapters. Four or five others of the titles in the
new work, however, are entirely the creation of the author of the present biography himself.
Scripture passages, whether quoted in

Text or Notes, are derived from the English
Revised Version of the Christian Bible (1881-85),
unless otherwise indicated.
C H A P T E R 1
Early Childhood and Preparation: Humble Beginnings at Poo*
A city on a hill cannot be hid.

... the [lowly] things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and
the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are: that no flesh should
glory before God.
Matthew 5:14; 1 Corinthians 1:28-9
As IN A CRADLE lies a sweet and tiny babe peacefully nestled upon a pillow, so lies the lovely
little village of Poo serenely sheltered within the niche of a tranquil mountain valley This
relatively unknown community was spread out along a rather high hillslope on one side of a
narrow glen traversed by a small stream. Tucked away almost from view among majestically
high and holy mountains, the village had for many years past brought sighs of relief to those
who sought timely and needful respite from their long and arduous journeys in the higher
elevations. For as the weary traveler would emerge onto the Poo side of a nearby mountain
pass his eye, that heretofore had become so jaded by the constant sight of nothing but bleak
mountains and bare rocks along the elevated trails which had brought him here, would now
be rewarded with an exceedingly contrary, delightful and most welcome aspect: a fresh
green fertile appearance to everything around, created as it was by the numerous fruit trees
and grain fields which abounded in the gardens and sloping fields of Poo herself and on the
inviting plain of Kor—the tiny sister village that lay dwarfed at her feet.
So surprised and captivated by this unexpected sight was one visitor to these parts that he
was wont to describe his first encounter with Poo and Kor in the following terms, first as
seen from atop the pass and then hours later down on the plain:
The whole tract of land at our feet, rich with vegetation, appeared as one uninterrupted garden,
watered by many rivulets: high walls, surmounted by luxuriant hedges, formed at once the
boundary line of the wilderness and the enclosure of fruitful grain fields. Within two hours we
reached the plain of Kor, and, overcome by fatigue, resolved to pitch our tents in this paradise.
Thick, velvety turf, and the shade of very ancient apricot trees, invited us to repose: we had
only to touch the trees, to have showered upon us a redundant supply of ripe and delicious
fruit; milk too, and cakes baked in the ashes, were soon brought in liberal profusion by the
* Spelled sPu in some old though not ancient Tibetan inscriptions to be found in the village of Poo itself. August
Francke, Antiquities of Indian Tibet, 1:18. The village name thus appears on some maps as Pu, or even Pui, the
latter sometimes being the name which the local villagers call it, the "i" being added "merely for the sake of
euphony, as the Chinese sometimes change Shu (or chu), water, into Shui." Andrew Wilson, The Abode of Snow,
11 On. Wilson, having visited Poo in 1874, also noted that on the map of the British Government of India's
Trigonometrical Survey Department, "it has been transformed into Spuch." He also mentioned that the Survey's
executive engineer, Mr. Creegan, in one of the "Professional Papers on Indian Engineering," called the village
Spooi, adding somewhat whimsically, "where Mr. Creegan found his version of it I cannot conceive." Ibid. Still
another and Westernized spelling of the name is Pooa, the form used by Dr. Werner Hoffmeister, in his book
Travels in Ceylon and Continental India..., 431-3. Hoffmeister served as traveling physician to H.R.H. Prince
Waldemar of Prussia during the latter's two- year journey 1844-5 that took the Prince and his party to Poo and
beyond during August 1845. In point of fact, according to both Hoffmeister and Francke, Poo was actually a
complex of two villages: sPu, and dKor, Kor or Kora, the latter located on a small plain downhill from the former.
xxviii
CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
hospitable inhabitants. Beautiful butterflies and many other insects were swarming round the
beds of flowers on the margins of the brooks, whereas, on yonder heights, I had seen not a
trace of any living creature—not a bird, not a lizard, not an insect of any kind. 1
Not only butterflies and other small creatures, but animals too, could be seen at Poo. As
in the past, so today, the village and its charming environs are still marked by grand-covered
hills humanly landscaped with sizable pasturage areas on which one can gaze and gaze in
silent fascination at the unruffled movement of sheep and goats, cattle, ponies, yaks and
donkeys as they leisurely graze by themselves or in small groups, unmindful of the bustle of
the village world about them. On the other hand, beyond the hills the higher and incredibly
narrower peaks—cut through and through and deeper and deeper by the swift-flowing streams
which abound in the area—exhibit to the beholder unique attracting power of their own.
In the more immediate vicinity, however, and rushing downward in a foaming torrent
flows the turbulent river Sutlej,2 the most easterly ¿f the five streams which unite to flow as
the Panjnad into the Greater Indus, one of the mightiest of the Indian subcontinent's fabled
waterways. Along this portion of its channel, the Sutlej takes on a rather wild appearance
since it is bordered on both its banks by huge rugged boulders and very dense forests.
Comparatively narrow here at Poo, the raging river's back-and-forth direction as it wends
its course to the west and southwest lends zigzag beauty to its already dramatic natural
grandeur. The occasional vista of clusters of rhododendrons and orchids makes the entire
landscape appear like a sparkling garden. Everywhere mushrooms bedeck the earth with
umbrella-like shapes and forms. They are a delicious dish, surely, for a midday meal.
Far away in the distance towards the lofty elevations of Indian Tibet one can contemplate
in silent wonder the magnificent snow-clad tops of the mountains gleaming white under the
glaze of the noonday sun. At night, though, they shine princely pink beneath a full moon as
though joyfully beckoning the poets, artists and philosophers to undreamt-of realms of
imagination and aesthetic creativity. The vast stretches of pine trees with their richness of
green only serve to heighten still further the unbroken continuity of nature's awe-inspiring
miracle witnessed in the lengthy ranges of the gigantic Himalayas.3
The Neoza fruit, a kind of pine nut which is especially tasty to the palate of the wandering
children, is found everywhere.4 Not only is it a principal article of food for the region's own inhabitants,
it is also a most valuable commodity commercially in satisfying a demand for it by others elsewhere.
In this respect, at least, the obscure village of Poo*—situated as it is at the remote altitude of9400
feet and some 1000 feet above the bed of the tumultuous Sutlej—can nonetheless assert its own
undeniable claim. But there are other claims, too.5 "A city set on a hill cannot be hid."
* Its obscurity is very much in keeping, it would seem, with the meaning of its Tibetan name of sPu (or sPui, the
"s" being mute): "little hair." Per Poo's Moravian missionary Rev. R. Schnabel, "An Evangelistic Tour into
Chinese Tibet," PA (Dec. 1899):215. Even as late as 1933, two European travelers in the region could write in
their journal that "Poo,... although Moravian missionaries have been here for a long time, is still little known."
Giuseppe Tucci and Capt. Eugenio Ghersi, Secrets of Tibet, 198. Yet, though the village may have been little
known and quite obscure to the world of a later day, it was apparently not so in ancient times, in the view of the
Moravian Tibetan scholar August H. Francke. For it was his considered judgment that Poo (or sPu in Tibetan),
far from having been obscure in its hoary past, loomed as quite a significant, if small, community, it having been
visited by powerful West Tibetan kings and the Buddhist faith propagated personally there by influential monk
rulers from the same region. For the fascinating details, see the note indicated at this very point in the Text of the
present chapter.
Early Childhood and Preparation: Humble Beginnings at Poo 19
Yet, though set on its own high hill, Poo is surrounded in its immediate environs by much
loftier summits that tower precipitously to a dizzying height of from four to five thousand feet
above the village! Moreover, for the longest time this largest of all the communities to be
found in this remote area was exceedingly inaccessible from every side; in fact, to reach this
mountain hamlet, it was necessary either to cross two quite awkward passes or, as was the
case in the very early days, to negotiate a very bad trekking path that followed the serpentine
course of the river Sutlej and that even with subsequent improvement was to remain a
difficult track to traverse. But besides the fact that the high Himalayan passes were not the
easiest to trek through at any time of the year, they were absolutely impassable to the
traveler for a good part of the year. In short, Poo was about as isolated a place to reach as
one could imagine. Yet once having reached its precincts, it was like stepping into a bright
emerald oasis.
Round about the village—which, because it stretches itself along the slope of a high and
rather steep hill, has no level ground whatsoever—both terraced strips of farmland and rolling
fields are scattered hither and yon, where the humble hard-working folk of the locality cultivate
peas, three varieties of barley, wheat, millet and phapar or buckwheat that supply much of the
staple food of the populace, as well as tobacco and opium. And not just one but two crops can
be grown each year, with one harvest occurring in late June and the other, chiefly comprising
phapar and millet, in September or October. This is due to Poo's relatively mild climate, but
even more so tc the soil made extremely fertile by dint of her inhabitants' ingenious irrigation
system that is fed by continual snowmelts. Then, too, in the orchards luscious fruits like apricots,
pears, peaches and wild berries grow in great profusion.
In particular, the apricot, which may sometimes mature to the size of an oak, is a
great source of wealth here and is the people's favorite tree of all,6 providing an almost
indispensable article of winter food—yet not only for the Poopas, the inhabitants of Poo,
but also for their cattle and other domestic animals. In addition, the shade cast by this
fine ancient tree provides delightful and welcome relief from the burning rays of the sun;
for despite Poo's high altitude, the hilltop community lies in a deep basin, consequentially
meaning that its inhabitants must face the heat of a sun that shines with full strength the
summer through; and even in winter some precaution must be taken by the Poopas not
to expose their uncovered heads to the sun's rays, though the dry cold be accompanied
by ice and snow. Now because the climate of Poo especially suits the fruit of this
particular tree, many apricot orchards dot the village everywhere, making them appear
from a distance "like little dark-green islands in a golden sea of barley." The roofs of
Poo's dwellings, which are mostly flat, are used for drying pile upon pile of apricots,
which if not allowed to rot because of soaking rains are "turned by the sun's rays to
every shade between orange and deepest crimson." Nevertheless, because of such a
lavish abundance of this fruit (there being an estimated five thousand of its trees at
* - i ' : I,
. -"
xxviii
Poo), the villagers' flat roofs were often unable to accommodate the entire crop yield,
and accordingly, the excess would be stored on the surface of the fields following the
harvest; and as a consequence, wrote a visitor to the area, "every path and stile is
rendered slippery by the numbers inevitably trampled upon."
But if the apricot grew in such bountiful quantity at Poo, the grape was not far behind.
Vineyards "of unsurpassed beauty" could be found down below along the banks of the Sutlej
and elsewhere. Arranged in arches as was done in the South Tyrol of Europe, the vines
without any care or concern by the villagers bore huge clusters of grapes that hung in rich
profusion everywhere, promising an abundant harvest if disease failed to make its appearance.
And once harvested, much of the grape yield was then contracted by English merchants to
be transported on the backs of coolies in quick relay from village to village down the Sutlej
Valley to the British Indian summer capital of Simla some 200 miles' distance, "where they
arrived fresh, and in excellent condition."7
Then, too, the apple gardens, originally planted by the Christian missionaries shortly after
coming to the region, have stood the test of time: thriving over the years since, these gardens
have contributed their own quota to the horticultural production of the area. Potatoes, also first
introduced by the Western missionaries, were perennially cultivated throughout the district, for
the people had come to appreciate their high nutritional value in carbohydrates. Other European
vines and vegetables—such as cucumbers, melons, lettuce and spinach—likewise flourished
in the "foreign" but fertile soil of Poo. Indeed, one year the cauliflowers and cabbages developed
to such an incredible degree that the resident missionary repprted some of them as having
grown as tall as himself! "Such overflowing fertility of soil I had never witnessed since visiting
the rich fields of the Swiss Valais," remarked one European visitor in 1874; "it is easy to forget
whilst in Poo, amidst its fertile fields and rich meadows, that it is only an oasis in a desert,
surrounded on all sides by bare rocky land or moors, with here and there a patch of grass in the
rainy season." Poo, it would appear, would never suffer from hunger!
The basic food of the villagers, therefore, could be summarized in the following fashion:
first of all, tsamba (made of parched barley which is then ground into flour that in this form
is consumed), which takes the place of bread and is frequently eaten mixed with butter tea
to form "a kind of stiff porridge" that when dry "is not unlike sweetened sawdust—an
acquired taste!"; then potatoes; then also, a sort of white radish, the size of a turnip; some
imported rice, and sugar, too, in a limited quantity; the apricot, fresh or dried, and in winter
often boiled with flour or grits; a little fat, the regular source for which is only the butter that
is melted into the so-called butter tea that is drunk in huge quantities; and finally, meat, which
in summer is consumed only a little.8 Such is the basic diet of the Poopas; nevertheless, "on
this diet," wrote another Western traveler to the region, "both men and women maintain a
magnificent physique. Their teeth are invariably excellent and likewise their eyesight, though
it is said that certain illnesses of the eyes are not uncommon ..."
This same traveler, before he had reached Poo in his journey up the Sutlej, had heard
many tales "about the wonders of this place for weeks." This was because the head porter
of his party, Odsung by name, who had proved to be exceptionally reliable and intelligent,
happened to be a citizen of the village and had not hesitated to voice his understandably
biased opinions about his home community. "The sweetest potatoes come from Poo," he
would proudly say. Again he would declare: "Apricots! You don't call these apricots; you
wait till you get to Poo and then you will learn what's what!" And again he would boast:
"Woodworkers? The ones here all overcharge; besides, not one of them can hold a candle to
the carver at Poo!" This constant banter by Odsung became a standing joke to the traveler;
but upon reaching Poo and staying there for a number of days, the visitor had to acknowledge
that Odsung's home village "did not fall far short of his claims: it was a charming place, with
quite the most succulent apricots, the tastiest potatoes, and the most intelligent inhabitants in
the whole district." This highly favorable comment, he added, was later confirmed by a
British friend of his in the Forestry Service who, having an intimate knowledge of the area,
declared the Poopas "to be unusually attractive."
As intimated earlier the humble peasants of Poo were hard workers, both in cultivating
their fields and in grazing their flocks and herds farther up the hills and mountains round
about.9 Even so, it was not hard work all of the time, especially for the children. For during
the summer and autumn harvests, which brought particular joy to the younger Poopas, the
villagers' flat roofs—now transformed into threshing floors—would be richly covered with
grain or apricots that would betoken an opportunity, commented another traveler to the area,
for "the merry gambols of many a group of little ones on the housetops: how often must one
and another tumble down from this airy playground!" But doubtless, too, he added ruefully,
the great number of cripples he met in these parts "must be attributed to this perilous custom."
Beyond their various agricultural pursuits, however, a considerable number of the older
Poopas engaged in trading the year round, but especially during the late summer and autumn
seasons. At that time of year a series of great melas, or fairs, were held at which merchants
from far distant places would gather and barter their wares with their counterparts from the hill
regions of Northwest India (including, of course, those from Poo)—first at Gartok in nearby
Tibet, then at Kanum just one to two days down the Sutlej from Poo, and finally, and most
importantly, at Rampur, much more distant down the same river valley. Among those engaged
in mela commerce, little or perhaps no money at all would be exchanged; instead, one dealer in
his particular goods would offer to another dealer in other goods an equivalent quantity of
merchandise for that which he required; and thus in rapid time the produce of either country or
district would change masters. The traders from Tibet, for example, would bring down to
Rampur as their chief goods, the following: preeminently, of course, bales and bales of wool—
both shawl (derived from a type of goat and called pashm) and common (the coarser sheep
wool)—and of a fine quality, salt, as much tea from China as Tibet could afford to trade away,
a little fine Chinese cloth, some musk, borax, yak tails,10 and other items in great demand. In
exchange, the Tibetan merchants would take back with them articles which had come up from
the Indian plains: those such as sugar, sugarcandy, cloths both coarse and fine, indigo, ironwork,
brass utensils, all sorts of spices, silk manufactures, etc. And from the hill regions like Poo's
district these same merchants would return to Tibet with such highly prized commodities as
raw iron, blankets, tobacco and opium, ghee, various grains for the nearer and barren parts
of Tibet, and, last but not least, the much needed wooden cups for tea.15
As expected, most of the cultivation around Poo would only be carried on in the summer
months since during much of the winter the knee-deep snows prevented any productive
agricultural activity whatsoever. Moreover, at such times as this, the villagers would assist
each other in clearing their roofs of the heavy weight of snow, lest they might succumb—as
often would be the case were this measure not taken—to the pressure of the deep snow and
be transformed into a heap of ruins. Now in order to protect against the worst of the winter
elements, the summer season was always the time when these mountaineers' dwellings
would become literal storehouses for fuel and grass and when tree leaves would be
accumulated for the villagers' domestic animals—the latter being safely sheltered on the
ground level of their homes until the severest of the winter season had passed away. The
winter would also see little, if any, communication between the villages. The inhabitants
would instead content themselves with merely clearing a path from house to house in their
own snowbound community, but refuse to venture beyond.
All this did not mean, however, that every work activity would come to a halt with the
onset of the cold weather. On the contrary, during this spell of admittedly relative winter
leisure, there would still be carried on such profitable activities as spinning and weaving (a
major cottage industry in the region). Nevertheless, this was about the only economic activity
which the chilly season afforded. This meant that the children, thus relieved for the most part
of certain labors at home and out in the fields, could attend the Mission school nearby to
learn the rudimentary elements of language and arithmetic. More often than not, though, the
children resorted to merrymaking, cavorting about upon the frozen streams, enjoying the
endless snowball fights or else building interesting figures out of the snow. Yet, because the
winters at Poo were for the most part quite mild, even the deeper snows would remain for
only a short period, it often happening that outdoor labor could be commenced as early as
February once again, to the chagrin of the children immersed in their winter frolic.
Even so, though the knee-deep snows might soon melt down or disappear altogether
even at Poo's high altitude, the children as well as the older residents could still enjoy well
into the spring the incredibly stunning wintry scenes afforded by the still higher elevations
round about the village. If the talent to give eloquent expression to such exquisite scenery
were in any degree the possession of some of the Poopas, they would most assuredly echo
the beautifully worded sentiments of one particular traveler as in June of 1838 he gained the
summit of a high pass near Chini just fifty miles down the Sutlej. "'Far as the eye could
reach, or thought could roam,'" he acknowledged, quoting a line of poetry, "all was one
broad unvarying waste of snowy peaks, unbroken by a single shrub or tree, except in the
depths of the darkly wooded glen, which stretched along the bottom of the pass where we
were standing." "Not a sound nor a rustle even caught the ear," the traveler continued in his
reverie, "save the rushing of the keen wind that was drifting the snow in wreath or spray
before it; not a living thing was seen to stir amidst this wild and majestic scenery. All was so
calm and still that it chilled one to behold it, and but for the ragged and shattered peaks
around, which told of the' fearful warring of the elements upon their crests, the traveler might
almost suppose that the elevation had carried him beyond the strife of storms, to which this
lower world is subject." "It is amidst scenes like these," he concluded, "where words cannot
be found adequately to describe the grandeur and magnificence that everywhere delight the
eye, that man is led involuntarily to acknowledge his own comparative weakness and
insignificance, and as he views the stern cold majesty of the wintry and never fading waste
of snows by which he is surrounded, in spite of himself his thoughts revert to Him, the
impress of whose mighty hand pervades the scene, and by whose merciful care alone, he is
guided safe through countless and undreamed of dangers."12
Here in the Poo district the lakes to be found in the high interior become snowbofund in
winter due to extremely cold winds which elude the high tips of the Himalayas. Nevertheless,
in these cold regions the wildlife of the forests roam about quite freely but also, perhaps, too
carelessly. The sporadic sight of a wild sheep, a cautious antelope, a highly prized musk deer,
a cunning leopard or a wolf on the prowl catches the quick eye of an experienced hunter,
impelling him to pull the trigger of his gun. Wild partridge, perhaps a disappearing species of
the quail, is spotted aplenty. This serves as the finest of food, but due to its religious aura its
destruction is prohibited. Even the teeming fish of the waters are not permitted to be caught,
out of deference to the sacred sanction surrounding their life.13 On the other hand, the sweet
music of a cuckoo bird, the graceful flight of a lammergeier, the shrewd ways of the crow
and the gentle simplicity of the dove14 are a welcome treat to those who merely wish to
enjoy in innocent pleasure the beauties of nature in all its fauna and flora.15
The village of Poo, situated in the upland region of Kunawar (Kunawur, Kunavar, Kunu,
Kinaur, Kinnaur, etc., on some maps) close to the point where the Sutlej issues from Chinese
Tibet, falls at the present within the boundary of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. This
had not always been the case, for at one time Poo and other present-day border communities
of northwestern India had been a part of West Tibet prior to 1650. But in that year a treaty
had been concluded between Tibet and Bashahr State, the smaller political territory within
today's Himachal Pradesh where Poo is found.* The Mogul Emperor of that long-ago day
had supported Bashahr in its fight against neighboring Guge, the name assigned centuries
ago to the large area of what was then southwestern Tibet. Now when the Tibetans were
defeated by the Mogul army at Basgo, near Leh in West Tibet far to the north of Poo, the
vanquished Empire of Tibet had to cede to Bashahr a sizable portion of Guge; namely, all of
the Sutlej Valley down to what before 1650 had for centuries been the ancient boundary site
between Bashahr and the West Tibet Empire: the Wangtu Bridge, which spanned the Sutlej
and was located near the town of Chini some fifty miles to the southwest of Poo. Thus was
Tibet compelled to make over to Bashahr, as one of the lost spoils of the war, all of the Sutlej
* Of course, within Great Britain's Indian Empire, Bashahr State had constituted one of that Empire's numerous,
so-called Native States that were ruled over by hereditary Rajas. "The British, as the paramount power,
controlled the State's external affairs but exercised no more than a loose supervision over its internal administration
through the Superintendent of the Simla Hill States who resided in Simla itself." John Bray, "Christian Missionaries
on the Tibetan Border ...," in S. Ihara and Z. Yamaguchi, eds., Tibetan Studies, 370.
xxviii
Valley eastward from Wangtu to the present-day Indo-Tibet border beyond Poo. And hence,
though situated within the boundaries of India today, Poo's ancient geographical location had
been well within the clearly defined limits of the territory of Tibet.16
Kunawar itself, as a tract of country belonging to Bashahr, ran in a northeast-southwest
direction, whose habitable part hardly ever exceeded eight miles in breadth. This was because
both upper and lower parts of Kunawar, lying as the province did along both banks of the
Sutlej, were inhabited only along that chief waterway and along the banks of other large
streams which were tributary to the Sutlej. All the villages, whose elevations ranged between
7000 and 12,000 feet, were thinly scattered; seldom were more than two or three of them
encountered in any one day's trek, and at times none at all would be encountered for several
days. Poo was of course included among the higher elevated communities and located within
the province's northern habitable part. Kunawar as a whole was an altogether secluded
region, rugged and mountainous to an extraordinary degree. Terminated on the north and
northwest by mountains covered with perpetual snow and ranging in altitude of between 18
and 20,000 feet, the province was separated by these rugged peaks from neighboring Ladakh,
an extensive territory of West Tibet which in an earlier period had stretched along the banks
of the Indus all the way from the vicinity of Gartok/on the southwest to the borders of
Kashmir on the northwest, and whose chief town, already mentioned, was Leh. A similar
range of the Himalayas, nearly equal in altitude, bounded Kunawar some 50 to 75 miles to
the southwest (as the crow flies); on the east the province was separated from the high
elevated plains of Tibet proper by a lofty ridge, through whicl^ were several passes, one of
which was that of Shipki; and on the west lay the region of Dusow, one of the other divisions
of Bashahr. It would therefore be within the confines of this rather narrow but quite elongated
territory of land, comprising some 2100 square miles, that the first twenty years of Gergan
Tharchin's life would be chiefly spent. It was an area of Northwest India and Lesser Tibet
with which he would become quite familiar as a consequence of trekking many many miles
by foot, mule and/or pony on Kunawar's numerous mountain trails and paths.*17
Poo, Upper Kunawar's most important village, stood and still stands guard on the strategic
and important trade route—the well-known Hindustan-Tibet Road—between India and what
is now western Tibet. This Road route was actually a glorified mule track whose official name
was described by one late nineteenth-century traveler on it as "the somewhat high-sounding
* Because of this familiarity, one or more variant spellings of the name of this geographical area associated with
Tharchin's earliest upbringing would later in life become attached to his very own name as a means of ready
identification when others had occasion to make reference to him in conversation: thus, for example, Gyamtso
Shempa, an Amdo-born Tibetan resident of Kalimpong in Northeast India where Tharchin eventually settled,
could observe that "everybody in the town knew him as Kunawar Tharchin"; and the Japanese intelligence agent
Hisao Kimura could report that when it was suggested he should seek out Tharchin for some timely assistance,
the agent was told the following details about him by his Kalimpong informant: "He is Tibetan—well no,
Kinauri, but that's almost the same. They call him Kunu Tharchin because he's from somewhere called Kunu on
the other side of Nepal." Japanese Agent in Tibet (London, 1990), 135; also, interview with Shempa, Jan. 1992.
title given to an excellent bridlepath.. ,"18 It ran in generally an easterly direction from Simla (a
railroad terminus among the Punjabi foothills of the Himalayas) all the way to near the Tibetan
frontier at Poo, a distance of some 185 miles. To cover this distance required in those days
roughly sixteen day marches. To better understand the nature of this Road, a familiarity with
both the terrain through which this improved mule track ran and the Sutlej Valley along which
much of it was marked out may at this point prove helpful to the reader (a map has also been
provided at the end of this volume as an aid).
To begin with, the river valley has nowhere been better depicted in all the travel literature
consulted than in the private diary of Thomas Hutton who journeyed through Kunawar and
other districts along the Sutlej in 183 8. Under the patronage of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Bengal, Lieutenant Hutton, who by profession was not only a British Army officer but was
also a surveyor, had undertaken the trek for the purpose of determining the geological formation
of these districts traversed, and could therefore be depended upon to record keen observations
of much which lay before him. In his journal Hutton set down the following with regard to
the Sutlej and its so-called valley:
Those who have figured to themselves the valley of the Sutlej to consist of a large river
winding beautifully through broad and fertile vale, well cultivated and studded \yith habitations
and villages, will feel a degree of disappointment and surprise of finding it in reality to be no
more than a steep and rugged mountain glen of unusual grandeur, with a broad and rapid
torrent roaring and foaming as it rushes impetuously along the bottom over the fragments of
rock, which everywhere strew its bed, causing its waters to curl and rise in waves, which hurl
the white spray on high, and give to the surface of the stream the appearance of a ruffled sea.
Broad and fertile valley there is none, but in its place are frowning hills rising high on either
side from the water's edge, clothed, and that scantily, with tufts of grass and shrubs, while near
their ragged crests are scattered dark groves of bristling pines, giving to the scene an air of stem
and bold magnificence, which cannot fail to impress the traveler with an idea that some vast and
more than usual agent has been the means of stamping the landscape with unwonted grandeur.
The banks and bed of the river are thickly strewed with rolled and water-wom fragments of
every size, from the pebble to the mass of many pounds in weight, and seemingly brought
down from great distances, as many of them evidently belong to formations which do not
occur in these lower parts.
Boulders ... are heaped together in confusion along the river's course, while here and there
above the stream are vast beds of the same rolled stones embedded in clay and debris.... They
are chiefly, if not altogether, situated at those places where the river takes a rapid turn, and have
evidently been thrown up or deposited in the back current or still waters of the deep floods,
which must have brought down the sediment and stones of which they are composed. These
vast deposits of alluvial matter are horizontal, or rather preserve the line of level of the river, and
upon their wide and flattened surface the traveler is pleased to see a rich and smiling cultivation.
These beds are sometimes far from each other, at other places they extend along both banks of
the river, by the action of whose current they have evidently been severed. Upon such are built
... many villages on both banks, and surrounded by a beautiful and luxuriant vegetation.
... These deposits of the Sutlej are not the gradual accumulations of months and years, but
from their massiveness and the enormous blocks or boulders which they contain, must evidently
owe their origin to a larger body of water than is now supplied even in the rainy season; they
must owe their origin to some vast and perhaps oft-repeated floods from the upper parts of the
district, such as the sudden outpouring or bursting of some extensive lake, which has brought ,
down and deposited vast fragments of rocks, whose true site is situated many miles from the
xxviii
deposits which now contain them, and which tower up for two and even four hundred feet
above the river's present level.19
So much for the mighty river and its narrow width of a valley along which much of the
Hindustan-Tibet Road ran. Commonly called the New Road, the latter and its route had originally
been suggested in 1841 as a means of inducing merchants down on the Indian plains at such
places as Amritsar and Delhi to undertake the journey to Gartok in search of fine shawl wool. But
the Governor-General of British India, Lord Dalhousie, saw in the idea of constructing the road a
number of additional arguments in its favor, the preeminent one of which would be that a road
could greatly improve the conditions of trade with Tibet—and with Central Asia in general. And
hence he authorized the commencement of its construction, which began in 1850 at Kalka at the
foot of the Himalayan hills some 55 trail miles below Simla. Moreover, it was proposed that the
trade route would eventually reach the Tibetan frontier just beyond Poo, a total distance from
Kalka of around 260 trekking miles. From the frontier there was already an existing and well-
established trail which would take the trader-traveler the rest of the distance to Gartok (240 miles
inside southwestern Tibet, some 15 day marches away).
Within a few years of its initial construction, and despite the great mutiny of 1857 (see later)
when the project was temporarily abandoned, the New Road had already reached Simla and well
beyond that important hill station. From the latter place the farxled Road led through Narkanda 40
miles hence, from whence for a certain distance there was found both an upper branch (called
the Old Road) and a lower branch (the continuation of the New Road). This latter branch wended
its way through the well-known forest of Bagi on the south and then over a ridge in a northeasterly
direction to Sarahan (the summer capital of Bashahr State and some 93 miles from Simla), while
the former branch made its way down from Narkanda through Kotgarh to the north (about 60
miles from Simla) and thence along the river Sutlej through the important trade mart town of
Rampur to Sarahan. At least two-thirds of the distance between Simla and Sarahan along the
New Road constituted a nearly level path, although it simultaneously gained in altitude all along
the way. In the years following 1860 the Route was extended in sections; first past the forest of
Nachar, next to the famed Wangtu Bridge site already mentioned where the Road crossed the
Sutlej to the right or north bank of the river some 145 miles from Simla, and then onward through
Kunawar by way of Chini and Pangi as far as Poo where it crossed the mighty river back to the
left or south bank just below that village at the celebrated Namtu Bridge (to be discussed later in
the narrative). A less than satisfying path, to say the least, was finally laid down for the remaining
twelve-mile distance to the frontier—from which point the trekker could travel onward to Gartok
by means of Tibet's own ancient trail.
To the Indo-Tibetan frontier from Simla, then, this highly useful Hindustan-Tibet Road
eventually covered a total distance of a little over 200 miles. But precisely what kind of
terrain would the traders and travelers using this popular highway encounter in their attempts
to reach Poo and the borders of the Celestial Empire? In the first place, to have constructed
the Road at all was itself a remarkable feat, for as it turned out it constituted for that day
quite a marvel of engineering ingenuity. Just outside Simla two and a half miles to the north,
for example, is. to be found the Mahasu tunnel portion of the Road that penetrated all the way
through solid rock in the spur of a steep mountain, the length of which was 560 feet. The
famed Road also ran up and down elevations ranging between 4000 and 12,000 feet. For
instance, just beyond Kotgarh on the Road's approach to the river Sutlej, which may be
heard roaring at a distance of 4000 feet below the village, there is a tremendous dip—an
abrupt zigzag descent of over 3500 feet in less than five miles—amidst beautiful wood df
pine, oak and yew and leading to the very banks of "that noble stream." During the warmer
season the traveler will quickly notice, upon reaching the riverbed at last, how very hot the
valley becomes, enclosed as it is on every side by high mountains. After following the left or
south bank of the Sutlej for about 24 miles the capital of Bashahr State, Rampur, is reached.
Built on a terrace, this town of some 3000 souls is shut within a gorge of the mountains
whose lofty and precipitous ramparts frown down upon the community and leave so narrow
a passage for the river and the rays of the sun that in November the latter is only visible
between eleven and three o'clock! But now, beyond Rampur, the Road rises very abruptly
&nd, by a very steep ascent, reaches its higher levels once again—a climb of 4000 feet in
five miles back up the mountains. Henceforward, the traveler is only able to catch short
glimpses of the mighty river thousands of feet below, it disappearing from view and then
reappearing again and again as it winds its tortuous course through Kunawar towards the
Wangtu Bridge, Chini and Poo.
Still another mark of the Road's remarkable engineering features can be found between
Wangtu and Chini a few miles beyond the village of Urni. For there comes into view at this
place what one geographer in 1906 termed "one of the great wonders of India." Here the
Trade Route had been blasted through the Rogi cliffs to the extent of four long miles at an
altitude of 10,000 feet!—a monument, surely, noted the geographer, to not only the perseverance
of the engineers but also the skill of the hillmen, "who during its formation were to be seen
perched by the hundreds on dizzy pinnacles, boring for blasts, suspended on narrow planks
over the abyss, or crawling along a place where a goat could scarcely find footing." In one
section of this incredible roadwork, he added, the traveler will come upon "a perpendicular
drop of 1500 feet, with a further steep descent of 2500 feet to the Sutlej." Indeed, the paths
here become so steep and dizzy, "that the brain reels when the traveler gazes down." How
very right, therefore, for this section of the Road to have been characterized in 1906 as one
of the wonders of the world in road making. Yet even beyond Rogi itself the pathway of the
Road had to be blasted for an additional half-mile through some very steep cliffs; but once
through this portion, one emerges onto a beautiful rustic landscape: a forest on one side of
the trail, snowy peaks on the other, and the travelers' bungalow of Chini straight ahead!
There is, however, a much less favorable assessment of the Road to be given when
describing that portion of the Route from just beyond Chini to Poo and the Tibetan border, in
essence the track's last 50 or so miles in India and doubtless the part most familiar to young
Tharchin. Moravian Bishop Benjamin LaTrobe, who in 1901 paid a visit to Poo via the
Hindustan-Tibet Road, wrote a few years later about the Road in general and about this
treacherous section in particular, as follows: "In 1901 we found this to be a well-kept
xxviii
Bridlepath, mostly from four to six feet wide, for 150 miles from Simla up to Jangi, just
beyond ... Chini. From thence to Poo and beyond, however, it was often little more than a
dangerous native path, in places less than a foot broad, with sheer precipices above and
below it." The news that it would soon be repaired and broadened, he added, "would be an
immense boon to our missionaries^ who have frequently to tread where it winds along the
cliffs at dizzy heights, and to climb or descend its steep zigzags " Yet even though these
repairs, which were performed during the summer of 1905 along the worst part of the Road
to Poo, had "somewhat improved" the situation, the editor of one Moravian periodical was
forced to acknowledge
i
nonetheless that "it is still very far from expressing the English idea
of a road."
Now Poo was Ipcated just inside Indian territory only a day's journey by foot (if one
marches quickly, two if slowly) from the mountainous borders of Tibet. For traders and
travelers trekking this route, Shipki Pass and its nearby "§ister" Pass, the Peeming, afford
the only gateways on the frontier into Tibet, the summits of which—at an elevation of nearly
16,000 feet for the first and over 13,500 feet for the second—cannot, singly or together, be
characterized as part of a ridge but of a plateau some four miles in breadth. En route to that
mysterious land from Poo the tiny Indian village of Namgia, situated like her sister village at
about 9400 feet, welcomes the weary bands of travelers at the border to spend the day or
night in its few but hospitable dwellings. But in order to have reached here, one must have
had to follow the Trade Route for some eight miles, then gone a mile more past the junction
of the river Spiti with the mighty Sutlej.20 From here the path then dipped down to the level
of the great river, crossed over a shaky and none too reliable bridge formed of indifferently
twisted twigs which spanned the 75-foo.t-wide Sutlej (that at this point lay 8600 feet above
sea level) and finally climbed up some £00 feet to Namgia.
Once having arrived, the traveler discovers that the few Tibetan-style houses in this small
village are constructed solely of granite due to the want of forests anywhere around. For the
country now appears barren and stony with even the banks of the river showing no sign of
green; although immediately adjoining Namgia on the opposite bank of a small tributary
stream the visitor can see a few verdant fields of grain, turnips and other vegetables, some
apricot groves and a few grapes—there thus being lent to the village itself the appearance of
a last Indian oasis amidst the desert of rocks and debris through which the Sutlej has had to
force its way. In the near distance just slightly off to the northeast of Namgia can be glimpsed
the beautifully shaped but awesome peaks known as the Leo-Purgyul that rise as a cluster
of three separate groups of snowcapped giants more than 22,000 feet high on the crest of
the Himalayas. Their huge rocks—standing guard as it were at the very portals of the
Celestial Empire—tower majestically over the nearby Sutlej "like some gigantic Termites-
hill with their thousand sharp cones and pinnacles," and in the turquoise blue of the sky can
be seen to, sparkle Leo's mighty glaciers.21
Just beyond Namgia eastward a couple of miles the traveler will come to what much of the
time is a dry nala or river gorge between two crests called Kung Mada which forms the
boundary line between India and Tibet. At other times it can be a raging torrent. To reach this
boundary point, however, which is where the Hindustan-Tibet Road finally peters out, one must
carefully negotiate the Route's last few hundred feet—that is to say, the Road, if so it may be
called at this point, "drops down an almost perpendicular cliff for about 200 feet" to the nala!
From here lies the Kungma or Shipki Pass, on the other side of which, and below it some 5400
feet, is situated the first community of Tibet proper: Shipki village. The Pass is high and difficult,
with a steep ascent of 6000 feet having to be climbed when coming from the Indian side.
Coolies themselves could avoid this by trekking along the bed of the Sutlej; but this lower route,
though preferred by them because of its shorter distance to Shipki village (only eight miles from
the nala), proved generally to be impassable to pack animals due to its extremely rugged and
treacherous terrain.22 Giuseppe Tucci, a leader of expeditions into western Tibet during a much
later period, has vividly described this very river gorge and the rough terrain beyond, across
which the traveler still had to make his way even in 1933:
After we have gone only two miles from the village [Namgia], we reach a small stream [the
Oopsung] which descends precipitously in a narrow, savage gorge, and indicates the boundary
line between northern Bashahr [comprising Upper Kunawar] and Tibet. This is also the point
where ends the tolerable road of the Hindustan-Tibet trade route ... A few hundred meters
more and the road disappears completely in a very steep-sided ravine, the descent into which
is difficult for a man and would seem to be impossible for beasts.
But we are too well aware now of the cleverness of our ponies and we are certain that
though it may be at the cost of inevitable delay the caravan will manage to pass. It would be
advisable for those who cannot place the same dependence on their men and their animals to
take the other road which climbs upwards by way of the Pass of Shipki, whilst the by-path
which we are following runs alongside the course of the Sutlej and whilst rising in a toilsome
manner always keeps at a lower level than the Pass proper. But the gorge is a veritable abyss,
bounded by a vertical wall along whose side runs a mere suggestion of a path which looks out
qver empty space. In Europe people would travel roped together, and here one thinks of
making a caravan pass!
At 2 p.m. we are on the [Peeming] Pass and two hours later [at the end of a fairly long
descent] we enter the Tibetan village of Shipki.23
What Tucci must have witnessed as he gazed off into the Forbidden Territory from atop
Peeming has been graphically described by another though much earlier Himalayan explorer,
Captain Alexander Gerard, who had been employed as surveyor to the Board of
Commissioners in the ceded provinces of India. In October of 1818 he had stood where
Tucci would stand more than a century later, and recorded the view that now opened up
before him. It was a panorama which young Tharchin, growing up long afterwards at nearby
Poo, would doubtless himself look out upon, time and again, and dream of journeys he hoped
he too would undertake someday to faraway fabled places in his ethnic homeland like Lhasa
and Shigatse. Indeed, from his own testimony set down long afterwards, he had greatly
desired while still a teen-ager at Poo to go even then to Tibet for higher studies in his native
language. Here is how the explorer-surveyor from Scotland set forth what he saw of
Tharchin's ethnic homeland from the top of the Pass:
xxviii
From the Oopsung the road was a tiresome and rocky ascent to the Pass which separates
Kunawar from the Chinese dominions, 13,518 feet above the level of the sea. Here the scene
was entirely changed, a more marked difference ¿an scarcely exist. The mountains to the
eastward were quite of another nature from those we had before met with. As far as the eye can
reach, mountain-masses succeed each other: no rugged peaks rise into view, but a bare expanse
of elevated land, without snow. They are of granite broken into gravel, forming regular slopes,
and neither abrupt nor rocky. The country in that direction has a most desolate and dreary
aspect, not a single tree or blade of green grass was distinguishable for near thirty miles, the
ground being covered with a very prickly plant which greatly resembled furze in its withered
state. This shrub was almost black, seeming as if burnt, and the leaves were so much parched
from the arid wind of Tibet that they might be ground to powder by rubbing them between the
hands. The brownish tint of the furze, together with the bleakness of the country, have the
appearance of an extensive heath, and would strongly remind a Scotch highlander of his native
land.... The wind was so strong that we could with difficulty keep our feet, and it is said to blow
with almost equal violence throughout the year. We saw some snow on our right a little below
us, and beyond it a peak above 20,000 feet high crowned with eternal snow, off which it was
drifting in showers from the force of the wind.... From the lightness of the snow, in October,
unchanged by the power of the sun, we beheld it drifting from the summit like smoke before the
wind, and carried bver our heads at the perpendicular distance of two miles, but none of it
descended to the earth again.... I can never forget the effect it produced on my astonished
eyes; such scenes cannot be impressed upon others by the medium of language.24
In bygone years Poo and the upland region of Kunawar had been included within the limits
of the Native State of Rampur-Bushair25 ruled over by a Hindu king named Raja Padamsingh.
This king, the last of a long line of a hundred and twenty Rajas, and known also as Shamser
Singh, ruled over the State of Rampur-Bushair (later called simply Bashahr State) for over
sixty years, and was the ruler on the princely throne during Gergan Tharchin's boyhood and
adolescent years. An explanation of the terms raja and maharaja will not be out of place
here. These are Sanskrit words for "king" and "great king," respectively. In the time of British
India a maharaja, that is to say, a prince or king ranking above a raja, especially referred to a
ruler of one of India's principal Native States (like that of Kashmir-Ladakh) or to a ruler of a
neighboring State such as Sikkim or Bhutan or of even a smaller territory. Raja, on the other
hand, usually had reference to a prince or king like Raja Padamsingh who ruled over one of the
smaller Native States such as Bashahr was. Born around 1839, the current Bashahr Raja, in
the words of one missionary writer in 1931, was "a man of weak intellect" but "well known to
all who have traveled along the Hindustan-Tibet Road."26 Especially was this true of European
travelers along the Road; for Padam or Shamser Singh was very favorably inclined towards
them and wished to make friends with all of them, as was amply illustrated by the fact that this
Raja often quite simply and boldly invited himself to tea or to dine with these Europeans if they
happened to cross paths with him within his territory.*27
* Francke, Antiquities, 1:8. While on a research journey in Tibetan studies, Moravian missionary Francke had this
very experience in 1909 when, shortly after halting at Sarahan, the Bashahr ruler's summer capital and residence,
Now in general the prince's subjects had belonged to an lndo-Aryan Hindu Rajput race28
except, however, for the inhabitants of the northern regions who have retained to this day the
dominance of Tibetan clothes, creed and culture. In fact, Western travelers through the area
during the first half of the nineteenth century had noted with keen awareness these distinctions
which did indeed set off the inhabitants of Bashahr's Upper Kunawar territory from the other
peoples of Kunawar farther to the south and southwest from Poo. And in all the travel literature
of the period, probably the most detailed delineation given of the Tibetan mountain dwellers of
Kunawar-Bashahr was that penned by Dr. Werner Hoffineister. As traveling physician to a
Prussian prince he had journeyed during the summer of 1845 along the Sutlej Valley to the very
borders of Tibet and beyond, acquainting himself as he did so with a number of villages in the
Upper Kunawar districts of Bashahr. In his description he painted a most fascinating portrait of
these Tibetan highlanders—both the dwellers at Poo and those at the adjacent community of
Dubling. A very sharp observer, Hoffineister wrote in part as follows:
The difference between the populace of... Bashahr and that of Tibet is scarcely perceptible; the
features, the costume, and the manners and customs are the same, with this distinction only, that
the inhabitants of Bashahr are friendly, merry, and yet modest; those of Tibet, on the contrary, the
most impudent, filthy, vulgar rabble upon the face of the earth: they cheat and chaffer like [a
certain race of men found in Europe], and practice deception whenever opportunity offers....
[Upon our arrival at Poo] we were soon surrounded by a throng of the inhabitants, attired
completely after the fashion of Tibet. The profusion of amber ornaments, and the brownish red of
all their garments, the thoroughly Tibetan complexion, the general use of boots and trousers,
even among the women, which prevails from this place forward, all mark the influence of the
manners and customs of Tibet. The men wear skullcaps, sandals or high cloth boots, and a broad
belt round the red vestment, in which are stuck a knife, a pipe, a spoon, and a number of other little
articles. The only thing which distinguishes the women's costume is the absence of the belt and
the manner of wearing the hair, which, divided into numberless thin plaits, and interlaced with
coral, shells, amber, and silver bells, hangs down like a sort of network upon the back.
The Tartar [i.e., Tibetan]29 physiognomy is ... predominant; and although the noses are
generally somewhat broad, and the cheekbones large and prominent, yet I saw some faces
which, in any country, would be acknowledged to be pretty and expressive- The figures are
slender and yet athletic ...
Through the evening, the whole population, having flocked together from far and near, sat
in strange groups around our tent, perfectly satisfied with the simple permission to gaze to
their hearts1 content at the new and unwonted visitants. Whether we, in our semi-European
the Raja "announced his intention to have tea with me. He was carried in a litter by several of his subjects, and
a small crowd was gathered together near the bungalow to receive him with shouts, 4 Ho! Maharaj.'" Ibid.
According to Francke, the long dynasty of Rajas claims to have come from Kanchanapuri (i.e., Conjeevaram)
in the Deccan of South Central India and to be of Brahmin caste. When once lbng ago the Bashahr throne lay
vacant, a prophecy came forth that whatever Brahmin entered the palace gate first, that one was destined to be
king. The younger of two Brahmin brothers from Kanchanapuri, Pradyumna by name, entered the gate first and
accordingly became king. The elder brother's descendants, however, became the family's priests and were said in
1909 to still be in office. All the Rajas, noted Francke, were "called by the dynastical name Singh (Sanskrit
Simha), but there is no instance of any ancient Indian family which makes use of that name earlier than the 15th
century." Nevertheless, the Moravian was told by the British Assistant Commissioner of neighboring Kulu that
the family of the Bashahr Rajas was recognized throughout northern India as being very ancient and that the other
rajas always desired to receive "their caste-mark" from the Bashahr Raja, "even if the latter condescended only
to put it on their foreheads with his toe"! Ibid. Incidentally, Shamser in Tibetan (bSam-gser) means "golden
thought." Ibid., 18.
xxviii
costumes, appeared the more wonderful to them, or they to us, in their thick, stiff, woolen garb,
tricked out with finery and hung with fantastic ornaments from top to toe, it were difficult to
decide. The whole night long, these friendly people, ever wakeful, ever mirthful, bivouacked
around their fire; a constant joyousness reigned among them, and their hours flew on amid
laughter and singing.
Our departure ... was, as had been our arrival..., a universal fête. The path was enlivened
by numbers of blithe and merry women, maidens and children; and the male population escorted
us as far as the river [Sutlej]—at least an hour and a half's walk—and even there parted from
us only one by one. The women remained on the vine-clad hills commanding our path, singing
in clear but plaintive tones, "Tantun ne re ho!" which, I understand, signifies, "Happy journey !"
The kindly salutation was still heard resounding long after the songstresses had vanished
from our eyes....
As we entered the village [of Dubling], the people, especially the women and children,
assembled in crowds, and received us with loud shouts. These mountaineers of the Sutlej are
certainly the blithest folk I ever saw, garrulous, unsuspicious and friendly, yet not troublesome
by their importunate intrusions, like the natives of Chinese Tibet. Nevertheless, they were not
to be withheld from examining our goods and chattels and our every article of raiment, nor from
prying even into our pockets—each new discovery causing a fresh burst of laughter....
The costume here [as in Poo] is extremely curious; loose trousers of their brownish-red
woolen stuff, woven by villagers themselves, for the principal part of it: a load of amber,...
glass beads and amulets, pendant in countless strings round the neck, and falling over the
breast and back, is never missing in any female figure; equally indispensable are the long plaits
of sized hair, which, to the number of forty or fifty, hang down the back, while the men adom the
head behind with a long, flowing tail, either of their own hair or of brown wool: the children and
youths usually dispense with any such ornament. %
The women are all distinguished by an uncommonly sweet voice, which often contrasts
strangely with the broad, square face. Their singing is melodious, and their language, too, has
a much softer sound than the Miltshan dialect of lower Kunawar, or the positively harsh one
of Sungnum [in Kunawar, but located over a high mountain pass to the northwest of Poo],
called the Tebarskad; for here the Bhotea language is already spoken, which bears a great
resemblance to that of Tibet.30
From this lengthy pen portrait, then, it can readily be seen thât the inhabitants of these
upland regions of Kunawar—and most particularly in Bashahr State—truly reflected a
predominance of the physiognomy, the costume, the language, customs and manners of
Tibet. But equally was this true with respeçt to the religion of Tibet, which was Buddhism—
and of a sort uniquely peculiar to the Tibetan people wherever they happéned to be found.
And nowhere among the northern uplands of Bashahr was the Tibetan religious culture
more typically evident than in the village of Poo, whose population just prior to Gergan
Tharchin's birth numbered some six hundred citizens, of whom "one-tenth ... belonged to
the Buddhist priestly class" alone!31
Now the teachings of Buddha (to be discussed more fully later) had called for the
elimination by his followers of the rigorously observed Hindu caste system of India which he,
a Hindu himself at one time, had rejected; and it is apparent that the influence of the master's
thinking on this sensitive issue must have had some impact on the generations of religionists
who came after his death; for it has been noted that the deeper one travels into the northern
elevated reaches of Northwest India, especially the farther one goes to the north and east of
that area, "the more tolerant become the inhabitants" there and the more "freed from inhibitions
of caste."32 Nevertheless, in Poo and at other places of this region, the people acted little
differently in this regard from the general Hindu populace of Kunawar as a whole. Indeed,
at Poo, several castes continued to exist among the many adherents of Buddhism there.
As a matter of fact, even in Tibet proper, the Buddhist inhabitants of that day were not
nearly so democratic as their scorn of the Indian caste system might have led one to assume.
Technically speaking, wrote one later authority on Tibet, there was no caste in that land at
all; even so, he observed, "there is a sharp distinction preserved between patrician and
plebian families." He calculated that this exclusively Buddhist country possessed some 30 or
40 "great" families that in other nations would be classed "a nobility." Below these ranked
some 150 to 200 other families that constituted "a squirearchy, or upper middle class." And
below these, of course, could be found the broad mass of the citizenry consisting of peasant
farmers and petty merchants. But lowest of all on the Tibetan social scale came "the
outcastes"—those "who were taboo because of their occupation," applying as this term did
"to such 'impossible trades' as a butcher, a tanner, a blacksmith, the disposer of the dead,
and maker of bows and arrows."33
DawaNorbu, a native from the monastic town of Sakya in Tibet, has shed further light on
this matter, providing an explanation for the denigrating treatment meted out to the blacksmiths
and the other members of the lowest classes in Tibet. Readily acknowledging that caste
most certainly existed in his homeland, Norbu nonetheless was quick to point out that the
system "was not nearly as rigid and inhuman as in India." Butchers, hunters and smiths—
"especially blacksmiths"—were labeled "impure bones" by Tibetans: a term of reproach
applied to these and other occupations that "the non-violent Buddhists considered the most
sinful." Norbu goes on to quote an eminent Tibetan historian who explained that "because
butchers kill animals, bjácksmiths make weapons and agricultural implements (tools for
violence), and because hunters shoot wild animals, these people were considered bad in the
theological sense." With Buddhism's eventual assumption of preeminence in Tibetan society,
"bad" in the religious sense became "bad" in ine social sense as well. Nevertheless, writes
Norbu, these groups were not ostracized in Tibet. True, these "impure bones" could never
share a common cup with the other community members nor marry outside their small group
nor their sons be allowed to follow a monastic career; even so, apart from these three
specific strictures, they could and did participate fully in the religious, social and cultural life
of the community. In this connection, Norbu could add a personal note: "Our family had
several friends from the impure class, and they were always invited to our annual religious
functions and social get-togethers. They stayed in the same room, joked, conversed, sang
and danced with the rest. Nevertheless the stigma was felt, though borne stoically."34
Yet if this social stigma was true in Tibet proper, it was even more true—but more
harshly felt in its consequence—in Indian Tibet. Especially was this the case in the villages
and towns situated close to the frontier. According to one close observer of the social scene
on the Indian side of the border, some of these lower-class castes just now identified as
existing in Greater Tibet were "typical and perfectly exclusive" right here in Lesser Tibet as
well. One caste in particular—that of the blacksmiths, called in Tibetan Garas (mGar-
ba)—formed "a group apart in society," an aspect of community life which was
characteristically true among the inhabitants of Poo. The blacksmiths, noted this same observer,
xxviii
63» CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
"can only marry among themselves, and can only exercise their family trade; they cannot
buy and cultivate fields; and in a general way they live without contact with the people
around, who consider them as occupying an inferior position."35
This very last observation is more than corroborated by one who visited Poo in 1901 at the
very time that Gergan Tharchin, a boy of eleven,, was himself living there. This visitor from the
West, mentioned earlier, Moravian Bishop Benjamin LaTrobe of London, spent many days in
the village and gained a real pulse on the life of the community and its social mores. In the diary
which he kept of his journey the Bishop had something to say of the caste divisions then
existing in Poo, and related what he saw and felt as he went about the village. In part, he wrote:
Poo is a green oasis on a hillside amid bare, brown mountains, behind which rise snowy peaks.
The village, or rather cluster of villages so-called, centers in the group of dwellings inhabited
by the Nangpas, the higher caste and richer class, who claim a considerable monopoly of
"religion," as well as of wealth and influence. The Pepas (outsiders), or the poorer class, of the
smith and weaver castes, inhabit the outlying groups of houses. Of the latter are our Christians....
[We] arrived at last at... the dwellings of the wealthier inhabitants ... I have called on ...
Stobgya, who is friendly to the missionaries but does not see his way to give up his Buddhism
for Christianity, which has been exclusively accepted as yet by the pariahs [i.e., the outcast
Pepas, or the poorer class of the smith and weaver castes]. They "have no religion"; let them
adopt Christianity; but he "has religion." This is the position of several Nangpas, though
some of them are fairly regular hearers in our chapel....
By way of contrast, let me tell you of this morning's visit to the dwellings of the Christians
... Our Christians are all of the "smith" class; but first let us climb up to a "weaver's" home and
workshop. It is but a shed, roughly roofed and open in front...
... We took our leave, to call on all the other Christians [i.e., those of the "smith" caste] in
this group of houses. Their homes were ... worse.36
Such was the state of affairs at Poo in 1901. Yet these social conditions were nothing new in
this community. The founder of the Christian mission station at Poo could report decades
earlier the same situation—and worse, in some respects—in a letter he penned from the
station in February of 1866, less than a year after its founding. In it he outlined in fulsome
detail the sorry plight of those among the poorer class, including the blacksmith caste, at Poo:
The people of this district appear to be a proud, selfish, obstinate race. The poor are called
"pipas," i.e., strangers, heretics, etc., and are shamefully treated, being regarded as the scum of
mankind. An attempt was made to eject the pipas during the winter, because they were unable
to give the usual gifts in connection with the death of some of their relatives, it being the
custom for the survivors in such cases to present each person in the community with a portion
of wheat and some oil. They were obligedto purchase permission to remain here for the sum of
one rupee each. Their punishment, in case of any transgression, is exceedingly cruel and
humiliating—the men are tied naked to a tree, and flogged with a horsewhip; the women are
scourged with thorns. Fines are the common punishment for those who belong to other classes
of society, a custom which has been learnt from the viziers [ministers of the ruling provincial
Early Childhood and Preparation: Humble Beginnings at Poo , 19
raja or potentate], who, besides imposing very heavy taxes, are wont to inflict fines to a very
considerable amount. May our residence among this people teach them to practice mercy and
show love to their fellow men!37
Unfortunately, the presence of the Western missionaries during the ensuing decades,
though impacting for good in other ways, did little tp ameliorate the injustices of the caste
system and lack of mercy on the part of the rich towards the poor among the inhabitants of
Poo; for the missionary reports out of Poo for 1909 and 1910—the two last years of Gergan
Tharchin's stay at Poo—continued to include comments on the harsh and oppressive conditions
of the poorer classes. The report for 1910, for example, noted that the "poor congregation
has thus far consisted only of the downtrodden lower caste, whose character has long been
deteriorated by the injustice and oppression of their richer neighbors."38 And even as late as
1915, fully five years following the final departure of Gergan Tharchirvfrom the village, the
report from the mission station for that year indicated little change when if made the observation
that the congregation's members there, who "are of the poorer class," have "long been
wronged and oppressed by their richer neighbors ..., while the people of the higher caste
wrong themselves by refusing the gospel with the excuse that Christianity is a religion for the
poor, but not for them."39
John Bray has searched out additional details concerning the st^rk social and economic
conditions which existed among Poo's inhabitants and the pressures which could so easily be
exerted upon the poorer classes, both non-Christian and Christian alike. Because the much
richer but far fewer Nangpas owned most of the land in and about P0o and could therefore
provide employment for many of the Pepas, they held the upper hand not only economically
but socially and even religiously. For by the threat of withholding or withdrawing employment,
the staunchly Buddhist Nangpas were often successful in extorting from those Pepas who
had become Christian converts a decision to renounce their newly-acquired religious
identification. Furthermore, those landless laboring Pepas who had been fortunate to secure
summer work in the Nangpas' fields would quickly exhaust their meager food supplies
during the winter and would hence be forced to "borrow" grain from their wealthy Nangpa
"masters" but at exorbitant rates of interest: as high as fifty percent in some instances. And
thus the poor would fall deeper and deeper into debt with hardly any hope of ever making
good on such loans. Yet "low as they were in the social hierarchy," adds Bray, it was
nonetheless possible, from the perspective of the Nangpas and other Buddhists in the
community, for the Pepas "to sink one step further: they could become Christians"! Were
they to do so, however, "they risked losing their employment and they could not share food or
tobacco pipes with their Buddhist relatives or even enter their houses." And whether Christian
or not, the Pepas, regardless their line of work or lowly trade, were definitely not permitted
to share food with the Nangpas or enter their houses under any circumstances.
As has already been pointed out, these class distinctions were certainly not in keeping
with the tenets of Buddhism; but Bray posits the notion that the basis for such caste divisions
"may ultimately have been racial in origin"; for the Nangpas, he notes, were reportedly more
Mongoloid in appearance whereas the appearance of the Pepas was apparently more Indian-
looking, even though there existed in Poo no linguistic differences at all. But because the
proportion of Pepas was far higher at Poo than at other places along the Indo-Tibetan border
and farther into Tibet itself where similar social divisions were present, these destructive
distinctions, Bray concluded, "played a more important role in Poo" than elsewhere.40
Now it was into just such a social and religious environment as this that Gergan Tharchin
was himself bora of blacksmith parents41 in the village of Poo inhabited by an almost totally
Buddhist Tibetan population.42 His birth occurred on the eighteenth dayôf April in the year
1890.43 He was a contemporary of his illustrious friend of later years, Sadhu Sundar Singh,
and was younger than he by only seven months (seven months and fifteen days to be exact).
Tharchin's birth date has been corroborated by his baptismal certificate44 which, according
to his recollection, "clearly declares [my] age on the day of christening to be that of two
years" (Western reckoning).45 The sacrament of child-baptism was administered on 18
April 189246 and was done, he further recalled, "through the blessed hands of a godly minister,"
the Rev. Theodore Schreve47 of the Moravian Mission from Germany.
According to Tharchin, his parents "came from humble ... stock." His father, Taschi by
name,48 a citizen of the "Tibetan" village of Kyelang49 located in the region of Lahul to the
north, had apparently migrated from there and had settled down at Poo. No record of when
he had been born is known; but Tharchin's mother, Sodnama %
by name, had been born in
December 1867 at Poo itself.50 It would be at this rather obscure village that Tharchin,
whose given name at birth was Dorje,* would be brought up51 and where he would remain
off and on until a young man of twenty. Here, Taschi and Dorje's mother would eke out a
most difficult livelihood. They did so, said Tharchin later, "by dint of hard labor and
perspiration"—qualities which their son himself was later to evince in his own life and which
doubtless he gained from his mother. Tharchin's mother, it should be added, was quite skilled
in the manual arts of weaving, sewing and knitting—talents which provided an additional
source of income to meet the household expenses.
But at this point in the narrative it must be noted with considerable sadness that this
blacksmith household was not, in two major respects, an altogether united one insofar as
their impact upon the mother, and later, young Tharchin, was concerned. For, first of all, it
must be understood that Tharchin's father, Dorje Taschi,52 and his mother, Sodnama, were
* The naming of Tibetan children is quite fascinating. Here, Dorje means "noble stone" or "thunderbolt," but
there are other equally interesting given names: for example, Dikyi, which means "happiness"; Trashi, "good
luck"; Tsering, "long life"; Phuntso, "satisfaction"; Jigme, "fearless"; Sonam, "fortunate"; and so on. If a child
were born on a Thursday, it might be called Phubu, or if on a Tuesday, then it might be named Myima. Additional
names of this sort are Tsechi, meaning "the first day"; Tsegyai, "the eighth day"; and Namgang, "the thirtieth
day." Some parents come up with some very ingenious names: Gorkkyai, for instance, which means "born to my
never married; and thus Taschi's youngest son, Dorje,53—and known to the world today as
Gergan Tharchin54—was, according to the church records of the German missionaries at
Poo, an "illegitimate son" of Sodnama ("Sodnama und ihr unehelicher Sohn Dorj e").55 Indeed,
matters were made even worse, at least for mother and child, by what the father then did;
for it was revealed decades later by the elderly Tharchin himself that almost simultaneously with
his birth "his father left his mother for another woman."56
Among Buddhist Tibetans on both sides of the border, this was not an uncommon
occurrence; even as were the social-sexual phenomena of polygyny and polyandry, both of
which were arrangements that were "historically established." As a matter of fact, according
to one well-known Western anthropological scholar on Tibet (Prince Peter of Greece and
Denmark), ninety-five percent of the Tibetan people are polyandrous. Although this may be
an exaggeration of the actual situation, it is nonetheless true that various forms of polyandry
have been quite pervasive throughout Tibetan society for many centuries.57 The most common
form to be found, of course, has been fraternal or adelphic polyandry, a custom often
practiced among Tibetan peasants and herdsmen everywhere (as well as among families of
landowners and merchants), wherein the woman would be "wife" to a group of brothers,
with the choice of a wife being the prerogative of the eldest among them. In fact, noted one
traveler (Wilson) who visited the Poo region in 1874, "among the Tibetan-speaking people it
universally prevails that the contract" the eldest would make "is understood to involve a
marital contract with all the other brothers, if they choose to avail themselves of it."
There was the case of a family in Poo village itself, explained the same traveler, "in which
six brothers were married to one wife, but the youngest of the brothers was quite a boy." And
in 1912, another Westerner (Bruce), visiting the Moravian missionaries at Kyelang in neighboring
Lahul, came upon one household wherein the wife was shared among nine brothers, "most of
whom were away either with their flocks or trading at the time." He noted that the eldest of the
nine, and therefore the husband in the household, was "a most pious Buddhist." There was
even the instance, again in Lahul and noted by still another Western traveler (Edith Waugh),
wherein some monks belonging to a non-celibate sect of Tibetan Buddhism had grown tired of
married life and went off on a religious pilgrimage to Lhasa, "leaving wife and home to the
brother next in succession"! In such cases, of course, all offspring produced would be considered
to belong to the oldest brother (unless he be ousted by a more energetic brother), who would
also constitute the owner of the family property. And hence one major reason for such
arrangements as just described was obviously economic in nature, for if all the brothers were
"married" to one woman and continued to live as one household, the dispersion of the family
property would thus be prevented. Prince Peter has observed that in order for a thorough job to
be done in keeping all family property intact, it will often be the case that the communal wife of
all the brothers in a given family will have husbands who are only three or four years old, with
some "even being unborn"! Now according to Sarat Chandra Das, this somewhat ancient
custom of adelphic polyandry as an arrangement whereby the ancestral property could be
need"; Samdru, "my dream come true"; Bukri, "a son to come"; or Chopa, "no more!" In the case of a woman who
may have lost many of her children, she might desire'to name the new one Kyag, meaning "dog's dung," in the
hope that the devil would be put off by this appellation and not snatch the infant away from her. See Chapel
Phuntso, "Customs and Rituals of the Tibetans," in N. N. Jigmei et al., Tibet, 89-90.
kept entire and undivided was said to have had its origin in far-off Kham, the eastern region
of Tibet that bordered on China. The Tibetans of central and western Tibet then borrowed it
from their Kham cousins and for the same reason.
This concern for keeping the hereditary land parcels inviolate was an important
consideration among even the most ordinary of property owners in the Lahul and Bashahr
areas of Northwest India, as the following passage taken from the Kangra District Gazetteer
for 1897 (and quoted by Gill) will bear out:
Polyandry, or the taking to wife of one woman by several brothers, is a recognized institution,
and is very general; the object is to prevent the division of estates. When asked to defend this
repulsive custom they say that their holdings are too small to divide, and that experience
shows them that it is impossible for two sisters-in-law, with separate husbands and families, to
live together, whereas two or more brothers with a common wife can agree.*
Yet in such polyandrous arrangements where the children were regarded as the offspring
of the eldest brother, there was a price to pay, as is plainly reflected in the oft-repeated proverb
among Poo's Tibetan neighbors ir i Lahul: It is a wise child who knows his own father." As one
visitor to that area in 1931 sadly commented, "Ask a little Lahuli and he will answer: This is my
big father (eldest), this is my little father, this is my lama father,' and so on." (Waugh)
There was a parallel to this fraternal kind of polyandry among Tibetans, though far less
common. This was the sororal kind—that is to say, the marriage of several or all sisters in
a family to but one man. The well-known American scholar in Tibetan studies, Theos Bernard,
whom Gergan Tharchin would serve many years hence as guide and interpreter on a visit to
Lhasa, once noted that it had been "a good old Tibetan custom that a husband may live with any
of his wife's sisters, if he so desires." In noting this custom he had had specifically in mind the
unusual case of his and Tharchin's host in the Tibetan capital, the eminently respected and at
one time highly influential member of the Cabinet, Tsarong Shape. With the permission and the
blessing of the then ruling Grand Lama of Tibet, Tsarong had in 1913 married the widow of a
great nobleman's son (the nobleman and son having died on the same day), the son's unmarried
sister of marriageable age, and later two more of his sisters—one of them widowed in 1918,
the other not yet of marriageable age in 1913. There were other daughters in the dead nobleman's
family, as well as one surviving son, but at the time the latter was a celibate monk. Now it
should be observed that in this particular case of sororal polyandry, the matter of property and
its disposition had very much to do with it; for as one of the sisters (R. D. Taring) who married
Tsarong was to explain decades later: "My [other] brother ... was already a monk, and when
* Even today, in the Tibetan Buddhist-dominated areas of northwestern Nepal very close by to Tibet, these and
other economic and cultural advantages of fraternal polyandry are still held dear by the traditionally-bent village
elders. For example, in the settlement of Kagbeni in Mustang, the head of that village's panchayat (or village
committee) was heard to remark not long ago that this form of the polyandry system had quite a number of
benefits. For one thing, he noted, "the custom helps keep our traditional values intact." But secondly, he added,
"property disputes among brothers are relatively hard to come by and family splits are rendered negligible.
Thirdly, since brothers do not need to establish separate households, and jointly contribute to the common family
purse, chances of getting poorer are also lessened. Besides, not having to build separate houses for each brother,
the cultivable lands do not get bifurcated either. What's more, use of building materials like timber is reduced,
thereby helping preserve the sparse forests..." See Nagendra Sharma, "A Two-in-One Boon?," Kathmandu Post,
Sunday Post Magazine, 7 December 1997, p. III.
a Tibetan family had no married son they could invite the bridegroom of their daughter—or
daughters—tcytake the family name, as without one layman member to serve the Government
their estate might be claimed by relatives or the Government might give it to a monastery or to
any deserving cause." Hence, Tsarong's action—willingly acquiesced in by the future spouses
and their mother, and supported by the deceased nobleman's servants and retainers whose
opinions in such matters counted a great deal in Tibet—automatically caused him to be recognized
as heir to this family's estates, thus keeping all the property intact.
Yet there was another reason that motivated Tibetans, especially those in the Lesser
Tibet areas of Poo and KyeTang, to engage in polyandrous practices. Briefly stated by M. S.
Gill, it "acted as a suitable social method of population control." Since in these hill areas there
was very little cultivable acreage to go around, what agricultural land was available could not
support a large population. The Tibetans therefore considered the custom of polyandry to be
most useful, and attempted to observe it as much as possible. Some of the Moravian
missionaries, in fact, apparently appreciated these economic and social justifications for
such marriage arrangements and were consequently somewhat tolerant towards the non-
Christian Tibetans in their districts who adhered to them. The very founder of the Poo
mission station, for example, was said (by traveler Wilson) to have been kindly disposed to
find excuses for the polyandrous customs followed by the unbelieving Tibetans around him
because of "the circumstances of their life." Indeed, the above-mentioned traveler to Poo in
1874 admitted that he "was a little surprised to find" that Rev. Pagell
defended the polyandry of the Tibetans, not as a thing to be approved of in the abstract, or
tolerated among Christians, but as good for the heathen of so sterile a country. In taking this
view, he proceeded on the argument that superabundant population, in an unfertile country,
must be a great calamity, and produce "eternal warfare or eternal want."
An even more widely practiced marriage arrangement was that of polygyny (male
polygamy), the custom whereby a man would have two or more mates. This was due to the
need for offspring so as to maintain the landed property in a family; since, if there were no
heir, the property must revert to the State or estate. "This need for continuity of blood
relationship in order to keep property in a family," wrote Tibetologist Franz Michael, "was
seen as a biological matter and not as a matter of spiritual continuity and therefore of ancestor
worship, as in the Chinese tradition."
It needs to be recognized, however, that such marital settings as have been described did
not always work out well in Tibetan society. As Michael further observed, "A polyandrous
wife might prefer an older or younger brother, and the union might break up with one brother
taking another wife and moving out." On the other hand, he added, "polygamic marriages could
not be maintained by force, and the relatively free popular attitude towards breaking marital
relationships and engaging in other ones indicates a general social tolerance towards marital
arrangements and sexual relations for both men and women."
Michael went on to say that this general social tolerance "extended to the attitude towards
sexual behavior between unmarried men and women." And although it was especially the
social more of the aristocratic Tibetan families to "discourage younger daughters from engaging
in sexual relations with young men," nevertheless, he concluded, "there was no disgrace or
social censure attached to extramarital sexual relations by either sex."58
24 CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
Now the missionary, church and other records still extant from the period of German Tharchin's
birth and available to the writer of this present biography do not give any clue as to what kind
of social-sexual arrangement, if any, had existed between the parents of little Dorje; yet, in
view of what has been discussed above concerning the marital and sexual mores of Tibetans,
and particularly in the light of the final statement quoted from Franz Michael, it would ill-
behoove the reader from a Christian perspective to censure Sodnama and/or Dorje Taschi for
having engaged in what would still be termed by many Westerners today—Christian and non-
Christian alike—as illicit sexual relations. For it should now be readily perceived how relatively
easy it was for a young Tibetan village woman such as Sodnama to have done so and how her
conduct could have been quite tolerable in the eyes of the general populace around her.
Nevertheless, it can be joyfully pointed out that in less than three years following this irregular
sexual union Sodnama, now a woman of twenty-four years, would be able to leave all that
behind her as she came into the experience of knoWing inwardly the cleansing, the forgiveness
and the love of God. Born anew of His Holy Spirit, she would step forth thereafter as a new
creation of God in Christ Jesus and a new member of His redeemed family. Moreover, less
than two years later she would be confirmed in her newfound faith and be permitted to take
Holy Communion for the first time on 23 March 1894.59
On the other hand, the resulting child of this union, when grown to an age of understanding
and confronted by the circumstances of his beginnings, could take solace in Jesus and in the
Holy Scriptures. For although his birth had indeed sprung from such a lowly, and in the eyes
of some, a despised and scandalous, station in life, Gergan Tl|archin could nonetheless take
solace in the fact that the Son of man himself could trace back through His own genealogy
to instances of a similar sordid circumstance as well; the Tharchin of more mature years
could, in addition, take comfort from what the apostle Paul declared in his First Letter to the
Corinthians. There he brought to every Christian's remembrance for all time what are in
truth the genealogical roots of all who would be redeemed, including Gergan Tharchin. For
there the apostle set down in those dignified and dramatic cadences of his the following
unforgettable passage from Chapter 1 of the Letter:
Behold your calling, brethren, how that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble, are called: but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to
shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to
shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are
despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the
things that are: that no flesh should glory before God. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who
was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption:
that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. (vv. 26-31 mgn)
*
The positive note which has just now been sounded, however, has anticipated with sadness
the second disuniting factor that marked the blacksmith household into which Dorje had
been born. For it must be observed with regret that at the time of little Dorje's Christian
baptism in 1892 when two years old, and for quite a number of years thereafter, only young
Dorje's mother had become a follower of Christ. Not so with Taschi, however. It is true, of
course, that eventually the Blacksmith Taschi and his family did enter the church60 upon his
baptism in Poo at the hands of the same godly minister, Rev. Schreve, who had administered
the sacrament of child-baptism upon little Dorje. But the father's baptism did not occur until
1901 ;61 even so, it was unfortunately but a desultory profession of faith Taschi the blacksmith
exhibited in his life thereafter, if the missionary reports of that period can be accepted. "For
seven years," reads the two-year report for 1910-11, "old Dorje, the blacksmith,... was
numbered among the [Poo] Christians, and all that time he was wavering between heathenism
and Christianity." The report described this wavering in some detail: "At one time he would
let the Skushog, or chief [Buddhist] priest, pronounce his blessing over him, at another he
would bend the knee before the God of the Christians—just according to whether the one or
the other appeased his bodily hunger."
Nevertheless, added the report compassionately, "we must not judge him too harshly. Hunger
not a nice thing, and these Christians are oftentimes ostracized by those around them. But
Br. [Hermann] Marx was filled with deep compassion for the old man when he said to him: T
have no hope of getting to heaven, for I have stolen too many things. Whenever, in the course
of my work, any silver, copper or brass was left over, I never returned it. When I die I will take
hold upon God, and He will cast me into hell, which is the proper place for me.'" The report
went on to state that the Blacksmith Dorje was shortly thereafter "summoned before the
judgment seat of God." It concluded by saying, however, that Br. Marx entertained the hope
that young Dorje's father "was still able to comprehend" what Marx had told him "about the
grace of God"—that he hoped the blacksmith did indeed take hold of the Lord's hand, "and
that He drew him unto Himself at the last." During Dorje Taschi's lifetime, the report ended,
"this poor old man never understood much about Christianity."62 As best as can be determined
from the records available, Dorje Taschi died sometime between 1908 and 1911.63 This assertion,
and the belief that Dorje Tharchin's father had never truly become a follower of Christ prior to
his deathbed, are confirmed by the son himself. Towards the end of his own life, Tharchin,
when dictating his "memoirs," declared that his father "was never converted to the Christian
faith" and that he had "died within a few years after" his "mother's death"—the latter death
date of which can be stated with certainty as having occurred in 1906.64
Meanwhile, in God's good providence Tharchin's mother, a simple and sincere woman,
came into close contact with the devout Moravian missionaries, the ones here at Poo. It was
from them that, for the first time, she formally heard about the saving gospel of Christ.
The mission station at Poo was the second of four or five Moravian outposts to be
established along the border region between India and Tibet at the latter's western extremity.
Founded in 1865 by Edward Pagell and his wife, Poo, of all the sister stations in the region,
apparently had had the most success in establishing friendly and open relations with the
inhabitants, although admittedly not without some initial difficulty of its own. There is some
very interesting evidence for believing this success to be true. In chronicling the early exploits
of the Moravians in the western Tibet region, Annie Marston could report in her book (prepared
in 1892/3 and published in 1893) a comparison on this point between Poo and the first station
to be created by the Moravians, the one at Kyelang.* She writes:
At Kyelang, where all the novelty of the Christian mission has worn off, and where the work
has been carried on the longest, there is a sharp line of demarcation between the Christians and
the heathen. The former are treated as outcasts, and no heathen will now come to the Christian
services. At Poo, the reverse is the case, where all the inhabitants are on friendly terms with the
Christians and with the missionaries, and many heathen attend the preaching of the Gospel.65
Marston goes on to observe that one of the greatest encouragements there could be to
those who have labored the longest among the Tibetans (who were obviously the missionaries
here in the Kyelang-Poo region) is to see the changed attitude of the local citizenry towards
the Christian faith and its propagators. "When Mr. Pagell first went to Poo in 1865," she
comments, "the inhabitants recommended to him, as a site for his house, a spot over which
they knew that great quantities of stones and earth rolled down from the mountains every
year, in the hope that, by the first such downpour, the building would be destroyed." One
reason, and perhaps the chief one, for this hostility lay in the fact that an oracle among the
people had prophesied that the Poopas' fields would all dry up were the missionaries to settle
there.66 Some twenty-five years later, however (and at almost the time to the year that
Sodnama and her young son Dorje received Christian baptism in 1892 at the Poo church),
Marston could relate that "the people are well-disposed"—no doubt in part because of the
medical aid Pagell so faithfully and tirelessly rendered the people, the school he established,
and the teaching his wife gave the Poo girls and women in better methods of knitting (much
more about these practical works will be described in later chapters). But Marston could
also relate that the Raja of Bashahr State (Shamser Singh) "was but speaking the truth when
he said, 'It is true that the missionaries at Poo have not a great number of converts, but the
people love them as if they were their father and mother."'67
Without a doubt one of the people at Poo who so much loved the Schreves and the other
missionaries there was Tharchin's mother. In his annual report from Poo for the year 1892,
Br. Schreve could relate the following encouraging news: "At the beginning of the year our
children's nurse Sodnama applied for reception into the congregation. As she had been
under Christian influence for a long time [with us] and also with our predecessors, in whose
service she was, she could be baptized on April 18th, together with her two-year-old son,
after preceding instruction for baptism."68 And after completion of the stipulated period of
instruction meant for intending disciples, she confessed Jesus Christ as her Lord and personal
Savior; and to the glory of God, both mother and child were baptized on the same day as
indicated, it taking place in the sanctuary of the Moravian church at Poo. It was at his
baptism, incidentally, that Tharchin (which in Tibetan means "success") was added to young
* Although some would pronounce the name of this village with but two syllables as if spelled as Ki-lang and
uttered with a long "i" (as in kite), the correct pronunciation of this three-syllable name is as though it were
spelled Ki-eh-lang and said with a short "i" (as in kit) and followed by a long "a" sound (as in hay), the accent
being on the second syllable. So explained the Editor of PA (June 1887):58n.
Dorje's name.69 Thereafter Tharchin's mother, who received her baptismal name in Tibetan
of Tsensin,* continued to be in the fellowship of the believers and also continued to serve as
a nurse to look after the growing children of the missionaries.
It would seem, based upon other statements of chronicler Marston, that by the time
Sodnama had appeared on the scene in the Poo church, there had again been an evident
change among the Tibetans, it having to do this time with their conduct at the Christian
meetings and in the appearance of their persons and homes. Speaking once more about the
positive turn in thq situation at Poo, Miss Marston noted that there had been
a marked improvement too in the behavior at the services.70 At first, the people used to interrupt
constantly by talking and arguing with one another over anything with which they did not
agree; now, the older attendants put a stop at once to any such action on the part of newcomers.
In the early days of the mission, the congregation sat on carpets on the floor, but when the
converts heard that in other countries Christians sat on seats, they provided benches at their
own expense. They have also greatly improved in the cleanliness of their persons, and
dress, and houses, so that, in the Province of Kunawar it has been said by the Tibetans
themselves, that it is easy to recognize a man belonging to Poo by his appearance.75
Yet, not only did the Tibetans of Kunawar utter such remarks concerning the appearance
of Poo's inhabitants, they also made such favorable comparisons about their work habits. In
a report of the Tibetan Himalayan Mission for the years 1882 to 1887, the Mission's
Superintendent could happily observe the following:
The contrast between the inhabitants of [Poo] and the other villages of Kunawar is such that
even those living at a distance may be heard to remark that it is easy to see when a man is a
native of Poo, that is, when he is under the influence of the gospel, [he] ever working silently
but surely.72
Obviously the gospel was having a salutary effect on much of the community of Poo, and
most particularly on those attending the church there. Nowhere was this more evident than
at the first communion service held among its believing communicants in the mission church.
In describing the scene, the missionary at Poo was wont to tell about it in the most moving
terms:
I can scarcely describe the feelings of my wife and myself, when we approached the Lord's
table for the first time with our little flock. The men were clothed in white, the women had a
white shawl over their dark dresses. One sees that one is in the East; for instead of falling upon
their knees to pray, they throw themselves upon their faces. It was a touching, and at the same
time an inspiriting sight, to see the firstfruits of this people solemnly and with evident eagerness
waiting to partake of the flesh and blood of our Lord.73
Most likely Tharchin's mother, even before her conversion, had herself been in the
vanguard of those whose personal appearance and department at home and on the streets
must have been markedly different from that of the general Tibetan populace to have caused
the missionaries to approach her to serve as nurse or governess of their children. By this
* This may have been a feminine form, coined by the Moravians, of the quite familiar Tibetan name Tenzing that
means "to take hold of the faith" or "protector of religion." Tenzing itself, in fact, has sometimes been given to
Tibetan females—so the present writer has been told.
time, moreover, she and her small son Dorje—no longer a part of the household of Taschi the
blacksmith—had established their dwelling place within the very grounds of the mission
station itself* It is further known from Tharchin's much later testimony about this period
that his mother Sodnama, "in her grief" over Taschi's desertion of her and her child, had
"given up her son to the Herrnhuters" (another name for the Moravians at Poo), and that
thus he "grew up under the influence of Christians."74
One very important step that in 1898 Sodnama took, and which greatly relieved, if not
pleased, the Poo missionaries, was to be joined in matrimony to a young man of twenty-four
whose own reputation among the missionaries, both at Poo and Kyelang, was by this time
far from commendatory. His name was Madtha,75 the son of "a man of the poorer class"—
that is to say, of a blacksmith family76—whose name was Dschamjang Zering (Zehring,
Tsering, Tering, Taring, etc., and meaning in Tibetan, "long life"). Madtha's father, on the
latter Js day of baptism 5 February 1871, had the distinction of being only the second Christian
convert about whom, up till that time, the Poo mission could boast! Dschamjang, who upon
his baptism received the Christian name of Jonathan, had for some time been in close
association with the Poo mission station founder, Br. Pagell, %and had, in fact, accompanied
the missionary on several of his evangelistic tours farther afield from Poo.77
Jonathan's baptism was followed several months later by that of his future wife, Khadogma
(Kadagma). This took place on 6 August 1871, at which time she received the name of Hannah.
The very next Sunday, 13 August, these two were united in marriage before a crowd of visitors
from the village who filled to overflowing the small, 1 OO-person-capacity chapel that had only
just been completed by Br. Pagell and opened the previous December.78
The newly-wedded couple would now make their home on the grounds of the mission
compound itself. Jonathan and his wife were permitted to build a small house for themselves
in a field that stood on higher ground behind the very chapel in which they had been married.
In the meantime, Hannah became the house servant for the Pagells in their home. And
Jonathan now sought work among the farmers in the village of Poo itself. He was probably
more fortunate than most of his "caste" when it came to obtaining work as a Christian
convert, for he was told by one employer that he could be exempt from labor on Sundays so
that he might be free to attend the church services; while still another farmer permitted him,
in the words of Br. Pagell, "to abstain from any heathenish customs forbidden" by Jonathan's
new religion, and also gave permission to him to follow all the Christian instructions of the
Christian missionaries!79
* This is definitely known from an interview the present writer had in December 1994 at the Tharchin residence
in Kalimpong with a relative (by marriage) of Gergan Tharchin's daughter-in-law. The relative, Rev. Tshering
Wangdi, aged 71 at the time of the interview, reported to the writer that Tharchin had told him that "Mother had
been a real, faithful Christian; but Father took another woman," and that because of this, both he and his mother
"left Poo [proper] and came down the hill [a ways] to the Moravians' mission compound to live."
Now the birth of Madtha—Jonathan and Hannah's son, and future stepfather of Dorje
Tharchin—did not occur until 18 January 1873. And eight days later, the little child was
baptized at the hands of the godly founder of the Poo mission station, Br. Pagell.80Next to
nothing is known of the boy's first fifteen years, but plenty has been written by the
missionaries about his parents and other members of his immediate family, little of which
makes for pleasant reading. For it needs to be said immediately that Dorje Tharchin's
future stepfather and the latter's parents would have to endure much trial ere Madtha's
emergence as a Christian adult in his own right could take place. Sad to say, however, that
many of these trials were of the parents' own making, as is evident from the numerous
letters and records of all the various missionaries who eventually came to be stationed at
Poo during the next three decades. For they are replete with detailed accounts of the
vicissitudes which marked this family throughout the period. For example, incurring inordinate
debts was a continuing problem for the Zerings, Jonathan and Hannah. As Br. Pagell
wrote at some length in 1876:
... our two Tibetan Christian families [of whom that of the Zerings was one] easily fall into the
temptation of running into debt without any necessity. It is very difficult to convince them that
it is wrong, as this style of doing business is universal in our valley; indeed, as soon as there
is any prospect of the work, wages are taken in advance. The idea, which our people entertained,
that we would always help them out of their difficulties, arose from the fact of our having
assisted them in this respect, when first they came to us. Then each of them had debts to the
extent of more than 80 rupees, on which they had to pay interest at the rate of more than 25
percent per annum. Considering it a duty of Christian love, we discharged their debts, and
repaid ourselves gradually by their labor. Subsequently, however, we perceived that a life too
free of care is not good for these people, for, as soon as their old debts were discharged, they
plunged into fresh liabilities. As Christian teachers we could not undertake to keep young and
healthy people living in idleness in a place where there was no lack of work, nor would it have
been good for themselves. The consequence was, that discontent soon showed itself among
them; they forgot our kindness and began to say to one another, "Lama is not so kind as he
was at first." We are very thankful that circumstances have led all our people to leave us and
take up their abode in the village, so that they are no more dependent on us in regard to
temporal affairs. Their attendance at the weekday meetings is not so easy as before, but they
come regularly on Sunday, and are more open to reminders and reproofs, than when they were
living with us [the Zerings had by this time re-established home off the mission compound].81
Br. Redslob could report in similar terms on this apparent perennial problem which plagued
the Zering household. The Pagells had both died within one week of each other in early
January of 1883; and missionary Redslob and his family, formerly stationed at Kyelang,
succeeded them in the work at Poo for a year or so. Writing in the late winter of 1884, he
shared the following:
The people of Poo are less reliable than those at Kyelang, and are more inclined to self-
indulgence, a passion which renders it impossible for them to free themselves from debt. Thus
Jonathan, in consequence of pecuniary difficulties, has been obliged to engage himself as
servant to a rich villager for the whole of the summer. I consider this state of things to be
prejudicial to his real interests, and am endeavoring, as well as I can, to free him from this
engagement, but his untrustworthy character renders this a difficult task.82
But another unfavorable characteristic of young Madtha's parents, and one which was
perhaps more deleterious to the well-being of the family, was the ever-present
contentiousness which had developed between these two spouses. In a letter from Poo in
February 1884, Br. Redslob felt compelled to write once again of this Christian family, in
the following terms:
I have not much to report with reference to our small congregation, which consists of three
adults and three children. Br. and Sr. Pagell used to complain ii) their time that the members of
their flock gave them but little cause for encouragement. For several years past the married
couple, Jonathan and Hannah, have been continually at variance with one another. Husband
and wife are always engaged in disputes, which sometimes even lead to acts of violence.83
In a similar vein the very next month God's servant again poured out his troubles stemming
from his continued encounter with the contentious character that never ceased to erupt
between these two squabbling spouses:
With regard to our small congregation, I could not fail already last summer to notice how
frequently the married couple, Jonathan and Hannah, were at variance with one another, as
was already the case in Br. Pagell's time. But the circumstance which causes me most anxiety in
this matter is the fact that Hannah has lately more than once spoken of leaving this place, as
she threatened to do some time ago, and it is no easy task to dissuade her from her purpose and
to reconcile the contending parties. %
Hannah is of a proud and domineering disposition. As every one is afraid of her, she had
things her own way after Br. and Sr. Pagell's death, and she has therefore to be treated with
great firmness. May she not only conform to mere outward ordinances, but may she also yield
obedience to the Word of the Lord!84
It shall shortly be seen that Hannah's contentious disposition was eventually to bring down
upon the family the most tragic of circumstances.
Still another vexation adding to Br. Redslob's difficulties in knowing how best to deal with
Madtha's family had to do with the lack of Christian knowledge and an inability to read on
the part of the Zering parents. In the same March letter, the servant of the Lord at Poo had
to report the following:
I am persuaded that it was right not to admit our Christians here to Communicant membership,
for they are very backward in Christian knowledge. I am laying afresh, as it were, the
foundations of their Christian faith, by relating to them those Bible stories which they have
already heard, but most of which they have again forgotten. The Bible will, of course, have
to be translated into the literary language, but this language, unfortunately, in consequence
of their want of education, is as unintelligible to the common people, even when they have
learnt to read, as ecclesiastical Latin is to a German Roman Catholic peasant. Our Christians
at Poo will therefore have to receive the necessary instruction before they are in a position
to understand printed characters. Jonathan, whose intellectual capacity is weak, cannot
even read; Hannah is receiving instruction from my wife, whilst Jonathan reads with me out
of the Gospels, which I then explain to him. It is to be hoped that an improvement will be
witnessed in this respect in the case of the rising generation. Jonathan's children will receive
a fair education at school.85
*
Yet by far what had the most serious and devastating effect upon both family and missionary
alike was the gross backsliding into "heathenish practices" and the renunciation of the Christian
faith by Jonathan and Hannah and the other Christian family there, who together made up
the entire church at Poo (in the interim they had achieved communicant status, after all). By
this time (1884/5) the Redslobs had been succeeded at this mission station by the Webers;86
and the latter witnessed the cumulative manifestation of this backsliding almost from the
moment they assumed the mission post responsibility. It reached the crisis point in 1889,
nearly six years later, when, according to a report by Dr. Romig of the Mission Department
at Herrnhut, Germany, Br. Julius Weber "was compelled to exclude from church fellowship
all his communicant members ... for inconsistent and evil conduct." The report went on to
say that "instead of these members showing any grief or penitence at having been placed
under Church discipline, they appeared to be glad of it, and shortly afterwards attended a
heathen festival and [again] took part in heathen worship."87
The consequence of all this was that a lengthy period of restoration to normalcy proved
to be quite necessary. Indeed, from the perspective of the Webers, the situation had become
so grave that it had even precipitated their raising the question as to whether or not the Poo
mission should be abandoned. They broached the question, in fact, at an important Moravian
West Himalaya regional missionary conference that was held at Leh in Ladakh during July
1890, only a few short months after Gergan Tharchin's mother had given birth to little Dorje.
It was fortunate for the future of this Tibetan mother and her newborn child, however, that
the missionaries assembled at the conference, after weighing the matter most carefully,
decided to continue maintaining the station. Nevertheless, the backsliding of these two families
resulted in the Webers themselves requesting to be relieved of "the apparently unfruitful
post" at Poo and the Schreve family—heretofore stationed at Kyelang—agreeing to relieve
the Webers.88
The restoration to fellowship and to participation at the Lord's Table was a slow and no
doubt painful one. All the adult converts involved (there were also four innocent children—
including, of course, Madtha—who had been affected by the discipline exacted upon their
parents) eventually demonstrated a spirit of repentance, and even "begged" for readmission
to their Christian privileges. Even so, it was not until the summer of 1891 (the two families
having been excluded in 1889) that, first of all, Benjamin, head of the one family, was restored
to all Christian privileges; that by late the same year, his wife Numba, hitherto a Buddhist,
had become a candidate for baptism;89 and that there was good hope that their two children
would be brought up by the parents according to the promises which had been made at their
child-baptisms.
Jonathan and Hannah's case, though, had apparently been more serious; for it was indicated
in a summary of the Schreve report submitted in late 1891 that this second family "had given
more offense." Nonetheless, Br. Schreve is shown in the summary to have gone on to say
that the Zerings, too, were desirous of being readmitted to the Christian Church; and that
according to the summary, Br. Schreve had written that Madtha's parents were undergoing
instruction with that very desire being the goal They, too, it can be said, were ultimately
reinstated and restored to fellowship.90
But although the Zerings were ultimately restored, the one particular trouble above all the
rest discussed, and which persistently continued to plague them, would, in its consequences,
eventually end in personal tragedy for Hannah herself. It will be recalled that Madtha's
mother possessed what Br. Redslob had termed a contentious, disputatious and violence-
prone disposition. Moreover, he had noted, she was proud and domineering and was insistent
on having things her own way. Regretfully, Hannah never did allow the Lord to deal with this
defect in her character except in the most superficial manner. Her contentious spirit even
provoked a similar, though less severe, disposition in her daughter Thakurma (Trakur). All of
this would prove to be Hannah's undoing, as the following narrative must with sorrow reveal.
In the early 1890s, a young Christian convert—Ga Phuntsok by name—who formerly
had been a Tibetan Buddhist from Leh in Ladakh some 400 miles north of Poo, began
serving the Lord at the Moravian mission station of Kyelang as an evangelist. This was, and
continued to be, throughout all his days the chief calling of God upon his life as he unceasingly
itinerated for the gospel's sake in the regions surrounding Kyelang and beyond. In fact, Ga
Phuntsok was to become one of the most able, intelligent, "beloved and respected native
helpers the Moravians would produce among the Tibetans of Lesser Tibet. Even as early as
1897, the missionaries were commencing to take more than casual notice of him: "Of this
good and faithful man," they wrote in their report at the Kyelang station for that year, "there
is, we are told, every reason to believe that he is, by the grace of God, a Christian indeed, and
that grace has become in him an impelling and a preserving power, which, although not yet
folly developed, is steadily increasing." The report went on to add that it was "pleasing to
know that he fills his place well [as an evangelist], and enjoys the confidence of the people
to such an extent that they not only receive him gladly in their own homes but also come to
see him in his."
As the work of the Kyelang center progressed and expanded, it was decided to establish
an out-station at the small village of Chot (Chod) that though only a scant five miles away
from the mother station proved to be a most arduous two days' journey to negotiate. Here,
Ga, besides carrying on his labors as an evangelist, also began to serve as one of the teachers
(subject: Scripture History class) in the boys' day school that soon came into being there.
Indeed, at one point in his experience at Chot, four of his own ten children—all of them
Christian boys—would themselves be numbered among his classroom scholars!91
Now because in the earlier days at Chot Ga had not yet married, he was provided only a
small dwelling on the mission grounds in which to live. But by the time he had gained a wife
and family a larger house had been set aside for him and which had become "a rendezvous
for the villagers to gather in ... for social intercourse." On Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day, for example, it was always "packed full with people, to whom he [would] relate the
wondrous Christmas story and expound its meaning." In his later life, in fact, when by that
time (1929) he had over two decades already been in charge of the filial station at Chot, it
was said of Ga Phuntsok that "often he assumes the role of peacemaker in private or
communal disputes, and ... uplifts his countrymen by precept and example."
It can perhaps be observed with some justification, therefore, that what motivated Ga to
have assumed for those many years "the role of peacemaker" in such disputes was the
tragic circumstance surrounding Hannah alluded to before—and more particularly, what had
precipitated it—which many years earlier (around 1910 or 1911) had befallen him and his
family suddenly and without warning. But just here the reader needs to be made aware that
by the summer of 1901 Ga Phuntsok had already met and married Madtha Zering's sister,
Thakurma, the daughter of the well-known blacksmith couple at Poo, Jonathan and Hannah.92
This development removed Thakurma from a most unhealthy situation morally and spiritually
and may, in fact, have ultimately constituted the saving grace of God for her if one understands
what had happened at Poo just a few years before.
According to missionary Julius Bruske's diary account for 1898 at Poo, Jonathan and
Hannah had had to be excluded once again from Holy Communion and other church privileges.
This was because, first of all, they had failed to protect, when they easily could have, their
two grown unmarried daughters—one of whom was Thakurma—from being seduced by
the two sons of a local lama into committing fornication that had actually taken place right
within the confines of the Zering home! In his 7 December diary entry missionary Bruske
had to report that "in spite of repeated solemn promises which they had made not to grant
admission into their home to some scoundrels, and in spite of having been reproved repeatedly,"
the parents had not safeguarded the moral purity of their daughters. Their church exclusion
was prompted, second of all, by the fact that Jonathan and Hannah had "denied that D. and
Tr. [the diary abbreviations for the daughters' names] had fallen, calling on God as witness
and avenger for proof of innocence." Yet the fallen daughters, wrote Bruske, had openly
confessed that "the sins had been committed in the house and [in the] presence of their
parents and their younger siblings," with Thakurma (Tr.) admitting that their sexual indiscretion
had occurred on the very "roof of their parents' house."
But what made this sordid incident of 1898 even more reprehensible was the unseemly
attitude and behavior displayed afterwards by the girls themselves. For in the case of D., it
was reported that she "had said to her seducer that [though] he was a Nangpa," now "he
would lose caste"—presumably for having engaged in a sexual union with one of her ilk who
belonged to the lowest caste in the community. Trakur, on the other hand, took a different
stance on the issue of caste; for in the words of Br. Bruske's diary entry, she, in a shameless
show of condescension towards young Dorje Tharchin, had "boasted after D.'s fall had
become public, that while Tharchin (the illegitimate son of Sodnama [whom their brother
Madtha had only just married two weeks earlier]) was the son of a [smith], D.'s child would
have a Nangpa as father"!93
In the light of this entire affair, then, there can be little hesitation in saying that it was
surely the mercy and saving grace of God that Thakurma had the good fortune to meet and
later to have married such an upright, magnanimous and compassionate man as Ga Phuntsok.
The contrast between these two was, to say the least, most startling, bordering in similarity
to the story in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament Scriptures of the prophet Hosea whom J
God had commanded to marry a harlot. Now as these two newlyweds settled down at Chot
and commenced to raise what proved to be an incredibly large family, all seemed at first to
go well for themselves until the moment when Hannah, the mother-in-law, came to live at
Chot in the home of her daughter's family. This had come about some years after the death
in February 1897 of her aged husband Jonathan who had died from what the Poo missionary
of that time had noted as "a second stroke." This fatal stroke, confided missionary Marx in
the Poo Diary, had been accompanied by both "outward and inward pain." Noting that
Jonathan had constituted "one of the first baptized Christians in Poo," the missionaiy added,
with no doubt a twinge of sincere sorrow, that he had died still "excluded from the
congregation." Br. Marx felt compelled to conclude his diary entry with the following pithy
but quite sobering commentary: "He and his surviving widow are a warning example of the
Lord's word that 'there are first that shall be last."94 It was sometime later, then, that the
surviving widow Hannah traveled up north from Poo to be with her daughter at the Kyelang
filial station of Chot.
Almost immediately thereafter, Madtha's sister and mother began to quarrel, the two of
them "not getting on well together" at all. Indeed, over the next several years such quarrelsome
episodes became, unfortunately, a marked feature of their relationship. Then, one day (which
would have been around the year 1910 or 1911), when Ga was absent from home, they went
at each other unmercifully. Because she was "treated so badly" in the fray by Thakurma,
Hannah, by this time having grown sorely "tired of life," weqt to the nearby river where she
took her own life by throwing herself into the water. Unimaginable grief descended upon the |
whole family. Yet, in reporting the suicide, the missionaiy at Kyelang, Br. Hettasch, commented
that "in this case ... there was a sad lack of understanding. So little was [Hannah] clear
about what she was doing that she prayed to God as soon as she found herself face to face |
with the water!" Br. Hettasch added, though, that he had grown to like Hannah,
"notwithstanding the fact that her life in its earlier phases had not been above reproach." It
is to be devoutly hoped and believed that out of this dark and tragic event Thakurma underwent
a profound change in her own heart which impacted for good on her children, her husband j
and the latter's ministry as "peacemaker."95 1
Needless to say, this recounting of so many problems, sordid character lapses and
untold difficulties which dogged the few Christians at Poo (and those from Poo at
Chot) must be viewed as a terribly sad and sorry chapter in the history of this little
mission station. The litany of moral and spiritual inadequacies—seemingly endless in
their number, with even more of them to come—would appear to the casual observer
to hold very little, if any, significance of a positive nature. Yet a deeper inquiry into the
situation and its aftermath will yield a dramatically contrary conclusion. For despite
the admittedly dark picture just now painted, there is sufficient evidence to suggest
that positive consequences emerged for the Poo church in general and for those specific
individuals in particular who would soon exert an influence for good on the life of
Dorje Tharchin. God could—-and did—turn much if not all of it to glory, as the next
chapter of the narrative will attempt to show.
C H A P T E R 2
Early Childhood and Preparation (Concl'd):

The Moravians, Buddhism, and Momentous Years 01 Youth at Poo
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
To them that love God ail things work together for good, even to them that are called
according to purpose.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!
The Lord said unto him,... he is a chosen vessel unto me.
Isaiah 55:8; Romans 8:28,11:33; Acts 9:15
WITHOUT A DOUBT God now had His eye upon "the rising generation," to borrow the phrase
Br. Redslob had used when referring to Jonathan's son and daughters. Although the missionary
wrote these words within the context of a desire for educational improvement amon g members
of the Zering household, unquestionably he had in mind spiritual advancement as well. Br.
Redslob, it will be remembered, was determined that "Jonathan's children will receive a fair
education at [the Poo] school."1 By this time (early 1884) Madtha was eleven years old and
receiving a fairly good education indeed. Within a few months thereafter, there appeared on
the scene Br. Julius Weber, Redslob's replacement, whose endeavor with respect to Madtha
now was "to train [this] Christian youth as a native helper." As the situation at Poo over the
next few years deteriorated, however, and especially within the Zering household itself, it
became clear to the missionary that the "circumstances ... were not favorable for this
[endeavor]." So that in the spring of 1888, just a year before Madtha's family would have to
be removed from church fellowship because of their blatant backsliding, an important decision
was made which would greatly affect the boy's future: Madtha Zering was now to be sent
north to far-off Kyelang. There, in the words of the missionary, "he will be surrounded by
more Christian influence, and can be more thoroughly educated."2
The Heydes and Schreves at Kyelang explained the situation more definitively in their
annual report from that mission station for the year 1888: "On June 7th, the ... boy Madtha
arrived here from Poo. Because of unfavorable circumstances in the parental home, Br.
Weber wished a change of place for him and had asked us to receive him in Kyelang for a
longer or shorter period, which we are glad to do. We pray and hope that the Lord may grant
His blessing on Madtha's living with us."3 As was intimated in the previous chapter, however,
and though the intentions of the missionaries were most worthy and sincere, the outcome of
Madtha's stay at Kyelang for over seven years and his subsequent life at Poo to where he
eventually returned would prove to be, if anything, a mixed blessing. True, his relocation to
the Lahul station had removed this fourteen-year-old Christian lad from the negative influences
of his less than desirable home environment and also shielded him from possibly following
naively in his parents' footsteps when they at one point even renounced their Christian
faith—an action which the son never once did take throughout the many years of his desultory
life of faith in Christ before he took on a more settled Christian existence in neighboring Kulu
province after 1906. Furthermore, subsequent to his arrival at Kyelang it must have come as
82»
something of a shock for Madthato learn of Jonathan and Hannah's excommunication from
the Poo church and to have to witness, as he most surely did even from afar, the slow and
painful process which over the next several years was necessary if his father and mother
were to be restored to normal church fellowship.
Yet would this youth benefit from the very sobering and meaningful lesson provided by
the aforementioned experience? Would he learn, from his parents' terrible weakness and
failure in so many of life's areas, the lesson of what kind of Christian not to be? And
contrariwise, would the far more wholesome and uplifting environment which he would now
have at Kyelang inspire him to become the kind of Christian young man God was expecting
him in fact to be? In retrospect, it must be said with a great deal of sadness that Madtha's
adolescent and young adult faith fell far short of the high hopes and expectations which the
missionaries at both Poo and Kyelang had held out for him. For although this youth had
indeed been lifted out of the deleterious environment of the Zering household the latter's
adverse influence had apparently gained too large a place and too firm a foothold within
Madtha himself during this formative period of his life. Less than wholesome impressions
and habits derived from the daily observation of his parents' flawed lifestyle had perhaps
become so fixed in him by this time that the removal to Kyelang came too late to effect a
solid rescue of the boy's character, as will be made abundantly clear in the pages to follow.
That said, however, it would be difficult for anyone conversant with the situation to deny
the assertion that had Madtha not been sent to Kyelang but had instead remained for the
rest of his adolescent years within the household environment of his parents, this youth
would unquestionably have ended up a terrible profligate, drifter and ne'er-do-well. In short,
he would have amounted to a total cipher of a man rather than the somewhat commendable
indigenous helper and church elder, skilled teacher, able mission station manager and faithful
school supervisor that he ultimately became at Poo in all these fields of endeavor.
Even so, as it turned out, Madtha's further character development at Kyelang—despite
all noble efforts by the missionaries to the contrary—took on traits that were sufficiently
reprehensible to have repeatedly moved God's servants, in their numerous field reports and
diaries over the ensuing years, to voice unending concern, vexation and keen disappointment
about this young man. Typical of the frustrations they encountered in Madtha and of their
candid comments expressed about him were the following:
1889-90 Madtha accompanied Br. Schreve to Leh where he remained with the missionary
over the winter and into the spring of 1890. His conduct there motivated those at Kyelang
later to write that "as [had happened] already here, so Madtha has already given strong
reason for annoyance and grief at Leh."
1893 Madtha was sent on a mission to Kulu with letters to be delivered and money given
him to purchase commodities for the Kyelang station. He promised to be back in twelve
days; instead he "gadded about for more than a month" in Kulu, fell in with bad company,
squandered the money given him, borrowed a large sum of additional money there on the
name of the mission station, which he then foolishly spent by having joined a group of "ill-
reputed musicians" for whom he lavishly provided the food and drink. He also entered into a
relationship with one of that group's girls who was then presumably to become his wife and
The Moravians, Buddhism, awe/ Momentous Years of Youth at Poo 39
return with him to Kyelang (this, mercifully, did not happen). Upon having finally to be sent
for, he came back to Kyelang without the girl, and demonstrated no repentance for having
gone astray, for having caused a huge public scandal both at Kyelang and in Kulu, and for
having brought much disgrace upon the name of Christ. Wrote the missionaries in their grief:
Madtha "has unfortunately caused us much sorrow and pain this year. We had thought that
his having been here for so many years we could trust him more, because he had behaved so
much better in comparison with last year, and [we thought] we could depend on him more
than formerly.... We have excluded him from the congregation with deep regret in the hope
that through discipline he can be brought to a better way."
1894 "To be sure, there was more trouble with Madtha, as he caused dissatisfaction in
the congregation through offensive relationships with the villagers; but we could not rightly
get to the bottom of this."
1895 "Unfortunately Madtha caused us trouble again in that he tried again to gain a wife
for himself in an inadmissible manner...." Given an horrendous set of subsequent
circumstances which the Kyelang missionaries detailed at great length in their Diary and
Annual Report for this year, they felt "there was nothing else for us to do than to exclude
Madtha again ..."
The Kyelang missionaries continued: "After all this had taken place, Madtha of his own
free will made the decision to return to Poo, something we could only desire, inasmuch as he,
through his repeatedly recurring lapses,... had so often caused us harm during his nearly
eight years of being here.... [He] left Kyelang on the 2nd of August. May the Lord have
mercy on [him] and let the change into new circumstances in Poo be the means of a thorough
self-examination!"4
The Diary and Report entries at Poo concerning Madtha during the subsequent years between
1895 and 1907 were not much better, at least in the early and latter periods of his stay here:
1895 "Unfortunately Madtha is not that strong on his own feet that he can earn his daily
bread independently.... He first received the position as an observer in the meteorological
station, a task which keeps him busy for only five minutes in the morning, but it assures him
fully his modest daily bread. He still has to learn that he should earn his bread with the work
of his hands and that this position is considered only an extra, [a lesson] late to be learned by
a [twenty-two]-year-old man."
1896 "Madtha... had mastered the work of meteorological observer. Since he does absolutely
nothing except this, which requires only about five minutes of time each day, he had been told
already many times, the position would be taken away from him. Unfortunately the truth of the
following proverb was also confirmed by him:4 Slothfulness is the beginning of all evil.'...
"... As it was evident that in material things he would never develop any inclination for
work, and that rather through frivolity and loose living he would get further into debt, the
mission took from Madtha the house which he had bought in the spring for 30 rupees, the
amount which had been advanced to him for building the house. This punishment might seem
too severe, so we must observe here that Madtha had been told that we would take him back
as soon as we saw that he was making the effort to live a better life. Unfortunately no
change took place in him."
1897 "... we also had in our midst [Madtha] who had caused great vexation during the
past year because of [his] offensive lifestyle ..."
1906 "... another [person], who was to have been an example for the congregation and
to sow the good seed [i.e., evangelize], was drawn into the net by the evil enemy. That was
the teacher and native helper Madtha. Almost a year ago I alerted him to the dangers of
drink. In love and earnestness I warned him then again, to fight with all resolution in the
strength of Christ against the vice and to give it up. For a time it worked. But then he
succumbed and carried it on worse than ever. One sin leads to another, and finally, [came]
theft and adultery ... How painful and depressing are such experiences!"
1907 "... one asks oneself, How can one keep alive the Christian spirit among those who
have already confessed themselves as disciples? What did we not have to experience with
one Madtha, who for years was appointed as teacher and native helper, and with others?...
He as well as Hirsukh asked my colleague and me ... for readmission into the congregation,
but there was neither earnestness nor true repentance and regret to be seen in them. On the
contrary, the behavior of Madtha after that was such that I had to go after him judicially;
finally he had to pay ... because of his earlier theft."5
Not a very pleasant picture, this! Even so, unbelievable as it may be to assert, there
was a brighter side to Madtha which also needs to be told, for the sake of balance and
fairness to young Dorje Tharchin's future stepfather. The reader will notice a lengthy gap
in this litany of Madtha's character blemishes, a gap which extended from 1897 to 1906.
One would not have to look far to find an explanation for this: his marriage to young
Dorje's mother Sodnama, though not without some further character lapses, seems to
have provided Madtha with the most stable and productive period of his life while under
the care and responsibility of the Moravians. It gave some hope that the labors of the
missionaries towards this young man were not all in vain. Nevertheless, it is the considered
judgment of the present writer that had the faithful and devoted Moravians failed to exhibit—
alongside their firmness and discipline—what was a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of
patience and compassion towards Madtha, none of the positive traits to Madtha's character
now to be delineated would have ever been revealed and nurtured to a point where others,
including Dorje Tharchin himself, could begin to be benefited by them. Due recognition
must therefore be given to these dear servants of God for the patient, tough love which
they continually dispensed in their dealings with such a difficult young man. What follows,
then, is this brighter, laudable aspect to Madtha, culled from the same reports and diaries
quoted from above for both Kyelang and Poo.
1891 "... we yielded to the many requests and pleadings, and hired draught-oxen to
several villagers under Madtha's supervision. Oversight on our part is necessary, if one
wants to be sure that the hired oxen are fed and treated properly." And Madtha would be
responsible to see that this requirement was implemented by the villagers.
"... during the winter the [newly arrived] young man from Nubra will feed the cattle and
do other station-worker tasks [heretofore done by Madtha], as Madtha is [now] busy in the
print shop."
1894 "During the 'speaking' before the Holy Communion6 on Maundy Thursday, it came
out—to our great joy—that... Madtha's heart seemed to be more inclined to (his former
and better) state of heart, but the other members do not want to get a bad name because of
him and had encouraged him and helped him to come back to better ways. Since then,
Madtha shows himself much more approachable and we dare to hope that the work of the
Holy Spirit in his heart is not in vain....
"In December we again began printing for the winter. Since the one who did our printing
until now ... is no longer able to do his work because of illness, Madtha who has helped in
the print shop for various years, has taken his place for the time being."
1898 "Madtha and Sodnama were married to each other and received into the group of
communicants."
1899 "Madtha, who was appointed as teacher during this year, shows skill as a teacher.
In addition to the Christian children, two or three other children attend the school."
1900 "In order to present a stature [sic] of the most advanced Christians as an example
for the others in the Christian walk, and so that they might share in the oversight and exhortation
for a good lifestyle of the members of the congregation, the three, Benjamin, Padma and
Madtha, were selected and installed as Elders of the Poo congregation. Every fourth Sunday,
after the sermon, we have met as the Board of Elders, have discussed all the occurrences in
the congregation, and presented them to the Lord in prayer ...
"In the school, which Madtha conducted faithfully and skillfully, the progress and knowledge
of the children were apparent in an examination which we conducted shortly before Easter.
We had assembled the whole congregation in the church for that."
1902 "After New Year some children from the village also reported for school attendance.
I also found a teacher of Urdu, a young man [Lobsang] whom I hired to work under Madtha's
supervision, to teach Urdu."
1903 "As formerly, again, in addition to Madtha the schoolteacher, a neat young man,
named Lobsang, was hired to instruct Urdu."
1903-4 Missionary Schnabel at Poo writes that during his absence on visits to Chini, "under
the direction of my wife, Madtha conducted two services in the week and kept school, and also
faithfully took care of the [meteorological] observing, the post office and all outside work....
"Even though I myself, because of various circumstances, was not in position to proclaim
the gospel this year on a longer tour, still it was carried into the distance by our Paulu....
Towards the end of September, Paulu, together with Madtha the teacher, visited several
villages in the neighborhood of Poo. Besides Paulu and Madtha, there are not many who
combine with the quiet witness of a good life, also a 'testifying with the mouth'."
1904-5 "The attendance at the schools was not worse than formerly. In the Tibetan class,
which Madtha teaches, there were several newcomers; Paulu gave the Urdu instruction."
1910 "Madtha, the former manager of this mission station, is at the present time in the
service of [an English official,] the Assistant Commissioner in Kulu province, from where he
writes us faithfully and asks for reception back into the Poo congregation ... Because [he]
..., according to the reports of others, [is] living a Christian life and, together with ... a [Poo]
church member and another Christian, [is] maintaining prayer fellowship, [he has] been
granted the readmission."7
As can readily be deciphered from all this documentation, Madtha's desultory faith throughout
his adolescence and young manhood had been sorely tested and had been found to be wanting
in the grossest way. As a matter of fact, it is quite amazing that his faith, as weak and defeatist
as it most surely was, endured at all. The only explanation for it must be found in the fact that
others, both missionaries and congregants, had been faithful in their prayers that Madtha's faith
not disappear altogether. Furthermore, by the time of the last entry quoted above, extracted
from the Poo Diary for 1910 and signed by the Brn. Schnabel and Kunick in September of that
year, there would appear to have developed an even more settled Christian lifestyle in Madtha's
experience than ever before. He had left Poo during the first half of 1906 and had apparently
found himself at last; although, as the record will grievously show, these seemingly encouraging
events had been preceded by Madtha's desertion of his wife Sodnama at the most critical
period in her life.8
More will be said in the next chapter about the far from satisfactory relationship between
Madtha and Dorje Tharchin's mother. Suffice it to say here, however, that it appeared to
typify every apparent advance which marked young Zering's pathway; that is to say, almost
without exception, in every major development concerning this man's earthly walk when
God's missionary servants and others might have found occasion to be encouraged or even
to rejoice, such a reaction could never be unqualifiedly expressed. A dark element, it seemed,
always lurked in the background to rob them of the fullness of joy. It is therefore to be hoped
that Madtha's heretofore inconsistent Christian faith and practice had indeed come to an end
in Kulu to be replaced by a consistent one for the rest of his days. Beyond 1910/11 nothing
further about the man is known, for the missionary records make no more reference to him.
He simply disappears into the mists of time, and one can therefore only speculate as to his
final end.
For the present purpose, however, the excerpts taken from these same records as already
spread before the reader do nonetheless anticipate the discussion of one very interesting and
meaningful facet to Madtha's known life which must now be looked into; namely, that Madtha
Zering became in time a teacher and even supervisor in the mission school at Poo. And as
can best be determined, this was to have a profound influence on Dorje Tharchin.
It will be recalled that Madtha had remained at Kyelang a little over seven years, from 7
June 1888 till the 2nd of August 1895. By late August he was back at Poo, a young man
approaching the age of twenty-three. Over the next three years he drifted in and out of jobs,
numerous troubles of his own making, and the lives of two different women. How he ultimately
settled upon Sodnama to wife is recounted in all its dismal detail in the chapter to follow. But
Madtha did finally enter into marriage with young Dorje's mother, which was solemnized by
missionary Julius Bruske (the Schreves being absent in Europe) on Sunday, 20 November
1898. Sodnama would continue to serve as nurse or governess to the missionary families'
growing children; Madtha would exhibit a more stable character; and within a year, Br.
Schreve would feel confident enough to appoint him as teacher of Tibetan and other subjects
in the mission school.
His selection of Dorje's stepfather to fill this important post would not be a mistake. Indeed,
by the end of 1899 the missionary could boast of Madtha as one who "shows skill as a teacher."
Furthermore, by the turn of the century Rev. Schreve could describe the results of his appointee's
first two years at the helm of the mission school in the following terms:
In the school, which Madtha conducted faithfully and skillfully, the progress and knowledge
of the children were apparent in an examination which we conducted shortly before Easter. We
had assembled the whole congregation in the church for that. In religion, the recitation of
Biblical stories could be evaluated well. Reading and writing was good in the case of the boys,
with the girls [of whom, in 1901, there were three], hardly satisfactory. The results in arithmetic
left much to be desired. The examination confirmed the experience which was made earlier, that
the girl$ are behind the boys with their knowledge. This is probably related to the fact that our
Christians are still of the opinion that all knowledge is excess baggage for the female gender.
After the examination we celebrated it with a little outing for the children.9
Without any question the training Madtha had received at Kyelang for many years in both
school, church and other training at the hands of the missionaries and indigenous helpers
there had stood him in good stead. Unlike the school at Poo where the missionaries could at
best only get their pupils together for three or four months out of the year, the instruction
Madtha received at Kyelang was far more extensive and concentrated because it lasted
without interruption throughout the entire year. It could therefore be taken for granted that
upon returning to Poo Madtha was prepared sufficiently enough to assume his appointed
school post, where he would serve effectively for many years as one of the outstanding
teachers in what was by this time a well-attended day school at Poo. During Moravian
Bishop LaTrobe's stay at the Poo mission in May 1901 (see previous chapter for details), he
made a point of visiting the school, "where," he noted in his journal, "Madtha sat among his
boys."10 Doubtless one of the boys sitting there with Madtha was his very own stepson,
young Dorje Zering! In that year the boy would have just turned eleven years of age the
month before LaTrobe's visit to the school.
When little Dorje had first attended the Poo mission school his Tibetan school books had
been much the same as would have been found most anywhere else: he had begun his initial
schooling with the ABC books. But by the time of his stepfather's schoolmastership at Poo,
the older Dorje would now be using as his reading books the Tibetan New Testament, a
primer of Old Testament history, and a Church history from its commencement to the
Reformation. In addition, he would be imbibing Tibetan writing of a more advanced sort,
geography, history, arithmetic and astronomy (the study of this latter subject indirectly serving
the evangelistic aims of the missionaries in that it would aid in contradicting Buddhist
cosmogony), as well as ilindi and Urdu—all from textbooks or books that had been compiled
or translated by Heinrich Jaeschke, the great German Moravian missionary-linguist and
Tibetan-language scholar, who had himself been stationed decades before (1857-68) at
Kyelang. Jaeschke's interesting description in Tibetan of his journey back to Europe,
incidentally, became a standard reader in the Moravian schools and turned out to be quite a
favorite with the schoolchildren everywhere throughout the Mission; and no doubt Dorje
44 R.AT R .FD FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
Zering was among those who much enjoyed learning geography and history from such a
source. Among other things, this unusual reader "explained that a train was like a Tirey
wooden horse5 ..., that sea-sickness was rather like taking an emetic and that, contrary to
the claims of Tibetan literature, there were no demons on Langka."11 It, like all the other
textbook materials used in the mission classrooms, had been printed by the missionaries on
the celebrated Kyelang lithographic press with the help of the Christian converts there—one
of whom, as was learned earlier, was Madtha himself.12
Although no description had been given of the Poo school's normal daily activities by the
good Bishop LaTrobe in the account of his visit there in 1901, happily there was one given in
a report from Poo for 1915 which is quite enlightening and more than likely reflects little
change from what it was like fourteen years earlier during Madtha's teaching days:
Among the scholars there are six adults, who desire instruction in four languages. Two lamas
study Hindi, and another priest is learning to write Tibetan in cursive characters. A merchant,
who has traveled far and wide, wants to master English, and two other inhabitants of Poo are
learning Urdu. Meanwhile, in the same room, the children are writing Tibetan in its classical
characters, and classes are carried on in geography, arithmetic, Bible history, etc. It is somewhat
of a Babel, yet good results are attained, as the examinations attest.13
It was in just such a rude setting as this that young Dorje Tharchin received his early academic
training and where by his own acknowledgment long afterwards he was "educated in Tibetan
and Urdu" and where he would study "up to the age of sixteen"—or to the year 1906.14
Despite the "one-room Babel" which often characterized his educational experience, young
Dorje would nonetheless benefit greatly from these early school years at Poo.
Now the reader will become aware much further on in this biography that Dorje (later
Gergan) Tharchin came to be regarded by many as a respected scholar in classical Tibetan
studies, including both the spoken and written language. One might wish to speculate as to
what, in his early days, might have directly contributed to this bent towards classical scholarship.
Obviously it must not be overlooked that mdirectly, it was the solid emphasis placed upon
education and learning in the classical mold by the Moravian missionaries themselves which
made it possible for any Tibetan child enrolled in the Mission schools to obtain aêtter-than-
average foundation academically. Without their pioneering efforts none of what follows in this
discussion would have any meaning. Nevertheless, it may be helpful if an attempt is made to
determine the roots of Dorje Tharchin's subsequent inclination towards classical Tibetan studies.
And hence an indulgence in speculation may have some merit here.
At the outset it may not be incorrect to state that just here, in the simple and quite limited
surroundings of the one-room school at Poo described so vividly in the above quotation, there
is provided part of the answer to such speculation. And as the Poo records quoted from
earlier have made plain, Madtha himself was the very teacher who instructed young Dorje in
his classical Tibetan language studies. For it should not be forgotten that this young lad's
stepfather had been educated during the latter part of his most formative years at the highly
intellectual and academic mission center of Kyelang, where a great premium had been
placed upon classical Tibetan in all its forms. Here, for instance, was where the universally
acclaimed Moravian missionaiy scholars in Tibetan language and literature, Heinrich Jaeschke
and the Rev. Dr. A. H. Francke, were based off and on for many years. It was at Kyelang,
in fact, where most if not all of the Jaeschke New Testament translation into classical
Tibetan had been prepared and, after publication, made available to layman and academic
alike. And though, as the reader will subsequently learn, a revised New Testament was soon
to be published at Ghoom in Northeast India, and served as the New Testament for Dorje
Tharchin's daily devotions during his latter teen-age years, nonetheless, this revision still
retained intact much of the Jaeschke classical Tibetan in its text. And hence, during young
Tharchin's late adolescent years, he was still being exposed by this means, albeit in a modified
form, to the classical Tibetan tradition. It is therefore inconceivable that during his seven-
year stay at the Kyelang mission, Madtha had not imbibed to a certain degree some of the
knowledge and language skills in classical Tibetan which were readily available there.
Consequently, on almost a daily basis both in schoolroom and at home with his family,
young Dorje Zering must have benefited from his association with his stepfather. Although
when dictating his "memoirs" the elder Tharchin was entirely silent concerning Madtha
Zering (and for reasons which may perhaps become clear in Chapter 3 to follow), it is hard
to believe that between 1899 and 1906 (that is to say, from the age of nine to sixteen) he was
not in one way or another an indirect beneficiary of his stepfather's educational training
gained at Kyelang. Furthermore, it has come to light that prior to his leaving Poo for good in
1910/11, Dorj e Tharchin had himself visited Kyelang for stays of varying length during which
he could easily have assimilated directly the fruits of learning in Tibetan and other subjects to
be had there. In a letter written to the present author by an elderly Tibetan lady who is still a
resident of one of the nearby regions to Poo and is knowledgeable in such matters dating
from that period, she could assert that "Tharchin used to go to Kaylang [Kyelang] often
because some of the missionaries were in Kaylang and some were in Poo. So he lived at
both%places."15
Hence, at least by these two means available to him—his teacher-stepfather Madtha and
his own exposure at Kyelang directly—this young lad from Poo was being grounded and
prepared in a very basic and fundamental way to appreciate the classical Tibetan language
and literature that would serve him well when he later launched forth his own scholarly
studies in Tibetan at Ghoom, Kalimpong and in Tibet itself. As will be discussed later, in fact,
one of Tharchin's expressed motivations—unsuccessful though in the end it proved to be—
for him to leave Poo temporarily in 1908 and permanently in 1910 was "to go to Tibet and
study the Tibetan language more."16 Indeed, it was years later, with the completion of his
higher studies in Tibetan at Lhasa, that he most likely received the venerable title of dge-
rgan17 (Gegen or Gergan, the more easily spellable and pronounceable Western variants),
which means Guru or Teacher. In the context of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic culture, it is
the gergan (or gegen) who teaches the novice monks and those children intended for
monastic life how to read and write, and how to recite the various obligatory texts and
formulas.18 It developed that this title of "Gergan," like "Tharchin" itself, was from that
moment onward an appellation that would ever afterwards be identified with the name of the
man from Poo who had been born simply as Dorje. (In effect, it might be said that in his own
inimitable way he would shine forth as a "teacher of success" in a variety of fields throughout
his life, not least of which would be a scholarly pursuit of classical Tibetan studies in which
he would continuously excel.)
Little Dorje Zering, of course, could scarcely realize how fortunate he was to have been
living where he was when he was, insofar as his spiritual rebirth in Christ was concerned. If
ever there was an instance when Romans 8:28 of the New Testament was valid and true in
the lives of human beings (see at the head of the present chapter for the text of this verse),
it was very much so in his case and in that of all the other Tibetans in this region who had had
the privilege of hearing the gospel of redeeming love and had responded to the Christian
message. But to appreciate the force of what has just been asserted, the reader will need to
be apprised somewhat more than what has thus far been told of the history of the Moravian
Mission to Tibet and of how Rev. Schreve and the others before him had come to be at Poo
and the other Mission centers which eventually ringed the western border of Tibet. For it
needs to be understood that originally Tibet and Tibetans were not in the least in the minds of
the Moravian Brethren back in Europe when the two missionaries who had first arrived in
Lesser Tibet were chosen to be sent forth on a mission in behalf of the gospel. And that is
why it can so unequivocally be said that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful inherent in the
spiritual reality of Romans 8:28 has such a clear and dramatic bearing on the life of this little
lad who had been born in such humble and obscure surroundings. It now remains for the
story to be told which will amply confirm the truth of these observations which have been
prompted by this noteworthy passage from the Christian Scriptures.
It all began back in 1853 at a small religious village community by the name of Hermhut
that had been created a century and more before on a Christian nobleman's estate near
Dresden, in Saxony, Germany. The nobleman was none other than the passionately devoted
Christian, Nicolaus Ludwig, Graf (Count) von Zinzendorf, and the religious community of
Herrnhut had been created on his ancestral estate at Berthelsdorf. More than a few words
need to be said about this outstanding Christian nobleman and the establishment, growth and
development through the centuries of the particular Church community on his estate over
which he would preside for nearly a quarter of a century. And here the present writer is
indebted to Rev. John A. Graham, author of a valuable volume on the missionary expansion
of the Reformed Churches (of which Zinzendorf's group was such an illustrious member), j
' ' i
for providing a highly informative historical sketch, extensive excerpts from which are truly
worth quoting. For this sketch, quite moving at times, can perhaps help to explain to the
reader to some degree how it was that the protagonist of this present narrative came to
possess, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, such a strong, vibrant living faith which
served him so well throughout the ebb and flow of his many days on earth. For as one
modern-day Christian has so rightly observed: "Origins often determine destiny"; and without
any doubt it was the nurturing influence of the Moravian Christian missionaries during the
critical first twenty years of Gergan Dorje Tharchin's life which accounts in great measure
for the solid and sure spiritual foundation that would ever afterwards characterize his long
and fruitful career. And hence it will not be out of place at all to pause for a few moments to
consider the inspiring history of this unique Christian community, including a brief sketch of
its early principal leader and an introduction to but a few of its numerous selfless endeavors
on behalf of Christ and His kingdom. Writing in 1898, Graham began his discussion of the
Moravians as follows:
When Martin Luther nailed his Theses to the church door at Wittenberg in Germany [in 1517]
there were in Bohemia and Moravia 400 congregations with 200,000 members of the Ancient
Unity of the Brethren [or, Unitas Fratrum, founded in 1457], the disciples of John Hus, that
"Reformer before the Reformation" (and martyred in 1415); but a cruel and relentless persecution
by Church and State in the beginning of the seventeenth century almost exterminated them.
The last of their bishops, John Comenius, fleeing into Poland in 1628, prayed as he crossed the
frontier that God would maintain a seed to serve Him. "The hidden seed" was indeed marvelously
preserved, and in 1717 it was quickened by the Spirit of God. Christian David, a converted
village carpenter, himself not a member of the United Brethren, was instrumental under God in
bringing about the awakening among the Protestants of Bohemia. Learning that a safe asylum
might be found in Saxony, on the estate of Count Zinzendorf at Berthelsdorf, he, with nine
others, secretly left his Moravian village under cover of night; and when, on 17th June 1722, his
axe felled the first tree of their new settlement, called Herrnhut, or "watch of the Lord," he fixed
the site of one of the great classic centers of Christian life and work, the seat of what is
popularly known as the Moravian Church.
In Count Zinzendorf the exiles found a benefactor wonderfully prepared of God. His
grandfather, the representative of one of the most ancient noble families in Austria, had also
left his fatherland for conscience' sake. Philip Spener, the founder of the Pietists, stood sponsor
at his baptism (1700), and he was nurtured in the atmosphere of Pietism. Before he was six years
old he had made the covenant, "Be Thou mine, dear Savior, and I will be Thine." His school
days were spent at Halle, under A. H. Francke (Sr.), who, then busied with the Tranquebar
Mission [in India], no doubt sowed in his mind the seeds of those mission thoughts which
bore such abundant fruit. At fifteen (in 1715 ...), he founded "The Order of the Grain of
Mustard Seed," whose members were, among other things, pledged to seek the conversion of
Jews and heathen, and whose first article was, "The members of our Society will love the whole
human race." Another youthful covenant with a likeminded friend, Baron von Watteville, was of
prophetic import in its reference, "Especially to such heathen as nobody else would regard." Nor
must his marriage covenant be forgotten, under which his wife and he stood ready, "with pilgrim's
staff in hand, to go and preach the gospel to the heathen," if such were the Lord's will; and it was
while he was absent on his marriage tour that there reached his estate Christian David and his
comrades, in whom Zinzendorf recognized "the parish destined for him from eternity."
To this shelter at Berthelsdorf came the persecuted from many lands. A hard colony it was
to manage, from its variety of elements, but a revival in 1727 helped to weld these together. In
1732, when Foreign Mission work was definitely undertaken by them, the community consisted
of six hundred souls, old and young.
It was a visit by Count Zinzendorf to Copenhagen, Denmark, on the occasion of the
coronation of his relative, King Christian VI, that gave direction to the mission thoughts which
had been in the minds of the Herrnhuters. Among the gay crowd was Anthony, a negro from
St. Thomas, a Danish island in the West Indies, and through him came the Macedonian call
[see in the New Testament, Acts 16:8-10] to Zinzendorf and the Moravians. Anthony, who had
been seeking after God, and had been baptized at Copenhagen, afterwards visited Herrnhut
and pleaded the cause of the negro slaves, and especially of his sister, who had shared in his
spiritual longings. The Spirit's message to the Church was to separate Leonhard Dober, a
potter, and Tobias Leupold for this work. With what brave, simple, true words did Dober plead
to be sent!... After a year's hesitation and deliberation on the part of the congregation, lots
were cast, and proved favorable to Dober, though unfavorable to Leupold, who, however,
followed later.... Receiving help and encouragement from thfe Danish royal family (never to be
forgotten in Mission history), they set sail on 8th October 1732 for St. Thomas. "From Greenland's
icy mountains," too, did the call come to the Moravians at that coronation ceremony through
two of [Danish Mission missionary] Egede's converts [from Greenland] who were present. The
sight of them greatly impressed Zinzendorf, especially in view of the proposed abandonment
of the Danish Mission, and on his return to Herrnhut he unburdened his mind to the brethren.
Again the Spirit touched simultaneously the hearts of two young men, Matthew Stach and
Frederick B5nisch, who, while at their work in the grounds, "believing with all simplicity in the
promise to two or three [see Matthew 18:19-20],... knelt down by the next brushwood and
begged we would be guided to do right." Stach and his cousin Christian, "with nothing but the
clothing on our backs," were the first to start, having received as their guiding principle the
command "in all things to follow the Spirit of Christ." ... A high official, Count Pless,... at
Copenhagen,... [gave] a gift ..., and the persistent faith of the men ended in their sailing to
Greenland in April 1733....
Thus were the Moravians, when they were but a feeble folk, led to be the pioneers among
the churches of the Reformation in undertaking missions to the heathen, and no church has
come nearer to the missionary spirit and methods of the first century. Very suggestive is their
Episcopal seal, "Our Lamb has won; let us follow Him." [If] we trace ... the story of the various
early efforts made by the Brethren, we shall find in them the impress of the life and ideas of the
good Count Zinzendorf, who for twenty-three years (from 1737 till his death in 1760) was the
bishop or superintendent of the church. Years before the missions were started he had sung
that "Herrnhut or stands or falls," according as—
We ever ready prove
to be scattered far and wide,
A salt to fertilize the earth.
No wonder that the Moravian outlook was wide as the habitations of men, seeing that it was
guided by a man who could say, "The whole earth is the Lord's; men's souls are His; I am
debtor to all"; or again, "Henceforth that place is my home where I can have the greatest
opportunity of laboring for my Savior.^ Zinzendorf's methods have been criticized; he has
been called excitable, eccentric, and wrong-headed; perhaps he was one-sided in his theological
opinions; but there he stands out: one of the most notable figures in the history of missions,
one who by his labors and his sufferings and the power of his noble example deserves a high
place in the story of the missionary expansion of the Church. As statesman and ecclesiastical
administrator, as poet and preacher, he showed himself to be no common man....
Many other missions, afterwards abandoned, did the Moravians attempt in the eighteenth
century. Such were those to the Parsis of Persia, to Ceylon, the East Indies, Tranquebar, and the
Nicobar Islands, to the Calmuck Tartars, to China, Egypt, Algiers, and the Guinea Coast. The
story of the nineteenth century is a record of similar devotion to peoples and places, deemed by
many to be impracticable—for example, to the degraded aborigines of Australia and the abodes
of snow on the Tibetan frontier; and nothing could be more eloquent of the spirit which still
animates them than their latest enterprise, the Leper Home beyond the Jaffa gate of Jerusalem.
No finer tribute has probably ever been offered up in honor of the Moravians than that
accorded them by Rev. Graham in the same volume of his on missionary expansion just now
quoted from. Himself a missionary in Northeast India at the time of writing this work, which
was at the close of the nineteenth century, Graham penned the following extremely respectful
eulogy that served to conclude the historical outline he had laid out for his readers in his
chapter on the worldwide evangelistic enterprise of the Moravians. That chapter, incidentally,
was entitled quite simply, but most meaningfully, "A Missionary Church." Its laudatory
conclusion is worth placing before the present readership in its entirety.
We have done nothing more than hint at the heroic labors of the early Moravian apostles, the
pioneers of more tlian 2000 whom that little village of Herrnhut sent out during 165 years.
Scholars and men great in the world's estimation have not been wanting in their ranks, but the
great majority of them have been very humble men and women, often supporting themselves
by the labor of their own hands. No nobler and truer soldiers of the Cross, however, have gone
forth to the battle of the Lord, and very few of them have proved failures in their Christian life.
Their humble position has on occasion been a subject of ridicule. For example, a trader tried to
persuade one of Rauch's Indian converts who had been saved from drunkenness that the
Brethren were not privileged teachers, "It may be so," was the unanswerable reply, "but I know
what they have told me and what God has wrought within me. Look at my poor countrymen
there lying drunk before your door! Why do you not send privileged teachers to convert
them?" In the midst of persecution and slander their motto has been, "Remain silent and wait
upon God"—an attitude, no doubt, strengthened by that petition from their Litany, "From the
unhappy desire of becoming great, preserve us, gracious Lord and God." A distinguished
writer on missions, who does not usually spare criticism, has said, "If I wished to praise a
missionary I should say that he is worthy of being a Moravian."
It has sometimes been objected that the Moravians go to the wrong places, where they
have to endure unnecessary hardships, and to the wrong races, to peoples who are degraded
or fast dying out. But while this criticism does not apply to all their fields of labor, these are
exactly the considerations which weigh with them in going out into the world's highways and
hedges. "If we have been cast out and rendered homeless, it must be the Divine will that we
shall become the ambassadors of the Master, who had not where to lay His head" [see Matthew
8:20]. They believe that the most abject and most remote "are within the line of that covenant
which embraces the ends of the earth." They have been called the leaders of the forlorn hope
of evangelization. While not minimizing the importance of evangelizing the higher and more
aggressive races, they think they have a special genius for reaching those neglected peoples,
and the fact that a race seems to be dying out is to them precisely the argument for urgency.
They look not so much at the race as the individual soul. The consumptive member of the
family, wasting away on his sickbed, receives the most tender care, and the Moravians would
apply this principle to the whole human family. They have proved incontestably that no people
are so sunken in the scale of humanity that they cannot be reached by the Gospel of Christ. We
do not admit that they have been wrong, but even though they had been, surely theirs has
been a "magnificent blunder," one infinitely more significant in the missionary world than the
brilliant charge of the Light Brigade in another sphere. Generation after generation of them go
out to the great fight, nothing daunted by the hardships and death of their predecessors, and
it is perhaps a unique experience in the history of missions to find members of the same family
through six successive generations evangelizing among the red men of North and South
America.
The Moravian Church survived the deadening rationalism of the eighteenth century
largely, we believe, because of its missionary spirit, and its example did much to encourage
the present missionary activity of the Churches. Nor is it even now unworthy of emulation
by the rest of Christendom. As one of themselves has said, they "early realized that the
business of a Christian's life is not to become one of a select coterie, a clique banded
together, to luxuriate selfishly in the enjoyment of personal religion, but that the express
commands of the Lord and the needs of the times demand the most strenuous efforts for the
evangelization of the world and the furtherance of Christ's kingdom." Today the membership
of these churches is, in the three provinces of Germany, England and America [the
ecclesiastical administrative divisions of the Church], 36,950 in 156 congregations, and that
of the Mission churches nearly three times as large! One in every sixty of their communicants
is a missionary to the heathen, and the whole Church may be said to be missionary. "The
Unity of the Brethren and missions are inseparably connected. There is never a church of
the Brethren without a mission to the heathen, nor a mission of the Brethren which is not the
affair of the church as such." The place which missions have in the heart of that Church is
seen in the beautiful prayer for their Sunday morning service:—
Thou Light and Desire of all nations,
Watch over Thy messengers both by land and sea;
Prosper the endeavors of all Thy servants to spread Thy Gospel among heathen nations;
Accompany the word of their testimony concerning Thy atonement, with demonstration
of the Spirit and of power;
Bless our congregations gathered from among the heathen;
Keep them as the apple of Thine eye;
Have mercy on Thy ancient Covenant people, the Jews;
Deliver them from their blindness;
And bring all nations to the saving knowledge of Thee;
Let the seed of Israel praise the Lord:
Yea, let all the nations praise Him;
Give to Thy people open doors to preach the Gospel, and set them to Thy praise on
earth. Amen.19
Now with an awesome missionary-minded background such as this among the United
Brethren, it should come as no surprise to learn that there at its Christian village of Herrnhut
the Mission Board of the Moravian Church sat down one day in the presence of the Lord to
choose two laymen who were then to be commissioned to travel Eastward to open another
mission: yet not in Tibet but Mongolia! This had all come about through "the magnetic
enthusiasm" of a most imaginative servant of God.20 Three years earlier the pioneer German
Protestant missionary to China, Dr. Charles Friedrich Augustus Gutzlaff (1803-51),21 on a
furlough back to his native land just one year before his death,visited Herrnhut in 1850 and
urged his hearers on the Mission Board there to re-establish work among the Mongols in far-
off Central and East Asia.* Several attempts had, in fact, been undertaken during the
previous century and more by the Moravians themselves. Count Zinzendorf himself had
gazed with longing eyes at the East Asian countries and even spoke poetically in one of his
own hymns of the probability that the gospel of Christ would eventually be communicated to
the Persians and Mongols.22 From 1735 to the end of the eighteenth century the Moravians
had struggled to find hearts open to the gospel in southern Russia among the Volga River
Calmucks, a branch of the Mongol race23 and—like many Mongols—devoted to the Lamaist
or Tibetan Buddhist faith, but without much success.
In 1815, however, the Mission to the Calmucks was renewed "under the protection of
Emperor Alexander I and his minister Prince Galitzin,"24 resulting in the emergence of a
flock of twenty-three Christian converts at the Moravian settlement of Sarepta (presently a
suburb of Volgograd) in the province of Astrachan. The place chosen, located as it was
among the Volga steppes at the confluence of that famed river and the Sarpa, was well
made, inasmuch as numerous nomadic Calmucks surrounded the spot, and its close proximity
to the "grand route" running from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the East provided excellent
opportunities for preaching Christ to Armenians, Georgians, Persians, Tartars and Hindus.25
The success of the Moravian Church here would be short-lived, however, due first of all
to the persecution of these recent converts by the jealous Buddhist lamas who, naturally
feeling quite threatened by the effects of the Moravian teaching, now drove out the Calmuck
Christians from among their own tribes, thus forcing them to seek refuge within the Moravian
settlement near Sarepta that was situated on an island in the river Volga. There they were all
heartily welcomed and steps were also taken by the Moravians for further development of
the mission work among the Calmucks, despite the persecution. All this had occurred in
1821.26 But the success of the missionary effort was short-lived for a second reason: political
intervention behind the scenes against the Moravians themselves, this latter action having
been set in motion the very next year by ecclesiastics within the Orthodox Church in Russia.27
For in 1822 a Government edict, obviously provoked by the aforementioned ecclesiastics,
was suddenly issued commanding the Brethren there to "give up their missionary work and
[commanding] the baptism of their converts to the ... [Orthodox] Church, on whom alone
this [missionary] duty devolved."28 Moreover, "this severe blow to the believing flock," as
one chronicler of this period noted with sadness,
* Actually, this visit by Gutzlaffto Herrnhut was a mere stopover along his way elsewhere in his travels on the
Continent to make known the need and claims of China for the Christian gospel. Having reached Europe early in
1850, Gutzlaff, still "burning with love to Christ and zeal for the advancement of His cause," had begun—in
London as the starting-point—"a missionary crusade of the most remarkable kind. From Ireland to Hungary he
passed, proclaiming in all the leading capitals of Europe the duty of the Christian Church towards the unevangelized
millions of China... with the result that multitudes were on their knees praying as never before." And one of the
various outcomes, incidentally, of this unusual crusade and the much prayer it had engendered was the raising up
of the China Evangelization Society that would subsequently send out to China Mr. J. Hudson Taylor, the future
founder of the China Inland Mission, the largest and most respected of all Protestant missionary societies related
to the work of the gospel in that vast Asian land. Indeed, so great was the impact which this German missionary
entrepreneur had had on Taylor that the latter in later life would sometimes speak of Gutzlaff as "the grandfather
of the CIM " But Gutzlaff's European crusade also resulted, as will shortly be seen, in the eventual establishment
of a missionary effort by the Moravians to the Tibetans. See F. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor in Early Years:
the Growth of a Soul (1911; reprint ed., London, 1923), 88, 91.
was followed by new persecutions on the part of their countrymen, by whom they were not
unfrequently attacked, carried off, and fearfully maltreated. In the end they were obliged to join
the ... [Orthodox] Church, from which they received baptism. Since then several hordes have
been visited by brethren from Sarepta, who made known the gospel to them; but the above-
mentioned edict effectually put a stop to a more permanent work.29
By 1823 the work was totally abandoned.
What Dr. Gutzlaff's urgent representations at Herrnhut in 1850 did, therefore, was to
revive the memory in the minds and hearts of the Moravian Brethren everywhere of these
earlier efforts to convert the Mongol race. Long experienced already in missions to some of
the most challenging and remote areas of the world, these devout Moravians—and especially
those on the Directing Board—in response to Dr. Gutzlaff's suggestions, "resolved to take
measures for the establishment of a mission to the Mongols inhabiting the northern provinces
of the Chinese empire, as soon as qualified candidates would be found, and the best mode of
commencing the work ascertained."30 They now issued an appeal among their Brethren for
volunteers, garnering thirty who answered the call. And out of these thirty, two were selected
to go forth, they first to make preliminary inquiries.
The two brothers chosen to go on this high-risk adventure for the Lord were the laymen
J. Edward Pagell, a Pomeranian, and Augustus William Heyde, a Silesian. Both of them
were "men of courage and endurance, endowed with considerable mental powers developed
by a fair ordinary education, but without theological training."31 As a preparation for what
lay ahead, the first task these two set themselves to accomplishing was to go to Kônigsfeld
to study the Calmuck and Mongol languages. This would be under the instruction there of
Br. Zwick who for years had been one of the Moravian messengers of the gospel to the
Calmucks in and around Sarepta (and warden of the church congregation there) thirty years
before during the very period when the issuance of the Government edict had shattered the
hopes for any further work among the Mongols at that time.32
After language study Pagell and Heyde next traveled to Berlin where they obtained at
the Charité Hospital some practical knowledge in medicine and surgery, a course of study
that would later prove to be of inestimable value for them on the field. Once having been
ordained Deacons at Herrnhut by Moravian Bishop J. G. Breutel,33 they set forth in faith
believing that God had called them as missionaries of the gospel to spread the Good News to
those among the Mongols in the north of Imperial China who had never heard.34
Now the most natural and logical plan by which to proceed to Chinese Mongolia was to
get there by way of Russia and the Kirgiz steppes, a worthy challenge in itself; but upon
inquiry they were refused the necessary passports through this territory by the Russian
government,35 not only because man (the Russian authorities) stood in their way, but apparently
because God (the Highest Authority) did too, for He had plans other than Mongolia in mind
at the moment: at least for these heralds of the gospel! Undeterred, however, Pagell and
Heyde were still bent on reaching Mongolia to preach Christ's salvation message there. Yet,
what might have now appeared to be the most convenient alternative method of access to
Chinese Mongolia—that by way of Peking—does not seem to have been considered by
these two, even though subsequently it did prove to be a successful route for one of the
gospel heralds of the London Missionary Society. Even so, had this alternate method of
access actually been mentioned to the Moravians, more than likely too little was known
about it at the time to have justified its selection anyway.36
In the event, what these two Moravian brothers ended up doing turned out to be a plan
almost equally as challenging as their original one by which to arrive at their goal. This was for
them to first travel west in the world, then south, then east, then west again, and finally north!
And hence, they initially journeyed to England, where, upon arriving in London, they were soon
introduced to the Secretaries of the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society (CMS). These latter
furnished Pagell and Heyde with letters of recommendation to the CMS missionaries at Calcutta
and other places along the line of their route to the Himalaya Mountains of India,37 a path
which these gospel heralds now saw as their only hope of advancing towards their goal.
Itwas on 31 July 1853, in fact, that the two Moravians finally commenced the longjourney
from Portsmouth, England, sailing on the ship Monarch and under the friendly Escort of the
Rev. Mr. Rebsch of the CMS, who was returning to his missionary post in India.38 By thus
sailing from England to Calcutta, where they landed on 23 November, and more specifically
onward by land and river (they being rowed up the Ganges!) to the Himalayan hill stations of
Northwest India, they hoped to trek through Tibet and deeper into Central Asia and onward to
Mongolia.
These intrepid travelers did in fact reach one of these hill stations, the most important one
of Simla, early in 1854; and their first destination, after a well-deserved rest, was the village
of Kotgarh some 50 miles away to the northeast. (As will be learned subsequently, this very
hill village would figure quite prominently in the lives of both Dorje Tharchin and his future
revered friend Sadhu Sundar Singh.) Here the two fledgling missionaries were met by the
longtime (1843-58) medical missionary and pastor at this hill station, the Rev. Dr. J. D.
Prochnow of the CMS, who welcomed them as co-laborers in the cause of Christ.39
The missionary society to which Rev. Prochnow belonged had taken up mission work in
the Punjab in 1852. Thanks to some "magnificent gifts" from a succession of distinguished
English governors over the Punjab (which after bloody campaigns in 1845 and 1849 had
been annexed in the latter year to Britain's Indian Empire), the CMS was enabled to establish
in quick succession a number of mission stations: Amritsar in 1852, Kangra two years later,
and Multan and Peshawar the year after that. Moreover, by 1853 the CMS had received
from the Himalaya Missionary Union (founded by a number of wealthy Englishmen at Simla
in 1840) that mission society's two stations at Simla and Kotgarh, both having been established
in 1843. Rev. Prochnow, who had been at the Kotgarh mission station from its very inception,
had decided to remain here under the new aegis of the CMS.40
He it now was who, by pre-arrangement in London, had graciously secured for the two
Moravians, Heyde and Pagell, a suitable dwelling place at Kotgarh and who would proceed
to "render them every assistance in his power, till the Lord," one chronicler noted, should
"open a door for their entrance into Mongolia."41 For many months thereafter they remained
with Prochnow, where they perfected themselves in English, continued their study of Mongolian,
and began to learn both Hindustani and "the 'sacred language' of Asia," Tibetan.42
Within a year after their arrival here, and even though they were now aware that two Roman
Catholic missionaries had only recently been murdered in their attempt to enter Tibet via Assam in
Northeast India,43 Pagell and Heyde set out on a preliminary tour of investigation that would last
some seven months (March-October 1855) and would take them across the Indo-Tibetan frontier
by way of passes varying in height between 13,000 and 17,000 feet above sea level. Yet far to the
north of Kotgarh at the town of Leh (the capital of the vast, mostly barren, district of Ladakh in what
is now the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir), they "were made to feel anything but welcome."
Nor "did they discover a bright prospect for a mission" when they finally crossed over the forbidden
frontier of Tibet to the east of Leh, they actually pushing forward through a few villages. Not only
were they refused by the Tibetans to buy provisions of any kind for both man and beast; but also, the
gopas, or headmen of each village visited, urged these Europeans to return from whence they had
come, asserting in conclusion that "if they did not succeed in stopping them, they themselves would
have to answer to higher officials with their heads."44
More than thirty years later, it should be here noted, the situation along the border had not
changed one iota. Pagell's successor at Poo, Rev. Weber, gave an account of what he, too,
encountered only one day's journey inside Chinese Tibet at the town of Shipki just east of
Poo. It was the summer of 1888. Weber wrote in part as follows:
I had settled with my attendants that they should accompany me into the interior of Tibet as far
as I wished. When the headmen of Shipki heard of this they tried to dissuade me from my plans.
I replied that I in no wise asked for their help, and whither I wished to go was no concern of
theirs. To this they answered that personally they were not averse to me or my plans; they had,
however, received orders from the authorities to resist the advance of any European, if necessary
with force. If they did not, severe punishment awaited them, perhaps even death. They showed
me scars and wounds which they had received for offenses which would have been considered
by the [Tibetan] Governor quite trivial as compared with the heinous sin of allowing any
European to enter the country....
Under these circumstances I could only do what Br. Pagell had done before me, give up my
plan. If I pursued it the headmen of Shipki would answer for it with their lives, or limbs; so with
a heavy heart I turned homeward. I was accompanied by some of the village inhabitants, not
from friendship, but rather from mistrust lest, in spite of my promise, I might take a detour and
find the way into the interior of their country.45
Perhaps right here the reader ought to be apprised of the reasons for this highly stringent
exclusion policy on the part of Tibet; for it was of such far-reaching importance that more
than a few words need to be said concerning it. In his book, Four Years in Tibet (by which
the author meant in Indian Tibet and between 1894 and 1897), the Rev. E. Ahmad Shah, an
Indian Christian national who spent four years as medical missionary in Ladakh with the
CMS, especially at its Leh hospital, gave four main explanations for why until 1905 Tibet had
been in his view "the most impenetrable country in the world." The significance of the year
1905 lay in the fact that it was the year following the first and only Western invasion of the
country and penetration of Lhasa itself, this by the British.
First, said Ahmad Shah, Tibetans learned from indigenous travelers crossing the Himalayas
from Kashmir, North India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan that the rise and progress of the new
empire of India had been advancing little by little towards Tibet's own borders, and thus the
Tibetan authorities came to regard the presence of such a powerful neighbor to the south "as a
possible source of danger to their independence."*46 Apathetic though the Tibetans are by
nature, continued Ahmad Shah, when "their feelings are worked upon by the power-loving
lamas, they find motives strong enough to stir whatever feelings of political independence they
may possess and assist the authorities in their efforts to exclude all foreigners from the land."
Second, word about the introduction by the British and other Westerners of the
"revolutionizing breechloader"—a gun far superior to the flintlock of the indigenous peoples
of the Himalayan regions between Kashmir and Bhutan—eventually reached Lhasa and
motivated the authorities even more to do all to prohibit those who possessed such terrible
weapons from entering their Closed Land. This observation by Shah compares favorably with
Gabriel Bonvalot's account of his journey with Prince Henri d'Orléans through Tibet in the late
nineteenth century. These French travelers were welcomed into the Forbidden Land once it
was determined by the frontier officers that they were neither from Bombay nor Calcutta.
Later inside the country they were told by other Tibetan authorities: "You must know that the
English are the enemies of our people"—areference to Tibet's ethnic brethren located elsewhere
along the Himalayas—"many of whom they have killed with their farcarrying guns, and our
people do not want the English to penetrate into Thibet at any price."47
Third, apropos of this weapons development among Western outsiders, the two Chinese
Amban representatives at Lhasa (supported by a military garrison)48 had by this time
become—from their own personal experience back in China—well acquainted with the
aggressive policy of various Western nations. First assigned to the Lhasan court in .1728 by
* One modern-day Tibetan scholar, Dawa Norbu, has himself traced in some detail aspects of this record of
Tibet's neighbors alerting her to the dangers they saw for Tibet in the gradual British encroachment upon her
southern borders. After quoting Chinese Ambans of Lhasa, merchants from Kashmir, a king of Nepal, and an ex-
minister of a Sikkim raja, etc., Norbu observed that "the Tibetan authorities came to know the nature of British
imperialism in South Asia early on from their neighbors ... As the Panchen Lama confided to George Bogle in
1775: 'I had heard also much of the power of the Fringies [Europeans]; that the [British East India] C o m p a n y
was like a great king, and fond of war and conquest; and as my business and that of my people is to pray to god,
I was afraid to admit any Fringies into the country.'" Like Ahmad Shah, Norbu has argued that "it was the
terrifying image of British imperialism as proved by their deeds in the cis-Himalayan region and as painted by
Tibet's immediate neighbors that made the Tibetan lords and lamas to suspect and fear the worst from British
India. Their fear of British colonization of Tibet proved totally unfounded. As they surveyed the economic
resources of the country, the British found it worthless. But it was not this truth which influenced Lhasa's
decision to close Tibet's door to Westerners; it was the informed fear and suspicion of British imperialism which
they apprehended as the greatest danger to the security of their country." See Norbu, "The Europeanization of
Sino-Tibetan Relations, 1775-1907 ...," TJ(Winter I990):34-5.
the Manchu Ch'ing dynastic Emperor K'ang Hsi to make sure the Emperor's will was
carried out, these Imperial emissaries posted to the Tibetan capital had quite naturally fostered
still further the growing anti-European and more especially anti-British feelings of the Tibetans
themselves. In 1865, noted Ahmad Shah, the then ruling Grand Lama directed the Chinese
Emperor to proscribe any entrance of Tibet by Europeans; yet not only Europeans were
proscribed by the resultant Imperial decree, but all persons in British India were equally
excluded from crossing the frontier—whether they were Buddhists or not—except for a
few well-known Ladakhi and Nepali merchants.
Indeed, this proscription of certain foreigners in the latter half of the nineteenth century was
apparently not anything new. Nearly a century earlier George Bogle, at the behest of India's
overlord, the Governor-General of the British East India Company, had been sent on a trade
and diplomatic Mission to the Tibetan court of the Panchen Lama located at Shigatse some
distance to the southwest of Lhasa. He could report to Governor-General Warren Hastings in
1774 that the Panchen, in a letter to Bogle while the latter was still en route to the Tibetan
border, had given as a reason for initially delaying Bogle's onward journey to his land that he
was bound by "an order from the Emperor of China forbidding the admittance of Fringies into
his country." Bogle, however, saw this as only "a pretense^' on the Panchen's part, but was
persuaded, nonetheless, that the latter's motive for this early refusal "proceeded from a suspicion
of Europeans." In the same report to Hastings, Bogle set down what Tibet's second highest-
ranking Lama had described was the specific nature of this Imperial decree: "the Lama's letter
... informs me that his country being subject to the Emperor of China, whose order it is that he
shall admit no Moghul, Hindustani [Indian], Pathan, or Fringy, he is without remedy, and China
being at the distance of a year's journey prevents his writing to the Emperor for permission;
and desires me therefore to return to Calcutta ..." hi the end, though, the Panchen did relent
and received Bogle at his ecclesiastical court the following year.49
Now it would appear from other evidence that some such Chinese decree had in fact
been promulgated then or not many years afterwards and had remained a standing order of
the Emperor well into the next century.50 For the French Catholic missionary Abbé Hue was
to be confronted with a similarly worded proscription against certain foreigners when he
himself attempted successfully to penetrate the Tibetan border in the 1840s.51 But by 1865,
when fear of British intentions towards Tibet had reached new heights as a consequence of
India's expansion into Bhutan that year, the lords and lamas of Tibet may have felt, as
Ahmad Shah asserts, that a newly-issued and more stringently worded proscription from the
Chinese Imperial court was called for by this latest alarming development. And hence the
summons for renewed regulation and control of her borders went out from the priest-center
of Lhasa to the patron-center of Peking.52
It was this particular Imperial proscription, incidentally, that provided the impetus in British
India for the expansion of the secret surveying system of Tibet which had been conceived of
two years earlier. Organized in the interest of both geopolitics and cartographical and
topographical science, the now celebrated Pundits, or "learned men," with their predominantly
Mongoloid features and being for the most part Tibetans who had settled in India as naturalized
British subjects, were trained in the basic skills required and then dispatched as clandestine
explorers into/the Great Closed Land. More will be said about the Pundits elsewhere in the
present biography. Suffice it to say here, however, that one of the more celebrated of the
Hindu Pundits to penetrate Tibet and even Lhasa itself, Sarat Chandra Das (who disguised
himself as a Tibetan servant to his traveling companion, the Lama-Pundit from Sikkim, Ugyen
Gyatsho), left a legacy (1) of retribution meted out by the Lhasan government upon those
Tibetans who in any way befriended or assisted Das in his Tibetan travels incognito, and (2)
of increased fear of all foreigners and suspicion especially towards British India, once Das's
true identity and intentions became known. This is confirmed by Ekai Kawaguchi, the well-
known Japanese Buddhist monk who had been a student of Das and even lived with him at
Darjeeling for a little while prior to commencing his own three-year travel inside Tibet at the
turn of the twentieth century. Kawaguchi has left a record of what he heard while in Tibet
about the Indian Pundit and what Tibetans suffered on his account:
... When the real nature of the mission of Sarat Chandra Das [in 18 81 -2] had become known to
the Tibetan government, it caused extraordinary disturbance, involving all th^ officials who
had been on duty at the barrier-gates through which the Hindu passed, as well as all the
persons who had extended any sort of hospitality to him during his stay in the country. All
these persons were thrown into prison and their property was confiscated. A number of those
whose complicity, unwitting though it was, was judged more serious than that of the others,
were condemned to death and executed. After this memorable occurrence, Tibet resolved more
than ever to enforce strictly the policy of exclusion against all foreigners.53
And fourth, observed Ahmad Shah, whenever evils befell the Tibetan nation, the
ever-resourceful monkish leadership of the land worked upon the religious sensibilities of the
Tibetans by ascribing those evils to whatever laxity had been exhibited in keeping foreigners
away. For example, if for selfish political reasons the life of a young Dalai Lama, upon his
approaching majority age to assume the rightful rule of Tibet, would be snuffed out by the Regent
through some such method as food-poisoning or if the maturing young Pontiff would die
prematurely of natural causes, such untimely deaths would be falsely attributed to the notion that
foreigners had been allowed to enter Tibet. As a further example, in the directive the Grand Lama
had sent to the Chinese Emperor requesting the issuance of a ban excluding all Westerners, he
had urged that policy on the ground that ever since the visits of white missionaries and others,
Tibetan women had become unfaithful to their husbands and the people had wavered in their
allegiance to the Buddhist faith. And because of the tremendous influence wielded by the
ecclesiastical authorities throughout the land, the gullible Tibetan populace would accept these
explanations of the lamas and the Grand Lama with unthinking credulity.
Now those readers who might not be conversant with the nature of Tibetan society of
that day may find it hard to believe that the lamas could so successfully exert such profound
and pervasive influence upon the general populace. But when one understands that at this
time in Tibetan history at least one-fifth to one-fourth of the population consisted of monks
and lamas and that the other three-fourths was largely responsible for their livelihood, it
becomes much easier to grasp hold of the fact of their near-total power over the people. * To
* One recent Tibetan authority on Buddhism in Tibet has noted that this secular support for the priestly class
had its beginning as far back as King Ralpachen, who ruled between 815 and about 836. He writes that as
Buddhism spread among the Tibetans under this King's royal sponsorship, "religion, as a living institution,
became part of the social organization, and many practical problems of integrating it had to be solved. It is known,
give some indication of their phenomenal growth in numerical strength over the centuries, it
has been estimated by one writer on Tibet (Stein) that as long ago as the seventeenth century
there had already been around 1800 monasteries housing some 100,000 monks, lamas and
nuns in them; but that by the nineteenth century the number of monasteries had increased to
2500 with the number of inmates having risen sharply to an almost incredible 760,000, or
again roughly one-fifth to one-fourth of the total estimated Tibetan population of that day.
And according to the most recent—and in this instance, the most reliable—study ever made
on the subject, even as late as 1950, on the eve of Communist China's invasion of Tibet,
there were still more than 600,000 monks, nuns, lamas and Nagpas (Tantric practitioners)
cloistered within the walls of some 6260 monasteries, nunneries and temples throughout the
land.54 It should come as no surprise, therefore, that one early traveler in the land had
described the country as one "huge monastery inhabited by a nation of monks." Yet of the
totality of such an incredibly large monastic inmate population as Tibet possessed, it has been
estimated by Jampei Chinlei that only about four percent were those in positions of general,
financial, governmental and spiritual administration of the monasteries, the overwhelming
remainder being "ordinary monks mostly from poor families." For many of the latter, "entering^
a lamasery was their only way of escaping the direst poverty ..."
Such an immense number of religious in Tibet is accounted for by the fact that even as it
was the obligation of every family among Tibet's hereditary aristocracy (which ranked just
below the religious hierarchy) to provide one son for government service (at little or no
salary), so all Tibetan families, regardless of rank, were required, if they possessed more
than one son, to give up one male to a monastery for training as a monk.55 As was observed
earlier, moreover, the remaining three-fourths of Tibetan society—that is to say, those who
did not or could not pursue the monastic life themselves—were the supporters of these
priestly institutions and their inmates; they did so, notes Jonathan Mirsky, with their prayers
and other religious observances, as well as "with their donations of money, labor, objects, and
of course their children who became monks and nuns themselves." With such a centuries-
long pattern of family obligations as this, it is no wonder Tibet was overrun with monks and
lamas everywhere, with dominant power and influence accruing over time to the religious
hierarchy of the country at all levels of society. As one English explorer, the Earl of Dunmore,
had observed after traveling in the 1890s through Lesser and Greater Tibet:
... the Northern Buddhists ... are fearfully priest-ridden. From the cradle to adolescence, from
youth to middle age, from middle age to senility, from there to the grave; the man is never free
from the lama. At his birth the lama takes his horoscope, at his death it is the lama who finds the
way for him to that region in which his soul shall be reborn. Nothing in Tibet can be done
without a lama: from the ploughing of a field to the betrothal of a couple; for if the lama, to
whom reference must be made, pronounces them unsuited to each other, the marriage cannot
take place. Such are the powers of the priesthood, (emphasis Dunmore's)
This dominating position of the religious element in the Land of Snows was nowhere made
for instance, that during this period every fully ordained Buddhist priest was allotted seven households to be
responsible for his maintenance. This particular form of taxation was the basis from which developed much of the
later economic power of Tibetan monasteries, some of them very large, numbering hundreds or even thousands
of monks." Jampei Chinlei, "Tibetan Buddhism," in N. N. Jigmei et al., Tibet, 163.
more manifest for all to witness than what could be seen exhibited among Tibet's ruling elite
whenever they were participating in official processions through the streets and pathways of
Lhasa and the surrounding district. These festival events would occur on a number of special
occasions in any given year. One such procession was witnessed by Heinrich Harrer in 1946
when the entire officialdom of Tibet's central authority turned out to celebrate the opening day
of summer in a march that traversed the two-mile distance from the Winter Palace to the
Summer Palace of the ruling Dalai Lama. Wrote Harrer later, "We could not have witnessed a
better example of the distribution of authority in Tibet than in the procession which had moved
by before us—with the Dalai Lama and the Regent [who was then, and nearly always before,
a priest himself] as the high peaks, and the different grades tapered downwards to front and
rear. It was significant of their power in the State that the monks marched in front" As
can readily be seen, little was to change in Tibet from the time of Ahmad Shah in the 1890s to
that of Harrer, except perhaps that the priestly power and influence became even more
concentrated in the hands of the lamas during those fifty years. Given all that has been said,
therefore, on this matter of pervasive monkish dominance of society, it can quite accurately be
stated that if ever there was a period in Tibetan history when one of Tibet's most familiar
proverbs rang true, it was the period from 1850 to 1950; for, says the proverb, "there is no
approach to God unless a lama leads the way."56
Before concluding his analysis, Ahmad Shah also commented on the stringent instructions
issued by the central authority of Lhasa to the gopas of every village and to the local and
district petty chiefs. He noted that one of the conditions under which all of them held their
posts was that they must not permit any foreigner to traverse their district; otherwise, as the
reader has already learned, they would be liable to punishment by death or some other
severe consequence for any violation.57
To these explanations, however, must be added still another and quite significant one
which Ahmad Shah had only indirectly touched upon in his discussion but which needs
further amplification here. This was, of course, the ever-present China connection and its
interplay with Tibetan politico-religious predilections and phobias. Bordered as she has been
for many centuries (since the breakup of her mighty empire that had begun in the ninth
century) by powerful neighbors like Russia, India and China, Tibet soon learned how paramount
it was to maintain good relations with them. And with China there had ultimately developed
an unusual "priest-patron" relationship (termed in Tibetan Choyon)58 between the ruling
Grand Lama of Tibet and the dynastic Emperors of China: a high-level connection which the
Tibetan Grand Lama in the present day, the Fourteenth, has described in his memoirs as a
"reciprocal personal relationship between the Dalai Lamas and the Emperors of China; a
relationship of religious leadership on one side and a rather tenuous secular leadership on the
other. The Emperor appointed two officials called Ambans to represent him in Lhasa. They
exercised some authority, but in the course of time their authority gradually declined."59
Nevertheless, this unusual relationship had lasted for some two and a half centuries till its
demise in the early part of the twentieth century. This had had its beginning in the period
when the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan in China and later the Manchus (who came
to power there in 1640) were converted to the Tibetan form of Buddhism by the early Dalai
Lamas themselves. For example, leading Mongols had been converted by Dalai Lama III
(1543-88), seemingly without much difficulty, perhaps because Tibetans and Mongols were—
and still are—so closely related. Particularly, however, since the establishment in 1653 of a
mutually respectful "preceptor-benefactor" relationship between the first Emperor of the
Manchus and the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, it soon became customary for China as patron of
Tibetan Buddhism to voice concern about any anti-Buddhist (that is to say, preeminently
Christian) influence making its way into the sacred precincts of Tibet. As one longtime
authority on Tibet has noted, the Chinese did not hesitate to warn the Tibetan government
that should it allow foreigners to enter the Forbidden Land these "would subvert their religion
and introduce Christianity in its place."
A case in point was what happened in the wake of the Gurkha invasion of Tibet and the
ensuing war that ended in 1792. Before that time Tibetan frontiers had been almost totally
accessible to foreigners, but after the expulsion of the Gurkhas the Chinese—as "protector"
of Tibet and patron of that land's Buddhist faith—had convinced the Tibetan rulers that such
intruders would undermine their religion. Accordingly, Tibet dutifully closed its borders to all
but selectively approved outsiders. Yet it needs to be further explained that as a result of a
subsequent military clash between Tibet and Nepal in 1&54 a treaty was entered into by
which, among its several provisions, both these countries were called upon to recognize the
suzerainty of China over Tibet as a means of preventing future clashes. During the next fifty
to sixty years Imperial China, for its own profit, was to take full advantage of this new state of
affairs by intensifying among its newly-acquired suzerain subjects the principle of exclusiveness
towards outsiders. This would not prove to be too difficult inasmuch as there was already a
strong prejudice among the Tibetan ruling circles against foreign intrusion. Especially did the
Ambans at Lhasa oppose all Europeans because the Chinese desired to retain in their own
hands a monopoly of the lucrative Tibetan trade which by their long favorable relationship
with Tibet had for centuries been nourished by them.
In the opinion of one Western writer on the subject, both the secularist authorities of
Peking and the ecclesiastical authorities of Lhasa had for some time past been expert instigators
of this principle of exclusiveness: "the former for commercial and political reasons, the latter
from religious motives." Both feared the loss of their respective power over the country and
the people; but while the feeling had been strong against Europeans as a whole, it came to be
held the strongest against the British.
This same writer went on to explain, however, that at one time Tibetans had seemed
inclined to be receptive towards the British, particularly when Tibet's traders began to
appreciate the advantages which could be theirs as a consequence of the opening in 1881 of
the Darjeeling Railway up from Siliguri (the famed "toy-train") that had immediately put the
port of Calcutta a mere three weeks' journey away from them as compared with the many
long, dangerous and expensive months necessary to make the journey to Sining along the |
Sino-Tibetan frontier. But the shocks which one after another had come to be felt by Tibet'si j
neighbors—China, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Ladakh—over the reverses they each had
suffered in war at the hands of British power were also being felt by Tibetans who now
became fearful for their own security as a nation were foreigners (especially those in British
India) permitted any kind of access.60
Moreover, the jealousy and alarm of the religious authorities in Tibet had been greatly
aroused as they became aware of "the cordon of missionaries" that had gradually been
spreading along Tibet's frontiers. For it must be pointed out, as one recent Tibetan scholar
has written, that with the emergence of Tibet as the Vatican of Mahay ana Buddhism in the
thirteenth century, Lhasa had become the epicenter of the entire Lamaist world and had
thus exercised substantial influence among the numerous Tibetan-speaking peoples
inhabiting the cis-Himalaya—a region that stretched from the Lamaist culture area of
Tawang on the southeast of Tibet to the several Indo-Tibetan areas on her northwest
borders. One concrete evidence of this influence, notes Dawa Norbu, was the fact that
"Ladakh, Sikkim and Bhutan used to pay [from annual to] tri-annual tributes to the Dalai
Lama until the Communist takeover of Tibet in 1950." Another was the fact that pilgrims,
scholars and traders from these three lands and Nepal "used to flock to Lhasa and other
holy cities in Tibet." But with the extension of British ascendancy into these and other
lands along the Himalayan foothills, where, in Hugh Richardson's words, "the influence of
Lhasa, even if not sovereign, had long been respected," there was created an opportunity
for an influx of Western Christian missionaries whose increasing presence had set off
alarm bells in the Tibetan Buddhist capital.
Moreover, by the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century the religious
officialdom at Lhasa was voicing a dread of the British in apocalyptic terms. For British
imperialism came to be conceived by them, writes Norbu, "in the more familiar idiom of
Tibetan mythoiogy." The entire matter, Norbu more clearly explained, "was couched in a
popular idiom that the religious people could understand; the Westerners were projected and
portrayed as a diabolical threat to the survival of Tibetan religion and the political system that
sustained that religion." He quotes the famous Hindu spy from British India, Sarat Chandra
Das, who in disguise as a Tibetan servant, it will be recalled, had visited Lhasa in 1881-2.
The English, recorded Das in his journal,
are dreaded by Government officers, especially the monk officials, as an invincible power, and
as being the incarnation of the Lhamayin [giants] who fought against the gods.... The whole
world will succumb to the power of the Phy lings [Russians and English]. Neither the Emperor
of China nor combined legions of gods and demigods who reside round the golden mount of
Rirab [Sumeru, the mythical mountain at the center of the Buddhist universe], will be able to
arrest the progress of their arms or the miracles of their superior intellect.
Indeed, so great was the paranoia among the monk officials about the possibility of the
demise of the Buddhist religion at the hands of the British that it was not uncommon for them
to utter statements of gloom and doom similar to what one of them was reported to have
declared at the Tibetan capital: "that if the British entered Tibet, his bowl would be broken,
viz., that the influence of his [Buddhist religious] order would be destroyed."61 In short, the
Tibetan fear of the British and the Christian missionaries who they were convinced would
follow bordered on the pathological.
Now because of the widespread belief throughout the Land of Lamaism by the end of
the nineteenth century that Tibetan Buddhism's days were numbered, "suzerain" China
found it quite easy to exploit the situation by fanning the flames of fear still further in Tibet's
religious leaders who now saw in a more stringent policy of exclusion of both stranger,and
missionary a way to stave off the inevitable and retain their religious dominance among the
people. And in the process, China, by the same uncompromising policy, could retain her
monopolistic hold on Tibet's profitable trade and maintain a tighter strategic control over her
"suzerain" territory.
The feelings of Tibetans, at least those in authority, towards alien missionaries and merchants
alike can be no better summarized than what is found in the words of a well-placed Tibetan
government official by the name of Tsarong who expressed them to an American Methodist
Bishop and his wife at Calcutta in early 1925 while on a pilgrimage to India. At that moment
he was both Commander-in-Chief of all Tibetan armed forces as well as the most powerful
member of the Tibetan Cabinet. (He also, incidentally, was to become a close personal
friend to Gergan Tharchin himself.) Although at the time a prime mover in Tibet towards
effecting progress and modernization and who—as "the most consistently pro-British Tibetan"
in the Government—looked to the British as a model by which to modernize the Tibetan
Army, Tsarong even at this late date nonetheless reflected by the words of his interview with
the Americans something of the deep-seated conservatism, suspicion and mistrust Tibetans
still harbored towards foreigners: in particular, the Europeans. This can easily be judged by
reading what follows of the pertinent dialogue which occurred between the Sahib Bishop
and General Tsarong:
"We have read, your Excellency, much about your lofty country but we should some day like
to come and know you, your country and your fellow countrymen better!" ventured the Sahib
... diplomatically.
"My country is closed, Sir," answered the Tibetan laconically.
"Will it always be closed?" asked the Sahib with a warm, friendly smile.
"Always, even to those brave men who would climb Everest."
"We have found you so frank, your Excellency," said the Sahib; "will you not tell us why
you have closed your country so tight to us?"
"I shall tell you, Sir, if you are sincere in your desire to know"—and in blunt but kindly
fashion he told us the story.
"Sometimes we have thought of letting you missionaries of Jesus come. For your message
is one of love and friendship, and our people like you. But if we let you missionaries come, you
would teach our people to desire many things which you have and which our country does not
have. They would see the missionaries using many things which they would like, things
which, I admit, are both attractive and useful. By that time the traders—your Western traders—
would have learned of the desires in my country and would come along with all these things
our people have been taught to want. Trade grows then, and by and by the traders get into
trouble, and need protection. They send to their government, then the soldiers come, and there
is war and our people are killed. And by and by we look at our flagpole. It is not our flag we see,
but your flag. Our flag is hauled down and trampled upon and a European flag is in its place.
And our country is no more. No, Sahib, we shall not let your people in even with the message
of love. It is too dangerous." ...
•.. From these Tibetan lips we had heard the entire Orient speak its mind concerning European
expansion. And when we secured our permits to go to the "Top of the World" and were obliged
to sign our names to a document promising that even though we might reach the borders of
Tibet we would not step foot on her soil, we understood.62
Before concluding this entire discussion on Tibet's exclusion policy, however, one very
important distinction must be drawn if a fuller grasp of the true situation in the Closed Land
at this time is to be fairly and more completely understood and appreciated. An intimation of
this distinction can easily be deciphered from one of the Tibetan General's statements quoted
above, where he declared: "Sometimes we have thought of letting you missionaries of Jesus
come. For your message is one of love and friendship, and our people like you. But... it is
too dangerous." It can also be discerned, and even more clearly, in a much more recent
statement made by another Tibetan, JamyangNorbu, a scholar specializing in Tibetan history
and culture. In looking back over the whole sweep of his country's history he has concluded
that "a large part" of it had been "outward looking, imperial, even 'expansionist.' Isolationism
as a definite policy of state came about only in the last few hundred years; and even that, to
a large extent, because of Manchu propaganda and monastic conservatism rather than
through any isolationist feeling on the part of the Tibetan people." The distinction
which therefore needs to be seen here is that which existed between the people of Tibet on
the one hand and the Tibetan political and ecclesiastical ruling circles, combined with Chinese
"suzerain" influences, on the other.
It can be stated with little fear of contradiction that almost to a person, Western travelers—
be they explorers, merchants or missionaries—who have had any appreciable contact with
the Tibetan citizens beyond merely their contact with Tibetan authorities have commented
most favorably on the people's kindness, openness and generosity, and have repeatedly
observed that generally speaking they are not at all averse to welcoming, and commingling
with, the foreigner who might have peacefully entered upon their land, even as Rev. Weber's
experience quoted above would indicate. To quote another traveler besides Weber, British
missionary Annie R. Taylor, who trekked deep within Tibet from the China side in 1892/3
and nearly reached Lhasa, had this to say:
I have nothing but praise to give the Tibetans for their chivalry and kindness. Setting aside
their raiding proclivities [she speaking here of certain clans on the Chinese borders of Tibet
who lived, as professional brigands, on the plunder of caravans],... they are hospitable, friendly,
trustworthy, and by no means averse to intercourse with Europeans. In simplicity and na'fveness,
more especially, these people form a striking contrast to most Asiatic races.
That is what she had to say about the people of Tibet. Read, however, what in the next
sentence she had to say about the authorities both inside and outside the Great Closed
Land: "Although the lamas, for political reasons, do not wish to see us in their country, it is
the Chinese who force Tibet... to so jealously guard her frontiers, and this principally for
their own trade interests; nor do they hesitate to do all they can to impede any intercourse
between the Tibetans and Europeans, and to raise bad blood."
The famous explorers, St. George R. Littledale and his wife, were to sound a sibiilar note
in reporting afterwards their deep intrusion into Tibet from the north in 1895. The Littledales
had already become experienced explorers in Central Asia twice before when on important
expeditions there in 1891 and 1894. But their attempt in 1895 to reach Lhasa failed only
because they were forced, when only 43 miles from the Tibetan capital, to retreat into
Ladakh to the west by Tibetan officials who maintained constant contact with their superiors
down in Lhasa: the ecclesiastical officialdom at the "Big Three Monasteries" there. At one
point in their advance upon the capital the Littledale party had come upon some Tibetan
shepherds who, reported Littledale, "came and asked us to stop till they could communicate
with their local headmen. They appeared to be a very good-natured lot of people, and were
very friendly, laughing and talking with our men." But, added the English explorer significantly,
though "it was palpable that the common people bear strangers no ill will,... all the trouble
springs from Lhasa." Indeed, like the experiences of Heyde and Pagell and of Rev. Weber,
the Littledales encountered some gopas who "came and entreated us to stop, informing us
that they would all be executed if they allowed us to pass."
Archibald J. Little was yet another who had been fortunate to gain access into Tibet,
and at about the same time as Miss Taylor, though not as a missionary but as a traveler-
explorer like the Littledales. His experience was primarily along the Sino-Tibetan border
region. A Fellow, along with the Littledales, of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society
of London, Little expressed a similar commentary on the Tibetan situation as had the
others already quoted. He generally held the Tibetans in high esteem and believed that
although the Chinese seemed to have little actual power in Tibet, they nonetheless possessed
enough influence to keep the country closed to all foreigners—by which he meant
Westerners. He then added the following observation: "The Tibetans are not prejudiced
against foreigners; and were it not for the oppression of the lamas, and the fear the latter
entertain that the influx of Europeans would destroy their hold over the people, Tibet
would be as pleasant and easy a country to travel in as any in Europe."
This argument about the Tibetan lamas leading astray a relatively friendly citizenry
was also to find its way over and over again in the correspondence of two of the key
players in the well-known 1903/4 British invasion of Tibet. Quite typically, Lord Curzon,
Viceroy of India at the time, would repeatedly write along the following lines, when in a
September 1903 letter to Britain's Secretary of State for India in London he drew a
"distinction between the people of Tibet who are a good-humored, sociable set of men,
quite prepared to enter into communications with ourselves," and the dominating lama-
clique who are "a narrow, intolerant and superstitious ecclesiastical hierarchy, whose
continued ascendancy depends entirely upon the exclusion of the foreigner." And Colonel
Younghusband, the leader of the Expedition itself, was not far behind in expressing these
same sentiments when while advancing upon the Tibetan town of Gyantse some 150 miles
inside the country he declared in one of his letters that it was "extremely important" for
the British to come into contact with the Tibetan people themselves—"who are friendly
and prepared to enter into relations with us"—as compared to the Lhasan hierarchy of
monks who, he wrote, constituted the real opposition to friendly relations with outsiders.63
It can readily be perceived, then, that during the long period of exclusivity, the Tibetan
people had become innocent pawns in a multi-faceted chess game of international proportions.
Generally speaking, the inhabitants of the Land of Snows were by nature a race of men who
delighted in being friendly to outsiders: even to the Europeans. Towards the latter, however,
they had continually been indoctrinated, as it were, to be suspicious if not downright hostile,
for political, religious and economic reasons far beyond the understanding or even the
knowledge of most of them. And because of this, the average Tibetan often found it difficult
to bring himself to act in the prescribed manner expected of them by their superiors. Only
when the tightly restrictive hand of authority from above was sufficiently felt by Tibetans
situated along the frontiers of Tibet, where the issue became one of either carrying out the
exclusion mandate issued from Lhasa and other centers of power or suffering severe
consequences for not doing so, did the average Tibetan citizen or local magistrate, who
otherwise was inclined to welcome the European into his precincts, feel compelled to put up
resistance to foreigners for the sake of his own personal survival in terms of life, limb or his
livelihood.
The published literature abounds which recounts the travel adventures of foreigners who
found themselves alongside or, if fortunate, inside Tibet's frontiers, and is replete with instances
of border-crossing experiences like that which confronted Heyde, Pagell and Weber or of
encounters with other authority figures deeper into the country's interior. In such instances,
the local villagers and district magistrates, once they became aware that the foreign traveler's
intent was to go farther afield, would now have to shed their customary friendliness and
openness and instead flex their muscles by turning the intruder back—and by force if
necessary—or else place themselves in jeopardy of literally losing their hands or heads!64 In
those days, it mattered not who the Tibetan was; for the responsibility not only devolved
upon the village gopa and district dzongpon (governor) to keep the foreigner away: in
particular, those from British India and those neighboring areas within her sphere of influence;
it was the job also of every lowly citizen to do likewise. Accordingly, if the heavy hand of
retribution could fall upon the authority figure for any dereliction of duty in this regard, it
could equally fall upon the average inhabitant were he discovered as having abetted the
unwanted outsider in the latter's purpose, or having failed to assist when he could have in
keeping the foreigner out or in turning him back to the frontier if, upon being detected, the
traveler had somehow penetrated deeper into Tibetan territory.
Hence, from all which has been ¿aid, there can be little doubt left in anyone's mind that
in both Tibet and China, ecclesiastical and Imperial authorities, in a conscious effort to
preserve their respective spheres of power or influence in the Forbidden Snowy Land,
were continually working in tandem throughout this entire period to keep outsiders—at
least a selective number of them—from insinuating themselves into Tibet's territory or her
religious and economic affairs;65 and to the disappointment and frustration of both foreign
missionary and trader alike, this "tandem operation" proved extremely effective in keeping
them both at bay.* And of course, the newly-arrived Moravians were no exception to this
highly successful policy.66
It had now become obvious to Heyde and Pagell that nothing was to be gained by proceeding
farther into the hostile land of Tibet. Needless to say, they returned to Kotgarh greatly
disappointed. Once again their entrance into the regions beyond was barred. What were
they to do now?, these hardy soldiers of the Cross asked themselves. In seeking the mind of
God, Pagell and Heyde, together with the Mission Board back home,67 came to the unanimous
conclusion that the Lord wanted them for the present to remain where they were just outside
the closed door, to further learn—in the midst of the polyglot population that was there—the
Hindustani, Tibetan and Mongolian languages against the time when they hoped to be able to
realize their original plan, and to pray until the closed door be opened by God for them to
plunge forward towards Mongolia at last.68 *
When it became apparent, however, that the doors were not going to yield immediately,
Pagell and Heyde decided to plant roots right where they were and establish mission stations
which could serve as starting-points for evangelistic tours into the surrounding country that
was inhabited for the most part by an estimated twenty thousand Buddhist Tibetans.69 For as
was earlier noted, the actual area in which these two Tibet-tfound soldiers of the Cross now
found themselves marking time was in a very real sense "Tibet" already. For it must be
explained that in trekking just a little ways up the now quite familiar Hindustan-Tibet Road
from their starting-point of Kotgarh, they and any other would-be traveler of that day would
have been struck by the fact that, as one observer has remarked, "Hindu India begins to
disappear and Buddhist Central Asia seems to come slowly filtering in."70 This was because
the traveler would gradually cease glimpsing Hindu temples dotting the landscape but Tibetan
Buddhist shrines instead. Beyond Rampur, for example, these shrines or chortens as they
are called, together with mani walls, prayer wheels and prayer flags, would now be found in
every village and on every mountain slope;71 and along this same stretch of the Road beyond
Rampur the traveler would have noticed that among the hill men and women encountered, the
Mongolian features would increasingly have begun to show their predominance. Accordingly,
by the time such a village as Poo and the Tibet border itself had been reached, almost all traces
of Hindu civilization would have been replaced by that of Lamaist Buddhism.72 In fact, it would
continue that way not only into Tibet but deep into Central Asia as well, where this faith,
transplanted from India, was and still is in many ways the prevailing religious culture throughout.73
And hence, it could be said quite accurately that in a cultural and religious, though certainly not
a strict geographical, sense, these two undaunted servants of the Lord had already reached
their goal. In at least this regard, therefore, they could take some solace.74
* Not to be overlooked in all this, of course, was the role of the British in India in sealing off the borders of Tibet
themselves. Indeed, particularly with respect to the missionaries, the British played a major role in keeping, as
best they could, these heralds of the Christian gospel from crossing over the Tibetan frontier from the Indian
side. See a few pages hence for the details.
Now in negotiating the circumstances under which they would pursue their missionary
labors, Pagell and Heyde were given to understand by the British Government of India that
permission to establish their Mission could only be granted on condition that they would
restrict their activity to the territory which was under British rule. Just here it needs to be
understood that prior to 1858 the ruling authority in India was jointly exercised by the British
Crown and the British East India Company. The latter had been organized in England for
trade in India and granted a charter by Queen Elizabeth on the last day of the year 1600
under the title of "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East
Indies." Until about 1765 it had remained essentially a trading company, but then it was given
joint territorial sovereignty over India with the Crown. By 1818, in fact, the Company had in
effect become Master of India, its new role reflecting, in the words of H. G. Wells, "one of
the most extraordinary episodes in the whole history of conquest." Indeed, some local Indian
rulers were now compelled to assent to the British Company's overlordship, while others
were deprived of their territories altogether. So that the end result by the early 1850s was
that the vast Indian subcontinent was divided into a British India administered directly by the
British, and an Indian India ruled over by indigenous dynasties that were retained under
British supervision. As it turned out, this state of affairs would continue right up to the
moment of Indian independence in 1947.
However, a significant event—which Indians like to call theirfirst war of independence—
occurred along the way. This took place just a few short years following the arrival in India
of Heyde and Pagell. It was an event which, though costly in human lives, would prove in the
long run to have a salutary impact upon these two Moravian missionaries and many others,
so far as their activities within Indian territories under British control were concerned. For as
a consequence of a very serious mutiny in 1857 by mainly Indian troops called Sepoys who
comprised the bulk of the East India Company's security forces,75 the arrangement of dual
control over the Subcontinent came to an abrupt end, as now called for by Parliamentary
legislation the very next year known as the Act for the Better Government of India. This Act
and its implications in overturning one particular facet of previously- and strongly-held policy
by the Company is most important to understand and therefore deserves careful study.
Under the provisions of this Act, the empire so amazingly obtained by the East India
Company was now to be "annexed" to the British Crown, thus completely terminating all
political and military responsibilities of the Company in the Hindustan peninsula. Moreover,
the ruling British representative on the Subcontinent who had heretofore been the Governor-
General of the Company would new be known as the Viceroy of India and would directly
represent the British Sovereign, who at the time was Queen Victoria. The Act also called for
a Secretary of State for India, responsible to Parliament, to take the place of the Company.
(To round out the picture of how completely the transformation of British Indian affairs at
this time became, it should be noted here that in 1877 Lord Beaconsfield caused Victoria to
be proclaimed Empress of India.) In addition to the provisions of this Act already mentioned,
there was now to be recruited from honor graduates of British universities a trained civil
service that would soon be bent on ruling India more efficiently and with more benevolence
than heretofore. And finally, as to the East India Company itself, although it was indeed
deprived of its governing powers in 1858, it nonetheless continued to exist for some years
more as a trading company in India until, after an extraordinary lifespan of nearly 275 years,
it was dissolved by action of the British Crown effective 1 January 1874.
Now as intimated earlier, there was one aspect of this Company's history in India which
needs to be inquired after with more than casual interest, inasmuch as it was to have a direct
bearing on the missionary fortunes of Heyde and Pagell and those many others who would
come upon the scene after them. This has reference to the fact that from the very inception
of the East India Company's overlordship of India in about 1765, it had taken the quite
unconcealed and most self-serving position of refusing to interfere with the customs and
particularly the religion of its subjects. This meant, among other things, that its merchants and
officials, now having been turned into a colonizing power, forbade missionaries to come into
their territories of control on the Indian subcontinent. This unfriendly attitude towards Christian
Missions was fed by the fear that the teachings and other activities of the missionaries would
upset society, cause political unrest, and even stir up rebellion.
It was quite true, of course, that in the 1600s and 1700s British and other European East
India Company merchants and traders had brought chaplains with them. But these individuals
were only there to minister to their own nationals and in a very limited way to seek to convert
slaves, servants and Euro-Indians who lived under their jurisdiction. Such a jurisdiction, it
was clearly to be understood, fell only within the various corhpounds and forts which these
merchant companies had developed over the years and which in some instances had
admittedly grown into sizable populated towns and suburbs. At no time did these merchant-
rulers ever entertain the idea of anyone engaging in any kind of missionary endeavor among
the general Indian populace. On the contrary, they earnestly sought to avoid the emergence
of any religious issue which might interfere with their economic activities. Instead, what they
attempted their best to do, as missionary historian Jonathan Lindell has noted, was "to maintain
good relations with Indian rulers, upon whose good will their residence and work depended."
And hence, their adamancy against Western missionaries entering their precincts of economic
and political control.
[It should be observed right here, incidentally, that this overly-obsessive emphasis on
maintaining good trade relations to the detriment of the spread of the Christian gospel goes a
very long way in explaining why the British Government of India—not only during this period
but in fact during the entire remaining one hundred years of" its rule on the Subcontinent—
would not allow missionaries of the gospel, on their own initiative and at their own risk, to
cross the border into the neighboring closed lands of Tibet and Nepal, and for that matter,
into Independent Sikkim and Bhutan. Both the merchant-rulers and later the British
Government of India did not wish to see trade agreements and political treaties which had
been carefully and persistently negotiated with these neighboring governments to be
jeopardized in any way by the possible development of religious unrest in these non-Christian
countries that might be triggered by what the British rulers continually believed would be
unappreciated Christian missionary activity undertaken there. And consequently, British
security forces rigorously monitored as many border crossings as possible to interdict any
and all missionary attempts, both open and clandestine, to penetrate these lands. Needless to
say, this policy, adhered to in the most unmitigated fashion, was the cause of untold frustration
and disappointment among not only British heralds of the gospel but also those who were
nationals of other Western countries: in particular, the German Moravians and other Christian
groups interested in penetrating the Forbidden Land of Snows. It was also to frustrate, to
some extent, the evangelistic efforts in Tibet of independent missionaries like Gergan
Tharchin's future co-laborer in the Christian gospel, the renowned Sadhu Sundar Singh (as
will be discussed more fully in a subsequent chapter). Thus, on the one hand, missionaries
interested in reaching Tibet for Christ were restricted in their movements and activities by
the Tibetans themselves for various reasons already outlined earlier. On the other hand, they
were equally restricted—perhaps even more so—by the British authorities on this side of
the Indo-Tibetan border. In short, the Moravians and nearly all other heralds of the gospel
were to be hemmed in on both sides of the economic-political-religious equation.]76
Numerous examples of speeches, letters and documents from the period could be produced
which make quite plain the Company's inimical posture towards Christian Missions. For
instance, as quoted by Lindell, one such outburst of hostility, which bordered on near fanatical
vituperation, declared "the sending out of missionaries into our eastern [i.e., Asian] possessions
to be the maddest, most extravagant, most costly, most indefensible project which has ever
been suggested by a moonstruck fanatic. Such a scheme is pernicious, imprudent, useless,
harmful, dangerous, profitless, fantastic. It strikes against all reason and sound policy, it
brings the peace and safety of our possessions into peril." So unsympathetic was the
Government of India (read, the Company) towards things Christian during these years that,
as missionary historian Lindell has pointedly observed, it "upheld the Hindu custom of out-
casting Christian converts from home, inheritance, property, status in society and legal
equality." Such converts, he added, were not even allowed to enter government employment.77
All of this was to change, however, with the implementation of the Act of 1858. This
legislation, which took effect the very next year, granted equal opportunity to all in British
Indian territory to practice any religious faith and to occupy government office. According to
Lindell, the new situation brought about by this Act now totally opened the way for hundreds
of missionaries—-Catholic and Protestant, British and others—to enter India at will. In fact,
by the time of the zenith of their strength, Lindell commented, there would be over 400
mission organizations in India! Government and its officials, he added, were now "neutral
and took no part in religious affairs" as such.
Fortunately for the CMS and other Christian Missions which by the early 1850s had
established their stations along the Hindustan-Tibet Road, they had not had to wait until 1859
to do so. This was because the harsh attitude expressed by the Company had not everywhere
been absolutely followed. In the words of Lindell, there were "some modifications," as is
evident by what happened not only with the aforementioned Missions (whose generous
benefactors were briefly cited earlier and will again be cited in the next chapter) but also
with the Moravian Mission as represented by Heyde and Pagell.78
Accordingly, when these two Moravian Brethren requested permission in 1855 to establish
their Himalaya Mission, the atmosphere, at least in certain areas of British Northwest India,
was already less hostile and more receptive to such a request; although the British authorities
still insisted on restricting their missionary activity to British-controlled territory. This
requirement, though obviously at cross-purposes with their ultimate goal of pushing forward
into Tibet and beyond, Pagell and Heyde nonetheless reluctantly assented to. And hence,
within two years after their arrival at Simla these Moravian Brethren, with the advice and
even financial aid of Major Lake of the British East India Company,79 planted their first
center far to the north of Kotgarh in the vicinity of the village of Kyelang. Situated on the
tableland above a narrow mountain stream at 10,000 feet elevation in Lahul province, this
first Moravian station was some 60 miles from Tibet. A second station was planted much
later by the Pagells in 1865 at Poo80 some 200 miles (a seventeen-day journey) to the south
and east and but a scant twelve miles from Tibet proper. These two sites were chosen
because of their strategic location along the primary trade and pilgrimage roads leading to
Tibet. Moreover, when it became quite evident that they were in for a much longer wait for
the door to open into Tibet, a third center was founded by Br. Frederick Redslob, his wife
and others in 1885/6. This station was located some fourteen days' journey from Kyelang
and twenty-one days from Poo deep into the heart of Kashmir at Leh, the capital of Ladakh
and the most important town of Indian Tibet. Situated at an invigorating height of 11,540 feet,
it constituted the highest mission station anywhere in the world! This had all come about
through the amicable influence exercised by the British Joint Commissioner for Kashmir-
Ladakh, Mr. Ney Elias at Leh, in seconding the efforts of Redslob and Heyde (vis-a-vis the
British Viceroy of India, the Marquis of Ripon) to garner concessions from the then Maharaja
of Kashmir and Ladakh, Rumbeer Singh.81
A brief history lesson on Ladakh and Kashmir will be helpful here. The Sikh monarch
of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir to his domains in 1819 and shortly afterwards
conferred the small principality of Jammu, adjacent to Kashmir, on his associate, the
Maharaja Gulab Singh (1792-1857), who was a Hindu Rajput of the Dogra tribes people
who were dwellers in Jammu. As a means of extending his power, Gulab Singh in 1834
dispatched an army under his commander Zorawar Singh against neighboring Tibetan
Ladakh. Although Ladakh was conquered from the Tibetans in 1834-5, and Baltistan in
1840, towards the end of these several Dogra Wars that lasted till 1842, Zorawar Singh
had perished in combat in 1841. For in that year he had assembled an army at Leh for the
purpose of invading Tibet proper and even plundering as far as Lhasa. But although Rudok
did fall to his troops and the monasteries of the upper Indus were looted, the Tibetans
were able to avoid battle till mid-winter when at 15,000 feet in elevation this Dogra
commander was slain in a snowstorm. "The Indians were routed and, owing to the intense
cold, very few survived."
It needs to be observed, however, that as a consequence of the Dogra invasions, the
authority of the Ladakhi Tibetan Buddhist aristocracy was destroyed and considerable damage
inflicted upon various Buddhist possessions that included a sizable number of monasteries.
Moreover, the political changes which followed upon Ladakh's subjugation by the Dogras
posed a serious threat to Tibetan Buddhism's hold on the region; nonetheless, because of the
strong faith of the people, Ladakhi Buddhist culture was able to survive intact during what
proved to be a century and more of Dogra rule. Not only did it suryive, this ancient culture
was able, despite the imposition of a colonial, non-Buddhist government, to maintain its
position of supremacy throughout most of the Ladakhi region. This was assured, in fact, by
the revitalization of Buddhist practice through the efforts of responsible learned Lamas from
various area monasteries.
With the conclusion of the Dogra Conquests, Ladakh lost its political freedom and was
incorporated in 1842 into the dominions of Gulab Singh, who became ruler of Kashmir as
well in 1846. And thus it was by these events that Ladakh became a part of (British) India;
so that when the combined State of Jammu and Kashmir was created within the Federation
of Indian States, Ladakh formed an integral part of such a creation.82
Now the Maharaja of Kashmir-Ladakh at the time of Heyde and Redslob was a successor
to Gulab Singh, who had died in 1857. And although Britain had general overlordship over
Kashmir-Ladakh, the latter was actually ruled by the quasi-independent indigenous dynasty
of the Singhs. And hence, even though there was a British Joint Commissioner for Kashmir-
Ladakh, he would often have to yield to the wishes of the ruling Maharaja in those instances
when the latter failed to agree to a particular request of the Commissioner. It was this kind
of political arrangement which made it necessary for thirty long years to pass before Heyde,
and later Heyde and Redslob together, were able to extract the desired concession from the
Maharaja for the Moravian Mission to be allowed to establish a permanent station at Leh,
even though in years past both the Commissioner and even the Viceroy had petitioned the
indigenous ruler to grant the permission. The successor Maharaja, Rumbeer Singh, finally
yielded to the entreaties of Lord Ripon, paving the way at last for the establishment of what
proved, over the years, to be a most important and influential outpost at Leh for the spread of
the Christian gospel.83
At this latter station—and now with over thirty years of experience behind them—the
Moravian missionaries, strengthened by additional numbers of missioners possessing a variety
of skills and talents, first opened up at the mission post itself a native dispensary headed up
by their first medical missionary here, Dr. Karl R. Marx. His career was cut short five years
later when in May 1891 he died of typhus; his leadership, however, was not replaced until
1898 when Dr. Ernest Shawe arrived at Leh. Next, a hospital was established; a place of
worship dedicated; and finally a day school was opened to the children of the general public,
which, again, was predominantly Buddhist Tibetan, but with a growing Moslem minority
making itself felt as well.
Interestingly enough, the ruler of Ladakh, called the Wazir or Chief Minister, and
representing the Maharaja of Kashmir, upon having discovered to his great disappointment
that his subjects dwelling within the district where Leh was situated were "much behind
those of other districts in education," promptly promulgated a decree which stated that
from every family in and around Leh which possessed more than one child, at least one
child must be sent to school. But surprisingly, the specific institution to which these children
must go was to be the Moravian Mission's day school, the Wazir having determined upon
inquiry that it was the best one in Leh; better, even, than the local Roman Catholic school.
A portion of the time each school day was devoted to religious and Biblical lessons; but
the missionaries wisely left attendance optional at this particular time of instruction. Even
so, the day-scholars who came to the school gradually increased their attendance at the
hour when the Christian gospel was read and expounded. And although the Wazir's unusual
order cannot have been fully observed, the average attendance at the mission school did
rise to the remarkably high number of sixty!84
If the fact has not already been appreciated by what has thus far been recounted here,
namely, that in the beginning stages of their labors along the Indo-Tibetan border the Moravians
experienced little in the way of fruitfulness, then it needs to be made clear now that the
propagation of the gospel in these parts had veiy little about which to be overjoyed initially.
Except for the arrival of their brides from Germany in October 1859, the setting up of a
lithographic press by which to produce gospel literature, and a meager dissemination of their
translation of the Harmony of the Gospels begun among the locals and the traders who came
from Tibet over the frontier passes, there was not very much else to gladden the hearts of
these heretofore lonely men of God in those first ten years of missionary service. And even in
the years after the Poo mission had been established in 1865, there were few converts from
the Tibetan Buddhist faith to be gleaned from this seemingly arid and parched field. Steeped as
they were—from the missionary's perspective—in fear and gross superstition which dominated
the minds and hearts of the people and which daily made "even the coming of darkness and
sleep a matter of dreadful terror,"85 these Tibetan peasant folk among whom the Moravians
labored remained for the most part resistant to the coming of the Light of Christ.
What exactly was the nature of this religious faith which so tenaciously gripped the hearts of
this race of people here in Indian Tibet, Tibet proper and the other Closed Lands of the Himalayas
where Lamaist Buddhism predominated? For this, of course, was the religious faith of Gergan
Dorje Tharchin's parents and from which he himself would later be converted to Christ. To arrive
at a satisfactory answer it will be necessary to inquire to some extent into the life and teachings
of the Indian founder of Buddhism first. This is because Tibetan Buddhism cannot be understood
without some prior knowledge of orthodox Indian Buddhism that in a subsequent greatly adulterated
form, assert many Buddhist scholars, found its way across the borders into the Land of the Bhod
People during the latter centuries of the first millennium of the Christian era.
Buddhism's founder was born Gautama, the Prince Siddhartha, in ?563 b.c. into the family
of the Gautamas, whence the name by which the boy was later known (although his given
personal name was indeed Siddhartha). The Gautamas were one of the families among the
Sakyas, a tribal clan of the Hindu Kshatriya warrior caste. His father, Suddhodana, was a
wealthy ruling noble or king of the Sakyas that as head of a small confederation had its capital
in the town of Kapilavastu in the ancient northern Indian principality of the same name. Gautama
was born at an uninhabited spot within an ancient grove near this Indian town, and though the
site of his birth is today marked at this same grove, it is now nearer the later-established town
of Lumbini not far from Kapilavastu but within the boundary of southern Nepal. (It ought to be
noted, however, that even though Gautama's birthplace had since then become a part ofNepal,
Tibetans have for centuries continued to regard India as the holy land to which, after Lhasa,
they have always hoped to make a pilgrimage once in their lives.)86
Now the discovery of an inscription on a majestic stone pillar erected at the Lumbini
.grove by the mighty but eventually devoutly Buddhist Indian Emperor Asoka makes it likely
that the entire legend surrounding the Buddha's birth had been well established as early as
the third century b.c. The said stone pillar bore a noteworthy inscription in Brahmi script. In
part it recorded the fact that "in the twentieth year of his imperial reign Priyadarsi Asoka
revisited this place and worshiped here ... and had a stone pillar created ... to commemorate
that here was born Buddha Sakyamuni...." This makes the date 249 b.c., according to the
accepted chronology of Asoka's reign.
There is also a shrine at the Lumbini grove, which has increasingly become a site of
pilgrimage for modern-day Buddhists. The shrine includes, among other things, a bas-relief
representing the birth of Buddha. According to the legend as presented in the Buddhist
Canon, his mother, Maya Devi, is said to have been on her way to her mother's house, as
was the custom for women pregnant with their first child, when her pains came upon her
near a fifty-foot square pool of water that had previously been constructed by the Sakyas in
the Lumbini grove and where she subsequently gave birth to Gautama beneath a Pipal Tree
nearby. The legend has it that as Maya Devi was bathing in the pond the pangs of labor
gripped her, causing her to cut short her ablutions. Quickly approaching the nearby Tree, she
faced east and, grabbing hold of a drooping branch for support, the future mother of Buddha
gave birth to the Prince. While resting at this same spot Maya Devi, as Queen of State,
having bodyguards and helpers with her, sent word of the birth to her husband the King (that
is, to the royal palace of Kapilavastu State) and to her mother at Devdana in the neighboring
principality of Koliya where her father ruled. She eventually returned with her newborn child
to her husband, but shortly afterwards Maya Devi died.
Now Queen Maya had dreamed one night that a white elephant walked about her slumber
couch three times and then entered her body. Learning of this unusual dream, the royal
family's Brahmin priests, well-versed in astrology, soon prophesied that the Queen would
give birth to a child who would become either a great religious leader—an "Enlightened
One"—if he abandoned the world, or a great secular prince—a Universal Monarch—if he
followed a worldly life. The King preferred to embrace the latter aspect of this prediction.
As Roger Hicks has explained:
... the Queen Maya had been his bride for twenty years, and this was their first son, whom he
called Siddhartha, which means "Every Wish Fulfilled." He ordered that his son be brought up
surrounded with the utmost luxury, shielded from any intimation of suffering which might
cause him to leave the palace and his parents in order to lead a religious life.
Yet, after being reared in this fashion for so many years a$ the son of a raja of the Sakyas,
Gautama nonetheless left his father's palace when in asking the King what could bring
peace to the troubled human soul he received no answer. What had prompted this strange
question from one who all his life had been shelterectfrom the harsh realities of the outside
world was the rude awakening the Prince had received one day when in venturing forth
from the confining limits of the palace he beheld for the first time three sights that were to
change the course of his life forever: a man enfeebled by old age, another infected with a
horrible disease, arid an abandoned corpse lying by the side of the road. This experience
greatly troubled Gautama's sensitive soul, for he now realized that life was not in the least as he
had been led to believe by his father's artificial environment but was instead full of misety and
suffering. Though disappointed by the King's silent response to his anxious question, the Prince
shortly afterwards happened to meet a wandering mystic who inspired him with the notion that
the world's trials and their resultant sufferings might be overcome by right practice.
Armed, then, with this inspiring word, Prince Siddharthja stole out of the palace on his 29th
birthday in the middle of the night without a word to anyone except his servant-companion,
leaving behind his wife Princess Yosodhara and their baby son Rahula. By this act, known as
the Great Departure, he now renounced his life of luxury and indolence—having recognized
how grossly distorted his upbringing had been—and became a traveling ascetic and mystic
himself, seeking to unravel the mystery of human existence. This experience, called the Great
Renunciation, was a failure. Only after many years of wandering and searching for the truth
did Gautama the Buddha—now enlightened (for that is the meaning of the Sanskrit word and
would be the preeminent title, among others, he would ever afterwards bear)—make a return
visit to Kapilavastu at age 45, but now as a recognized "saint." There he was able to convert
his father to his teachings, much of the royal court and the Sakyas as well.
Buddha then spent the remaining thirty-five or so years of his life continuing to be an
itinerant teacher among his own and neighboring tribes, as well as elsewhere, teaching his
followers what he had learned. From among his numerous disciples he organized a community
of monks, the sangha, to carry on after him. Shortly thereafter, in ?483 b.c., Gautama died at
Kusinagara (only 50 miles from his birthplace), having received the title not only of Buddha
(although "there is no evidence," asserts H. G. Wells, "that he himself ever accepted the title")
but also of Bhagava ("Lord"), of Tathagata ("he who has arrived at the truth") and of Sakyamuni
{muni, the silent one, denotes a person who follows the contemplative life; hence, "Sage or
Wise Man of the Sakyas"). Like Confucius, Buddha himself in his later life was personally an
"expounder of an ethical code, and a mirror of virtue, not professing to be a redeemer of fallen
humanity, but declaring that man can work out his own salvation." Indeed, about God he talked
not at all, he carefully avoiding any discussion of a Supreme Being;87 and on his lips as he lay
dying were words to hisdisciples which plainly underscored his emphasis on human effort as
opposed to grace or magic: "I am as a worn-out cart; therefore, you be lamps to yourselves,
you be a refuge to yourselves, betake yourselves to no external refuge ... Look not for refuge
to anyone besides yourselves.... Work out your salvation with diligence." Through both his life
and teachings Gautama Buddha became the inspiration for what subsequently developed into
one of the most influential and pervasive religious systems of the world.88
As coincidence would have it, the beginning of this new Life Philosophy inaugurated by
Buddha would have as its setting an identical one to that which marked the very
commencement of the founder's life: that is to say, beneath the giant limbs of an ancient and
now revered shade tree of India. The particular tree in question happened to be near the
present-day Indian village known and celebrated around the world as Buddha Gaya, but
known to Tibetans as Dorje-den. This village, located adjacent to the much larger community
of Gaya in the Gaya District of the present-day North Indian state of Bihar, became the site
where Gautama, after years of wandering and seeking for the truth to life's most searching
questions, is said to have received the heavenly light of his "awakening" or "enlightenment"
as he sat by the side of a river one day beneath what is today considered by his religious
followers to be the sacred Pipal Tree (Ficus religiosa, similar to the poplar) or Bodhi Tree
("tree of enlightenment"), but which, Sir Charles Bell has noted, is actually "its lineal
descendant" since the present tree there "is quite young."
Yet what specifically had happened to bring Gautama to this point in his life of placing
himself beneath this shade tree? Noting first what had occurred in the Prince's life after he
fled his father's palace, Roger Hicks then puts in perspective for his readers the pivotal
moment at Gaya where the future Buddha would soon sit down to meditate:
Reacting against the luxury of his life up to that point, he went to the other extreme. He spurned
all comfort, neglected his body, and mortified his flesh. At last, weakened by years of privation,
he fainted from hunger and exhaustion. When he came to, he recognized that this path was as
fruitless and distorted as the path of luxury which he had known before. Realizing this, he set
forth upon what has become known as the Middle Path—the path in which the body is well
treated, as befits the house of the soul, but not pampered in a way which would distract it from
spiritual activity.
Having thus returned to the more normal life of a mendicant, Gautama in ?528 b.c. found his
way in his continuing travels to the village near Gaya that would henceforth bear his titled
name. Recalling how in his earlier youth he had sat in the shade of a rose-apple tree and had
entered into a stage of contemplation known among Hindus as the first rapture, the ex-
Prince had one day seated himself on a grassy platform under the now sacred fig tree at
Buddha Gaya and had determined to remain there until he received the light he had so
greatly sought concerning the mystery of existence. By this time he realized that the path he
was to follow would have to be one of moderation; nevertheless, notes Hicks, "according to
tradition, he made a surprisingly immoderate vow: 'Blood may become exhausted, flesh may
decay, bones may fall apart, but I shall never leave this place until I find the way to
Enlightenment.'"
Though he was assailed all day by a variety of terrors and carnal temptations instigated,
as it was said, by the death demon Mara, he was triumphant over them all: including even the
dispatching by Mara of his three daughters—Thirst, Displeasure and Voluptuousness—as a
means of seducing the meditating man, yet all to no avail. Then wrapping himself in further
meditation and the enjoyment of his newly-found emancipated state, Gautama at this moment,
writes Bell, "knew that he was now free, that he would be reborn no more": he became
Buddha, "the en lightened one." In a nutshell, what he had detected through his experience
was that the cause of suffering was to be found in craving due to ignorance but that the path
to its removal was to be through right living and mental discipline. According to British
historian and philosopher H. G. Wells, "when this sense of clear vision came to him, it
seemed to him that he saw life plain. He is said to have sat all day and all night" for seven
weeks "in profound thought, and then he rose up to impart his vision to the world."
From Buddha Gaya Gautama went off on foot a few weeks later to Benares, the officially
renamed (in 1956) present-day Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Situated as it is on the river
Ganges, Benares to the Hindu (and Gautama at this moment still was) is looked upon as
being the most sacred place on the 1500-mile course of this most sacred of India's waterways.
The Ganges had earned this sanctified reputation because devout Hindus believe that this
particular river had fallen from heaven to earth and that Lord Siva had strained its waters
through his hair in order to moderate its force; whereupon, he subsequently chose the site
along its banks, where Benares is now situated, to be his permanent home. It was because
of such beliefs that this city eventually grew to become the greatest place of pilgrimage
among the Hindu faithful.
Hence it was no wonder that for the Hindu this site along the Ganges loomed as the
holiest place on earth; that for the faithful adherent of this faith it would constitute a most
glorious fate to die in Benares, the chosen domain of Lord Siva, where one is promised
moksha, or liberation—that is, in the words of Santha Rama Rau, a "release from the cycle
of birth, death, and reincarnation in a final merging with the infinite, ultimate source, thus
satisfying the most profound objective in a devout Hindu's life." It was no wonder, too, that
it was to this place some 130 miles away that Gautama had to travel after his experience at
Buddha Gaya to seek out his lost disciples who had deserted him earlier and had become
recluses here, and to win them to his new teaching, which he did. In fact, it was at the village
of Sarnath just a few kilometers to the north of Benares that the Buddha set in motion the i
Wheel of the Law; that is to say, he preached his first sermon after his Enlightenment to five j
of his former followers, thus launching his public ministry of some 45 years. In fact, too, as
explained by historian Wells, it was in the King?s Deer Park or Park of the Gazelles at
Sarnath that Gautama and his won-back disciples "built themselves huts and set up a sort of
school to which came many who were seeking after wisdom." It has been claimed, incidentally,
that the Dharma Wheel had been given to the Buddha by Gyajin, the king of the gods, and
that two deer suddenly appeared as the first wheel (sermon) was being preached. It was
because of what actually or presumably happened at Sarnath's Deer Park that both wheel
and deer developed into two important symbols in Buddhism. In Tibet, for example, they
eventually came to appear over the main entrance of nearly every Buddhist monastery.89
121
The Moravians, Buddhism, awe/ Momentous Years of Youth at Poo
What, however, had Gautama's enlightenment constituted and what did he then preach
and teach over the last half-century of his long life? According to one writer on Buddhism,
Gordon H. Chapman, the central thrust of the Great Enlightenment which the Buddha received
as he sat beneath the Bodhi Tree was this: "that the cause of all human misery is desire,
arisiiig out of the will to live and the will to possess. Progress towards the peace of Nirvana
(the state of perfect absence of all desire ...) depends on the recognition of this basic fact of
human existence,..." The essence of Buddhist teaching as further revealed beneath the
Tree is embodied in what the Enlightened One called the "Four Noble Truths." These can be
defined as follows: (i) the truth of suffering, or the fact of pain—all forms of which are
unavoidable; (ii) the truth that pain has a cause in intense desire or in the appetites which
nourish desire; (iii) the truth that pain can be relieved or suppressed by eliminating self-
desires; and (iv) the truth that the pain of suffering can be relieved by adhering to the "Noble
Eightfold Path," the essence of Buddhist discipline. Such a Path—known also as the Middle
Path—would include rightness in the following aspects of life: in views, intention, speech,
action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. (The Buddha never made explicit,
however, what the word translated as "right" or "rightness" meant.) These eight aspects
were classified into three groupings: those of Enlightenment, Morality, and Concentration—
on each of these subjects of which an infinite number of subsidiary teaching could be
presented, not only by the Enlightened One himself but by others also throughout the coming
ages. The six Cardinal Virtues (or, Paramitas) must also be practiced if there was to be
cessation from all suffering; these are the virtues of charity, morality, patience, industry,
meditation, and wisdom. The laity was to be taught the following five commandments—Do
not: kill, steal, commit adultery, lie or bear false witness, nor drink intoxicants; while the
monks were to abide by a decalogue of commandments and a strict set of rules governing
conduct and discipline.
Commenting on the Eightfold Path, one authority on Buddhism has observed that "it was
a way which was immediately practicable by all, a way which counseled moderation rather
than renunciation—eschewing as it did excess at any level, either of self-indulgence or self-
mortification—and a way that promised, and gave, immediate results.... This middle way
thus appealed to the masses, not to the few, and it was directed at people who have to live
ordinary lives, not at those who seek seclusion."
It must be understood that in India at this time, there were those serious thinkers among
one segment of Hinduism whose minds were fixed upon getting into touch with a living deity
and investigating the notion of a world-soul or Atman and man's relationship to it. But there
was another and larger portion of this faith's adherents whose lifestyle was far less noble:
"Ceremonial Brahmanism and corrupt and sensuous Hinduism," wrote one writer on India's
religions, "were developing apace, so that the everyday religious life became more and more
set with complications." But there then commenced the change, added Sir George Macmunn,
"for which the doctrines of Brahman and the Atman and the commentaries thereon had
prepared the way." And thus did there arise at about this time a "teacher of release," the
Buddha.
Being himself a Hindu, Gautama had doubtless been thoroughly acquainted with the Vedantic
teachings as well as the conceptions of the Upanishads, both numbered among the core of
Hinduism's sacred literature. Nevertheless, Macmunn observed, "he saw in the daily work
around him how little6 ice' these teachings cut in everyday life. How the people were immersed
in complicated rituals which puzzled them, and lived in dread of curses and evil spirits ftdm
whom their religion did not release them. He must have seen, too, that the world was tired pf A,
and longed for a better 'way'." Accordingly, it was the aim of this great soul to show the world
of Hinduism this "way." For in its impact on Hinduism, the teaching of the Buddha called for
the abolishment of the caste system, the Brahmanic ritual order, the Hindu conceptions of deity,
as well as the notion of self as an individualized permanent ego or soul that at death merged
with a universal self. Moreover, noted Sir George, the centerpiece of the Buddha's teaching,
the Eightfold Path, was in effect "a ladder of the Mystic, complicated enough, but far simpler
than anything'that Hinduism had evolved, and uttered as Hinduism had not, a note that is moral
in its way of life, and which definitely connects religion and life together."
Even so, Gautama the former Hindu, did retain in his teachings the doctrine of Karma
(literally, "deed" or "action"; the Universal Law of Cause and Effect, or Fate)* and the
belief in reincarnation or the cycle of rebirths. For as Macmunn went on to point out, "No
religion or life philosophy can be taught unless it has an acceptable explanation of life.
Gautama accepted as the basis [of his philosophy] the doctrine of transmigration and rebirth
as the theory of life and Karma as the reason of evil. From this, and on this, the 'Way' could
be built." Said the Buddha, "One thing only do I teach, suffering and escape from suffering.
As the ocean has but one taste, so my Way has but one savor, that of salvation." And by
salvation here he clearly meant an escape from the constant cycle of rebirths with its attendant
sufferings. This goal can be obtained, taught the Buddha, by faithfully following the Eightfold
Path whose result will be the extinction of all desire, even that for a future existence, and
hence an end to all karmic generation. Known in Buddhist terminology as Nirvana, such a
state, one can say, is the "salvific" objective of all Buddhist discipline.
The original Buddhist teachings of the founder of this new ph ilosophy of life would thus go
on to exert a very special appeal upon the minds of the masses, who most likely responded to
it initially, said Chapman, because of "the comparative moderation of its demands and discipline,
the elimination of the philosophical subtleties of mystical Hinduism and Brahmanic rituals, and
the abolishment of caste segregation." The Buddha's teaching, noted Macmunn, was of a kind
"dear to all Hindu thinkers, and it is not to be wondered at that it spread, and eventually, but not
for many generations, swept India." In fact, Macmunn added, when history on the Subcontinent
had reached the halfway point between Buddha's birth and that of Jesus Christ, Brahmanism
* Here is an excellent definition of karma: "In Buddhist parlance this word usually refers to 'action and its
concordant reaction,' cause of successive rebirth in ever varying states of existence, according to the merit or
demerit thus incurred. Karma may be said to correspond to the 'immanent justice' of the Universe. In relation to
any given being, karma is the 'fate5 that being has inherited from past causes and^modified in its present state of
existence, thus determining the nature of a future existence in the world. Suffering is the recurrent price of this
process: Buddhahood is deliverance therefrom through an understanding of the real nature of things, including
that of the karmic process itself." Chogyan Trungpa, Born in Tibet (London, 1966), 258.
was to fall on hard times. For as the result of the great fillip which was handed Buddhism upon
the adoption of that life philosophy personally by the mighty Indian Emperor of that day,
"Brahman ism was driven from the field and became of no account."
In time, however, there would arise two very important divisions within Buddhism, each
coming to be identified with those countries of the south or north, respectively, which embraced
this new teaching. Traditional or Southern Buddhism was to remain "in a relatively
unadulterated state and on a high ethical level" up through the time of the reign (269-232
b.c.) of the militaristically powerful but ultimately pious Indian Emperor Asoka, a situation,
Helmut Hoffmann adds, that was indicated by the famous edicts issued by this great ruler.
Carved upon stone pillars, some of which still stand today, these imperial edicts stressed
compassion, kindness to all living things, truth, purity, and liberality—royal prescriptions that
historian T. Walter Wallbank has termed "a practical application of the teachings of Buddha."
Inspired by these teachings, this Buddhist convert also performed great acts of philanthropy
and works of charity and goodness on behalf of his subjects too numerous to mention here.
Called "the first great royal patron of Buddhism," Asoka, says Wallbank, "was also to
Buddhism what Paul was to Christianity—a successful propagator of his faith." For it was
during Asoka's imperial rule that the Early Buddhist teaching experienced its initial missionary
impetus, the Emperor sending numerous Buddhist missionaries to many lands both near and
far. He even dispatched his son to preach the new doctrine in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka),
where even today Buddhism is found in a few places in its near original form. Furthermore,
so zealous was he in spreading Buddhism that he ended up erecting, according to one assertion,
some 84,000 shrines as monuments to this new faith. Yet it is unlikely that Asoka, who
himself was later to become a monk, was very much aware, if at all, that he was so vitally
instrumental in keeping the flame of this new teaching alive. It was the opinion of one writer
on this period of Buddhism's advance, John A. Graham, that without this Emperor's
enthusiastic benefaction and missionary zeal which literally transformed this new "way" of
life into "a missionary religion ip its early centuries," Buddhism "would long ago have passed
away"; since, Graham went on to explain, "Brahmanism, with a long and gradually tightening
embrace, 'took it to its arms and sucked out its life blood,'—but not until Buddhism had been
firmly planted [through Asoka's efforts] beyond the land of its birth."
But if Asoka has sometimes been termed Buddhism's Paul, he has likewise been frequently
referred to as "the Buddhist Constantine." For like his Catholic Christian counterpart of a
much later day, the Indian Emperor took it upon himself to convene a Council for the purpose
of determining his own newfound gospel's Canon. And upon its determination, this Canon
was placed by Asoka into the custody of his own son and daughter who bore it thence to
Ceylon; from whence its contents were made known far and wide throughout the regions
beyond. For this new gospel of salvation and equality was subsequently carried to the
"southern" lands of Burma, Thailand and Indochina, and to as far away as Syria, Egypt, and
Macedonia in what later was Greece.
Initially called Theravada—the orthodox "way of the elders," this southern division or
school of Buddhism was later denominated by the followers of the northern "progressive"
Mahayana division as Hinayana, that is to say, the "little vehicle" or "little career" (maha
means "great," hina means "little"; while yana, another Sanskrit word, means "burden" or
"responsibility" or "career"). Now the Hinayana school of Buddhism was more conservative
than the Mahayanists and claimed to base its teachings on the Tripitaka or Pali Canon,
reputedly the closest to the Buddha's original teachings. (The Tripitaka, or Three Baskets,
consisted of the three books of the Buddhist code that in the first qentury b.c. were collected
and formulated some four centuries after the founder's death: the Vinaya, or rules and
discipline of the Buddhist monastic community; the Sutras, or doctrines of Gautama Buddha;
and the Abhidharma, a metaphysical treatise.) And according to the followers of this older
and more conservative school, the ideal saint (who could only be numbered among the
members of the sangha or monastic community; see below) separates himself from the
world and dedicates himself to the attainment of enlightenment and Nirvana. In other words,
the ideal towards which the Hinayana Buddhist practitioner strives is to become an arhat
(the perfect saint) who observes the religious life solely for himself and not for anyone else,
since according to this Buddhist school of thought the accumulated good karma gained by
performing good acts is not transferable to others but can only apply to the one who carries
out these acts. Although this may appear to some to be highly self centered and quite limited
in mission when compared to the Mahayana branch of Buddhism (see below), it needs to be j
said that the Hinayana adherents, though readily acknowledging that Gautama Buddha had j
certainly attained enlightenment, had taught the Doctrine well, and had possessed extraordinary j
understanding, considered him nonetheless as only a human teacher and was thus to be
revered but not worshiped, as many of the followers of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism
soon fell into the practice of doing.* This was because the ^lahayanists conceived of the
Buddha as an eternal being who, as in the Christian view of God, was omnipresent, omnipotent
and omniscient, not subject to the laws of life and death, yet who—for the purpose of saving
humanity—may manifest himself in time and in human form, as had occurred in the instance
of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni, as had also happened before him, and as will happen
again in the future. On the other hand, the earliest Theravada belief, it has been assumed by
most Buddhist scholars, had only conceived of the historical Buddha as merely an actual, if
albeit heroic, man subject to life and death. Indeed, for these early Buddhists of Hinayana he
was no different from other ascetics except that he was a teacher and the founder of the ;
Way. In these respects, among others, therefore, the Hinayanists of the South are considered j
by many students of Buddhism to be more faithful to the Buddha's teaching about the Pathway j
and about himself than their liberal Northern counterparts, as will presently be delineated, j
Nevertheless, it should be made clear, as E. Dale Saunders has correctly noted, that "there j
is no general agreement as to the contents of Buddhism as it existed before the writing of the ;
Pali canon" in the first century b.c. j
Now as already intimated, the other major division of Buddhism is the Mahayana school, \
whose canon of beliefs and practices was written down in Sanskrit in contradistinction to the ;
Theravada canon in Pali. This school developed into a less individualistic and more socially- j
* This Mahayana development, in the opinion of Dr. Gary W. Houston, was probably inevitable. In a recent j
volume he edited, Houston writes: "Buddhism ... is not considered a religion by some, at least in its Theravada |
form, and one could argue that Mahayana had to develop in order to attempt to satisfy the hunger for the religious j
in the Buddhist cultures. By this we mean the later notion of a savior, prayer, and more developed liturgical j
practices. None of this is evident in primitive Buddhism." The Cross and the Lotus: Christianity and Buddhism 1
in Dialogue (Delhi, 1985), 1.
concerned group of followers of the Buddha than Hinayana, and even served, noted Chapman,
"as a protestant revolt against Theravada strictness." Instead of offering "salvation" to only
the few, as in Hinayana, this more progressive view of Buddhist thought offers it to all, since
basic to this view is the liberal notion that all have the potential of enlightenment. Known as
the "great vehicle" or "career," the Mahayana system of belief called for the individual to
aim not at achieving Nirvana merely for himself but also that he ought to prepare himself for
Buddhahood in order to save a great multitude of others who are struggling along the Path.
For the adherents of this school had observed that the Buddha had not selfishly kept his
discovery to himself but had shared it with the world out of his compassion for all sentient
beings. Indeed, it has been said of Buddha that when he himself was on the threshold of
Nirvana he asked whether one suffering individual remained in the world.
Accordingly, a person must first become a bodhisattva, that is to say, one "destined for
or on the way to enlightenment"; in other words, a being who has delayed his own entry into
Buddhahood (an entrance which would thus be deserving of Nirvana's release) in order to
help other suffering beings (animals, men, and even gods) arrive at this goal through his
accumulation of merit. For the Mahayanist holds to the notion that a bodhisattva is able to
transfer a portion of his merit to those needing it, thus demonstrating his willingness to
sacrifice himself for the good of others. However, this compassionate individual's burden or
responsibility or career may extend through many lives, wherein he practices such virtues as
alms-giving, moral conduct, patience, heroism, meditation, wisdom and the like as he proceeds
through the various stages of discipline towards the goal of Nirvana.* Now the Mahayanist
believes that these bodhisattva saviors maintain a spiritual existence within "a super-celestial
heaven where prayers and other invocations could reach them and where they could aid
struggling humanity by a sort of spiritual sympathy." In turn, adds historian William McNeill,
the worshiper on earth, by means of these prayers and ritual invocations of the bodhisattva
of his choice, "could hope to become a bodhisattva himself (though perhaps only after
innumerable incarnations) and thus attain a blessed life after death ..."
This, then, is what, among other differentiating doctrines, clearly distinguishes the
Mahayana school from that of the much older Hinayana.90 And it has been this younger (and
some would say liberal or progressive) branch of Buddhism, with perhaps some variation
from country to country, which has become most popular in the so-called northern Buddhist
lands of Kashmir-Ladakh and the rest of Indian Tibet, the southern foothill areas of the
Himalaya region like Sikkim and Bhutan, Nepal (at least the upper third of the country),
Tibet, western China, Mongolia, Korea and Japan.
It is quite true, of course, that Gautama Buddha reformed Indian religion for a time by
censuring the rites and dogmas of the high-caste well-born Brahmanic Hindus, breaking
* The ordinary signification of the word Nirvana denotes extinction, as a fire which is gone out, as a luminary
which has gone down. Its origin is from two Sanskrit words: nir (without) and va (blow), thus extinction of wind,
calm. Nirvana has two degrees, one implying blissful existence, enjoyed for a time by the Kahats already on this
earth when their passions, and desires for future existences, are extinguished; the other is the" extinction of
conscious existence or even of being itself. E. Dale Saunders has defined Nirvana as the liberation, escape or
release from "the cycle of rebirths and hence from suffering," since "in human terms, it is that state where ail
teire and craving" which has brought on suffering "are exhausted." Saunders, "Buddha and Buddhism," in
Encyclopedia Americana—International Edition (Dan bury, 1998), 4:687,691.
with the rules of caste, teaching that all men are equal, and presenting to the world a code of
morals whose purity is generally recognized everywhere.91 He thus denied the special virtue
of caste, ritualism and asceticism, and went on to insist uipon the necessity of pity, kindliness
and patience for salvation. Yet ironically, though Gautama was a reformer, following his
death many of the evils he had castigated crept into Buddhism itself; in the course of time,
moreover, a radical change occurred in its teachings, accompanied by a great elaboration of
the latter into metaphysical beliefs that were at serious odds with the ideals of the Buddha;
so that in the opinion of many Buddhist scholars, by the time this religion had many centuries
later crossed the Tibetan frontiers it had already fallen into a decadent form of the original
ethical system espoused by the Enlightened One and his immediate disciples. As one writer
on the Tibetan faith, Sir Charles Bell, once exclaimed in dismay: "How greatly this religion
differed from the teaching of the Founder!"
Despite the Buddha's ban against the worship of deities, for example, men gradually
began to pray to him as a god who could assure their salvation. Even before Gautama's
death, writes Wells, "a cycle of fantastic legends began to be woven about him," for it would
seem that mankind "has always preferred a wonder story to a moral effort, and Gautama
Buddha became very wonderful"—very wonderful indeed.92 In Mahayana Buddhism,
furthermore, which as noted earlier became the recognized school in Tibet, not only is the
Buddha deified, but there has also developed an extensive pantheon of Bodhisattvas and
other divinities that are worshiped as well.93
Sir George Macmunn, quoted from earlier, has described how it happened that, during the
waning days of Asoka's reign and on through the period in India of what by some authorities
is called Later Buddhism, Gautama's simple world-philosophy, deemed atheistic in nature by
these same authorities, gradually took on the character, and adopted much of the paraphernalia,
of a religion—at the hands of the Aryan religionists there. In his finely and sensitively composed
chapter on Buddhism's Rise and Fall, Sir George traced this development of decay on the
Subcontinent as follows:
The subtle Aryan mind found plenty to elaborate in all that Gautama had left behind;... we can
watch among other things the gradual changing of what was an agnostic philosophy and "way"
to a religion, wherein the belief in the presence of a Brahman, a Yahweh, which is an instinct in
human nature that demands to be conceded, gradually takes shape again. The same pervading
presence that had taken control of Brahmin thought now begins to dominate Buddhism.
... We [also] find statues of Gautama becoming statues of a God to worship, rather than a
memorial to venerate, and shrines become temples. India is still full of rock-hewn temples,
shrines and stupas of the Buddhist period, simple at first, growing more ornate, in which
scenes in the life of the Buddha are portrayed, and many of the famous and captivating
incidents of his simple life and career are recorded, as well as representations of followers
venerating the teacher....
... [Moreover,] pilgrimages to the holy sites of Buddha's life [have now become] the fashion.
The Bodhi Tree under which Gautama gained enlightenment, the Deer Park in which he resided
and taught, and any other places famous in his life story were eagerly sought.
But as has been said, the busy Aryan mind wanted more information than the teacher had
thought necessary to give them. More depth and distance was necessary in the philosophy.
And eventually was evolved the teaching that Buddha was only the incarnation of the Great
Spirit vouchsafed to this age. There had been other Buddhas in the past and there would be
more in the future.... Images were made of the twenty-four mythical and previous Buddhas as
well as of Gautama, the historical Buddha, and even of Maitreya the future Buddha, at the
stupas, in pagodas and chityas. While originally put up as stimulants to meditation, they soon
became objects of worship to the general public, and offerings of fruit and flowers, tapers,
incense, and all the paraphernalia of the worship of a divinity after the lush methods of the
East, were introduced....
... [Furthermore, in the Mahayana school] the last state of the Buddhist to which a man
may attain is now twofold, that of the Arhat [Sanskrit; meaning, "a Worthy or Deserving
One"], the monk in contemplation who in kindliness and gentleness has attained Nirvana,
while the Bodhisattva is a new conception, he who prefers not to go to Buddhahood till all the
world can go with him, but has become a saint helping those still traveling, and was in fact
worshiped as a God. The calm and peaceful figures seen so much in Ghandaric remains are not
as a rule presentments of the Buddha, but of a Bodhisattva, looking down in pity on the world.
Paradises were now offered to which men might attain and dwell in company with Bodhisattvas
and Buddhas before proceeding to the far-off Nirvana.... With [all] these came more systems
and more philosophies and Buddhism began to resemble the Hinduism against which it had
been the revolt.... Buddhism had become so full of ceremonies and pomp, of processions of
previous Buddhas and the like, that there was not much to choose between it and popular
Hinduism.... [Indeed,] human nature was back again where it had started on the quest.... The
final collapse of Buddhism and the rebirth of popular Hinduism [were not far hence].
In identifying for his own readers what had happened in Later Buddhism, it became
Charles Bell's settled view, as expressed in The Religion of Tibet, that the doctrine of
salvation by faith in a Buddha or Bodhisattva instead of salvation by works, the calling on
that Buddha's name, the belief in supernatural beings, the reliance on images, ritual and
charms, and the indulgence in abstruse metaphysical discussions—these and other elements
in Later, that is to say, Mahayana Buddhism which were eventually carried over from India
into Tibet and further enlarged upon there "were fundamental departures from the life as
lived, from the word as spoken, by the Buddha himself,* But they were popular; they appealed
to the emotions of the many rather than to the intellect of the few." As Professor Dawa
Norbu, writing out of his personal experience in Tibet as a modern-day Tibetan, has observed,
"most Tibetans believed more in the mysteries and superstitions of neo-Buddhism [read: the
later Buddhism imported from northern India] than in the rational teachings of the Buddha."
* Antoinette Gordon has charted this chain of departures from what she terms Primitive Buddhism in her book's
first chapter, "Origin of Buddhism and Its Development into Lamaism." She writes that the form of Buddhism
which was brought into Tibet in the seventh century had come about as follows. By the end of the first century
of the Christian era the Northern Buddhists of India, having formulated their new ideas revolving around the
notion of the Bodhisattva, came to be called Mahayanists by the end of the second century. "In the fifth century
the monk Asanga added to the Mahayana the Yoga doctrine of ecstatic union of the individual with the Universal
Spirit and the attainment of superhuman powers by the practice of ecstatic meditation and austerities." But he
also added to the Mahayana "the Mantrayana, the doctrine of spells and charms." Then, "at the end of the sixth
century the Tantric doctrine" (described later in the Text above) "was added to Mahayana BuddhismAnd thus
the form of Buddhism in India when finally it penetrated the borders of Tibet had been molded and shaped by
Mahayana ("with its worship of a Supreme Being and other divinities, chiefly the Bodhisattvas") having been
added to the Primitive Buddhism of the founder Gautama, "plus the Yoga doctrine" that had originally been
introduced into Hinduism by Patanjali in about 150 b.c., "plus Mantrayana plus Tantrism." None of this so-
called Later Buddhism could at all have been seen in the original doctrine of Gautama that "was primarily," adds
Cordon, a philosophy with rules of conduct and ethics." The Iconography of Tibetan Lamaism (1939; 2d ed., rev.
& enl., Rutland VT USA/Tokyo, 1959), 4-5.
The well-known Russian scholar on Buddhism, Theodor I. Stcherbatsky, has pinpointed

even further the great gulf which came to exist between the earlier Hinayana and the later
Mahayana expressions of Buddhism. In one of the most telling passages ever written describing
the dramatic change which had occurred since the death of Buddhism's founder, this highly
respected Russian Buddhologist declared the following:
It has never been realized what a radical revolution has transformed the Buddhist church when
the new spirit, which, however, for a long time was lurking in it, arrived at full eclosion [emergence]
in the first centuries a.d. When we see an atheistic, soul-denying philosophic teaching of a
path to personal Final Deliverance consisting in an absolute extinction of life, and a simple
worship of the memory of its human founder, when we see it superseded by a magnificent High
Church with a supreme God, surrounded by a numerous pantheon, and a host of Saints, a
religion highly devotional, highly ceremonial and clerical, with an ideal of Universal Salvation
of all living creatures, a Salvation not in annihilation, but in eternal life, we are fully justified in
maintaining that the history of religions has scarcely witnessed such a break between new and
old within the pale of what nevertheless continued to claim common descent from the same
religious founder.
Moreover, Principal Grant, in his volume on the religions of the world, was moved to declare
about Buddhism's end as follows: "Originally a system of Humanitarianism with no future
life and no God higher than the perfect man, it has become [in other lands] a vast jungle of
contradictory principles and of popular idolatry, the mazes of which it is hardly worthwhile to
tread." As a matter of fact, as late as the 1890s one scholar oq Buddhism, Oxford University
Sanskrit Professor Monier-Williams, had declared that "the best authorities are of the opinion
that there are not more than one hundred million real Buddhists in the world"—they meaning
by the term real those adherents of this philosophy of life who still followed the teachings
and practices of its founder.94 Which meant that in the day Professor Monier-Williams offered
up this assessment there were not very many in Tibet who could be numbered among such
adherents. And the situation would remain this way in the Land of Monks and Monasteries
right through till the period of Red China's invasion and total subjugation of Tibet during the
mid-twentieth century.95
By the seventh century a.d. Indian Buddhism had experienced all its metamorphoses,
which included a transformation of it by the Mahayanists into a highly ceremonial cult, with
its many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, its yoga-mantra meditation techniques, and an admixture
of Indian demonology. Moreover, the Buddhism of the Mahayanists had been further
transformed from the pure ethics of Classical Buddhism by the introduction into its religious
system of the extremely complex creed of Tantric occultism* that was marked by attempts,
* "'Tantra' (in Tibetan, Gyud) is an Indian word originally meaning 'thread' or 'cord,' a word symbolizing the
succession of masters and disciples, linked one to the other by initiations to secret doctrines and rites passed
from mouth to ear. Later the word was used when speaking of the books in which part of such teachings were
consigned to a written form. Tantra schools rely heavily on the recitation of sacred, often secret formulas
quite successful, at obtaining superhuman powers and by esoteric psycho-sexual disciplines,

rites and ceremonies—a creed, say various scholars and writers, far removed from the
simpler Hinayanist Buddhism of a much earlier day.
In fact, say these scholars, the orthodox teachings of Buddha were rarely taught anymore
in India; instead, the Tantric doctrines, practices and mystic symbols that had been spread by
the Tantric Mahayana Buddhists had gained increasing popularity in the Subcontinent. And
hence, by the latter part of the eighth century when this Later Buddhism had begun to be
carried to Tibet in earnest by court-invited Tantric-Mahayana missionaries from the great
North Indian monastery-cum-university of Nalanda—most notably by Padma Sambhava
and Santarakshita—the Dharma or "Way" of the Buddha, in the opinion of these scholars,
had sunk to a profoundly corrupted level even before it was transported from India to its
northern neighbor. And there it was corrupted still further into what many writers have
chosen to call Tibetan Lamaism.96
This greatly adulterated form of orthodox Buddhism—i.e., the Tantric-Mahayana system

of belief—whose philosophical and moral basis had presumably been provided in India with
an entirely new set of supposedly canonical texts which claimed to be the teachings of the
Buddha himself but whose "actual origin," write David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson,
"remains unknown," would now be added to the mosaic of Tibetan culture. That culture at
this period of Tibetan history—the seventh century of the Christian era and even much
earlier—had been informed religiously by a primitive form of nature worship which for lack
of a better designation has sometimes been referred to by scholars as "the religion without
name." In its basic character this earlier expression of Tibetan religion was both animistic
and shamanistic, and was apparently an unorganized religious practice in the lands of the
Bhod people, including those of Lesser Tibet, long before the advent and subsequent
acceptance in Tibet of the Later Buddhism of northern India. Moreover, noted Tibetologist
(mantras), on the use of symbols, such as ritual gestures (mudras), and on cosmic diagrams (mandalas), as means
of reaching a subtle identification with superhuman powers.
"One of the most characteristic liturgical objects of Tantric masters is the so-called 4vajra' (in Tibetan, dorje),
a short wand variously wrought, generally of metal, representing a thunderbolt but also symbolizing a perfect and
indestructible diamond and in some contexts functioning as a phallic metaphor. The entire complex of Tantric
teachings and practices came to be known, around the sixth century, as Vajrayana, 'the Vajra Vehicle/ a third and
final stage in the development of Buddhism following and completing, according to its believers, both ancient
Hinayana and later Mahayana. More debased forms of Vajrayana leaned heavily on magical beliefs and practices,
and on its bipolar symbolism, in which male-female oppositions were very important and often developed into
liturgies of a highly sexual and sometimes erotic character.
"In its earlier stages, the followers of Nyingma-pa [the sect of Tibetan Buddhism founded by Padma
Sambhava—q.v. shortly hereafter in the Text—and the only one which survives today from the earlier spread of
Buddhism in Tibet that ended in the ninth century and whose members are primarily Tantric Buddhists] relied
solely on oral teaching of their doctrines, implying that a true mystical transmission of knowledge, often of a
secret nature, can take place only when uttered from master's mouth to pupil's ear...." J. Chinlei, "Tibetan
Buddhism," in Jigmei et al., Tibet, 165-6.
Per Kvaerne has observed that this "popular, autochthonous, essentially nori-Buddhist religion"
has from time immemorial down to present times been "incorporated, to a greater or lesser
degree, in the religious life of all Tibetans" (his emphasis).
This indigenous religious expression can best be described as essentially a belief in the
forces of good and evil in nature and in the existence of supernatural forces in the universe
that could be dealt with by magic and by animal—even human—sacrifices. Animistic to the
core, this primitive religion was linked to legends of spirits and deities—often assumed to be
malevolent—which were believed to inhabit rocks, trees, rivers, lakes and mountain passes
and that must be appeased with offerings whenever one passed them or had anything to do
with them. One recent writer from Tibet, Lobsang Lhalungpa, has identified some of the
more prominent mountain and lake deities to which Tibetans—whether dating from this
early religious practice or from the later Buddhist period of the land's history—have felt
obliged to show religious deference. He writes:
The most popular mountain deities, usually known collectively as war gods, were the thirteen
Gods of die Monarch and the nine Gods of Creation. Two groups of female deities were
associated with mountains and lakes: the twelve Eternal Protectresses and the five Immortal
Sisters. Each peak around the country was the seat of a different deity, from Mount Amne
Machin in the extreme northeastern Amdo region to Ghomolhari on the southern border with
Bhutan, and Mount Teci (Mount Kailas) in western Tibet near the Indian border. Mount
Everest was known to Tibetans as Chomolungma and was considered the abode of the five
Immortal Sisters. Among the lakes, the one held especially sacred was Lhamoi Latso, the
Sacred Lake, which became associated with the selection process of the Dalai Lamas,97
As one can imagine, local deities, good bad, were worshiped in the early religion of
Tibet—aspects of which were still extant in Tharchin's home village of Poo as late as the
1930s and was therefore present there while young Dorje Zering was growing up. The previously
mentioned Tibetan scholar from Italy, Giuseppe Tucci, led an archaeological expedition in 1933
to Lesser Tibet where he and his co-leader, Eugenio Ghersi, spent some little while at Tharchin's
village itself. Writing of the Kunawari country generally, and of Poo in particular, these two
scholars remarked in their journal about how the most ancient aboriginal cults of this primitive
faith had been grafted onto the ruling Lamaist Buddhism, and went on to declare
that non-Buddhistic divinities are even today venerated as tutelary patrons of various villages.
Practices and liturgies, often in absolute contrast with Buddhism, were vigorous up to recent
times; thus, for example, human sacrifices were common enough once in the valley of the
Sutlej. So were agricultural rites which demanded holocausts of victims. There exists a mass of
[ancient] beliefs, the origin of which is lost in the night of time,... [that] are continually yielding
ground to the renewed missionary ardor of Lamaism in the northern part, and of Hinduism in
the southern part, of these regions.
Traces of the cults remain in the annual festivals celebrated after the harvest, or in the
thanksgiving ceremonies for the birth of the firstborn son; here at Poo, [traces are found] in the
consecration of the Shar-rgan [i.e. , a goat sacrifice now, which takes place about November ;
but not so long before Tharchin's time at Poo, a human child sacrifice (eight years old) was
offered up once a year in celebration of the "great mother" goddess—Tara, wife of Siva]. The
ceremony is carried out, or to put it better, directed (for almost the whole population of Poo
lakes part in it) by a leader called scianldn,.. Waving a bundle of peacocks' feathers, he starts
various tempi of the dance, which is performed rhvthmicallv by the crowd singing in
chorus and usually arranged in alternate lines of men and women. The dancing-place is called
dogra or dogmo; it is a wide space, in the corner of which is set up a large monolith.
The purpose of the ceremonies is to maintain the fertilizing power of nature, to promote a
high rate of reproduction in animais and to invoke the benediction of the gods that they may
extend the scope of good and destroy the influence of evil forces....
The hymns conclude with a long list of deities who are the protectors or the patrons of
villages or of simple places, mountains, rivers and bridges—the sole survival of an aboriginal
religion now almost completely vanished.*
The central deity is evidently the Grablà ... the patron of Poo and of Kanum, because every
one of these villages still preserves its tutelary gods.... All are included and invoked in the
litanies which the priests of the various temples recite in the daily ceremonies from one end to
the other of Kunawar.f 9 8
Such, in part, gives some idea of what constituted the highly animistic element in this
aboriginal religion. But there was another equally important side to this primitive faith. For
not unlike other "proto-religious creeds"—such as those in Siberia and Africa or among the
Australian aboriginals or Native Americans (formerly called American Indians)—this
indigenous religion had its shamans or priestly adepts, too, whose aim was to nurture the
good forces and control the evil ones. The technique used by these sorcerers, magicians and
diviners was to allow themselves to enter passively into an ecstatic trance and thus by this
means cure sicknesses, exorcise demons, or communicate with the dead and with spirits—
all on behalf of the community, household and/or individual. Here, too, vestiges of this other
major element in this aboriginal faith could also still be witnessed among the followers of
Lamaism in Lesser Tibet during the time of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
Moravian missionaries. In his study on the religions of Tibet, Helmut Hoffmann has cited
Moravian missionary Samuel Ribbach's German volume (published in 1940) as providing
such evidence. He extracted from this Moravian's book an example of an attempted
shamanistic healing of the sick which had taken place in one of the Indo-Tibetan communities
(Kalatse in Ladakh) and that must have typified what occurred in other places of Lesser
Tibet as well, including Poo.
In the instance at hand derived from Ribbach, an exorcist of demons (called a Lha-pa),
who had arrived in the area all the way from Lhasa, was summoned to call back the presumed
departed soul of a Tibetan woman who had fallen deathly ill. Besides utilizing various kinds
* This and much, much more became quite familiar to Austrian scholar, Baron René deNebesky-Wojkowitz, who
delved quite thoroughly into the subject of the Tibetan protective deities and other occult phenomena among the
Bhod peoples of Central and South Asia. The results of his researches, conducted principally at Kalimpong in
NE India near the Tibetan border during the early 1950s, provide an excellent introduction to this fantastic world
of the unseen realm. Two works of his dealing with this extensive topic are: Where the Gods Are Mountains; and
his much more significant, massive work, Oracles and Demons of Tibet; the Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan
Protective Deities.
Î Even as recently as the mid-1990s, archaeologist L. S. Thakur, having conducted seven field-surveys between
1988 and 1995 in Poo/dKor and other areas of Kunawar as well as in the neighboring Lahul-Spiti region, could
declare in 1995 : "The prevalence of the cult of native godlings can [still] be seen in the area but it is not very clear
when such cults made their appearance first. The archaeological evidence is wanting on the historicity and
antiquity of these native cults." Thakur, "Tibetan Historical Inscriptions from Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti," in H.
Krasser et al., eds., Tibetan Studies, 11:978. For further data on the practice of human sacrifice at Poo and
elsewhere in Kunawar, see the End-Note cited above.
of Lamaist magic devices, the Lha-pa also resorted to the use of fumes of juniper berries
and juniper twigs which were burnt on a coal brazier as a narcotic. Quoting from Ribbach,
the incident unfolded as follows:
The Lha-pa now called on his protective demon to enter into his body, and went into an
ecstasy, becoming very agitated, his eyes staring fixedly and his lips foaming; and then leaping
to his feet, uttering shrill cries and dancing around wildly. Now the conjured spirit demanded
through the lips of the medium (the Lha-pa): "Who has called me?" Someone answered: "The
Lha-pa. Who caused the sickness of Parlapong Rolma?" The spirit answered: "The Naskorpas."
Someone then asked: "What can we do against the sickness? How can we bring back the
departed life of this woman?" The Lha (the spirit which has entered the Lha-pa) now announced
that a sku-rim or a sacrificial ceremony must be arranged and sacrificial gifts should be scattered.
Hoffman then noted that this was an authentic shamanistic performance marked by a great
degree of trance and by the significant cooperation of a familiar spirit." Needless to say,
many of this religion's priest-sorcerers were and still are greatly respected—even feared—
for their magical powers. (In Tibet itself, for example, individual practitioners of this shamanistip
religion were still present in many parts of the country at the time of the Chinese invasion of
4
the land in 1950.) \
Now at the time of the initial entrance of Buddhism into Tibet, which occurred during the
first half of the seventh century, but on a very small scale, it was more than likely restricted
to the court of the Tibetan king, who in this instance was Songtsan Gampo. Having made
matrimonial alliances with the rulers of two neighboring lar\ds—one with the Emperor of
China and the other with the royal court of Nepal—the Tibetan King-Emperor thus acquired
two foreign wives both of whom were reputed to be devotees of Buddhism and who each
brought with them a prized sculptured image of the Sakyamuni Buddha (see Chapter 15 of the
present work's next volume for much more detail regarding this episode in Tibetan histoiy). It is
believed by Snellgrove and Richardson that to please these two foreign Buddhist wives the
Tibetan king had constructed two temples for enshrining these two priceless images, and thus
were built the very first Buddhist temples to grace the land of Tibet.
Yet, though he had done this and had extended further royal patronage to the foreign
religion, Songtsan Gampo nonetheless "continued," assert these two authors, "to follow the
beliefs and practices of his non-Buddhist ancestors"; and thus, one may add, he presumably
relied as before on the services of those specialty priests denominated in the earliest Tibetan
literary sources as Bon and gShen whose particular sacerdotal task had been to perform
death ceremonies and invoke and make offerings to a variety of local divinities.* According
to Snellgrove and Richardson, even the King-Emperor's descendant on the throne, Tri-song
* Some clarification is needed here in reference to the use of these two Tibetan terms of Bon (most likely meaning
"Invoker") and gShen (most likely meaning "Sacrificer"), especially with respect to the use of the former. Thanks
to more recent scholarship—initiated by Snellgrove himself, incidentally—a much needed corrective has appeared
in more recently published scholarly literature about Tibet. As Snellgrove and Richardson have themselves
explained the situation in their Cultural History of Tibet, page 59: "Later Tibetan writers as well as some Western
scholars have referred to this early religion as Bon, but the word never seems to appear with any other meaning
but 'priest' in really early Tibetan literature. Later on the term Bon came to be applied to the new religious
developments, which incorporated some old beliefs and a very great deal of Buddhism ..." In his monumental
work, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (1987), 11:390, Snellgrove has further explained the confusion and clarified the
matter thus:
Detsen, considered by later Tibetan literary sources to have been a great champion of
Buddhism, appears nevertheless to have been the defender and quasi-deity of the older
indigenous faith while at the same time serving "as an 'enlightened' votary of the new." And
though the third and final of these so-called great Religious (Buddhist) Kings of Tibet,
Ralpachen, is viewed by later Tibetan histories to have been "almost besotted" in his devotion
to the foreign religion, he too, like his Buddhist champion father before him, was buried at the
ancient bon- and shen-dominated burial ground of the kings, and presumably, say Snellgrove
and Richardson, done so according to the pre-Buddhist rites of the older religion.100 Regarding
this stage of Buddhist development in seventh-century Tibet, therefore, one could agree with
these two cultural historians who observe that Buddhism was about the business of "securing
royal permission and protection for its practice [rather] than of practicing it confidently as
the dominant religion."
But with the coming to Tibet during the latter half of the eighth century of the Indian
Tantric-Yoga Buddhist from Swat, Padma Sambhava (meaning The Lotus Born), his brother-
in-law Santarakshita, and the other court-invited northern Indian Buddhist missionaries, there
was presented to the previously dominant pre-Buddhist shamanistic religion a strong challenge
that was both imitative and innovative in nature. For as Tibetan scholar Schuyler Cammann
has pointed out, they too exhibited a reliance on shamanistic magic and even on demon
worship.
In fact, another Tibetan scholar, Australian anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel, has observed
that "if the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet was shamanic, it was not the only source of shamanic
orientations and practices" there. "The Buddhist tantras" brought in by the aforementioned
Indian Tantric teachers, he explains, "were themselves largely a product of shamanic thought."
Samuel goes on to indicate that "the magical powers are amply attested in the tantras
themselves, as well as in accounts such as the Lives of the Eighty-Four SiddhasT The
latter is a reference to the Eighty-Four Great Indian Magicians or Tantric Adepts of the
eighth to twelfth centuries. And the major categories of this Indian Tantric magical or
shamanistic ritual—pacifying, increasing, overpowering, and destroying—were "performed
through the evocation of deities ..."
Now it was these kinds of shamanistic powers which were carried to Tibet where through
the intense activity of Tantric teachers like Padma Sambhava and Santarakshita "the shamanic
The term Bon, earlier meaning a special category of priest in the indigenous religion, came into use with a
changed meaning in that uncertain period of the history of central Tibet, late ninth to mid-eleventh century
... It then meant what it has continued to mean to this day, a form of Buddhism that may fairly be regarded
as heretical, in that those who follow it have persisted in claiming that their religion was taught not by
Sakyamuni Buddha, but by gShen-rab, likewise accepted as Buddha, and that it came not from India, but from
, Ta-zig and by way of Zhang-Zhung [a geographical area to the west of western Tibet], Such are the Bonpos,
; who have managed to hold their own down to the present day against the enormously more powerful
representatives of orthodox Buddhism, while they are constantly and quite wrongly identified by other
Tibetans, as well as by many modern outsiders, as the persistent practitioners of pre-Buddhist Tibetan
religion.
For two other equally helpful scholarly discussions of the bon and shen priests in the pre-Buddhist and early
Buddhist period of Tibetan religious history, consult Per Kvaerne, "Introduction," in Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
Oracles and Demons of Tibet, v-viii; and Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies
(Washington/London, 1993), 10-13,442-3.
world-view," notes Samuel, "remained very strong" despite "signs of an imperial preference"
by the late eighth century "for clerical over shamanic religion."* Hence, it becomes clear
that what these invited Indian Tantric practitioners did in competition with their native Tibetan
counterparts was to employ their own shamanistic abilities: powerful demonstrations of which
resulted in a compromise with the older indigenous faith. Indeed, Snellgrove and Richardson
have remarked that during this period the Buddhism of Padma Sambhava and his associates
"was content to compromise,... trying always to come to terms with the older faith." Exploiting
whatever common ground which existed between the more worldly Buddhist Tantric rites—
such as those for prosperity and the destruction of enemies—and certain pre-Buddhist
practices of the autochthonous "popular religion" of Tibet, the Indian Tantric yogin-magician
Padma Sambhava was able to accomplish what Snellgrove and Richardson feel was probably
his primary achievement. By duplicating and even excelling in the magical—that is to say,
shamanistic—arts of the aboriginal Tibetan religion, whether that be achieving equal or superior
proficiency in such practices as oracles, divination and the cult of local divinities, the position
and influence at court of this older faith were bound to grow weak with the passage of time
while concomitantly the prestige and power of the foreign religion from the south were
bound to increase.
Moreover, as was intimated earlier, these representatives in Tibet of the eroded Buddhism I
of northern India had also in their teaching and practice an emphasis on various sexual j
elements. Placing considerable stress on what Cammann described as "the philosophic concept |
of the union between the spiritual and material forces in the \ini verse," Padma Sambhava's
Tantrism, he added, represented this aspect of their teaching by paintings and images portraying
the physical union of god and goddess, and "practiced and encouraged sexual excesses as a
form of worship."101 That this latter observation made by Cammann was no exaggeration is
indisputably borne out by David Snellgrove's scholarly researches into the ceremonial feasts
of North India's Tantric Buddhism, much of which found its way into Tibet through the
missionary energies of Padma Sambhava and his co-religionists. In his remarkable two- ;
volume study on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (1987), Snellgrove introduces his discussion of
these Tantric religious feasts as follows:
The reader of tantric texts soon becomes aware that they range from the preaching of strict j
living to extreme licentiousness, the former applying quite explicitly to the pupil who is ;
undergoing training, and the latter to the perfected yogin, who is not only free from all social
conventions but who has also learned the secret of the absence of passion by means of the \
* Samuel, "Early Buddhism in Tibet: Some Anthropological Perspectives," in B. Aziz and M. Kapstein, eds., f
Soundings in Tibetan Civilization (New Delhi, 1985), 390-1. |
Elsewhere in his published scholarship Tibetologist Samuel has shown that all four Buddhist traditions in |
Tibet, including the ruling Yellow Hat Gelugpa order, have at one time or another incorporated not only "the
sophisticated tantric Buddhist form [of shamanic powers] ... from India" that had been adopted and developed j
by India's early Tantric teachers who had then gone and taught in Tibet, but also the "shamanic procedures of a i
less sophisticated kind: those involving spirit-mediums and other folk-religion divinatory techniques, bsang ;
offerings to local deities, and the like" and whose "origins are, for the most part, Tibetan rather than Indian, and j
... lie in cults of local deities and divinatory techniques which are common in one form or another to most parts j
of East and South Asia." Samuel, "Shamanism, Bon and Tibetan Religion," in C. Ramble and M. Brauen, eds., J
Proceedings,.., 326-7. Samuel provides a much fuller treatment of this subject in his massive study cited in the J
previous footnote, Civilized Shamans, passim.
passions. There is a tendency nowadays, much promoted by Tibetan lamas who teach in the
Western world, to treat references to sexual union and to forms <hf worship carried out with
"impure substances^ (referred to usually as the "five nectars") ^s symbolic. There is some
justification for this, but it is only part of the truth. Thus when [the Tantric yogin] Kanha
serenades his washerwoman as the source of his bliss, he is referring to internal practices of
yoga. Likewise^ the Hevajra Tantra is often quite explicit in its reference to esoteric meanings.
But when modern apologists use the term "symbolic" as though to suggest that the external
practices were never taken in any literal sense, they mislead us. Central to tantric practice is the
refusal to distinguish between the everyday world (samsara) and the experience of nirvana.
The 6uter practices were certainly performed in the centers where the materials of which such
tantras consist were recited and eventually committed to writing, even if the Tibetans have
since ceased *o perform most of them....
, Snellgrove then goes on to quote verbatim in translated form several of these Tantric
texts that not only include sexual union in a licentious form as part of these festivals but also
include what to many outsiders might prove to be the most repulsive: the offering up and/or
physically partaking of human flesh along with other forms of flesh as part of the sacrificial
ceremony involved. In his commentary on one such feast and its so-called symbolic references,
Snellgrove notes that the "spiced food" of the sacrament "refers to a concoction of the flesh
of a human being, a cow, an elephant, a horse and a dog." The enigmatic reference to
"kingly rice" in the same Tantric text "refers to specially selected human flesh—that of a
man who has been hanged, a warrior killed in battle or a man of irreproachable conduct who
has returned [reincarnated] seven times to a good human state." And the coded reference
to "sacred skull," likewise in the same text, means the skull of a Hindu brahmin priest.
One need not doubt, asserts Snellgrove, that "these items were sought after and used
according to their availability," including that of human flesh. This Buddhist scholar could be
certain of the truth of this assertion since the tantra itself is in this instance quite explicit:
"One should mark out a 'seven-timer' with the characteristics recounted in Hevajra. In the
seventh birth there comes about that perfection which is typical of the 'Joy of Cessation' [of
the cycle of rebirths]. He has a fair-sounding voice, beautiful eyes and a sweet-smelling
body of great splendor and he possesses seven shadows. When he sees such a one the yogin
should mark him out. By the mere act of eating him, one will gain at that moment the power
of an aerial being": one of the miraculous mundane powers Tantric yogins seek after in their
quest for enlightenment and Nirvana.
Snellgrove then rhetorically wonders, however, whether the yogin in question here would
track down his desired human victim and await his natural death or whether he would hasten the
process. Answering his own inquiry, he concludes that because all these tantras describe numerous
"fierce rites with the object of slaying," he believes that the latter option would have been the
more likely scenario. As a matter of fact, "there can be no doubt," he states with confidence,
"that the followers of the Great Goddess Devi or Durga... sought out suitable [human] sacrificial
victims," since he notes that a similar fate nearly overtook the most celebrated of all Chinese
Buddhist pilgrim-scholars and a lama in his own right, Hsuan-tsang. He it was who traveled
throughout northern India during the seventh century and on one occasion was almost ravished
While a passenger in a boat on the sacred Ganges by so-called yogin "pirates" who were devotees
pf the Goddess Durga. For they saw in him a most suitable victim for their own special purposes,
perhaps believing that participating in such sacrificial flesh by eating it, they would be fortified
spiritually in the course of acquiring various sought-after superhuman powers; for according to
their Tantric Buddhist conception of things, they would be appropriating to themselves the exalted
nature of their sacrificial victim (whom they described as "this monk of noble form and pleasing
features") which would in turn greatly enhance their chances of acquiring such powers as the
ability to read another person's mind, to become invisible, pass through solid objects, fly in a
crosslegged fashion, assume different appearances, project over great distances various emanations
of oneself, force others into doing one's will, etc. From the earliest times, observes Snellgrove, the
acquisition of such superhuman powers had been "closely associated with the realization of
enlightenment." And if that be the case, these yogins would have been motivated even more to
participate in such Tantric festivals that more often than not combined both sexual excesses and
human sacrifice together in their so-called worship ceremonies.
All this was to have a tremendous impact on the adherents of the old aboriginal religion in
Tibet that in Peter Hopkirk's view was "an even more primitive kind of animism" than its
challenger from the south. Like many other writers on Tibet, Hopkirk subscribes to the Late
North Indian Buddhist debasement school of thought; and as such, he attributes "this
debasement" in the Buddhism of India to the "infusion" there of the animistic creed of
Tantrism that "embraced magic, witchcraft and spells." Soon finding itself "in violent conflict"
with Tibet's indigenous faith whose centuries-old practices, writes Hopkirk, included "human
sacrifice, cannibalism, devil worship and sexual orgies," the eroded Buddhism of Padma j
Sambhava nonetheless gradually prevailed because it, too, With its emphasis on Bengali I
Tantric beliefs, leaned considerably on magic, witchcraft, human sacrifice and eroticism and 1
fitted in so well with Tibet's own pre-Buddhist animistic-shamanistic practices. Indeed, it is
the view of Jampei Chinlei that the debased Buddhism's initial appeal to the Tibetans was
because they saw it "as a superior form of magic and healing art." And whether or not one
chooses to believe the many legends surrounding the exploits of these bearers of the
adulterated Doctrine, which told of a series of extraordinary victories over the local deities ;
and demons of Tibet by these Buddhist newcomers, it can at least be asserted with much
justification that by their use themselves of eroticism, magic and devil worship, Padma
Sambhava and his co-religionists from northern India made a lasting impression on the Tibetans
and gained many followers who aided this Guru missionary and his colleagues in establishing j
temples and monasteries as centers for the new faith, the earliest founded being the monastery
of Samye in 779 a.d.
Padma Sambhava's Tantric creed thus made it possible for him to assimilate into the j
Mahayanist system of belief both the deities and many of the practices of Tibet's "popular," J
fundamentally non-Buddhist, indigenous religion. In this way, writes Tibetan scholar George j
Woodcock, "the syncretic form of Buddhism peculiar to Tibet, and generally called Lamaism, i
was developed." In the long term, he added, Tibet's aboriginal faith "was defeated because ]
Lamaism provided all that the old religion could give in the way of magic and ecstasy, and in |
addition offered the consolatory doctrines of Mahayana, with its redeeming Bodhisattvas j
willing to sacrifice all hope of eternal peace until the suffering of every creature had been J
brought to an end." And despite the fact that Lamaism had to pass through numerous trials I
and counter-challenges by the adherents of Tibet's old shamanistic-animistic belief systeiri \
(particularly that of the wicked anti-Buddhist King Langdarma during the second quarter of
the ninth century) before the trend towards Mahayana-Tantric Buddhism was completed,
the conflict between these two creeds was primarily resolved by the simple fact that they
gradually but inexorably commenced to resemble one another. In fact, Snellgrove and
Richardson have made it clear that ever since this contact between the "Tibetan native
religious genius and the fantastic philosophical and religious extravagances of late Indian
Buddhism," Tibetan Buddhists as a whole have remained "almost innocently unaware of the
great variety of pre-Buddhist beliefs and practices that they have absorbed as an accepted
part of their daily thoughts and actions." Even so, what Buddhism did with respect to this
highly shamanistic "religion without name" among the Tibetans was not a unique phenomenon
peculiar only to the ancient religious practice of Tibet. On the contrary, John Graham has
made the observation that in all countries where Buddhism has thrived to any extent, this
faith "has shown a wonderful power of consorting with the previously existing religions"—
whether that be "with the idolatry of the Hindus, the demon worship of the aborigines of
Ceylon, the Confucianism and Taoism of China, the Shintoism of Japan, or the Shamanism of
Tibet and Mongolia."*102
Nevertheless, though Lamaist Buddhism has in truth supplanted the older shamanistic-
animistic faith for most of Tibet's religious history, the land's native form of worship, as
intimated earlier, has never been entirely uprooted. Right through the Buddhist period down
to the present day, note Snellgrove and Richardson, certain pre-Buddhist ideas and practices
persisted. For example, one particular holdover from this earlier shamanistic perjod and still
very much used by Tibetans as part of their Buddhist ceremonies is the practice <®f conjuring
* Interestingly, a much later-day writer has in similar vein noted this same phenomenon, at least in relation to
Mongolia. In a study about the conversion of this shamanistic-oriented land to Tibetan Lamaism during the
seventeenth century, Walter Heissig has insightfully observed that the "newly imposed Lamaist formulas were
only substitutes for the shamanist functions." See his article, "A Mongolian Source to the Lamaist Suppression
of Shamanism in the 17th Century," in Anthropos 48 (1953):493~533.
And with regard to Tibet itself, Australian anthropologist Samuel has made a most perceptive observation. In
countries like Thailand and Mayanmar (Burma) today, he writes, shamanistic practices "such as divination,
spirit-mediumship and the negotiation of the relationship with local gods and deities fall outside the proper realm
of orthodox Buddhist practice (which is not to say that good Buddhists, including Buddhist monks, do not
participate in such activities)." On the other hand, "in Tibet, they form part of Buddhist practice, and are carried
out predominantly through the procedures of the Vajrayana"; which, as noted by Jampei Chinlei, the reader may
recall, includes the entire complex of Tantric teachings and practices (many of which were shamanistic in
character) that by the late sixth century in India had come to be known as "the Vajra Vehicle," the third and final
stage in Buddhism's development in the Subcontinent that according to its adherents had followed and completed
both ancient Hinayana and later Mahayana. Thus in Tibet, Samuel adds, "we have a religion of shamanic ritual
and a religion of scriptures and monastic observance" which "have somehow been combined and homologized."
Samuel, "Shamanism, Bon and Tibetan Religion," in Ramble and Brauen, eds., Proceedings ...,319.
Indeed, the Tibetan religion, writes Tibetologist Per Kvaerne, provides
an almost classic example of the co-existence and interfusion of two traditions: a "high" tradition of Buddhist
ethics and metaphysics, meditation and ritual, and a "low" tradition consisting of beliefs and practices of an
essentially non-Buddhist kind. Although the emphasis which the individual Tibetan—according to his background
and situation in life—places on either the "high" or the "low" tradition may vary, it should not be forgotten
that in Tibet the two traditions were not distinguished, the amalgamation being designated by the single word
chos, "religion." This term, corresponding to the Indian term dharma, is used by all schools or sects within
Tibetan Buddhism to refer to their teachings.
\
Kvaerne, "Introduction," in Ncbesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet, iv.

a malevolent god or demon into a ritual contraption known as the "sky." Captured by priestly
conjuration in this unusual device like a bird caught and placed in a cage, the malevolent one
that has caused trouble to someone in the community is given ransom-offerings and then
dismissed by both devilish sprite and cage-like device being hurled away.
Another holdover from this ancestral animistic and shamanistic period and which has
been neatly fitted into the Tantric-Mahayana framework of the newer religion of Tibetan
Lamaism are the various categories of numerous local divinities—whether they be harmful
demons or hero-gods. According to Snellgrove and Richardson, it would appear that Tibetans
"have never thought seriously of rejecting their own local gods and indigenous rites as un-
Buddhistor 'pagan'." These local divinities are the mountain-gods inhabiting certain mountains
regarded as sacred, local "gods of the soil" and "gods of the place" inhabiting prominent
rock-features among the Tibetan hills and mountains, as well as the "serpent-divinities"
inhabiting streams and springs. Even in the most recent Buddhist period of Tibetan history
these all, assert the two authors, "have survived right up to present times." In every kind of
building and agricultural labor, they add, Tibetan citizenry "are liable to come into conflict
with these local deities, who easily take offense if they are not propitiated in compensation
for the use that men make of their domains. Any misuse of them, such as polluting a spring,
provokes spiteful reactions from them which result in disease and death." One could add
here, even as Geoffrey Samuel has observed, that the services of "protecting the community,
household and individual from destructive spirits and maintaining prosperity and the life-
force"—which were provided both by the earlier native religious practitioners and by the
Tibetan Buddhist Tantric lama practitioners of shamanism who arose as their victorious
competitors—"have continued to be a primary activity of Tibetan lamas into modern times."
But finally, the most significant evidence of the continuing presence of this ancient shamanistic
religion among Tibetans has been, as noted alike by Hoffmann and Samuel, the official place
reserved within the framework of the country's Buddhist religion for the oracular Lama called
Nechung whose advice has often been consulted on important State matters. Before the
downfall of Tibet to the Chinese, his habitat had been identified with the small Buddhist Temple
of Nechung located just to the west of Lhasa in the neighborhood of Drepung, one of the three
great State Buddhist monasteries. Like the familiar spirits of old, there is one called Pe-har that
takes possession of the Nechung Oracle. And whenever consulted by the Tibetan Buddhist
government, this Lama, in a state of wild ecstasy, would ejaculate his oracular utterances while
often writhing on the ground in convulsions. In fact, in the 1997 Hollywood film on the 1 ife of the
current ruling Pontiff of the Tibetan Buddhist Church, directed by Martin Scorsese and entitled
Kundun, there is presented twice for the viewer an extraordinary but very accurate portrayal
of this same Nechung State Oracle, as under possession of the Pe-har spirit he communicated
to the ruling Pontiff the advice and counsel of the unseen realm which the Buddhist Pontiff and
his Government ministers were bound by ancient tradition to follow in leading the nation through
periods of crisis.103
Thus borrowing freely from the pre-Buddhist religion of the Tibetans as well as from
other religions, including even Nestorian Christianity, the Buddhism of Tibet "in its final
form," writes Peter Hopkirk, "would scarcely have been recognized by its saintly founder."
In this same vein, another Western scholar, the highly respected Dutch Tibetologist, Dr. P. H.
Pott, who was otherwise quite understanding of—perhaps even sympathetic to—this final
form of Buddhism in Tibet, was nonetheless driven to acknowledge the following:
Whoever has some knowledge of Buddhism as we find it in Ceylon, and as we think we can
trace it in the ancient monuments of India, is astonished, and perhaps even indignant, when he
makes acquaintance with the Buddhism of Tibet. The reason is, that he is confronted by
beings which he never encountered before, and which seem to be incompatible with the real
teaching of the Buddha.... [For] when we observe the manifold curious beings who have
gained a place in the vast system of divinities characteristic of Lamaism, we certainly have
reason to wonder whether such conceptions still have any connection with the original teaching
of the Buddha, which in the first instance was an ethical doctrine.
But equally troubling in its implications was Pott's further remark about Tibetan Buddhism, in
particular its Tantric-Mahayana expression. "In the Mahayana," he writes, "one observes
the development," described by him as Tantrism in its most elaborate form, "of a mystical-
occult variation" whose "complicated ritual and practices ... come dangerously close to
sorcery." Other scholars, however, have not hesitated to declare that these and other practices
in Lamaist Buddhism were in truth sorcerous in character.
Such a state of things in the Land of the Bhod People proved to be a keen disappointment to
the famed leader of the diplomatic-military Mission to Lhasa of 1903/4, Colonel (later Sir) Francis
Younghusband. In a paper he read before the Royal Geographical Society in London shortly after
his return from the Land of Monks and Monasteries, the Expedition leader and future founder of
the World Congress of Faiths expressed his deep misgivings about Tibetan Buddhism:
One monastery at Lhasa contained no less than 10,000 monks, and another had 7000.1 do not
• think anyone saw these monks without remarking what a degraded, nasty, sensual-looking lot
they were.... I would warn those who would look to Lhasa for any kind of higher intellectual or
spiritual guidance to seek nearer home for what they need. Imbued, as the Tibetans are, with
much of that impassive contentment inculcated by Buddha, they are still, to all intents and
purposes, demon-worshipers. Their religion is grotesque, and is the most degraded, not the
purest, form of Buddhism in existence.104
But such a state of things in Tibet proved to be an even more keen disappointment to the
well-known Russian explorer, archaeologist and Orientalist of sorts, Nicholas Roerich. Not
strictly wedded to the Western faith of Christianity in its distinctive doctrines and practices,
Roerich—who as a Theosophist greatly appreciated Gautama Buddha—had set out in search
of what his obituary in the New York Times termed "a composite Messiah in Tibet" when he
launched his many years of travel and study through much of Central Asia, including especially
the lands of Tibetan culture and influence. But in 1928 this highly regarded student of Asia,
who was so well received in every place he went there,*105 was forced to conclude with
it would be hard to imagine a better ambassador of good will from the West to the East, for the reason that
although he represents the summit of European accomplishment and culture, Roerich is deeply Oriental in
temperament, sympathies and point of view. One has only to look at him to see—or, if you must have it so,
imagine—the reincarnated Eastern sage. Certain it is that in India, in Tibet, in Ladakh (Little Tibet), and in the
white fastnesses of Siberia he was received with an honor, accorded a confidence and even an affection, quite
different from the ordinary attitude of these peoples towards strangers, which has the reputation of being
covertly or openly hostile." Claude Bragdon, "Introduction" (to Roerich's published diary of his travels to
Central Asia, 1924-8), Altai-Himalaya, xiv.
great reluctance that Tibet, once reputed to have been the stronghold of Buddhism, had sunk
into "depraved Shamanistic religion."106 Painfully affected beyond measure by what he had
witnessed all about him during his lengthy stay atop the World's Roof, Professor Roerich
was moved to declare: "Tibet has been veiled in the reputation of being a country of religious
[i.e., Buddhist] covenants, but let us not be afraid of the truth—penetrate it. Does Buddhism
exist here, or is it, rather, Shamanistic Lamaism? Do not let us be afraid to call things by their
proper names." After describing at great length some of the more blatant worldly, unethical
and hypocritical lapses of Buddhist Lamas who, he said, should be "teachers of the people,"
Roerich then proceeded to catalog for the readers of his travel diary the dismal record of
what he had seen firsthand of the multifarious shamanistic-animistic manifestations of the
so-called Buddhism of Tibet. Unable to restrain himself, he candidly reviewed the sunken
state of this religion as he had beheld it just two short decades before the godless religion-
hating Chinese Communist cadres would commence to sweep the formal trappings of it all
wellnigh completely away:
Let us consider the Black Magic of Tibet. Let us recall the revived corpses, the celebrated
Rolang-resurrection—which is nothing but a crude form of vampirism. Let us recall the
wandering spirits who kill and do all manner of evil; and they are often the spirits of lamas.
Let us recall all sorts of obsessions, how, under evil influences, people are completely
changed and temporarily fall into actual insanity. Let us recall evil conjurations and invocations
with which the lamas arm themselves to frighten the ignorant people. Let us recall the
suicidal magic daggers, dark fortune-telling, spells, werewolves, entities which have assumed
the appearance of animals; and all kinds of inventions of an evil will.... Such dark practices
It should be clearly understood that in this and other writings about his Central Asian journey published
shortly afterwards, Roerich had expressed strong criticism of the Tibetan spiritual and temporal ruler of that day,
the Dalai Lama, openly opposing him to Tibet's second-highest prelate, the Panchen Lama. As may be discerned- «
by what is presented in the End-Note just now indicated in the Text above, this siding with the Panchen Lama
may have been motivated by grandiose politico-religious designs which he, in concert with the Soviets, had
concocted for Tibet and other neighboring regions of Central Asia. But the paramount reason for this great 3
admirer of Gautama Buddha to oppose the Dalai Lama was because the Russian held him and his Government j
ministers (and perhaps their predecessors)—at all levels, both cleric and lay—responsible for what he genuinely (
perceived was the near-total degradation of the Buddhist dharma in Tibet. This will become clearer to the reader ]
as he reads further on in the Text above. i
Now in the interest of complete candor and fairness to all concerned, the present author felt it incumbent upon j
him to relate, in the aforementioned End-Note, additional—perhaps to some, unsavory—information about j
Roerich, which among other things concerns possibly ulterior motives that lay behind this strong criticism of !
Tibet's ruling Pontiff Government and religion. But even in the face of this unsavory information about this j
Russian mystic, it is this writer's considered judgment that what is revealed in the End-Note regarding the j
peculiar personality and activities of Nicholas Roerich does not in the least invalidate this Russian's findings on 1
the general state of Tibetan Buddhism as he saw it firsthand and subsequently reported on it to some of his j
expedition's sponsors and later discussed it in the published accounts of his travels—and even if some might be j
led to assume, from all which is presented in the End-Note, that out of spite for having been denied permission 1
to enter Lhasa or for other religio-poiitical reasons, he might have embellished his report to make it an even more j
searing indictment than it would nonetheless still have been. Moreover, even if such embellishment were true,
that action, along with other, far more bizarre, aspects to the Roerich story, as detailed in the End-Note, would
still be no justification, in this writer's opinion, to view his report and subsequent accounts as flawed documents, j
On the contraiy, regardless how one may view Nicholas Roerich and his strange career, there is enough corroborative j
evidence from other legitimate sources which lead this writer to accept as valid and true the sum and substance j
of this Russian's remarkable indictment. And hence, this author has had no hesitation to include it in the present |
narrative both in summary fashion in the Text above and in its more complete form in a subsequent End-Note, j
of lamas do not give very good evidence of their uprightness....

Many authors who have written about Tibet have called it the miracle of miracles. But this
title ... is due to the misconception of those writers who have been hypnotized by tradition....
Then, after devoting several paragraphs to the "savages, nomads and forest dwellers"
who, he explained, worship arrows and revere "absurd" amulets, Professor Roerich lamented:
"It is fearful to think that the name of Buddha is intermingled with this spiritual dirt." Indeed,
he was saddened immensely by the fact that in Tibet conscious reverence for the Buddha
was held by a remarkably small number of people, a majority of whom, added the Russian
mystic, were in far-away hermitages, "unable to tolerate the official manifestations of the
Lhasan Lamaism." Finally, near the end of his brutally frank delineation, Roerich contrasted
this dark and complex picture of Tibetan Buddhism with the much more uplifting and simple
Buddha dharma of old, declaring: "In the teaching of the Blessed One there are practical
indications about the whole routine of life [the Eightfold Path?]. It is very easy to know and
apply them. But now those who have desecrated the high teaching, must understand that
their criminal actions are condemned and cannot continue... ."107
Thus did Roerich conclude his extraordinarily candid assessment of the state of Tibet's
religious life at the end of his travels through the many lands of Lamaist culture and influence—
and in particular, the very epicenter of them all itself. At the inauguration of his Central
Asian travels in 1924 the Russian mystic had confidantly declared: "The greatest spiritual
country in the world today is Tibet. There we can learn much of the mysteries that have so
far been concealed from us." But by the time he had ended his travels five years later his
opinion of the country and its religion had suffered a drastic change. Earlier he had naively
entered Tibet believing it to be the most spiritual land on earth; he departed it nine months
later extremely disappointed, now believing it was one of the most degraded.*108
* Tibetologist Per Kvaeme, were he to read all of Roerich's findings and judgments, would probably feel that this
Russo-American scholar had not been able "to abandon all prejudice and make a sustained hermeneutical effort"
in order that he might bridge the "abyss" which separates "the rationalistic orientation of the European mind"
from the world of Tibet's oracles and demons. Only by this abandonment and this effort, asserts Kvaerne, can the
Western rationalist ever "succeed in crossing" this Wide gulf of separation. He describes the Tibetan religious
world in the following uncommon even somewhat nightmarish language, a world with which the Moravians and
other Christian missionaries have had to contend in their attempt to bring the message of Christ to the followers
and practitioners of Lamaist Buddhism wherever present in Asia. It is a world, writes Kvaerne,
inhabited by terrible, blood-drinking divinities whose furious anger may nevertheless be directed towards
beneficial ends; by hosts of minor gods, demons, and spirits who, peopling the snow-capped mountains, the
wind-swept plains, the rushing rivers and broad valleys of Tibet, are easily annoyed by intruders and quick to
cause disease and other calamities unless propitiated by appropriate means. It is a world in which death may
turn monks into roving, vengeful spirits, and gods take possession of men, infusing them with supernatural
strength and causing them to utter prophecies; a world where nothing is devoid of meaning if one can but
interpret the signs, and where that which is visible is but an imperfect screen or a partly transparent cover for
a transcendent reality which may be viewed by the eye of faith and controlled by means of meditation,
coercive formulas and elaborate ritual.
Kvaerne, "Introduction," in Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet, iii.
In the minds of many Christian missionaries to the lands of the Bhod peoples during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, however, the "transcendent reality" of which Kvaerne here speaks would probably be
judged, more often than not, as demonic or Satanic in nature. And the manifestation of it through earthly human
agents would be characterized by these messengers of the Cross as a divinely forbidden display of what some
Christians would describe as the latent, superhuman power of the mind and will in man. Moreover, such
*
Such, then, was the incredibly mixed and, many would say, degraded character of the
Lamaist religion of Tibet wherever it was to be found along the Himalayan arc of nations and
elsewhere in Asia. Moreover, during the last half of the nineteenth century, Lamaist Buddhism
had become so strong and sure of itself that it was not about to yieid easily to any competitive
foreign faith—especially to Christianity. With respect to Indo-Tibet, for example, in 1889 one
commentator in thé Moravian Church was moved to describe its mission field among the
Tibetans there as "the most barren of all heathen soils" up to that day, "blighted as it is," he
added, "with the poison cloud of cold, proud, well-sufficient Buddhism."109 In fact, the Lamaist
religious system, possessing a long and singular history among the Bhod peoples, had over
time become so deeply entrenched in the minds and hearts of its adherents that the resistance
to the Light of Christ which the Moravians in Lesser Tibet encountered was nothing short of
a marvel to these missionaries of the Cross. They reacted to the Tibetans' unbelief and
hardness of heart in much the same way as Jesus himself had done in His day when confronted I
by a similar hardhearted condition on the part of the people of Israel among whom He had j
taught and preached. Said Mark in his Gospel account: Jesus "marveled because of their j
unbelief (6:6). j
Yet, it must not be overlooked here, as inferenced earlier, that one extremely important |
element in this remarkably intense resistance to the Christian gospel stemmed, and in great j
measure still stems, from the very strong national feeling of Tibetans that is at once very j
closely identified with their religious practice which as earlier noted has been called by many j
outsiders Lamaism. In the words of the distinguished longtime Australian missionary to j
Tibet, James Edgar, who worked inside the country along the Sino-Tibetan border, "Lamaism J
is distinctly and fanatically opposed to anything inimical to the national solidarity of the Tibetans" 1
and, accordingly, "a general change of religion must mean racial disintegration and national
extinction ..." Indeed, wrote Edgar in 1927, "the Tibetan would not forego Lamaism, because
Tibetan national existence and Lamaism are one ànd the same thing." But because Christianity
is what it is, he concluded, it "is the enemy of Lamaism and must therefore be rejected.. .•'"10
And hence, it can rightly be said that fear of the loss of their national identity greatly informs
the incredible resistance and unbelief on the part of the adherents of Tibetan Buddhism, but
especially among the Lamaist clergy, and goes to explain in great part the strength of the
lamas' opposition to Christian conversion.
There were other reasons, however, to account for this resistance and callous unbelief ;
among the Tibetans whom the Moravians attempted to reach with the gospel of Christ. Two
in particular were explained by a most perceptive traveler through Indian Tibet, Lieutenant
Colonel Henry D. Torrens of the British Indian Army, who himself visited among the
Moravians at their Kyelang station during the summer of 1861. The two reasons he chose to
manifestation would stand in stark contrast to the legitimate expression of that which Christ's apostle Paul had |
mentioned as an acceptable, even desirable, exercise by Christians of some of the nine supernatural gifts of God's j
Holy Spirit for the advancement of Christ's kingdom and the upbuilding of His Church. For further on this I
subject, see Ch. 10 of the present volume. j
discuss in his volume of travels were: (a) the resemblance in some aspects between Christian
faith and Tibetan Buddhism; and (b) the doctrine of reincarnation.
As to the first, the Colonel noted that this resemblance "is at once an assistance and a
drawback to the missionary; an assistance, inasmuch as he finds in the educated Buddhist a
mind prepared to accept the mystery of Incarnation (it is no new doctrine to the believer on
Buddha)—and the mere fact of a partial similarity of creed excites a curiosity on the part of
the listener to hear more; a drawback, inasmuch as it induces the Buddhist to think that
Christianity is but another and an inferior form of his own religion, which he feels inclined to
tolerate, but never to adopt."* And as to the second reason for the resistance, Torrens
observed that upon both rich and poor, upon both educated and ignorant alike, this doctrine of
reincarnation "acts fatally; it is to the Buddhist what fatalism is to the Mohammedan. If a
Buddhist is treated with kindness and benevolence, he sees no cause for gratitude, because
he looks upon it all as the result of good works performed by him in a previous state of
existence. If, on the other hand, misfortune overtake him, he considers it as a punishment for
sins committed by him when existing in another shape." So deeply engrained in his psyche is
this doctrine that the Buddhist of the Bhod lands finds it extremely difficult to discard it for
the forgiveness by grace through faith found in Christianity.111
Indifference and contempt are other explanations for the lack of a positive response to
the message of the Moravians. To give but one vivid example of this which the missionaries
were up against in propagating the Christian gospel in this Tibetan Buddhist-dominated region,
one chronicler of their labors here has recorded the following anomaly:
When ignorance and conceit are amalgamated and fashioned into weapons of offense and
defense they present an almost invincible front—invincible save by the grace of God. This the
missionaries on the western Himalayas for years experienced. The opposition was one of
supreme indifference and contempt. Outside of... Tibet, Pagell and Heyde and Jaeschke might
go where they pleased without hindrance. Buddhist monasteries might be invaded, and the
folly of idolatry denounced under the shadow of prayer-mills and within the sight of shrines
wreathed in incense, and yet no angry demonstrations be called forth—only dull scorn.
Conviction of sin seemed impossible where the very conception of the actual nature of sin was
lacking, so distorted was the mind and so benumbed the conscience of priests and people. It
was often difficult even to gather an audience. If a village were entered in the course of a
missionary tour, the people remained in their houses, to which the missionary had no access.
If the weather permitted, the householders might be on the flat roofs. Then, the house door
being fastened, the stranger must needs boldly mount up by a ladder outside. Possibly the
* This inclination by Buddhists to interpret Christian teaching in their own terms is no better illustrated than the
incident recounted by the renowned compiler of a distinguished Tibetan-English dictionary, Heinrich Jaeschke,
involving an educated monk from Trashilhunpo in Tibet—Chosphel by name—who had come to Kyelang in
1865 where he remained for three years. Reported Jaeschke:
The story of Christ made no impression on him, or on Buddhists in general, mainly because their own stories tell
of the self-sacrifice of holy beings who had to undergo innumerable terrible agonies in order to accomplish the
salvation of other beings; so they regard the evangelists' stories of Jesus as something long known. The idea that
the suffering Christ is not a holy man but the almighty creator of the world does not affect them simply because
they think that from their books they have a better understanding of how the world began than we do.
Quoted and translated from the German by John Bray in his published paper, "Christian Missionaries on the
Tibetan Border: the Moravian Church in Poo (Kinnaur), 1865-1924," in Ihara and Yamaguchi, eds., Tibetan
Studies, 372.
people would meanwhile vanish. If they remained, he must be content to hear the invitation
passed on to gather for the performance of the tadmo, i.e., juggler, merry-andrew, clown. A
"holy" man will say to him: "Your religion is good perhaps; but you do not fear sin." "How
so?" the surprised missionary replies. "You kill sheep." On his trying to prove that God has not
forbidden this, and on his retorting that the Buddhist himself eats mutton when he can get it,
the latter will say: "Yes, but I kill nothing, not even the merest insect." "But you let others do
the killing for you." "That may be; but then only half the sin is mine. Besides, I acknowledge
and repent of my sins in the evening of each day on which I have eaten flesh."112
But beyond indifference and contempt, which often grew out of ignorance and conceit,
was the problem of the tyranny of the lamas over the lives and minds of the Tibetan people
themselves. This thus buttressed the already severe opposition that was increasingly put
forward by the lamas towards all Moravian evangelistic efforts among the Buddhist settlers
in Lesser Tibet. "At the time when Heyde and Pagell arrived on the scene," wrote another
chronicler of this early period, "no one had the least suspicion how strong and well organized
the opposition to the work would be. During the next fifty years, however, many interesting
facts were discovered about the moral and spiritual life of the people; and these facts are
almost sufficient to explain" the Moravians' slow progress in garnering a harvest of converts
for the kingdom of God along the Indo-Tibetan border region.
The key to the problem, Moravian chronicler J. E. Hutton went on to say, was to be found
in the very word "lamas." In theory, the popular religion was called Buddhism; but in reality,
he explained, it was Lamaism. And the distinction, as will be seen, was most telling. For
these lamas, "by using three powerful methods, had so destroyed the people's higher instincts
that one missionary, Redslob, described their work as Satanic." (Now lest one might be led
to think this a prejudicial judgment against the Tibetan lamas personally, it should be pointed
out that Br. Redslob dearly loved the Tibetans and their lamas and was dearly loved in return
by them; as a matter of fact, he was so greatly respected and revered by the lamas themselves
that after his premature death, they could often be heard speaking of him as an avatar, or
incarnation of the deity; see much later in the present narrative, in Chapter 28.) Although
most fully delineated by Hutton in his History, in a nutshell these three methods of the lamas
were as follows:
(a) Ceremonialism, by which the lamas "created the impression that they alone, being in
possession of supernatural powers, were competent to deal with the devils with which the
country was supposed to swarm"; and "thus had the lamas, from time immemorial, held the
peasants of western Tibet in terror"—and to such an extent that the latter greatly feared to
turn to any other religious faith even if lovingly preached and practiced among them.
(b) The Doctrine of Merit, which in reality, when examined closely, Hutton opined, cannot
even be called an ethical doctrine of salvation by works but "gave such a perverted view of life
that no person, holding it sincerely, could by any possibility accept the Christian religion." There
were four ways of gaining merit, and each, "while looking excellent, was morally corrupt."
These four ways were: (i) to keep a set of commandments which, like the Judeo-Christian
counterpart, was ten in number; (ii) to read as many religious works as possible, in the shortest
time possible; (iii) to offer up prayers, yet not signifying a communion with God or the gods, but
a mere repetition of words, by which, for example, the more frequently one repeated the most
popular "prayer" formula (Om! Mani Padme Hum!) the more merit would accrue to that
person; and (iv) to suffer, by which was meant that because "suffering was closely connected
with sin," therefore, suffering becomes the method for the atonement of one's sin, and hence
necessitating the creation of a doctrine of reincarnation whose acceptance by the people
provided, in theory at least, a cyclic means of purifying themselves, since one short life on this
earth "was not in most cases sufficient for this great purpose."
(c) Financial Tyranny, which accurately describes, asserted Hutton, what was the worst
part of the entire story. This was because the lamas had over the centuries become the
"moneylenders" of the country due to the fact that many of the peasants in hard times had
grown in debt to these religious tyrants. But the latter had then foisted a reign of terror upon
the Tibetans, using the intimidating threat that if the peasants failed to pay on time (and here
is where the doctrine of reincarnation came forcefully and nefariously into play) they would
in their next existence take the form of some loathsome beast or insect.*
* A much more sympathetic view of Lamaism has been taken by certain recent Western writers on Tibet; for
instance, Roger Hicks of Great Britain. In attempting to answer the question of why Tibet should have been such
a religious state, Hicks presents one modern answer, with which, however, he categorically disagrees. Writes
Hicks: This answer, "given almost as a reflex, might be that the country was priest-ridden, and that everyone
followed religion in fear; but this was and is utterly untrue. Certainly the monasteries had considerable economic
power, both by wealth and by weight of numbers, but lamas were not feared, and only a very few lived in
anything which might be called a semblance of luxury." Hidden Tibetf 12-13. Needless to say, the West Himalaya
Moravian missionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, could they have read Hicks's presentation,
would have most certainly taken him to task for such an erroneous assessment—at least with regard to western
and Lesser Tibet.
With respect, first of all, to the matter of priestly lifestyle, the individual lamas wielding any degree of
ecclesiastical authority would in those days have been considerably more well-off when compared to the
economic plight of the lowly Tibetan peasants, and even to the merchants, shopkeepers and craftsmen. And as
for the matter of Lamaist tyranny, both economic and relip: ous, which according to the missionaries and other
observers instilled fear among the populace: let it be said here that the continuous flow of detailed reports and
letters back to the European mission headquarters of these Christian missionaries, who lived and labored so
intimately among the Tibetans for nearly a century, are replete with evidence (such as is given in the Text above)
that sharply contradicts the statements of Hicks, and readily accounts for why, in part at least, the Christian
message of the Moravians and other Mission groups encountered such stout resistance. Furthermore, one need
only recall from a few pages earlier the candid observations of Nicholas Roerich describing the horrific state of
Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet proper to find credible corroboration of much of what these missionaries had to say
about the venality, tyranny and materialism of the lamas with whom they had to deal in Lesser Tibet.
Finally, there is a brief though well-documented recent discussion of the materialistic character of some but
certainly not all monastic institutions in Tibet in Wim van Spengen's fascinating article, "Geographical History:
Long Distance Trade in Tibet," 77(Summer 1995):43-6. This Amsterdam University historical geographer writes:
Where Tibetans chose to write down their life experiences, these had not, with few exceptions, to do with
economic affairs.... Which leaves us with the writings of outsiders,... [and] it is to one of the [travelers in
Tibet] ... that we owe the following immortal observation, which, as a mirror of the time in which it was
written, i.e., the (ate 1930s, succinctly summarizes the relation of the sacred to the profane: "the monks of Tibet,
though cloistered from the vulgar world, have a nice sense of business." This situation was the outcome of a long
historical process, in which the conditions and demands of everyday life, as well as the continual growth in power
of the monasteries, had necessarily led to a considerable softening of the originally strict monastic observance....
Incarnations turned secular insofar as they could make big money, but perhaps there is some stereotyping
involved [here] ... After all, there were big and small monasteries, rich and poor gompas, and among the monks
"all the graduated shades of poverty and wealth that you see in mundane cities." Nevertheless, it is true that
monasteries were important economic centers, some of which had deteriorated into dens of exploitation for local
villagers and visiting pilgrims.... Monasteries had grown rich by their legitimate functions, and sometimes by
their illegitimate actions. Their pivotal position in Tibetan society made them into "immense reservoirs, into
which flowed, by a thousand channels, all the wealth of these vast regions."
Returning one final moment to the matter of merit, Hutton in his careful delineation made
a most chilling observation by way of conclusion:
Let us now see how this doctrine of merit affected the progress of the Mission. The point needs
to be stated with great precision. As the Tibetans worked, read, prayed and suffered simply to
acquire merit, they very naturally argued that all other men, all the world over, acted from the same
selfish motive; no other motive was to them conceivable; no such thing as pure unselfishness
existed; and on this principle they judged the conduct of the missionaries. Why did the missionaries
come to western Tibet? To gain merit for themselves. Why did they teach the children and
distribute medicines to the poor? To gain merit for themselves. Why did the missionary doctor
rise from his couch, trudge ten miles through the snow, and attend a suffering peasant free of
charge? To gain merit for himself. And why did Christ, the Son of God, lay His glory by, take upon
Him the form of a servant, and suffer on Calvary? To gain merit for Himself!!113
Is it any wonder, then, that the Moravian missionaries stationed in Lesser Tibet, throughout
their many years of labor for the Lord, continued by and large "to plough upon a rock"? And did
not the Christian baptism, for instance, of young Tharchin's mother and her son Dorje loom even
more upon the Moravians' view of things as constituting nothing short of incredible miracles of
God's almighty Grace? "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" could quite naturally have been the
heartfelt response by these patient missioners of the Cross to such an /«frequent event as this.
Yet, despite the meager harvest of converts from this incredibly rocky soil of humanity,
slowly but surely, through persistent and dedicated colporteur work, quiet evangelism, and
homely service, small congregations commenced to develop; and the Lord, in response to
the prayers of His servants, began to add to their number. For example, the talented Tibetan,
Sodnam Stobkyes (Nicodemus), who had for years been employed to operate the
aforementioned lithographic press set up at Kyelang, received, together with his son Samuel
(Samuel Joldan), the rite of Christian baptism in October 1865.114 March of the following
year found two other men being baptized, and later their wives received the Lord and were
baptized too. And two years later, Pagell at Poo was able to baptize his first convert there—
Baldan, now named Joseph—on 15 December 1868. Moreover, at Kyelang a few other
converts were added to the little church there as well. Then, too, the various schools which
had been established by the Moravians began to have their influence also: the spring of 1876,
for instance, saw the baptism of the Mohammedan teacher in the Kyelang school, only to be
followed shortly thereafter by the conversion of five of his students!115
But once the Mission of the Moraviansjiad begun to exert more than scant influence for
Christ among the local citizenry, the point was eventually reached "when indifferent tolerance
passed into sharply accentuated hostility": the converts were now to be ostracized. They
faced the near certainty of being disowned by relatives, and suffering the loss of employment
and of possessions, too, while at the same time the local gopas as well as the lamas indulged
in both open and secret opposition of the intensest kind towards the missionary effort.
Nevertheless these developments did not deter either the fidelity of many of the converts to
remain true to their newfound faith or the zeal of the missionaries to plant additional stations
elsewhere. New mission outposts were established at Chot and Gui, near Kyelang, at Scheh
(Sheh), near Leh, and at the turn of the century still another one at Chini village on the river
Sutlej a three-days' journey downriver from Poo. In addition, further signs of spiritual life
(discussed earlier) were especially showing up at Kyelang and elsewhere, what with indigenous
evangelists being raised up from among the early converts—those such as Paulu of Leh,
Chompel of Leh and Kalatse, and Ga Phuntsok of Kyelang and Chot—who courageously
itinerated among their own countrymen. Despite whatever obstacles and opposition were placed
in the way by the enemy, the blessings of the Lord were beginning to fall upon the missionaries
who had come from afar to share the gospel of God with these needy folk here.
These Moravians were all of them a hardy and brave lot. As one English observer of
missionary endeavors described their efforts after decades of devoted service:
The story of their mission to Tibetans in the provinces of Lahul and Kunawar ... has been a
perennial inspiration.... No stone have these dauntless pioneers left unturned to win a people
sunk in indifference and degradation. One of their number writes that any missionary working
on the borders of Tibet would almost be prepared to start for Lhasa at five minutes' notice if the
way were unexpectedly opened. Such is the intrepidity of the Moravian missionaries at these
Himalayan outposts ... n 6
They endured the rigors of living in a foreign land and culture that to them possessed an
equally foreign and in many ways dark and forbidding religion, of facing untold hardships in
terms of harsh climate and topography, unused-to sicknesses and illnesses of various kinds
that resulted sometimes in death, of loneliness and isolation, disappointments, defeats and
near despair, as well as encountering opposition and at times aggressive antagonism towards
them personally and towards their faith. Yet all of this, and more, was endured for the sake
of bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples inhabiting "the regions beyond"—to
such people, for example, as Madtha, Sodnama and her small son Dorje.117
Hence in the light of these humble Moravian beginnings among the West Tibetan border
peoples, one can now easily trace what was alluded to much earlier in the present chapter
about the presence of Romans 8:28 throughout the whole affair: had God not laid it on the
hearts of the eighteenth-century Moravians and their predecessors to create by His Spirit a
fraternity of Christian living, had the Christian nobleman not invited the founding of the
community of Herrnhut on his vast estate, had the unjustified edict of the Russian government
not been issued halting the work of the Moravians among the Calmuck Mongols thirty years
Earlier, had Gutzlaff the missionary to China not visited Herrnhut just before his death and
made urgent representations to the community to re-establish a Mission to the Mongols once
more, had the community not responded favorably in their hearts before the Lord to such an
Appeal—and its Mission Board not then selected two undaunted heralds of the gospel to go
forth, had these two not then remained undeterred at the rebuff they experienced to the east
of Europe, had a more direct alternate route to the Mongols via Peking not been closed when
only a few years later it would be opened to missionaries, had these two heralds not then
been again determined to still go east by traveling west and south and east and west and
finally north, had the door not been closed at this time even into Tibet, and had the humble
village of Poo tucked away among the forested foothills of the gigantic Himalayas not been
discovered and selected as the site of one of these few centers of gospel activity: then who
is to say what would have been the spiritual fate of this little Tibetan boy and other Tibetans
at Poo and its environs in the year 1892 and the years to follow? Although God had closed j
the door at the frontiers of Russia, northern China and Tibet, He certainly did open a door at
Kyelang, at Leh, and at Poo, And as a consequence, in the fullness of time at this latter place !
Madtha, Sodnama and her son Doije were touched by the redeeming love of God in Christ j
through the ministrations of His grace and power as dispensed by these faithful, compassionate, j
patient and courageous missionary servants of the Lord. How true and most applicable to f
this entire situation, therefore, are the Christian Scriptures which head up the present chapter's j
opening page: Surely God's ways are not man's ways, and His thoughts are not man's
thoughts. All things do work together for good to those who love God and who are the
called according to purpose. His ways are most assuredly past finding out! "O the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!"
Actually, the year 1892, so significant spiritually for this mother and child, held tremendous
significance as well for the entire Christian community at Poo. Ih essence, that year represented
the turning point in the spiritual fortunes of this little mission and ushered in a revival never
before seen; one which, though but a trickle at first, would nonetheless continue unabated
during the next fifteen years. Out of spiritual declension, death and darkness would come
forth spiritual uplift, life and light for this small church congregation which, as noted earl ier,
would impact for good on the life of Dorje Tharchin. And ironically enough, it was the
miserable and sorry state of affairs in the family of young Tharchin's stepfather (so fully i
described previously) that served as the catalyst which God then used to quite miraculously
turn the whole situation at Poo completely around! His ways are most assuredly past finding j
out, indeed, as the following account of what happened will attest.
The reader will recall that by the summer of 1889 all three adult communicants in the Poo {
church, together with their four innocent young children, had been removed from their Christian \
privileges. And, of course, the parents of Tharchin's stepfather, Jonathan and Hannah Zering, î
along with the other communicant, Benjamin, were the three adults who had been disciplined in j
this way. Br. Weber had meted out this discipline with great reluctance; with the result that, as j
one summary report of the dismal situation had observed, he was "sorely discouraged at finding j
himself for a time a missionary with no communicant congregation" at all.118 In desperation j
that same summer, missionaiy Weber hastened to forward back home a strong and urgent plea I
that intercessory prayer be offered up on his and the entire West Himalaya Mission's behalf.
"You can well understand," he readily acknowledged, "that my heart sighs and longs for fruits,
but when is the hour of the Lord coming?" The discouraged missionary then went on to plead
as follows; "Could you not, in missionary circles at home, form a union which would make it a
dèty, not occasionally, but daily, to remember prayerfully the Himalaya Mission?" Quoting
Jesus from the Gospels, Br. Weber ended by declaring: '"When two or three ask anything in
my name, it shall be given them.' And His word always remains true."119
This earnest appeal was not to fall on hard hearts or deaf ears. Upon its immediate
publication in the Moravian missionary newspapers and journals, and thereafter picked up by
the publications of other mission organizations, the response was instantaneous and
overwhelming. In fact, little Poo's crisis became, overnight, an international cause célèbre
among not only Moravian Christians but Christians in many other circles around the globe as
well. The Directing Board of the Moravian Mission in London expressed it well when it
issued the following comments:
Hoping and waiting, we gaze up to those Himalayan heights. Courage might fail us and hope
sink, when the letters from our missionaries bring sad tidings rather than glad. We have a
station at Poo, but scarcely for the present a Christian congregation. Oh, may the Lord work
real repentance through the faithful exercise of church discipline, and may He call those who
are no people, that they may truly be a people to His praise! But we will not let our hands hang
down in despair, while the Lord gives faith and patience and courage to our dear missionaries
to carry on the arduous work, and, indeed, makes others willing to accept a call to this distant
field, with its peculiar difficulties and trials.120
Furthermore, a Moravian commentary that appeared in the December 1889 issue of that
Church's highly respected English-language journal, Periodical Accounts Relating to the
[Foreign] Missions of the Church of the ... Moravians ..., and published in London,
editorialized in very dramatic terms what should be the reaction of all its Church members to
the insistent cry of missionary Weber's plea, "Brethren, pray for us!":
Our Mission Secretary sends on the request to us for very special, definite, daily prayer for an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon that work. That distant and secluded field, where our
brethren are laboring in great devotedness, appears to be, so far, the most barren of all heathen
soils, blighted as it is with the poison cloud of cold, proud, well-sufficient Buddhism. Let us
answer with all our hearts "we will." We will try to make it our daily cry, "Lord, remember the
lost souls in Tibet, for whom Thy blood was shed. Give to our missionaries courage and skill
to go on, in simple faith, testifying of Thee and Thy free redemption." The Lord's hour must
come, and even Buddhism will fall before the gospel of Christ's death.121
These were typical of the responses from Moravians everywhere to the spiritual plight in
Poo and other stations along the Tibetan frontier of Northwest India. But another and
subsequent commentary in the same respected Moravian journal was alert enough to note
by June of 1894 that "a considerable proportion of those who responded to the request [to
fray]... do not belong to the Moravian Church." "This," he added meaningfully, "has seemed
âprovidential indication that [this "agreement" to pray] should be upon a broader basis. The
conviction is strengthened by the fact that the Holy Spirit is today laying on many hearts the
burden of the awful spiritual destitution of the six million souls in [Tibet]."122
The direct outcome of Br. Weber's urgent appeal for the creation of a band of prayer-
warriors resulted in the formation of the Tibet Prayer Union in early 1890—less than a year
following the plea for such a union. Interestingly, its international Secretary turned out to be
none other than Rev. (later Bishop) Benjamin LaTrobe of London, whose name the reader
will immediately recognize with some appreciation. He it was, it will be remembered, who
ten years later visited Poo himself and met young Tharchin and his mother Sodnama and
stepfather Madtha, as well as the latter's restored parents whose earlier backsliding from
the faith, be it not forgotten, had ultimately impelled Br. Weber to issue his now famous
appeal for a prayer union in the first place!
Now a formal proposal to create such a prayer band was put forward by the Editor of
Periodical Accounts in an article which appeared in the March 1890 number of the same
journal. Almost immediately chapters of the Tibet Prayer Union began to spring up all over j
the world and continued to do so during the next several months and years. Each member of j
the Union would undertake: J
1. To pray definitely at least one day in the week for our missionaries in Central Asia, and for j
the success and extension of the work by an abundant Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. j
2. To read regularly what is published about this field, as material for supplication and
thanksgiving. ' j
3. To plead for the opening of the door into Chinese Tibet, the great stronghold of Buddhism, I
and one of the few countries still closed to the gospel. j
Additionally, the Moravian journal's Editor included a requesfthat those who were willing "to j
be privately known to one another as intercessors for Tibet" should "send their names to 1
Rev. B. LaTrobe" in London.123
It will be of keen interest to the reader to learn that two individuals who immediately sent
their names to Br. LaTrobe were a young, hardy and brave missionary couple with the China
Inland Mission. These two were Cecil H. Polhill-Turner and his wife. Polhill-Turner had
initially gone out to China in early 1885. He, along with several students at Cambridge
University and others, had together emerged in the early 1880s as that illustrious band of
young missionary-minded men who came to be known afterwards as "the Cambridge
Seven."124 Eventually settling down along the Tibetan border on the China side, the Polhill-
Turners began ministering the gospel among the Tibetans who frequented the border regions
in large numbers. When in 1890 they had learned of the formation of the prayer band for
Tibet, Polhill-Turner wrote to Rev. LaTrobe in part the following:
I notice in the August No. of the American Missionary Review, that a Tibet Prayer Union has
been set on foot... We are so glad to hear this. Is it not the first shaking [prior] to the heavy
gates being rolled back... ? Who can stay the hand of the Lord, or who can say unto Him, What
doest Thou? [See Daniel 4:35, Old Testament.]
... The Moravian brethren [along the western Tibet border] are often in our prayers ..., and j
... we esteem them very highly ..., they having a warm corner in our prayers....125 1
Little could the Polhills realize that their initial expressions of prayer support for the work
of the gospel at Poo and elsewhere in Indian Tibet had been communicated in the very year,
of Dorje Tharchin's birth; nor could they further realize that the baptism of this mother, alonff
with her child, less than two years later would represent the very earliest firstfruits of theirf
earnest travail in prayer; nor, it must be said finally, could they have ever conceived that this
answer to their prayers in the person of the young lad Dorje Zering would himself, as Gergan
Tharchin, have his own gospel ministry among Tibetans decades later in far-off Kalimpong
and that missionary Polhill would meet him there and become his personal friend and strong
supporter of that ministry! Spiritual history has an unusual way, does it not, of providing
beautiful symmetry and wholeness to human events which otherwise might appear to the
less critical observer to be "a seemingly unconnected, rambling and incoherent pattern of
experiences."126 For these very things did in fact occur just as here described.
Yet if the truth be more fully told, there will be ample reason and justification to assert
that more than likely the most effectual and significant prayers offered up to the Throne of
Grace on behalf of Poo and which exerted the greatest immediate impact on the course of
Gergan Tharchin's personal history must surely have been the sympathetic prayers of two
German children halfway round the world. What now follows concerning these two constitutes
one of the most endearing and uplifting episodes to the entire Poo affair and truly deserves
to be told in some detail.
When in the summer of 1889 Br. Weber's several letters of appeal for prayer were
forwarded to various places, one destination of them was his very own home Mission
Department at Herrnhut in Germany. These letters naturally included a frank, sobering and
detailed description of the discouraging situation at Poo. During the remaining months of that
year and on into early 1890 these letters were published in a number of German mission
periodicals. On Sunday evening, 2 March 1890, a widowed mother and her two daughters
attended their church's missionary prayer meeting, it always being held on the first Sunday
of every month. At this meeting the two children's uncle-pastor took it upon himself to read
aloud as a matter for prayer the sad communications of Br. Weber's. The effect these
letters had on the widow's two youngsters was extremely touching and profound, and prompted
mother and daughters to write, each of them, a personal letter to the missionary at Poo and
send them off together in a packet. In her own letter of 6 March the mother explained the
reason for the other two letters. Translated from the German, in part she wrote:
... shortly after the missionary meeting, when I went as usual to their beds to pray with them,
I found my little Hedwig weeping and sobbing bitterly. After many unsuccessful efforts to
calm her, and after repeatedly asking what distressed her so greatly, I learned that the great
trouble of her little heart was that, "Now he has no more Christians at a l l " We then agreed that
she would be allowed to write you a letter, and together with her thirteen-year-old sister,
Gretchen, to embroider a book-marker for you. Then she said smilingly through her tears, "I
would like best of all to go there at once"; and upon being questioned as to what she would do
there, she replied, "Comfort him "
... Will you, honored Mr. Weber, kindly accept the children's expression of heartfelt love
and sympathy. My late husband often said,"Children's prayers are the most effectual mission
prayers"' The merciful God will graciously acknowledge all work among the heathen done for
His honor, and yours also, and give you each day comfort, strength and power anew.... With
heartfelt salutations and earnest prayers, Yours faithfully.
Little Hedwig's own letter of 5 March is most precious:

On Sunday, as our dear pastor was telling us about you, a very great feeling of sympathy laid
hold of us, and I wanted very much to write you a letter and tell you how very sorry we are for
you, that you have worked [many] years, and converted only seven heathen, but still sadder is
it, that these have again turned to worship idols; and, therefore to comfort you, we send you this
book-marker [with the German words, Die mit Thraenen saen, werden mit Freuden erriten: They
that sow in tears shall reap in joy (Psalm 126:5)]. Wewillalso, everyday, ask the dear Savior to
comfort you, and that the [many] years be not in vain, and that some will still be converted, and
help you to preach to the other heathen the Holy Gospel.
Receive love from little Hedwig.
And the letter of the older daughter Gretchen, dated 7 March, is equally precious and sincere.
It read in part as follows:
As we heard about you one evening lately, we were much distressed to hear that you had
preached for... [so many] years and that it has all been in vain except to seven, who have fallen
back again. We will therefore ask the dear Lord that the [many] years may not have been
fruitless, but that all may be still made to work for the best; and, if it is His will, most certainly,
in a longer or shorter time, there will be a few who will acknowledge the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and thank Him for His mercy. Then you will once more have a congregation,
even if it be very small....
Farewell, dear missionary. Your Gretchen greets you.527 %
One cannot help but be touched, wanned and gladdened by the simplicity of faith, earnestness
of concern, and commitment to daily prayer which the letters of these two distressed children
so beautifully exhibited. And God himself must have particularly taken to heart the mother's
quote of the oft-repeated words of her late pastor-husband: "Children's prayers are the most
effectual mission prayers." Surely the daily intercessions of these two earnest young believers
as they instantly implemented the words they wrote to Poo must, together with the prayers of
the other Tibet Prayer Union members, have moved Heaven's Throne into actions of mercy
and grace in response to motions of repentance, godly sorrow and simple faith and trust in the
hearts of all concerned at Poo, and especially in the hearts and lives of Sodnama and her little
child Dorje. For, indeed, such a rapid turnaround as did occur in the spiritual fortunes of this tiny
mission station can only be attributable to the overwhelming intercessory prayer that ascended
Heavenward from all parts of the world and Heaven's response thereafter.
Such an assertion, be it added, has not been said lightly or flippantly; it will be shown to be
quite accurate. But to be able to appreciate the full force of this assertion, the reader must
now be treated to a careful chronology of certain events which occurred both just before
and immediately after these letters of prayer commitment had been penned by Hedwig,
Gretchen and their mother.
(1) July 1889—Little Dorje (to be known later as Gergan Tharchin) is conceived in the
womb of his mother Sodnama Tserima following physical union with the Poo blacksmith,
Dorje Taschi.
(2) Summer 1889—Tharchin's stepfather's parents are excommunicated by Br. Weber.

(3) Late That Same Summer 1889—Br. Weber's letters of appeal for prayer are sent to
various places, including his own home Mission Department at Herrnhut, Germany, together
with a detailed description of the discouraging state of affairs at Poo.
(4) Late 1889-Early 1890—Missionary Weber's letters are published in various German
mission periodicals.
(5) Sunday Evening 2 March 1890 —The two German children attend the first-Sunday-
of-every-month missionary prayer meeting at which their uncle-pastor reads Br. Weber's
letters to those present.
(6) 5-7 March 1890—The two children and their mother—all three—write individual
personal letters of comfort and support, and the two children declare their intent to pray daily
for revival at Poo. The mother, in her letter, quotes the oft-repeated and meaningful words of
her late husband: "Children's prayers are the most effectual mission prayers." Indeed, the
prayers of the two daughters are most direct and specific concerning Poo: (a) that the past
years of labor will not be fruitless or in vain; (b) that everything from the past, including the
matter of the backslidden ones, may still be made to work for the best; (c) that most certainly,
in a shorter or longer time, there will be a few who will acknowledge the Lord's grace and
thank Him for His mercy; (d) that some will be converted who will themselves in turn help in
preaching the gospel to other Tibetan unbelievers; and (e) that there will once again be a
congregation at Poo even if it be a small one. It will subsequently be learned that each of
these specific burdens of prayer for Poo will be answered—and done so beyond what could
ever be asked or thought! (See Ephesians 3:20, New Testament.)
(7) 18 April 1890—Little Dorje (aka: Dorje Zering, aka: Gergan Tharchin) is born of
Sodnama Tserima and Dorje Taschi.
(8) July 1890—At Leh's crucial plenary conference of all West Himalaya Mission
missionaries the question raised of abandoning the Poo station is, after weighty consideration
and prayer, rejected in favor of continuing its maintenance but relieving the Webers of its
responsibility and placing Br. and Sr. Schreve at Poo instead. One is loathe to imagine what
the future of Gergan Tharchin would have been like had this critical decision gone the other
way and not been guided by the Holy Spirit in response to the daily prayers of these two
earnest children and others of the Tibet Prayer Union.
(9) Autumn 1890—Sodnam Gyaltsan, an educated Tibetan of nearby Spiti province,128
providentially arrives in Poo to live, where he soon applies for instruction in the Christian
faith. In less than three years he will be baptized and begin to serve as an evangelist.
(10) Summer 1891—Benjamin, one of the three adult backsliders, is restored to all Christian
privileges, after sincere expressions of repentance and appeal for readmission, and after
having been placed under instruction for that purpose.
(11) Late 1891—Benjamin's small son is baptized. His wife, hitherto a Buddhist, becomes
a candidate for baptism. Within a few years she would indeed be baptized, after a long
period of instruction.
(12) Late 1891-Early 1892—Jonathan and Hannah, the other two backsliders and parents
of Tharchin's future stepfather Madtha, are themselves restored after being placed under
lengthy and appropriate instruction to that end.
(13) From Sunday, 3 January 1892, Onward—The Poo chapel "is filled with hearers [of
the gospel] Sunday after Sunday." So writes Br. Schreve under date of 7 February 1892, wherein
he also states: "To our very great joy the attendance at church has been good since the
commencement of the year." Among the hearers in attendance are little Dorje and his mother
Sodnama.
(14) 18 April 1892—Wrote Br. Schreve in his annual report for the year 1892: "At the
beginning of the year our children's [i.e., the Schreves' children's] nurse Sodnama applied
for reception into the congregation. As she had been under Christian influence for a long
time [with us] and also with our predecessors, in whose service she was, she could be
baptized on April 18th, together with her two-year-old son, after preceding instruction, for
baptism." At this joint baptism, administered by Rev. Schreve, the new Tibetan name of j
"Tharchin" ("Success") was appended to Dorje's name. He will "successfully" grow in
faith in ensuing months and years. The mother, whose baptismal name was "Tsensin" (perhaps
meaning "to take hold of the faith"), constitutes the earliest adult conversion firstfruits since
the prayer appeal for revival at Poo had been issued by Br. Weber. In fact, a missionary 1
report from Poo notes that she is "the first to be admitted into the Christian Church there for
twenty long years of faithful, patient labor" in the gospel at the little mission station. She |
would not be the last.
(15) Sunday, 30 April 1893—Sodnam Gyaltsan, the educated Tibetan from Spiti but
now living at Poo, is baptized by Br. Schreve, receiving the Christian name of Paulu (Tibetan
for Paul). Almost immediately thereafter he commences to proclaim the gospel to his fellow
Tibetans in and around Poo and elsewhere, including inside the very borders of Tibet. By the
late 1890s, in fact, Paulu will be a recognized evangelist. Furthermore, he will be employed
at the Poo mission partly as assistant in the work of Bible translation into the Tibetan dialect
used around Poo, and partly as Urdu schoolmaster. A few years hence, therefore, Paulu will
become Dorje Tharchin's Urdu teacher in the mission school.
(16) Easter Monday, 26 March 1894—Young Dorje Tharchin's maternal grandmother, i
"an aged widow" (born at Poo 1831) and called Abo Tachung (or, Abi Teschung)—i.e.,
Grandmother Tachung, is baptized by Rev. Schreve and given the baptismal name of ;
"Salsom" (meaning unclear). Wrote Schreve in his Poo Annual Report for 1894: "Early in ]
the first days of this past year [on 5 January 1894 to be exact] we had the joy that an aged \
widow, who had been under the discipline of the Spirit of God, presented herself for \ii
instruction for baptism. The Lord had led her to that through a prolonged sickness, and had J
also led her to acknowledge before the eyes of the world her turning away from idol £
worship and to confess Christianity The widow had been known to us for a long time as the }
mother of our Christian children's nurse [i.e., the mother of Sodnama] and also because of her. I
regular church attendance." Tharchin's grandmother went on to receive "instruction for baptism f
three times a week." Wrote Br. Schreve, in a letter from Poo dated 23 April: "We are very I
happy over her coming into our small congregation. She herself is a j oyous witness to the grace j
which the Lord has shown her." The happy Poo missionary could then report a beautiful story I
of her testimony for the Lord within only a few days following her entrance by baptism "into j
the death of Jesus," as Rev. Schreve put it. The incident he related ran as follows: "Several I
days after her baptism she was in the house of a rich pagan Poopa where they pressured her 1
to find out whether she really understood something of our religion. So in her simple way she
told the account of the Sixth Day's Work (the Creation story of the sixth day). We had just
begun, after Easter, the Bible story of the Old Testament. The house owner brought out the
book of Genesis and read it and found that she had related it correctly. So he was silenced."
Abo Tachung would go on to become a candidate for Confirmation (Holy Communion) in
November 1894 and was confirmed and took her first Communion on Sunday, 30 December
1894. It is worth noting here that the grandson, when dictating his "memoirs" towards the end
of his earthly walk, credited his mother's "life and testimony" of that day as that which brought
this grandmother and two aunts and their husbands to the Lord.129
Even the most casual reader of this chronology must acknowledge that what these two
young earnest intercessors in Germany had specifically requested of God for Poo had all
been answered in a most remarkable manner, one after another. But though these new
developments were admittedly small in quantity when compared to what occurred in the
next several years, these more immediate fruits of travailing prayer proved to have depth
and lasting power to them. The Schreves were greatly encouraged by the quality if not the
quantity of these new beginnings after so long a time of drought at a mission station whose
gospel work had often been likened to "plowing and sowing on flinty rock."130 And by late
1894 there were further signs of hope for the future at Poo: the mission's little Christian
congregation went on growing in numbers slowly but surely, and the willing stream of
unbelievers who had already been attending the preaching of the gospel Sunday after
Sunday continued on unabated. In fact, these attendees had become so serious-minded
about it that most of them who had frequent contact with Br. Schreve throughout the
week came eventually to think that "some excuse must be tendered if they have been
absent for a Sunday or two"!131
The stage was therefore set at Poo for a larger ingathering of converts for Christ and His
kingdom. One interesting development that occurred one year later (1895) was the addition
to the congregation by baptism at test of Numba, the hitherto Buddhist wife of Benjamin.132
This brought to full circle the complete restoration of those two original church families who
had backslidden so terribly years earlier. And by 8 February 1897, Br. Schreve could report
in a letter the unmistakable signs of a coming harvest. "In summer," a condensed version of
the letter read, "the people are scattered, seeking a livelihood; but in recent winters they
have attended the Christian services very fairly." However, during the winter of 1896/7, the
abridged report went on to say, "the eagerness to hear the gospel has been quite unusual.
The little chapel [with a capacity of 100] has been crowded every Sunday, and the hearers
have listened to some purpose." Although there is always more blossom than fruit in a given
situation, there was, in this instance, noted Br. Schreve, "no mistaking the movement of the
Spirit of God upon the hearts of the villagers." Especially among many of the poor, he added,
there appeared to be "an open heart to the entrance of the Word that giveth life," and
"several," he wrote significantly, "have begged to be instructed for baptism." In his postscript
to the letter, which bore the period date of 8 to 13 February, Br. Schreve wrote:
Yesterday eleven persons attended the instruction which I have for some time been giving to
our old Tibetan couple. Several more have also expressed a wish to be admitted into the
Christian Church....
For us this is a blessed and a cheering time. One is so accustomed to a stated indifference
on the part of the villagers towards Christianity, that we rejoice with trembling, and doubts will
assert themselves as to whether the movement is quite genuine. But we will hope in God, who
is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. He can confirm these souls
in the path of salvation so that they may press on in faith unto eternal life.... 133
That was in February By March 27th Rev. Schreve could write that twenty-five applications
for baptism had been received and could report that among this number was one of the more
prominent members in the community—a person whom the missionary identified as "the
man who formerly gave oracular responses in connection with the heathen festivals through j
the aid of an evil spirit." The desire of this man and his wife to be baptized, he happily noted j
in his letter, "affords us much joy in the hours of instruction." Well it may have, indeed, for '
despite attempts of every sort by the jealous and staunchly.Buddhist populace to dissuade
this man from submitting to the Christian rite of baptism, he nonetheless remained resolute in
his decision. "People in the village," explained the Poo missionary, "have said to him that if all j
the rest permit themselves to be baptized, it will be of no consequence; but that he must not; J
for they cannot spare him." Nevertheless, reported Schreve, the man had replied "that even j
though they should put him to death for it, he will never again serve as the mouthpiece of the j
oracle." Yet so persistent was the populace that they even offered the man the use of a field j
if he would only refrain from being baptized. "But he remained firm," Br. Schreve concluded, |
"and we hope to be able to baptize him at Easter."134 j
And when Easter did arrive (on 18 April), this man's baptism most likely took place as a J
part of the first large ingathering of converts the Poo mission had ever witnessed. For that j
Sunday saw from among these twenty-five the baptism of fourteen adults and two children, J
with the remaining number of candidates still under instruction. (These who continued to be |
i
instructed, together with perhaps others gained along the way, eventually experienced the J
rite of baptism themselves during Bishop LaTrobe's visit to Poo four years later in 1901. One '
among this number was young Tharchin's biological father Dorje Taschi, who along with
four other adults and two children were baptized by Br. Schreve on Sunday afternoon, 26
May.)135 In commenting on these new members of the Poo congregation, the Annual Report
of the Mission Board of Herrnhut observed that their steadfastness had already "been tested ;
by a degree of persecution," and had "stood the test. Their missionaries have been able to
report several instances of patience and perseverance."136
Despite trial and persecution, these new members, wrote the Poo missionary a year later
(September 1896), were still "a cheerful and happy little flock, with whom it is a pleasure to j
have any dealings." He nonetheless felt compelled in a moment of candor to observe that J
individually "they show great weaknesses of character, and are not much better than children j
in their behavior."137 It was recognized even then, as it was expressly stated two years later j
by the Mission Board at Herrnhut, that "the principal task of the missionary at Poo" was "to |
give permanence and depth to the movement among the lower class of the population towards
Christianity."138
This very thing did the Poo missionaries attempt to do over the next several years, and
with a great deal of success, it might be added. So that by mid-19G3 Rev. Reinhold Schnabel,
w ho arrived as Schreve's replacement the previous October, could report with some
139
satisfaction "that of late the Poo Christians have, with a few exceptions, greatly improved."
Additional insight into this improved spiritual state among the Poo community was provided
by the Schnabels at this same time and reported in condensed form by the Editor of Periodical
Accounts as follows:
The prospects of work among the surrounding heathen have also become more hopeful of late.
Heathen are to be found among those who attend the services, and as hostility towards
Christianity is not any more so strong in the village itself there have of late been several
applications for baptism. The villagers like to visit the mission-house too, and the women
gladly come to the meetings of the Women's Guild lately started by Sr. Schnabel, at which after
a cup of tea Bible stories are told, verses of hymns and of Scripture are committed to memory,
and sewing is done. The Tibetan and the Urdu schools are attended by some 30 children, but
only the children of the Christians can be induced to attend the children's services and the
Sunday-school. On the other hand, heathen as well as Christians find employment in connection
with the looms that are at work on the mission premises during the winter months.140
During the next five years Poo experienced what could only be termed a phenomenal
growth in its church community. Even at the time of the Schreves' departure in the summer of
1903 there was already in place a congregation of forty-four. This number included twenty
communicants; that is to say, those who, having been instructed, baptized, and then confirmed,
could now be more than hearers or attendees or pray-ers at the Christian services but could in
addition, and most meaningfully, participate in Holy Communion at the Lord's Table. By mid-
1905 the once spiritually barren station of Poo had outdistanced all other West Himalaya
Stations in being the largest Tibetan congregation among them with a membership of fifty, with
several other candidates under instruction! Included in these fifty was an entire family of five
members who on Easter Sunday of that year were all baptized together! Doubtless the forty-
fifth member of the Poo congregation to have been baptized between 1903 and Easter Sunday
1905 was the future wife of young Tharchin's Urdu teacher, Paulu the evangelist, the former
Sodnam Gyaltsan from Spiti province. A native of Spiti herself, she had followed Paulu to Poo
where she was later baptized before the two of them were subsequently united in marriage by
Rev. Schnabel on Sunday 9 October 1904 before a large, happy and joyful crowd of onlookers—
both believers and non-believers alike.141
Meanwhile the Sunday services continued to be well attended, with a fairly sizable number
of unbelievers also showing up at the church services regularly. In addition, many Christian
tod non-Christian poor were provided means of livelihood in the knitting school and in the
spinning and weaving industry operated by the mission station on its own compound. For
example, the art of knitting socks had been taught by Mrs. Schreve, enabling the local
women to sell them at a profit. Moreover, Br. Schreve, by importing from Germany an
improved loom, was able to establish a cottage industry of blanket-weaving, thereby garnering
additional revenue for the local women and for the mission station's own needs, too. Thus, in
the process of all this activity many of these craft workers were thereby being reached and
taught concerning the Lord and His gospel. But another blessing which redounded to the benefit
of the poor in Poo had its origins in the farm maintained by the mission station and which, as was
learned earlier, was under the supervision of young Dorje's stepfather. By extending the mission
farm into fallow land, the Schreves at one point could employ forty men to clear the land, and hire
others continually to cultivate and harvest the crops grown. In addition, the missionary created a
seed-trading business that ultimately improved the quality of a number of local vegetables. Yet
besides the employment the farm provided for some of the villagers, there was another blessing
which accrued to the less fortunate from its existence whose story ought to be told.
In one of his letters written to supporters back home, Rev. Schnabel must have taken
great delight in telling, as he did, how the grain produced at the farm had ultimately prevented
"the combination of upper caste people, the landed proprietors, from cornering the grain of j
the vicinity.'5 When the Poo station had first been established, he explained, one rupee could j
purchase twenty "dri" of grain. Currently, however, but apart from the mission's output of ]
gt-ain, "the greedy combination" had "screwed the price up" in such a manner that the same 1
^mount of money would now purchase "only five or at most eight dri." On the other hand, f
the Lord's servant happily noted, the mission farm is able to sell sixteen dri for one rupee! j
"The Indian government," Rev. Schnabel went on to say, "has recognized the good public j
service the mission farm has rendered in this manner." The poor folk in the village must also
have recognized the good the Christian mission was doing by this means, for in the same
letter the missionary was able to report that the Thursday evening services—when the
magic lantern is employed to illustrate the Scriptures—-"are crowded."*142
Yet this was not all which was happening during this phenomenal period of growth and
expansion. For instance, school attendance continued to be more than satisfactory, and •
Christian literature, including Gospels and tracts, were widely distributed throughout Poo and ]
its environs as well as taken by traders, and travelers on pilgrimage, into Tibet itself Moreover, j
the Schnabels could report in late 1905 and again in early 1906 that the two villages between j
their mission station and the Tibetan border, Dobbaling and Namgia, had been "aroused"— J
through the labors of Paulu—"to ask urgently" that "a schoolhouse and preaching-place" be |
erected in their communities, with Rev. Schnabel further reporting his hope to visit these f
villages the following spring "to prospect" the possibilities. Apparently the prospects still |
appeared as good as before, for upon visiting Namgia in the spring of 1906 the missionary j;
received from the village's inhabitants an appeal that the construction of "a choskhang or |
religious meeting-house" should not only be begun but that it should be completed "during the I
present year!" In addition, he could also report that the house for religion and education J
already being constructed at Dobbaling "is to be finished in the summer." Furthermore, f
wrote Schnabel, "the people of three other villages have united in presenting a similar petition |
for the erection of a schoolhouse." I
I
* There could be negative spiritual consequences attached to this good fortune for these poor Poopas if their heart |
attitude were not right. For as potential Christian converts they could become followers of the foreign faith either |
out of conviction or else see in the compassion of the missionary an opportunity to reap a variety of material |
benefits. As a matter of fact, a considerable number of them did become so-called barley-Christians, resulting ifl
problems for pseudo-convert and missionary alike. Consult the End-Note indicated above for a discussion of this
serious development at Poo.
The Moravians, Buddhism, and Momentous Years of Youth at Poo 115
All these developments must have cheered not only the Schnabels but also Paulu, inasmuch
as they were obviously the results of his effective ministry as an indigenous evangelist
whose work had taken him out beyond the home base of Poo. Indeed, his evangelizing
efforts—though marked by uneven results—had even reached well inside the frontier of
Tibet itself during the 1890s, the missionary's thought having been that an indigenous Christian
preacher might incur less suspicion or hostility than a European. But by the time of a more
r e c e n t journey there in 1904 Paulu would now be told by local officials that the prohibition
against Europeans entering the country was equally applicable to him as well; for they made
clear to him that though he might be a pure Tibetan outwardly, inwardly he had been tainted
with the religion of the sahibs! Undaunted, Paulu nevertheless took advantage of every
opportunity opened up to him to carry the gospel message into the Forbidden Land as far and
wide as he could.
Paulu was unquestionably rendering outstanding service as both an evangelist and teacher,
so much so that Br. Schnabel wrote of him in the following terms: "He does his work for his
Master cheerfully and zealously. May he continue to do so!" Yet not only was Paulu cited as
being quite helpful, so, too, was Madtha, young Dorje's stepfather. In a report of the Poo
missionary for the year 1905, Rev. Schnabel explained that he had been "greatly assisted this
year by ... Madtha, the schoolmaster" in ways not just limited to the mission school's
classroom—as helpful as that also must have been. All in all, the mission station and its staff
were at this time exercising a considerable salutary influence in so many facets of life
among the Poo villagers and throughout the whole district around.
Even so, the end of God's outpouring upon this heretofore "stony and flinty soil" had not yet
been reached in response to the intercessory prayers of the Tibet Prayer Union. As one
Moravian journalist back in England noted, Rev. Schnabel reported in the spring of 1906 "a
spirit of inquiry and religious interest, which comes in response to many prayers. The attendance
at the services is very good, especially on Sundays." Those applying for baptism at that time
numbered eleven, and this, Br. Schnabel added significantly, "in spite of the taunts and persecution,
which such a step is known to involve." As it turned out, it would not be until the beginning of
1908 that the Poo mission would witness the very zenith of its harvest of converts. By that year
its church membership had risen to the highest level at sixty-nine, but it would never afterwards
ever go higher; as a matter of fact, the congregation would begin to fall in numbers that very
year and would steadily decline to thirty-nine by the end of 1911, a year after Dorje Tharchin,
now a young man of twenty, had bade his final but fond farewell to Poo and all that it had
beneficially held for him those many years.*143
Although there are still a few more important details from this period which need to be
recounted in the following chapter, right here might be an appropriate moment in the narrative
* See the Appendix at the very end of the present volume for a discussion of the final end to the Poo mission and
church, and the causes for their demise.
I:
to pause and reflect, more than has been done already, on the significance of this period of
spiritual ferment and its meaning in the life of the central character of this biography. Surely
upon added reflection here one must come away from this rehearsal of God's unusual
outpouring upon Poo with the distinct impression that Dorje (Taschi) Zering Tharchin was
the undeniable beneficiary of men, movements, actions and forces for good that for the most
part were hidden from his youthful eyes of knowledge and understanding and certainly
beyond his control. From the critical moment of Br. Weber's deepest despair in 1889 to that
decisive moment in 1910 when Dorje Tharchin took his final leave of Poo, any objective
observer of it all must certainly acknowledge that this young man had been privileged to
witness the spiritual "golden age" of Poo and to experience beneath the canopy of God's
love and protection the manifold blessings of Christ. Here were godly and caring missionaries,
servants of the Most High God, at whose feet young Dorje had first heard the truth of God's
love in Christ; here also, and raised up by those same godly servants, were responsible and
talented Tibetan helpers such as Madtha Zering and Paulu of Poo who could assist in teaching
this young lad the fundamentals of Tibetan, of Urdu, and of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself;
here, too, was the boy's mother, who, though her life was still marked at times by weakness
and failure (see the next chapter), nonetheless faithfully served a long line of missionary
families as governess of their children and who sought as best she knew how to bring up her
son in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; but here, as well, was the young lad's determined
and consecrated Christian grandmother, whose own spiritual history in her latter years (she
would live till 1904) had itself been marked by God's manifold mercy, grace and love, and
whose connection and involvement with the young Dorje as a strong Christian woman of
prayer had come at just the right moment to provide a further role model for his tender and
then growing years of childhood and adolescence; and finally, here in addition was a thriving
community of saints whose presence as a body of believers, heretofore almost non-existent,
would now provide a happy spiritual family within which the youth could grow in the Lord
and be loved and appreciated by others of like precious faith.
Without any question, therefore, the young protagonist of this biography had every reason
to take away with him fond memories of all that was wholesome and uplifting of his two-
decade experience at the little home village of Poo. But then, too, in his later years there
must have often been moments of reflection when, now both maturer and wiser in the Lord,
he could gaze back upon that early chapter in his life and find inspiration and encouragement
to go forward further with his Lord as in retrospect he contemplated again and again those
countless evidences of God's timely and loving intervention on his behalf And at such moments
the older and wiser Tharchin must have bowed in awe and worship at the feet of Him who
in mercy and grace had called him from such humble, obscure beginnings as "a chosen
vessel" indeed.
C H A P T E R 3
Training at Poo and Kotgarh: First Encounter with Sadhu Sundar Singh 161
If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold they
are become new.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.
2 Corinthians 5:17 mgn; Proverbs 22:6
Now AFTER THE RETIREMENT of Rev. Schreve, Dorje Zering's mother Sodnama began to
assist Br. Schnabel his replacement. It needs to be explained that although the latter and his
wife had arrived at Poo in October 1902, it would not be till the summer of the following year
that the Schreves would actually leave the mission station on furlough back to Europe. And
thus the missionary families were together for some eight to nine months.5 Poo, it should be
added, was not entirely new for the Schnabels, for they had served at this post for a year or
so during the late 1890s. They would now remain at Poo till the autumn of 1910, at which
time they too left on furlough to Europe, being replaced at the little station by the Revs.
Hermann Kunick and Hermann B. Marx and their wives.2
Just here, perhaps, is an appropriate place in the narrative to give due recognition to the
Schreves—especially Br. Schreve—for the inestimable impact they exerted for good upon
the life of Dorje Tharchin. More than any other missionary among the several who figured in
the childhood and early adolescent years of young Dorje Zering, Rev. Schreve was the one
posted at Poo the longest. For his and his wife's missionary responsibilities spanned most of
the "golden period" of God's remarkable outpouring of grace upon the mission station, the
story of which was recounted in the previous chapter.
Although this devoted missionary couple left on furlough with the definite intention of
returning once again, in the providence of God they departed the West Himalaya Mission
field forever, never to return due to the continuing ill-health of Mrs. Schreve. From an
incident reported many decades later by Margaret Urban, a missionary and Christian writer
unconnected with the Moravians, it was revealed—with a great deal of shock and surprise,
it might be added—that Br. Schreve returned to Europe with the distinct attitude and feeling
that he and his wife had failed miserably at Poo! They, it will be remembered, were the ones
who had volunteered to replace the discouraged Webers in 1890 and had come to Poo at the
nadir of its spiritual history, only to be witnesses soon afterwards of the greatest ingathering
of souls ever experienced by any of the Moravian stations among the Tibetans. Yet, as was
intimated in the previous chapter, there had always been a lurking fear in Br. Schreve's heart
that quantity would not translate itself into quality of spiritual fruit that would last. The
reader will recall how in 1897 at almost the height of the spiritual turn of fortune in the little
village, the missionary had tremulously written to his supporters back home the following
communication:
Although, as is rightly said, there is always more blossom than fruit, there was no mistaking
the movement of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of the villagers.... For us this is a blessed
and a cheering time. One is so accustomed to a stated indifference on the part of the villagers
towards Christianity, that we rejoice with trembling, and doubts will assert themselves as to
whether the movement is quite genuine. But we hope in God, who is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think. He can confirm these souls in the path of salvation
so that they may press on in faith unto eternal life....
Here was a missionary couple who had been present almost continuously at Poo during
the "golden" age when so much of a positive nature for God was spontaneously happening
at young Dorje Tharchin's home village. Even so, if the later testimony of Miss Urban now
to be recounted can be accepted as evidence, it would appear the Schreves truly believed
that no lasting fruit had in the least accrued to their sacrificial labors for God and the
gospel of Christ.
Yet those who have the benefit of hindsight now know how grossly inaccurate the
feelings of Br. Schreve were; since at least one person can be singled out from that
ingathering of souls (but he was not the only one, either) who went on to serve God
mightily for the rest of his life: the very person who is the central character in the present
narrative, Gergan Tharchin himself. Having become intimately acquainted with Tharchin
in 1964, which was towards the end of his life, Miss Urban, in a book she authored,
portrayed this Tibetan from Poo as one "who knows Jesus'Jove, joyfully wants his brethren
in the flesh to know it also, and is constantly praying for this." She went on to say how
later that same year or the next she "had explained all this and still more" about Tharchin's
godly and fruitful life as she spoke before a meeting of the Women's Missions Prayer
Association of Basel, Switzerland. Here is how she described what next happened after
she finished speaking at the meeting: *
Now stood up an old woman professor and said something like this: "When I was young, I was
able to take part in the glorious Missions-Conference of the Moravians. Once I heard a missionary
speak who had worked with the Tibetans in the area west of actual Tibet. His name was
Schreve. I have never forgotten how [throughout the entire Conference] he again and again
always said: 'No fruit! Through all the sacrifices and pains—no fruit!' It appears to me in this
meeting hour today we have seen something of fruit [an allusion to Tharchin's story only just
then shared by Miss Urban].'5 This woman spoke still more. I went from impatience to absolute
frustration, I not being able to get a word in; for my eyes had filled with tears ... as she had
named the missionary. She finally concluded what she had to say and immediately I sprang to
my feet: "Schreve! you said, Professor. This very name Tharchin had named to me, and as I
asked him to repeat it, he took the pen out of my hand and wrote it down. It is the only word he
personally wrote in my notes, so important was this name to him, because [in trying to recall
the past] he figured out that Schreve was the missionary who had decisively influenced him in
his youth." Each of us at the meeting was very moved and gripped. This moment was a
foretaste of the last days, wherein one experiences great surprises.3
Needless to say, the Schreves, their own feelings to the contrary notwithstanding,
had not labored in vain, else there would be nothing more to set down concerning the life
of the subject of this present biography. But thanks to the "decisive influence" of this
stalwart and compassionate missionary and his wife-—who, as we have seen, had literally
laid down their lives for those Tibetans in the West Himalayas such as Dorje (Taschi)
Zering Tharchin—there can, and will be, much more to be said and recorded about the
life of this Christian youth as God continued to prepare him for the service to which he
had been called.
Now a brief pen-portrait of the Schreves' successors at Poo—the Schnabels—has been

provided by one prominent Himalayan traveler, Brigadier General Charles G. Bruce,* While
trekking in the Lahul area during the summer of 1912 he and his wife came upon the Moravian
station at Kyelang, to where by this time the Schnabels had been reassigned from Poo. Staying
with the missionary couple for over a month that year, General Bruce could write of them:
We were entertained at Kyelang by German Moravian missionaries—a very charming and
modest little couple by the name of Schnabel. Having for a great number of years lived intimately
with the people from Ladakh to Spiti,... they in a way were absolutely imbued with the spirit of
the country. Their knowledge of the language and of its dialects was very profound... Schnabel
and his wife did not by any means confine themselves to the religious side of their calling, but
were Jacks-of-all-trades—engineers, doctors, taught weaving and were ready to turn their
hands to anything that came along. They were evidently on excellent terms with all the people
and ... were very kind to us the whole time we were in Kyelang. 4
According to Tharchin's own testimony years later, Rev. Schnabel himself was a man of
medium height, but he had tremendous energy and abounded in ceaseless activity at Poo:
working, writing, teaching, or visiting the sick and the suffering. Where there was no hospital,
Br. Schnabel would personally rush to the spot, supervise the sick, and dress their wounds with
his own hands. A case in point can readily be cited which, though it happened not at Poo but at
Kyelang, provides further testimony to Br. Schnabel's compassionate desire to extend a helping
hand to the needy no matter what in terms of self-sacrifice. The wife of General Bruce just
mentioned recounts a startling incident which occurred while the Bruces were still at the
mission station with the Schnabels. One day, she writes, a half dozen men "were laying a
wooden pipe to carry water across the face of a cliff'; and "owing either to stones coming from
above or from the face giving way, they were precipitated down the cliff, and all were more or
less broken up." Immediately upon hearing of what happened, Br. Schnabel "flew off to attend
them although the place where the accident had happened was over twenty miles away."
* Bruce, incidentally, would go on to command (in 1922) the climbing expedition involved in the very first
attempt to scale the summit of Chomolungma (the Tibetan name for Mount Everest). Moreover, the expedition's
Tibetan interpreter would turn out to be none other than Dorje Tharchin's future "boss" and very close friend at
the Christian mission school in Ghoom, Northeast India, the school's Headmaster, Karma Sumdhon Paul (see
Chapter 5 of the present narrative for the details.) Four climbers, including the famed mountaineer George Leigh
Mallory, ascended from the Tibetan side (the peak's north face) to 26,800 feet; but the expedition had to be
terminated prematurely when an avalanche on the "Ice Cliff' took the lives of the Sherpa porters. Mallory, who
with Andrew Irvine would be observed reaching to within 600 feet of the 29,028-foot summit on the second
attempt in 1924 but with both then disappearing from view never to be seen again, made himself famous further
by coining the phrase, "Because it's there!", in response to a questioner who asked why he had wanted to climb
the world's highest mountain. Some 75 years later, on 6 June 1999, Mallory's body perfectly mummified by the
arctic elements, was found very much intact; but it and the artifacts discovered on and near his body, could still
not yield up the definitive answer to "mountaineering's greatest mystery": Had Mallory and Irvine indeed
reached the summit, as some mountaineers have claimed? If so, such a deed, writes David Roberts, would stand
s
'a fair claim to be regarded as the greatest climbing feat in history"—dwarfing the feat accomplished 29 years
later by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa on 29 May 1953, who did so from the less difficult
southern approach to Everest's mighty summit. See Roberts, "Out of Thin Air: The Mallory Story," National
Geographic Adventure (Fall 1999):98ff.
In commenting upon the generous reaction of the missionary, Mrs. Bruce had this to say:
"This is only one of many proofs of the confidence the people have in him, and that, irrespective
of the actual making of converts, the civilizing influence of the Mission must be great. Even
the mere example of doing so much for people without asking anything in return is in itself
worth untold gold/' She added that he being the only person with any medical knowledge in
the whole of Lahul, Rev. Schnabel was continually being applied to "in every kind of illness
or accident, for all of which he does his best."5 Yet that which he did at Kyelang he likewise
did at Poo, manifesting at every turn the generosity and compassion of Christ. Later on
when he was joined by the Revs. Kunick and Marx, they carried on in the same caring
tradition for a long time after his departure from Poo.
Indeed, this kind of compassionate and certainly far more professional "missionary
doctoring" at Poo (and for that matter at the other mission stations of the Moravians) stood
forth in sharp contrast to the kind of so-called medical aid which the Tibetan villagers received
at the hands of their lamas or Buddhist priests. The latter, as described by Br. Schreve, were
themselves almost the only "doctors" among the villagers, and if any layman happened to
take up the profession, he was looked upon as half a lama! Now because the superstitious
villagers, observed Schreve, would apply for medical assistance on the merest indisposition,
the business of "doctoring" for the Buddhist priests was quite lucrative. If, for example, a
villager had a headache, he would go to the "Amtschi" (the priest-doctor), and he would be
quite content if the lama did "nothing more than lay his hand on his head." Unlike that of the
"missionary doctor," the pharmacopoeia of the "lama-doctor" was decidedly limited: the
latter would feel the pulse of his patient, and with both hands if the case were serious; he
knew a few vegetable extracts and decoctions, but musk was "his great heal-all"; then,
should these limited remedies fail, the lama would tell his patients to swallow small paper
balls on which had been written certain Buddhist prayers; he would also bleed his patients, if
need be, or cauterize their wounds with a hot iron; but beyond the extraction of teeth "with
terrible pincers,"* the lama-doctor attempted no surgical operation because he well knew "it
would result in failure and endanger his reputation."6
So much for the medical knowledge and skill of the Buddhist priest-doctor, if such terms
can at all be used to describe his practice in treating the Tibetan villagers of Dorje Tharchin's
home community. For although it must be acknowledged that Revs. Schreve and Schnabel
* Interestingly, in nearby Ladakh, pulling teeth posed a real problem to the lama-doctor. This was because, wrote
a German Moravian missionary who served there, Samuel Ribbach, no dentist's forceps were available, compelling
the toothache victim to go to the person in the community who usually was the only one with a pair of tongs: the
local smithy! The missionary, in Ladakh between 1892 and 1913, went on to describe the ordeal which ensued:
"The patient lies on the earth and two men hold him down. Then the smith kneels over him and grasps the bad
tooth with his often very crude tongs—and pulls, Sooner or later something gives; sometimes the tooth does
comc out, sometimes the jaw breaks or it also happens that the tongs fall apart and the tooth stays where it is,"
Ribbich, Culture and Society in Ladakh, 181.
were not qualified medical men themselves, nor, even, was their predecessor, Br. Pagell,
nevertheless, such medical assistance as these dear missionaries could and did render the Poo
villagers and the other mountain-dwellers in the district was "golden," wrote the Editor of Periodical
Accounts, when compared to the treatment of their ills by the would-be doctors among the
Buddhist clergy, as the following testimony of Rev. Schreve will attest:
By way of preface to any account of my endeavors in this department, I will remark that the late
Br. Pagell, the founder of this station, must have possessed considerable knowledge of medicine.7
His advice was in great demand, and his treatment was attended with such good results, that
only a few very bigoted Buddhists still adhere to their "Amtschis." His successors have inherited
his reputation, and no day passes without someone coming to me for medicine. Cases of
inflammation of the eyes are among the most numerous, and occur all the year round. I treat them
with a zinc salve. In winter they are due to the dwellings being full of smoke, in summer to the
reflected glare of the sun. Snow-blindness is also met with here. In autumn, when one is liable to
catch cold in the windy passes, I am overrun with toothache patients. If extraction is necessary,
my instruments can accomplish it less painfully than the dreadful pincers of the "Amtschis," but
I try all other means first, and the patients are glad to have retained their teeth. For the treatment
of wounds and slight hurts, Br. Pagell introduced Hoffmann's ointment. It has gained wide
reputation under the name of "molum marpo" (red salve). Not long ago I had to stitch up a large
wound in a boy's head with ordinary needle and thread, and it was astonishing how soon it
healed, though this method of closing a cut cannot be properly accomplished without the right
surgical implements. Other diseases claim my assistance, some of them the result of the sad
custom of polyandry, which obtains in this country.
Of course such medical aid in their times of illness helps to draw these Buddhists nearer to
us. Yet do not imagine, dear friends at home, that in every single case it affords us opportunity
for a direct appeal to the patient about the salvation of his soul. If we made that a hard and fast
rule we should simply frighten them away, and lose touch with them altogether. We have to use
tact, but you may be sure that, wherever and whenever it is at all feasible, we seize the
opportunity to commend the gospel to them as God's cure for the ills of their souls.8
Vet, whether in their compassionate health care or in other ways, such as by education, the
message of the Christian gospel did go forth in an effective manner as will be seen in what
now follows.
In the course of time and in obedience to the directions of Christ to preach and to teach,
the missionaries had established a primary school at Poo in order to impart secular education
to the children coming from both Christian and non-Christian backgrounds alike. Another
equally important aim was to impart some Christian influence. In his Poo diary account for
1904-5 Br. Schnabel made this point clear in regard to the schools the Moravians had created
throughout the Himalaya Mission. He wrote: "Another word about the schools. In these
tests our chief objective for the influence which we can exert on the children through them,
and that is not easy to determine.9" It will be seen, with respect to Dorje Zering at least, that
the school created at Poo was to have a profound influence. It was the second school to be
started in Indian Tibet by the Moravian Mission,10 and had been established by Edward
Pagell and his wife some years after their establishment of the Poo mission. By 1876 the
school could boast 100 pupils, although the number would decline to a more manageable
average of thirty scholars by the turn of the following century. It was in this school where
Tharchin, according to his own testimony, received his initial education and, most significantly,
experienced his conversion to the Christian faith.11 It was most providential, in fact, that four
of his teachers were not only academically qualified, at least three of them were also men
of great faith and love of the Christian Scriptures. Three of these four have already become
quite familiar figures in the narrative thus far: Madtha Zering, Tharchin's stepfather, whose
Christian credentials could have been better as a balance to his acknowledged academic
qualifications; and the two Poo missionaries who exerted the most significant influence over
this young man, the Revs. Schreve and Schnabel. Only briefly, however, has anything been
said about the fourth, who served for many years as the young Tibetan's Urdu schoolmaster.
His name as an unbeliever had been Sodnam Gyaltsan, but when baptized at Poo he became
known to all as Paulu.
Born in 1856 at an isolated mountain village in Spiti, Sodnam would be sent off as a sturdy
youth to the Kyelang mission school in response to the expressed desire of Government officials
that the young people of the province ought to be educated there for a few years to better
themselves in the basics of reading and writing; but they were being sent there, in particular, to
study the official language in India at that time: Urdu—the teaching of which utilized missionary
Jaeschke's very effective textbook, An Introduction to the Hindi and Urdu Languages for
Tibetans, that only a few years before Sodnam's arrival at Kyelang had been printed on the
lithographic mission press there in 1867. That same year, in fact, witnessed the opening of an
Urdu school at the mission station that was established there "at the instance and expense of
the British government" and which soon drew pupils in from all over as the consequence of "a
little pressure" having been brought to bear "by the British commissioners on the native civil
authorities." Both a Mohammedan munshi and a Christian Tibetan became the masters of the
Urdu school, with the whole of it being under the superintendence of the missionaries at
Kyelang.12 But besides acquiring Urdu and the other academic skills in good measure, this Spiti
youth in addition gained substantial knowledge of Christian truth during the nearly six years'
stay at Kyelang, although he did not at this time become a Christian.
The next five to ten years were marked by unending hardships, misunderstanding and
discouragement as teacher, farm laborer, guardian to the son of Spiti's raja, and finally as a
cowherd. But then, while in this latter lowly position for one so well educated, Sodnam
Gyaltsan, like the proverbial prodigal son of the New Testament, one day came to himself
out in the field and decided to end this experience by returning to Kyelang, where, he said to
himself, "I shall find some other" more suitable "employment there." And indeed he did, for
he immediately became secretary to Br. A. W. Heyde, the founder and patriarch of the
West Himalaya Mission. Heyde at that moment was engaged in the preparationof Government
census papers that were to be printed on the mission station's famous lithographic press. But
once this project would be finished, what then for Sodnam? As Rev. Schnabel relates it,
there would be something for him, something which would bring him at last to Poo (and,
coincidentally, in the very year of young Dorje's birth):
Again a favorable opening presented itself. Mr. and Mrs. Schreve's luggage was to be conveyed
to Poo through Spiti, whilst they themselves traveled by way of Simla and Kotgarh. The things
were entrusted to Sodnam Gyaltsan's care, and in this way he was led to Poo. This was in the
autumn of 1890.13
In coming to Poo Paulu's days of spiritual darkness and wanderings would finally end. As he
himself testified later: "In former times I... had been wandering in dense darkness, but I am
grateful that now I have obtained power by Him our Lord, that power which enables man to
walk in light, and day by day to hold fast to His Word; moreover, for an ever-increasing life
of faith, Jesus will help me."14 Jesus did indeed help this young man and launched him at Poo
into a remarkable life of fajth, beginning with his baptism.
Once baptized at Tharchin's home village, Paulu soon made himself extremely useful,
becoming one of the most talented and helpful "native assistants" in the entire West Himalaya
Mission: evangelist, Urdu schoolmaster, and, because of his excellent knowledge and training
in that language, a translator of portions of the Old and New Testaments into the Tibetan
dialects in use within and around Poo. Without any question, Paulu developed into a true
disciple of Jesus and servant of the Lord about whom the missionaries could not say enough
that was praiseworthy. On the occasion of his joyous baptism in 1893, for example, Br.
Schreve had this to say, noting it in his diary:
His profession of Christianity is a great blessing to our congregation, for he is thoroughly in
earnest, and by his walk and conversation proves himself to be a real disciple of Jesus. The fact
of his being an educated man and his having thoroughly grasped the truths of the Christian
religion makes his influence all the greater among his fellow-countrymen.15
Then, too, when four years later Paulu changed his mind about returning to his native home,
the grateful new missionaries at Poo, the Schnabels, had nothing but unqualified praise to
write concerning him in their annual report for 1897:
We have nothing to find fault with in Paulu. He has been a great help to us in the past weeks.
Paulu is of a modest, cheerful disposition, and is at the same time free from obsequiousness
and insincerity, which, alas! we cannot say of all the other Christians. Only the other day he
expressed himself to the effect that he casts all his cares on God and goes on his way rejoicing.16
And although Paulu would have gladly dropped everything "to undertake," as he one day
exclaimed to Br. Schnabel, "a missionary's journey to Tibet with you!", he nonetheless agreed
with the missionary that their first priority at that moment was to continue to give instruction
to those who had just been baptized that very year (1897).17 The nursing of these young
converts would not be an easy task, but certainly Paulu's devoted assistance in this regard
must have proved indispensable to the Poo missionaries.
Such, then, was the caliber of teacher at whose feet young Tharchin would sit during
those very formative years in the Poo mission's schoolroom. Whether it was his stepfather,
or Rev. Schnabel, or Rev. Schreve, or Paulu, too, this particular Tibetan youth was extremely
fortunate in having schoolmasters like these for instruction in the academic and also the
spiritual side of things in the classroom. And hence it was no wonder that there came a day
in Gergan Tharchin's life when he could assert quite meaningfully that he had been both
educated and converted in the simpl^, roughhewn one-room school at the humble village of
Poo. Hereafter he would commenc^ to experience in his young life what St. Paul, the
servant of Christ, once described asi all "the old things ... are become new." For young
Dorje Zering was now "a new creation in Christ."
Yet it must be pointed out, as well, that there was also a disciplinary dimension to Tharchin's
experience in the mission schoolroom, as the following brief incident will pointedly attest.
When asked to convey indelible impressions of his childhood school days, the elder Tharchin
smiled as usual and then remarked, "The teacher was very strict. On one occasion he struck
a blow to my head with the straight edge of the wooden slate. To this day the mark of that
injury inflicted by the teacher persists on the left side of my head."18
But he could also recall "how Rev. Schnabel the missionary teacher used to enter our
simple, tiny classroom and teach us the geography of India, drawing our attention to the map
which always hung on the wall. He would first point out the major cities of India to us. Later
he would instruct us to go to the map and show him the metropolitan centers of Bombay,
Calcutta* Delhi and Madras."
On yet another note, Tharchin recollected the following incident quite vividly Every day
during the school interval, at about 11 o'clock, a schoolieacher used to send him to the teachers'
residence to fetch the hookah, a kind of smoking pipe very common in North India and Nepal.
For anyone who may be unfamiliar with the hookah a good idea of it can perhaps be obtained
by noting a description of it and of its use in a family setting that was recorded by some
travelers in the Himalayas over half a century ago. Two young Swiss geologists trekking in
1936 across the Indian border from Kumaon found their way into Tinkar (12,000* a.s.l.), the
highest village in Nepal and located only a few miles from the Tibetan border just east of the
larger community of Garbyang south of the Sutlej River valley and the Sacred Sites of Kailas-
Manasarovar19 and therefore not far from Poo itself. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tinkar's
populace was a mixture of both Tibetans and Nepalis. While they were guests in one of the
villagers' homes, at one point the great family smoking pipe, a hookah, was brought out.
As the two travelers described it, it was "a curiously wrought instrument with a heavy
foot of German silver and a clay bowl, similar to those which, varying slightly from place to
place, are used throughout the central Himalayas." It stood approximately forty centimeters
(fifteen inches) high. The two of them noticed that "the bowl is filled with tobacco which has
been moistened with sugar-cane sap. Then it is closed above by a stone disc on which red- J
hot cinders are piled. At the bottom, just above the stand, is a water chamber, for the pipe is J
a hubble-bubble," another name for the hookah and derived from the sound thus produced as \
the smoke is drawn through the bowl filled with water. "The aromatic smoke is drawn
through the water," in fact, "by means of a long bamboo stem, and is deeply inhaled," the
tobacco smoke having been cooled by this process and having attained a more mellow
flavor. When all was ready and it came time for the family to smoke, the pipe would be
passed from hand to hand, "but not from mouth to mouth, for the smoker does not touch the
mouthpiece with his lips," but uses "his hand curled to form an intermediate tube."20
Now having fetched the smoking instrument for the teacher several times and growing
more and more curious day after day, young Tharchin was eventually tempted to try the
hookah; and one day while in transit with the cumbersome device he ventured to take two or
three puffs from it, presuming none had seen him stealthily smoking the pipe. This experience
came to be repeated daily, so much so that the habit was now firmly established. He did not
suspect that Rev. Schnabel, whose bungalow was situated midway between the teachers'
quarters and the school proper, had not just once but several times noticed him smoking the
"hubble-bubble."
Soon after this episode, when the joyful season of Christmas arrived, all the children
looked forward with great eagerness and expectation to receiving beautiful and somewhat
expensive presents like toys, clothes, soap-cases, combs and mirrors. On the 24th of December
every child opened his present as soon as it was given. When Dorje Tharchin unpacked his
present hoping for something great, to his utter amazement and disappointment he saw
several tobacco leaves lying within a nicely packed case. Actually, the boy should have
learnt the lesson of the day from this, but instead of giving up smoking for good he deliberately
took it up forever.
Young Tharchin, of course, was not alone in indulging in this particular habit. Werner
Hoffmeister, who has frequently been quoted already in the present narrative, has made the
observation that in the Little Tibet area of Bashahr where Poo is situated, "tobacco-smoking
is here, as in India, a universal custom: those who are unable to procure a hookah, even of
the simplest form . . s u p p l y the want by making a hole in the moist, loamy soil, to serve as
a pipe-bowl; a pipe passes into it through the ground, the mouthpiece above being a stalk of
hollow twig, through which they inhale the tobacco fumes, with such violence indeed that
they are often seized with fearful fits of coughing, and convulsive vomitings; for they swallow
every particle of smoke." Hoffmeister, who visited Poo during August 1845, bitingly added
that "those who have not already an aversion to tobacco-smoking would certainly acquire it
here, on seeing this most abominable form of it."
It will be recalled from Chapter 1 above that Dr. Hoffmeister had served as traveling
physician to H.R.H. Prince Waldemar of Prussia during the two-year journey of the Prince
in 1844-5, and it is hence quite understandable why he would take such a dim view of the
smoking habit. It will also be recalled from that same chapter that tobacco was one of the
main crops of the Poo inhabitants, as it was in many other communities of the district, and
was therefore a readily available article for use by its citizens—including Tharchin's teacher
at the Poo mission school—and for the trick which Br. Schnabel was able to play on the
young would-be hookah-using scamp! Tharchin's mother, it must be added, tried to reason
with the lad but all in vain. He argued with her, saying, "Since tobacco is given to me as a
Christmas present, there can be no harm in smoking. It will have no ill effect upon my body."
The logic was clear, but in the light of the observations of the good Doctor Hoffmeister and
any other physician of the day, one could say with some justification that his argument,
though clear, was only half correct! The perplexed mother was found at her wit's end in
trying to refute the argument of her clever son who had thus managed to turn the tables on
the gimmick devised by the missionary.
It may be in the interest of fairness, if not humor, here to mention that one of Rev. Schnabel's
own earlier compatriot missionaries from Germany stationed at Kyelang—either Heyde, Pagell
or Jaeschke—had been seen smoking on a pipe himself one summer morning in 1861. Wrote
one British visitor to that area: "We crossed the river, and paid a visit to the mission next
morning en route.... One of the Herr Pastors comes forward courteously to greet you (he has
been smoking a matutinal pipe in the cool spacious verandah) and asks you in." Oh, if only the
young Dorje could have known this bit of information in the early 1900s! Incidentally, the visitor,
Lieutenant Colonel Henry D. Torrens, never identified the Moravian by name!
It may be of additional interest to the reader to mention that ironically, in the land of Dorje
Tharchin's forebears at the time, and even up until recent times, the smoking of tobacco had been
strictly forbidden. This has been noted by William McGovern, an American visitor to Tibet in the
1920s whom Tharchin would himself meet at Gyantse in south-central Tibet in late 1922 during
the American's first trip into the Forbidden Land. On McGovern's second and disguised journey
into Tibet the following year he was able to reach Lhasa undetected, where he then revealed his
true identity to high officials there. Wrote McGovern on the subject of smoking in that land: "The
use of tobacco is very strictly prohibited in Tibet. The smoking of tobacco is regarded there in
very much the same way as the smoking of opium is in Europe ..., but one of the two governors
of the Phari castle district [located on the way to Gyantse from India] had contracted a great
liking for cheap English cigarettes, two or three of which he smoked while we were there. During
the lunch he sidled up to me and in a whisper implored me to say nothing in Lhasa about his
smoking [he having learned that McGovern and his party were hoping to be invited to go to
Lhasa], because if it were known, he would inevitably be dismissed and disgraced."
As a consequence of his unauthorized visit to the Tibetan capital later, the American
could further comment on the subject of smoking among Tibetans. Speaking of his host
there, Sonam by name, McGovern afterwards wrote: "During his stay in Kalimpong [for
education] Sonam had acquired a taste for cigarettes, a taste which he had found it impossible
to overcome in spite of the terrible anathema against tobacco on the part of Government.
The sale or use of cigarettes was particularly prohibited by the Dalai Lama, but, as with all
prohibitory laws, there was the usual bootlegging. Sonam had managed to smuggle in a
supply, which he kept carefully hidden and locked away; for in Tibet drinking is only a vice,
while smoking is a crime." McGovern went on to tell about the conduct of another one of
his Lhasan hosts, the famous Tibetan Army Commander and member of the Dalai Lama's
Cabinet of Ministers, Tsarong Shape, who at the time was second only to the ruling monarch
as the most powerful person in the Closed Land (and who, as noted in Chapter 2, would
later become a close personal friend of Tharchin's). While dining at General Tsarong's
Lhasan home, McGovern's host surprisingly "hauled out after dinner a huge English pipe,
which he filled with strong shag and smoked. Considering the strong prejudice against tobacco,
this was remarkable, but even Tsarong dare not smoke in public."
But precisely what can adequately account for this strong prejudice against tobacco?
Perhaps the explanation given Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark in 1938 by the Tibetan
Moravian minister and great Tibetan Bible translator, Joseph Gergan, can go a long way in
providing the answer. In traveling together on a journey from Leh to the Kashmiri capital of
Srinagar, the famous European anthropologist happened to ask Rev. Gergan how it had
come about that throughout Tibet and in those areas under her cultural influence smoking
was viewed as such a heinous offense. Paraphrasing his response, the Prince wrote that Br,
Gergan had replied "that it was because, so the lamas said, tobacco was a weed grown from
the menstrual flow of a prostitute who had prayed that it might fertilize a plant that would be
the joy of mankind. For this reason, lamas could not think of smoking, and they naturally
opposed it in the lay population as well."21
Now given this great prejudice among Tibetans, which Tharchin must certainly have become
aware of, it is all the more remarkable that this young Tibetan from Poo—as will be seen more
clearly in Chapter 5 below—insisted at this Christmas season and for nearly the rest of his life
thereafter on engaging in a habit that was forbidden among his very own people in Tibet. But
then again, it may well be indicative of just how strongly this habit would gain a grip on him that
he could not so easily discard it once he had reached a more mature understanding of Tibetan
strictures and the ill effects on his health which such a practice could inflict on him.
There was another Christmas during this same period which would likewise stand out in
the memory of Tharchin, and for as long as he lived—a Christmas that would be identified
with perhaps happier and certainly more exciting circumstances. For Poo was to be graced
with the presence of one of the more famous explorer expeditions through Tibet which with
increasing frequency Europeans were attempting to mount at this period in Central Asian
history. This particular adventure in exploration occurred in late 1904 as an outgrowth of the
Treaty of Lhasa which had only just been signed in the Potala Palace on 7 September at the
conclusion of the now celebrated Younghusband Expedition that, when all other peaceful
means had vainly been tried, had been launched by the British to effect better trade relations
between India and the heretofore almost totally closed Land of Snows. Article 5 of the
Treaty had stipulated that besides trade marts to be established at the well-known localities
of Gyantse and Yatung in the southeast, one more was to be opened at Gartok in far-off
western Tibet to serve the trade needs of British Northwest India as well. It was therefore
decided to appoint Captain (later Brigadier General) Cecil G. Rawling to head up an expedition
to Gartok to examine this obscure hovel-and-hut-village for its suitability as a trade mart22
and at the same time use this venture as an opportunity to add to British India's geographical
knowledge of the Tibetan country.23
A future friend of Tharchin's, Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Colonel) Frederick (Eric) M.
Bailey, who had been a member of the military escort which had accompanied Colonel
Younghusband in his Political Mission to Lhasa, had been personally chosen for the Gartok
128 CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN
Expedition by the Colonel because his knowledge of the Tibetan language, said Younghusband,
would "likely prove to be useful." And indeed it did. Beginning on 10 October 1904 at Gyantse
just before winter set in, the Expedition's route along the north of Nepal took the exploring
party some 800 to 1000 miles to Shipki Pass on the Indo-Tibetan frontier and another 200 miles
or so to Simla (via the Hindustan-Tibet P.oad so familiar to young Doije), where the Expedition
arrived at its ultimate destination quite weary but safely, happy were they to have surmounted
incredible odds against both weather and terrain. Two important topographical facts were
firmly established as -a result of the Rawling Exploration Party that also had as one of its
members the future Surveyor-General of India, Captain C. H. D. Ryder. The first fact was that
there was no mountain in the part of the world the Expedition had traversed that was higher
than Mt. Everest—indeed, the Rawling Party were the first Westerners ever to behold the
north face of the earth's highest peak; and secondly, that the source of the river Sutlej was
definitely placed far more to the west than had been assumed previously.24
But a most challenging moment in this long, arduous and ofttimes dangerous trek across
Central Asia came when the Expedition arrived at the doorstep of Tharchin's home village
on Christmas Day 1904: how to traverse the mighty river Sutlej from the left (south) bank to
the right where Poo was situated and from whence the Hindustan-Tibet Road continued on
its way to Simia. Quite simply, it would have to be by means "of a harrowing temporary
"bridge" that had only recently been thrown up for travelers to use. Yet this so-called bridge,
doubtless familiar to Dorje and his fellow villagers, would prove to be, as Captain Rawling
himself recalled, a near setback for his trekking party. Shortly after the experience, the
leader of the Expedition reminisced about what happened that day at Poo:
... while congratulating ourselves on the satisfactory progress the expedition was making, a
disaster had happened on the British side of the frontier which came near to wrecking our
plans.... A great cantilever bridge, regarded as an engineering triumph, spanned the Sutlej,
carrying the road from the left to the right bank. It had only been completed and opened for
traffic in the autumn, and was looked upon by the natives with awe and admiration. But for us
it was to be of no use. The timber, obtained from the neighborhood, proved to be exceptionally
brittle, for, three weeks before our arrival, the lower beams gave way close to the piers, and the
whole structure was precipitated with a crash into the torrent below. Learning of our approach,
Mr. Hart, Deputy Conservator of Forests, gave immediate orders for the construction of a new ;
bridge, leaving matters in the hands of the lambardars of the neighboring villages [local i
officials or functionaries who attend to the wants of travelers] as to the particular method by j
which the river should be spanned. f
Three immense trees had been felled and placed in position upon two projecting rocks, |
immediately above the site of the old bridge. This new structure was naturally only a temporary J
measure, but sufficed for all requirements, though it sagged to within a foot or two of the water. |
It was of sufficient strength to support the animals when driven over singly, and the baggage |
25
was carried across by coolies. j
St
The party, now on the Poo side of the dangerous torrent, had barely time to catch their |
breath when suddenly they were met with a welcome that took them completely by surprise.
And Dorje Zering, the young Tibetan Christian, was there too. As Captain Rawling recorded J
it a year later in his book of explorations:
At Poo, a village situated close by, a delightful surprise awaited us, for we were met halfway
i
down the hill by the Moravian missionary [Rev. Schnabel], who has lived here for many years.
We were promptly carried off to the Mission buildings, where a repast of the rarest delicacies
had been prepared. On Occasions such as these, the smaller details often impress themselves
the most forcibly on one's mind, and I feasted my eyes with unbounded delight and admiration
on the spotless tablecloth and the folded napkins. In the corner of the room stood the Christmas
tree, so lately laden with presents for the village children.
Our host and hostess were kindness itself, and a delightful afternoon was spent in looking over
the near and comfortable buildings, the prize fowls, the orchards, and the hundred and one things
which appeared so welcome and so strange to our eye after a year spent in Tibet. As the story of my
previous journey [in 1903] ends with an account of the hospitality shown by the Moravian
missionaries at Leh, so also does this part practically terminate with a grateful acknowledgment of
the many kindnesses received from the members of the same Society stationed at Poo and Chini.
The Expedition's missionary hosts reciprocated these words of commendation with fine
ones of their own regarding the members of thi^ unusual expedition themselves. Wrote
Moravian Bishop LaTrobe just a few months after the-eyent:
Last Christmas Day (1904) brought most interesting and important visitors to Poo, where our
missionaries dwell... Out of the mysterious interior of Chinese Tibet, and across the frontier at
Shipki, came four English officers, Captains Rawling, Rider and Wood, and Lieutenant Eric
Bailey.... By invitation of our missionary the party camped in our compound and took their
meals in the mission house. A card from Mr. Schnabel, at Poo, tells us that they proved most
pleasant guests, and that they amply repaid his hospitality by giving our native Christians a
Christmas present of thirty rupees. This generous gift was greatly appreciated.26
And doubtless young Dorje was one of the recipients of the gift presented to the local
Christians by Bailey and the others in his party. Decades later, this time at Gyantse, Tharchin
was to encounter Officer Bailey again but under quite different yet just as happy
circumstancesâs the reader will learn in a subsequent volume of the present biography.
As the increasing pressures and responsibilities of the church and school grew over the
years, the mission work required closer attention and supervision. Under these circumstances,
Rev. Schnabel voluntarily sacrificed his turn for regular furlough in the year 1905/06 and
instead decided to take the entire family later to the village of Kotgarh for a period of
physical rest and relaxation which by this time was called by the missionaries a "local furlough."
Situated at an altitude of about 7000 feet some fifty miles northeast of Simla, this village with
its (Anglican) CMS mission station lay in the heart of the Simla Hills on the Hindustan-Tibet
Road, quite distant from Poo.
Now the reader has already been made acquainted with this mission station, for it was
here some fifty years before, and at the hands of the hospitable Rev. Dr. Prochnow, that the
jQO-founders of the West Himalaya Mission, the Moravians Heyde and Pagell, had so warmly
fbeen received and helped. This mission station had originally had its start in 1843/4 through the
generosity of a civilian named Gorton and an officer, Captain Jackson, and was an offshoot of
the (CMS) Simla Mission. In the past the CMS had stationed doctors here at Kotgarh (and also
at Kangra) so that "tours both for purposes of preaching and healing might be made among the
far-stretching spurs of the Himalayas."27 Dr. Prochnow and Dr. Jukes were two such medical
missionaries who were stationed at Kotgarh for these purposes. Here, then, wrote one chronicler
of these mission efforts, "the gospel was preached east and west of the Sutlej." Yet the work
in Kotgarh had really always centered around the Middle School for Boys that had eventually
been established in the village, and the pastor of the mission church would act as its headmaster.
At this time the Kotgarh Mission was under the care of the aged German pastor, Rev. H. F. T.
Beutel, and his wife. This kindly missionary couple had endeared themselves to both locals and
Westerners alike.28 Charles Freer Andrews (1871-1940), a longtime resident of Kotgarh during
the summer months beginning in 1907, has given a brief firsthand sketch of the mission hill
station as it appeared at that time:
This little hamlet, with its church in the center, and its hospital and school, lies nestling far
below the road to Tibet surrounded by forest. Open spaces have been kept for orchards and
for fields of Indian corn. In those earlier days, an old, white-haired German missionary and his
wife, named Beutel, used to live next to the church in the center of the village. Another aged
missionary, Dr. Jukes, came to live later on in a second bungalow, halfway up the hill, and
ministered to the sick and dying for many miles around. The small hospital and dispensary,
near to the church, were in his charge.29
Since Br. Schnabel was interested in Dorje Tharchin spiritually, the missionary took him
along with the Schnabel family to Kotgarh. There was a solid basis for this interest in the
teen-ager. For one thing, in 1905, just the year before going to Kotgarh, Dorje Tharchin
Zering had been confirmed by the missionary on the Sunday (16 April) closest to his fifteenth
birthday, which of course came two days later. This had occurred after three-vand-a-half
months of instruction given personally by Br. Schnabel and that had commenced on Sunday,
1 January 1905, the date the Tibetan youth had become a candidate for taking Holy Communion
within the Christian Church. And hence, upon receiving his Confirmation after this lengthy j
period of instruction, it meant that he was now a bona fide communicant in the Poo church, and |
could thus enjoy all Christian privileges, including the participation in the Lord's Table. It will be j
of interest to note what was the Confirmation Text chosen by Rev. Schnabel to be read at j
young Dorje's Confirmation Service. It was taken from the words of Jesus found in John's f
Gospel, Chapter 15, verses 9 and 10: "Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you: j
abide ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have j
kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."30 j
For another thing, just the year before, young Dorje Tharchin's name (here spelled
"Tharchen") was appended with that of his stepfather's, of Paulu's, of Benjamin's, and of j
three other Tibetan men of some spiritual stature at Poo whose collective signatures were |
affixed to a letter addressed to the British and Foreign Bible Society in London. Dated 16 J
February 1904 and composed in Tibetan by Paulu on behalf of the rest of these men, it had
been written and sent in anticipation of the centenary celebration later that year of the
founding of the Bible Society. The letter reads in part as follows:
To our esteemed British and Foreign Bible Society, greetings of peace.... To those who were
able to read and longing for books, portions of the Bible and religious tracts were distributed.
Only by your assistance was this possible.... At present I am here at Poo, where there is a
missionary and his congregation, and I feel very happy among religious brothers.... Very, very
great thanks and God's blessing to you, dear brethren, for every holy Book sent and the
unspeakable assistance afforded to this poor congregation.
It concluded with the following words, to which were then affixed the names of the seven
brethren, young Dorje's being listed immediately next to that of his stepfather's:
As we get continual help, and the time to celebrate your great jubilee comes nearer, it is with
great joy that we collect something to send as a donation by our lama, the Rev. R. Schnabel, for
the further spreading of the gospel.
(Signed) Paulu, Madtha, Tharchen, Benpa Tsering, Benjamin, Denyed, Denthong.31
That Dorje Tharchin (nearing only the age of fourteen at the time) would be included among
these other Poo brethren permitted to sign a letter of this kind is doubtless indicative of a
recognition of further spiritual growth in his life. It also demonstrates the fact of young Tharchin's
appreciation of God's word and of an interest in the spread of the gospel among his people.
As yet a third piece of evidence strongly suggesting that Rev. Schnabel had reason to
take more than casual interest in Dorje Zering at this time is the fact that less than two years
following the Kotgarh visit, the Poo missionary had begun to notice in young Tharchin more
than the average spiritual propensities to be found in a person of his age; for in his Diary
entries of the Poo mission covering the year up to September 1910 Rev. Schnabel was wont
to describe this youth in the most unusual terms: "His [Madtha's] stepson, named Tharchin,
is a very promising youth and one going about [i.e., conducting himself] by the Spirit of God
[;.. einem vielversprechenden und im Geiste Gottes angefassten Jüngling]."32 So that it was
more than likely true that even prior to his Kotgarh furlough Rev. Schnabel had already
begun to discern signs of nascent spirituality in the youth which evoked in the missionary
more than superficial interest and motivated him the more to take young Tharchin along that
he might help to nourish and to bring under disciplined self-control what he saw in the lad.
And this, as Tharchin himself later indicated, the missionary would continue to do in the
weeks and months following the party's return to Poo in 1907.
According to Gergan Tharchin's own subsequent testimony, his chief area of responsibility
while with the Schnabel family at Kotgarh was to assist in the household affairs. And most
likely he at times served as a cook for the family, a position he definitely filled while in
f i n i n g at the Poo mission itself two years later, as is confirmed in the same Poo Diaiy entry
cited above. The missionary family and the young Tibetan all lived together "for six months"33
in a rented house at a place called Thanedar (or Thandu) located some three hundred feet
above and to the north of where the Prochnows lived below at Kotgarh. This rented house
was the very bungalow referred to by Charles Andrews as being located halfway up the hill
from the center of the village. It was also, coincidentally, the very house in which the Schnabels'
fellow Moravians, Heyde and Pagell, had initially lived after their arrival at Kotgarh from
London in April of 1854.34 From piecing together a number of different facts and dates it can
be stated with a great degree of certainty that this six-month period during which the Schnabel
family and Dorje Tharchin resided in the Kotgarh area occurred from approximately
November-December of 1906 to the early part of June 1907.35 Rev. and Mrs. Marx were
the ones who relieved the Schnabels at Poo during this six-months absence, the Marx family
having arrived at Poo in the fall of 1906 in time for the Schnabels (with Dorje) to depart for
Kotgarh.36
From time to time young Tharchin would have opportunities to accompany Rev. Schnabel
to Simla some 50 trekking miles away for purchasing foodstuffs and household commodities.
This would be a new experience for this teen-aged Tibetan, since he had never before been
to this prominent hill station. The youth availed himself of the opportunity on these occasional
visits to witness the many interesting sights to be seen in Simla. This opened his eyes to
visualize for the first time the glories of modern civilization which otherwise was a closed
experience to this rural lad from an ignorant village like Poo. Strolling through the streets of
the market one day, this humble son of a village blacksmith found, as he was wont to explain
afterwards, that the modern and palatial-appearing buildings of Simla were a far cry from
the rude stony structures of tiny backward Poo. In fact, "even the thought of comparing the
two," he exclaimed, "would be a mark of stupidity!" Reflecting on those memories of long
ago Gergan Tharchin confessed: "When, for the first time in my life, I saw a railway engine
dashing towards my direction I got scared and ran for my life from the railway platform ...
After all, this was not an unusual thing for a Tibetan to do on the first glimpse of such a
strange contraption."
In Kotgarh the Tibetan youth became acquainted for the very first time with the renowned
Christian saint and mystic, Sundar Singh. This son of a wealthy Indian Sikh family was to
become a close friend for life of this lowly Tibetan from Poo. At that time the seventeen-
year-old Sundar was presenting what was most likely a life of Christ "slide show" on the
magic lantern37 in a Christian meeting that was held on a spot somewhere near the mission
station. The world is indebted to the Englishman Charles Andrews, whom Sundar would
come to regard as a "greatly beloved missionary friend,"38 for providing what is probably the
only pen-portrait of Tharchin's new friend which has ever been drawn of him as a youth. A
graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Andrews was celebrated in his own right as the
beloved Anglican missionary priest (later an independent lay Christian servant), professor,
author, and confidant to so many (including two other and even more renowned Indians,
Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas K. Gandhi). *39 Now it so happened that the Englishman
would come to Kotgarh every year from 1906 to 1911 to escape the summer heat and the
heavier monsoon precipitation;40 and it was here during those years that he continually
experienced close and intimate friendship with Sundar Singh. In his personal memoir of the
Sadhu published in 1934 Andrews provided many revealing sketches of Sundar's life and
work in the latter's early years before he gained public prominence. But he also provided in
the volume a description of his very first meeting at Kotgarh with the youthful Sundar in
1907.f Andrews writes vividly of this encounter:
... it was with the utmost eagerness that Principal Rudra [of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, where
Andrews taught and which the Sadhu was later often to call his home when in the Indian
capital] and I seized the opportunity of going out together [from Simla] to Kotgarh and thus
meeting [Sundar] at last face to face....
He was still quite young in age and youthful also in appearance. His wistful shyness had
first to be overcome before he could be altogether at ease with us. For we were complete
strangers to him and he had only recently become a Christian. During the time of transition
from his old life to the new, he had met with many difficulties and some unexpected rebuffs.
Therefore he was diffident and reserved until he came to know us intimately as his friends.
Then his whole nature blossomed out in a singularly happy manner and he won our hearts by
his gentle goodness.
His face had the look of childhood fresh upon it, in spite of marks of pain which were there
also. At first sight, however, it was not so much his face that attracted my attention as his
marvelous eyes. They were luminous, like the darkly gleaming water of some pool in the forest
which a ray of sunlight has touched. While there was a shade of sorrow in them, there was also
the light of joy and peace.
During the larger part of the time we were together, he seemed almost entirely to be absorbed
in his own thoughts. But suddenly there would come into his eyes a flash of quick intelligence
as he looked up and said a few words in reply to some question. The discipline of inner self-
restraint was noticeable, and when he made a remark the effect was all the greater because of
his previous silence.
In later years, the dignity of his presence deeply impressed me; but on that first occasion I
seemed to see nothing but those eyes of his looking into my own and offering me his friendship.
They seemed to tell me, without any formal words, how great a treasure his soul had found in
Christ, and how he had realized at a glance that my heart was one with his own in devotion to
the same Lord.41
It ought to be added that besides the above pen-portrait, Andrews has provided an additional
vivid remembrance of the Sadhu from those same early years at Kotgarh. This he set down
in his Preface to the same memoir:
* Indeed, this was the sarnfc Rev. Charles Andrews who was the delightful "Charlie" personality in the universally-
acclaimed Academy Award-winning motion picture, "Gandhi," that was chosen Best Film for 1984. Directed by
Sir Richard Attenborough, it accurately portrayed Andrews as one of those who befriended the future Mahatma
in South Africa at a crucial moment in the young Indian's public life and who would go on to become a lifelong
cherished friend of Gandhi's in India.
t It should be noted, though, that a year earlier the English clergyman had first noticed the boyish sadhu—but
from a distance, as it were—on the occasion when young Sundar, along with otheryoung candidates, had received
their Confirmation at a service for this purpose that was conducted in the little mission church at Kotgarh. See a
few pages hence for the details.
During the years when I was the nearest to him and saw him most frequently, his love for Christ
was so ardent that at times it filled him with rapture. There was also to be noticed in him a
singular gentleness of spirit. This was one of those "marks of the Lord Jesus" which had come
to him through much suffering and humiliation.
He seemed to live consciously in the very presence of his Lord, and to carry that presence
with him wherever he went. Men and women "took knowledge of him that he had been with
Jesus." His inner joy sprang from the fountain of Life itself... Sundar Singh, by his creative
personality, set forward a true type for Indian Christians to follow.42
Now the particular magic lantern the young sadhu was using in presenting his "slide
show" to a crowd of onlookers (one of whom was Dorje Tharchin) had been borrowed by
Sundar from a free-lance American Quaker missionary by the name of Samuel Evans Stokes,
with whom the younger Sundar had been traveling as a team of Christian sadhus since
September of the previous year (1906). This was not the first instance he had met Stokes.*
After his dramatic conversion to Christ (see below) and wh&n the ensuing hostility from his
father and family had become too intense,! Sundar had enrolled in the Christian Boys'
Boarding School at Ludhiana operated by the American Presbyterian Mission. When on
account of constant trouble that occurred even here from his^ relations, the lad was sent in
1905 by the wise Headmaster, Dr. E. E. Fife, to the Presbyterian Mission Leper Home at
* It was at this time, however, that Dorje Tharchin was to make his first acquaintance with the youthful American
missionary. This is known from a letter dated 13 July 1925 which Rev. Schnabel had sent Rev. Dr. Oskar Pfister, a
Swiss pastor who was then preparing to publish an unfavorable psychological study on the life of Sadhu Sundar Singh
that in addition would touch upon his association with the Tibetan Tharchin. In his report-sounding letter, couched in
both the first and third persons, Schnabel related the following; "he [Tharchin] came with Schnabel to Kotgarh in 1907
and saw S.S. [Sundar Singh] and Stokes as well. At that time we [had] already set out from Poo in October 1906 and
journeyed to Kotgarh, where we met the two people mentioned " See Pfister, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 219-20.
t So intense had their hostility become that on the veiy night of his ostracism from the family, one of its members had mixed
poison in the food he was served during the final meal he took with them. Then, driven out from his home forever, the boy
made his way by train to the home of a Presbyterian minister in the village of Rupar some 35 miles away where the poison
had now begun to take its terrible effect. A doctor was called who immediately diagnosed his condition as fatal, saying there
was no hope, and refusing to give Sundar any medicine, so certain he was that the boy would die and so fearful that if he were
to give him any prescription and Sundar did die, people would claim that it was he who had poisoned the boy.
In his testimony of later years, however, the Sadhu, speaking in Geneva, Switzerland in 1922, declared: "I felt
sure I would recover and bear witness for my Savior When I regained consciousness I told the doctor to read St.
Mark Chapter 16. [But] he began to laugh at the story of the Resurrection, as the Rationalists do today. They
don't understand miracles because they have not experienced them, but those who have, find no difficulty." The
following morning Sundar "felt quite fresh and received new life." But when the doctor came again and saw the
revived boy sunning himself, "he was very surprised and ashamed and went away without saying a word."
There was a most remarkable sequel to this event, however. For though the Sadhu saw nothing of the doctor for
the longest time thereafter, some fifteen years later, while preaching in Burma (now Myanmar), Sundar happened
to meet this doctor at one of the meetings. The latter asked Sundar, "Do you recognize me?" "Yes," the Sadhu
replied, "I last saw you when on my death-bed." Whereupon the doctor proceeded to tell his Christian patient of
long ago that his "miraculous recovery had made such an impression on [me] that I began to read the Bible and [am
now] a Christian." As it therefore turned out, this former skeptic had become Sundar Singh's very first convert! Yet
he would be followed by many many more in course of time. See Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 24-5.
Subathu near Simla to study the Bible and prepare for the Christian baptism he so earnestly
sought. When he left Ludhiana, he went across the plains with several boys his own age in
company with the young missionary Stokes. The latter, the son of a wealthy American
Quaker (later Episcopalian) who had become fascinated by the character and ideals of St.
Francis of Assisi, had come to India in February 1904 at the age of 21 to do evangelistic
work along the lines of his Italian saintly mentor who, in Stokes's words, had "tried to conform
his life in all particulars to the life of Jesus."
Now it was upon returning from Kashmir that the young sadhu once again met up with
Stokes. This was on 8 July 1906. And shortly thereafter, in the words of Charles Andrews,
there began, "in unison of perfect brotherhood, their ministry of love and healing." According
to Sundar himself, Stokes "asked me to stay with him for a time," which he indeed did;
furthermore, reported Sundar, Stokes remarked that "if it is the will of God, I myself desire to
serve along with you in the sadhu style, because for India that is the best method of service."
Whereupon, wrote Sundar in his retrospective travel diary of the period, young Stokes
"distributed all his property and possessions to the poor and adopted the life of a sadhu," he
even donning the proverbial yellow robe.* After their time in Kotgarh was concluded, they
traveled together as a team of sadhus from September 1906 to November 1907. For Stokes
had tentatively decided to form a Brotherhood of the Imitation of Jesus committed to a life of
poverty, celibacy and obedience, with himself and young Sundar as the initial members of
this Order. The Order, in fact, would later be inaugurated with a solemn service in the
(Anglican) Lahore Cathedral.f
Andrews has provided a thumbnail sketch of the Brotherhood and its basic principles of
life and service: "This was to be a literal following of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as he
* What had prompted this radical conversion in the American to follow Christ in this manner was the fact that
while wandering among the Simla Hills region on a holiday just prior to linking up again with the Sadhu, Stokes
had met a Mrs. Bates, widow of a retired Forest Officer. Due to her "simple goodness" there had occurred "an
overwhelming experience of conversion" such, that the American Quaker renounced then and there his inherited
wealth in favor of eventually giving it all to the poor and of thereafter identifying with the much younger Indian
$adhu for the next fifteen months.
• Having heard about and been deeply moved by their venture of faith, Charles Andrews took it upon himself to
seek out Mrs. Bates while she was in Delhi with friends on winter holiday (1906-7). He extracted from her a promise
that on his upcoming summer visit to Kotgarh he would be able to meet "her modem Franciscans." And thus began
what blossomed into a close and intimate friendship between the English clergyman and the precocious Christian
sadhu from the Punjab and his older American counterpart. See Chaturvedi and Sykes, Charles Freer Andrews, 71.
t It soon became clear to young Sundar that he should join no Order but "should follow the path of his own
wayward genius as a solitary Christian sadhu." Nevertheless, by the end of 1907, Stokes, Andrews and the Rev.
E J. Western, an English lecturer at Delhi's St. Stephen's College (where Andrews was himself a professor) who
would later become Bishop of Tinnevelly, were deeply imbued with the desire to form "a new international
brotherhood of renunciation and service." Stokes would travel the following year to England and America to share
this dream with others and thus gain interest and support for it. When the time approached for inaugurating the
Order, however, only Stokes (who had returned to India) and Western went forward with the plan, since
Andrews reluctantly had to withdraw due to his uncertain health. On 22 February 1910 the new Brotherhood
pas solemnly inaugurated at the Lahore Cathedral by its Bishop, Dr Lefroy. It would meet its demise, though,
after but two years' existence, primarily because the American, after consulting Andrews and receiving his
reluctant support, decided to marry an Indian Christian lady Ibid., 72. See Chapter 9 for further details. See also
Chapter 11 below for a counterview not only of Stokes's lack of a wholehearted commitment over the long term
to the vow-af celibacy but also of this same lack in respect of the vow of poverty.
lived and walked on earth. Every single thing was literally to be given up for Christ's sake.
No purse or script was to be carried; nothing was to be kept as one's own. The gospel story
was literally to be fulfilled.... The two brothers thus went on their way happily together,...
and thus it went on for a short time ..." Sundar (aged 17) was unquestionably helped by this
older man and was doubtless able to catch something of the Franciscan spirit of service that
must surely have emanated from this radical American Christian, who in the process instructed
Sundar a great deal concerning the life and teachings of the Franciscan Friar.
One of the most fascinating chapters in their association together was the "cave home"
which this East-West team of sadhus maintained for several years in the hills just above
Kotgarh. The cave, however, was not only for themselves but also for a little band of young
lads whom they would bring up with them from the Punjabi plains during the summer months.
Charles Andrews has described this haven from the suffocating heat and bustle of the
plains. For as he himself has written, "for different years in succession,... it was my privilege
to spend part of the hot weather, when college duties in Delhi were over, with Sadhu Sundar
Singh and Samuel Stokes at Kotgarh ..." Whenever Andrews would arrive at the village
from Delhi and Simla, the first inquiry he would make concerned these two friends and "the
company of crippled boys whom they used to bring with them each year to the Hills. For
they collected, in the manner of the Gospel, the maimed, the lame, the halt and the blind,
along with certain children of leper parents, who were themselves suspected of leprosy, in
order to form a summer camp for them in the Hills. Every one of them was a waif and stray
of humanity. Stokes had fathered and mothered them all and lâd taken them like a hen under
his own wing. A happier company of children"—and "parents" for that matter—"it would
be impossible to meet, and they won our heart's affection whenever we were able to be with
them. They hardly knew what sorrow was. They lived a simple life of the most abstemious
kind which hardly cost them anything at all."
Stokes, on his part, had nothing but praise for the young Indian sadhu, whose labors for
the Lord, he observed, were done "so faithfully and with such effect that all were astonished."
Indeed, "his work has been far better than my own, and although he is scarcely more than £
boy he has suffered hunger, cold, sickness, and even imprisonment for his Master." Stokes
went on to comment that "the man who suffers against his will speedily becomes a physical
wreck; but if he suffers of his own free will, impelled to do so by his ideal, there is hardly any
limit to his powers of endurance. This I have seen in Brother Sadhu Sundar Singh ..."
Stokes would go on to become an intimate friend of not only Sundar Singh (during the latter's
youth) but even more so of the Father of Free India, the Mahatma himself.43
*
The encounter the teen-aged Tibetan had in Kotgarh with the teen-aged Sundar occurred
sometime during the months of May-June 1907,44 less than two years after the latter had
been baptized a Christian in Simla and had donned his pocketless saffron yellow robe—the
color which every sadhu wears—to become an itinerant preacher and teacher of the gospel
particularly to the mountain kingdoms of the remote Himalayas. It was also in this village of
Kotgarh, and just a year earlier (most likely at the beginning of the summer of 1906), that the
sixteen-year-old sadhu (along with other candidates) received Confirmation at the hands of
the Anglican Bishop of Lahore at a Confirmation Service held in the little mission church that
was here. All of the candidates, clad in white, came forward one by one to receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. Sundar's longtime friend Charles Andrews has
provided a moving picture of this event at Kotgarh, the environment within which it was held,
and especially of the young sadhu himself. Recalling the incident with pleasure a year
afterwards, Andrews wrote:
Last year I walked out from Simla with the Bishop of Lahore, who was to hold a Confirmation.
On the way we passed the shrines of the different gods and goddesses. The hill folk are
steeped in superstition, and very backward; each hilltop or corner is supposed to be inhabited
by some demon: cries and shouts and beatings of gongs were heard from time to time betokening
their worship: we passed a great tree which was still famous as the scene of the last human
sacrifice. Then suddenly beneath us we saw the little Christian church with its cross and
wooden belfry, and heard the children's voices singing a Christian hymn. The peacefulness of
the scene, and the sense of the sweet beauty of our Christian Faith in the midst of the gross
heathenism all around, were beyond description.
... The next morning, Sunday, the village Christians were up early, and standing in the
sunshine outside the church they greeted the Bishop as he drew near. The rain was past, and
the air was the purest translucent blue. The service was very quiet. The old German pastor
played the music very softly, and led the singing throughout. The candidates, all in white,
came up one by one to receive the gift, the last being a young Sikh convert of noble parentage,
who had given up all for Christ, in order to live with a young American Churchman the ascetic
life. His face was shining with strong determination and bright energy as the Bishop shook
hands with him after the service and wished him God-speed. He was veiy humble and quiet,
but full of earnestness, and devoted to his young American brother.... 45
The old German pastor was of course a reference to Rev. Beutel mentioned elsewhere
already, the young Sikh convert was obviously Sundar Singh, and the young Churchman
referred to was the American Quaker, S. E. Stokes, about whom more was said earlier. The
Bishop was the Anglican Bishop of Lahore, Dr. J. J. Lefroy, whom Sundar came to "love
deeply."46
Sundar, when growing up, had been, like his parents—and especially his wonderful
iftother—a devout adherent of the Sikh faith (the word Sikh, from the verb sikhna to learn,
means learner, disciple, or follower). This was a religious persuasion, founded in the late
fifteenth century, which sought to unite in itself the best facets of Hinduism and Islam in an
attempt to lead men back to a purer worship. Sikhism's founder and its first Guru, by name
Nanak (1469-1538), had been born and reared along the banks of the River Ravi near
Lahore in the Punjab of India. After marriage and the siring of sons, Nanak became a
tnendicant after the manner of the sadhus, with whom he traveled widely, visiting most of the
well-known pilgrimage sites. According to tradition, he had even gone to Mecca in his search
for a better faith by which to live than by either Hinduism or Islam, both of which he had
studied as a high caste orthodox Hindu. His quest for a more satisfying faith had been
inspired by the fact that as a boy he had found himself "protesting against the rigidities of
Brahmanism" of his Hindu parents and against the entire caste system that was fundamental
to the religion into which he had been born.
Nanak would be greatly influenced by a contemporary, the Hindu mystic poet Kabir
(14507-1518), who was one of several religionists who sought to work out a viable combination
of the teachings of Hinduism and Islam. In time Baba Nanak would evolve his own particular
teaching which, like so many reformers before him, had as its aim the combining of various
religious persuasions "in the worship of the same god whom all under different guises revered."
Added Sir George Macmunn, in his volume on the religions and cults of India, Baba Nanak
taught the Creator-spirit, outside whom all is may a, illusion. Salvation could be attained through
a Guru, a leader, as a mediator between God and man. Through the Guru, reincarnation could be
avoided and karma defeated. It is thought that Nanak must in his wanderings, although there
is no record extant, have come into considerable contact with Christian teaching, so much
does Christian thought figure in his "way." Besides the Christians in Travancore [in South
India], there is a sect of friars, or faqirs, claiming conversion by St. Thomas in the north, who
have both the Gospel of Matthew as well as the writings of Nanak. There is within the Granth
[the Sikh holy book] the following:
As great as Thou thyself art, so great is thy gift;
Who having created the day, didst also create the night. %
Many sloks, i.e., couplets in the Granth, have Christian affinities. In fact, it has been said, from
an examination of the Granth from certain aspects, that Nanak taught nothing but the story of
Christ from Birth to Ascension.
Macmunn went on to crystalize more precisely the teachings of the Baba, as found in those
writings of his which have been incorporated into the Granth. These are as follows:
The Fatherhood of God and all that fatherhood means. j
The brotherhood of man ["caste," wrote Macmunn, "was abolished and the ranks of ]
brotherhood were open to all comers ..."]. i
The necessity of obedience to the inward voice Divine. i
The unerring work of Divine justice. |
The necessity of a Divine Teacher. f
The existence of a Mediator and Absolver of sin.
The folly and evil of idolatry.
In commenting on these seven points, Macmunn noted that they "show what a long way J
Sikhism had traveled from Hinduism with its complicated obsessions ..."
Furthermore, in the precepts of Sikhism's tenth Guru leader that summarize the Baba's f
Granth writings, it is declared that a Sikh should set his heart on God and His name, on f
Charity, and on Purity, as reflected in the following:
Worship God every day.
Keep a place in the heart for the poor.
Give a tithe of all possessions.
He who professes holiness should act as such.
Avoid the lustful eye.

Offend none, for the Lord's sake.
Look for the advent of a spotless incarnation.
"Yet there are those," exclaimed Sir George, "who would maintain that Sikhism is a Hindu
sect!"
With Nanak's death there developed a hereditary succession of Guru leaders of the new
movement. It was the fifth in this leadership line, Arjun by name, who was the one who
brought together Baba Nanak's writings, prayers and poems into the scriptures of the Sikhs,
the Granth. Indeed, the Granth, wrote Dr. Youngson of Sialkote, contains not only the words
of Nanak but also those of his successors and of the poet Kabir, and which, in Amritsar's
famed Golden Temple and elsewhere in the Punjab, it "is adored as if it were a living person,
eating, sleeping, waking, working."
Suffering many persecutions over the years, Sikhism's followers ultimately diverged from
their first Guru's gentle preachment of a pacifistic code and formed themselves into an
organized military power for the purpose of avenging its wrongs. In fact, with his people
being persecuted by various Moghul warlords, the tenth and last of the Gurus, Gobind (Govind)
Singh, having brooded since age fifteen over the brutal murder of his father, the ninth Guru
Teg Bahadur (1664-75), and over the scattering of the disciples—all at the hands of the
Moghul Emperor Aurungzeb—created a fierce brotherhood of "warriors of God" known as
the Khalsa (the Pure) and stood at the head of an army that in the end temporarily conquered
the Punjab.47 It was at this period in Sikh history, incidentally, that the Rajput cognomen of
Singh (i.e., "Lion," and which the Rajput Aryans had hitherto reserved strictly for themselves)
was adopted for all new disciples of the faith. Moreover, the Singhs of Sikhism would ever
afterwards be distinguished by the wearing of what came to be known as the "Five K's" or
Kakkas:
the Kes, uncut hair rolled in a knot on the head;*
the Kachh, short pair of drawers;
the Kirpan, steel dagger;
the Kara, iron bangle or quoit, a throwing missile; and
the Kangh, small iron tooth comb, always worn in the hair.t
Although the movement would in time spread and take on the dimensions of a national
group in the Subcontinent, the new faith would be mostly centered in the Punjab of
* Of these Five K's or Signs of the Sikhs, this one is their chief glory. And this was the one which young Sundar
would violate when, after eight months of bitter persecution by his family and community following his embrace
ifthe Christian faith, he cut off his long hair "as a public intimation that his faith in the Sikh religion was gone."
For both Sundar and his family there was finality in his action. The following morning his family turned the lad
out from their home. As far as they were concerned, "he was dead to them." T. E. Riddle, The Vision and the Call:
a Life of Sadhu Sundar Singh, 15-16.
IThe bearer of the Singh name identified any and every Sikh who followed Guru Gobind Singh; and the wearer
i>f the aforementioned Five Signs showed that they belonged to the Khalsa or Pure Ones; Sundar's family
belonged to the latter. Moreover, the given name which Sundar received from his parents at birth was determined
in the orthodox Sikh manner: Sikhism's sacred scriptures, the Granth, is randomly opened and the first letter of
the first word in the upper left-hand verse of the left-hand page is taken; accordingly, the name to be given must
begin with this letter. In this case "S" turned out to be the initial letter, with the name Sundar (meaning Beautiful)
chosen. Ibid., 7-8.
northwestern India, from whence Sundar Singh himself came, he hailing from one of the
small Punjabi plains villages—Rampur by name and situated in Patiala southeast of Ludhiana
some 100 miles west southwest of the Simla Hills region. Further insight into the Sikh religion
is provided by young Sundar's intimate missionary friend of later years and the eventual co-
executor of his estate, the Rev. Thomas E. Riddle from New Zealand. Riddle was in a
position to know this faith firsthand inasmuch as he labored as a Presbyterian missionary for
many years in the Punjab itself, living as he did in a village that was predominantly of this
religious persuasion. Writing in his autobiography, the New Zealander made the following
observations about the Sikhs in general and their religion in particular:
The Sikhs, who constitute 75 percent of the Kharar people [among whom the author lived], are
mostly farmers, if they are Jat Sikhs, and weavers and shoemakers if they are low caste Ramdasi
Sikhs. The Sikhs worship God, particularly in his manifestations in the form of their ten Gurus,
or religious teacher-leaders. When the last Guru was dying he was asked who the next Guru
would be. He put his hand on their sacred book, the Granth, and said, "This also is your Guru."
The Sikhs therefore count the Granth as their Geru, the manifestation of God. The honor they
pay to it—to the number of its pages and the weight of its paper—comes very near to idolatry,
but as their Gurus, their book and their God are all manifestations of one reality they are to be
classed as Deists. In their worship of God, incarnate in their Gurus and their book, they
approach nearer to the Christian attitude of worship than any other Indian religion. Both are
bhakti religions, that is, religions of devotion to a personal God. The Sikhs have no idols and
they pray to a God that can do acts, and can forgive sins.... Many times after a lantern lecture
on the life of Clirist, which we have given in a village, some sturdy old Sikh Sardar [a manager,
or a foreman in charge of coolies, porters, etc.] has come up to me and said with conviction,
"Sahib, that's just what we believe."48
*
t
Surprisingly, however, and despite the distinct echoe§ in Sikhism of some of Christianity's
most basic tenets, young Sundar Singh, as a highly devoted Sikh, had at one time been
vehemently opposed to the Christian faith—even to the point of pouring kerosene oil over a
copy of the New Testament and setting it aflame in the presence of his disapproving father.
His antagonism to Christ was so fierce, in fact, that if even so much as a Christian missionary's
shadow fell across him, the teen-ager, in his fanatical hatred, "spent a whole hour in washing
away the pollution."49 But the lad, cast into despair over the nearly simultaneous loss of both
his mother who was his dearest friend50 and his elder brother whose nature and turn of mind
had been very much like his own,* now sought consolation in death in the event that God—
* As was stated earlier, Sundar's Sikh faith at its beginning had been an attempt by its founder to unite the best
of both Hinduism and Islam. That Hindu teaching still occupied a central place in young Sundar's thinking at this
time (having been taught it by both his mother and a Hindu pundit to whom she had entrusted him for instruction)
is no better demonstrated than what impact it now had on him with the death of these two loved ones within a
few months of each other. For it happened that the thought that he should never see them again, he was to write
long afterwards, had cast him into utter depression because he "could never know into what form they had beeris
reborn"; nor, he added, "could I ever even guess what I was likely to be in my next rebirth. In the Hindu religion
"if there was a God at all"—were to fail to "reveal Himself to him as he prayed and to
show him "the way of salvation, and end this unrest" to his soul. Rev. Riddle, who later in the
Sadhu's life had had many conversations with Sundar Singh about these traumatic but crucial
early days, has explained and described what was the all-consuming focus of this lad's
prayer:
Sikhs and Hindus, in the search for merit or for enlightenment, bathe in cold water before
beginning their worship, so at three o'clock in the bitter cold of a Punjab winter morning
Sundar bathed, and then began to pray that God would reveal Himself and end his spiritual
conflicts. His petition was that the all-pervading, impersonal, unknowable, incomprehensible
universal spirit that is the supreme deity of popular Hindu belief, would once again take human
form so that his mind might be able to compass the thought of Him. Orthodox Hindus held that
the Deity had already taken finite form three hundred and thirty-three million times to destroy
some evil-doer or to proclaim some truth. In the most influential of all the sacred books of
popular Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, the Supreme Spirit in the form of Krishna had said:
To save the righteous, to destroy evil-doers, to establish the Law, I come into birth age after age.
—and all Hinduism expected such incarnations to occur. In the Punjab villages it is not rare for
the arrogant pride of a sectarian leader or the fulsome flattery of his designing disciples to
claim that he is God.*... That night the boy, Sundar Singh, looked for the appearing of some
avatar, or incarnation of God, who would destroy the demon of his doubts.51
If, however, his fervent petition were to go unanswered, Sundar had "firmly made up his
mind" that he would surely go down to the nearby railway tracks before daylight and place
his head on the line in advance of the oncoming five a.m. express train to Ludhiana.
But the God of all gods did indeed respond to the despairing cry of this heretofore youthful
fanatical Sikh, and in a most singular way; for on the night of 17/18 December 1904, God
revealed Himself to this lad of fifteen with a miraculous appearance of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Years later Sundar Singh was to present a brief but illuminating record of what
happened on that most fateful night of his life:
I remained till about half past four praying and waiting and expecting to see Buddha, Muhammad,
Krishna or some other Avatar of the Hindu religion; they appeared not; but suddenly a light
appeared, coming through the door from outside. Alarmed, I opened the door of my room to see
if the house had been set fire to, and saw a resplendent light but not the source of it. I turned and
saw that the room I had just left was now full of light; so I returned inside and noticed that the
light increased in intensity and took the form of a globe of light above the ground, and in this light
there appeared, not the form I expected, but the Living Christ whom I had counted as dead. I saw
the whole figure of Christ, His long hair, His robe, the wounds in His hands and feet. [Yet]... the
scars with blood flowing from them ... were not ugly but glowing and beautiful. He was not
standing on the floor, and His face was wonderful, so loving. He had a beard on His face. The
long hair on His head was like gold, like glowing light. His face was like the sun, but its light did
the only consolation for a broken heart like mine was that I should submit to my Fate, and bow down to the
inexorable law of Karma." Sundar Singh, With and Without Christ, 54-5.
* "I once attended a conference of the members of one of the new Hindu sects held in a village at no great distance
from Sundar's village of Rampur. Challengingly one speaker asserted, 'Do not say that our leader comes from
God. He is God.' In the same district I saw the followers of a Jat Sikh, who claimed to be God, worshiping him
as God." Riddle, Vision and Call 11.
not dazzle me. It was a sweet face, always smiling—a loving, glorious smile. Though I had burnt
the Bible the day before yesterday, He was not angry.* Christ was not terrifying at all. To all
eternity I shall never forget His glorious and loving face, nor the few words which He spoke: "I
am Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. How long are you going to persecute Me? See, I have
died on the Cross for you and for the whole world. Be My disciple and proclaim My Name."
These words were burned into my heart as by lightning, and I fell on the ground—down, down,
down to the Master's feet. When I had got up, He had disappeared. My heart was filled with
inexpressible j o y and peace, and my whole life entirely changed. Then the old Sundar Singh died
and a new Sundar Singh, to serve the Living Christ, was bom. 52
This vision—nay, this appearing—of the Living Christ altered his life completely and
forever. The Son of God and Son of man would now be supreme in his walk and work.
Indeed, as was true of St. Paul in his conversion, no other explanation could account for
such a radical and immediate transformation which had occurred in this young lad. For j
from that moment onwards he who had been so fiercely opposed to the Christian faith j
now became an ardent follower and disciple of its Founder and sought to proclaim His j
message everywhere. Yet not only to the ordinary and illiterate of humanity but to the j
famous and brilliant as well, it would be the privilege and great joy of Sundar Singh to give j
witness in much of the world—both East and West—to the central place which the Living |
Christ henceforth occupied in his life.j As a matter of fact, by the time Dorje Tharchin first |
met this young man in Kotgarh, the latter had already well proved himself on his first missionary I
tour53 at the conclusion of which he had come to this very hill village a year earlier primarily 1
to gain a much needful rest. Indeed, this small hill community was for a long time afterwards I
* As the source note for this conversion testimony will intimate, all the biographies of the Sadhu contain accounts
of this experience. However, as Eric J. Sharpe has discovered, a slightly different version from all the others was
the one the Sadhu wrote in Urdu on 19 October 1920 to the London Missionary Society missionary in India,
Mrs. Rebecca J. Parker (whose impact on Sundar, incidentally, was immense, she having become, notes Sharpe,
his "spiritual mother"—a not uncommon phenomenon in Indian religion). From this "Parker version," Sharpe
observes, one gains the impression that "the main impulse contributing to,this conversion experience was
remorse (and perhaps also fear) at having publicly burned the Bible." See Sharpe, "Sadhu Sundar Singh and His
Critics," Religion (Spring 1976):64 note 5, with 52.
t His ministry would take him not only throughout India and many Other parts of the East, where he would be
asked to share his testimony with the likes or Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore; it would take him also
to many areas of the West. As but one example of the famous in the West, the future Sadhu from the East, while
traveling on a preaching tour through Europe in 1922, was requested by Russia's Empress Dowager to come to
her castle in Copenhagen, Denmark. He had just spoken before a packed audience in a large concert hall there and
had made a deep impression upon those assembled. Hearing about this, the Dowager had immediately sent for
him. She it was whose son Tsar Nicholas II and family had been so brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks just four
years earlier. The Sadhu only went to her after being told that "no woman had suffered like her." Towards the end
of his time with the Dowager, she asked Sundar Singh to bless her. As was his wont by that time, however, he
humbly explained that his hands which had once destroyed by fire the Christian Scriptures could not bless her:
"Only the pierced hands of the Living Christ could do that." She had to be content with receiving the Sadhu's
verbal blessing. Source: letter of reminiscence, Rev. P. Langc (Danish missionary in India) to A. J. Appasamy,
May 1950, and quoted in Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 191.
As another example, in this case one of the world's most brilliant, the Sadhu was given opportunity to have
a lengthy interview with the famed French thinker, philosopher and would-be mystic, Henri Bergson, during the
same European tour of 1922. An esteemed member of the French Academy since 1914 and the recipient of many
honors from his Government, Bergson (1859-1941) had apparently requested the interview because of the
philosopher's great interest in the intuitive and not merely the rational side of man. Unlike the intellect which
could grasp the true nature of reality only in part, there is another faculty in man, the intuition, which he believed
to serve as a sort of headquarters or a place for beginning and ending his many missionary
travels. Barefooted and clad only in his thin saffron robe for protection against the harsher
climatic elements, this precocious itinerant evangelist would make the Kotgarh and Simla
Hills region, so familiar to his newfound friend Tharchin, the locale for much of the unceasing
ministry to which he had been called of preaching the gospel of Christ. He would even make
his way to the Indo-Tibetan area in and around Dorje Tharchin's home village of Poo. But
the hope was ever in his breast that from here in Kotgarh he would eventually be able to
penetrate into the very precincts of the closed land of Buddhist Tibet itself.
Although no one will eVer know for certain, more than likely when young Tharchin went
forward at the conclusion of the Sadhu's lantern show to introduce himself as a fellow
believer to Sundar, the latter—once he had heard from the young Tibetan about Poo and its
mission station and its close proximity to the "Forbidden Land"—must have put many questions
to his informant concerning Tibet and the border region for gaining entrance into it. Captivated
as he must have been by the boy-evangelist's earnest Christian zeal and winsome personality,
Tharchin himself may have even suggested that the young herald of the gospel would be more
than welcome to visit the mission outpost on any attempt he might wish to make to cross the
border with the Good News. (As it turned out, in fact, the Sadhu not long afterwards did
precisely this, and was greatly helped on his way by the Moravians at Poo, as the next chapter
will indicate in more detail.)* Suffice it to say, however, that these two teen-aged youths could
was capable of apprehending life in its wholeness. This intuitive ability, Bergson maintained, is that which is
employed by the artist and the mystic to see into and interpret the true nature of the universe. And hence, his
interest in the Sadhu from India, the report of whose mystical bent had been somewhat publicized in advance of the
Sadhu's arrival in Europe. This naturally presented the Sadhu, now matured in both knowledge and experience, with
a remarkable opportunity to speak of Christ with the renowned philosopher and to tell what the Lord Jesus meant
to him in his life. "Finally," the Sadhu reported afterwards to a missionary back in India, "I turned to Bergson and
inquired: 'And what do you think of Him?"' The French Academician paused for a moment, having been plunged in
thought by the question; but, then, he replied as follows: "I admit that He was not [merely?] a man. My philosophy
has no place for Him." By contrast, it can be said, "Sundar Singh's philosophy," in the words of the listening
missionary, "had little place for anything else"! See Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 195, who quotes the report of this
interview that appeared in The Indian Witness, 9 Jan. 1930, a year following the Sadhu's disappearance.
As a further demonstration of the absolute centrality of Christ in Sundar's thought and life, the highly
respected American Methodist missionary to India for half a century, the Rev. Dr. E. Stanley Jones, has related
the following incident about his great and good friend the Sadhu. On one occasion in India there came to the Sadhu
a request for an interview by a well-known European professor of comparative religions who was then a lecturer
at a Hindu college. The professor, missionary Jones later explained, was a thoroughgoing agnostic when it came
to the Christian faith and interviewed Sundar Singh with the evident purpose of showing him how greatly
mistaken he had been in renouncing his Sikh faith for Christ. Inquiring of the Sadhu, the professor put this
||Uestion to him: "What have you found in Christianity that you did not have in your old religion?" To which
Sundar simply responded with, "I have Christ." "Yes, I know," his inquirer replied somewhat impatiently, since
he had been anticipating a philosophical discussion; "but what particular principle or doctrine have you found
which you did not have before?" Back came the unhesitating response from the Sadhu: "The particular thing I
have found is Christ." Try as he might, the European lecturer in religions could not budge the former Sikh
adherent from this new center and focus to his life. The professor, added Dr. Jones, "went away discomfited—
and thoughtful. The Sadhu was right. The non-Christian faiths have fine things in them but they lack—Christ....
Christ being Life is a necessity to life." And this, for the renowned Indian mystic, was now the center and sum
pf his entire being. See Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road, 47-8.
*Jn fact, so impressed, apparently, would the Sadhu become with the strategic location which Tharchin's home
Village possessed, that on one occasion many years later Tharchin received a letter from the Sadhu dated 18
October 1920 in which he inquired if the Tibetan could join him on a contemplated journey the following year to
little realize at the time that this first brief acquaintance at Kotgarh would not be their last, for
as the biography of Gergan Tharchin further unfolds, it will be seen that their paths would cross
again and again in the years that lay ahead.
During this period away from his home village of Poo, sad news was received regarding
the passing away of Dorje Zering's mother. Her passing had occurred on 19 November
1906,54 not long after Dorje and the Schnabels had departed on furlough on the lengthy
journey to Kotgarh. It is obvious, of course, that due to the distance involved (some 140 trail
miles away), the news of her passing at Poo might not have reached the young man at
Kotgarh until as late as February or March of 1907 or most likely even later because of
heavy snows making the passes and trails impassable. And though Dorje's heart was filled
with longing to go back to Poo immediately, the trail conditions made any such thought
impracticable.
When Sodnama Tsensin Zering breathed her last she was in the prime of young j
womanhood—not having quite arrived at her thirty-ninth birthday (Western reckoning). By
any measurement, hers had not been a very happy life, not even after Faith, Baptism and
Confirmation in the early 1890s had removed the guilt and lessened the unpleasant memories j
of the recent past. If anything, in fact, Sodnama's existence soon thereafter took on an even j
stormier character than had been the case during her illicit relationship with Taschi the blacksmith. \
True, her encounter with the kindly missionaries and their message of Christ's redeeming love, i
coupled with the opportunity given her to serve their families and enjoy wholesome Christian J
fellowship, had doubtless soothed her troubled soul and enabled Sodnama to care more properly i
than otherwise for her young child Dorje. Evidently, however, the lack of a husband and of a f
both Poo and Kyelang—no doubt with the intention of then attempting to cross the border into the Closed Land. |
Sundar indicated in his letter that he had just returned from Europe, America and Australia and would like to go J
to his friend's home village the next year The Sadhu made it clear to Tharchin, who was by this time situated at |
Kalimpong in Northeast India, that he would take care of him and would be prepared to send him money in f
advance. Unfortunately, the Tibetan had to reply that he was still engaged in Teacher Training, but that if the
Sadhu was intent on going to Tibet, then it ought on this occasion to occur from the Kalimpong side eastward, as |
had been contemplated when both of them did attempt unsuccessfully to enter Tibet together from Sikkirn in |
1914. See Pfister, Die Lege ride Sundar Singhs, 214, where the author has provided an extract from a report sent |
to him by Fr. Henry Hosten of a conversation the latter had had with Tharchin in Darjeeling on 4 June 1925, at
which the Tibetan had shown Hosten the Sadhu's letter.
So impressed had the Punjabi evangelist come to be with Poo's location that there would even come a time four J
years later when Sundar Singh would seriously toy with the idea of making Poo the headquarters for his missionary |
work itself—or at least that part of it relating to Tibet and associated regions. For in a letter which Moravian |
missionary Fred E. Peter was to write from Poo to Tharchin in 1924, in response to the latter's inquiry about |
perhaps coming to Poo to settle and to work among Tibetans at his birthplace and its vicinity, the Moravian wrote:
"... you meanwhile will have talked with him [Sundar Singh] about this project of your [possibly] going to Poo, and 1
you will know that at one time [quite recently] he thought of settling down here himself." But in another letter of Jj
Rev. Peter's of the same date, this one to Moravian Bishop Arthur Ward in London, he wrote: "Sundar Singh writes :m
to say that he gives up the intention of coming here [to Poo] and wants to make Almorah his headquarters" instead. ||
Peter to Tharchin, Poo, 25 March 1924, and Peter to Ward, Poo, same date, MCHA.
father for the boy must have been too difficult a state for her to cope with. Her faith, greatly
tested in this regard, was found to be quite weak when confronted by the temptation which
Madtha Zering's return to Poo from Kyelang created for her in August of 1895. His return had
in itself been a precipitate decision, one that was to engulf Sodnama and her son—and others,
too—in what can only be termed a chaotic period of strife and turmoil of the most debilitating
sort emotionally and spiritually. Occurring only just a little more than a year and a half following
her admittance (on Good Friday, 23 March 1894) to Holy Communion for the first time in her
Christian experience, Sodnama's fall, and that of the others involved, would bring scandal and
shame and frustration to so many and leave the Poo congregation temporarily in a weakened
state. But in the end, there came signs of renewed hope for some of the key participants. It
now remains for the turbulent story to be told.
"Unfortunately, Madtha caused us trouble again in that he tried once more to gain a wife
for himself in an inadmissible manner." Sp wrote the missionaries Heyde and Schnabel in
their Diary Report of the Kyelang mission station for the year 1895. And so began in Kyelang
a seemingly unending saga that would not find a resolution in Poo (it would be only a temporary
qne there) but would apparently only do so many years hence in far-off Kulu province. What
now follows is a summary of a tragic tale whose many parts filled many pages of the
Moravians' reports and diaries during the ensuing years.
It would appear that at some point in 1894 Madtha had made the acquaintance of a girl
from Upper Kyelang, a prostitute by the name of Gyamo (Gyiamo, Kyiuma, Giamo, etc.),
who, "according to the ideas of the Lahul people belonged to a higher caste, into which
Madtha, as belonging to a lower caste, was not permitted to marry." Nonetheless, there had
been cases of mixed-caste marriages having been allowed, but provided the potential spouse
$the lower caste would "buy himself or herself into the higher-standing family." This practice
was called yus-yin (meaning, to pay a price for the higher one), in which the person buying
in gains an advantageous part through the marriage, but at the same time pays the price or
"compensation" that comes to the so-called "good family" for the latter having had its name
and reputation "dishonored." In the case at hand, Gyamo's father formally turned her over to
Br. Heyde and asked the missionary to consider the girl his own daughter and to care for her
in preparation for the marriage.
Gyamo, just ayearyounger than Madtha, having been born in February 1874, was obviously
not a Christian, but since both she and Madtha insisted on marrying each other, and since, as
well, she expressed a desire to become a Christian, "we decided, after consulting the men of
the congregation," reasoned Heyde and his colleagues, "that we would give her instruction,
and then if, after a period of four months, we had won joy for this, we would baptize her." It
had become clear to the missionaries that Gyamo's motive to become a Christian was only
for the sake of the marriage and "not from a recognition of sin and the consequent need for
Ifee Savior"; nonetheless, they explained, "we thought that under the above listed circumstances
we should make the effort," by which they apparently wanted to see if, in the long four-
month process, Gyamo might become a genuine believer in Christ and not a "barley-Christian.''
Instruction for baptism was therefore begun with Gyamo but only after both she and Madtha
had promised to stay apart from each other totally during the instruction period.
It soon became evident, however, that they were not keeping their promise. Not only did
they arrange secret night rendezvous, they even spent a night together in the local monastery,
the potential spouses having been "misguided by evil-intentioned lamas and others who
doubtlessly wanted to turn the girl away from her intention." Their conduct eventually became
known generally, ^nd so, the missionaries explained, "if we did not want to incur the suspicion
among the Christians that such faithless behavior during the requested instruction had no j
consequences, there was nothing else for us to do but to exclude Madtha again [from the
Kyelang congregation] and to discontinue the instruction." The upshot was that Madtha
decided to leave Kyelang and return to Poo, and Gyamo—despite all attempts at dissuasion
by her relatives and by the missionaries—"insisted on going to Poo with Madtha." They
departed together on 2 August 1895, and later that same month arrived at Poo.
At the latter place, Br. Schreve, in his Annual Report for that year, picked up the story; |
"the oldest son of the Jonathan family, Madtha,... arrived back here in August with a girl
whom he had selected from among the heathen residents of Kyelang as his life-partner....
The girl... had been in instruction already in Kyelang, and her instruction is being continued
here [as a matter of fact, it began at Poo on 22 November]. We have to regard the two as a
married couple, even though they have run together without the benefit of any kind of a
ceremony. The consecration of their marriage can follow only after the girl's baptism." i
Within a few months of his return to Poo, however, Madtha, it was sadly to be reported, i
had become illicitly involved with Sodnama, who at the time was still "the Christian servant
girl of Br. and Sr. Schreve." In his Annual Report for 1896, Br. Schreve explained that "the ;
singular relationship" between these two had been going on for a long time and that they had
decided to leave Poo secretly together. The plan, though, was discovered; yet because
Sodnama had "expressed penitence," the Schreves desired to keep her in their domestic i
service. As to Sodnama's apparent penitence, though, this was soon uncovered to have been \
pretence during the entire ten days she had remained in the Schreves' service following the 1"'f'
discovery of her and Madtha's efforts to run away. f
This pretended penitence became even more transparent when a few days later, on the |
night of 4 June 1896, all three of these sinners—Madtha, Gyamo and Sodnama—secretly f
left Poo together! This was most likely a nascent case of polygyny (male polygamy) discussed f
briefly in Chapter 1. Mercifully, it can be said, Sodnama had had the good sense to "leave |
behind her six-year-old son Tartschin [Tharchin]"—in all probability leaving young Doije in f
the care of her now devoted Christian mother, Abo Tachung, or else (the record is not clear) f
quite possibly having left the boy at the home of the Schreves. Added missionary Schreve in |
his recounting of what happened: Sodnama "had provided for the others, who were not in a |
position to get shoes and food supplies for the journey [because Madtha was in debt]. Later |
we heard they had gone to Spiti. Madtha had left a lot of debts in Poo." As a consequence
of her illicit relationship with Madtha and her lack of genuine repentance as demonstrated
beyond doubt by her departure with him from Poo, Sodnama was excluded from Holy
Communion and all other Christian privileges of the Poo church, effective 4 June 1896.
Madtha, on the other hand, had already been excluded at Kyelang for having "brought
shame on the Christian name" and had not yet been reinstated at Poo.
That was in June of 1896. By August this sordid tale's plot had thickened with the arrival
back in Poo from Spiti of not Madtha and his "common-law-wife" Gyamo, but of Madtha
and Sodnama! Gyamo they had left "in Spiti under false promises." Unfortunately, reported
the vexed missionary, with the return of these two, "strife returned to the involved Christian
families." Immediately this wayward twosome settled into the home of Madtha's parents,
Jonathan and Hannah. But by the end of September who should show up in Poo but Gyamo!—
who "was received lovingly by Madtha's parents." On the other hand, wrote Br. Schreve,
"their own son, together with Sodnama,... were set out on the street, after Madtha had
explained that he did not consider Gyamo any longer his wife, but wanted to live with
Sodnama." To say the least, added the distraught missionary, "this caused more disturbance
in our Christian congregation."
The dissolution of the relationship between Madtha and Gyamo went before Poo's village
court. Br. Schreve was present at the proceedings, where he noticed that "justice and calm
objectivity" was markedly displayed by the villagers. Madtha was required to pay Gyamo a
total amount of Rs. 23/-, to be paid in yearly installments of Rs. 6/-. Shortly after this court
settlement Gyamo returned to Kyelang along a lengthy route via Rampur, where she arrived
at the mission station on 7 November 1896. The Brn. Heyde and Schnabel could report that
generally speaking "she made a more favorable impression than one would have expected."
Because her relatives, though receiving her in a friendly manner, did not take her in, Gyamo,
the missionaries explained, "sought residence and acceptance with us, which we, in pity,
could not deny her." The mission then provided the girl with the necessities of life and gave
her a job: spinning, weaving and knitting, with which, the missionaries made clear, "she has to
. earn her board."
, Meanwhile, back in Poo, Madtha and Sodnama had also decided to leave the village, but
"by night," in order to avoid Madtha's many creditors who had been pressuring him severely.
They went off down the Hindustan-Tibet Road all the way to Simla, where by the end of the
year they were still "lingering." The good Rev. Schreve was wont to close his narrative for
1896 with a prayer for Madtha and Sodnama, not having at all consigned them to hell. He
Wrote, with perhaps just a tinge of tiredness about it all: "This ends the story for this year. May
they be led to repentance and conversion. Our little group of Christians consists at the close of
the year, inclusive of Madtha and Sodnama,... a total of seventeen souls."
1 It will be recalled from the previous chapter that the Poo church at this period in its
history was in the midst of great spiritual ferment. And hence, despite the setback caused by
the recent scandal brought on by this shady triumvirate, by Easter time the following year the
church had apparently recovered from it, for the Poo missionary could report that the
congregation was doubled with the baptism on that joyful Church Holy Day of fourteen
adults and two children! Present also at this Easter celebration (which would have been 18
April 1897) were Madtha and Sodnama, who had returned to Poo from Simla two days
earlier on Good Friday. Wrote Br. Schreve: "this ... couple ... had caused great vexation
I luring the past year because of their offensive manner of life," but now "they expressed
penitence for their former life ..." In fact, the missionary noted several months later, "they
seem to experience regret, which is apparent in Madtha in that he of his own accord sits in
the back in church, whereas in former times he used to sit in front." And so, he added, "we
[have] permitted them to live in the house which the Mission had purchased from Madtha.
We could not decide, however, to give the blessing of the church to this union as long as
Madtha had not complied with the obligation to his former wife Gyamo [the payment of the
remainder of the court settlement debt], which amounts to Rs. 20/-." One could assume
from this that young Dorje, whose seventh birthday, coincidentally, happened to fall that year
on Easter Sunday, would not have yet been returned to Sodnama's custody in view of this
cloud which still hung over her and Madtha's heads.
More than a year passed, by which time Madtha had apparently paid the full amount of
the debt to Gyamo that had remained outstanding, for on 20 November 1898 the two Poopas
were married by Br. Julius Bruske (the Schreves being on furlough), and were received
back into the group of Poo's church communicants, with all Christian privileges having been
returned to them. Moreover, it can be assumed that now Sodnama's son was returned to her
and Madtha's care. There then followed a long season of stability and fidelity in this new
home, lasting for a period of some eight years. During this time, it will be recalled, Madtha
proved himself to be an excellent teacher and supervisor of the mission school, a faithful and
diligent manager over the mission station, a rather decent elder in the church, and even a
good companion with Paulu in evangelizing and preaching the gospel in the areas beyond
Poo's immediate vicinity. *
But then, in late 1905 or early 1906, perhaps brought on in part by Sodnama's failing
health, Madtha fell into "frivolity and fleshly pleasures." Several years before this, Rev. ;
Schnabel had replaced Br. Schreve. Schnabel tells how he had alerted Madtha to the dangers
of drink, and for a while Dorje's stepfather fended off this vice successfully. In 1906, however,
he succumbed to it with a vengeance. Yet, one sin like this, the concerned missionary wrote,
"leads to another, and finally, because of theft and adultery," Madtha found it necessary to j
give up all his service to the Poo Christian community voluntarily. Unfaithful not only to his j
church but also to his wife, Madtha soon inflicted the harshest blow upon poor Sodnama, j
now in agony because of great physical pain: he "deserted her" at the time of her greatest |
crisis; and eventually, wrote Rev. Marx in his Diary report, she "died of leprosy" on 19 f
November 1906, just one day shy of her and Madtha's eighth wedding anniversary. She had |
died without benefit of the presence of either her son, her husband, her mother (who had |
died two years earlier) or missionary Schreve—without a doubt, the four people whom she f
had counted the closest and dearest to her in the last years of her earthly walk. What a sad f
end to one who had tried her best to live according to the principles of Christ, and who, by all |
accounts, had finally been able, by God's grace, to do so successfully and consistently during |
the twilight period of her tumultuous life. And for this her son must have been exceedingly f
grateful to the Lord. |
By the time of her passing, of course, the Schnabels and young Dorje Tharchin were |
either still on their way along the Hindustan-Tibet Road to Kotgarh or else had just arrived
there. One can speculate as to why, given the fact that Dorje's mother was ill, Br. Schnabel
had taken the lad away from Poo. It may very well have been that Sodnama herself had
insisted he be taken to Kotgarh by the missionaries, to whom she as it were had given the
child for spiritual nurturing from the moment his father Taschi had left her for another woman
(see earlier in Chapter 1). Certainly she was in no position now to take care of her sixteen-
year-old son, and his stepfather was no longer around to assume any responsibility for the
lad. It might also have been the situation that at the time of the Schnabels' departure for
Kotgarh, Sodnama's condition had temporarily improved, leading to the opinion that she
would survive the winter and be able to enjoy a reunion with her son upon his return from
Kotgarh the following spring. It may even have been a combination of both these explanations.
Whatever the truth of the matter, one comes away from reading the documents and other
literature of the period with the distinct impression that this mother coveted the very best
spiritually for her son, and saw his close association with the beloved missionaries as the best
manner by which to achieve this aim.
As for Madtha, he had arrived at what was probably the nadir of his fitful, carnal walk
with the Lord. He had fallen terribly and was to suffer grievously for his disobedience and
sin. This darkest period was marked by the following events: First, he had stolen from the
Poo mission most of the gift funds which the poor little station had accumulated from its
impoverished Christians as its way of participating in the world wide effort to wipe out an
enormous longstanding indebtedness with which the Moravian Church had still found itself
long after the death of Count von Zinzendorf back in the eighteenth century, Second, he
had turned unfaithful towards his wife through the sin of adultery (the record does not
reveal with whom). Third, he had then deserted his wife at her greatest hour of need. This
had to have occurred prior to 8 July 1906 since the Poo Church Register shows that
Madtha had on that date been "excluded in Kulu" from the Poo church, by which was
meant that before July Sodnama's husband had left her in Poo and gone off to distant Kulu
province. Fourth, within five months of his departure and subsequent exclusion his wife
lay dead of leprosy. Fifth, in less than three months thereafter, his aged father Jonathan
passed away (February 1907), having died excluded from the Poo congregation. Sixth,
within two or three years after this, his mother Hannah would take her own life at Chot
(see again Chapter 1). And seventh, all his entreaties with Br. Schnabel and Br. Marx for
readmission into the congregation at Poo were rejected by them. Madtha had even written
about this matter to Rev. Schnabel at Kotgarh during the early part of 1907, but still to no
avail. Explained the missionary: "there was neither earnestness nor true repentance and
regret to be seen in him. On the contrary, the behavior of Madtha after that was such that
Ihadtogo after him judicially;... he had ... to appear before the judge ... and had to pay
because of his earlier theft."
This, therefore, was the awful situation in which Madtha Zering found himself at the
close of 1907. It would appear, based on the more sanguine outcome to it all, that under the
gracious yet disciplining hand of God he had most likely entered into an experience that
though far from being a perfect correspondence in all respects could nonetheless be somewhat
likened to what some deeply spiritual writers have termed "the dark night of the soul"—a
period of being laid bare before the Lord for deeper purification, enlightenment and closer
mion with God, after which Madtha apparently made a complete 180° turn.55 For Br.
Schnabel could report in his Poo Diary entry for 1910, signed by him in September, that
"Madtha, the former manager of this mission, is at the present time in the service of the
Assistant Commissioner for Kulu [an English official], from where he writes us faithfully
and asks for reception into the Poo congregation together with Kyiuma [Gyamo], his wife
It would seem that at some point after 1907 he had ultimately linked up once again with his
former "common-law wife" from Kyelang, that they were eventually married and happily
settled down in Kulu. Schnabel continued with his report of what were very hopeful signs of
renewal: "Because both of them, according to the reports of others, are living a Christian life
and, together with Dorje, a [Poo] church member [in Kulu?], and another Christian, are
maintaining prayer fellowship, they have been granted the readmission." And thus ends the
record of what is available to the present author concerning the kaleidoscopic life of Dorje
Tharchin Zering's stepfather.56
Admittedly, this has not been a very uplifting narrative to recount. Throughout the
entire affair, the Poo church had been vexed and battered repeatedly by the sins, weaknesses
and failures of Madtha, Sodnama and the former prostitute Gyamo. Nevertheless, the
church could take solace in the words of St. Paul: "where sin abounded, grace did abound
more exceedingly."57 As a matter of fact, though there were most surely some terrible
consequences to be paid by these three, it must be acknowledged that it was the abounding
grace of God which brought the sordid affair to what appeared to be a hopeful conclusion.
But it must also be pointed out that it was the marvelous grace of God which protected and
shielded Dorje Tharchin from this dark situation's worst effects, that he might be preserved
to become a chosen vessel of the Lord indeed. That he egnerged from this frightfully
painful experience relatively unscathed (although perhaps one will never know what hidden
inward scars may have resulted) is no doubt due in great measure to the salutary role
which God's choicest missionary servants like Schreve and Schnabel played throughout
the long ordeal. And thus set within this context, such developments as the six-month stay
at Kotgarh and the ongoing discipleship training received by Dorje Tharchin take on added
significance for this young Tibetan Christian. These and other timely interventions of the
Lord preserved this adolescent youth from what could have been a terrible fate. One can
only bow in worship at the Lord's feet and wonder in amazement at the marvelous, gracious
ways of God.
It can now perhaps be better understood why Gergan Tharchin had remained entirely
silent with regard to his stepfather when dictating his memoirs. He may have been too
ashamed or embarrassed to have done so. On the other hand, he may have been quite
successful—if he ever attempted to do so—in repressing that whole chapter of his life as
something best to be forgotten and done with. More than likely, too, during his sojourn at Poo
and ever afterwards he had never really been in a position to have been aware or to have
been made aware of all the events surrounding Madtha Zering's life or of all the details
surrounding the latter's connection with his mother. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that he
was privy to enough information to have formulated his own conclusions about Madtha.
These, though, were probably inaccurate conclusions, based as they no doubt were on
incomplete or perhaps even distorted data. Yet whatever the nature of his knowledge and
assessment of his stepfather down through the years, it apparently was of a kind which
inhibited Tharchin from ever speaking about Madtha Zering to anyone. From his perspective
it might have been too painfol an experience.*

It was a totally different situation, however, in regard to his mother. He had no hesitation
in sharing memories about Sodnama. With mixed thoughts of sorrow and solace the elderly
Tharchin on one occasion fondly spoke of his mother in this fashion:
I have always dwelt upon the loving-kindness she continually showed during my childhood
days. Her sweet countenance still lingers clearly and vividly in my mind. I am thankful to the
Lord that she brought me in contact with the Christian missionaries, who were truly the
servants of the Lord. When I heard the tragic news of my mother's death I felt very sad and
lonely Especially did I feel much for her as I could not be near Mother's sickbed to nurse her
during her last moments. Above all, although I had a strong desire to return home immediately,
I could not do so as it was humanly impossible for me to undertake the long and difficult
journey58 to attend the funeral and pay my last respects to my beloved mother. I still remember
how she used to pray at home. As a result of her [later] life and testimony, my [maternal]
grandmother, two aunties (Mother's sisters) and their husbands were also brought to the Lord.
My grandmother was a great woman of prayer. [She had died on 4 April 1904.]59
Sodnama Zering's son proved later to be a great man of prayer as well.f One may therefore
>wonder with some seriousness whether in this family the habit of prayer was hereditary! It
is not unlike that situation to be found in the New Testament described by Paul in his second
letter to Timothy his disciple. There the apostle explains to his young disciple how he is
"reminded of the unfeigned faith that is" in Timothy; but which, he adds, "dwelt first in thy
grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice," and which, he concludes, "I am persuaded [is] in
thee also."60 To spiritual heredity, at least, there may indeed be some truth!
About those days in Kotgarh and afterwards, Gergan Tharchin went on to comment:
Soon after Rev. Schnabel and the family returned to Poo, I naturally returned with them also.
Rev. Schnabel was a farsighted person and consequently, foreseeing the future needs of the
* There was but one instance the present writer could discover during the entire course of his research into the life
of Gergan Tharchin in which the latter had acknowledged any connection at all with Madtha Zering (Tsering,
Tshering, etc.).'Yet it was a significant instance, nonetheless. In the opening sentence of the Indo-Tibetan's will
are these words: "This is the last will and testament of me, Rev. G. Tharchin, son of [the] late Khew Tshering
Bhutia ..." Dated 4 April 1974, this document was shown the present author by Tharchin's son, Rev. S. G.
Tharchin, at the Tharchin family compound, Kalimpong, in February 1992. The derivation of "Khew" is
unknown, but it may have been a Tibetan name that had been given to Madtha at his birth by his parents. On the
other hand, its meaning as translated into English is the "Little One." This is according to a previously cited
authority on such matters, (Mrs.) Sungkil Phuntsok, in her letter to S. G. Tharchin, Dehra Dun, 4 August 1999
(and shown to the present author in December 1999). And as will be explained in more detail in Chapter 7 of the
present narrative, "Bhutia" or Bhotia (from Bhot, the Sanskrit equivalent for Bod, the indigenous name sometimes
for Tibet) is a term synonymous with "Tibetan," and a word that was appended to the personal names of
Tibetan-speaking peoples in much of the Himalayan regions where the Tibetan culture pervaded,
t Prayer was not the only spiritual discipline which Sodnama's son imbibed early on from his mother's example
and guidance. B. C. Simick, Jr., a close but much younger friend of Gergan Tharchin's at Kalimpong, told the
present writer that Tharchin had been "greatly influenced by his mother, a devout Christian. The study of the
Bible on a daily basis was implanted in him by his mother." Interview with Simick, Jr., Dec. 1992.
Church, he desired to train me up in the Biblical and theological disciplines so that I could be
prepared to assume the burden of tomorrow's Church with efficiency and competency. With
this purpose in mind he taught me Bible lessons twice a week.
True, it may have only been "twice a week" beginning in mid-1907 upon the Schnabels' return
from Kotgarh. But by the fall of 1909 such training had increased to three times weekly,
inasmuch as Br. Schnabel had voiced the sentiment in his yearly report from Poo for that year
that he "wanted to train" the "very promising" young Tharchin "to become a helper" in the
work of the Himalaya Mission. (A "helper" refers to one who, once achieving such recognition,
would help in conducting church services and, conceivably, in also serving as a church elder.)
In fact, the lad was so enthusiastic about the instruction class that in the same report the
missionary described his pupil-disciple as "radiant [or, beaming] with joy [freudestrahlend]" in
his "three times a week" attendance!61 Some indication of what Rev. Schnabel's curriculum
was like in these training classes has been provided by Tharchin himself:
He guided and instructed me in the contents of the Old Testament and the New, in the expansive
and progressive history of the Church through the centuries, and in the sound basic principles
of Church government.
Tharchin added that he still had to this day some of the Bil?le notes in his possession. "This
training," he long afterwards admitted, "however simple and superficial it might have appeared
on the surface, strengthened my Christian faith and enriched my understanding of the inspired
Word of God." It shall become most evident to the reader long before he has read the final
sentence of this biography of Gergan Tharchin that the truth of the words of Scripture which j
head up the present chapter were most amply proven in the life of this Indo-Tibetan: "Train \
up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it." And i
needless to say, such an outcome must forever redound to the credit of those Moravian $
servants of God and their Tibetan helpers who faithfully taught and trained this Poopa youth i
in the right path.
C H A P T E R 4
Young Manhood at Simla and Delhi:

Second Encounter with the Sadhu and Impressions of Delhi Durbar*
Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
Jesus Christ,... the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Ecclesiastes 12:1; Revelation 1:5
GOD IN H I S MERCY and goodness provided a wall of protection around Dorje Tharchin when
a year later (1908) he once again found his way to the celebrated city of Simla, the hill
station that had enjoyed and still enjoys the advantage of being the venue of important
administrative offices of the Indian government. Even today Simla, whose population in
1971 was over 55,000, is one of India's most popular resorts, it continuing to be as well an
important rail terminus and agricultural trade center for the region. Currently the capital of
H i m a c h a l Pradesh State and headquarters of the district of the same name, Simla w a s
originally built by the British on land they retained after the Gurkha War of 1814-16 and
was used for resting troops. It lies on a ridge of the Himalayan foothills northeast of
C h a n d i g a r h at an altitude of 7100 feet. The town rapidly gained popularity as a summer
resort because of its favorable climate, acceptable rainfall limits (only 65 inches annually),
spotless sanitation and scenic surroundings, and from 1865 to 1939 served, under British
rule, as India's summer capital.
Now since the cool and congenial climate of its hilly countryside had such a salutary
effect upon the physiology of many in the days of British rule in India, it appealed to and
attracted the European settlers who thronged to the place in great numbers. Indeed, the
world-renowned Swedish explorer Sven Hedin once noted—after his own visit to Simla in
September 1908—that because of the "enervating heat" prevailing over the lowlands of
India, all Europeans who were "not absolutely tied to their posts" would move up the hills in
the summer for a much welcomed relief: "the Viceroy and his staff, the government officials,
the chief officers of the army, civil servants and military men" would all make haste "with
their wives" up to Simla, "where the leaders of society" would "live as gaily as in London,"
resulting in the number of inhabitants rising "during this season ... to 30,00o."1 On the other
hand, during the long British regime Simla had acquired historic significance as well,2 and as
a result of its increasing political prominence many government officers selected it as the
place to settle down permanently. For the visitor, therefore, a trip to Simla evinced a sign of
one's culture. It enhanced the reputation of some who visited, and became a political pilgrimage
for others. But for the young Tibetan, simple and lowly as he was, the visit as a visit held
* From the Hindi word darbar originally signifying court held by a native Indian prince and including in its later
Cleaning a festive reception given by a maharaja or emperor for his subjects at which they pledge their fealty to
him. The word therefore came to mean in British India a formal reception of native Indian princes given by the
British Governor-General (after 1858 called the Viceroy, by virtue of the Act for the Better Government of
india), or as in the case at hand, given by Their Majesties King-Emperor George V and Queen Mary in 1911, to
which event the young man from Poo was an eyewitness and which is described later in this chapter.
only marginal significance for him. In quite another sense, however, it constituted a major
turning point in his life, as the following pages will amply show.
One day as Tharchin, dressed in the coolie garb of "ragged clothes,"3 was rambling
through the bazaar like a novice, his eyes caught sight of a crowd standing in a semicircle on
Simla's main street. This sizable gathering would have attracted the attention of most anybody,
yet even more so of this rustic lad. Out of curiosity he went near the spot to learn the cause
for the assemblage. When he looked he was taken aback to find that the focus of the
crowd's attention was none other than Sadhu Sundar Singh, whom he had first encountered
just a year before at Kotgarh. Although Sundar Singh was alone and only eighteen years of I
age, he was proclaiming the gospel of Christ zealously and courageously to the critical yet
credulous crowd surrounding him. For to young Tharchin the audience appeared to be listening
to his address with rapt attention.
To be sure, the long flowing saffron robe of Sundar Singh—with scarf and turban to
match—would have captured the hearts and minds of most any segment of Indian society,
and the teen-aged Indo-Tibetan was no exception. Waiting patiently until the crowd of people •
would break up and leave, he intended to meet Sadhuji.4 A{ the conclusion of the gospel ;
message and as the Sadhu was about to depart, the youth from Poo "placed himself in his ;
way," approaching the young evangelist with folded hands in accordance with the traditional
Indian mode of greeting. j
At first glance, Sundar failed to recognize Dorje Tharchin from the year before, which was
understandable. As noted above, the lad from Poo was quite differently attired than he had
been earlier, which helps to account for why the Indian sadhu could not immediately recognize
him. Just here, a word of explanation needs to be given as to why the Tibetan from Poo village
should have been garbed in the coolie manner in the first place. In his near-definitive biography
of the Sadhu, the Rev. (later Bishop) A. J. Appasamy has briefly recounted this meeting in
Simla bazaar between Sundar Singh and young Tharchin, and its aftermath. And doubtless
many of the details were later supplied to the Sadhu's biographer by the Tibetan himself.
Now the latter is described in the biography as "working as a coolie carrying stones
and was in ragged clothes." While there is no denying the substantial truth contained in
this statement, the word "coolie" should not be construed as conveying the sense of
Tharchin's being a coolie by trade. In his case the term had only a temporary connotation.
It was, and still is, quite customary among the inhabitants of the mountainous regions to
come down to the plains—or at least to the areas of lower altitudes—during the winter
season to escape the severe cold. In Tharchin's case it was not that he had come to the
lower altitudes of the Simla Hills region to escape the cold winter but for another and far
more meaningful reason: that he might earn as much money as possible to support "the
noble aspiration" he had "made up his mind" about "to go to Tibet and study the Tibetan
language more." So he himself wrote decades later when putting together a brief biography
Second Encounter with the Sadhu and Impressions of Delhi Durbar 155
of himself. In order to garner an income, however, Tharchin, in company with these simple
and innocent migrants, was compelled to take up any temporary employment he, like
them, might be able to obtain.* Only after the severity of the cold had relented would such
mountain villagers usually then return to their original homesites to engage themselves once
more in their erstwhile pursuits.
In Dorje Tharchin's case, though, he was in Simla to stay for a while, pursuing what in
those days and in that region was the most available means of employment by which to earn
income: working as a coolie on the Hindustan-Tibet Road. Such labor basically consisted of
removing and hauling away by hand as many basketsful of earth and stones as was humanly
possible on any given workday. And so he labored long and hard at this backbreaking work.f
It needs to be added, however, that Tharchin had to acknowledge in his brief biography that
his hope of financing his dream of going to Tibet for study "could not be realized for want of
money," although, he added, he "had attempted as far as Simla" to make a go of it in 1908.5
Such, then, explains why, in this second encounter between these two teen-agers, young
Tharchin was dressed in coolie garb and why at first he was unrecognizable to the young
Christian convert from the Punjab.
After an exchange of a few words of greeting between these two friends, Sundar's
memory suddenly clicked, and he remembered his fellow teen-ager in a flash. In a tone of
# Indeed, the young Tibetan was not above working at most any kind of job. Long afterwards he would
sometimes speak of this early period in his life to his friends. Moreover, his son recalled to the present writer a
line of his father's which now and then fell from his lips when on those rare occasions he would speak to him
about his beginnings. Declared the elder to the younger Tharchin, in almost atone of pride: "I worked from a very
low class and never became a 'big shot.' I worked as a cook, as a coolie, as a house servant in my early years."
Interview with Rev. S. G. Tharchin, Dec. 1992. As a matter of fact, it may not be too presumptive to say that the
aspiring young Dorje had been inspired to humble himself even to the lowly status of a coolie by the example of
his Christian mother who herself, he had told a friend long afterwards, "had worked as a coolie on the Hindustan-
Tibet Road"—no doubt on that part of the Road in and about the Poo-Namgia district. Per interview with Achu
Namgyal Tshering (son of Tharchin's very close friend and colleague in British Intelligence in re: Tibet), Jan.
1998.
f Nevertheless, though highly motivated to garner as much income as he could to finance his dream to pursue
ligher language studies in Tibet, this young Christian refused to work more than six days a week that he might set
impart every Sunday as the Lord's Day. For on that day of the week he would read his Bible and observe the Day
in prayer and in other ways. In fact, a story which Tharchin would later often relate to his family and close friends
highlights this particular facet of his coolie experience and underscores the strength of his Christian convictions
at this very early stage in his adult life.
!• As the story goes, his coolie co-workers asked him one day why he only worked six days a week, resulting in
the forfeiture of an entire day's pay. "We are getting seven days' pay," they said, "whereas you only get pay for
six days." In reply, however, Tharchin presented them with an interesting challenge. "All right," young Dorje
responded, "let's see if your seven days' income will be sufficient for you to survive on as compared to only my
six days'." They readily took on the challenge, confident they would be the winners. It did not turn out that way,
though. For by the end of the third or fourth day of the following week, the seven-days laborers began to come
to Tharchin for a loan, which he most willingly extended to them.
Said Tharchin later: "This thus gave me an opportunity to witness to them about the power of God in my life.
For I told them that because their money was already exhausted, and even though they had gotten one day's pay
more than I had earned, it proved that my six days' pay had been greatly blessed by my God due to my having
faithfully kept the Lord's Day." And, he ended the story, "they looked at me in great surprise and were even
Awestruck at my remarks, unable to say a word!" This very same scenario, Gergan Tharchin added, happened
over and over again during his coolie days on the Hindustan-Tibet Road. Interview with Rev. and Mrs. S. G.
Tharchin, Feb. 1992.
surprise he exclaimed, "Is that you, Tharchin? What has happened to you? Come with me!
I will take care of you!" Sadhuji then escorted him to the Library and Bookstore of the
Church Missionary Society's St. Thomas's Church where he was lodging with a few Christian
friends, some of whom were serving in the Government offices. This incident occurred on
the 2nd of May 1908.6 It should not be surprising that the Sadhu, still not even nineteen years
old, would have been lodging at the facilities of St. Thomas's, once one realizes that it was
here on his sixteenth birthday, 3 September 1905, that he had been baptized, according to the
rite of the Anglican Church, by the kindly Rev. Joseph Redman, senior missionary of the
CMS at Simla.7 St. Thomas's (Native) Church, then situated in the center of Simla's Native
Bazaar, had originally been consecrated in 1885 and had regularly held services thereafter in
both English and Urdu.8 Doubtless, then, the young sadhu felt at liberty to invite his Tibetan
friend to join him and the others for lodging at this Church's Library facility Here "for three
months" in these living quarters the teen-aged Dorje would now serve his friend Sadhuji and
the several other Indian gentlemen abiding there by "helping in the kitchen and doing also
other work." So Tharchin would relate by letter much later to Bishop Appasamy.9 But he
would also serve the Sadhu in another and very important way when at times Sundar Singh
was out of station (see below).
* %
Now it just so happened that the Sadhu had only recently arrived in Simla himself from
having gone on his very first missionary journey into Tibet, traveling as far as Tashigang
(located along the Indus River about 215 miles from Simla and some ten to fifteen miles
north northeast of Poo but inside Tibet proper itself). To get there he had trekked along the
famed Hindustan-Tibet Road, inevitably stopping at young Dorje's own village before plunging
forward over the border. He remained a week at Poo where he received a warm welcome
and much assistance from Tharchin's familiar missionaiy friends the Revs. Hermann Kunick
and Hermann B. Marx. Because of Sundar's unacquaintance with the language spoken in
Tibet, these good men helped him to acquire the basics of the language and heartily gave him
one of their workers, a young evangelist named Tarnyed Nasib Ali, who as his interpreter
(he, like Sundar, spoke Urdu) would now accompany the Sadhu and instruct him further in
the dialect of the people. Though presently based at Kyelang, Tarnyed had found his way to
Poo on an evangelistic tour at the time that the Sadhu had arrived at Tharchin's home village.
Tarnyed Ali had come originally from Baltistan where, having inherited Balti blood from his
mother's side, he had been brought up a Moslem before he had been orphaned when a
young teen-ager. As for his father, the latter had been a "Drogpa," belonging to the tribe of
the Dards—a stocky broad-shouldered moderately fair-skinned frequently brown-haired
Indo-Aryan people in the upper valley of the Indus—and having its tribal seat in several
villages that lay between Ladakh, Baltistan and Purig. Although raised a Moslem till orphaned,
young Tarnyed had subsequently become a Christian, having been instructed in the faith by
his new parents—the Moravian missionaries—and then baptized by them at Leh.10 Much
later, though, Tarnyed had become the Urdu instructor at the Kyelang mission school (having
arrived there the spring of 1907),11 and a few years later would even replace Tharchin's
own Urdu schoolmaster at Poo upon the retirement in 1911 of Paulu the evangelist because
of old age and ill-health.
Leaving Poo together, Tarnyed and Sundar soon encountered some persecution as they
made their way over the mountains which separate Greater Tibet from Lesser Tibet. In one
instance, for example, the Tibetans were horrified upon witnessing the Sadhu bathing in an
icy stream and ordered him and his companion out of the village, giving as their reason that
"holy men never wash"! The one place where these two young men received a kindly
welcome was at the fortified town of Tashigang already mentioned (and not to be confused
with a town by the same name in Tharchin's home province of Bashahr). Here the Head
Lama, "who ruled over a colony of four hundred lesser priests," received the Sadhu cordially
and gave him liberty to preach the gospel in the lamasery. It would appear that after this
Tarnyed returned to Poo (and ultimately trekked back to Kyelang) while Sundar on his own
wandered about in Tibet for a while before he too made his way back across the Indo-
Tibetan frontier and on to Kotgarh and finally Simla, where he was found by Tharchin
preaching the gospel in the bazaar.12
Concerning this second encounter with the former Sikh youth, Tharchin later observed:
"Sadhu Sundar Singh asked me if I was intending to return home for the summer season, to
which I offered a negative response. Thereupon, Sadhuji invited me to stay with him and enjoy
his fellowship. I consented readily" It was thus in this way that the young man from Poo was
able at this time to spend his days in the sweet company of this converted Sikh who became
such a great servant of the Lord. He had the blessed privilege, he added, of traveling with
Sundar in the hills and valleys surrounding Simla, serving both him and the Lord faithfully for
three months.13 And doubtless one of the ways this Poo youth was able to serve Sundar Singh
was as an interpreter, a service he would likewise render the Sadhu with distinction some six
years later in far-off Sikkim. Just now, however, Tharchin could serve this itinerant evangelist
from the plains whenever the two of them encountered ethnic Tibetans in the Simla Hills
region, Tharchin's ability in both Urdu and Tibetan making it possible for the Sadhu to communicate
the message of the gospel to his non-"Indian" hearers.
It should be pointed out, incidentally, that in a psychological study of the Sadhu by the
Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister, it is related that Tharchin had reported the fact that his friend
Sundar had "wanted" to teach him Hindustani at this very time, that is, during the spring-
summer 1908. But from another source, in this case the biography of the Sadhu by Appasamy
cited earlier, the author, writing of this summer's activity, had observed that "during this time
Sundar Singh taught him Hindustani."14 Just here might be a suitable place to take note of
the similarities and differences which exist among several of the predominant languages
used in the north of India, at least at the time of these two youths in the early part of the
twentieth century. These are the languages of Urdu, Hindustani, Hindi and Sanskrit. A
passage from a 1904 article by Rev. George H. Rouse, D.D., of the English Baptist Mission
Press at Calcutta, will perhaps be helpful.
Sanskrit... is a language somewhat akin to Greek in its inflections and its phraseology. It has
long ceased to be a spoken language, and is important only as being the sacred language of
the Hindus and the basis of the North Indian languages. The most important of the spoken
languages'of India is Hindi. This is spoken throughout the Gangetic Valley, except in Lower
Bengal, and also in Rajputana and the central provinces. When the Mohammedans invaded
India this was th6 center of their authority. They therefore had to learn the language of the
people; but while adopting its grammatical structure, they introduced a large number of their
own Persian words, including many Arabic words which had been adopted in Persian. This
mongrel dialect was called "Urdu," and as it was the language spoken by the conquerors, it
gradually developed into one of the most polished of Indian languages, and its literature is
probably more extensive than that of any other tongue in India. In some respects it has become
a sort of lingua franca of northern India. It is specially the language of the towns in Northwest
India, while Hindi in one or other of its dialects, is spoken in the country districts; it is also the
special language of educated Mohammedans. As Hindi and Urdu have practically the same
grammatical structure, and differ only in phraseology, the t\yo merge into one another, and the
common people speak something which is neither pure Hindi nor pure Urdu, and is sometimes
called Hindustani, though by some the term "Hindustani" is regarded as a synonym for Urdu.
It is difficult, for this reason, to say how many people speak one language as compared with
the other; but we may safely say that Hindi, in one or other of its dialects, and Urdu are,
between them, spoken by fully ninety million people. In its composite character and its general
hardiness, Urdu reminds one of English.35
In the light of this passage, one may safely assume that because of the close relationship
between Urdu, Hindustani and Hindi, the result of the Sadhu's language instruction this
summer of 1908 probably enabled Dorje Tharchin to speak with greater facility in the Urdu
tongue as well as provide the Tibetan with some fundamentals of Hindi, both of which came
in handy for Tharchin to interpret for Sundar whenever the latter attempted to spread the
gospel among the common people who spoke only Hindustani. Certain it is that young Sundar's
traveling companion this summer had learned the Urdu language to a great degree while a
student for many years in the mission school at Poo. As a matter of fact, he had had a most
talented and capable Urdu teacher, Paulu, to instruct him, as noted in the previous chapter.
Furthermore, because Paulu the evangelist was so competent in Urdu, he had also been
appointed by the Poo missionaries to translate Bible portions from that language into Tibetan.
Suffice it to say, then, that with t e a c h e r like this to instruct him, Dorje Tharchin was quite
well versed by the summer of 1908 in speaking and understanding Sundar's native tongue.
But by the same token, with such a strong foundation in Urdu, Sundar's Tibetan friend would
not find it too difficult in learning Hindustani from the Sadhu.
Now as Dorje Tharchin the poor villager from Poo continued to accompany Sundar
Singh the formerly wealthy young sadhu for this lengthy period, the Tibetan never realized
that one day his companion would attain great heights of universally-recognized saintliness
and public prominence. Many decades later in the course of a conversation with a close
acquaintance when the latter casually touched on the then current prosperity in Tharchin?s
life and ministry, he with his usual candor commented: "The blessings of my dear friend
Sadhu Sundar Singh have fallen upon my life abundantly because, I believe, I served him and
also served my Lord sincerely and faithfully during the days of my youth. This is the goodness
of the Lord, unto whom I ascribe all the glory, honor and majesty."
But much earlier, in 1925, he had also ascribed great honor and deep respect towards the
Sadhu personally out of his profound appreciation for what the latter had done for him in the
days and years from 1908 onward. This effusive praise the Tibetan would communicate to
Jesuit Fr. Henry Hosten during a lengthy conversation he had with the Catholic priest at
Darjeeling on 4 June 1925 while discussing his relationship with the Sadhu. As reported by
Hosten, Tharchin had said about Sundar Singh that
he looked up to him and reverenced him as his spiritual "Guru," who influenced him
tremendously in his religion and devoutness. It was Sundar Singh who took him up from his
low status and put him in the position to improve his level little by little. He therefore feels a
great love and gratitude for Sundar Singh.16
He
During this period in Simla with the youthful sadhu, Dorj e Tharchin had the good fortune—-
through the help of Sundar—to meet Daud Singh from Delhi.17 By his own assertion long
afterwards, the youthful Dorje "became the 'boy' to [this] high-ranking... colonial official at
Simla and was soon regarded like a son."18 The Tibetan once described to an acquaintance
of his how the initial encounter with this British Indian official had come about:
On one occasion when Sundar Singh was leaving for the plains, obviously to conduct a
Christian convention, he effectuated proper arrangements for me to stay with a very highly
educated Indian Christian, Daud Singh, who had married a European lady who had originally
come [to India] as a missionary. Daud Singh's father was a minister in good standing in the
Church Missionary Society in Abbotabad then located in the Punjab [but now in Pakistan].
Daud himself was engaged as a private [language] tutor to a British chaplain who was intending
to appear for an examination in Urdu. Since after the summer vacation [at Simla] the chaplain
made his way to Ambala, Daud Singh also returned with him.
Commenting on the appearance and abilities of his future master, Tharchin recalled that he
was an elderly person with closely shaven beard, of above average height, and had fair
complexion. [As for his talents] Daud Singh was an accomplished technician. He was well
versed in the manual arts of carpentry, painting, furniture-making and bookbinding. He had a
carpentry studio in his own residence and was adept at making coffins of various sizes, shapes
and woods with glazed polishing and finishing. In a metropolitan city like Delhi coffins are
always in great demand, and urgent orders were often received without a moment's notice.The
sales [thus garnered] brought in an additional income for Daud to supplement the regular
monthly salary. Furthermore, Daud possessed sound practical knowledge of bicycle mechanics.
He could easily repair a puncture or dismantle a bike and [put it back together]. He could detect
any sort of mechanical defect. Besides all this, Daud had a business shop in which mechanical
and manufacturing works were finished by trained technicians.
In Ambala, north of Delhi, Daud Singh secured a contract for bookbinding. This contract
covered over a thousand church hymn books that were in a torn and dilapidated state and
which required repairing and immediate mending. Since he was quite an industrious person,
he was able to recondition the books in no time. Said Tharchin about his own involvement
with Daud Singh: "I learned the art of bookbinding from him without any fees being charged.
The knowledge of this art helped me when later I began to publish my own books on my own
printing press. Even the smattering of bicycle mechanics I acquired from him sometimes
served me later in good stead."
After completing the temporary assignment of tutorship to the British chaplain,
arrangements were made for Daud Singh to take up the responsibilities of the principalship
of the S.P.G.I. (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Institute) in Delhi. First, however,
Daud sent his Tibetan apprentice in advance to Hoshiarpur, northwest of Ambala, intending
himself to join him later. After a while the entire family arrived from Lahore to the west, and
having spent one month in Hoshiarpur all of them proceeded on to Delhi where Daud Singh
was to assume his duties immediately. During his stay in Delhi Dorje assisted the family in
the household activities as well as in various mechanical projects. With thankful heart he ;
much later commented: "I learned the art of furniture-making and -repairing from Daud
Singh which much later was to be of great value to me, especially at those times when the jj
printing machines would go out of order and no expert technician might at that moment be !
available on the spot. Moreover, he at times entrusted me with such responsibilities as j
supervision of the workmen and payment of their weekly %wages." Indeed, the youth had J
demonstrated such a sense of responsibility that his master eventually placed Doije "in J
charge of his household affairs" and even "his shop"!19 S
i
(j
While Dorje Tharchin was in Simla and later in Delhi during these eventful months of his |
life, away off in his home village of Poo an event worthy of the attention of nearly the entire J
civilized world had taken place that created something of a sensation in newspapers around |
the globe. For the world-famous Swedish explorer, Dr. Sven Hedin, had in August (1908) |
descended from the higher mountain passes of the Tibetan interior, reaching at last the §
Hindustan-Tibet Road, from which point he had then made his way with his party down |
along the Sutlej River the short distance to the particular place where Poo was situated on |
the exact opposite side of the river.
Two years before, Hedin had departed from Leh, far to the north in Ladakh, shaking |
hands in farewell as he did so with the last Europeans he would see for that length of time |
and who just happened to be the Moravian missionaries stationed there.20 The explorer was |
bound on yet another exciting if arduous and dangerous expedition into Tibet; and during his j
long absence the world had grown increasingly apprehensive for his safety since virtually no Jj
news had been forthcoming concerning his whereabouts during almost the entire period of 1
his journey It was only now, by his arrival near Poo on the 28th of August, that he had for the j
first time stepped outside the Forbidden Land except for a brief interlude when in November
1907 he had crossed over into Lesser Tibet (Ladakh) from Gartok just long enough to pay
off the members of his caravan crew only to return immediately "to make yet another great
sweep through Tibet." The news of his arrival at Poo which was subsequently flashed to
near and far was of course electrifying, but it brought relief to a watching and waiting world
that had nearly given up hope of ever again seeing this most celebrated and esteemed
traveler into unknown parts of the world.21
But though the famed explorer had indeed arrived near Poo, he was not yet in Poo. For he,
like Captain Rawling's party before him, was faced with a knotty problem of how to negotiate
the roaring Sutlej which separated him from the other side where the Hindustan-Tibet Road
continued on its way to Simla, his ultimate trekking destination. It was going to be quite a risky
business to get to the opposite bank as Hedin himself was to recount afterwards in his fascinating
book, My Life As an Explorer, and it was only through the help of Dorje Tharchin's two
missionary friends—Rev. Schnabel and Rev. Hermann Marx—that Hedin and his sizable
party of travelers and transport animals were able to reach the other side in safety!
In relating the story, the explorer has unintentionally provided a still further, and quite
vivid, glimpse into Tharchin's village surroundings which the lad must have continuously
encountered while growing up at Poo. In writing of the hazardous crossing Hedin described
the adventure as follows:
Near the Shipki-la, we crossed the borderline of Tibet and India. Here ... we were at an altitude
of 16,300 feet.... Presently we descended from the upper cold and wind, down to the river,
where we enjoyed temperate summer winds, blowing through the apricot trees. We were on the
left [that is to say, southern] bank. Poo, the first village on the Indian side, lay high up in the
hills on the right side, embedded in luxuriant vegetation. Here there was a Moravian mission,
established many years ago, and still conducted by German missionaries.
But how were we to cross the immense river, which at this point was squeezed into a narrow
passage, between perpendicular rocks, and roared in foaming eddies through its bed? Not a
living creature was to be seen on the shore, and Poo was obscured. Only a steel cable, as thick
as my thumb, stretched across the abyss, which yawned about a hundred feet below. The
f bridge that once was there had broken down. The only remains were the stone abutments at
both ends, and the adjoining beams which used to be the bridge-heads.22
At this point, wishing anxiously to seek help at Poo, Hedin dispatched his last guide,
Ngurup, who "knew what to do." Winding rope round the cable a few times, he secured
himself in a loop he had made, grasped hold of the cable and pulled himself over. He
then "ran to Poo" and shortly afterwards came back with the astonished missionaries
Schnabel and Marx together with some villagers. Marx himself picks up the story from
his side:
The 28th of August was a very memorable day for us ... In the afternoon ... a special messenger
[Ngurup] brought a card written by Dr. Sven Hedin, the great traveler and explorer of Tibet,
who had already arrived at the wire-rope bridge below Poo, and was waiting there for help to be
pulled across the Sutlej Stream.... For a whole year the world had not heard anything of the
famous explorer.... We went at once to meet Dr. Hedin at the wire-rope bridge. He sat sketching
x on the other side when we arrived. After sending across the wild torrent some of his horses and
loads, he crossed himself, and I snapped his photo23 when he was hanging from the wire-rope.
In his own account of the crossing, Hedin provided far more dramatic details as to how he,
his party, impedimenta and animals traversed the raging river:
The missionaries had brought a wooden yoke, grooved to fit the cable, and wound around
with ropes. Other ropes served to haul it back and forth along the cable. And now we began the
transit. Mules, horses, dogs, boxes, and men were hauled across. I put my legs through loops
in the ropes, grasped the yoke with my hands, got another rope looped around my waist, and
was thus hauled across the abyss. It was a hazardous trip. With legs dangling I swayed
between heaven and earth. It was a hundred and fifteen feet to the middle, but the distance
seemed endless. With a sense of relief, I finally glided in over the bridge-head on the right
bank, and felt safe. [Hedin would further clothe his feelings in the candid words: "This bridge
is a proper place for people desirous of committing suicide!"24]
Thus the Moravian Mission staff at Poo were the first to give the renowned traveler a
welcome back, just as those Mission staff members at Leh had been the ones to send him
off with a "Godspeed!" over two years before. In another account of his arrival at Tharchin's
home village, Hedin expressed his profound appreciation for their hospitality:
On August 28 we encamped in the village of Poo ..., and I spent memorable days in the hospital
house of the Moravian missionaries, Messrs. Marx and Schhabel and their amiable families
overwhelmed me with kindness, and now I was deluged with news from the outer world—it
was like listening to the breakers on the coast of the ocean. I had not seen a European for more
than two years, and I looked myself like a Tibetan footpad. But the missionaries rigged me out
at once in European summer clothes and set an Indian helmet on my head.
Having arrived on a Friday, Hedin was able at Poo to garner some much needed rest
over the weekend. But he then revealed that "on the Sunday, I attended their impressive high
mass, celebrated for the native children." Before taking leave of the village and all that it had
held for him, the world-traveler presented two treasured objects to the missionaries. One
was his "ferocious Lhassa dog," which in the words of Marx had "guarded the great traveler
faithfully on his lonely and dangerous journeys in Tibet," but which "has now become the
guardian of our new mission compound, and reminds us of the never-to-be-forgotten hours
spent in the company of his former master." The adventure writer, Charles Allen, has noted
that Hedin had seemingly always saved his real affections for the succession of dogs he
never failed to take with him on his explorations. The noted explorer had in fact once declared
that "it was always more difficult to say goodbye to the dogs than to the men" that accompanied
him on his lonely travels.25 It so happened that Dorje Tharchin, as the reader will learn in a
later chapter, himself possessed an uncommon affection for dogs, and therefore must have
doubtless greatly appreciated the opportunity of getting acquainted with Hedin's treasured
animal during the remaining few years he would spend at Poo on the mission compound.
The other gift of Hedin's was his handsome keyless gold watch, which was presented
with the wish that it should be &old for the Mission. It was accompanied by a note which
read: "To my friends the missionaries at Poo, in memory of the charming days I had the
pleasure of being their guest.—Sven Hedin." (When Marx went back to Europe on furlough
a year later, he took it with him and had it sold for £15.)26 The renowned Tibetan explorer
then departed down the Sutlej Valley on Monday the 31st of August, leaving the lovely village
of Poo behind him as the terminus of what he later came to describe as "the best years of my
life and the finest chapter."27
Should the reader have been wondering, incidentally, if the Namtu bridge at Poo ever
did get repaired, he will be happy to learn that not only was it repaired, it was entirely
replaced with a new bridge and at a new site, but still within the vicinity of Tharchin's
village. This new and much more secure means of negotiating the roaring Sutlej would
be constructed during the summer of 1910, an event which must have been watched
with great interest by many villagers, including Dorje Tharchin. By that time he would
be back in Poo long enough to have observed the new bridge going up before he would
leave the area for good a few months later. One of Hedin's timely rescuers, the Rev.
Marx, has provided a brief description of this new creation by the Public Works
Department. He writes from Poo in early 1911 with an obvious mixture of relief and
pride in his words:
This new wire-rope suspension bridge is about two miles distant from the old wire-rope bridge up
the valleyjust below the village of Dobbaling. As soon as I found time last autumn I went over
to Dobbaling, where we have a small schoolhouse, to preach the gospel. On my way I crossed the
new bridge for the first time. We have longed for this bridge for many years, and are thankful that
it has at last become reality. At a height to make one feel giddy, the swaying light bridge spans the
wild-foaming, loud-roaring Sutlej River from one high precipice to another, thus linking together
two mighty mountain ridges. It is really a wonderful structure of modern skill in this out-of-the-
world, wild, romantic Himalayan valley The height of the bridge above the rushing water is 300
feet. It is 150 feet long, but only a little more than one yard wide [but fortunately has handrails!].
The new road leading to the bridge is not yet quite finished; about 100 yards below Poo/it leads
into the old road. When crossing the bridge for the first time my thoughts went back to two years
ago, when I had to cross the Sutlej (two times with my wife) still on that old wire-rope below Poo
sitting only in two rope-loops while one was pulled across!28
Before leaving this episode involving Sven Hedin, it ought to be added that, interestingly
enough, the explorer would shortly afterwards experience his second resting point at
another place quite familiar to Tharchin. This was at Kotgarh, where he arrived on
Sunday, 11 September 1908. Here he stayed at the (CMS) mission house with Pastor
Beutel, the elderly German missionary already familiar to the reader. This was just
before trekking the last leg of his journey to Simla (where, if still there, young Tharch m
may have caught a glimpse of him as the latter paid his respects at the Viceregal Lodge
to Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, and to Lord Kitchener) and by train from there
down to Delhi- While at Kotgarh the explorer attended the little mission church service
that same Sunday evening, where, coincidentally, the very good friend of Sundar Singh's,
Charles Andrews, was also in attendance. "I was present at evensong in the missionaries'
church," Hedin recalled. "How strange to hear again the soft soothing tones of the
organ, and as an unworthy Christian pilgrim in a Christian temple remember the solitude
of the past years." As a token of his gratefulness, at the conclusion of the service the
famous Swede bestowed his gold chronometer—which had been of inestimable value
bn his journey—to the Kotgarh Christian Mission as a thank-offering to God for all the
mercies he had received.29
During the nearly one year in Delhi living with his master Daud Singh (which would have
been from late summer 1908 to early summer 1909), Tharchin also sought additional
employment elsewhere in the city. This he no doubt did as a means of furthering his ambition
to earn as much money as possible to finance the journey to Tibet he had still had in mind to
take for the purpose of pursuing the mastery of his native language more. And hence,
besides continuing to serve Daud Singh, he would tell a friend long afterwards, "I worked in
a Delhi hotel as a masailjee" (an Urdu word for dishwasher), "and spent a year in this
position."30 Sometime during the early part of the summer of 1909, however, this young man
from the mountain village of Poo was struck down by a severe attack of malaria. This more
common illness of the plains area now forced him to retire to thepiore salubrious climate of
Simla city to the north in order to rest and be restored to good health.
"After my convalescence in Simla," Tharchin was to recall, "a European hunter required
an expert interpreter; so I volunteered to accompany him on the troublesome tour." This was
sometime later that same summer of 1909. "On the return journey I requested the hunter to
allow me to make a quick visit to my birthplace of Poo, the tin corrugated roofs of which \
glittered silver-like in the sunshine at a distance of just twelve miles to the south of Spiti."
The district of Spiti of which Tharchin was speaking is that area formed by the river of i
the same name where it flows from north to south for some 7^0 miles, together with its east f
and west tributaries. Moreover, the specific part of Spiti in which he found himself at this |
particular juncture of the trek is where this rather large river empties into the mighty Sutlej at \
a place very close to a tiny hamlet called Khab just a bit northwest of Poo's neighboring 1
community of Namgia and about eight miles northeast of Tharchin's village, which at Khab f
would put the confluence about seven miles after the Sutlej enters Upper Kunawar from j
Tibet. Given the fact that Namgia is situated to the south of the Sutlej, it can be assumed with J
confidence that the spot from whence Tharchin and the hunting party had espied the tin |
roofs of Poo was somewhere in the vicinity of the junction of the two rivers, but just inside |
Spiti to the north of the Sutlej. This would thus put the party some 200 trekking miles from f
Simla, the starting point of their journey. Tharchin was therefore quite correct in portraying |
the trek he made with the European hunter as a "troublesome tour." Not only was it a f
journey of at least 400 miles roundtrip; it involved as well here in Spiti some of the most |
starkly barren and extremely steep and difficult terrain to be seen anywhere in Indo-Tibet, |
and a trail marked in unmitigated fashion by countless ascents and descents! In fact, Spiti |
had at one time been described in the Imperial Gazateer "as being beyond question the I
most inaccessible part of the British Dominions in India." The teen-aged Tibetan must J
therefore have been quite relieved when he finally did get back to Simla.
Some idea of the barren, wild and highly arid topography of the region can be gained
when it is understood that although the size of Spiti in that day had been spread over 2900 §
square miles, only some 2400 acres of it—and all necessitating irrigation—had come under
cultivation in 1922. A further indication of the sparsely developed nature of the area is seen m
in the fact that the total population in 1911 had numbered a mere 3629 souls: just slightly
more than one and one-fourth inhabitants per square mile! The Spiti name—pronounced as
piti there and in Tibet—means the "middle country," perhaps indicating a derivation of its
name from the location it occupies between Greater and Lesser Tibet. Being immediately
adjacent to Tibet proper, one is not surprised that Spiti's population, though meager, was
entirely Tibetan. Interestingly, and confirming the need of the hunter to have had Dorje
Tharchin along with him, Spiti's language was in those days that of Central Tibet, but exhibited
some resemblances to Lahuli Tibetan. "Its Lamaism, that weird medley of Buddhism [in this
case that of the Nyingmapa Red Hat Sect], Tantric doctrine, and demon worship, hardly
differs from that of Tibet," reported one explorer of the region, "except perhaps in the
identity of the demons, which seem in Spiti to be more numerous than the men. The dress is
Tibetan; and so are many of the customs."31
Dorje Tharchin did not have such matters as these on his mind as he stood atop his
vantage point looking down and away towards his homeland in the distance. On the contrary,
in his reminiscence of this experience in Spiti many decades later he recalled with some
emotion how he had felt at that time when in company with the European he had recognized
the outlines of his mountaintop birthplace and how disappointed he had become over what
happened thereafter: "The prospect of revisiting the place of my birth welled up within me
fond memories of the past and I looked forward eagerly to meeting my classmates and other
acquaintances of my childhood days." The young Tibetan's reverie of that moment was
rudely broken, however, by the hunter's contrary decision on the matter. "Unfortunately,"
reported Tharchin sadly, "the inconsiderate hunter turned a deaf ear to my petition, my
earnest plea being thrown to the winds."
"I was very much disheartened," continued Tharchin in his recollection of that sorry
moment, "and was even frankly annoyed with him. Since there was no other alternative, I
had to satisfy myself with having only seen the village of Poo from afar—an event very
much like Moses of old who had to be content with having merely seen the Promised Land
from the top of Pisgah on the mountain of Nebo.32 Particularly did the thought pain me a
great deal inasmuch as I was unable even to pay a quick visit to my mother's and
grandmother's graves in order to place a wreath of flowers to their hallowed memory out of
my deep love and reverence for them."
"Thus we in the hunting party," Tharchin further recounted, "returned to Simla, where I
continued to spend my time as before." This would have been to continue his "work as a
houseboy" with a family in Simla,33 since presumably his weakened physical state due to the
earlier malarial attack would not have permitted him to resume so soon afterwards the far
jnore arduous labor as a Road coolie. "One day," recalled Tharchin, "I chanced to meet
some friends who had come down from Poo, and among them I recognized my uncle. Upon
inquiry I learned that they had lately arrived in the city with the specific purpose of escorting
Rev. Kunick back to Poo as he had only rather recently returned from furlough in Germany.
After I had had some exploratory conversation with Rev. Kunick, he advised me to return
with him to Poo. Whereupon my friends, and particularly my uncle, prevailed upon me to go;
and so I made up my mind and went back with the party to my birthplace. There I worked in
the Moravian Mission for the duration of about one year." During this period, besides the
resumption of training classes with Rev. Schnabel, he would chiefly serve the Poo mission,
noted the Poo Diary for 1910, in "his position as a cook."34
Doij e Tharchin's arrival back in his home village with the missionary and his party occurred
on 10 November 1909. This is made certain by Moravian published records which show that
Rev. and Mrs. Kunick returned to Poo on that date after an unusually extended near-three-
year furlough "detention in Europe"—a situation which was "owing to the serious state of
Mrs. Kunick's health" that required them, after spending time in Germany, to remain even
further on furlough in England. The Kunicks had originally intended being away only one
year, having left Poo in the late spring of 1907. Their return was delayed even longer, however,
when at last on .their journey back to the mission field Rev. Kunick himself suffered an
attack of some sort of fever. So that when Tharchin chanced upon the missionary family in
Simla in the late summer-early fall of 1909, the latter were most likely anxious to have the
young disciple of Schnabel return with them to Poo for further training and to assist the
mission station in its work inasmuch as it would be shorthanded by the departure on furlough
back to Europe already that fall of Rev. and Mrs. Marx. The Schnabels were still at Poo, of
course, but by the time Tharchin would leave during the latter half of 1910 to go to Delhi
once again (see below), the Marxes would be on their way backio Poo (arriving 16 November)
while the Schnabels were scheduled to depart on their own furlough that very autumn.
Hence Dorje Tharchin's presence and assistance must have been most welcomed and
appreciated by the mission staff at Poo during this critical year of 1909/10.35
Now although Rev. Kunick had "advised," and his friends and particularly his uncle !
had "prevailed upon" him to return to Poo, Tharchin could not be held down at his birthplace 1
for very long. It would appear from his own testimony, in fact, that far from wishing to
remain there for any extended period, he had only really wanted to visit Poo long enough •
to renew acquaintance with his former classmates and other friends and to pay deep |
respect to his dear mother and grandmother at their grave sites. Yet when foiled in this
desire earlier by the European hunter, but then "prevailed upon" and "advised" by Rev. J
Kunick and others to do so, Tharchin, if one be permitted to read between the lines, J
reluctantly left Simla for Poo, nonetheless most likely hoping he would in the meanwhile J
be summoned back to that area of India which over the past several years had held an f
increasing attraction for him. |
A tug in two directions was most evident here. On the one hand there was the pull back |
towards Poo, the place of his roots, family upbringing, and spiritual nurture and training. On J
the other hand, Simla, Delhi and the regions beyond even that were beckoning him to break J
the "umbilical cord" which still bound him to the place of his birth. What lay ahead of him, if 1
the cord were indeed cut asunder, this nineteen-year-old youth could at best only dimly 1
perceive at this point and could certainly not articulate it in any degree whatsoever. Even so, |j
he apparently felt an increasing call on his life by the Lord elsewhere than at Poo. And m
hence, the struggle in his heart would continue for some little while and not be fully resolved, | J
as shall be seen, until about a year later. In the meantime, he would be faithful and diligent in
all that came to his hand while studying and serving at the Poo mission station, as confirmed
by what has already been noted in the Poo Diary entry for 1910 quoted from above and
several times more in the previous chapter.
There did eventually come a day, however, when everything would be radically and
irrevocably altered. "From Poo," Tharchin long afterwards noted, "I regularly corresponded
with my master Daud Singh. In one of his letters he extended an invitation to me to stay with
him if I so desired. This momentous welcome gave me an incentive to 4 fly back' on foot to
Delhi where I arrived by the [latter part of 1910]."36 From just a mere reading of these
words one can sense in an almost palpable way the relief, the release and consequent
enthusiasm with which when dictating his "memoirs" he must have related this turn of
events in his life. It was as though for the longest while he had been waiting for just such an
opportunity to announce his decision to the missionaries and be off westward on the Hindustan-
Tibet Road. This day did come, however, and not surprisingly it was a great disappointment
to his hearers—especially to Rev. Schnabel. For he had hoped against hope that he and Rev.
Kunick would succeed at last in realizing their goal of completing the requisite training that
would make the young Tibetan an additional native-born assistant in the work of the West
Himalaya Mission.
But as was the case in Br. Schnabel's previous attempt with this young man, it was just
not to be. It will be recalled that the youth had been confirmed in 1905 and had consequently
been admitted into all the Christian privileges as a full-fledged member of the Poo church.
And Br. Schnabel late the following year had taken the teen-aged Tharchin with him and his
family to Kotgarh for six months of close companionship where most likely there took place
the beginnings of discipleship training which would then continue in earnest upon their return
together to Poo in mid-1907. By the middle of 1908, however, it was a totally different story.
For according to church records from Poo, "in the spring of 1908" this young man "was
excluded [ausgeschlossen]"37 from church membership presumably because of his absence
already during the first part of that year in far-off Simla. What had happened?
By this time in the history of the now thriving Poo church, those who absented themselves
from church attendance over a lengthy period of time would eventually have their names
"struck off the lists" of church membership. This phrase the Mission Board back in Europe
had used in extracts which were printed in Moravian publications that were based upon the
report by the West Himalaya missionaries for the two years 1910-11. And in the particular
extract made from the Poo report submitted, there is an interesting passage, quoted already
in the previous chapter, which can help to shed light on this situation with regard to Dorje
Tharchin, inasmuch as it refers back to this very period now under discussion-—namely, the
year 1908. "Poo is passing through a time of sifting," began the extract, and it continued with
the following information:
The number of Christians at this station has decreased from 69 to 39 during the five years from
1907 to the end of 1911. And a further reduction is impending.... They are either leaving of their
own accord or their names have to be struck off the lists.38
The above quotation appears within the context of an extract that deals, as its subtitle indicates,
with the "Status of the Congregations and Their Christian Membership." And hence the
phrase being discussed here—"struck off the lists"—has obvious reference to a person's
name being struck from the membership roll of, in this case, the church congregation at Poo.
And hence, further, if one is dropped from membership, that one automatically is "excluded"
from all the rights and privileges of that particular congregation.
It would seem, therefore, that Dorje Tharchin's being "excluded" in the spring of 1908
and resulting in his name being removed from the list of Poo's church members was due to
his absenting himself from the church and from the mission station altogether when "in
1908," as he himself was to explain long afterwards, he had "made up his mind to go to Tibet
and study the Tibetan language more,... attempting as far as Simla" so to do in earning
money for the venture. And the means by which he intended to garner the necessary funds
for the Tibetan journey was to labor as a coolie on the Hindustan-Tibet Road, beginning
westward from Poo, since because of recurring landslides, employment to repair the Road
might be available repeatedly as he made his way towards Simla. But once having arrived at
British India's summer capital in 1908, he in the end had to resign himself to the disappointing
reality that "for want of money"—as he himself phrased it—"this noble aspiration" of his
"could not be realized," at least not for the present.39 Accqrdingly, Tharchin decided to
remain in Simla for the time being, he not contemplating a return home at that time (just as he
had said to Sundar Singh when the latter had asked him his intention for that summer). As it
turned out, in fact, Tharchin would not return to the Poo mission until late 1909, and even
then he had to be strongly advised and persuaded so to do by Rev. Kunick and his uncle.
It can readily be perceived from all this that Rev. Schnabel's previous attempt to complete
the training of his would-be disciple as a helper in the work of the Mission had been grossly
impaired by his lengthy absence away from Poo, an absence that had stretched for at least
two years—from late 1907 to early November 1909.40 Nevertheless, Br. Sehnabel was a
patient man and would make a second attempt when Tharchin arrived back home on 10
November with the Kunick party. As a matter of fact, the missionaries at the station would
now, in the words of Tharchin himself, "train him as a preacher."41
One of the first actions which the Poo missionaries took with respect to the nineteen-
year-old returnee was to have him "readmitted [>readmittiert]" into church membership "in
1910."42 Most likely this occurred shortly after the first of the year and consequent upon
young Tharchin's having demonstrated to the satisfaction of the missionaries that he intended
to stay for a while! As was intimated earlier, however, once more it was not to be. Although
he was now attending the training class "three times a week" and was "radiant with joy" in
doing so, Rev. Sehnabel was reluctantly compelled to report concerning his apprentice-
disciple that "the urge to roam awoke in him again." As a matter of fact, even before the
summer had ended, the young man, in reaction to the invitation from Daud Singh, now
announced to the missionaries that he had "resigned his position as a cook" and would be
leaving.43
Indeed, it can be assumed on fairly sound evidence that Dorje Tharchin saw in the invitation
from Delhi a new opportunity to attempt the fulfillment of his "noble aspiration" to find his
w ay to the learning centers of Tibet that he might pursue higher studies in the classical
language of his people and their rich literature. He had failed once already in 1908 to finance
a journey to his ethnic homeland via Simla and beyond. But though he had to admit failure,
the embers of desire within him to reach Tibet for this purpose had never been extinguished.
For in the "Brief Biography" of his early years which he would compose decades later he
recalled that "again at the end of 1910, prompted by the same desire [to journey to Tibet, he]
44
ventured forth the second time and arrived at Simla" and on, then, to Delhi. Once and for
all this young man would depart Poo and commence to chart a new life for himself elsewhere,
beginning at Delhi.
To those of a Western mind, as the Poo missionaries of course were, this sort of behavior
in Dorje Tharchin was quite disappointing; to these missionaries, however, it was not at all
inexplicable. They had already encountered such conduct in the local Tibetans numerous
times in the past, and even commented upon this pervasive "vagabond" spirit among the Poo
Tibetans in the very next sentence of their annual report following the statement in the report
which mentioned Tharchin's resignation as a cook. "These people of the lower castes,"
Schnabel and Kunick had continued, though in factual and not judgmental terms,
belong as it were to the class of the carefree wanderer [ Wandervogel, bird of passage; that is,
a migratory person, a vagabond], and it is a difficult undertaking to make them in some degree
self-supporting [or, independent] and settled down, although they love their native soil and
eventually always return to it, unless their great indebtedness does not permit it ...45
There was obviously no gainsaying the fact that young Tharchin in his own personal lifestyle
did indeed manifest some, though by no means all, of the above-outlined traits which were
accurately descriptive of members of his humble social class.
One ought not to be harsh, however, in any assessment taken of this teen-ager, for several
very good reasons. First of all, precisely because at this point in time Dorje Tharchin was
only a teen-ager, it ought not be expected of him to be perfect in all his ways. Second, the
measure of any individual must take that person's life as a whole into account before passing
final judgment; and in Tharchin's case the fact must not be overlooked that he would in very
truth settle down, and permanently so, in but one place (Kalimpong) during the concluding
sixty-odd years of his eighty-seven-year walk on earth, where he died a peaceful and happy
man in the Lord. And third, in every instance of his so-called youthful vagabondage, any
similarity to such behavior ceased with him upon his arrival at whatever destination it may
nave turned out to be. A dictionary definition of vagabond reads: "One who wanders from
place to place, having no fixed dwelling, or, if he has one, not abiding in it; a wanderer;
especially, such a person who is lazy and generally worthless and without means of honest
livelihood."46 This latter part of the definition, so pointedly focused upon by the missionaries
in their observations of the lower-caste Tibetan citizenry at Poo as a whole, was in no way
true of this young man. As the narrative up to this point has so clearly shown, and will
continue to show, this humble-born Tibetan had diligently applied himself wherever he did
end up "wandering" to, and attempted to learn trades and skills which he hoped would prove
most beneficial for his livelihood in the future and which would provide him, in the short term,
with his own means of support.
One must therefore bear in mind that in spite of the vagaries of his adolescent years,
marked, admittedly, by an almost vagrant character about them, Dorje Tharchin Zering, far
from being lazy, idle, worthless or in debt, demonstrated from his youth up just the opposite of
these traits of a "vagabond" or "bird of passage." Furthermore, on more than one occasion
the reader shall witness this young man's curious, inquisitive nature which served him well in
motivating him to develop new skills, or to adopt new techniques in previously learned skills, I
that would in consequence provide him with further means of "self-support" and "honest j
livelihood." j
1
Moreover, though outwardly Dorje Tharchin may have been deficient, inwardly it was
quite another matter. By now a young man, he had learned to discipline himself from early
childhood. As he grew up spiritually, his devotional habits developed regularly and sincerely.
He learned to wait upon the Lord at the commencement of each day. Daily he used to read
a portion of the Scriptures from the Tibetan New Testament which he carried with him
wherever he went.47 Indeed, men of prayer—and he did become one of them—are often
persons of inner discipline and certainly strength of character. As he himself testified near
the very end of his life (and quoted earlier in the present chapter), "I served my Lord j
sincerely and faithfully during the days of my youth." It can therefore be said without j
contradiction that within the next few years of Dorje Tharchin's young adult life, the Poo \
missionaries would have good reason to look upon their former disciple not as a disappointing
failure but as one in whom they could verily take great pride. He would not betray their
earlier trust.
Such, then, was the outward and inward makeup of this young man as he "6 flew back'
on foot" to Delhi that early fall of 1910. "Here," the elder Tharchin would later explain, "I
continued to reside with the Daud Singh family. I endeavored to help Mr. Singh a great
deal as he was busy expediting contracts involving the Delhi Durbar that was to be held
late the following year." The maturing apprentice would, in fact, be with his master for
well over a year, and learning whatever additional skills and knowledge he could gain from
him; although the one skill in which he now apparently so earnestly sought to be
apprenticed-—that of the printing trade—his master had not provided him an opportunity to
learn, a lack which would soon impel him to seek to fill up elsewhere (see below). Long
afterwards, the Tibetan would have opportunity to demonstrate his great appreciation for
this man when, in a visit to Delhi in 1959, he made a special point to go to the church
cemetery where was still located the grave of Daud Singh who had died on 1 August 1915
at the age of 51. As a token of his gratitude for the solid contributions made to him by his
kind Christian benefactor, Gergan Tharchin took flowers, cleaned the grave site with his
own hands, and snapped a photograph of the spot—which, he observed with obvious
feeling, was still in his personal album. t
Now reference was made a moment ago to the Tibetan New Testament. Originally
porje Tharchin had received his copy of it as a present while he was in Poo. This copy he
would keep with him for many years to come. In fact, he had it in his possession at Kalimpong
in Northeast India as late as 1927 when, true to his future calling as a Christian evangelist, he
gave it away to an old Tibetan man from Lhasa whom he had led to Christ in Kalimpong and
whom he perceived was in need of "the comfort of the Scriptures" in his own language.
(See Chapter 18 of the present biography's second volume for the details.) With respect to
the molding influence and the great impact this New Testament had upon his life, Tharchin
would subsequently acknowledge the following:
It was a great source of comfort and consolation to me, especially during those poignant
moments when I felt the acute absence of my mother and grandmother as well as other near
relatives. I often pondered on the deep things of God and in this way I began to be conscious
of the unfathomable love of God for me. Without the constant companionship of the Tibetan
New Testament my spiritual life would have gone dry and dead. It would have become totally
barren.
While in Delhi one morning Tharchin took out his Testament as usual in order to wait
quietly upon the Lord. On this day, however, before reading the Scripture passage he casually
leafed through the pages and thus happened to turn to the last page of the little volume.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the phrase containing these English words: "Printed at the
Scandinavian Alliance Tibetan Mission Press, Ghoom, Darjeeling." He asked a friend what
these words meant and the latter informed his inquirer that it was the address of the place
where the New Testament had been printed and published. Immediately a keen interest was
aroused in him by the word "printed," for as Tharchin was wont to acknowledge long
afterwards in the declining years of his life: "Even in my youth [I] knew that the Christian
Scriptures must be printed ... [as a] way that Jesus can be 'smuggled' into Tibet."48 This
perception in his younger days had most likely been inspired by the missionary environment
within which he had been raised all during his youth and adolescence, since this had been the
Moravians' own modus operandi for spreading the gospel, aided as it was by their ever-
resourceful Kyelang press. But only at this moment, upon catching sight of the words "printed"
and "press" at the back of his New Testament, was this young Tibetan now additionally
inspired to be in the future one who would establish his own printing press by which to
produce these Scriptures and other Christian literature for wide dissemination throughout his
ethnic homeland.*
* This is definitely known from a letter he would write nearly three decades later to some dear Christian
missionary ladies at Ghoom whom he would eventually come to know as a consequence of his discovery of these
few English words at the back of his New Testament. In the letter he retrospectively reviewed the very events in
his life now under discussion which would soon take him from Delhi to Ghoom. And at one point he remarked:
.. the Lord brought me to Ghoom through my seeing [the words] Tibetan Mission Press' printed at the back
*>f the New Testament, and since that time I had the desire to have a Tibetan Press and do some printing work for
the Lord through which I can reach far into Tibet; and I praise the Lord that He has granted to me what I was
thinking since 1910 ..." Tharchin to "My dear Anni Las," Kalimpong, 17 Feb. 1949, ThPaK.
"At once," confided Tharchin later to some friends, "I wrote a letter in Tibetan" to Ghoom.
But a problem arose: how to address it! So, upon further inquiry about the English phrase he
had noticed in his Testament, he was assured that the letter he wished to write to Ghoom
would safely reach its destination if the above-noted address were properly written on the
envelope. Yet knowing at this point in his life nothing of English but the merest smattering of
its vocabulary, having—as he admitted to these same later friends of his—only just "begun
to read a little English or Romanized] Urdu,"49 the naive Tibetan copied the entire sequence
of English letters exactly as they appeared in the print of the New Testament and wrote
them in the appropriate address column of the envelope. The eager Tharchin then posted the
letter, which must have occurred sometime in late 1910, not long, ironically, after his enthusiastic
"flight" to Delhi from Poo. The postman at the Ghoom end must have had quite a chuckle
upon reading such a laughable-looking address: namely, "Printed at the Scandinavian Alliance
Tibetan Mission Press," etc. etc.! Providentially, nevertheless, this most pivotal letter in the
life of Gergan Tharchin arrived safely.
It was delivered into the hands of Rev. Kaarlo Waismaa who was stationed at Ghoom as
a member of the missionary staff of the Mission to the Tibetans that had originally been
established there by the Scandinavian Alliance Mission (SAM) of North America in 1892.5°
It just so happened that Waismaa and his wife Hanna were two of the very first four
missionaries sent out as a group in the fall of 1898 from Finland under the newly-formed
Finnish Alliance Mission (FAM) that was to serve as the Finnish Department of the SAM.*51
The FAM had been personally helped in its move to be organized in Finland earlier that same
year by the SAM's American founder and longtime Director, Fredrik Franson,52 when he was
on a ministry tour of Europe in the interests of both evangelism and missionary enterprise and
which among other European nations took him to that particular country as well.
* Rev. Waismaa (b. 1869) was a highly gifted and talented Christian. Upon first arriving on the field, he and his wife
were soon thereafter assigned to work at Ringim-Mangan village in North Sikkim among the indigenous Lepchas of
the area. Going from one house and village to another spreading the gospel of Christ, they soon founded a school at
Ringim. Later, back at Ghoom, Rev. Waismaa took part in translating the Old Testament into Tibetan, which he had
become quite fluent in by this time. Having become a well-known composer of spiritual songs back in Finland prior
to coming to Ghoom, he set about translating popular Christian songs into Tibetan at the mission station, then
composed and arranged the music and published these as several hymn books on the Mission Press. These
translated songs of Waismaa's would even be translated decades later from the Tibetan into Nepalese.
The Waismaas had two children, and when Hanna fell ill and died of a stroke at Ghoom in 1905, Rev. Waismaa
had to return with the children to Finland, where he remarried. Five years later he returned to Ghoom for two
more years of faithful service on his own between 1910 and 1912. It was a fruitful period, during which he
compiled a Tibetan spelling book and reader (see further in Chapter 12 on this accomplishment, involving as well
Dorje Tharchin himself), and published some new songs. Returning to Finland, Waismaa would serve as editor-
in-chief of theFree Church of Finland Weekly, using it as a method in making known the work of the missionaries.
"As a preacher, editor, Bible College teacher and board member of the Free Church of Finland, he ... had a great
influence on Free Church theology and inland ministry." C. L. Perry, Nepali around the World, 426; for further on
this outstanding missionary couple, see also 107, 129 various notes, 424-6, 437, 439.
Now Rev. Waismaa evinced prompt interest in the subject matter of Tharchin's letter
and immediately replied from the far distant North Sikkimese village of Ringim-Mangan
where he happened to be ministering suggesting the possibility of employment with the
Mission if he met certain qualifications. But what he had offered the young Tibetan was
not what the latter had inquired after. For in his letter Tharchin had applied for an
apprenticeship in the printing press work, saying: "I am a Tibetan and know Tibetan well,
and if I am fortunate I wish to work in your Tibetan Press, and ... [hope] I may be granted
to work under you in your press." To which the Reverend had countered, however, with
an entirely different proposal of his own, explaining: "We have just sold the Tibetan Press
to someone and therefore the Mission no longer has a print shop and Press. We do,
though, need a young man who can teach Tibetan, and who also wants to train as a
missionary."53 But he also indicated in his letter one additional requirement. Explained
Tharchin later: "Mr. Waismaa stated that... if I knew Hindi well, the Mission could give
me a teaching job."*54
Despite the disappointing news regarding the Press, Rev. Waismaa's counter proposal
for the young man's consideration greatly interested this eager Christian. Yet the final
confirmation of the teaching post and its acceptance by Tharchin would not be concluded for
many months to come. In fact, it was only "after corresponding for ... nearly six months,"
wrote the Tibetan later, "that I was asked to join the [Ghoom] work from November 1911 ,"55
But upon telling Daud Singh about it, "my master," Tharchin reported, "did not want to let me
go." On the contrary, added the Tibetan, he insisted that "he could get me a [?printing?]
instructor and I could learn at his ... house to my heart's content." Young Tharchin "pulled
so hard" in favor of the Ghoom missionaries, however, that "his master let him go."f 56
Nevertheless, though Tharchin "was so glad to get the letter [confirming the offer] and was
thankful to the Lord" for it,57 he was confronted with a minor di lemma. For the suggested date
of arrival at Ghoom of November 1911 was most unsuitable for him, to say the least, because
at this moment he was keenly drawn to the political developments surrounding the extraordinary
Delhi Durbar that was to be convened on 12 December 1911. From this budding political
observer's point of view, it would have been a preposterous notion to have missed the
opportunity of a lifetime to witness the pomp and splendor of the royal visit to India of the
British Raj and his resplendent entourage. Princes as well as paupers were alike extremely
interested in the occasion. On the other hand, Tharchin was equally interested in the teaching
profession, for which he had been preparing himself already; and he feared that he might
lose the opportunity of gaining a teaching post if he failed to reach Ghoom by the first of
November as requested by Rev. Waismaa.58 Obviously in an unenviable quandary, he desired
neither to miss the Durbar nor to lose the chance of garnering a teaching post.
The dilemma concerned him no end. "I was at a fix," wrote Tharchin long afterwards,
* The clever and quite amusing manner by which Tharchin at Delhi immediately went about preparing to meet
this last requirement for the teaching post is recounted in the chapter to follow.
t i t may even have been the case that Sundar Singh, whom Dorje Tharchin was to meet once again, this time in
Delhi but only for a brief period, might have spoken to Daud Singh on behalf of the Tibetan and persuaded Daud
to release his servant from any further obligation to remain in his household. It was this same year, 1911, that the
young man from Poo was to see his dear Punjabi friend before he made his way to Ghoom. See Oskar Pfister, Die
legende Sundar Singhs, 212.
not knowing whether to start immediately to take up the new appointment or to stay on till the
great function was over.59 This was a great source of trouble to my mind and 1 put the matter
before the Lord and prayed.60
As a matter of fact, he prayed much about the matter in order to ease the mounting tension,
and finally obtained God's clear and unmistakable guidance as to what to do. For after much
thought and prayer, he later confessed, "I dared to write Mr. Waismaa and request that... as
I am so keen to see the Delhi Durbar, may I be allowed to join the work from the middle of
January 1912?"61 And with that the predicament was solved, for Waismaa understood
Tharchin's awkward situation very sympathetically and kindly granted his request to be
given an extension of time to appear at Ghoom. But the young Tibetan Christian admitted
that "till I got the letter I was not so happy, but when I got Rev. Waismaa's reply saying that
I could join in January, Oh I was very very happy"! Added Tharchin: "Praise the Lord for all
His wonderful guidance in my life."62 Later he was to say more about this divine response to
his persistent entreaty to God for wisdom in the quandary he had faced: "I was very thankful
to the Lord for this answer to my fervent prayers. It taught me how God leads us and guides
us through all circumstances aright, even if the moments be fraught with crises and
difficulties."63
Very few persons alive today have had the unique privilege of having observed the
greatness and grandeur of the Delhi Durbar, the other name for which was known as
Coronation Day in honor of Their Majesties King-Emperor George V and his Consort
Queen Mary, since only recently had the King of Great Britain been newly-crowned and
would on this occasion at Delhi be proclaimed India's Emperor. Preparations for this
observance had been in progress throughout all India during most of the year, and the
political developments which resulted from the event were not without significance. For
as one noted Indian historian remarkéd: "At the close of 1911, Their Majesties ... visited
India and were received with an outburst of loyal enthusiasm. A magnificent durbar was
held at Delhi on 12 December, and Their Majesties made two important announcements."64
These two highly significant pronouncements by His Majesty the Emperor took most
Indians as well as certain British governing circles in India totally by surprise. The first of
these announced the reversal of the partition of the Province of Bengal into two; the
second, the transference of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi! Commented one observer
at the time: "It was a great State secret,... wonderfully kept, and with dramatic suddenness,
suited to the circumstances and associations of the occasion, revealed to an astonished,
unexpectant Empire. Even the Lieutenant-Governors of the Provinces concerned are said
to have been unaware of what was pending."65
With respect to the reunification of the two Bengals, associated with it were other Indian
administrative changes announced by the Emperor: (a) the reunited Bengal was to be raised
to the dignity of having a Governor, like Bombay and Madras, instead of a Lieutenant-
Governor ais was the situation before December 1911; (b) Bengal was to be stripped, on the
one side, of Assam, which was to be put again under a Chief Commissioner, and would
probably include all the wild border southwards, and gain a seaboard at Chittagong (located
in present-day Bangladesh); and (c) Bengal was to be stripped, on the other side, of Bihar,
Chota, Nagpur and Orissa, which would henceforth be combined under a Lieutenant-Governor,
with his capital at Patna in Bihar. On the other hand, with respect to the transfer of the
Indian capital to Delhi, the concomitant administrative change made known by His Majesty
made clear that Delhi, and the land immediately surrounding it, were to be extra-provincial
and administered directly by the Viceroy in Council.66
Actually, the designation of Delhi as the new capital of India was not something new in
the long and dramatic history of the Subcontinent known as Hindustan and later India.
Centuries before the Imperial decree that was handed down by India's British masters in
1911, Delhi had been the capital of the Great Mogul Empire and in the seventeenth century
had according to Sven Hedin been "the most magnificent city in the world."67 In the words
of Lord Crewe, the Secretary of State for India at the time of the Great Durbar now under
discussion: "The ancient walls of Delhi enshrine an imperial tradition comparable with that
of Constantinople, or with that of Rome itself." And much earlier, famed Anglican Bishop
and Cambridge Professor in Biblical Studies Joseph B. Lightfoot (1828-89), on St. Andrew's
Day in 1876, waxed even more eloquently: "Delhi! what associations do not gather about
the name? Delhi, the immemorial center of Hindu tradition, the chief stronghold of
Mohammedan power, the capital of the descendants of Timur [Tamerlane], the seat of the
most splendid, if not the most powerful, of Oriental monarchies, the city of many sieges—
Tartar, Persian, Mahratta, English. Delhi, the beautiful, the cruel, the magnificent, the
profligate. And a name, too, of not less absorbing interest to the Christian than to the
Englishman."68 Surely had he lived to see the day of the Delhi Durbar, Bishop Lightfoot,
like other equally imperial-minded members of the upper classes of Victorian England,
would have gloried to have been privileged to witness the near indescribable display of
pomp and pageantry which was about to unfold at the rejuvenated Imperial City of Delhi.
Certain it is that he would not have been disappointed.
Among all the Durbars held in India since the inauguration of British rule, this particular
one to which Dorje Tharchin would be an eyewitness had the distinction of being the very
first in Anglo-Indian history in which it was opened by a British king in person. "I rejoice to
have this opportunity," declared King George to the assembled Princes and people at Delhi,
"of renewing in my own person those assurances which have been given you by my revered
predecessors of the maintenance of your rights and privileges and of my earnest concern for
your welfare, peace and contentment. May the divine favor of Providence watch over my
People and assist me in my utmost endeavor to promote their happiness and prosperity." But
then, too, it was also the very first instance that India had witnessed an Empress Consort
sitting at the side of her King-Husband; for as one observer of that day has pointed out, "the
only Emperors of India before the English line were Mussulmans, and the matrimonial customs
of Islam do not lend themselves to the creation of the title so graciously associated with the
names of Alexandra and Mary."69 [Alexandra had been the Queen Consort of Edward VII
(1901-10), George V's immediate predecessor.]
It must be understood, of course, that in order to have mounted such a grand and
glorious spectacle as did occur on that bright December day in 1911, an incredible amount
of planning, preparation and organization must needs have been invested by the King-
Emperor's various ministers both high and low. One of these ministers, a member of the
Indian Civil Service since 1907 who would years later become one of Tharchin's British
friends during the Tibetan's days at Kalimpong in the 1940s, was Basil (later Sir Basil)
John Gould. In 1909 he had been appointed to the Political Department of the Government
of India; but in anticipation of the Durbar he had then been appointed the following year to
act temporarily (till 1912) as an Under-Secretary in the Foreign Department and posted to
Simla and, as the Durbar finally approached, to Delhi, where he was intimately involved in
certain aspects of the ceremonials.
Now the Durbar undertaking was on such a mammoth scale that a literal tent-city, called
the Durbar Camp, had to be laid out in a suitable area of the old city of Delhi to accommodate
all who would be participants in the grandiose affair. The New York Times printed a report,
filed from Delhi and datelined the day before the Durbar, in which was included a description
of this vast canvas city. Lit well by electricity, served by "a perfect water supply," marked by
excellent streets and roads, and even provided with "a special railway system" of its own,
this temporary camp community covered some twenty-five, square miles. "Chief of all,"
read the Times article, "stands out the Emperor's central camp," situated, appropriately, "on
Grand Avenue," and in whose huge tent would take place both the Investiture and the
Durbar reception.
According to Gould, the essential features of the Durbar ceremonies would be the following:
the state arrival of Their Majesties; individual visits by Ruling Princes from their campsites
to the King at his, and the return of these visits by the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, on behalf of
the King; The King's review of troops, including Contingents from the various Indian States;
an Army Veterans parade; the actual Durbar, at which Their Majesties would receive homage;
and the Investiture of the King-Emperor. Not least of Gould's responsibilities was his
involvement in the said return visits by the Viceroy to the Ruling Princes at their campsites.
"As the Under-Secretary responsible for recording any departure from the exact procedure
laid down for each visit," explained Sir Basil later, "I was, I believe, the only person who
accompanied the Viceroy on each of his return visits."
The Times article already quoted from went on to describe what would occur the following
day, the 12th of December, a day which Tharchin would term "unforgettable":
About 150 Princes, gathered from every quarter of India, will be present at the Durbar, their
Camps being in close proximity to that of the Emperor.... King George V and Queen Mary will
arrive tomorrow in the center of the great plain about three miles from his Camp in state
procession and will proceed halfway around an enormous banked up arena in which will not be
fewer than 80,000 spectators. From there he will go to a smaller amphitheater, accommodating
12,000 persons. These will comprise the Indian Chiefs, the Governors, and Lieutenant Governors,
the members of the imperial and Provincial Councils, with all the leading officials, nobility, and
gentry of India.
After receiving the homage of the Chiefs on a special dais under a regal purple canopy,
Their Majesties will proceed to a marble dais surmounted by a golden dome and will show
themselves in their coronation robes and crowns to the assembled multitude. Twenty thousand
troops, with heralds and massed bands, will surround the dais.
After the ceremony and on the return to their Camp, Their Majesties will complete the
second half of the circle in the big arena and then proceed along the Princes' Road through a
number of other Camps occupied by the Indian Princes.
In his own recollections of the Durbar, which were included in his autobiography, Sir
Basil has described this larger and quite new Durbar Amphitheater in which Their Majesties
would show themselves to their subjects. It was located just beyond the Durbar Railway
Station and on the very site where in 1877 Queen Victoria had been proclaimed Empress of
India by Lord Lytton and where in 1903 King Edward VIPs accession had been announced
by Lord Curzon. Wrote Sir Basil:
The Amphitheater consisted of a covered crescent to seat some ten thousand, faced by an
embanked crescent, open to the air, where fifty thousand could sit or stand. In the space
between the crescents twenty thousand British and Indian troops would be on parade. Facing
the covered crescent was a canopied dais where the King would receive homage. Beyond it
gleamed a four-tiered eminence. The lower tiers would be occupied, in succession, by a guard
of honor, principal attendants, and General Officers, and from the summit the King and Queen
would show themselves to their people.
Unbeknown to each other, Dorje Tharchin would be sitting among the huge crowd of
spectators in the open-air crescent area of the Amphitheater, while his future British friend,
Sir Basil Gould, would be opposite him across the space between the crescents playing a
very important role beneath the covered crescent. "In the actual Durbar," Gould confides in
his autobiography, "it would be my joy to judge the exact moment at which each of the Ruling
Princes and other notables who would do homage to the King should start from his seat on
the right-hand side of the covered crescent, while a colleague did the same on the left-hand
side." It is interesting to speculate whether decades later, as they trekked in Tibet together
towards Lhasa, these two attendees at this august affair—one a lowly Tibetan, the other
soon to be a high British official in the Indian government—ever did discover from each
other the fact that they had shared in common, but from two diametrically contrasting vantage
points, this great experience, an event which Sir Basil himself would later characterize as
"the one supreme personal act of British sovereignty ever performed in India." Whether or
not these two gentlemen ever did learn of their mutual experience in Delhi will probably
never be known.70
*
All was now ready. On the following day, the one appointed for the momentous Durbar at
Which the Imperial pair would accede to the Throne as Emperor and Empress of their vast
feudal Indian lands and receive homage from their Governors, Ruling Princes and other
representatives of British India, the ancient imperial capital was astir as never before with
excited anticipation of what was about to unfold. As only briefly summarized in its previous
day's report, the Times now recounted in some detail for its readers how the color and
magnificence of the event actually appeared to the countless eyewitnesses who were treated
to what could only be termed a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of pomp and glory:
... the Viceregal procession came into view. Escorted by a brilliantly uniformed native
bodyguard, the Viceroy and Lady Hardinge sat in their state carriage, drawn by blooded
horses with outriders uniformed in scarlet and gold.
Then the booming of an Imperial salute announced the approach of the Emperor and Empress.
The royal carriage, drawn by four magnificent horses, was almost hidden from view by the
gaily caparisoned escort. The Emperor was in a robe of imperial purple, a surcoat of purple,
white satin breeches, and silk stockings. He wore the collars of the Orders of the Garter and the
Star of India and the star of the latter order. The imperial crown consisted of a band of diamonds
studded with large emeralds and sapphires, with rubies in the center, and a cap of purple velvet
turned up with ermine.
The Queen-Empress's dress was of white satin embroidered with a design of roses, thistles,
and shamrocks, with a border of lotus flowers. The Star of India embroidered the front of her
dress. Her Majesty's imperial robe was of purple velvet trimmed with ermine, with a border of
gold braid. She wore the Orders of the Garter and the Star of India. Her ornaments were a
diamond and emerald necklace and brooches.
Carriage after carriage with members of the suite followed the Imperial pair. The guards
presented arms and the bands burst into the royal anthem. j
The combined processions proceeded slowly to the great central tent, where Their Majesties
stood to receive the homage and congratulations of the Governors, Ruling Princes, and other
representatives of British India. When the gorgeously uniformed line had filed past, the Imperial
and Viceregal parties appeared before the vast assemblage in the Durbar amphitheater. When
they took their seats on the crimson dais the strains of the National Anthem were heard, and
the people rose as one person and stood in profound silence.... The Emperor... commanded
the [Imperial] herald to read aloud ... that George V had been crowned King-Emperor. At that
moment the National Anthem was played by the massed bands, and as the last notes of the
music died away 101 guns boomed the tidings of the proclamation.... The Emperor rose from
his throne and bowed to all sides. As he sat down once more the herald called for three cheers
for the Emperor, and a mighty roar burst from over 100,000 throats. Natives vied with the British
in their acclamations, and the cheers within the arena were continued by the troops outside until
they extended to the horizon..,. The greatest Durbar ever held in India came to an end with the
National Amhem and a final burst from the silver trumpets. As the King-Emperor and
Queen-Empress, accompanied by Lord and Lady Hardinge and their suites, left the amphitheater
they were cheered time and again by the crowd until they reached their tents.71
When asked decades later to convey his own personal impressions of this grandiloquent
function at Delhi, Gergan Tharchin paused for a while and then in a thoughtful mood replied
in part: "I still remember the general details of this grand and glorious reception accorded
Their Majesties. As they arrived, a tremendous ovation was rendered by the people, the ,
noise and tumult of which shook the entire place and pavilion with echoes and reverberations, j
The royal couple were seated in a beautifully decorated and ornamented carriage drawn by f
four horses." Sir Charles Bell, later to become another English friend of Gergan Tharchin's, |
vividly recalled an interesting moment at this point in the august affair that highlights in quite |
an unusual way the glory and splendor which must have characterized the event. Long after |
the occasion he had written: "One is reminded of the appearance of the solitary Indian j
sweeper who appeared at the great Delhi Durbar in 1911 to sweep the royal track, dressed
in his every-day clothes and holding his every-day broom, when all were in uniform pr their
finest attire, prepared for the arrival of the King-Emperor and his Consort.... Nobody would
resent the sweeper's appearance at this supreme moment, or seem to think that he might
interfere with the cavalcade that was to follow."72
"Some spectators," continued Tharchin's reminiscence, "experienced such a shock of
unprecedented happiness that I still recall a man sitting in front of me in the vast arena who fell to
the ground and was about to faint. The Indian princely maharajas and other rulers who attended
the function were dressed in the finest of their jewelry and vestments." Two of these "other
rulers" who attended the Coronation Durbar were the Maharajas of Bhutan (a country which by
mutual treaty the year before was now being guided in her foreign affairs by the British Government
of India) and Sikkim, a British protectorate.* For both these dignitaries, who spoke their own
respective form of Tibetan, Charles Bell served as interpreter when the two were presented to
the Emperor. At the interview between His Majesty and Bhutan's Maharaja, the former asked
the latter whether he often left his State on visits elsewhere. To which His Highness replied that
the only previous time he had ever "found it worthwhile to leave" had been the instance "when
His Majesty had visited Calcutta as Prince of Wales" in 1905. And when through Bell the
Emperor then inquired how far the Maharaja had come to attend the Durbar, the latter explained
that although it had taken only two days by Indian rail to reach Delhi from his Bhutanese frontier,
"I had ... a journey of seventeen days in my own country"! Whereupon His Majesty directed
Bell to express his appreciation for the loyalty of His Highness in having traveled so far. The
Maharaja's reply—which was not unlike the attitude of otherlroyal figures attending upon the
King-Emperor—was instant: "When coming to present myself before your Majesty, no distance
seems far."73 (Less than a decade later, incidentally, Dorje Tharchin would himself trek over
much of this same distance within Bhutan as had His Highness when as a member of an important
Education Mission from Kalimpong Tharchin and the others would pay a visit to this vety first
(hereditary) Maharaja on the Bhutanese throne, Ugyen Wangchuk, and at the latter's own invitation.
See Chapter 13 in the present biography's next volume.)
It also happened that another of these "other rulers" in attendance upon the King-Emperor
was the Wazir Amir Chand, His Majesty's Chief Minister over the province of Lahul where
the Moravian station of Kyelang was situated. Of all the stations oi the Tibetan Mission,
Kyelang was the only location in territory under direct British rule. Those at Leh and Kalatse
were in Ladakh under the quasi-independent Maharaja of Kashmir while the one at Dorje
Tharchin's village of Poo was in the Native State of Bashahr.
* Interestingly, the personage from Sikkim who, "attired in a handsome military uniform," served as the Commander
of Sikkim's Honor Guard on this supremely august occasion at Delhi was none other than the wealthy landed
aristocrat, Tsetan Tashi Kazi, the father of young Tharchin's future longtime intimate friend and "son," Sonam T.
Kazi. Interview with S. T. Kazi, Oct. 1991.
Now Amir's brother, Mangal Chand, served as acting Tehsildar (officer in charge) of
Kyelang's district; and to show kindness to those in Kyelang who were of His Majesty's
Christian faith, he consulted with the Mission station's two indigenous helpers, Ga Phuntsog
and Zodpa, as to what would be the most fitting local celebration of a modest "durbar" he
himself wished to conduct there on the same day (12 December) coi ncident with the immense
and far more formal one to be held at Delhi. Mangal Chand even invited the two Christians
to be present at the Tehsil (courthouse) on that occasion and to be the ones "to address the
people there on the significance of the event," inasmuch as they, in the absence of the
Western missionaries, would unquestionably be the best ones to correctly interpret for the
crowd its meaning because of their close association with the foreigners who must have told
them a great deal about this inspiring event.
A report of what occurred appeared later in the periodical, Moravian Missions, as part
of an article entitled, "The Kyelang Durbar." It will prove interesting to the reader since it
involved Tharchin's stepfather's brother-in-law. It makes for engrossing reading since it also
describes what must have been a unique experience nowhere else held in Northwest India.
At the time appointed, the villagers gathered from all directions. Ordinarily the courthouse is no
favorite resort of theirs; now it was filled by an enthusiastic crowd. In the chair, or in the place of
honor, sat Mangal Chand, as the acting Wazir, and next to him our two Christian evangelists. The
red-robed lamas of the Buddhist monastery above Kyelang were also there in force, but they
knew not what to say on this auspicious occasion. Ga Phuntsog and Zodpa, on the other hand,
were thoroughly prepared to speak, and gladly used the opportunity. They told of the earthly
king whose vast empire includes India, as well as many other countries and islands. Nor did they
omit to speak of the Heavenly King, to whom this mighty monarch, with his whole household and
millions of his subjects, pay reverent homage. And this King of Kings, they declared, is Jesus,
whose name and supreme claims the Mission has brought to us, the Tibetans.
Almost as though purposely to underscore this very matter of His Majesty's obeisance to
"the Heavenly King," the Wazir, upon his return to Kyelang, had much to tell, not least of
which was how "this Christian King-Emperor ... amid all the festive pomp ... attended
Divine service on Sunday and bowed the knee to the King of Kings." And "this made a deep
impression on Amir Chand."74
What the Wazir had reference to was the Worship Service which the royal couple had
attended at ten o'clock on Sunday morning the 10th of December: the only function that
day in connection with the Delhi festivities, the rest of the day—as the newspaper reports
put it—having been spent "quietly" by the Imperial pair. With respect to this Divine Service,
one Anglican ecclesiastic on the scene wrote afterwards that the Emperor and Empress
gave a "striking, though perfectly natural, object-lesson to the Indian world of their allegiance
to [Christ]" when on that Sunday the two were present at a Camp service open to public
view and attended by some eight thousand of His Majesty's troops. The sermon delivered
by the Anglican Bishop of Madras had as its text the mighty words from the Christian
Scriptures, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His
Christ,"75 which text was in turn reinforced by the Bishop when he made clear in his
message that "the Emperor" is but "God's representative" and that "the permanent value
of any empire or any social institution must depend upon its power of bringing nearer the
76
Kingdom of God ..." It was during this Divine Service, held in the open for all to see,
that His Majesty—in bowing the knee to Christ the Greater King—had so deeply impressed
Wazir Amir Chand.
But it had also impressed many other Indians when they too heard of this incident. The
story is told of how one of them had asked an American lady, Miss Shelland Bradley, who
was present at the Camp service: "You saw the King-Emperor kneel and bend his head in
prayer?" He spoke of it reverently as of some sacred thing. "Yes," the lady replied, realizing
for the first time that what to her eyes was "an accustomed act" was to her inquirer "a thing
of wonder." That the great King-Emperor, she privately noted later, "should himself kneel in
prayer and supplication to a greater even than he, moved him strangely." The Indian man,
with a look of awe and reverence on his face, then slowly replied with these unusual words:
"I would rather have seen that than anything else at Delhi." But immediately afterwards his
expression suddenly changed and he asked the American this question: "If the King outwardly
pays homage to religion, how is it that all his officials do not also do the same?" Caught off
guard, for a second or two Miss Bradley hesitated, feeling that the honor of British officials
in the eyes of this Indian was hanging for a moment 011 her answer. "What could I say to
him?55 she mused within herself. "I think they do," the visiting American answered the man
at last, but knowing full well, she thought, how many do not. He was not to be deceived by
this ambiguous response and immediately shook his head. "No," the Indian responded, "I
gave ground to build an English Church in Tondipur, my capital, but many of the high officials
never go to it." Again caught off guard, Miss Bradley was momentarily stumped once more.
How could she possibly explain to this serious-minded Indian, the lady later wrote, about "the
infinite divisions among Christians, and that perhaps many of those high officials did not
subscribe to the form of worship of that particular Church." Vainly did she now seek in her
mind for some exoneration of the Englishmen who had failed to do what this Indian fellow
subject so naturally had expected of them. "Though they do not attend the church," was her
feeble defense cf them, "they doubtless, too, pay their homage to the King of kings in private."
To which the Hindu man, obviously not convinced, responded with "a quick, beautiful smile"
and softly said, "Ah! but the King-Emperor knelt in publ ic."77
In his continuing reminiscence of the Delhi events Gergan Tharchin went on to remark
about the divided opinion which had existed among the Indian populace over the Coronation
Durbar: "The overt loyalty of the common people seemed to me staggering—beyond the
limits of human imagination." That Tharchin was not indulging in hyperbole here is well
attested by the many effusive descriptions which appeared in the public prints of the time—
both in the British and in the Indian press. To take but one example, that of the Times of
India, there is a graphic account given of "the great Sight" alluded to earlier, but only briefly,
by the New York Times—the ceremonial showing of himself by the British Sovereign to the
people of India as their Emperor. As he and his Empress sat in lofty seats placed on the wall
of the historic Delhi Fort, popular homage was enthusiastically rendered them by the masses
in their own expressive fashion as myriads and myriads of people beneath moved forward in
slow motion but with considerable excitement. Reported the Times of India:
The multitude advanced in a broad front nearly eighty yards wide with banners waving, flags
flying, bands playing—the slow, resistless movement of the myriads of Asia. Arrived opposite
the Saman Burj, this tide of humanity was stayed—hands went up, and heads were bowed in
salutation; from every throat went up a murmur of homage. To those in intimate contact with
the procession there was something infinitely touching in this great concourse of humanity—
Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus, a great proportion of greybeards, alien in creed, saluting with
supreme confidence in his fatherly kindness the Padishah who stood with his fair-haired
Consort before his people. ,
First standing in the Saman Burj, then seated on thrones on the terrace between the Burj
and the Rang Mahal, Their Majesties sat for near an hour while their subjects passed beneath
them.... [It was a ceremony that clearly evoked] the sentiment of loyalty—an incalculable,
strong, vital force, centered upon the British Crown ...78
Such demonstrations of loyalty and enthusiastic devotion to the persons of the King-
Emperor and Queen-Empress turned even into acts of idolatrous worship of Their Majesties'
thrones when vacated by them and of treating as holy the earth that had been trodden by the
royal couple's feet but which the masses thereafter caught up with their hands and pressed
"in lowly homage to their brows."79 As described by the special correspondent at Delhi of
the Times of London: "After the Durbar yesterday ... tens of thousands of people approached
the dais on which stood the high thrones and made obeisance before it. Many knelt and
touched the railings, others bent their heads till their foreheads touched the marble steps^
numbers prostrated themselves in the dust."80 Commented one Anglican cleric who witnessed
these and other similar actions by the mostly Hindu populace at both Delhi and Calcutta:
This ought to serve as a very explicit reminder to the Church of Christ that the idolatrous
tendencies of the masses of India have been as yet very little influenced by the wealth of
enlightenment which has been pouring into the country for a hundred years, in ever-increasing
volume, both through secular channels and through those which are professedly Christian.
The ordinary Hindu has not yet learnt any essential distinction between the human and the
divine. The boundary line between them is still scarcely visible to him. Power is, in both, the
only and the sufficient reason for worship.81
Perhaps those like "the ordinary Hindu" just now described were the ones whom Tharchin
had in mind as he continued his remarks about the divided opinion which existed concerning
the Durbar. "The visit of Their Majesties to India," he candidly noted, "captivated the minds
of the feeblest only, whereas the patriotic [that is to say, the Independence-minded] section
of the people who were in the minority at the time attached no significance and paid no
attention to the celebrations whatsoever."
"However," continued Tharchin, now turning his attention to those momentous political
events which were soon to engulf the entire Subcontinent, "when the great nationalistic \
struggle to achieve Indian independence moved forward with great zeal and enthusiasm,82 J
the Indian masses supported the cause of national freedom wholeheartedly and even quite |
vehemently. This was because subsequent events led to a nationwide success in the progress |
of the National Freedom Movement [as spearheaded by the National Congress* Party first
organized in 1886] that ultimately compelled the British to quit the shores of India. On 15
August 1947 India finally became a sovereign republic. The day was inscribed in golden
letters in the annals of human history." Although as a young man Tharchin was greatly
n^ved by what he had witnessed of India's British Raj in 1911, he nonetheless became very
sympathetic towards the nationalist movement in general and Mahatma Gandhi in particular,
for whom he had the highest regard. Democracy was sweeping India and the world, and the
Tibetan from Poo would not be left behind in its wake.
Gergan Tharchin, who many years afterwards was ordained a minister in the Church of
North India,83 took the opportunity near the close of his active ministry on earth to draw an
edifying analogy from the Durbar Days of 1911. He did this to impress upon his congregation
the significance of the blessed hope cherished by the Church—that is to say, the patient
waiting of the "ecclesia"84 for the second coming of Christ her Lord and Savior in power and
great glory. Rev. Tharchin emphatically asserted on that occasion that "if so much of joy and
exultation was expressed over the reception and coronation of an earthly king-emperor, then
how much greater joy and exultation will be voiced at the return appearing from Heaven of
Christ who is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords when He shall come to this earth
to reign over the entire world for a period of a thousand years! 'Even so, come, Lord
Jesus!"'85
C H A P T E R 5
At Ghoom: New Dimensions

Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.
Isaiah 30:21
To IMAGINE what the little upland village of Ghoom might have been like approximately ninety
years ago need not tax one's mind now except to infer on meteorological grounds that it must
have been then as now one of the most mystic spots on earth. This is because more often
than not, like a monk in a cloistered monastery, the village today meditates beneath a canopy
of opaque mist and fog that continually defies—if not defeats—the normally penetrating
rays of the noonday sun. For as one frequent visitor in the 1920s had remarked: "it is a
common saying and the almost universally spontaneous saying of newcomers that this town
was misnamed. It should have been called Gloom. For even though we have been in and out
t>f Ghoom many times on train, on pony back, and on foot, I have never seen Ghoom save in
a dense cloud."*1
The more probable meaning among several which have been advanced to explain the
community's actual name, which is a corruption of the Nepali word Ghum, is, as one gazetteer
Of the region has observed, "that the name means merely the bend of the hill, which is very
distinct at this place." Even so, the village of Ghoom is snugly ensconced in a most vague and
ill-defined area: the lower portion around the post office, for instance, was in those days
designated as Ghoom Railway Station while the higher portion where the Siliguri-Darjeeling
Town route branches off to Kalimpong is still known as Jorebungalow!—it having been given
that name in earlier days by the village's non-European residents because of the fact that, as
the name implies, there had formerly been only "a pair of bungalows" above what later became
»thriving bazaar Yet despite this vagueness of nomenclature, the little community constitutes—
even up to today-—a trade center of some local importance due to its location at the junction of
three main roads in the wider area: the Cart Road up from the plains to the south, the road
eastward to the Teesta River Valley that serves as the main route from the valleys, and the
road which leads westward to the Nepal border.
In popular parlance Ghoom is situated in "the mountainous arms" of the Himalayas at the
approximate altitude of7400 feet at its train station: thus making Ghoom the highest point on
the rail line and the second highest railway station in the world! Ghoom—the name so sweet
to the international tourists, who could advantageously travel by the famous "toy train" to get
there2—really deserves the renown it evokes in the Himalayan region. Today the place is
* The reason for this meteorological phenomenon has been explained by L. S. S. O'Malley of the Indian Civil
Service, an authority on the area during Tharchin?s days at Ghoom. The village, he writes, "is perched on a narrow
saddle which connects the Senchal range with the Darjeeling spur; and the consequence is that, being in a gap
letween the hills, it is an extremely rainy, misty and windswept place." Darjeeling, 191. O'Malley goes on to
explain elsewhere in his book (pp. 207-8) that Senchal, whose Lepcha name means "the hill of damp and mist"—
an appellation well deserved, is a mountain (elevation: 8163') situated six miles to the southeast of the Darjeeling
spur and that "catches the full force of the monsoon driving up from the Bay of Bengal and, for the greater part
#the year, is drenched by rain or enveloped in mist." No wonder, then, that Ghoom is itself cast in impenetrable
floom so much of the time!
associated with four or five important sightseeing attractions for which affluent travelers,
explorers and mountaineers pay high if not exorbitant lodging rates in order to enjoy the
many enticing beauties of nature to be found there.
The first of these, Sunrise Hill (known also as Tiger Hill), situated at about 8500 feet in
altitude, is visited by thousands of tourists every year from all over the world in order that
they might catch a glimpse of Mount Everest—the ruling queen of the Himalayas—and "the
fairy-like splendor" of the other incredible snow-covered peaks of the region. One Western
traveler-explorer visiting in the Darjeeling area in 1931 had noted that Europe does not
possess any peaks higher than 15,781 feet (Mont Blanc), and only six or seven which rise
above 14,000. But among the Himalayas, she observed, there are more than 1100 which
exceed 20,000 feet above sea level, with several over 25,000 feet high able to be viewed in
nearby Sikkim alone. And though not mentioning Sunrise Hill by name, she had this lookout
point in mind when writing that "two of the highest in the world can be seen at the same time,
Everest, 29,028 feet, and Kanchenjunga, 28,156."3
Without question, the sunrise upon this latter summit—"floating on the horizon like a
convoy of icebergs"—engages the attention and wonder of the tourist at Tiger Hill far more
than does the sunrise upon the world's tallest peak. For one thing, Kanchenjunga is much
closer to the viewer; for another, the drama which the sun plays out upon this "stupendous
snowy range in all its glorious magnificence" is intensified because of the presence of a
greater amount of snow than is true of Everest's summit. From the incredible vantage point
of Sunrise Hill one can easily behold, if weather permits, "the colossal massif' that is
Kanchenjunga, whose "ghostly form" at the sun's rising is transformed in a minute's time
into a "golden flame" of the most dramatic sort.4
Nevertheless, should the weather fail and the mists prevail, still the disheartened tourist is
most likely to be rewarded with the awesome sight of the rising bloodred sun, which the
Psalmist has so poetically depicted "as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as
a strong man to run a race."5 Indeed, the red ball of fire which ascends the horizon bedecks
the sky with changing hues that alternate from red to yellow to golden to molten colors. The
entire view of the firmament dazzles the eye and puzzles the mind with the mysteries of God
who creates with such ease this daily aesthetic production on the canvas of nature that runs
along the oriental sky. Surely the Great Divine Painter in his bringing forth from nature such
breathtaking beauty has caused thousands of would-be Michelangelos and Leonardos to
blush with shame. Indeed, the Russian painter, Verestchagen, had very much intended to
paint from Sunrise Hill's ideal lookout the incomparable panorama of Kanchenjunga and the
other Himalayan snowcaps; when brought face to face with their majesty, however, he cried
aloud instead: "Not now, not now! It is all too splendid!"
Verestchagen never did paint them, noted Tharchin's later friend, Henrietta Merrick, in
recounting the incident. Added the American author-explorer, "They cannot be captured by
brush, or camera, or pen." She herself, a writer of some distinction, would not even attempt
to paint with words their awesome wonder, even though, she acknowledged, "the effort has
often been made."6 One such effort, and accomplished with some success, it might be
added, had been set down a century ago by a former longtime resident of the Darjeeling;
area, Laurence A. Waddell. In his fascinating word picture of the mountain sunrise as he
At Ghoom: New Dimensions ¡187
witnessed it from Tiger Hill, Waddell has unquestionably captured something of the stunning
beauty and enormous grandeur of this incredible event:
I was soon rewarded with a sight of the grandest snowy landscape in the world. Far away in the
yet dusky sky, and at an amazing height, a rosy peak flashed forth for an instant and vanished
into the darkness. This was the summit of Kanchenjunga. It reappeared almost immediately, and
brighter than before, in the rising glow of dawn, which, reflected from peak to peak, streamed
down the lower pinnacles, bathing them in a soft rosy light that faded quickly away into cold
bluish gray, and left the snowy ranges a sea of dull sapphire peaks. Then, as the sun shot up with
its first long low beams glinting on the highest and then in quick succession on the lower peaks,
these dim blue crests and crags leaped forward tipped with ruddy gold and splashed with fire,
which, as the sun rose higher and higher, melted away in the distance into amber and frosted
silver against a turquoise sky. In the full flood of sunlight these snows lost most of their broad
details of light and shade, and presented an almost unifonn chalky whiteness through the pearly
haze. Not a cloud obscured the view. Snowy mountains stretched round almost half the horizon,
culminating in the mighty mass of Kanchenjunga with its 13,000 feet of everlasting snow, and
Everest In the background. From this latter peak, rising on our left over the dark shoulder of
Sandakphu, the crowded range of snowy pyramids extends almost continuously eastwards to
Jannu and Kabru (25,000 and 24,015 ft. respectively) on the flanks of Kanchenjunga (28,156 ft.),
and thence far away to the silvery cone of the Tibetan Chumolhari (23,940 ft.), and sinks in the
eastern snows of Bhutan, on the extreme right It was sublime!7
Besides the attraction of Sunrise Hill, however, many tourists also visit four other chief
points of interest in the Ghoom area. These are the Senchal Lake (altitude, 8160') for its
commanding views of the High Himalayas, great river courses, and the Indian plains, and for
its serene and unruffled peacefulness—with a golf course and picnic spot said to be the highest
in the world; the Keventer's dairy farm for its successful experimentation in milk and meat
production; the Yiga Cholling Monastery8 at Ghoom famous for the imposing and gigantic
golden image of the Maitreya or Coming Buddha;9 and last of all the rail loop at nearby Batasia
hilltop (whose Nepali name does justice to its location: "the windy site") where the toy train
turns about to rush round the hill and down to its ultimate destination of Darjeeling Station
proper some four rail miles' distance and some 600 feet below Ghoom's own station.
Lest from what has thus far been said one might misconstrue the motive for his decision to
relocate, it should be understood that Dorje Tharchin was not attracted to Ghoom by its intrinsic
natural beauty—-about which he had heretofore known nothing—but by the hard and cold
facts and circumstances of existence >!yhich relentlessly impel most any person to travel to a
point on the path of life to which he would not perhaps have otherwise considered going. As a
result, it will soon be seen how this young man from Poo initially made his home here at Ghoom
and later permanently settled down in nearby Kilimpong. And thus by this move would the
life in active ministry and service to God and God's people. Indeed, some sixty-four years later,
in the brief Citation delivered by his son Sherab Gyamtsho at his father's funeral, this change of
venue to Ghoom by Tharchin and brought about through the kindness of Rev. Waismaa would t
be described as "marking the turning event for the best in his life."10
On the 6th of January 1912, Dorje Tharchin bade goodbye to his master Daud Singh and to S
metropolitan Delhi and set out for tiny misty Ghoom.11 The geography lectures at the Moravian
Mission school in Poo had, not surprisingly, left him totally ignorant of the geographical relationship
between Ghoom and Darjeeling Town. This lack of knowledge, of course, made him a laughing
stock among passers-by. Not knowing the traveling details, by mistake he bypassed the Ghoom
station and alighted from the train on the 10th of January just a few miles farther, at Darjeeling
Station, the toy train's upland terminus. (As a matter of fact, the traveler would long afterwards
confess that "as I did not know to step down at Ghoom, I went straight to Darjeeling"!) Here
Tharchin innocently inquired about the route to Ghoom, and his naïveté only produced amusement
and laughter among the bystanders. It was now too late in the day to retrace the short distance
back to Ghoom, and hence the weary traveler was compelled to overnight at Darjeeling, thus
delaying Tharchin's arrival at his intended destination till the 11th.*
Situated as it is just three or four miles to the north of Ghoom, this "Queen of the Hill
Stations" (as Darjeeling came to be known) was, and still is, the administrative center of the
Indian district of the same name that covers an area of some 1200 square miles. Moreover,
the hill station is located by rail some 300 miles north of Calcutta ^long a ridge of the
southeastern Nepal Himalayan foothills that rises over 8000 feet in height, and is situated
only six miles south of the Sikkim State border and just eleven miles east of Nepal's frontier.
At an elevation of 7000 feet on the Chaurasta or main square that is regarded as the center
of the hill station, Darjeeling's toy train railway station is itself somewhat lower at 6800 feet.
Yet despite her elevated height and distant accessibility, by 1912 the hill town had come to be
one of the most important northern cities of India, with a population that steadily rose from
some 10,000 in 1857 to an estimated 57,600 in 1981, and which for many years had served as
a terminus on the trade route from Lhasa, Tibet. Like its sister community of Ghoom to the
south, Darjeeling's lookouts afford a view of some of the loftiest mountains in the world. As
one European traveler in the area once vividly and dramatically observed, entrenched as
Darjeeling is "by the steaming undergrowth of a jungle where the earth seems to push her
wild fury of creation to its ultimate climax," she nonetheless "enjoys th£ superb sight of the
Kanchenjunga ... which watchfully towers in the north."
* The three travel dates indicated here—6th, 10th and 1 ldl—are according to Tharchin's recollection enumerated in a
retrospective letter he wrote in 1949 from Kalimpong to "My dear Anni Las" at Gho^m, a file copy of which was
found among the Tharchin Papers. (These "Anni Las" were the two or three Finnish missionary ladies at Ghoom
with whom the Tibetan would forever afterwards count as some of his dearest lifelong friends.) Since this letter,
dated 17 Feb. 1949, is much closer in time to the events now under discussion than are the dates of 6lh, 9th and 10,!l
which Tharchin cited in his dictated "memoirs" some 25 years later, the present writer is inclined to accept the
former as more reliable. Nevertheless, both documents do agree on Tharchin's departure date from Delhi. (The
parenthetical quotation in the Text above, incidentally, is taken from the same "dear Anni Las" letter of Tharchin's,)
The city had at one time had a very large English population, stemming as it did from the
history of the wider geographical region in more modern times. The whole of the area
between the present borders of Sikkim to the north and the Bengal plains to the south was
once inhabited for centuries almost totally by the indigenous Lepcha race, then conquered in
the seventeenth century by Tibet and the people converted to Buddhism. Thereafter it had
become the territory of the Rajas of Sikkim, then of the Gurkhas of Nepal, followed again by
the Rajas with British help, and finally the territory of the British themselves. For in 1828 two
British officers were dispatched on a fact-finding mission to the area, who were quick to
appreciate the value of Dorje Ling, the former Tibetan name for the place,* as a site for
establishing a sanatorium for British troops, creating a delightful hill station, and providing the
geographic key to a pass into Nepal and Tibet. Their observations were reported to the
Calcutta authorities and a pretext was eventually found to pressure the Raja into granting the
site to the British in 1835 in return for an annual stipend of Rs. 3000/- (though periodically
raised thereafter).
In shape the main facets of the hill station taken together resemble the letter Y, the base
being represented by Ghoom, the capital or upright part of the letter by the ridge that stretches
from Katapahar to the Chaurasta, and the two arms to right and left by the spurs on which
stand, respectively, Lebong and Birch Hill. The hill station's highest and lowest points,
therefore, represent an awesome difference in height of almost 2000 feet: between Katapahar
at 7886 feet and Lebong at 5970 feet, with the total area of Darjeeling Town amounting to
some five square miles.
Once built up, the hill station of Daijeeling became an increasingly popular resort, especially
during the relatively dry spring and fall months. It was even at one time Bengal's summer
capital, until that Government at Calcutta gave up the idea as an economic measure to cut
out the expensive yearly move that was always required,f There is much about the city
which is Tibetan in origin and flavor, but the vast majority of people by 1912 spoke Nepali as
a first language. This was due in large part to the fact that in the last half of the nineteenth
century a large recruitment of laborers from Nepal was carried on to provide workers for
the tea plantations which had been established by the British12 following the smuggling in of
tea seeds from China. As a matter of fact, according to. the census of 1891 taken for the
* Whose meaning, according to General Mainwaring, is derived from a three-word compound; Dor a stone, rje
noble, and gling a plaee, with the first two of these forming a compound word Dor-rje, a precious stone, a jewel,
also a meteoric stone, and hence an ecclesiastical scepter (emblematical of the thunderbolt). Thus, Dor-rje-gling
may be translated "the place of ecclesiastical sway." "This rendering is found correct according to the Tibetan
Dictionaries by the Rev. H. A. Jaeschke and Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Das." Per G. S. Bomwetsch, The Glory
of the Snows, 31. The author went on to explain that "the Tibetans, who had about 1765 founded a small
settlement and monastery on the [Darjeeling] hill, would indeed have exercised spiritual sway from here over the
lower Himalayas, had not the [Nepali] Gurkhas several times destroyed their monastery"!
t In this very regard, O'Malley has given one indicator—population statistics—of just how extensive such a
yearly transfer of Government must have been. The census of 1901 revealed that in the Darjeeling hill station
there had been 16,924 residents "during the cold weather"; but that "a special census taken in September 1900"
showed the population to be a whopping 23,852, or nearly a 50 percent increase over the figure for the cold
season. O'Malley's conclusion: "This difference is due to the fact that in the hot weather and rains Darjeeling is
the temporary headquarters of the Bengal Government..." Darjeeling, 39.
entire Bengal district of Darjeeling, 88,000 persons then living in the area were recorded as
having been born in Nepal!13
The town is precariously perched on a slope and has extremely steep and narrow streets
or lanes coursing down the side to the bottom where there is a flat open area. Here was to
be found the city's main market and numerous bazaars where large numbers of people
congregated to trade their products. The shops were quite varied in character, writes O'Malley,
"ranging from the ordinary glass-fronted shops, dealing in European piece-goods, groceries,
glass, hardware and crockery, to dingy stalls containing a curious assortment of Oriental
articles intended for visitors, such as turquoise, coral and amber ornaments, jade and agate
cups and beads, Nepali kukris, Bhotia and Lepcha knives, brass teapots, prayer wheels,
bells, amulets and other curiosities illustrative of Buddhist monastic life."14 Having already
achieved distinction of being the biggest market in the borderland area between India and
Tibet, Darjeeling would later be eclipsed by her sister community to the east, Kalimpong.
Among the traders of that day could often be found numerous Tibetans, Lepchas, Bhutias,
Nepalis, Paharis and other mountain people—many of them Mongoloid. The costumes of
the Tibetan caravaners and those of the local Nepalis and Lepchas created an especially
colorful atmosphere, with much of it still able to be seen to this very day.
Besides the tea plantations, which even today afford the main cash crop (Darjeeling Tea is
still known the world over), the city and District area was, and is yet, noted for rice, maize,
wheat, cardamom, quinine production from the chinchona plantations at nearby Mangpu, and
oranges. Moreover, the forests continue to yield valuable timber*; and copper, iron ore, dolomite
and limestone deposits are still worked. With respect to education, because of the long-standing
British influence, Darjeeling through most of its history as a hill station could boast a considerable
number of schools and higher institutions of learning, among them, the Bhotia School (Government)
but later known as the Darjeeling Zila or High School when eventually raised to that status, St,
Paul's School for Boys and the Diocesan Girls School (both Anglican), the Loreto Convent
(Catholic), Queen's Hill School for Girls (American Methodist), and St. Joseph's School for
Boys (Catholic) which would later expand to become St. Joseph's College.
Religiously speaking, Observatory Hill, the town's highest point (7137'), had for the longest
time been dedicated to the Indo-Tibetan god Mahakala and was thus crowned by Mahakala
Temple; it is still a shrine sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists,15 where "a whole forest of
prayer flags flaps in the wind." Although the Buddhists, with their monasteries at both Ghoom
and here, have perhaps been the most conspicuous religious group, they have seldom
constituted more than a sizable minority of the population: today about 14 percent. The
majority of the inhabitants continues to profess Hinduism, reflecting their past origins in the
northern Indian States and Nepal. Nevertheless, though this majority and this largest minority
returned themselves as Hindus and Buddhists, respectively, in the Darjeeling District's census
of 1901, broadly speaking, the Hinduism and Buddhism professed by these adherents was
"nothing more than a thin veneer over animistic beliefs." This was the considered judgment
of one well-known authority on the District, the aforementioned L. S. S. O'Malley, who
published his findings a mere five years before Tharch in's arrival here. In his portrayal of the
actual bleak condition of these religionists, O'Malley made these additional observations,
speaking first of the Hindus and then the Buddhists:
Beneath this veneer the real popular religion [of the Hindu] can be seen in the worship paid to
a host of spiritual beings whose attributes are ill-defined, but whose chief power is to cause
evil to their votaries. The religion prevalent is in fact demonolatry, of which exorcists and
bloody sacrifices [of birds and animals] are the most prominent feature....
The form of Buddhism prevalent is not of a much higher type. The craving for protection
against malignant gods and demons causes the people to pin their faith on charms and amulets,
and to erect tall prayer flags, with strings of flaglets, which flutter from housetops and other
places believed to be infested by evil spirits.... [Since] the popular religion both of the Hindus
and the Buddhists is based on demonolatry ... there is no deep cleavage between the two
sects.... The current belief is that there are a number of malevolent spirits to whom the ills of life
are due, and who exercise their malicious influence on the bodies and minds of men by means
of demoniacal possession. Worship, therefore, consists of periodic propitiation of them in
order to escape their attacks, and the cure for disease is not medicine but exorcism.16
Such was the ^tate of things among the majority of religionists in the Darjeeling area. On
the other hand, Christians and Moslems have generally through the years comprised little more
than three percent each of the District's total population, although at the height of the missionary
enterprise, of which Dorje Tharchin was now to become a part, there came to be established
numerous church congregations that were scattered in and around Darjeeling itself.17
Suffice it to say, however, that the furthest thing from the mind of this weary traveler
from Delhi at this moment was to acquaint himself with the unusual hill town that, unbeknown
to him, lay sprawled behind the station platform upon which he had mistakenly alighted. That
would have to await another day and another hour; for night had already fallen, and the
severe cold of Darjeeling began to chill his body. Accommodation now became a knotty
problem for this strange young man far away from his birthplace. Nevertheless, a kind
businessman took pity and piously offered him a dirty, dingy, dusty and dismal room for a
night; and, as Tharchin was wont to speak of this later, "I had to clean up the floors thoroughly
before I could spread the bed and lay my head to rest."
The Tempter of men's souls had his own designs on this youth of 21; nevertheless, his attempt
to effect in the young Tibetan a transference from smoking the hookah to the drinking of spirits,
while appearing under the circumstances to be a quite natural course of action, proved in the end
to be unsuccessful. Concerning this incident Tharchin recounts this episode as follows:
Near my room I chanced to see a brandy shop inviting all its devotees and repelling none. As I
was already fond of the hookah I was compulsively tempted to try and taste a glass of brandy to
heat up my body which was feeling the chilly weather of Darjeeling quite acutely; but the Lord
gave me grace and moral strength to withstand and overcome this potentially enslaving temptation.
This moral resistance at the right moment helped me gain greater victories in later life.
On the other hand, it would appear that Tharchin did not have the slightest idea about
transportation or the vehicles available for plying one's person between Darjeeling and Ghoom.
Perhaps he was too innocent to know about it or too shy to inquire from others. Whatever
the reason, the next day he ended up engaging a porter to carry his suitcase and baggage all
the way from Darj eeling to Ghoom, traversing a trekking distance of about five miles on foot
up the steep hill. He paid the porter four or five rupees for what otherwise he could have
easily managed for only ten paise, or but one-fifteenth of the five rupees actually paid out!
Had he used his head he could have easily gone back to Ghoom in the afternoon by the same
train he had arrived on in Darjeeling. "How ludicrous to think of it now!" Tharchin would
later exclaim.
It will be recalled that while Dorje Tharchin was in Delhi he had originally applied to the
Ghoom Tibetan Mission Press of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission for an apprenticeship
position in the printing operations there. Unfortunately for the applicant, however, the Mission
had just before this found it necessary to sell its printing press to others. Nevertheless, Rev.
Waismaa had presented Tharchin with an interesting counterproposal: he had offered him
not only the position of a Tibetan teacher but also the post of a Hindi teacher in the Ghoom
Mission School in the event the young man was proficient in the grammar and structure of
the latter language. On receiving the letter Tharchin had promptly replied by mail on this
wise: "Sir, since I have an excellent knowledge of the Urdu, language, I could teach Hindi
tolerably well inasmuch as both these languages are akin to each other in grammatical forms
and phrases." On the very day Rev. Waismaa's offer had arrived, in fact, Tharchin immediately
afterwards rushed to Delhi bookstores in search of a standard text and bought a Hindi
grammar. With great earnestness and regularity he devoted himself to the mastery of the
essential materials. In the process, however, his study regimen aroused the curiosity and
even evoked the admiration of his friends, who wondered why the lad was so enthusiastically
sold on the study of Hindi. Years later Gergan Tharchin recalled his impressions of that time:
"I still have in my possession the first primer of the Hindi grammar which I studied in Delhi
with great concentration. By the time I arrived in Ghoom I had confident control of Hindi. I
was well versed in the art of reading and writing the language. My expression—if I may say
so—was facile and the diction, being commensurate with the thought intonation, was accurate"
Tharchin's recollection of that time continued:
Before I was accepted and appointed as a teacher at Ghoom, Rev. Waismaa desired to sound
me out as to my background in order to screen and psychoanalyze me thoroughly He wanted
to prove my intellectual integrity, emotional balance, and ability to conform to the rules and
regulations of the Mission. With this intention in mind I was asked several questions by means
of letters. A questionnaire was sent me that dealt with topics of varied interest and diverse
aspects concerning my life. Some of the questions were: Are you a drinker? Are you a debtor?
I replied to these questions in the negative. He also wanted to know if I was married. Rev.
Waismaa also inquired if I were a smoker. I informed him that I was not, but lest he might
misunderstand me or accuse me of false information, I clarified the point by acknowledging
that I was not a smoker of cigarettes but was instead addicted to my beloved smoking-pipe, the
hookah. I only meant to be sincere. I had not meant to be a smart aleck.
Upon his arrival at Ghoom Mission, Dorje Tharchin had opportunity to come into close
contact with many Tibetans who had settled in the community at Ghoom. Although the hill
town of Kurseong some 2500 feet lower down had its Tibetan settlement, Ghoom was at this
time the first really large Tibetan outpost to be encountered in the District of Darjeeling as
the would-be-traveler makes his way up the Himalayan foothills from the plains of Siliguri.
These Tibetan villagers, like those at Kurseong, could be seen everywhere—thronging the
streets, lounging about, or serving as porters. Big, grimy, deep-chested men and women they
were, wrote one prominent resident of the area in 1900, "with unkempt pigtails, and clad
yncouthly in greasy sheepskins or blankets, and decked with massive turquoise trinkets."
Xheir huts, most of which were constructed of used-up kerosene-oil boxes and tins, were
often gaily decorated with multi-colored bunting that streamed down from poles which were
topped by yaks' tails and that bore a variety of symbolic gadgets to ward off evil spirits. In
addition, inscribed prayer flags fluttered in the wind from atop tall bamboo poles, they "wafting
their petitions to the countless demons who infest the air and springs and hillsides in the
neighborhood." The area resident, who had been the Medical Officer of the District, went
on as well to describe the personal hygiene of the people whom Dorje Tharchin would soon
be laboring among:
Few Tibetans are conspicuous for personal cleanliness, most of them wear constantly the
same suit day and night for months without changing, and often till it is a thing of shreds and
patches. Needless to say, a Tibetan garment is always a zoological preserve; and both here and
along the road it is no uncommon sight to see, as in [the rest of] India, both men and women
seated on the ground reciprocating kind and necessary attentions to each other's hair.18
s
Now since Tharchin was to spend five years of his life at the Ghoom Mission, it would
perhaps prove helpful at this point to sketch out somewhat its earlier history. Yet in order to
understand more accurately the origin and subsequent development of the Ghoom Mission
to the Tibetans, the reader will need to know something of the life and work of a man by the
name of Fredrik Franson, since from its very inception the destiny of this Mission station and
that of this man were most intimately bound up with each other. And hence a brief inquiry
into the life of one of the most fascinating characters in modern missionary history will not at
all be out of place here.
*
1
Described by some as "the spiritual giant that Church historians overlooked," and often
called "God's Torch," Fredrik Franson was born in Sweden in 1852. But at age seventeen he
emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1869, where they settled on a rural homestead
in the State of Nebraska. He became a Christian in 1872 and was moved by the Lord to begin
serving Him two years later, he eventually becoming widely known among Scandinavians
through his evangelism and writing. Beginning public evangelistic campaigns in 1877, Franson's
ministry "reached a high level of intensity and fruitfulness that continued unabated to 1908," the
year of his premature death. He won uncounted people to the Lord in all parts of the world.
Franson also founded churches—"often from the converts of a single campaign," set guidelines
for church fellowships, and founded seven missionary societies. In fact, he was probably the
greatest foreign mission society organizer of all time, at least in terms of the number founded.
For a full decade, extending from 1881, Franson ministered extensively in Scandinavia and the
rest of Europe, as well as the Near East and Russia.
Returning to the United States in 1890, Franson was instrumental in founding in October
in Chicago the first of these seven missionary societies. Called at first the China Alliance
Mission, it gathered together under his guidance a party of fifty missionaries to China, "the
largest contingent till that time ever to be sent to a foreign field." This effort by Franson was
but one of many he exerted in response to an appeal made by J. Hudson Taylor of the China
Inland Mission and other leaders of China's General Conference of Protestant Missionaries
which called for a thousand new missionaries to be sent to that land within the next five
years.19 The Swedish-American had read this fervent appeal while holding meetings in
Germany earlier that same year (1890). And thus began that special consecration to foreign
missions which soon became a hallmark of Franson's worldwide ministry.
This first missionary society of Franson's changed its name shortly afterwards, however,
to the Scandinavian Alliance Mission (SAM) "to provide for its wider scope." (Its Board of
Directors also voted Franson its General Director for life in 1902, and in later decades of the
twentieth century, the Board would have occasion one final time to change its name to what
has ever since been known as The Evangelical Alliance Mission, TEAM for short. This took
place in May 1949.) Four more missionary groups were sent forth by Franson and the SAM
in 1891 and 1892, of which two more went to China, one to Japan, and one to India. It was
the members of this latter group, in fact, who—under the personal inspiration and impetus of
Franson—found their way to Ghoom and established the Mission to the Tibetans of the
SAM. Indeed, SAM's indefatigable founder would himself have the joy of visiting this
Himalayan station twice in the following years, as the reader will shortly learn.20
Now this group that went to India and Ghoom consisted of twelve earnest young volunteer
missionaries from the United States, all of them of Scandinavian background, under the
leadership of one among them, the Rev. John F. Fredrickson, who was Franson's dearest
friend and former co-worker in America. Indeed, it has been reported that the inspiration for
commissioning this group to India had occurred one day in 1891 while these same two Christian
friends had been fasting and praying somewhere in the American Rocky Mountains during one
of their evangelistic forays into the westerly part of the United States. "The spiritual darkness
of Tibet," it was long afterwards reported, "was particularly on their hearts, and when praying
they realized that it was them that God was calling to work among Tibetans."21 Acting upon
this burden, Franson was able to inspire this group of twelve to go forth with the same burden.
Not long afterwards the group sailed from Vancouver, British Columbia, on 9 March 1892
bound for India as the first of what would be several SAM groups to be sent to that land. On the
way, the party stopped off in China, and two of the twelve, "more interested in getting directly
to the Chinese," separated themselves from the group at Shanghai. The rest reached Calcutta
on 30 April.
Fredrickson and A. E. Shoberg went up to Ghoom ahead of the rest to reconnoiter the
situation. It had been the original intention of the group to enter Tibet once proper preparation
had been made along its border with India. And since there were many Tibetans then living
in and around this particular Indo-Himalayan village $nd since, as well, there existed a good
military route that could easily lead the missionaries from there up to a mountain pass (the
Jelep La) some eighty miles distant which served as an entrance into the Land of Snows,
they decided to establish a mission station right at Ghoom where they could prepare themselves
for eventual entry into Tibet and where they were to find a sphere of labor among the
Tibetans, mostly coolies.* And soon afterwards all the missionaries assembled at the village,
with the seven women assigned quarters in a structure they named "Evelyn Cottage" and
the three men housed with an Englishman nearby. Evelyn Cottage was in those days and still
is today situated alongside—but set back from—-Tiger Hill Road near the Road's beginning
as it winds in ascending twists and turns towards its majestic hilltop lookout. The Cottage
immediately became the main headquarters building for the Mission that was to grow from
these humble beginnings; and here in those early days "they all met daily in the dining room
(.. for prayer, Scripture readings and language study." Furthermore, the Cottage would also
be frequented by some rather well-known Christian servants of God—first by SAM's founder,
and then others. During much of 1896, for example, it served as the home of one of the
famed "Cambridge Seven" mentioned earlier in the present narrative, Cecil Polhill-Turner of
the China Inland Mission (CIM). Moreover, in that same year the celebrated founder of the
CIM, J. Hudson Taylor, together with his wife, were honored guests of the Polhills for nearly
two weeks at Evelyn.22 But this Cottage was to be the place also, incidentally, where young
Tharchin would himself first live upon his initial arrival at Ghoom Mission in 1912; in addition,
some forty-five years after that it would serve as the residence for Tharchin and his second
wife on their short honeymoon back to Ghoom in 1956. Finally, Evelyn was the place where
in 1914 Tharchin hosted the world-renowned saint, Sadhu Sundar Singh.
Fredrickson and the other two men had in the meanwhile (and still in 1892) made a
further reconnoitering journey up to and across the Tibetan border just over the Jelep Pass
(over 14,000 feet) and slightly into the Chumbi Valley in order to survey the situation. This
* According to one historical account of these developments, there were three main reasons for initially settling
at Ghoom: (a) the cost of living was cheaper here than in nearby Darjeeling; (b) there were already other Tibetan
thissions in Darjeeling, and in consonance with Franson's principle of only going where the Christian gospel had
not previously been preached, Ghoom was decided upon; and (c) this smaller hill station was situated on an
important crossroads frequented by Tibetan pilgrims and traders. See Vappu Rautamaki, "The Free Church of
Finland Himalayan Mission and theNepalese," a 1994 unpublished Finnish-language historical account, drawn
from various sources, of this and the SAM Missions, including their labors in Ghoom, Sikk.im and along the
Bhutan border, now translated and published as Appendix F on pages 420-42 in Perry's monumental work of
scholarship, Nepali around the World; Emphasizing Nepali Christians of the Himalayas, 423.
journey was subsequently reported in some detail in the April 1893 issue of the Darjeeling
Kalimpong & Sikkim News, a small newsletter then being published by the Church of
Scotland's Eastern Himalaya Mission based in the Darjeeling District. The three missionaries—
Fredrickson, Shoberg and Fred Gustafson—left Ghoom on 4 November for the Tibetan
border with the purpose clearly in mind of "seeing a prospect for the evangelization of
Tibet." Carrying tents, food, etc., these hardy souls made their way the entire distance on
foot, making stops among other places at Kalimpong (where they were guests of Church of
Scotland missionaries); at Pedong just this side of the Sikkim frontier (where they had an
interview with the Catholic Church Fathers stationed there); and at Rhenock just inside Sikkim
(where they were guests of other Scots Mission missionaries, who entertained them with a
show of the magic lantern). Departing Rhenock at 6 in the morning on the 8th of November
they finally reached the top of the Jelep Pass at 11:30 the morning of the 10th, after having
made "a tramp of eight miles uphill." Here was found a lake just over onto the Tibetan side of
the Pass from which two of the men satisfied themselves with "a gulp of cold water." There
beside the lake these three American SAM missionaries "knelt down in prayer," full of
thanksgiving that they had been privileged by God to behold and actually to enter the land they
would now energetical ly seek to prepare themselves to evangel ize. Th is thus constituted, declared
the Newsletter, the occasion for "the first Prayer Meeting in the South of Tibet."
Almost immediately thereafter the excited trio made their way back to India via Gangtok*
where they had a meeting with British India's Political Officer for Sikkim, J. Claude White.
From him they requested permission to settle in Sikkim. Me could not authorize such a
request but suggested they prepare a petition which he would then present to the Sikkim
State Council.23 This would in two years' time prove beneficial for the establishment of a
SAM mission station in northern Sikkim not far from the Tibetan border. After their meeting
with White the three men crossed back into India and headed not for Ghoom but directly for
Darjeeling close by. They were indebted to the renowned Indian pundit, explorer, linguist,
lexicographer, ethnographer, educator and eminent Tibet scholar Babu Sarat Chandra Das
(1849-1917) for providing living quarters for the three at his famed Darjeeling home. It was
a lovely setting, to say the least. The Babu had "built for himself a neat house on a crag
overhanging a wooded gorge, which echoed at nighttime with the music of many waters that
tumbled along in the bottom 3000 feet below."24 Having in disguise gone some years before
(as the last of the great explorer Pundits) on a secret surveying mission through Tibet to
Lhasa for the British Government of India, he "naturally enough" had "named his dwelling
'Lhasa Villa'," and had "fitted it up in facsimile of the better-class residences in Tibet."25
While living with Das the missionary men—^through the help of the Pundit—engaged as
their language teacher the well-known Lama Sherab Gyamtsho, an old Mongol priest who
was serving the Tibetans of that area. And it is noteworthy that the very reading book they
used in learning the language was none other than the "Jaeschke" New Testament translation
that had been the fruit of the Moravian missionaries stationed in Tharchin's original home
area of Lesser Tibet in Northwest India. The Mongol Lama "seemed to be impressed by thé
reading, but made no comments as to its teachings." Though no Christian himself, Chandra
Das was nonetheless sympathetic with the three men's desire to reach Tibetans with the
Good News,26 for as Gustafson reported, "When we men were living in Darjeeling with the
explorer..,, he kept urging us to go north from here into Sikkim" where the greatest caravans
from Tibet "come right down through Lachung and follow the Teesta River valley on to
Kalimpong." This encouraged Shoberg shortly afterwards (in June 1893) to make a trip
through Sikkim, scouting along the river Teesta up as far as Lachung, the latter place—in his
estimation—making for a possible site to locate a mission station from which to enter Tibet.27
Shoberg returned to Ghoom with hopes for later development of such a station. (A subsequent
development did indeed occur at Lachung, but not, however, involving Shoberg any further.
It would instead be left for some of the lady missionaries from among the group of ten to
foster the work. See later in the present chapter.)
As the months went by the women missionaries began working among the Tibetan children
at Ghoom. At the same time Shoberg set up new living quarters for himself at nearby Kurse<bng
(elevation, 4930') where many Tibetans dwelt, while Fredrickson and Gustafson rented a
bungalow near Ghoom on Senchal Mountain. All the missionaries continued in their language
study over the next two years in preparation for the day when they could spread out and
establish additional stations along the Tibetan frontier. Yet while they were thus engaged, fruits
for the kingdom of God began to manifest themselves in their midst in remarkable ways. For
example, Fredrickson's own teacher, Jjeurah by name, a Tibetan monk from Lhasa, received
the Lord Jesus and was baptized, becoming an earnest and faithful worker. Not only did he
minister in translation work for the missionaries, he also served as an effective interpreter,
presenting "correctly and forcefully" to the lowly Sweeper caste in Ghoom and Darjeeling the
gospel messages of SAM leader Fredrickson. The members of this caste were cruelly denigrated
socially, so much so that even the public schools refused to admit their children as students. But
the SAM missionaries "had in mind the 'Inasmuch' of Jesus" and established schools for
them—an action which when coupled with their message astounded the Sweepers and their
children as they heard that God loved them also.28 Then, too, there was the conversion of one
of the missionaries' elderly and faithful women servants and her children. These all constituted
the commencement of people being drawn to Christ through the compassionate ministration of
God's laborers at Ghoom and other nearby communities.
With this small missionary band now having their homes in three different places and
endeavoring to carry on schools and meetings and works of charity in four villages where
their labors were being blessed by an encouraging number of converts, the stage was set for
a memorable visit by the SAM founder. For at this juncture Fredrik Franson—while on the
first of two extensive world tours he would make in his lifetime (1894-5 and 1902-8)—
arrived in April 1894 on an extended visit to India for six months. Sharing in the gospel work
with his fellow-SAM laborers, he traveled throughout various parts of the Subcontinent,
although he focused his greatest attention on the work among the Tibetan-speaking peoples
in Ghoom, the surrounding Darjeeling District, Sikkim, and the southern fringes of Bhutan.
For his mind was very much centered on Tibet, as was evidenced by what he said to his
fellow missionaries gathered that first morning in the prayer room located just inside the
front entrance to Evelyn Cottage. With the white tops of the majestic yet forbidding
Kanchenjunga massif quite visible off in the distance, Franson movingly observed to the
prayer group: "The snow mountains are here in front of us, stretching as far as we can see
from east to west. They are like the ramparts of an impenetrable fortress, blocking our way
into Tibet. But God made even them, and they are His. As we pray for the opening of Tibet
to the gospel, let us remember Luther's hymn, 'A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark
never failing.'" These words were very much in keeping with what one biographer of the
SAM founder has explained as the reason for his visit: "Franson felt that the purpose of his
trip was to encourage the missionaries and to spur them on. They themselves were still so
very new to the work that they looked to him for advice. He commended them for the
schools they had opened in four nearby villages. With seven single women on the field, this
work for children seemed a very appropriate approach."
During the months that Franson was in the Darjeeling/Ghoom area he tramped many
miles over mountain trails with his fellow laborers in the gospel, and continued to do the one
thing he loved the most: to witness daily to the unconverted. Yet many people wondered how
this frail-looking man could endure the dangers and hardships of such travel. But as one of
the SAM missionaries at Ghoom, A. E. Andre, wrote of him at the time of his visit:
Franson was tireless as a walker. The two of us have traveled several hundred miles in the
Himalaya Mountains. No matter the circumstances, he got along with and even seemed to
enjoy what was provided. He really did not give much thought to what he ate.... He was,
however, much frightened of precipices. It often happened when we were on the very narrow
paths with a sheer mountain cliff on one side and a dizzying chasm on the other that he cried
out to God for strength and crept forward on all fours with his eyes almost closed. On the other
hand, he had a great deal of courage when it came to something of an adventuresome nature.
He was very anxious that we shpuld enter closed Tibet without delay.29
One outstanding example^f the success of Franson's personal evangelism while on the
trekking trail and which had alohglasting impact on Christian endeavor in many fields was
what happened when he encountered a highly educated young man of Eurasian extraction
who was steeped in the Buddhist faith as a result of his Tibetan mother's devout upbringing.
One evening while traveling in Sikkim the young man arrived at one of the government
bungalows for travelers where he found Franson already there, and thus by custom they
would be sharing the quarters together that night.
They commenced to talk in English since the Buddhist was fluent in that language as well
as Tibetan and Hindi. "I hardly had time to greet him," said the Eurasian, "before he began to
ask me whether I believed in Jesus. As I didn't know who Jesus was, of course, I could not
believe on Him. The stranger ... then began to talk earnestly about Jesus and urged me to
become His disciple." This precipitated a lengthy argument, forthe Buddhist was now determined
to defend his faith as superior to the Christian faith. "Was not my religion as good as the Jesus
religion?" argued the Buddhist to the Christian Franson. Furthermore, he said, since "you are
trying to convert me, I'll tiy to convert you." With that, however, Franson countered with: "We
are accomplishing nothing by this. Come, get down on your knees before the living God."
Made quite angry by this suggestion, the young man refused.
Nevertheless, "the man was so persistent," he reported later, "that I could not get away
from him. It did no good to refuse," he added, "and reluctantly I bowed my kiêes with him."
After Franson "had prayed for some time, he urged me," said the Buddhist, "to pray and call
upon God" to save his soul. "I remained silent and even became angry because of his
insistence." But Franson would not give up. He was somehow convinced that this young
Buddhist would be won to the Lord, for, as the Eurasian reported, "the man/began anew to
call upon God and kept it up into the night, and his prayers became so insistent and earnest
that I didn't dare longer to oppose him." So, he ended, "I just surrendered myself to Jesus.
And since that moment I have been His happy follower."30
This young man, who thereafter became an earnest Christian and active worker for the
Lord, turned out to be Gergan Tharchin's future close friend and co-laborer in the gospel,
David Macdonald, son of a Scotch tea-planter near Darjeeling and a Tibetan-speaking
Sikkimese mother.* (David would himself become, in the words of Lord Ronaldshay, "the
fortunate husband of an admirable Nepali wife"!)f 31 Though brought up by his mother as a
devout Buddhist, the heritage young David could point to on his father's side, noted a lady
missionary in Ghoom at the time, was clearly Christian, inasmuch as his great-grandfather,
she wrote, was "the Dr. Macdonald who was a great evangelist in the [Scottish] Highlands."
Not only had the Rev. Dr. John Macdonald (1779-1849) been called "the Apostle of the
North"; he had also been elected in 1844 to serve as the second Joint Moderator (Gaelic) of
his Christian denomination, the Free Church of Scotland. In describing young David's state
of spiritual growth in 1896, Mrs. Cecil Polhill wrote as follows:
There has been a great deal of interest [in the Christian gospel] among the Tibetans lately,
though none have come right out. The young Eurasian Macdonald, who was till lately a
devout Buddhist, is keeping on steadily, helping us in all the meetings.... The leading Buddhists
write him threatening letters, warning him not to preach Christ, but he continues and is growing
in grace. Another Tibetan, baptized some years ago, but a very cold Christian, if one at all, has
come out very brightly and is very earnest. It is good to hear these two young men pray, and
to see their fellow Tibetans listening to them.32
Now because of Macdonald's acquaintance with many languages including Tibetan, he
was chosen to accompany the well-known British Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa in
1904 as an interpreter and translator. J And thus, in this manner, though indirectly so, was
Franson's earnest desire fulfilled to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into the very heart of
Tibet. For it needs to be noted that while in Lhasa, Macdonald had been invited by the Lamas
* To be most accurate, his mother was a Lepcha, the race of people believed to have been originally indigenous
to Sikkim. David's father had departed India when the lad was only six years old. The father, nonetheless, did
leave David's mother with what was then a generous sum of twenty rupees per month for the boy's education.
And in order that David (born Dorje) might gain enrollment in the famed Bhotia Boarding School of Darjeeling,
his mother had dressed him as a Tibetan. See Alex McKay, Tibet and the British Raj, 44.
t This would have been the Anglo-Nepalese lady, Alice Curtis. Alex McKay is incorrect, however, in stating (in
ibid., 44) that David Macdonald "became a Christian under the influence of his wife," as the paragraphs of the
narrative presented in the Text immediately above make plain.
t Indeed, writes Alex McKay, Macdonald's "understanding of the local languages and cultures was unmatched,"
adding that this Anglo-Sikkimese would become "the longest-serving of the British Raj's frontier officers in
Tibet," he serving there between 1909 and 1924. McKay, "Historical Foreword," in Peter Richardus, ed., Tibetan
Lives, xvi.
of the most holy Tibetan Cathedral, the central temple of Buddhism called the Tsuglag Khang
or Jo-khang, to read to them portions of "his [Macdonald's] Holy Book." It was an invitation
to which he most happily responded,33 and was an act the execution of which must have
undoubtedly constituted the first and only time in Tibetan history that the Christian Scriptures
had ever been publicly read aloud at this most sacred of all Buddhist temples in Tibet by
anyone whether from East or West.
In addition to this unusual privilege which Macdonald experienced in Lhasa, he was also
responsible for the distribution among monks and laymen in the Tibetan capital of the British
Bible Society's Tibetan Gospels,34 on which, it might be added, he had himself labored as one of
the New Testament Revision Committee's members during the preceding years at Ghoom.
But probably the most distinctive act he performed on behalf of the gospel in Tibet came on the
last day of his presence in Lhasa. On this very day when he and the Expedition left the capital
on its return march to India, Macdonald sent three of these same Gospels to the then Ruler of
Tibet, Ti Rimpoche.35 This Ruler was an extremely high and respected Lama whom the Dalai
Lama (the Thirteenth) had appointed to manage the affairs of State in his absence when he
himself fled to China from the Tibetan Holy City in the face of the approaching British Army
This temporary Ruler-Lama of Tibet, upon receipt of the'Gospels, granted an interview to
Macdonald that final day. Reporting the incident later, this recent Christian convert from Buddhism
noted that he found the Lama-Ruler quite anxious to know about "the white man's religion."
Whereupon the former Buddhist Macdonald had the unique privilege of speaking to this High
Lama of Tibet "about the one God and His Son Jesus Christ*"36 Macdonald, acknowledging
what he sensed was a deep spiritual darkness which enveloped the Tibetan capital, was able to
achieve a modicum of success in penetrating this perceived darkness, as is made evident in a
letter he wrote shortly after his arrival in Lhasa with the Younghusband Mission, part of which
follows:
When we asked the people why they would not agree to the Mission or the Europeans coming
they said the religion was different. But this is only an excuse. The truth is that they are afraid
of losing their independence. They have repeatedly told the commissioner [Younghusband]
that they are fighting for their religion. While at a village called Yong, I asked an old man what
there was in the four "Chortens" (hollow stone tombs), seen at a distance; he said there was a
"Lha," a god, and they worship him. Farther on I saw the tomb of an Indian Buddhist missionary
who had lived in Tibet twelve years, preaching and teaching, and now they worship him as a
saint. He is known as "Atisha."
It is a pity there are no Christian missionaries inside Tibet. I have had some opportunities of
witnessing for Christ on the way [through Tibet up to Lhasa], and I hope, D.V., to be able to do
something among the people as soon as I have an opportunity. One [Tibetan] soldier was
converted, and others are anxious to be taught. I do pity these people,-who bow down to idols
and do not know the true God. However, I am sure God will give them a chance of hearing the
good message of salvation, and I am glad in my soul that the day is not far distant. I have been
able to preach the gospel in Lhasa, and have distributed some copies of the Gospels.37
Now as the reader shall learn later in more detail, Macdonald was eventually (i) posted to
Yatung in southern Tibet in 1909 as British Trade Agent where he won others to Christ and
organized a group of believers in the Forbidden Land; (ii) a great helper to the SAM; (iii)
appointed a member of the Revision Committee that did indeed produce a revision of the
Tibetan New Testament; (iv) one of the chief reviewers of much of the entire Tibetan Bible
as it was being translated by the Moravians in Indian Tibet; and (v) a participant in the
revision of the Lepcha New Testament. Truly did there emerge much spiritual fruit from this
one brief but momentous encounter between the intrepid evangelist Franson and this young
Eurasian Buddhist!
Another timely conversion episode occurred through the instrumentality of the SAM
founder. This also tookplace in Sikkim and along the same route—the Kalimpong-to-Lhasa
mule track—on which he had encountered David Macdonald a short while before. It happened
that two missionary ladies among the original band of ten wished to take up work in Sikkim
using an indigenous helper as interpreter. Government passes were necessary, however, and
Franson therefore went with them to Rhenock, the first village inside the Sikkimese border
with India. And while there he preached the gospel as usual. The two missionaries found a
young Tibetan man lying sick and alone, in fact almost dead, by the roadside. Reviving and
helping him, they brought the desperate man to where he could hear Franson preaching
about heaven. Speaking to the evangelist through the interpreter, the fellow said hopelessly,
"I'm dying! I'm dying!" "If you are dying," said Franson, "you can go to heaven—if you
believe in Jesus Christ." "Tell me, when may I go there?" he asked with obvious sincerity.
Franson would later explain what he shared with the man at that critical moment: "We told
him, if the Lord had taken us home to heaven as soon as we began to love Him, he would
never have heard about Jesus at all, and that the Lord very likely wanted him to stay some
time on earth first, telling others about Him, and then he could go to heaven." Added the
evangelist, "He was satisfied with that."
Right there this young man whose name was Tsering received Christ and was baptized
by Franson who arranged for him to be taken to a hospital. There he rallied and became a
most steadfast and earnest witness of the gospel. When a few months later Franson had to
leave India he bade farewell to the Tibetan he had rescued from the jaws of a Christless
death, saying: "We'll meet again in heaven, Tsering!" For the next two years Tsering was to
bear a winsome testimony of Christ's salvation to Tibetans, Sikkimese and Bhutanese, after
which he died, "happily in the hope of heavenly glory."38
Further on in his lengthy visit to the East India Himalayas Franson performed still another
service for his fellow laborers in the gospel. His former co-worker in the American Midwest
and Utah, John Fredrickson, explained to him that the most promising lead for occupying
new stations on the Tibetan frontier lay along the southern Bhutanese border. The British
government had no objection to the SAM establishing a mission station so long as a favorable
vote were taken by the Bhutanese residents of the particular community concerned. A vote
taken turned out indeed to be favorable and, said Fredrickson, "I got a permit from the
[Bhutanese] government in Punakha to build a station near Ghunabatti. It's a place called
Buxa Duar,39 right on one of the trade routes down into India."
Now a piece of land at Buxa had been leased to the missionaries and a building constructed
by Fredrickson himself who lived there for a year while building it. It thus became the first
new station ever actually built by the SAM pioneers of India. "The house is nearly finished
now," reported the missionary to Franson, "and some of the ladies are hoping to move over
there." Whereupon the Mission Society founder gladly volunteered to escort two of the lady
missionaries, Emma Swenson and Beda Elofson, for the purpose of helping to open the new
station at Buxa Duar. They even rode part of the way through wild forests—noted for their
man-eating tigers—on two elephants which, with drivers, had been provided by the Bhutanese
Raja of the region himself. Eventually a third woman among the original seven SAM female
missionaries joined the work at Buxa Duar. She was Miss Anna Fredrickson, sister of John.
The Bhutanese appeared to be quite responsive to the word of God and in the ensuing
months and years the efforts of the missionaries and native workers produced some fruit
particularly among the children.40
Franson, deciding the ministry which God had called him to India for had been completed,
departed the Subcontinent on 28 September 1894 after having spent six busy yet most fulfilling
months there. But before leaving he made a commitment to îs dear friend John Fredrickson
that he would try to send from the States a printing press for the Ghoom Mission to use.
What had precipitated this offer was the fact that Franson, a prolific writer in other religious
fields, had set to work while in India to study Tibetan Buddhism. This resulted in his writing
eight different tracts that could be useful in the Tibetan work after he left. One of them was
in actual fact a small book, a 48-page treatise on the errors of Buddhism entitled, The
Religion of Tibet and the True Religion for English-Speaking Tibetans (Calcutta, 1896;
London, 1897), which was found to be so helpful that it was ultimately translated into Tibetan
for sending along with travelers into the Closed Land. All of these tracts which Franson
composed were translated into Tibetan but had to be printed on a mission press way off in
Calcutta. "You could use a Tibetan press up here in the hills," Franson told Fredrickson.
"And when I get back to the States I hope the Lord will give me one for you."
It needs to be recognized that, heretofore, much of the colporteur materials for distribution
among the Tibetan-speaking peoples in this part of India and the adjacent areas bordering
upon Tibet was dependent upon the literary output of the Moravians' lithographic press in
far-off Kyelang on the other side of the Indian subcontinent! During the two decades preceding
Franson's visit at Ghoom, and perhaps even earlier, the missionaries in the Darjeeling District
requested and received from the Brn. Heyde and Redslob at Kyelang case after case of
Tibetan translations of Bible portions as well as Tibetan-language tracts and pamphlets. Not
only were these materials requested for distribution among Tibetans in the Darjeeling area
but also among the peoples dwelling in the Tibetan-speaking territories of Independent Sikkim
and Bhutan, from "whence doubtless they will find their way to the eastern part of Great Tibet"
itself by means of traders and others bound for the Closed Land of Snows.41 But Franson was
now eager for a Press to be established at Ghoom itself which, as one of its consequences,
would obviate the necessity of having always to look to Kyelang, Calcutta and elsewhere to
provide the Mission's gospel literature for colporteur work among the Tibetans.
In support of Franson, God made it possible for the SAM Director to fulfill his commitment
made to the Ghoom Mission. For in 1898 a printing press with all of its additional relevant
equipment was shipped from America to India where it arrived safely that same year. And
thus was inaugurated the Tibetan Mission Press of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission at
Ghoom, which was the very instrument in God's hands that in the first instance drew young
Dorje Tharchin to the Eastern Indian Himalayas less than fifteen years later. Now besides
the more obvious advantages of having the Press, Fredrickson saw as well the opportunity
he had desired to provide work for some of the indigenous Christians and teach them a
trade. A case in point was the ethnic Tibetan named Djordan who was given employment
writing and reading proofs in the printing shop shortly after its inception. He received the
Lord Jesus into his heart, was baptized, and remained firm in his faith as a Christian.
Moreover, anticipating by some twenty-five years the long hoped-for fulfillment of
Tharchin's own dream, the India SAM leader had also wanted to publish a Tibetan paper for
distribution among the local and more distant peoples of that language; but to his great
disappointment he found this objective impossible to realize. This would have to wait for
Gergan Tharchin himself. But before his untimely death Fredrickson did labor together with
others (including the venerable Moravian missionary couple from far-off Kyelang, the Heydes,
who came over to Ghoom) to revise the so-called Jaeschke Tibetan New Testament which
in 1899 the Ghoom Tibetan Mission Press did begin to print in parts. And by 1903 or so the
more complete revision had likewise come off the fledgling printing press at Ghoom. It will
be recalled that it was the imprinted address at the back of this very New Testament that
had provided the essential information which impelled Dorje Tharchin in 1910 to write his
now celebrated—because oddly addressed—letter that was nonetheless safely received by
Rev. Waismaa and which explained this young Tibetan's desire to work in the Mission Press
at Ghoom as an apprentice. It should be noted, however, that the very first matter printed on
this newly-acquired Mission Press was a Tibetan hymnbook that, coincidentally, had been
prepared by missionary Waismaa himself, who had translated a number of popular Christian
songs, then composed and arranged the music for them.42
In 1900 famine struck certain Indian districts near and far afield from Ghoom, for which
relief funds were dispatched from other countries. The India SAM leader was named to be
the administrator of these funds in the famine-hit districts. Though Fredrickson was able to
tescue some two hundred starving and destitute children and place them in the care of the
Missionaries, the strenuous work and sickening toil attendant upon such administrative service
sapped his strength, allowing dysentery to set in upon his physically weakened constitution
and eventually causing his premature passing on 5 September in the far-distant city of
Ahmedabad, West India, while he himself was praying for his own family (his wife and two
small orphans) and the helpless famine-stricken Indian children. His death stunned all concerned,
especially the starving children whom he had placed in the various houses of the missionaries,
many of whom would in time be placed in a children's home established for them a few years
later at Ghoom Mission. Often afterwards these children would say, "Two have died for us,
Jesus and Sahib" (Fredrickson), and many of them—because of his sterling life and testimony
lived out before them—later became true followers of Christ. Cecil Polhill-Turner, himself a
dedicated missionary to the Tibetans on the China side of the Land of Snows, spoke most
highly of Fredrickson, having no doubt come to know this Swedish-American servant of God
while on a lengthy visit to Ghoom/Darjeeling in 1896: "He was a most devoted and singularly
unselfish character, ever at work, in and out of season. He was one of God's 4 salt of the earth.'
... The doctor, when asked what he died of, replied, 'He was tired—just worn out.'"43
In this same year (1900) a missionaiy couple with the "Tibetan Band" of the China Inland
Mission, the Edward Amundsens, who had been forced out by the Boxer Rebellion from
China where they had served in colporteur work for the British and Foreign Bible Society
along the Sino-Tibetan border, came for several years to Ghoom "to fill the gap made by
[Fredrickson's] death" and to assist the other missionaries in the printing and production of
literature. Amundsen himself also rendered valuable help in revising the New Testament. By
the end of 1900 the Mission Press "had produced in the Tibetan language a hymnbook with
seventy gospel songs [the aforementioned Waismaa hymnbook], an ABC Reader, a catechism,
some language lessons in Tibetan-fer English-speaking people, [a small history of India,]
Sunday School lessons for a year, [and] a number of tracts ..." Moreover, the Press was
also "printing hundreds of Gospels and other portions of Scripture" in revised form as they
were made available by the Revision Committee. The missionaries were quite justified in
feeling happy to have these items for use in their ongoing work of spreading the gospel of
Christ among the Tibetan peoples.
Moreover, Director Franson would have been justly proud of the quality work which the
gift of his Press to the Mission had produced. Although on a subsequent visit to Ghoom a
few years later (see below) Franson would see for himself the excellent results of the Press,
there is an extant eyewitness description of those results which has been provided by Rev.
A. W. Young who visited the Ghoom Mission in 1901. His judgment can be deemed quite
credible inasmuch as he was then the Acting Secretary of the Calcutta Auxiliary of the
British and Foreign Bible Society. On the day of his visit Young met as a guest with Br.
Heyde, David Macdonald and Edward Amundsen in one of their working sessions as members
of the Revision Committee of the Tibetan New Testament. Afterwards, Amundsen, who
had by this time replaced the deceased John Fredrickson both on the Revision Committee j
and as Chief of the Mission Press, took Rev. Young on a tour of the Press. The Bible Society
representative later described what he saw:
... At his invitation we go down to see the little printing office, and its surprising results. We
are shown sheets of the finished work, as clear and clean and exact as care can make them, and
we exclaim, "Do you mean to say these were printed here, in this small room, on this machine,
by these Tibetan youths, with these few fonts of type?" To eyes accustomed to the large and
well-appointed presses of Calcutta it seemed incredible. We could only imagine to what shifts
and contrivances Mr. Fredrickson must have been put, as he fought his way to that well-
deserved success which was crowning his efforts, when to our deep sorrow and loss he was
called away to heavenly service....
In Mr. Amundsen, we rejoice to think, he has found a worthy successor—a fact to which
the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, in their bright red covers, which have just been
issued from the press, bear eloquent witness. Very regretfully, we take leave of our three
friends at Ghoom, and turn our ponies' heads back towards Darjeeling, feeling privileged to
have this glimpse of a work so sacred and so absorbing.44
But Amundsen would be busily involved, during the few short years he was at Ghoom, in
other noteworthy scholarly endeavors. Not only did he faithfully and skillfully supervise the
Tibetan Mission Press and serve as a key member of the New Testament Revision Committee;
he also found time to produce a Tentative Edition of a Primer of Standard Tibetan whose
Preface was dated Ghoom, March 1903 and which was printed that same year at Ghoom's
Scandinavian Alliance Tibetan Mission Press. Having seen and reviewed a copy of this
work at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the present author has no hesitation in
observing that both Young and Franson would have taken great pride in the printing done for
this work as well—not only in the English text portions but especially in the Tibetan printing
portions too.
And finally, Amundsen had the privilege of revising Vincent C. Henderson's quite useful
Tibetan Manual that was printed at the Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta in the spring of
1903. Henderson's recognition of Amundsen's qualifications and his contributions made to
the revised edition is amply noted in that author's Preface, wherein he states: "The whole
work has been thoroughly revised by Mr. Edward Amundsen of the British and Foreign
Bible Society:—a gentleman of great linguistic attainments, probably the most erudite Tibetan
scholar in India.... He devoted time and great patience in revising this book at a time when
he was himself, in addition to his Mission work, occupied in bringing out a book of his
own"—the Primer mentioned above.
Fredrik Franson paid another shorter visit to India in 1905, which was just three years
prior to his death. This indefatigable traveler for the Lord was well into the third yearof his
second and final round-the-world tourthat would last till 1908, the year of his death. The first
month of his stay in India, which was during January-February, was spent initially at Ghoom
and later in Sikkim. His time at Ghoom was occupied with sizing up the entire SAM missionary
effort throughout the Indian subcontinent. He discovered that the situation had changed
considerably since his previous visit a decade earlier. For one thing, there were many more
workers on the field than the original ten, there now being a total of 23: eight belonged to the
Finnish branch of SAM, which Franson had aided in establishing in 1898; the Swedish division,
which Franson had also helped to found in 1899-1900, had six missionaries; while SAM of
North America had nine. These 23 laborers for the Lord were working out from seven main
stations: Ghoom, Ringim (later aka: Mangan) and Lachung in Northeast India and Sikkim;
Cooch Behar in the Duars along the Bhutanese border; and the other three divided between
Baltistan and West India.
Another difference in the situation from ten years before had to do with the Mission's
ethnic and geographic focus. "Up to this point," writes Alliance Mission historian Vernon
Mortenson, "the closed land of Tibet had been the focal point of interest." Spread out from
that center, he continued,
were many Tibetan people outside the borders of mountainous, forbidding Tibet. Denied entry
into the closed land, the missionaries could still work among the Tibetan people with the
expectation that, as these nomadic people went in and out of their country, those who knew the
Lord could become witnesses for Him. The SAM missionaries, having started in the eastern
area near Bhutan, entered Sikkim and, far to the west, Baltistan in Northeast Kashmir.45
But a new and quite promising evangelistic movement had recently manifested itself in a
remote area of West India among the aboriginal Bhil tribespeople who lived in the district of
Khandesh that today is part of the West Indian state of Maharashtra. Four hundred thousand
strong at that time, these people had never been embracers of Hinduism but had remained
faithful to their ancient animistic religious practices and were proving to be much more open
to the gospel than the Hindus. If all proved as promising in the near term as had appeared to
be the case just prior to Franson's arrival, then this new development would result in a
dramatic shift in strategic focus for the SAM effort in India.
Yet having quickly and quietly evaluated these new developments, but not wishing to
make any adjustments in personnel and location till first consulting and working with his
missionaries for several months, Franson bided his time and went off to Sikkim on gospel
1
itineration. There he found that Mrs. Fredrickson (the widow of John F.) and Miss Johanson
had established a good work in both Lachen and Lachung, at both places of which they had
helped to establish local churches.46 Furthermore, during his stay in Sikkim generally, Franson |
had the joy of baptizing more than thirty new believers in Christ, |
But during February-March the SAM Director, wishing in particular to witness the promising |
new endeavor among the Bhils and to be assured that their initial receptivity of the gospel was
genuine, made a lengthy visit to these tribespeople in company with several of SAM's missionaries. J
Convinced positively while there by what he saw firsthand, Franson now urged that his co- |
laborers in India inaugurate a new West India Field among these needy peoples before the |
opportunity afforded by the Bhils' openness to the gospel might slip away for lack of any |
permanent gospel workers among them. His recent experience in Burma afforded him the |
opportunity to see great numbers of animistic Karen people respond positively to the gospel j
At Ghoom: New Dimensions 207
because of the availability of missionaries to enter and preach among some of them; but in
those Karen areas where no gospel workers wejre available, those particular Karens turned to
Buddhism. Having now witnessed the openness among the Bhils in West India, the SAM
Director feared a similar fate might occur with the animistic Bhi Is in their turning to Hinduism
should there be no ongoing gospel proclaimed among them.
Accordingly, Franson, upon returning to Ghoom from West India, announced his decision
regarding the further placement of workers in a letter to a Swedish periodical dated 3 April
1905:
We have no intention of lying around and waiting for Tibet and Bhutan to open, while other
doors are wide open. We don't intend to place more missionaries up in the mountains than will
have good opportunity to work there. Although Tibet might open up, it will not, despite the
poetic glow that rests upon this closed land, be able to cause the missionaries to the Bhils to
regret their choice, since the Bhils are far more responsive than the Tibetans and the Mongols,
two peoples that are deeply entangled in the web of Buddhism.47
And in another letter the enthusiastic and energetic Director opined: "In Ghoom kings sit
waiting for a kingdom, but among the Bhils there is a kingdom waiting for kings." Which was
Franson's unique way of saying that in Ghoom missionaries of Christ the King of kings were
sitting around waiting for Closed Tibet to be opened at last and be claimed for Christ as His
"kingdom" while the "kingdom" of the Bhils was wide open waiting for some of these same
missionaries to come and preach Christ among them.48
As a result of Franson's urging, then, this new Field Mission was established later that
same year of 1905, shortly after the SAM Director departed Ghoom for the last time.* This
decision to expand the work in the direction of West India, of course, caused the focus of the
American SAM—in cooperation with its Swedish branch, the Swedish Alliance Mission—to
shift away from Ghoom and Northeast India. In the meantime, Finnish missionaries, including
the Waismaas, were evincing increasing interest in the work of the Ghoom area. So much
so, in fact,' that in 1906 the SAM of North America—in light of both this keen interest on the
part of the Finns and the dramatic shift in focus—decided to hand over to its Finnish division,
the Finnish Alliance Mission (FAM) which had sent the Waismaas out back in 1898, full
responsibility over the entire Ghoom area. Indeed, Franson's solution to the problem of
overlapping responsibility among several missionary-sending countries, notes Mortenson,
"was simple and direct": he divided it, making it clear, added the historian, that "each of the
sending missions was to have full authority over its own personnel and work." This meant
that FAM would exercise full authority in Northeast India, while SAM and the Swedish
Mission would do so in West India, with the division of responsibility in the latter region
between the American and Swedish missions occurring in 1907.49
Nevertheless, the SAM missionaries in Bengal and the Bhutan border area were able to
continue their work among the Tibetan-speaking peoples for the time being.50 Meanwhile, in
* From Ghoom Franson continued on his world tour that would take him to Baltistan, Leh in Ladakh, Karachi in
present-day Pakistan, Iraq, Iran (where he preached to, of all people, a settlement of Nestorian Christians),
Armenia in Turkey, and on eventually to South Africa, where he arrived a year later in April 1906. This globe-
trotter for the Lord would finally end his journey in 1908, returning to America at last, where he would breathe
his last breath shortly thereafter and pass to his heavenly reward. See Vernon Mortenson, God Made it Grow:
Historical Sketches of TEAMs Church Planting Work, 71-2.
1910 the Finnish Mission itself merged with the Finnish Free Church inasmuch as the latter
"represented exactly the same home constituency in Finland."51 These developments led to
a final name change for this mission in the eastern Himalayas: the Free Church of Finland
Himalayan Mission. *
When in January 1912 young Tharchin first arrived at the Ghoom Mission, he began to
teach Tibetan in the kindergarten section and Hindi in the upper primary class of the Christian
school which had been founded by the SAM.52 Here he taught from 1912 to the end of 1916.53
Normally he would prepare the Hindi lessons carefully at home prior to their rehearsal in the
classroom. Mr. Karma Sumdhon (or Karma Samden), who was then the Headmaster of the
Mission School, often assisted Tharchin in advance in the preparation of both the Tibetan and
the Hindi units. Upon his conversion to Christ the Headmaster had ever afterwards been
known as Karma Sumdhon Paul. But there hangs a tale of more than minor interest, since the
life and career of this particular gentleman happened to have crossed paths with those of
numerous other individuals who, like him, were to figure rather prominently in the life and
career of the protagonist of the present narrative, Gergan Dorje Tharchin.
But perhaps more significantly, the lives of these two contemporaries—Karma Paul and
Gergan Tharchin—when delineated more fully, present a very sharp contrast in how they
each responded to the Christian faith over the long term, once each of them had become
identified with it. Yet it must be noted that, interestingly enough, these two men had much in
common: both of them were Tibetans who had been born within two or three years of each
other inside British India quite near the Tibetan frontier but at opposite ends of the Himalayan
arc; both of them had been educationally and professionally "trained in Western culture
along Western lines"; both of them had become fluent in several different languages beyond
their own native tongue; both of them would become better than ordinary achievers in their
respective fields of endeavor; both of them had experienced continuous intercourse with
Western missionaries over a considerable length of time; and both of them, not unlike the
experience of most anyone else born into their particular lower-rung stations of life, had not
been immune to the harsher realities of existence but had encountered their share of the
"hard knocks of life." Nevertheless, with regard to just the Ghoom period oftheir lives, it can
be said that in the case of Gergan Dorje Tharchin, his was a life marked by much joy and
happiness, of solid Christian spiritual development, and a deepening sense of inward well-
being and fulfillment. Whereas in the case of Karma Sumdhon Paul, the reader may perhaps
be able to discern that his was a life marked by, yes, intense expressions at times of great
thankfulness to God for his mercy and grace, no doubt about it, but also by a nagging
* For a much fuller account of this and the SAM Missions' labors in the eastern Himalayas, including at Ghoom
and Buxa Duar and in Sikkim, see Miss Rautamaki's essay cited in an earlier footnote of the present chapter and
that appears in Perry, Nepali around the World, 420-42. A retired missionary of the Free Church of Finland,
Rautamaki has drawn her material from a variety of sources, including a two-sheet "Historical Review of the
Work of the Himalayan Mission" prepared in 1918 by missionary Waismaa himself.
undercurrent of sadness, disappointment, and disillusionment with life. Indeed, the note of
joy is difficult to find; and ultimately, there is manifested a dissatisfaction with, and a renunciation
of, the foreign religion from the West he many years earlier had embraced and an almost
palpable sense of relief in finding justifiable grounds—from his perspective—for returning to
his indigenous Buddhist practice.
It therefore now remains for the story of this other Indo-Tibetan to be told. Yet it must be
acknowledged here that without the coincidental arrival in Ghoom during this same period of
a noted Dutch scholar (Johan van Manen) who successfully urged upon Karma Paul to set
down his personal life story, little if any of what follows would likely have become known.
Quite fortunately, therefore, the primary source for the unfolding of K. S. Paul's personal
narrative is his own biographical account that only very recently has been entirely edited and
published in English.* It in fact forms part of three such personal accounts by those whom
one author of British imperial power vis-à-vis Tibet has described as "those who served on
the periphery of the imperial process."54 Here, then, in brief, is Karma Paul's remarkable
odyssey of inteitwining education, scholarship, Government service and religion that in the
end led from Tibetan Buddhism to Christianity and back to Buddhism in earnest; with Dorje
Tharchin, meanwhile, looking on from the sidelines as it were during much of the time of its
unfolding.
Karma Sumdhon Paul was born in 1888f at Jorebungalow village just southeast of Ghoom
Railway Station, his ancestors having originally hailed from distant Kham in East Tibet.
Karma's grandfather, together with the latter's wife and three sons, had gone to Tibet on
pilgrimage from their native land of Nepal, but upon their return they journeyed through India
and chose to resettle at Jorebungalow for the rest of their days. Karma was the youngest
male child of his grandfather's eldest son. His father, who became a Nepalese merchant,
enrolled Karma in a Hindi-speaking school in the village, where he learned to read and write
in that language. He was then sent off to school at Ghoom's famed Tibetan Buddhist Yiga
Cholling Monastery Here for the first two years beginning in about 1894, he was a pupil of
the pious old Lama Sherab Gyamtsho, who taught young Karma the Tibetan alphabet (even
as he had earlier done to the three Ghoom Mission missionaries and as he would also do a
*1t appears on pages 77-159 of Tibetan Lives: Three Himalayan Autobiographies (London, 1998), ably edited
Ky Peter Richardui> ofthe Kern Institute, Leiden University, Leiden, Holland. As just now indicated in the Text
above, this personal narrative by ICarma Sumdhon Paul constitutes the primary source in documenting the
outline of this Indo-Tibetan's life and career. And thus, his account published in Tibetan Lives will be cited quite
often throughout the remainder of this section of the present chapter dealing with K. S. Paul and his association
with Dorje Tharchin at Ghoom. The reader should therefore be aware that whenever passages quoted have been
derived from this particular published source, such will be indicated directly within the Text above (rather than
documented in the End-Notes for the present chapter), and shall appear at the appropriate place on each occasion
tjy using the simple designation TL (for Tibetan Lives) followed by the pertinent page(s); e.g., (TL 47-8).
t Internal evidence from Karma Paul's own account controverts Editor Richardus's indication of 1877 having
been Karma's birth year.
few years hence to the renowned Japanese monk-scholar and traveler to Tibet, Ekai
Kawaguchi). At age eight, having learned to read and write Tibetan, he withdrew from the
school to assist his father in his shop during the daytime. In the evenings, however, Karma
began to receive his very first English lessons at the Ghoom Mission School, and at the hands
of none other than the future British Trade Agent at Gyantse, David Macdonald. Yet as
Karma Sumdhon Paul candidly acknowledged in his personal narrative, the main reason for
his attendance there was because "I had heard that children received delicacies and toys at
Christmas"! {TL 80)
Having assisted his shopkeeper father in this manner until age twelve, Karma now began
attending Darjeeling's British High School until his father's death compelled Karma Sumdhon
to seek a job at the age of sixteen.* After initially working one or two years at Darjeeling's
court of justice as a petty clerk, he was appointed clerk to the hill station's Deputy
Commissioner. Soon thereafter, however, an unusual opportunity came his way as a result of
the arrival in Darjeeling—on his way to Greater India—of Tibet's second highest-ranking
Lama, the Panchen Rimpoche from Shigatse's Trashilhunpo Gompa. It was late 1905, and
the Panchen had come as a guest of the British Government of India, as represented and
planned for by their escorts from Tibet: the then British Trade Agent at Gyantse, Captain
(later Lieutenant Colonel Sir) W. F. O'Connor and the Trade Agency's Medical Officer,
Lieutenant Dr. Robert Steen. Thanks to his ability to express himself fluently in both Tibetan
and English, Karma Sumdhon was appointed interpreter to Dr. Steen. "Due to my excitement,"
1
he explained,
I could not sleep the night before we left. At ten a.m. the next day the party—which included
the Panchen Lama, His younger brother, His two tutors, Captain O'Connor, Dr. Steen, their
staff (including myself)t and servants—traveled from Darjeeling to Ghoom on a special train.
Here my friends and next of kin came to say goodbye. They gave me some tea, pocket money
and a ceremonial scarf Through his tears my uncle said, "You must go to a foreign country not l
because you are forced to, but to reap the fruits of the education your deceased parents, whom j
we represent, enabled you to follow!" j
Needless to say, I felt extremely proud and happy for being able, through God's mercy, to j
become acquainted with the Panchen Lama. This meant I could accumulate great virtue free of j
charge, contrary to those willing to pay 1,000 rupees or more for a mere glimpse of Him. [TL 82-3) j
. 'I
Upon this distinguished Tibetan party's arrival at the distant Northwest Indian city of
Rawalpindi, the Panchen and his entourage were welcomed by none other than the future
* Interestingly, Karma Sumdhon would be appointed decades later by the British Indian government to be this
High School's Head Lama. And Gergan Tharchin would be the very first person to whom Karma Sumdhon would
confide this information, and even before the news had been officially announced. See letter, K. S. Paul to
Tharchin, Ghoom, 1 Aug. 1933, ThPaK. It may be of further interest to note that this British High School at
Darjeeling (better known as Darjeeling High School) had as its antecedent two schools which in 1891 merged to
become the D.H.S. These were the Bhotia Boarding School (that from its very inception in 1874 had as its j
Headmaster the renowned Babu and Pundit mentioned earlier, Sarat Chandra Das) and the Darjeeling School. |
t Another member of this staff, serving even more prominently than K. S. Paul as one of the Tibetan interpreters, |
was Dorje Tharchin's future friend and associate in the gospel to the Tibetans, the Reverend Evan Mackenzie of |
the Church of Scotland Mission at Kalimpong who at that time was the shepherd of the Tibetan Christian j
congregation there. His replacement upon his retirement from the mission field in 1924 would be Gergan' I
Tharchin himself! See Volume II. Chapter 16 of the present work for the details, as well as for a more detailed; j
description of the Panchen Lama's visit to India. ; j
British King-Emperor George V, the then Prince of Wales. The Princess of Wales was there,
too, to welcome them. Traveling thereafter through the entire breadth of the Subcontinent
down to Calcutta, the Tibetan party and their British government escorts (including the seventeen-
or eighteen-year-old Karma) visited many important religious and secular sites along the way.
After a short stay in Calcutta, where the Vice-Pontiff of Tibet and his entourage were
feted with a Royal Reception by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Panchen and his
party returned to Tibet in January of 1906. Karma Sumdhon accompanied the Lama to his
ecclesiastical seat near Shigatse, where the humble Tibetan from Jorebungalow would now
be employed—by permission of his master Dr. Steen and Captain O'Connor's successor at
the Trade Agency, Lieutenant F. M. Bailey*—to instruct and demonstrate the use and
enjoyment of all the Western objects the Panchen Lama had carried back to the Snowy
Land from the warm distant South: everything from cameras to bicycles! Karma Sumdhon,
who at this moment was but five or six years younger than the Tibetan Vice-Pontiff, would
be thus occupied here for nearly ten months.
Leaving Shigatse at last, the eighteen-year-old Karma returned to his regular employ as
translator-interpreter to his master Lieutenant Dr. Steen at Gyantse's British Hospital. He
would serve Steen and his successor for about two years, after which he obtained employment
as confidential clerk to Dorje Tharchin's future friend, Lieutenant Bailey, currently the new
Trade Agent. At this point in Karma's story, however, it needs to be mentioned that when the
Chinese Imperial government in 1906 appointed Chang Yin-tang as its new senior Amban or
Representative to Lhasa, Chang had asked, while at Darjeeling on his way there, for a number
of English-speaking Tibetans to serve him at the Tibetan capital. As it developed, one of these
very Tibetans employed by Amban Chang happened to be young Karma's paternal uncle. And
during Karma's employ as confidential clerk at the Trade Agency, he would always make sure
to post his uncle's letters to Darjeeling at the Gyantse post office as they were received from
Lhasa for forwarding on to India; and he also saw to it that all letters sent to his uncle reached
his private servants at Lhasa. "My dealing with my uncle's mail and working as a confidential
clerk for Lieutenant Bailey," recalled Karma ten years afterwards,
continued without difficulty for about ten months until, on 13 September 1908, my superior accused
me of forwarding secret papers regarding Tibet to my uncle. Needless to say, after all my personal
belongings were inspected, no confidential matters were found. I soon discovered this false
accusation had been made by those eager to see my downfall. They included Sergeant Johnson, a
telegraph signaler who was later appointed Head Clerk in the British Trade Agency Having
committed a breach of trust by misappropriating government cash, he later shot himself55
In spite of my innocence, Lieutenant Bailey dismissed me on 14 November. I then stated to him
I would never work for the Government of Tibet or China.... I wished to work for the British
government only. (TL 108-9)
Though wrongfully dismissed by Trade Agent Lieutenant Bailey, Karma Sumdhon would
be fully exonerated many years afterwards by the same official who had terminated his
service at Gyantse in the first place!—though now he was Lieutenant Colonel Bailey, and
* The same Officer Bailey, incidentally, who just two years before, had pleasantly surprised fourteen-year-old
Tharchin and the other villagers of Poo by his sudden appearance on Christmas Day and spreading Christmas
cheer all around with his and his fellow explorers' gift of 30 rupees to them. See earlier in Chapter 3.
no longer simply the Trade Agent but now the Political Officer Sikkiml Here is how, in
Chapter 16 of his autobiography, Karma Sumdhon Paul, writing in 1927, described what
finally happened:
Once dismissed by the representative of the British government at Gyantse in 1908,1 promised,
come what may, never again to serve a Tibetan or Chinese superior. With the proverb in mind,
"There is no reason to have a dirty face, when you are not ill," I continuously tried to return to
the ranks of British Civil servants. Petitions addressed to Sir Charles Bell (the Political Officer
at Gangtok and also in charge of Yatung, Gyantse and Bhutan) were of no avail.
On 3 November 1915 I explained my problem in person to the Governor of Bengal, His
Excellency Lord Carmichael, during his visit to Darjeeling. Having first comforted me like a
father with the words, "Every true cause bears fruit, however long it may take," Lord Carmichael
promised that because this matter lay beyond his jurisdiction he would speak with Sir Charles
about it. However, years passed without any reaction at all in spite of my many letters.
Then, my one-time superior at Gyantse and now Lieutenant Colonel F. M. Bailey succeeded
Sir Charles Bell (who had never been popular among Tibetans).* As soon as the former had
heard of my situation from his personal assistant, a meeting was arranged on 27 March 1922.
Bailey Sahib was very glad to see me after so many years. After advising me to write a new
petition, he introduced me to his wife with the words, "This is my friend Karma Babu, whom I
have not seen since 1908. He is an honest man with a strong character!"
Lieutenant Colonel Bailey's official reply reached me on 1 May 1922. it ran as follows:
"Karma Babu, you henceforth have the right to serve the British government in any department
you wish to choose." You can imagine how immense my joy was. For, after fourteen years, my
innocence had been proven. Both A-chung Babu (the Special Agent at Pedong and later
Tibetan Sub-Deputy Collector of Darjeeling) and Mr. Laden La (the Assistant Superintendent
of Police at Darjeeling)! were informed of the contents of this letter.
An Indian saying runs, "The truth cannot be consumed by fire. The truth cannot be washed
away by water. The truth cannot be cut down by a sword. In the end truth conquers all." 1
therefore request my readers not to give up honesty. It is, after all, the best policy. (TL 154-5)
In the meantime, having in the summer of 1908 taken to wife a young lady of Gyantse
* As the reader will learn in future chapters of the present work, both Bailey and Bell were to become friends of
Gergan Tharchin, especially the latter. Had the ethnic Tibetan Tharchin been aware of Karma Paul's opinion that
Sir Charles lacked popularity among Tibetans, it would have come as quite a surprise to him, even as it did to Alex
McKay, a modern-day authority on the careers of those frontier officers who served the British Raj in the latter's
relations with Tibet. Writing in his "Historical Foreword" to Tibetan Lives already referenced in an earlier
footnote, McKay offers an explanation for this denigration of Bell by Karma Paul that appeared in the latter's
favorable discussion of Bailey, his superior during the years of his employment with the British in Tibet. First
describing the very close ties of friendship which Bell established with the then ruling Dalai Lama of Tibet and
the development of the Englishman's great understanding of the Tibetans, McKay then makes the following
observations (xvi): "... it comes as a surprise to read Karma Sumdhon Paul's comment that 'Bell was never
popular with Tibetans.' This may be an indication of the tendency for local employees at that time to associate
themselves with a particular British officer, who acted as their patron. As the British frontiersmen did not always
get on well with each other, or agree with each other's policy initiatives, their local employees were often caught
up in these conflicts and naturally adopted the views of their patron."
fSonam Wangfel Laden La, who for many years served the British in the Darjeeling Police force and served the
British in Tibet as well, was yet another of Tharchin's many friends, whose career profile is developed elsewhere
in the present work on Gergan Tharchin. He, too, had accompanied the Panchen Lama on his pilgrimage through
India in 1905, when by that time Laden-La was already arising figure in the Darjeeling Police organization.
It was probably during Karma Sumdhon's two years with Lama Sherab Gyamtsho at the Yiga Cholling
Monastery School, incidentally, that the former had first met Laden La; for the latter had lived with and studied
under the learned Buddhist monk between 1894 and 1898 in furthering his knowledge of classical Tibetan and
Buddhism.
noted for her talent as a singer, and later that same year having lost his confidential clerk's
post with the Trade Agency, Karma and his wife Yang-dzom returned to Darjeeling. But
very soon afterwards, and now leaving his wife at his parent's home, he accompanied his
brother, T. Wangyal (then on year-long leave from his duties as Darjeeling's Sub-Divisional
Magistrate), on the latter's pilgrimage to Lhasa, where they would remain for more than ten
months in the company of another of Karma's brothers, Jampey, who had served earlier as
an English translator to Tibet's religious and secular head, the Dalai Lama. Here in Lhasa
the two brothers from India would become thoroughly acquainted with the cultural—
particularly the religious—life <rfthe Tibetan capital, Karma recording in his diary the numerous
festivals and ceremonies he and his brothers attended and the many religious sites they
visited.
But among the many events Karma Sumdhon described in the course of his lengthy
account of their stay at Lhasa, he made a point of noting the following incident. Not long
after their arrival, he writes in his Autobiography, "a clever and very careful Tibetan government
official asked me without success to work for him." This was none other than Sa-dbang
Tsarong, a member of Tibet's elite Kashag, the four-man advisory Cabinet to the then ruling
but at that moment absent Dalai Lama. "It was his ambition to improve life in Tibet," explains
Karma. But being opposed to this idea by Tsarong's colleagues, he adds, they "sought to do
away with him for good." Indeed, claims Karma, "in 1913 monks murdered him and his very
promising son at Zhol [or Sho], a village at the foot of the Potala"—the Palace of the Dalai
. . rvfw
Lamas.* (TL 109)
Arriving back in Darjeeling on the next to the last day of 1909, Karma Sumdhon would be
approached by a soon-to-be dear and cherished friend of Dorje Tharchin's for many years to
come: Miss Anna Kempe (see much more about her shortly in the present chapter). A missionary
of the Free Church of Finland Mission at Ghoom (formerly known, of course, as the SAM
Mission), Miss Kempe now asked the recently returned young traveler to Lhasa "to become
her private tutor in classical and colloquial Tibetan." (TL 153) She, like him, made her home at
this time in Jorebungalow. Three months later, having proven to Miss Kempe and others his
facility in this language, Karma Sumdhon was appointed a teacher at the Missionary School in
Jorebungalow, where he conducted a Tibetan class for between seven and ten boys. "In the
years to come," recalled Karma some ten years afterwards, "a number of them, including a
son of mine, were awarded with Middle School Scholarships by the British government,"
enabling them, he added, "to attend an English High School." (TL 153-4)
Miss Kempe, being Miss Kempe, now began to supervise Karma's study of the Holy
Bible of the Christians, which lasted from 1910 to 1913, in the last year of which he did
become a Christian. This period in his life, however, was not without its share of troubles,
* It should be stated here that the successor head of this highly influential and extremely wealthy aristocratic
family, known to Westerners as Tsarong II, was to become one of Gergan Tharchin's closest and most intimate
friends inside Tibet. The development of their close ties of friendship and mutual admiration for each other is
discussed at various places in subsequent chapters of the present work.
Though it may have been true that Tsarong I and his son had been murdered by hostile monks, there continues
to be lingering speculation that the man whom the Dalai Lama installed as the new head of this aristocratic family
may have himself been behind the elimination of the original head of the family See elsewhere in the present
narrative for the details.
primarily because of his exposure to the foreign faith which he had ultimately embraced.
Writing retrospectively of these events in 1918, Karma Sumdhon confided to the pages of his
life story the following details of what had transpired:
[Miss Kempe] and her friends, all non-Buddhists, despised the religious customs of Tibetans.
When these missionaries pressed my family to become Christians, I prayed to God, "How can
I obtain salvation and be saved from damnation in hell? Should I accept Christ to find peace of
mind, although my parents were not aware of His existence?"
My comparing Buddhism and Hinduism with Christianity resulted in openly confessing the
latter religion on 21 September 1913. However, my wife and I were not baptized earlier than on
November 5. Between these two dates my friends and relatives, who regarded Christianity as
the foe of Tibetan Buddhism, continuously tried to force me to review my decision. I nevertheless
felt eternally blessed by God's grace and prayed that the gospel would reach each and every
corner of the world bringing about salvation amongst the Tibetan people, too. ( T L 154)
Meanwhile, by the time of Dorje Tharchin's arrival on the scene, the Finnish Mission at
Ghoom had elevated the newly-converted Christian, Karma Sumdhon Paul, to the post of
Headmaster of their Ghoom Middle English School, the very school where Tharchin—with
kindly and generous assistance from the Headmaster—was now employed as a Tibetan and
Hindi teacher.* Karma Paul's appointment as Headmaster had come about, he wrote in
1918, "through God's ineffable mercy." Indeed, he gave his "most humble and sincere
thanks to the Unchangeable Master of Love and the Rock [Christ Jesus] for all His help in
time past. I again pray for His guidance throughout my future life." {TL 154)
Nearly ten years would go by before Tharchin's newly-acquired friend from Jorebungalow
would commit to his autobiography anything further about his life as a Christian. But when
he finally did, his attitude towards the newfound faith had radically changed for the worss
from the Christian point of view. True, during the ensuing seven years following his conversion*
Paul had continued to study the Christian Scriptures with great zeal, and had deemed it his
* Dr. Cindy Perry has provided an historical profile of the Ghoom Mission School. It had originally been
founded, she explains, in conjunction with a children's home that had been established at the mission station to
take care of the children who had been orphaned as a consequence of their parents having died of starvation in the
famine of 1900 mentioned earlier in the present chapter. Called "Sparrow's Nest," this children's home together
with the connected school had become one of the most important Christian works undertaken by the SAM/
Finnish Mission. Established in 1904, the small elementary school had initially enrolled 42 pupils from different
nationalities and religions. The missionaries, eager to have girls study at the school, created separate classes for
them. Then, in 1910, the school became independent and commenced "to follow the official state curriculum." it
was at this time, in fact, that Karma Sumdhon, "a qualified Tibetan-speaking teacher," became its Headmaster.
"Anna Kempe, Mia Lipponen and Karma Paul," adds Perry, "developed the school so that it became an English
secondary school in 1917"—-the year in which Dorje Tharchin would depart for Kalimpong.
To round out the story, by 1924, which was the very next year following Karma Paul's dismissal as Headmaster
(see further in the Text above), the school could boast of 102 students and six teachers. "Almost all the children,"
notes Miss Perry, "voluntarily joined Sunday schools and other free-time activities." But in 1925 a decision was
made by the Mission's field committee which many subsequent missionaries deemed to be extremely unfortunate
and very shortsighted: the school, argued the committee, had to be closed out of fear that, in the words of Miss
Perry, "government support, and non-Christian school inspectors, board members and teachers would have too
much piipwer." Greatly annoyed by this development, later missionaries felt the school could have served as a
way fcTmake contact with students' families and the entire community. "The highly esteemed secondary school,"
Perry concludes, was replaced by an elementary school that in 1929 had 70 students. It would go on to be
expanded once again into a secondary school, and when the Mission finally left Ghoom decades later, it was taken
over by the state. Nepali around the World, 431-2.
— \
"supreme duty" to attend faithfully, with his "Indian, Nepalese and European brothers and
sisters" in Christ, all annual Christian conferences, Christian Endeavor meetings and open-
air preachings. (TL 156) He had even co-translated an edition of a substantial booklet entitled
New Tibetan Hymns that was published by The Mission House in October 1918 for the use
of the Tibetan Christian community there and elsewhere.56 Moreover, Karma Paul stressed
the point that his work as Headmaster of the Ghoom Mission School did not prevent him
"from achieving the second best result three times in the Annual Sunday School Examinations
in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Acts of the Apostles." (TL 156)
Having enumerated these things, however, this Tibetan convert to Christ went on to
acknowledge that a feeling had grown inside him that his "belief in a foreign religion
may well have been a serious mistake." He confessed, furthermore, that "this doubt
was intensified by the continuous hypocritical conduct of the missionaries towards me
and my family. After realizing that, 4 Whatever religion you choose to follow, you shall
achieve the desired salvation,' I gave up Christianity in 1920. From that moment on I
studied Buddhism more than I would have ever done if I had not once been a Christian."
(7X156)
But though doubtless his perception of the Ghoom missionaries' apparent hypocrisy was
a significant contributing factor to Karma Paul's renunciation of the foreign faith, it would
appear that what was a far more significant reason for renouncing his Christian identity was
the severe twin blows which had cruelly fallen upon him within several months of each other
and for which implicitly if not explicitly he attributed blame to his unappreciative Master,
Jesus. As a matter of fact, the opening clause of his autobiographical description of these
"merciless" events would seem to support such a conclusion:
While slaving for Jesus, two of my sons died. The fact that both were buried according to
Christian rites meant I had to bid them farewell forever. With tears in my eyes I stood at their
graves and said, "Goodbye, dear sons, I am returning to Buddhism." Who is to blame for such
a thing?
My wife died several months later aged thirty. Unfortunately, she did not see her mother
since our arrival at Darjeeling in 1908. Her death caused the following verses to come to my
mind.
My dearest beloved friend Mrs. Karma Yang-yom-la,
your leaving us behind in mournful helplessness has made
me realize in full that this world is an illusion.
I shall always remember your kind deeds and love; I pray
you may have a perfect, precious life in the world beyond. (TL 156)
One can perhaps find expressed between the lines here that in the opinion of this convert
to a foreign Western religion he had been harshly dealt with by a supposedly all-loving and
compassionate God despite his near-slavish faithfulness to Him, to His requirements, and to
the expectations of His more mature followers. As far as Karma Sumdhon Paul was
concerned, Jesus had been an ungrateful, pitiless god—an ogre of the worst sort who, for
whatever reason, was displeased with him and had in consequence inflicted extremely cruel
punishment upon him. And hence, he thought, why should I follow him and serve him anymore?
Karma Sumdhon Paul's recanting of Christianity in 1920 and a return to Tibetan Buddhism
was, of course, to bring him into direct and serious conflict with his Mission employers.* "It
stands to reason," he wrote in 1927, "that; after my backsliding, the missionaries of the Free
Church of Finland no longer considered me suitable to act as Headmaster of their school at
Ghoom." Nevertheless, three years would pass before he wduld officially be dismissed; but
it was coupled, he remarked, "with false accusations." "Indeed," he concluded, and perhaps
with some bitterness, "we find white and black sheep amongst followers of every religion
and under subjects of every nation." (TL 156-7)
Despite this change of heart towards Christ and His Church by this fellow Tibetan friend
of his, Dorjp Tharchin, though no longer at Ghoom by the time of K. S. Paul's dismissal, was
still keenly aware long afterwards of his indebtedness to this remarkable man. As one who
always sought to see the good side of every person, Tharchin in later years would often be
heard to speak kindly in casual conversation about Karma Sumdhon—and in words always
tinged with a deep sense of immense gratefulness and appreciation for all that the Headmaster
had done for him during his entire st^y at Ghoom.
On his part, there likewise developed in Paul a deep respect and admiration for the
unwavering Tibetan Christian from Poo in the course of the latter's rise to prominence in a
number of cultural and intellectual fields of endeavor, not least of which was his teaching and
headmastership experience within the Great Closed Land itself as well as his founding and
longtime publishing of his famed Tibetan Newspaper. The two of them, in fact, corresponded
frequently with each other and visited one another wheneveriheir two paths would cross—
whether at Ghoom or Kalimpong or wherever—until the former Ghoom Headmaster's death
sometime in or after 1967.f
In his various extant letters to Tharchin found among the latter's Papers, one can easily
discern what one early critic of Paul's autobiographical narrative was quick to notice. "From
K. S. Paul's biography," wrote P. H. Pott in 1951, "we can picture him as a capable, perhaps
more or less pedantic, schoolteacher, who had an eye for everything that happened around
him and had outgrown his early, original surroundings."57 But one can also discern an unhealthy,
even tiresome, expression of low self-esteem coupled with a constantly recurring, if more
subtly expressed, theme of deep personal insecurity. These characteristics, as the reader
* That Karma Sumdhon Paul was very much in earnest about his decision to re-embrace his former faith is
attested to by a passage from Phuntsog Lungtok's own autobiographical account of this period. Completing his
personal life story in 1924 for the Dutchman Johan van Manen down in Calcutta, he describes in Chapter 20 of
it a trip he made back to Ghoom the year before, his visit with his friend Karma Babu, and what he could observe
of his religious practice. Regarding the latter, Phuntsog Lungtok could write thus: "He is a former Christian but
now honors an image of [the fourteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist Reformer] Tsong Khapa and lights sacrificial
butter lamps on the altar in his house again." Tibetan Lives, 48. Furthermore, Karma Sumdhon would go on to
become a prominent Buddhist Lama, even serving—as mentioned earlier—as the Head Lama of a Government
high school. Indeed, therefore, the return was complete.
t Just as Editor Richardus had been mistaken about the year of Karma Sumdhon's birth, so he was grossly
mistaken regarding the date of his demise; the Dutch editor having indicated the year of death to have been in
about 1935. Yet found among the Tharchin Papers were a number of Paul's signed letters to Tharchin Babu dating
from as late as the 1950s and 1960s, the last of them bearing a date of 13 June 1967. Karma Sumdhon would
spend his retirement years in Ghoom, incidentally, still continuing to teach Tibetan to students, scholars, and:
even to several more Ghoom Mission missionaries. See Perry, Nepali around the World, 432.
will learn in due course, stand in sharp contrast to the bold, robust, far more self-assured
Christian personality that was a hallmark of Gergan Tharchin's character.
For example, a lengthy passage from Sumdhon Paul's letter of 16 May 1953 to his friend, who
now dwelt at Kalimpong, is quite representative from among his letters in delineating these various
character traits of the former Ghoom Headmaster. Now retired from all public and private
institutional employment, Paul was nonetheless careful to indicate several of his own past
accomplishments by means of his use of outdated letterhead stationery showing his former positions
of employment as well as having affixed a rubber-stamped closing that recapitulated much of the
same; thusly: Ex-Tibetan Professor, Darjeeling Government College; Retired Head Lama,
Government High English School, Darjeeling; Ex-Tibetan Professor, Calcutta University.
In the letter itself—as edited by the present author for easier comprehension—Karma Paul
can be seen falling all over himself in thanking the Tibetan publisher for having "spent money
for this humble unworthy soul" by sending Paul a gift parcel containing the latest edition of the
Tibetan Second Book that had just come off Tharchin's by now well-established Press. A
very popular tome of some 100 pages, it served very well as a Tibetan language reader to all
and sundry. But, then, the grateful Paul launched into a paragraph full of encomiums in recognition
of Tharchin's various other accomplishments, at the same time pointedly referencing—with
just a hint of envy displayed—the Babu's relationship with the high and mighty of this world:
I am sure you have many who will praise you for your wonderful labors in bringing our own
nation and people up to the same level with the other [nations]. Among these, take me as one
of your ... well-wishers for your great and strenuous labors, for which you are worthy. And 1
give my share of hearty congratulations and blessings, though mine may not be worthy [to be
compared with that of] the other more prominent, rich and great scholars and officials with
whom you are so well-acquainted. Yet, in God's name, I the humble and true friend, and your
well-wisher, offer his share [of praise] to you for all your extraordinary labors. "If God be
willing, may we see the fruits of our labors, i.e., the [coming together] very soon in the future
of innumerable Tibetans as a great nation and people in the world."
Returning to the Tibetan Second Book once more, Karma Paul had something further
praiseworthy to say about it, though in the same passage he now and again took deprecating
aim at himself once again:
Every sensible Tibetan teacher—either in a school or in a private family or in a private tuition
setting must try to use it as a course book for the benefit of the people ... Every sensible and
great person would not think of ignoring such things as gold or silver; how, then, can they
ignore wisdom that is not at all comparable to the things of this world? Though I am a poor old
man and a nominal petty teacher, I would [gladly] choose your Book first rather than choose
money Because, though the book is a small one, yet, we can obtain an ineffable treasure and
blessing for this and the next life. So, yet a fool I may be, nevertheless I would have wisdom
rather than worldly wealth. So, may God grant it to me, and in His name grant it to all who are
hankering after the true wisdom. So, may God bless your works abundantly and help you to
give us more food (Knowledge), especially to me, Karma, who is in need of it very much,
inasmuch as Karma is a helpless wretched soul. I congratulate you heartily for the Book.
But then he waxes more personal, gently taking Tharchin to task at the outset for not having
dropped in to see him and his wife at Ghoom (Karma Paul having married again sometime after
the loss of his first wife) when the Babu and his family had spent a week at nearby Darjeeling:
Of course, I cannot tell a lie here, being a true and faithful old friend of yours, whether you believe
it or not on account of our different Faith.... I tried once to see you at the Beechwood [Hotel?],
Darjeeling; but being an unfortunate soul, I could not see you, though I have nothing about me
but a mouth and empty hands; yet, as a true and faithful old Karma, I wanted to see you.
Following upon this self-denigrating passage, he insists on being frank with Tharchin
once again for not visiting him and his wife, Karma Sumdhon now taking the Babu to task
more strongly, yet simultaneously continuing to indulge in self-pity:
You are ignoring to come to us nowadays. Because we are in a small and humble hut in a
village, and because, secondly, you have more important people such as Officials and Rich
Ones as your friends, how, then, could you dare at all to come to this poor and humble pauper's
cottage? Thus did such thoughts come to me every now and then. But then this was the
answer I got... when thinking of you and yours, while sitting alone: Yet how, at any rate, could
Tharchin ever ignore me; for, no, he would never do this! And now, when I received your last
letter and the parcel which came with it, I felt that I had indeed got someone to take pity on this
wretched and evil man Karma. Thank you very much for your saintly heart and love towards
me.... So, you, whenever you can, you must peep in for even just a second, in case you come
[from Kalimpong] to the Ghoom or Darjeeling side. Will you? For as you know, "Love wantc
Love always, Love always wants to see each other, but not just any 'Lagta or this or that, but
Love." So, because you are my love, come and see me, when you get time. And do not mind my
writing this to you frankly, as I am "Khasang Dingsang gi mi shig yin chir Go-nyi thrab-mi
shey-so." [i.e., inasmuch as I, "being a person holding nothing back (but) sincerely speaking
(my) deeply felt thought, I know not how to pretend (put on an act)."]
%'
And at a later point in the letter, the former convert to Christ could not refrain from
quoting a New Testament passage taken from the Christian writings of St. Paul:
If you permit me, then, I will quote a passage from the Bible ...: "I am what I am, by the grace of
God." And though 1 am a fool and am nothing, remember, brother Tharchin, we are united in
what we are, no matter whatever Faith we follow.
Finally, Karma Sumdhon assumed both a Christian and Buddhist stance in closing his
letter that nonetheless ended, as it had begun, on what can only be described as an unrelenting
highly self-deprecating note of insecurity that to Tharchin, the robust Christian, must have
proved extremely tiresome, if not nauseating, to read:
Here we are pulling on in some way or other by His grace and I am sure you two are also the
same there. Though we are far along in this mortal form, yet we are joined together spiritually
at every moment. Believe me that we remember you in our own [Buddhist] ways and customs
in our daily prayer... Bye Bye, my dear brother Tharchin La. Your old wretched friend, K.
Sumdhon Paul.
Before leaving this entire period of Karma Paul's life at Ghoom, one final and quite,
fascinating facet of it must be recounted. For in mid-1916 there settled down in the Balaclava^
Hotel of Jorebungalow the previously alluded to Dutchman by the name of Mari Albert
Johan van Manen (1877-1943), a self-made Orientalist scholar and linguist of more than
ordinary repute who had relocated from Adyar, near Madras, South India. Heretofore at this
latter place he had served for over seven years—commencing in early 1909—as Assistant
Director, and then Director, of the Library attached to the international headquarters of the
theosophical Society, an occult religious organization to which he himself with great
enthusiasm had joined when a mere but quite precocious teen-ager back in Holland!
Xhe Society, a worldwide movement which sought to introduce to Western thought elements
of both Hinduism and Buddhism (with its motto being: "There is no religion higher than
truth"), had been founded in New York in 1875 by Russian-born Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
(née Hahn) and her ideological soul mate, the American, Colonel Henry Steele Olcôtt, a
former spiritualist. They together then went off to India to establish the Society's world
headquarters at Adyar, the place that ever since its founding in 1882 has served as the
center of world Theosophy up to the present day.
Now van Manen had abandoned the intellectual circles of Theosophy at Adyar by late
spring of 1916, his "interest in Theosophical ideas" having perhaps "faded somewhat" by
this time, especially after some serious differences of opinion had arisen between him and
Annie Besant, the successor in leadership of the Society following the deaths of Madame
Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott.58 Indeed, it would appear that over the years at Adyar the
Dutch thinker-scholar had become dissatisfied with Theosophical thought and methods as
the intermediary to the acquisition of ultimate spiritual truth;59 instead, he would settle down
in the Ghoom area because he "apparently felt the need"—in the words of his most recent
biographer, Peter Richardus—"to acquire firsthand knowledge of the Tibetan Buddhist culture
and language ..." 60 Realizing, however, that a study of the latter would require great
concentration and more than ordinary perseverance, he sought out the guidance of a thoroughly
competent Tibetan munshi or language teacher. And that is why he eventually selected the
Darjeeling area of India for his next place of abode and study, knowing full well that the
various Mission schools there employed teachers who besides Tibetan could also speak and
understand English fluently.
Accordingly, van Manen approached some of the Ghoom Mission staff, and through
them the Dutch scholar was brought into contact with Karma Sumdhon Paul; who by that
time, of course, had been a Christian and the Mission School's Headmaster for many years.
Needing someone to tutor him in the difficult Tibetan colloquial language, van Manen
immediately employed his Jorebungalow neighbor, Karma Sumdhon Paul, to give him daily
language lessons in classical and especially colloquial Tibetan. And though to the present
author's knowledge there is no extant record to prove that van Manen and Dorje Tharchin
had met here for the first time in their lives, yet, because of the close friendship which had
developed between the Mission School Headmaster and the School's Tibetan and Hindi
teacher, it is inconceivable that the Dutchman and the Tibetan from Poo had failed to make
their mutual acquaintance at Ghoom before Tharchin would relocate to Kalimpong at the
beginning of 1917.*
* Especially are there strong grounds for believing that for the first time in their lives these two did indeed meet
here inasmuch as another of van Manen's three Tibetan munshis at Ghoom-Jorebungalow, the Sino-Tibetan clerk
For two and a half years van Manen—insatiable in his thirst to learn Tibetan most thoroughly
so that he might fulfill his longtime wish of expanding his knowledge of the religion and
culture of the Tibetan people—was instructed in the language on almost a daily basis by
Karma Sumdhon in the spoken Tibetan, and soon thereafter in the classical written Tibetan
by a second teacher, Phuntsog Lungtok, an accomplished monk-scribe from Central Asia
who was extremely skilled in the classical literary language of the sacred Tibetan Buddhist
texts. As a matter of fact, for much of this period, all three of them met together nearly
every day, commencing at five in the afternoon; with Karma Babu serving the Dutch scholar
as a translator61 and the capable scribe serving as a copyist of religious and historical texts.
In his own personal narrative of this period, Phuntsog Lungtok has described what would
occur each day as these three would gather at the Dutchman's living quarters in the Balaclava
Hotel at Jorebungalow:
Each evening Mr. van Manen, Karma Babu and I would read or write the Tibetan language
together. After six months my Dutch Sahib could express himself in my native language.
Difficulties were solved by looking into dictionaries or into the grammar written by C. A. Bell.
The handwritten and printed books my Sahib had bought originated from Darjeeling, Ghoom
and Sikkim. They were used by [all four Tibetan Buddhist Church] denominations, each
describing religious ceremonies or historic events. If the runhing script had been used, I would
transcribe it into blockletters. We worked in this manner for about two years. (TL 40)
These two Tibetan munshis of the Dutch linguist would be joined later by even a third
%
teacher, Drin Chen, as noted earlier.*
Drin Chen, has stated in his own autobiographical account of this period that he often attended weekly Bible
lessons at the Ghoom Mission School where "the Headmaster here named Karma Babu and a teacher called
Tharchin explained to me the meaning of English words." (It should be mentioned that by this time Dorje
Tharchin was himself being tutored in English; see a few pages hence.) Since it is known that two of the three
Tibetan tutors of van Manen in the Ghoom area knew Tharchin (and that most likely even the third one,
Phuntsog Lungtok, was acquainted with him), it is extremely doubtful that the scholar from Holland and the
Tibetan from Poo would have failed to have encountered each other over a six- or seven-month period of time and
in such a small community if by no other means than through an introduction to each other by the one or the other
of these two, and perhaps by one or the other of all three, Tibetan munshis.
In any case, van Manen and Dorje Tharchin would definitely have opportaniy to meet and interact later in
Kalimpong on more than one occasion, once the latter had taken up his permanent residence there. For altogether,
it is known for certain that van Manen visited Kalimpong on at least four occasions: once in 1922 in company
with Sir John Woodroffe (a well-known jurist who as a writer and editor on Hinduism had published under the
pseudonym of Arthur Avalon); a second time in 1938, on which occasion he had stayed at the Himalayan Hotel
belonging to David MacDonald, one of the very closest and most intimate lifelong friends of Tharchin's; a third
time, when in the summer of 1940 Dr. Guha, a Frenchman, took van Manen with him to Tharchin's hill station,
thus providing his patient a breath of fresh air in response to the Dutchman's failing health; and a fourth time in
early March of 1943 for the purpose of seeing the house he had previously asked Gergan Tharchin to find for him
and his houseboy, Twan Yang, the latter of whom Tharchin had many times befriended over the years. However,
the death of van Manen in Calcutta several weeks later ended this plan of the Dutchman's to relocate permanently
in Kalimpong for the sake of his declining health and the completion of a voluminous Tibetan dictionary during
whatever years would have remained of his life.
* Coincidentally, Drin Chen, who was born in 1893 at Lhasa, was taught English at Darjeeling by Rev. J. Kelly,
the English Protestant clergyman who in 1924 would marry Gergan Tharchin and his Lhasa bride at Kurseong
nearby to Ghoom. Kelly was a missionary with the Tibetan Mission of Darjeeling and gave daily one-hour
English lessons to Drin Chen before the missionary returned to England in 1914 to serve his country in the Great
War against Germany. Shortly after Kelly's departure, Drin Chen would begin employment teaching Tibetan
Near the close of 1918, however, all this collective labor came to an end at Ghoom with
the appointment of van Manen to the post of Librarian of the Imperial Library in Calcutta for
two years commencing 1 January 1919. The Dutchman therefore departed Jorebungalow
and Ghoom in December 1918, never to return. But in due time all three of his munshi-
informants would join him in Calcutta where all three would in due course complete the
unusual task their common employer at Ghoom had requested of them to initiate: to compose
in great detail their personal life stories for scholarly use by van Manen himself and by other
Tibetologists and Orientalists interested in the language, customs, religion and history of
62
Buddhist Central Asia.
It should be mentioned, finally, that in late 1923, and thanks to Johan van Manen, Karma
Sumdhon Paul received a timely expression of benevolence from his former employer. Having
been dismissed a few months earlier as Ghoom School Headmaster, Karma Paul had been
thrown into deep despair as to his future, for he was now totally unemployed. Casting about for
ideas, he confided in his friend and fellow munshi, Phuntsog Lungtok. The latter had come up
to Ghoom from Calcutta that very summer to escape the intense heat and humidity of the
Bengal capital where he was currently serving the Dutch Sahib. "I visited my friend Karma
Babu," wrote the scribe in his own autobiographical account of this period. "He was, of course,
very glad to see me again." But then, after receiving gifts from the visitor, Karma "spoke of his
thoughts about leaving for Gyantse to teach English there." (TL 48)
This was an indirect reference, no doubt, to the school which the Tibetan government had
only recently permitted the British to establish at Tibet's third largest city. In one sense this
school had become the successor to the one Gergan Tharchin himself would establish at
Gyantse in late 1921 but then close some three years later with the creation of the British
school there in 1923.* Now because Karma Paul's well-placed friend, the Political Officer in
Sikkim, Lieutenant Colonel Bailey, had just the year before Karma's dismissal as Headmaster
written to him granting him the right to serve the British government in any department he
wished to choose, the former headmaster-educator at Ghoom may have perhaps felt he could
take advantage of this and return to Tibet in a totally new capacity from his previous experience
there. But because lie ultimately turned in the direction of Calcutta and van Manen, one can
assume that the Gyantse opportunity failed to open up, after all, if in fact Karma Paul ever did
submit his application for such a teaching position. (As will be learned in Chapter 14 of Volume
II of the present work, Gergan Tharchin would himself this same year unsuccessfully compete
for the teaching post of Assistant Master at the very same school!)
But though the possibility of a teaching post in Tibet would fall by the wayside in 1923,
Karma Paul did nonetheless return to Tibet in the employ of the British Indian government
during the previous year. And it is not too much to assume that one or more of his three
children at a mission school in Darjeeling operated by the Tibetan Mission. See Chapter 4 of Drin Chen's
autobiography in Richardus, ed., Tibetan Lives, 176-7; for the year of his birth see Richardus, "Some Remarks on
M. A. J. van Manen:s Contributions to Tibetology," in H. Uebach and J. L. Panglung, eds., Tibetan Studies. 390;
and for the year of Rev. Kelly's departure, see Fr. Henry Hosten, "Sadhu Sundar Singh: Interesting
Correspondence," CHI (15 Apr. 1925):232, wherein Kelly is shown to have given to Fr. Hosten some of his own
personal bio-data.
* These developments are discussed at greater length at the end of Chapter 14 and further in Chapter 15 of
Volume II of the present narrative.
patron-friends of yesteryear—Political Officer Bailey, Darjeeling's Tibetan Sub-Deputy

Collector A-chung Babu and Darjeeling's Assistant Superintendent of Police Laden La—
most probably had a hand in arranging the matter. For it was in the late spring of 1922 that
the first of several early attempts to ascend Mt. Everest from its North Face in Tibet was
inaugurated by the British under the leadership of General Charles G. Bruce. And as it
turned out, Sumdhon Paul, while still Ghoom Mission School Headmaster, garnered for himself
the appointment as the Climbing Expedition's Tibetan interpreter, serving at the side of the
General himself. Indeed, in a scene from Captain John Noel's classic motion picture of the
event, Climbing Mount Everest (1922), Karma Paul (as he was identified in the movie) is
shown verbally translating to General Bruce a message which the interpreter has brought to
the Expedition leader from LamaZatul Rimpoche, abbot of Tibet's nearby Rongbuk Gompa.63
Not only did this appointment afford Karma Paul the opportunity to "rub shoulders" with the
British General, it also enabled him to associate with the likes of the climbing team's most
celebrated member, George Leigh Mai lory himself, whose claim to fame has already been
well noted in an earlier chapter of the present work.
Having been severed the following year from all connection with the Ghoom School
and its headmastership, Karma Sumdhon Paul now departed for Calcutta in October 1923
in search of his benefactor van Manen. By this time the latter was a member of the
Senate of Calcutta University and the General Secretary of the prestigious Asiatic Society
of Bengal, he to serve in that post of the Society from 1923 to 1939.64 "I visited the
Dutchman ... as soon as possible," recalled Karma Paul in 1927. "Having explained to
him my situation," Karma continued, "he first shared my grief, speaking words of comfort,
and then promised to do his best to find for me a suitable post with a good salary. Through
his benevolence I was soon appointed Lecturer of the Tibetan language at the University
of Calcutta." (TL 157)
Indebted to van Manen beyond the telling for his kindness, the former munshi of the
Dutch scholar was moved to offer up at very near the close of his autobiography the following
encomium in honor of his benefactor:
I can state the following about van Manen Sahib. He never drinks liquor or eats meat. Worldly
matters such as horse races and picture shows do not interest him at all. Reading books is his
only pleasure. He never speaks in offensive terms about the people of India which, as we all
know, nearly every Englishman does. Towards Tibetans he is more than friendly. He even
regards me as a countryman of his and calls me Mr. van Karma! I regard him as my godfather.
In my humble opinion you shall never find a more kind-hearted gentleman. As he always helps
the needy it seems to me he is a true Bodhisattva. For this reason I wrote the following verses
in his honor:
When I felt alone and helpless in Calcutta,
your mercy on me, van Manen, was immense.
Faith grows in me when I bring this to mind.
Amidst the multitude of learned men, the great and merciful
scholar van Manen always helps everyone.
The knowledge of Sakyamuni Buddha is hereby kindled in them.
O, Father, you gave me many deep and useful teachings.
You helped me to stand up against enemies.
For helping me, Karma Babu bows humbly at your feet.
These words I offer as a prayer to God, "May you live long

and prosperously to the benefit of others." (TL 157-8)
Returning now more directly to the narrative concerning the young man from Poo, it will
be of interest to the reader to learn that sometime after his arrival in Ghoom Tharchin—
perhaps smarting somewhat from the amusing though embarrassing incident of his ignorantly-
addressed letter envelope to the Mission—now sought out the assistance of someone who
could teach him the basics of the English language of which it was clear he was so woefully
lacking. He wished to learn the Nepali language as well. The Tibeftan soon met Lopen (i.e.,
Teacher) Tinlay (or Thrinlay), a member of the FAM-SAM staff at thé Ghoom Mission and a
very good Christian. Tinlay was born a Lepcha, the original inhabitants of nearby Sikkim.
Being diligent and knowing the Bible well, he would in time serve the Lord mostly in the
north part of that land as teacher, evangelist and faithful pastor till his death at Lachen in the
early 1960s.65 Now since he had an excellent command of both English and Nepali, Lopen
Tinlay, when approached by the young man from Poo, agreed to instruct him temporarily in
the basics of these two languages. Later, however, wishing to advance his knowledge ànd
skill in both languages, Tharchin requested permission from Rev. Eli Ollila of the Ghoom
Mission, who by late 1914 had replaced Rev. Waismaa and his successor as the in-charge,
"to take tuition" (that is to say, to be privately tutored), and at FAM's cost, that he might learn •
them more thoroughly. This Rev. Ollila agreed to allow, though it must be mentioned that
unlike with English which Tharchin eventually became fluent in, the Tibetan never did master
Nepali and would later be embarrassed to deliver sermons in that language, especially after
he relocated to Kalimpong.66 Moreover, he soon fell into the habit, while speaking to people
in Nepali, that he would nearly always mix this language with Hindi; in fact, more often than
not, he might indeed begin speaking in Nepali, but because he never did feel that comfortable
in it, Tharchin would end up speaking totally in Hindi—a language he ultimately came to
know very well. It need hardly be added here that with respect to his own tongue, Gergan
Tharchin would in time come to be recognized as an authority in the Tibetan language, he
having learned both to speak and to write Lhasan Tibetan flawlessly.67
Tharchin's involvement in other aspects of the Mission work at Ghoom (about which the
details will be related in the chapter to follow) would bring much joy, fulfillment and happiness
to his heart. Indeed, in sharp contrast to the Ghoom experience of his fellow Indo-Tibetan
from Jorebungalow, Dorje Tharchin never regretted having left Delhi to cast his lot with the
missionaries and other Christians at Ghoom with whom in time he would forge deep and
abiding friendships and co-laboring association in the ministry of the Christian gospel to those
who had never heard. In the years and decades ahead, in fact, Tharchin would frequently
recall with fond memories this period of service he so much enjoyed at Ghoom before the
Lord called him on, then, to Kalimpong. One such recollection he would pen in 1949 in the
same letter previously cited in the present chapter, the one the Tibetan had written to the
"dear Anni Las" at Ghoom, one of whom, as was learned earlier, was Ani Anna Kempe.
How different, how joyful and how positive in tone was this recollection of Tharchin's from
those less than satisfying memories of Ghoom frequently recorded by Karma Sumdhon
Paul; for in this letter to Ani Kempe and her co-workers, the Tibetan from Poo expressed his
immense appreciation for all he had experienced at the Mission station:
I am so grateful to the Lord that he brought me to Ghoom in 1912 to work under... the then S.
A. Mission ... Praise the Lord for all His wonderful guidance in my life and specially am I
grateful that I was under your Mission where 1 learned more about the Lord and also got more
education. I shall always be grateful to the Mission.... I am always remembering that through
Ghoom the Lord has done great work, and its fruits [in terms of indigenous servants of the Lord
raised up by the Mission] are scattered here and there out doing His work.
But even more specifically with regard to his spiritual experience at Ghoom, Gergan Tharchin,
now mellowed by the passing years, was heard to confess the following in the early 1970s:
I learned various useful and practical things at the Ghoom Mission. Here my spiritual life
improved and deepened in the close fellowship I had with the godly missionaries. Formerly my
energies were frittered away and my activities aimless, but from then on my life began to be
oriented in the right directions and dimensions, and I also began to compose myself successfully
and spiritually. I realized God's richest blessings on my path, and the hand of the Lord was ever
nearer, clearer and dearer to me.
*
One day Tharchin was smoking the hookah, as was his usual habit when indulging in the
pastime he enjoyed the most. On this occasion, Miss Kempe, the Finnish missionary, happened
to appear on the spot at the very moment of his indulgence. She is still thankfully remembered
by the people in Kurseong, Kalimpong and Pedong for her selfless and sacrificial service.* But
as will become clear in the chapters to follow, she would likewise endear herself to Gergan
Tharchin, for she extended towards him these exact same qualities of selfless service. Now as
soon as Miss Kempe noticed Tharchin smoking the hubble-bubble, she swooped up the entire
apparatus from in front of him, threw away the pipes, and nicely cleaned, polished and then
filled the now empty pot with beautiful fragrant flowers from her well-maintained garden.
* One who could vouch for Miss Kempe's selfless service for others was Dr. Andrew Pradhan (1910-92), a
Christian who would later become Gergan Tharchin's personal physician. Educated four years (1919-22) at
Ghoom Mission School himself, Dr. Pradhan after his medical training in Calcutta returned to Ghoom in 1933 to
serve in the hill station's Martin missionary dispensary from 1934 to 1972 before removing to Kalimpong in the
latter year. He therefore had ample opportunity over many years to observe and fellowship with Ani Kempe atfd'i
the other "Anilas" connected with the Ghoom Finnish Mission. In an interview he gave the present writer just
prior to his death, Dr. Pradhan described in some detail Miss Kempe and her work for the Lord.
Ani Kempe, he noted, used to visit the poor and beggarly Tibetans on a regular basis at the Ghoom dharmsala
(or free inn), "the only missionary to do so!" Miss Kempe, in particular, observed Dr. Pradhan, "had a real
missionary spirit. She would walk everywhere, even the entire great distance between Ghoom and Pedong." Thisj
was when at the latter place she had rented a house for two to three years. But just prior to moving to Pedong,
Dr. Pradhan noted, Ani Kempe had rented some living space for a year on Rishi Road in Kalimpong where, out
Tharchin has described the scene in quite colorful terms:

When Miss Kempe, whom I addressed as Ani Kempe (Ani meaning nun), snatched the hookah
away from me, I was nearly tempted to throw her away like a tiny little doll, had it not been for
a friend of mine who prevented me from executing such a rash act. Later, when she converted
the pot-case into a flower vase and brought it to me, 1 could not control my indignation but
spurned it and threw it down with all the flowers—to her great horror. Afterwards I repented of
this thoughtless, hasty and angry behavior. The poor missionary also very graciously pardoned
me. But just the same, I picked up the broken pieces of the pipe one by one and tried to join
them together. My carpentry training at this point came in handy. I tied together all the pieces
with a length of twine and began to smoke the hookah like the devil more furiously than before.
All the while I was smarting and fuming with fury and anger. Rebellion was brewing up within
my soul.
Tharchin went on to narrate more concerning this dramatic incident of long ago: "Since two
of the other Anilas, Misses Treshbech and Juriva,*68 also disapproved of my habit of smoking
the hookah, I tried to substitute cigarettes. Not being satisfied with this alternative, the Anilas
hit upon a novel plan to help me do away completely with the smoking habit. They thought that
if the habit were allowed to go unchecked it would mar my health. They had only goodwill
towards me and therefore desired my highest good. They meant me well.
"One day they presented me with a box of sweets and biscuits. The box was beautifully
packed and attractively wrapped in colored paper. They suggested that I munch on the
ff her compassion, she adopted a Nepali boy, Kaloo Peter Singh, who lived with her there and later in Pedong.
"He grew up to be a fine Christian," explained Dr. Pradhan. "He then married a Christian girl—Esther by name.
^Vs a matter of fact, Ani Kempe had the privilege of marrying these two." This couple, with their entire family,
¿dded the Doctor, would regularly attend the worship services conducted by Gergan Tharchin, who by that time
had become the pastor of the Tibetan Christian Fellowship. Without any doubt, Dr. Pradhan concluded, "Miss
I|empe was most generous and caring, a person who had an extraordinary giving heart, ever helping all those in
distress without any consideration of cost to herself." interview with Dr. Pradhan, Nov. 1992.
It should be noted here that Anna Kempe (born 1877) had originally been sent out to India by the Finnish
foung Women's Christan Association; she arrived at Ghoom in 1908. Reminiscences of her can be found in
ferry's previously cited study of Nepali and other ethnic Christians in the Himalayas and the various Christian
missions which brought the foreign faith to those parts. Writes retired Finnish missionary, Vappu Rautamaki, as
quoted in translation by Perry: Anna Kempe "was a rather exceptional worker. She was not only a keen school
teacher but also an evangelist. In 1923 she left the (Ghoom Finnish) mission and became an independent
missionary in Kurseong and Pedong. She spoke Tibetan and Nepalese and worked among both peoples. She also
had an effect on the founding of a Christian church in Nepal...."
While at Ghoom, Miss Rautamaki further recounts, Miss Kempe had a hand in developing the Ghoom
Mission School that in 1917 became a respected English secondary institution. Going to Pedong as an indepen-
dent missionary in the latter part of 1924 after her brief Kurseong experience, Miss Kempe, writes Perry, came
to be "beloved by the local people as a kind of 'saduni' (a female sadhu) because she fasted in order to share her
food with the poor. She built a simple house complete with baptismal pool, then left it to her adopted daughter
when she finally retired in the 1940s." See Rautamaki and Perry in Perry, Nepali around the World, 428,86,432.
* Dr. Pradhan (see previous footnote) also had some words to say about these two Anilas, along with Miss
Kempe. These lady missionaries from Finland, he observed, had always been very friendly with him. In fact,
after the morning worship services on those rare occasions on Sundays when he was free from his duties at the
Martin missionary dispensary (which was always open on Sundays), Dr. Pradhan would attend the Bible study
which these three Christian sisters faithfully conducted every Lord's Day. "Among the three of them, Miss
Treshbech was the one in authority." And interestingly, he recalled, "she would always require the other Anilas
fo speak in Tibetan or else in English, nevei^ in Hindi or Nepali." Same interview with Dr. Pradhan.
Reminiscences about these two Anilas can also be found in the same Perry study referenced in the previous
footnote. About Ani Treshbech (whose surname has numerous different spellings showing up in the documents
sweets and chew the biscuits whenever I was beset by the smoking temptation. They also
bought a locally-manufactured leather bag for me so that I could keep the money in it which
I would save by not smoking anymore. Whereas before I had been trying to convert my cash
into ash, the Anilas were now trying to convert my ash into cash! In spite of my best efforts
and their best endeavors, however, I still could not overcome the habit.
"Noting the fact that their plan had failed to effect any controlling impact upon me, the
Anilas tried another tactic, which in this case was the idea of Ani Kempe's. She had purchased
a fine violin from Rev. Waismaa, who by this time [1913 onward] had left for Finland on
furlough for good. I believe the musical instrument had cost Rs. 120/- in those days. The Anilas
now offered the violin to me, advising me to play on the strings whenever the danger occurred
of my being drawn by the desire to smoke. Even then I could not give up the habit. It had so
completely enslaved me that I had lost any will power to be victorious over it."
The violin had no case. Tharchin kept it hanging on the wall in his room during the damp
weather of Ghoom, an action which can be very harmful to the wooden musical instrument I
{
since the humidity in the air can warp and crack the laminated wood.
On one occasion after receiving the violin from the Apilas young Tharchin was induced
to take it down from the waM to try- out a few strokes and learn a number of church hymns
on it. Since he already possessed some musical talent, he actually learned to play a few
songs on it which were tolerably pleasant to the ears but which, of course, were not without
a few jarring mistakes. Nevertheless, the psychological impact of the musical instrument,
such as there was, brought no satisfactory improvement, and Tharchin thus failed to attain
the goal: the smoking habit continued to cling to him as much as any leeches might do to his
skin. In the paraphrased words of St. Paul, he could very well have cried out: "O wretched
man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this habit of smoking?"69
One evening, as before, he went upstairs to attend a prayer meeting that was the regular
feature of the day before retiring. The normal time for this was at about 7 o'clock. After a
short passage of Bible reading and then prayer the meeting catne to an end. Outlining the
scene that subsequently occurred, Tharchin commented:
of the period), retired Finnish missionary Rautamaki had many fine things to recall about her. Born in 1876, she
arrived in India from Finland in December 1902. By profession Edla Treshbech had been a gardener and worked
for the Finnish Mission the longest period of anyone. Hanna Waismaa, not wanting to return to Finland upon
becoming seriously ill, inquired in the Free Church of Finland Weekly if there were any Christian sister who
would like to come and care for her household in Sikkim. Sister Edla, reports Miss Rautamaki, "was ready to go
immediately!" Continuing in missionary work for an incredible total of 57 years, Ani Treshbech labored for the
Lord at all the Sikkim mission stations but chiefly at Lachen, and later at Ghoom and Buxa Duar. "She was a :
person of vision, courage and initiative," writes Rautamaki, "and she had an interest in a wide range of matters"— !
in consequence of which "she had an important part to play in reaching Nepal" with the gospel of Christ. See i
Rautamaki, as quoted in English translation from the Finnish, in Perry Nepali around the World, 426. For further ;
details about the movements and activities of Ani Treshbech, see furthur in the Perry volume, pages 130 note :
149, 138-40, 161 note 19, 429, 431-5, 439, 440. ;\
And with regard to Ani Hanna Juriva (or Juureva), she spent much of her missionary work period of 37 years j
serving as Edla Treshbech's co-worker. Born in 1880, sister Hanna had been a textile teacher back in Finland |
before arriving in India to join the Finnish Mission at Ghoom and elsewhere. Prior to her arrival at Ghoom in 11
1924, Miss Juriva had actually been taught Tibetan in Finland by none other than Rev. Waismaa. She would ¡1
become the in-charge of the Mission's weaving shops and, with sister Edla, of the children's homes at Ghoom ana m
Buxa Duar. See Rautamaki and Perry, in ibid., 138-40, 161 note 19, 429, 431-5.
Thereafter, I returned to my room downstairs. I began to search for the matchsticks in order to
light the lamp which had somehow become extinguished. Although 1 groped everywhere I
failed to find the matchbox in the pitch darkness. Fed up, T withdrew in exasperation and
resigned myself to sitting heavily on the bed, not realizing that the violin was lying on the cot.
The result was inevitable and disastrous. The instrument, under the nearly full weight of my
body, seemed irreparably ruined. I nonetheless took the violin to Darjeeling, where I sadly
learned that the estimated cost of mending the instrument would be not less than Rs. 60/-. This
meant that the broken instrument had to be set aside for the time being until sufficient funds for
its repair were available.
The venerable Tharchin acknowledged with the mark of genuine humility that he himself
could not end the habit: "The violin had been offered to me so that I could stop smoking once
and for ail. I failed to eradicate this desire and, humanly speaking, I was powerless to
vanquish the habit as I had no control over my will power in this matter. This proves that we
all need God's grace to do what we cannot do with our own works, will or strength. I failed
to obey, and no wonder the instrument went into splinters." This explanation may sound
fatalistic and naive, but the point is clear and the moral cannot be gainsaid. Ultimately the
young man from the village of Poo would learn the lesson of the day; nevertheless, it would
be a long, long time coming—as the remaining paragraphs of this chapter will demonstrate.
To round out the story for the reader, it should be noted here that it took a miracle of
God's grace over an incredibly long period of time to annihilate the smoking habit in Gergan
Tharchin's life. According to a recent letter from his son Sherab Gyamtsho to the present
| author, the habit had really grown into nothing less than an addiction. "I know very well—
from what I have been told," he writes, "that my father was a cigarette chain-smoker dating
from his younger days; and the testimony of Theos Bernard, to this effect, is absolutely
correct." This latter is a reference to an observation which Bernard, an American Buddhist
scholar whom Tharchin would accompany to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in 193 7, had made
in an article he had written afterwards about the trip. Thus at age 47 the Tibetan from Poo
was still smoking the weed quite heavily. Indeed, so heavily did he continue to smoke thereafter
? that one of Tharchin 's younger friends from his latter years was led to remark long afterwards
to the present author that "Tharchin-la was always pardoning himself for his hacking cough
due to his excessive smoking."70
At some point earlier in his young manhood, in fact, Tharchin had apparently been
successful in substituting cigarettes for the hookah entirely; as a consequence, however, he
became so addicted to the cigarette that Tharchin's son, in the same letter, declared that his
father "used to puff-off about four to five packets every day!!" But this had become such an
expensive habit to maintain that in order to "minimize his expenditure on the purchase of
cigarettes" his father, added Sherab Gyamtsho, reverted once again to the waterpipe; for
"from the year 1960 he started taking the hookah in place of the cigarette." This indulgence
in his favorite pastime would continue on for seven years more until at age 77 God permitted
a "severe mercy" to come upon His recalcitrant servant: in his aging body there developed
a serious case of appendicitis. In 1967 the ailing Tharchin was admitted into the Planters'
Club Hospital at Darjeeling for an appendectomy.* An operation of this kind at such an
elderly age was a sufficient enough warning to the Tibetan that "on health grounds," wrote
Sherab, he must cease and desist from the smoking habit. And indeed, by God's grace,
immediately following his month-long recuperation from the surgery at Kalimpong's Charteris
Hospital, Gergan Tharchin willingly—and wisely, it might be added—gave up the practice
"of smoking the hookah/cigarettes for good."71 This already quite elderly servant of the Lord
had finally "learned the lesson of the day" and would live on for some nine years more, with
his near lifelong addiction to tobacco annihilated once and for all!
* Interestingly enough, the attending physician who performed the operation was none other than Dr. Tsewang
Y. Pemba, son of Rai Sahib Pemba Tsering, the latter having been one of Gergan Tharchin's early students in
Tibetan at the Ghoom Mission School. Per interview with S. G. Tharchin, Nov. 1992. Both father and son Pemba
would become very close friends of Tharchin, their paths crossing each other at various times and places—
whether at Ghoom, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Lhasa or Bhutan. Indeed, in the latter place the physician son, having
been schooled at the University College and Hospital of London (by means of which he would hold the
distinction of being the first ever Tibetan to become a qualified practitioner of Western medicine), would go on to
become in the mid-1950s the Medical Officer of the Government of Bhutan. He would remain in Bhutan till 1958,
attending the medical needs of the Bhutanese royal family, among others. After this he returned to England once
again, where later he received the Hal let Prize of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1966 and became a Fellow of
that prestigious organization the following year. In 1977 he assumed the post of Principal Medical Officer of the
Doars (i.e., Duars) and Darjeeling Medical Association.
C H A P T E R 6
Along the Teesta Valley: Proclamation of the Gospel 272

They ... went about preaching the word.
Acts 8:4
JOINING THE SERVICE of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission must be regarded as a vital and
pivotal point in the life of Gergan Tharchin. For him Ghoom became a gateway to academic
progress and to spiritual development as well. As a schoolteacher he began to impart knowledge
to others, but especially as a student of the Christian faith he began also to imbibe knowledge
from others. Spiritually he became strongly grounded in the Bible and began to reflect intellectually
and theologically on the Christian truths. Unlike much of the past period in his life, Tharchin
now began to channel his energies more and harness his abilities better for constructive purposes.
In other words, he commenced to dedicate himself to God in new ways. He learned that the
inner impressions must have external expressions. In this way he began to burn for God. The
zeal of the Lord began to consume him and he started to venture great things for God's
kingdom. The quiet contemplation on the Christian Scriptures commenced to pay dividends in
the form of witnessing for the Lord.*
It will be recalled that early in the year 1912 Dorje Tharchin had arrived at Ghoom from
Delhi at the invitation of Rev. Waismaa who, besides offering the Tibetan the opportunity to
teach Hindi and his own native language in the Mission school there, had also extended an
opening to him to be trained as a missionary. And this latter training this relatively well-
prepared Christian from Poo entered into with great enthusiasm. By the month of December
of the same year, for example, he had visited Lachen in northern Sikkim1 where he had an
opportunity to meet with the Christian congregation there.2 During the following year (1913)
he accompanied Rev. Eli Ollila of Finland on a preaching tour around the Siliguri area. And
by the winter of 1914 (that is, sometime after January 1st) Tharchin and his friend Prem
Singh3 from the Ghoom Mission's Children's Home, having waited upon the Lord, decided to
spread the gospel news together. This was in keeping with the Biblical principle instilled in
the trainees at Ghoom and reflected in Tharchin's own words later, namely: "We younger
missionaries preached in twos in various places."4 At this time they were led to embark on
a gospel trek along the beautiful valley of the Teesta River. Called by the people indigenous
to the region "the cleft of the winds," the river and valley have been described by one
traveler through the area as "a narrow gorge widening gradually towards the sky."5
J * Except for some necessaryêditing by the present author, this entire opening paragraph—cast in the third
person but expressive of Gergan Tharchin's own reflections on the significance of his Ghoom experience for his
••!. Spiritual growth and future Christian service—-has been excerpted in its entirety from his unpublished "memoirs";
i see GTUM TsMs, 37.
The journey which these two servants of the Lord were about to take along the Teesta
Valley must have been very hazardous during those days of gospel evangelism as it still is
today. This magnificent valley, called by some Scottish visitors "the Trossachs of the Himalayas,"
is a deep-cut gorge carved out by the wild river which during the rainy season almost goes mad
causing colossal destruction to the forests and road communications. Sir Francis Younghusband,
leader of the famed Expedition in 1904 into Tibet and certainly no stranger to either the river or
its valley, attests to the Teesta's awesome energy, power and destructive capabilities. "The
river Teesta itself," he wrote, "though only a minor contributor to the Brahmaputra, is
nevertheless during the rainy season, when it is fed both by the falling rain and by the melting
snows and glaciers of the Kanchenjunga region, impressive in its might and energy. With a
force and tumult that nothing could withstand, it comes swirling down the valley. Before its
rushing impetuosity everything would be swept away. For it is no little tossing torrent: it possesses
depth and weight and volume, and sweeps majestically along in great waves and cataracts. In
comparison with the serene composure of the lofty summits, here is life and force and activity
to the full—and destructive activity at that.. ."6
Unlike in the earlier days of Tharchin and Prem Singh, the road along the valley is now
motorable and the accidents are therefore very common, especially during the heavy rains.
Due to the absorption of rainwater huge landslides occur in the area, which sometimes cut off
the connections of the interior lands with the outside world.7 Since the road runs along the
riverbank by the sides of the sheer mountain cliffs, at anytime a piece of stone or a huge
boulder could fall on the head below from great heights above. B\ft in addition to difficulties and
hazards of the trail, the climate of the forest areas is unhealthy as well. In the lower regions
both intensive heat and malaria can cause great danger, even death, for those persons in the
habit of living in the high altitudes of the hill regions. Tharchin and Prem Singh must have
therefore experienced God's amazing protection several times during their gospel tour.
Now these two evangelists first of all set off from Ghoom and followed the descending
trail through the lovely green forests of pine trees and tea gardens on either side and walked
down to Teesta Bazaar. Situated at a height of 710 feet above sea level, this bazaar possesses,
even today, some commercial importance inasmuch as it stands at the junction of several
main District roads. At the time of Tharchin's and his companion's visit, many Tibetan
workers and laborers were engaged here in a railroad construction project.8 In addition,
several Tibetans were employed in the tannery owned by a well-to-do Tibetan gentleman
from Ghoom. This proprietor was once a Christian and even a catechist who had taught
others about the Christian faith, but for some reason he had grown cold in spirit and had gone
back to Lamaist Buddhism.
With the permission of this proprietor Tharchin and Prem Singh lodged with the workers
of the tannery. One night at about 11 o'clock there was a knock on the door. Someone had
come to inform the occupant in the next room about a Tibetan lady who was restless and
very seriously ill. The two missionaries were already aware that people in the area there had
spoken about this lady and her husband in a derogatory manner, saying: "These were once
Christians!" The wife had tried everything which the Buddhists had prescribed for her.
Besides all sorts of their medicines, she had even tried the local and jungle curatives and
even ajhakri, 9 to no avail. All this she had done the previous six months but without improving
her condition whatsoever. The messenger now reported that since the woman might take a
turn for the worse at any moment, some remedy or treatment must be administered at once.
The occupant consented to arrive on the spot—which was about fifteen minutes away—at
the earliest possible moment. Since the room occupied by Tharchin was right in the way, he
could not help but overhear the entire conversation. He inquired about the details from the
next-door occupant and offered to come and pray for the sick woman if she wished. The
occupant conveyed this message to the near relatives of the patient. They very gladly agreed
to the proposal and promptly Tharchin and Prem Singh were summoned to rush down to the
spot without a moment's delay.
The two evangelists were overjoyed at this golden opportunity. They hoped a great miracle
from God would happen that day through their hands. They hurriedly rushed forth and reached
the place, first listening to a recital of all the remedies she had unsuccessful ly tried; they then
began preaching to the entire family about the Lord Jesus Christ. They told them about the
power of Christ to heal all manner of diseases10 and that He is the same yesterday, today
and forever.11 They explained to the members of the family that if it were the will of the Lord
then He could heal her, but if not, death might overtake her easily and calmly and even her
soul might be saved. The sick woman seemed to follow the preaching. This they could
gather from the way she nodded her head to indicate her response. She was too feeble to
open her mouth and speak in an audible voice. At this point, then, Tharchin said, "Now we
will pray to God whose name is Jesus/'
After a session of "loud and heartfelt" prayer and consolation by the two missionaries, at
about half past one in the morning Tharchin and Prem returned home. They greatly rejoiced
because on that occasion many Tibetans had had the opportunity to hear the name of Christ.
Upon returning to their lodging they went straight to bed. Tharchin, however, did not go to
sleep. His mind was still astir with the implications of the incident.
At about 2:00 a.m. a messenger arrived with the news that the lady had breathed her last.
Tharchin5s reaction was immediate: "When I heard this disturbing news, I could not
comprehend it, that Jesus would leave us in this pi edicament. I was very much disappointed,
and wrestled with the Lord, calling out to Him: c You did not do a miracle! Now, Christians
and other Tibetans will keep their distance from You!' I grew angrier with the Lord and
continued to quarrel with Him in my heart. I argued with Him: 'Lord, You have promised us
to heal the sick in Your name if we pray according to your promises. Although we have
prayed earnestly, still the lady has passed away. Also, Lord, if the lady had been healed of
her disease in Your name, then several Tibetans in the establishment who heard the gospel
would have been converted. Moreover, the renegade proprietor would have repented of his
sin and come back to the fellowship of the church!' Thus it was that in a very dejected mood,
I finally fell asleep around 3:00 a.m. despite all the inner turmoil and commotion. It was
¿gainst the background of this disturbance, however, that I had a faint memory of the words
of the messenger who had casually reported that the lady had died peacefully and calmly.
"An hour later, at about 4 o'clock in the morning I had a dream as though Jesus were
speaking to me: c Do not be troubled or discouraged; read the verses in Acts 4:12 and Romans
10:13-14.' At that very moment I woke up and lit the candle, as it was still quite dark. I
opened the Bible and read the verses as I had been directed to do in the dream. The two
passages in question read as follows: (a) 'In none other is there salvation: for neither is there
any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.' (b)
6
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on
him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not
heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?' Understandably, I was deeply moved.
I immediately grasped the import of these Scripture passages and this comforted me very
much. For in a flash I saw how Jesus with all His heart cares himself deeply about a lowly
Tibetan woman! He had let her out of His sight as though she were backslidden, but to reach
one person with the gospel will satisfy Him. I came to realize that the lady was only waiting
to hear the name of the Lord and now that she had heard the gospel, she believed, was
saved, and was gathered to the Lord. This was confirmed by the report brought by the
messenger regarding the woman's peaceful death without the slightest sign of excitement or
disturbance. In this way I began to comprehend the mysterious yet marvelous ways of the
Lord which otherwise are inscrutable. 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
your ways my ways, saith Jehovah.'"12 "We young 'greenhorns'," he added, speaking of
Prem but more especially of himself, "must write these things on our hearts."13
From Teesta Bazaar Tharchin and brother Singh went along the Teesta Valley
proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Christ. They traveled along the Siliguri road
and reached a village called Domar which lies some two miles west of Siliguri proper.14
There they met a Bengali Christian family with whom they lodged for several nights. They
enjoyed wonderful fellowship with the family. They stayed with this particular household
since they were known to the head of the family who was a catechist. From time to time
the latter had visited Ghoom Mission station where he had come into contact with Tharchin
several times. J
A few days later Tharchin and his companion returned to Siliguri. From here they proceeded j
westward again, this time in the direction of Matigarah where a big fair was being held. As |
they were traveling on foot they decided to take a shortcut. This meant they would have to
ford a small stream. For its limited size the current of the water was nonetheless powerful
and sweeping. Both friends rolled up their pants and folded up their sleeves. They carried
their luggage on their backs so that they could maintain good balance while crossing the
swift stream. As soon as they crossed over, a Tjbetan camp loomed large before their eyes,
A dozen or so tents were pitched and occupied by some Tibetan workers. Tharchin was
carrying his violin15 which by this time had already been repaired in Darjeeling. Brother
Singh was carrying a bagful of Christian tracts and literature for distribution among the
people, Both the brothers must have looked funny with their queer paraphernalia.
When they neared the Tibetan camp one worker, presuming them to be Indians, remarked,
"Look at these Indian beggars! They are so young, hale and hearty, still they are begging."
Inimediately cut to tfie quick, Tharchin spoke up: "We are not beggars, not at all. We are givers."
Witnessing this flash reaction, the Tibetan workers were flabbergasted and for a moment could
not speak a word. Moreover, they were surprised to hear Tharchin speaking fluent Tibetan.
When they found their tongues once again, they asked the two evangelists, "What do you have to
give?" To which Tharchin responded: "What we give will bring you eternal life and peace."
Gradually all the men, women and children of the camp flocked to hear what these strange men
had to say. "Hundreds," reported Tharchin, "gathered around." The preachers banked on the
opportunity of proclaiming the soul-saving gospel of Christ to Tibetans, with Dorje Tharchin doing
the preaching. "I even played a Jesus song on my violin," explained the Tibetan missionary, "with
my friend singing it." Others who crowded in but could not understand the Tibetan language
requested Tharchin to preach the gospel in Hindi ("Come," they had called out, "tell us also about
this wonderful news!"), which he did gladly. Thereafter, the Tibetans invited the preachers to dine
attheir table of sumptuous food and delicious butter-salted tea in the Tibetan style. All the Tibetans
were happy that these so-called beggars could speak their mother tongue without a flaw.16
Rising before dawn next morning, Tharchin and Prem returned to Siliguri. There they inquired
about the correct timing of the train that would leave for Ghoom (the celebrated "toy train" whose
lower terminus was at Siliguri). They were informed that it would depart sometime between
and 7 o'clock in the early morning. They were further told that the train also stopped at a spot
about one mile from Siliguri. So they continued walking in the direction of the train stop a mile
away. Along the way they saw a Tibetan family sheltered under a pipal tree. The lady in the
family was very sick. She was suffering from a completely swollen body, but especially her face
and feet. She was unbearably uncomfortable, and could not manage to walk at all due to severe
\ pain in her body. In fact, she lay dying. The two missionaries prayed for her most earnestly and
faithfully "We comforted her and her husband," said Tharchin later; "we also explained the
ministry of deliverance, prayed with them and taught them a short prayer." They made them
repeat the prayer several times. The prayer went something like this: "Lord Jesus, forgive our
sins. If it is Your will, then send healing." In the light of the previous experience with the woman
who had died, Tharchin added the following commentary on the present situation: "One can see
that we learned to be careful in faith!" Just then the train arrived, stopping at a distance away of
a hundred yards. The two preachers hurried to the spot and boarded the train. They returned to
Ghoom safely in the forenoon. From this time forth Tharchin was to follow this habit of both
teaching and preaching, which became for him his normal pattern of ministry.
At Ghoom Mission it was customary to conduct an open-air meeting every Sunday quite
close to the main Mission bungalow along the principal thoroughfare. Whenever possible
I
277»
other friends and believers would join the open-air event in order to help in the meeting as
well as to stand as bold witnesses for the Lord. Furthermore, during the summer months
some of the Christian missionaries elsewhere would hand over temporary charge of their
local Mission work to the indigenous workers and would then go off to summer resorts like
Darjeeling or Ghoom in order to escape the scorching heat of the plains. And hence on
Sundays some of these same missionaries would themselves participate in the open-air
meetings, taking turns to sing a song, play a musical instrument, give a testimony or bring a
gospel message. Some preached in Hindi while others spoke in the Nepali language.
Interpreters were provided for those who were willing to preach but could not speak either
Hindi or Nepali. The entire preaching team—consisting as it often did of various nationalities
with each person carrying some piece of Christian literature in his or her hand and lots of
musical instruments—created an attractive impression on the audience or the passerby.
One Sunday in the month of June 191417 after the other speakers had finished preaching,
Tharchin took his turn to proclaim the message of Christ. He could preach in Nepali or Hindi
as well as in Tibetan. As he began to declare the message in Tibetan, a man and woman
stepped forward from the crowd standing around and fell down before Tharchin, saying as
they did so: "Kadrin Chen Yisu, Kadrin Chen Yisu"—that is to say, "Kind Jesus, Kind
Jesus." Tharchin immediately prevented them from worshiping him or taking hold of his
feet. Speaking to them he cried out: "I am not Jesus! I only prayed in the name of Jesus. So
do not worship me!" At this, the two stood up.
It then came to light that this man and woman were the very persons whom Tharchin and
Prem Singh had months earlier prayed for under the pipal tree near Siliguri while waiting for
the train. The man said, "I still remember how you prayed for my wife. You also helped us to
learn a simple and short prayer and repeated it several times. My wife was suffering from
swollen face and feet. In spite of visiting several hospitals in the tea gardens she could not be
cured. But ever since the day you prayed for my wife she began to show signs of improvement,
and now she has recovered fully."
This incident was being watched and witnessed by all the Nepali and Tibetan people who •
were listening to the redeeming gospel of salvation. The word of the man was a great
testimony before the crowd to prove that God in the name of Christ hears and answers j
prayers of His loved ones on behalf of the sick and the suffering. Even the missionaries who ;
had assembled there that day were tremendously impressed with the dramatic incident ^
Later both the man and his wife were kept at the Mission station and given Christian instruction |
for a few months. Ani Kempe herself taught them daily from the Bible, Eventually the
couple was ready to receive water-baptism. "But at the last moment," reported Tharchin, |
"they suddenly disappeared one night and never came back. We later found out that others |
had slandered us to them. The devil has his helpers everywhere."18
Nevertheless, Tharchin and his friend Prem Singh were happy to have served their Master J
and Savior so faithfully by preaching all along the Teesta Valley. Their experiences deepened |
their faith in the efficacy of the inspired Word of God and the healing power of Jesus Christ 1
All the whi le, too, Tharchin was increasingly receiving from the Lord a growing burden to bring
the salvation message to Tibetans, which thing gradually became a significant aspect of his
lifetime work and vision. Indeed, one particular incident that occurred on this p r e a c h i n g tour
provided a catalyst which would further spark his lifelong interest in Tibet—including its
history, language and literature. Tharchin was to speak of it in late 1975, just a few months
before his death, in an interview he gave at his home to the editor of a prominent Tibetan
journal. In response to the editor's question as to how he became so interested in Tibet, the
old man from Poo reminisced as follows:
When I was about 21 years old or so, I once was distributing in Siliguri sotne Christian tracts
to passers-by. And at that moment some Tibetan merchants passed by, remarking, "Such a
strong young man instead of doing work, wastes his time like this." They of course thought I
would not understand Tibetan. There and then I decided to work towards promoting
understanding between Tibetans and the outside world. But as I studied more and more about
Tibet, I naturally became more deeply involved with Tibet, and my interest became wider and
deeper till I felt "I had found my roots."19
It can also be said that through these pioneering ventures along the Teesta Valley, Dorje
Tharchin was learning to suffer for Christ, which rightly prepared him to travel shortly
afterwards with his most esteemed friend, Sadhu Sundar Singh.
C H A P T E R 7
Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet

Jesus ... said to them ...: As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you.
Then [Jesus] opened their mind, that they might understand the scriptures; and he said
unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the
third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all
the nations. Beginning from Jerusalem, ye are witnesses of these things.
And [Jesus] said unto them,... Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon
you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto
the uttermost part of the earth.
And Jesus ... spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven
and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them ... and ...
teaching them ...: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
John 20:21; Luke 24:45-8 mgn; Acts 1:7,8; Matthew 28:18-20
THE VARIOUS VERSES that head up this chapter are just a few of many in the Christan
Scriptures that constitute the great summons of the Lord Jesus Christ to His immediate
disciples and to those who, also called to such a ministry, would come after them to take the
gospel of God to the entire world. And thus in conformity to their understanding of this great
call of Jesus to go forth, many godly followers of Christ have obeyed this commandment of
His literally. For they have gone to the ends of the earth not caring in the least for their lives.
Not only are their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life, but surely also, great shall be their
reward in the world to come. For without exception their all-consuming passion and purpose in
life has been to bring the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ to those many throughout the world
who have sat in the shadow of darkness and death.
Yet Jesus never asked His followers to undertake any task but what He himself had done
so already before them. As Rev. John A. Graham, who himself had obeyed this command to
"Go," has written: "Jesus is not only the Savior of the world, but is also the great Missionary
Exemplar, the 'Sent' of the Father, the Declarer of the purposes of God, the infinitely
compassionate Teacher and Healer of the people."1 Graham went on to speak more fully on
the subject of missionary endeavor in his highly readable and informative volume concerning
the history of the missionary expansion of the Reformed Churches (of which he was a most
gifted and respected member), and is thus worth quoting at some length here:
The Gospels record the code of principles for the kingdom; His parables foretell its growth and
ultimate universal triumph; and in the training and sending forth of His disciples are exemplified
the methods of the missionary campaign. Above all, when He had finished His work on earth,
and was on the point of substituting for His bodily presence His omnipresence through the
Holy Spirit, He gave His disciples, and through them the members of His Church for all time,
those marching orders recorded with a suggestive fullness and frequency: [and here he quoted
the various verses that head up the present chapter].
This fundamental missionary idea, which is inseparable from the genius of Christianity, is
made a life-law to the Christian Church by the living example and the clear and direct commands
of Christ; and her one great work during the "magnificent parenthesis of history between the
ascension and coming again" of Christ is to witness for Him "unto the uttermost part of the
earth." Thus from the beginning was Christ's kingdom made universal, its only limit being the
extent of the human race.
The Bible is frill of missions. Directly, and still more by implication, the Old Testament sets
forth the duty, and in almost every New Testament book it is prominent. More especially are
the precepts of the gospel shown as put in practice in the Acts of the Apostles, which has
been termed the "Gospel of the Holy Spirit," for it contains the record of the acts done in the
power of that living personal influence promised for the work of missions by the ascending
Lord. It tells of the preliminary and all-important endowment of the Spirit, of His commission
and gifts to the missionaries, and of the results which followed, forming, as Dr. A. T. Pierson
has said, "one great inspired Book of Missions: God's own Commentary and Cyclopaedia for
all ages as to every question that touches the world's evangelization." But the book is
necessarily incomplete. It gives only part of the story of thirty-three years—the first generation
of the Christian Church. It is but the beginning of a book, to which fresh chapters will be added
until the time of the "new heaven" and the "new earth" foretold in the missionary Apocalypse
[that book of the New Testament at its very end and known also as The Revelation].2
Fresh chapters have indeed been added since those very first missionary pioneers whose
exploits were recorded so long ago in the Acts of the Apostles spoken of already. For throughout
Church history there have been many other followers of Christ who, not counting the cost to
their lives nor their fortunes, have responded to the command of their Great Missionary Exemplar,
so that they too might spread His gospel of redeeming love throughout "the regions beyond."
They together have constituted, as it were, a vast galaxy of bold pioneers who have gone forth
to proclaim to a needy world the "good news" of eternal salvation. And from among this great
galaxy of missionary volunteers many illustrious names couM be cited; but because of the
consideration of space one can only pause to reflect upon the praiseworthy lives of a very few
of many representative examples which could be put forward.
Most surely, of course, must first be mentioned those deeply consecrated Moravians,
discussed at some length earlier in the present work, who came to Indo-Tibet as pioneer
heralds of the gospel. But besides these worthies, the name of David Livingstone also quite
readily comes to mind when contemplating a list of such others as ought to be placed before
the reader for his consideration. Interestingly, this Scottish missionary had originally inclined
towards China, drawn there, wrote John Graham in his inspiring missionary volume quoted
from earlier, "ty the spell of Dr. Karl Gutzlaff's Voyages"—the writings of a missionary
entrepreneur who, the reader may recall, had personally exerted a profound influence upon
those Moravian pioneers just now referred to who had made their way to Lesser Tibet with
the gospel. But then Dr. Livingstone fell under the influence of African missionary Robert
Moffat during one of the latter 5s visits to England, at which time he had attracted Livingstone
to the "Dark Continent." So that even prior to the departure from London in 1840 of this new
missionary, "the bent was given to his life's work," noted Graham, by Moffat's advice to
"push on to the vast unoccupied districts" of Central Africa. Henceforth Livingstone would
trek through the dense jungles of that expansive region as a trailblazer of untrodden paths to
carry the torch of the Christian gospel; for he desired to bring the indigenous Africans, too,
within the eternal fold of his Master and Savior.
In the words of Graham, himself a pioneer missionary with ever increasing experience on
the mission field in India, Livingstone "had a taste for the peculiar joy of the missionary
pioneer." Said the future missioner to Central Africa, "I bless God that He has conferred on
Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet 239
me the privilege and honor of being the first messenger of mercy that has trod these regions.
I shall open up a path to the interior or perish." But it was as no mere traveler, explained
Graham. "I am a missionary, heart and soul," wrote Dr. Livingstone to his father, adding:
"God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor imitation of Him I
am, or wish to be." And to those who were urging him to act with caution and prudence this
courageous medical missionary, on the eve of his first substantive African trek inland, could
reply with such conviction as this: "If we wait till we run no risk, the gospel will never be
introduced into the interior." Armed with the strength of the promise of the "all power"
which, according to the New Testament, accompanied Christ's command to "Go," Livingstone
would be able to endure every suffering and every danger he might encounter on his numerous
travels; for his firm resolve, as he himself phrased it, was: "My life is charmed till my work
is done."
Four days after his celebrated encounter at Ujiji along the Tanganyika lakeshore on 15
March 1872 with Henry M. Stanley, the New York Herald journalist who had been sent to
find him when no news had been heard of him for two years, Livingstone was moved to
write in his diary for 19 March those stirring words so revelatory of where the heart-throb of
his entire life had truly lain: "My birthday. My Jesus, my King, my life, my all! I again
dedicate my whole soul to Thee—accept me." It was but a little over a year later that this
intrepid and brave herald of the gospel to the Black races, was found dead upon his knees in
the posture of prayer within a lonely hut at the Central African village of Ilala, near Lake
Bangweolo.
So inspired were others to follow in the train of this rare missionary soul that numerous
Christians—both men and women—felt the call to pioneer along the jungle paths of the
Congo themselves, many of whom ended in giving their all, even to the point of martyrdom,
for the cause of Christ. Yet so extensive was this expenditure of missionary life in Central
Africa that it was frequently criticized as having been the wasteful consequence of reckless
abandonment or else of imprudent action. But Graham, in his missionary history cited earlier,
has recorded the following response to such criticism:
An answer has been given in the statement that Christ did not tell His disciples "Go ye to the
healthy places of the world." The experience so dearly bought has proved helpful to later
workers, and it has been an inspiration to the whole Church of Christ to find so many men and
women of a like mind with the young missionary who, after comparing the ... work in Africa to
the laying of the unseen stones in the foundation of a great bridge, said: "If Christ wants me to
be one of the unseen stones, lying in an African grave, I am content, certain as I am that the
final result will be a Christian Africa."
Or like James Telford, one of the first of the workers of the Livingstone Inland Mission to fall
in heroic suffering for his Lord, who had said at his farewell meeting: "I go gladly on this
[missionary] mission, and shall rejoice if I may but give my body as one of the stones [with
which] to pave the road into interior Africa, and my blood to cement the stones together, so
that others may pass into Congo-land."
Not unlike the brave missionary ardor and self-sacrifice exhibited in both Livingstone and
these two direct successors of his in Africa was the spirit which was manifested in still
another bold and courageous pioneer in Christian evangelism—namely, David Brainerd. He
it was through whose very short life there shone so brilliantly yet so briefly that spirit of devotion
to Christ which impelled him to give up all, literally, for the sake of spreading the gospel to those
without hope and without Christ. As Graham has so well and so accurately put it:
... The spiritual aspirations and three years'... labors among the Indians at the Forks of the
Delaware River and elsewhere [in the American Colonies of Britain] are a precious legacy to the
whole Christian Church, and have led others, such as the like-minded Henry Martyn [missionary
to India and Persia], to follow in his train. Never was a man more dead to the world or fuller of
longings after the glory of God. On some occasions wonderful manifestations of the Spirit
followed his preaching to the Indians, and many were baptized. He was ready to do or suffer
anything for those who were without Christ, and his life proved the reality of his prayer: "Here
am I, send me: send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the
wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort on earth; send me even to death itself, if it be
but in Thy service, and to promote Thy kingdom." His constitution,-never robust, was shattered
by the privations he endured, but he toiled on till he could no longer sit in his saddle. In 1747,
at the early age of 30, in the house of Jonathan Edwards, to whose sister he was affianced, he
died, having even in this life had a foretaste of that heaven which he described as "to please
God, to give all to Him, to be wholly devoted to His glory."3
This concluding refrain from the heart of David Brainerd—"to please God, to give all to
Him, to be wholly devoted to His glory"—quite remarkably sums up the life and ministry of
one final illustrious name to be considered from among the many precious and dedicated
souls who make up the inspiring galaxy of those hardy and devoted missionary pioneers who
through the centuries have laid down their lives on behalf of Christ and His kingdom. For
beyond dispute, the Indian Christian saint and mystic, Sadhu Sundar Singh, can quite easily
be classified also among the great stalwarts of the faith who have answered the missionary
call of their Master to "Go," since he, too, despite privations and difficulties and persecutions
of every conceivable sort, faithfully proclaimed far and wide the riches of the glory of Christ
to a perishing world. And it is upon this pioneer missionary's life and work that the reader's
attention must now be focused in much greater detail than before, in view of the close
relationship he was about to have, in the work of evangelism, with the central character of
the present narrative.
It will be recalled from an earlier chapter that this young follower of Christ, after only
thirty-three days following his baptism at age sixteen, adopted the dress of a Christian sadhu,
discarded shoes and even sandals, and, armed with but his New Testament and his faith in
the power and love of God, launched forth upon what can only be termed a remarkable
display of Christ-likeness in both walk and work. (Anglican) Church Missionary Society
missionary in India, the Rev. Joseph Redman, who had baptized young Sundar, has provided
insight into the evangel heart of this lad as it was at that very moment. Having been sent to
Rev. Redman at Simla for baptism by the boy's Mission School Headmaster down on the
plains, Redman interviewed him the very night of Sundar's arrival from Subathu since the
lad was so eager to be baptized the very next day, his sixteenth birthday: the earliest age?
according to Indian law of that day, that a converted Hindu or Sikh could undergo Christian
baptism. Recalling how fully satisfied he had been with Sundar's answers to his many questions
regarding the primary points of the Christian gospel, the basic knowledge on the life and
teaching of Christ, and the boy's personal experience of Jesus as his Savior, Rev. Redman
confided the following: "I told him I would be very glad to baptize him on the following day,
which was a Sunday. He replied that he desired to be baptized because it was the will of
Christ, but that he felt so sure that the Lord had called him to witness for Him, that even if I
4
could not see my way to baptize him, he would have to go out and preach." Such was the
missionary zeal that was already evident in this young man's heart.
Journalist D. L. Pierson, editorializing about the Sadhu in 1920 at the height of the latter's
evangelistic ministry, wrote: "He represents a mode of life and service that is perhaps more
nearly akin to the example of Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry than is seen in the
outward life of any other living man." Commenting in the same editorial, this Western
missionary writer noted that Sundar Singh had desired to follow the Lord "as literally as he
knew how—an Asiatic devotee following an Asiatic Messiah": not doing so, though, "to gain
merit for himself' as would the average Hindu sadhu, "but to win men to Christ." Yet this
very life of the sadhu, Sundar had felt, was the best way for him to achieve this noble goal,
since, as he himself has explained it, "a Hindu will not drink from a foreign vessel, even if
dying of thirst, but will readily take it from a native bowl." Moreover, he is reported to have
once made the following remark to Christians from the West: "You have offered us the
water of life in a Western cup. Give it to us in an Eastern bowl and we will drink of it." As
if to confirm these statements of Sundar Singh, Pierson observed that "already multitudes
who have refused to accept the gospel from foreigners and from foreignized Indians have
accepted it from the Christian sadhu." All castes and classes, and even zenanas (women's
quarters of high-caste homes), Pierson added, "are open to him in his saffron robes."5
Typical, in fact, of the reaction of Indian audiences to this Asiatic messenger of Christ
and his message was a pen-portrait of this herald of the Christian gospel that appeared in a
South Indian newspaper of Madras. Here before an expectant audience, began the paper's
native writer, stands Sadhu Sundar Singh dressed in his saffron robe—
a tall young man delivering his message with the fire of a prophet and the power of an apostle.
The audience hung on his lips, and never for a moment allowed their eyes to stray from the
central figure. The Sadhu was unlike all mental pictures formed of him—he was incomparably
superior to all I had thought of him. As I heard the sweet words issue from the lips of the
Sadhu, who stood before me a visible symbol of the spiritual culture of the East, set aglow in
the resplendent light of the gospel—a vessel of eastern art and beauty chosen by the Lord,
and filled with His Spirit—my skepticism vanished like clouds before the rising sun, and the
dreams of my life seemed to touch the borders of the real. The problem of Christianity in India
is solved, and the Sadhu has solved it.
Indeed, a Hindu sannyasi, the moment he laid eyes upon this indigenous Christian sadhu,
was heard to say: "From his face I could see that he has realized the bliss I am struggling
after."6
It needs to be made clear that one of the reasons young Sundar had felt led from the
outset of his ministry to don the vestments and vocation of a wandering sadhu was because
of the then current state of the Christian Church in his country. He had wondered, in fact,
whether there was any place for him in the Indian Church. One of his biographers has
described the situation which had confronted this zealous and devoted young convert to
Christ at the very beginning of his Christian walk:
He was a village Indian: the Church had lost its way and was too Western for him to fit into. Its
existence and manners it owed to the West. Its hymns were translations, its services adaptations
of those to be found in Britain or America. Its members, relying on the missions for their
livelihood, imitated the missionaries' customs. They learned English, ate in Western ways and
dressed in Western clothes. Their intention had been to show the Hindus and Moslems round
about them that they had forsaken the old gods, but the results were perilous. The Christian
Church had become the Church of the West in India. To Sundar, even at this stage, it was clear
that if the Indian Church was to save its soul, and, more important, to save the souls of the
Indian people, it must present the Christian gospel in Indian terms. He must turn his back on a
secure position within it. He must be true to his heritage—and his Savior.
What, then, could be more Indian than the sadhu, the holy man lost in meditation, and
teaching ... those who sought him out.. .?7
Just here, however, it may by instructive to pause for \ few moments to make further
inquiry into this subject of the "sadhu" as regards the philosophy which lies behind it, the
place of the sadhu in the Indian and Eastern religious scene, and how Sundar Singh as a
Christian sadhu stood out in such sharp contrast to the vast majority of his non-Christian
counterparts. First of all, the term sadhu itself is a Sanskrit word used to refer to a Hindu
ascetic or holy man. And the title "Sadhu," by which Sundar Singh "became known both in
the East and West," noted one of his finest biographers, "has a long Hindu tradition behind
it. It implies one who has chosen for himself the life of a homeless wanderer in search of
spiritual truth. Under the impulse of this ideal, men and women have left their kindred, and
given up wealth and power in order to go out in solitary faith on this lonely search for God.
Even children, in India, have often been carried along by the same irresistible urge from
within."* So wrote Charles F. Andrews. Cyril J. Davey, like Andrews one of the Sadhu's
many biographers, has pointed out that Sundar Singh combined "the Indian ideal of self-
denial, not for his own sake but for others, and the Western ideal'of the preaching friar..."
Yet, he continued, "there was nothing of the gray-bearded saint about him—he was tall,
well-built and just sixteen years old. Nor could he be confused with the half-mad,
ash-smeared, tousle-haired, dirty mendicants who were so distressingly familiar: he was
clean, vigorous, radiantly happy ... His swinging gait, his honest eyes, his cleanliness, all
* See two footnotes below for a more recent example of such renunciation, albeit exemplifying a "works-
righteousness" approach to personal salvation for oneself by means of a life of ascetic wandering as opposed to
Sundar Singh's "grace-motivated" adoption of a similar pilgrim lifestyle as the means to draw others to God for
salvation in Christ which he himself had already received and now enjoyed. And though the example is of a Jain
and not a Hindu follower who renounces the normal lifestyle of humanity, it comes to the same thing in both
purpose and content.
distinguished him even to the casual observer from the cringing, deranged and mendacious
majority of'holy men'."*
Interestingly enough, an Indian journal in 1920 pointed out in similar vein the contrast
between Hindu and Christian sadhus, coming down on the side of the Christian ones as
represented by Sundar Singh, as follows: "Our typical yellow-robed religionist seems to
consider dirtiness next to godliness, whereas Sundar Singh takes his bath as seriously as his
prayers." Moreover, the journalist observed, "in India there are over five million sadhus—
five million wandering, yellow-robed 'renouncers.' It is conceivable that half or even three-
fourths are indolent instead of pious souls who rather enjoy gallivanting over the country,
seeing the sights and getting fed gratis by the faithful. And their bowls are not always
empty." Concluding the contrast, the Indian writer noted with great cogency the difference
in attitude between the two sadhu types 6n the matter of suffering: "Sundar Singh has won
knowledge and certainty out of pain. Today, Sundar Singh believes as ever in suffering. But
it must be suffering to some good for others. This Christian saint would never line his shoes
with sharp nails or walk barefoot over a path of live coals; he would never while away his
time reposing on a bed of spikes or squatting between three fires. Yet he is glad to swim icy
rivers in the Himalayas or to receive blows in the face (literally turning the other cheek) or to
be thrown down into a well amongst rotting porpses (as happened to him in Tibet), for the
sake of the Cross."
In short, Sundar had a wholesome attitude towards the austere lifestyle and rigorous call of
God which he felt obliged to follow. He never became an ascetic in the Hindu sense of the
word, and as Muriel Kent has noted, "it was emphatically true of the Sadhu that he had
committed himself 'not to a living death, but a dying life.'" The Sadhu, in fact, declared
himself as follows: "I do not call myself a Sannyasi, for a Sannyasi means one who renounces.
He renounces the world because he thinks everything in it is evil, but I think that all is good.
The world is all the property of my Father, and is therefore my property. If I renounce the
world I renounce some of the gifts which my Heavenly Father gives me out of His love."
* One who knew the Sadhu firsthand, it may be recalled, was the Rev. F. J. Western, who has given similar voice
to these very same sentiments of Davey's. This he did in his very helpful article, "Hindu and Christian Sadhuism,"
that appeared in the (Edinburgh) International Review of Missions (Oct 1921):525-41. Head of the Cambridge
(University) Delhi Mission, in connection with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Western had gone
out to India in 1905 and would five years later, together with Sundar Singh's early-days sadhu companion from
America, Samuel Evans Stokes, establish the short-lived Brotherhood of the imitation of Jesus, to which the
Sadhu, who nonetheless declined, had been invited to join. Writing out of his fifteen years of experience in Hindu
India, Rev. Western made the following observations in his highly informative article:
... A very large proportion of the [Hindu] sadhus ordinarily to be met with ... are nothing more than sturdy
beggars without the slightest tincture of devotion or spirituality, but who find the ochre robe and the matted
hair a passport to an easy life and in many cases to one of fraud or crime. Of the remainder, many have very
vague and crude ideas of the doctrines which underlie sadhuism, and very low standards of spiritual life. Many,
in particular, keep themselves in a state of stupefaction by the constant use of hemp on the plea or in the belief
that it promotes abstraction from the things of sense. It is therefore only a very small minority of sadhus to
whom any description that is worth giving can apply.
... [Furthermore,] a most important characteristic of Hindu sadhuism is that almost universally it is entirely
individualistic and self-centered in its outlook. The sadhu does not work for others, or pray with others; he feels
little if any responsibility for other men and women and his relations with them are simply incidental to the
development of his own life. That this should be so follows necessarily from the principles [earlier] stated. [In
short,] the work of a sadhu is in himself and for himself, (pp. 525-6, 530, 531)
And later he would say: "The harm comes, not when we use God's gifts, but when we
misuse them."
In addition, it may be stated with absolute certainty that as a Christian Sundar Singh
would never have subscribed to the idea that attributes salvific merit to the voluntary lifelong
pilgrimage of any sadhu. One typical expression of this concept can be found in the words of
the Hindu rain-god Indra, patron of travelers, who is mentioned in the Hindu writings as
having described the rewards of a sadhu's lifestyle in this fashion: "All his sins are destroyed
by his fatigues in wandering." But Sundar recognized only too well that only at the foot of the
Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is such absolution possible, as the Christian Scriptures make
clear: "Unto him [Christ] that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood ... to him be
the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen."—"Not by works done in righteousness,
which we did ourselves, but according to his [God's] mercy he saved us, through ... Jesus
Christ our Savior."8
Only after his merciful encounter with the Living Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the
receiving of His salvation by grace did Sundar Singh ever set out on the pilgrim's pathway of
good—if fatiguing—deeds as a Christian sadhu; for by experience he well understood these
additional words of Scripture: "By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his
[God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for [or unto] good works, which God before
prepared that we should walk in them."9 The destruction of Sundar Singh's sins did not come
from his having donned the saffron robe of a suffering wandering sadhu bent on laboring to
appease a wrathful god but from his having shed his own numerous robes of works-
righteousness so that he might receive in mercy and grace an altogether new robe with
which to now clothe himself: that robe being none other than Christ himself as his newfound
righteousness (see 1 Corinthians 1:30). Whether saffron or blue or purple, it mattered not,
with respect to his salvation, what would henceforth be the color of Sundar's outer garment;
for now he was clothed with the priceless inner spiritual garment of Christ himself! *
Nevertheless, two of the Sadhu's biographers have well pointed out that while the adoption
by a convert to Christianity in the East of the role of a sadhu "promised one great advantage,"
it did so "at the price of one great difficulty." In those days a sadhu traveling in India or its
neighboring States may indeed have had the advantage of being able to present the new faith
"in a specially and characteristically Hindu form." But a difficulty might arise, they went on
* How different was young Sundar's approach to becoming a sadhu wanderer from the approach which a
follower of the ancient Jain religion in India has most recently demonstrated in having adopted the life of a lonely
pilgrim. Unlike the Sadhu who had received salvation in Christ prior to donning the saffron robe, a multi-
millionaire businessman proceeded to have every hair on his scalp plucked out and to discard every piece of
clothing he possessed "in the hope of salvation as a wandering Jain ascetic." This he did on 16 February 1992
before a huge crowd of 10,000 onlookers gathered in New Delhi to witness the event, as reported in the Telegraph
of Calcutta and other Indian newspapers. The news account explained that the 60-year-old Sulekh Chand Jain,
till now a construction company owner, would henceforth be known as Muni Samveg Sagar and would follow till
his death the 250C-year-old tradition of the Digamber Jain sect "in renouncing worldly possessions and his
family of a wife, son and four daughters."
Before his disrobing ceremony (since afterwards he would be forbidden to make any reference to his past), the
millionaire contractor briefly recounted his experiences in big-time construction. "Every day I told lies to get
rich," he told his audience, "and then came a point when I realized that I had done everything possible for myself
to say, if "the respect and veneration traditionally accorded to the person and life of a sadhu"
were "to be turned into resentment and persecution" once it became evident it was the
Christian faith which "this particular sadhu was concerned to preach." This very dialectic
occurred over and over again in the missionary life of Sundar Singh, During the many years
of his active ministry for the Lord, the Sadhu "experienced acutely both the difficulties and
the advantages of the choice he made—wandering from place to place, possessing nothing
but his robe, his blanket, and a copy of the New Testament, living on food offered him by
hearers grateful or compassionate, or, when that was not forthcoming, on roots or leaves,
10
accepting hospitality when offered or, failing that, sleeping in caves or under trees."*
What is therefore most compelling about the Sadhu and the other humble and noble souls
who labored for the Lord in this and similar ways is the fact that though dead they yet speak
forth the content and cost of discipleship to the generations that have come after them. Their
lives should inspire followers of Christ even today to want to do the same. As briefly portrayed
already in an earlier chapter, the life of Sadhu Sundar Singh in particular has influenced
many, who in turn—like their Master and Savior—have dedicated themselves unconditionally
and unreservedly to the extension of the kingdom of God.
For instance, in his beautifully written personal memoir of Sundar Singh, Charles Andrews,
an intimate lifelong friend of the Sadhu's, has provided his readers with some telling examples
in this life but nothing for the next" That turning point had come nine months earlier, and had been triggered by
his attendance at a religious discourse which a young ascetic leader of the Jains, Muni Amit Sagar, had delivered.
Upon conclusion of the discourse the rich businessman, reported the Telegraph, immediately "resolved to follow
the footsteps of th^ muni on the path to moksha, or eternal salvation."
The daily regimen which this new ascetic wanderer will have to follow is most rigorous: (a) only once a day
may he eat—if invited to do so—and only that much which his palm can hold; (b) except during the monsoon
Season, the new muni may not reside in any one place for more than a few days—thus preventing any attachment
or possessiveness from developing; (c) his only means of transport will be his bare feet; and (d) when seating
himself, it can only be upon "a clutch of peacock feathers" to preclude the crushing to death of ants and other
small creatures.
As though to underscore the "works-righteousness" character in the approach to this tradition of wandering
asceticism, the former successful businessman, when asked if such penance as he had now embarked upon would
be too much to bear, replied: "I have always succeeded in everything I have undertaken and am confident that I
will not fail in this also." Moreover, there was no ambiguity as to why this latest muni to have joined a select
group of some 200 known Digamber Jain ascetics had inaugurated his late-in-life pilgrimage as a wanderer: "My
quest is personal salvation."
The new muni, incidentally, had left nothing to charity, but gave all his wealth to his businessman son and to other
family members; who continue, reported the Telegraph, to reside "in a posh home." "What I do with my money,"
he explained defensively, "is my business because I am a self-made man." What a sharp contrast in motivation and
purpose to that of the Sadhu, indeed, who—in the words of Cyril Davey quoted earlier, had adopted "the Indian
ideal of self-denial, not for his own sake but for others " See Telegraph (Calcutta), 17 Feb. 1992.
* On one occasion the Christan sadhu was inquired of as follows: "Do you ever ask for food anywhere?" To
which Sundar Singh replied: "Hindu sadhus do, but I never do so. When my Heavenly Father sees that I need
food, He arranges it for me." Quoted in J. H. Rowlands and H. R. Ghose (comps.), Sermons and Sayings of Sadhu
Sundar Singh..., 52.
288»
of the converted Sikh's dramatic influence on others around him. Young Sundar used to
spend time whenever in Delhi visiting his even greater friend, Principal S. K. Rudra at St.
Stephen's College (where Andrews himself was a Professor at the time). The young sadhu
would spend the larger portion of his spare moments with the Christian students at their
hostel on the College grounds. Sitting up with him into the wee hours of the morning, these
students would be so deeply affected by what Sundar would tell them of his experiences
with Christ and for Christ that "they very soon became intensely eager to go up to Kotgarh
and live with him there, so that they might catch something of his own brave spirit."
Yet an impact upon these young lives was felt and a change wrought in their attitudes and
life goals without their ever having left the College's precincts at all! As Andrews tells it,
"the change which came in this manner was marvelous to witness." One of the students, a
talented athlete, forfeited a most promising prospect in Government service in order to enter
Christian endeavor directly. A second student firmly decided to enter the ministry of the
Church "for a life of sacrifice and devotion." And when a third—who had been the most
influenced of ail by the Sadhu's life—became aware of the illness of a College sweeper who
was an "untouchable," this student entered the sweeper's quarters, remained with him, and
nursed him back to full health. "Such a thing," observed Andrews, "had never happened in
the history of the College before."
To the question as to what was the attraction which had wrought such wonderful changes,
Andrews makes plain in his response that nothing "merely second-rate could possibly have
effected it." No manner of living that was "half in comfort, half in self-denial" could have
wrought such "a miracle." Only the kind of life Sundar lived could have stood the test. "It was
reckless in its self-spending," Andrews declared; "and he had counted the cost." "The Cross
was not preached only, but lived," he concluded, "and that made all the difference."11 Similar
testimony has been offered by longtime American Methodist missionary to India, E. Stanley
Jones, who became a good friend of the Sadhu's in his later years.* Writing in one of his books
about the need for the follower of Christ to know and experience the losing, denial or surrender
of the self to the Lord Jesus Christ that he might find or gain it back in Him (see the Gospel of
Luke 8:23-5), Rev. Jones recounts from his own personal knowledge a most interesting incident
in the converted Sikh's maturer years which so clearly confirms the earlier testimony of Andrews.
Two men were on an Indian platform, one a man who was a religious politician, pulling wires,
manipulating men and situations, all in his own interest. The other was Sadhu Sundar Singh
who had lost his life [i.e., his self-life or self-centered life] in lowly service, wanting nothing
except to present his Lord. When the first man spoke he shook himself, but not us. The more
emphatic, the less effective he became. Inwardly we were saying, "Oh, yeah." When Sadhu
Sundar Singh spoke we were all eyes, all ears—and all response. He had no outer position, no
outer authority, but he held us like a vice, with the consent of all our inner beings. He was the
embodiment both of self-losing and of self-finding.12
Other books and articles about him have been published in the past and continue to be
published in the present;13 yet even more could be written about Sadhuji from sources which
* In a letter written in 1929 just a month before the Sadhu disappeared, Sundar Singh wrote of Jones as follows:
"Yes, I know Dr. Stanley Jones and his work in India. He is a friend of mine. I wish we could have many
missionaries like him." Quoted in Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 219-20.
still remain untapped. The next few chapters of this present work, in fact, should serve to
$hed further light on the life and ministry of this most singular servant of God. This is because
much of their content has been gleaned from the unpublished "memoirs" and other relevant
documents which form a part of one of these heretofore untapped sources: the voluminous
Tharchin Papers that were made available to the present author.
Now with respect to the first proposed visit of Sundar Singh to Tibet approached from the
eastern side of India by way of an evangelistic tour through the State of Sikkim, Gergan
Tharchin is without doubt the outstanding authority able to vouch for the details of the Sadhu's
venture into Sikkim. This is because he accompanied the Sadhu on the entire route of the
preaching tour he made there. In the past Tharchin had continually answered the correspondence
of Sundar Singh's friends and would-be antagonists confirming the visit of Sadhuj i to Ghoom
and other places. As it turned out, references to Tharchin's submitted statements—either brief
or more extensive—did appear in seven, and perhaps more, biographical and critical works on
the Sadhu during Tharchin's lifetime, three of which were brought to the Tibetan's attention by
his friends and acquaintances. One of these seven appeared in German in 1924 and was later
published in English translation; a second work—making probably the fullest use of Tharchin's
statements—appeared as both a biographical and psychoanalytical study of Sundar Singh's life
and was published in German in 1926; two other volumes utilizing some of the Tibetan's
statements, again published in German, appeared in 1927 and 1937; while the others, three
much later publications on the Sadhu's life, also made some use of Tharchin's observations and
were published in 1950,1958 and 1964 in English.14
Nevertheless, Tharchin never saw his confirming materials published anywhere in their
entirety. It may therefore be in the providence of God for the Christian world to be blessed
once again with a further opportunity to learn about some hitherto unknown facts, events and
statements from the life of the famed Sadhu. The unique character of these materials which
are to follow in this present narrative will become evident to anyone who would care to make
a comparative study of the various biographies of Sundar Singh that are available today.
It all began, according to Tharchin, "around the 10th of May 1914" when the Sadhu
"arrived in Ghoom with the specific intention o-f undertaking a journey into the closed land of
Tibet in order to proclaim the gospel of the grace of Christ to the Tibetans." It should be
understood, of course, that Sundar Singh had already made several arduous evangelistic
forays into the Land of Snows. From 1908 onwards, in fact, the Sadhu was to make Tibet his
Qhief area of "foreign missions" work. He had been drawn to that land in part because
in more recent times little if any evangelism had been undertaken there except for that
done by a few missionaries—mainly the Moravians along the northwest Indo-Tibetan
border and other missionaries along the Sino-Tibetan border; and in part because he
deemed the conversion of Tibet as chiefly the responsibility of the Indian Church's
missionary effort. 15 Indeed, it was because of Sundar's own ongoing efforts in Tibet
that the newly-formed indigenous National Missionary Society of India ultimately began
giving special consideration to this matter.16
Doubtless, too, the attraction for the Sadhu of this particular area—which he called that
"dark, closed land"—was strengthened by the exceptional hardships which the work there
might entail, both in terms of climate and topography (one Tibetan saying having described
the country as the "Great Ice Land"), but especially the certainty of persecution. For it was
no secret that the priests and lamas there, by virtue of the fact that they occupied all the
spiritual and many of the secular positions of authority in the land, were intensely hostile
opponents of any religious innovation. Yet such potential sufferings, combined with the
possibility of martyrdom, must have appealed to that passion in young Sundar for
companionship in the sufferings of Christ which was a prominent feature in his life and
which caused many, mistakenly, to "style him an Ascetic."*17
After his initial venture into Tibet in 1908, which, it will be recalled, took him through
Dorje Tharchin's home village of Poo, his plan ever afterwards was to spend up to half or
more of a given year in that closed land and/or the other restricted Himalayan kingdoms and
to spend the winter months working in India and elsewhere. For having once attempted
evangelizing in Tibet during winter, he quickly gave up the idea as an impossible modus
operandi for an itinerant evangelist when a snowdrift twelve feet deep had locked him into
one house for seventeen days!18
Now the Sadhu had always been on the lookout for new routes by which to penetrate the
officially closed borders of Lama-land. Indeed, he was once asked: "You are not allowed to
enter Tibet by the usual way—so how do you manage?" Replied the indefatigable servant of
God: "I watch my opportunity and slip in through jungles from a different direction."19 He
was not always successful, however, as this current opportunity with Dorje Tharchin proved
in the end to confirm. Nevertheless, it will be seen that spiritual fruit did accrue to the
kingdom of God through their combined evangelistic efforts in Sikkim.
In telling about the Sadhu's stay with him in Ghoom, Tharchin noted with a bit of humorous
irony that "in Simla, I had lived as the guest of Sadhuji, whereas in Ghoom Sadhuji lived as
* It should come as no surprise to learn that when the Indian saint visited the renowned Louvre Museum in Parisy
the only painting which truly attracted him was that of St. Sebastian, the third century saint and martyr who
became a favorite subject in Renaissance art that usually depicted him as a young man pierced by many arrows,
In fact, notes A. J. Appasamy, who had accompanied the Sadhu on his short trip to the French capital in 1920,
"he afterwards considered that the best picture in the Louvre!" Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 143.
my guest." Sundar's friend from Poo then went on to explain in his "memoirs" what happened
atGhoom:
Sundar Singh spent one week in Ghoom. During this time he took the Christian meetings, and
on Sunday he addressed the Christian congregation in the local church.* It was a blessed time
of fellowship to hear the word of God from this great servant of the Lord. Thereafter Sundar left
for Nepal without me as he thought he could easily manage there with the help of the Hindi
language which due to its similarities to Nepali is easily understood by the Nepali-speaking
population. Cofitrary to the common belief, it must be pointed out that Sundar Singh had come
directly to Ghoom to stay with me. He did not take any meetings in Darjeeling town proper. To
the best of my knowledge he did not even visit Darjeeling at all except to pass through it during
our return from Sikkim.
Several facets of this explanation by Tharchin of what initially took place at Ghoom
merits some clarification, observation, and even correction: (1) Tharchin has been quoted as
saying that the Sadhu's arrival at Ghoom was "around the 10th of May," where he "spent one
week" before he "thereafter left for Nepal." Yet from other reliable sources, including the
Sadhu himself, it is definitely known that Sundar Singh departed for Nepal from Ghoom on
the 5th or 6th of June.20 And hence, in Tharchin's explanation given above, there are three
weeks of the Sadhu's whereabouts which are unaccounted for. It may perhaps be explained
that Tharchin's use of the word "thereafter" was actually meant to indicate "sometime
thereafter" and not "immediately thereafter" when Sundar left for Nepal. Indeed, this
explanation is more likely the truth of the matter when one considers a passage from a letter
written by Rev. J. Kelly of Darjeeling's Tibet Mission House ten years later. In this letter
Kelly, a guest in Tharchin's home at Kalimpong, related the substance of a conversation he
had just had with the Tibetan about the Sadhu's visit to Ghoom and Nepal. Wrote Kelly to his
correspondent: "It was in 1914 that the Sadhu visited Ghoom, and after ministering there
[for] some time he announced his intention of visiting Nepal..." (emphasis added).f On the
other hand, if this be not the truth of the matter, then it could have been that Tharchin simply
failed to mention that after the initial week's lodging with him the Sadhu traveled elsewhere
in the Darjeeling District for another three weeks before coming back to Tharchin's home at
Ghoom.
(2) As made clear in (1), therefore, the chronology of Sundar Singh's visit at Ghoom can
be traced as follows: He arrived at Ghoom on or about 10 May 1914, which was a Sunday.
Accordingly, the following Sunday, on which he addressed the local church congregation,
would have been the 17th of May. It took place in the small church building that still stands
today. The congregation at that time had been composed predominantly of Tibetan folk who
had been attracted to the Darjeeling-Ghoom area from several of the neighboring countries
in the region.21 Only some three weeks later, after ministering further in Ghoom or elsewhere
in the vicinity of this hill station (or both), did the Sadhu, on or about the 5th of June, depart for
Nepal from Tharchin's residence, returning—as is also definitely known—on the 10th of
* This is the very chapel that the present writer visited on his first trip to Ghoom in 1985 and which is discussed
briefly in the Author's Preface.
f Kelly to Fr. H. Hosten, SJ, Kalimpong, 8 Dec. 1924, quoted in Hosten, "SSS: Interesting Correspondence,"
CHI{ 15 Apr. 1925):231,
292»
June to Tharchin's home again,* Only then would the Sadhu depart from Ghoom one final
time—on 17 June—for the much earlier stated anticipated j ourney to Tibet in company with
Tharchin.
(3) What Tharchin mentions here with respect to the language matter is quite true. Since
Sanskrit is the root language of Nepali, people knowing Hindi, Marathi or other languages of
northern India related to Sanskrit can easily follow and even pick up the Nepali language
without much difficulty. In fact, the Sadhu, in his account of his venture into Nepal written
immediately afterwards, clearly corroborates this observation:"... I can read and understand
the Nepali language, but I am not well practiced in conversation; and as Nepali resembles
Hindi, they [the people in Nepal] followed whatever was said."22
(4) Finally, when it is fully understood what happened to Sundar Singh in Nepal (which
the reader will be apprised of in Chapter 10), there may be some justification for observing
here that in one very critical sense Tharchin, perhaps without ever afterwards realizing it,
experienced God's protective hand against the Enemy of man's soul by His having shielded
him from serious harm or possibly even death as a consequence of the Sadhu's decision to
go into Nepal alone. It could very well have been that the young Tibetan may not have been
physically or even spiritually prepared enough at this point in his walk with the Lord to have
survived the horrendous ordeal that awaited the Sadhu. Indeed, an incident which occurred
at Ghoom between these two Christians immediately prior to the Sadhu's departure for Elam
may provide a clue to explain the latter's decision to embark alone for Nepal.
The source of this event is Gergan Tharchin himself who^confided the following narrative
to Rev. B. K. Biswas, a much younger evangelist in Kalimpong whom the older man in the
late 1950s had taken under his wing, so to speak, in the work of the gospel. Long afterwards
Rev. Biswas reported it to the present author. "One evening at Ghoom," Tharchin recalled,
after there had been a Christian meeting and dinner concluded, all retired for the night. Two
beds had been nicely prepared by a missionary lady for the Sadhu and myself in Evelyn
Cottage. As usual, Sadhu Sundar Singh knelt down at his bedside; but he then said to me, "I
want to praise God." To which I responded, "The whole night through I will pray with you." At
this the Sadhu looked at me silently, a smile crossing his face. Then, both of us began to pray.
I must add that though Sundar Singh was at his bedside kneeling, I was on my bed. And thus
in these two different postures, we commenced to pray and praise.
Early the next morning at 6:00 o'clock I arose from my sleep and beheld the Sadhu still on his
knees praising God at his bedside with his bed having obviously remained neatly made and
untouched the whole night through. Shortly afterwards, the Sadhu now having concluded his
prayer and praise, looked at me smilingly and gently remarked: "Brother Tharchin, you have a
calling from God and I have another calling. You should not accompany me to Nepal but rather
do as the Lord would lead you here at Ghoom."
Upon hearing this I grew sad, perplexed and somewhat ashamed that I could not sustain
myself in prayer as my esteemed companion in the gospel had done. It was then that Sadhu
Sundar Singh went off to Nepal.23
It would appear that this incident contributed greatly to the Sadhu's decision to depart
* This date is partially continued from the fact that the Sadhu wrote a letter dated 10 June 1914 to Rev. Redman
(at Simla) who had baptized him. And in the letter he told of his preaching tour through eastern Nepal and of his
conversation with the Officer at Elam town whose intent was to arrest him for preaching the Christian gospel
there. See Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 65. This letter was posted from Ghoom.
alone; for from his perspective, he may have concluded that the man from Poo was not yet
up to the rigors, hardships and dangers which he knew were quite possible in a land that was
staunchly Hindu and did not at that time (nor even until very recent times) take kindly to
those who might cross the frontier to preach the Christian message on her soil.* And if this
was in truth the Sadhu's perspective, then his decision before the Lord to travel alone, when
a traveling companion, guide and interpreter was verily available and ready and eager to go,
was indeed most critical with respect to the future life and ministry of Gergan Tharchin.
Sundar Singh, having continually been in the presence of his Master all that night, may have
received an intimation from the Lord that he should not take the Tibetan with him on this
journey; though as the reader will soon learn, he did encourage Tharchin to accompany him
to Sikkim and onward, hopefully, into that part of Tibet which by this time did have a
relationship—albeit a somewhat tentative, even suspicious, one—with the British Government
of India. In any case, Sadhu Sundar Singh made it clear to his friend that he should remain
behind. Truly, God knows man's frame, and according to that knowledge He wisely apportions
to every one of His children what each is able to bear and go through. For whatever reason,
therefore, and known only to God most fully, Dorje Tharchin was spared from having to
undergo what proved to be an extremely painful experience—the consequences of which,
* During the height of a simmering controversy surrounding the saintly character and ofttimes miraculous gospel
ministry of the Sadhu (see Chs. 10-11 for details), one of his harshest critics, Swiss pastor Dr. Oskar Pfister, took
exception to the notion claimed by the Sadhu that he had been severely "mishandled" physically by those in
Nepal whom he claimed had persecuted and tortured him for preaching the Christian gospel there. Wrote Pfister
in 1926, "our judgment on the legendary feature of the [Nepal] story" is based on "doubts" which "continue to
persist forcefully." One such doubt, he noted, was raised by the claim made by Sundar Singh of his harsh
ill-treatment at the hands of the Hindu Nepalese. In support of this doubt Pfister pointed out "the gentleness—
categorically alleged by thorough knowers—of the Nepalese, who as devout people would never ever mishandle
so inhumanly a sadhu wandering in a yellow robe."
But as was observed a few pages earlier in the present chapter, a sadhu traveling about in those days in India
or its neighboring States (of which Nepal was one) might have had the advantage of presenting the foreign
Christian faith in a particularly characteristic Hindu form. Yet the difficulty arose for such a sadhu like Sundar
Singh if the respect and veneration traditionally shown to the person and life of a sadhu were to turn to
resentment and persecution if it became evident it was the Christian faith which the particular wandering sadhu
named Sundar Singh was concerned to preach. A narrow-minded religious people as the Tibetans, Indians and
Nepalese were during much of their earlier history could be provoked eventually to take non-gentle action indeed
towards those who from their perspective posed a serious threat to their long-held religious beliefs and practices.
To cite but one modem-day Nepalese who has commented about this matter, Anil Stephen has most recently
observed that the quest for religious freedom—apart from either Hinduism or Buddhism—"has had a painful
history in Nepal." Tracing the historical development of Christianity in his homeland, this Christian writer has
noted that both Hindu and Buddhist traditions in the country "formed a historic bulwark" in opposition to any kind
of permanent establishment of the Christian faith in Nepal. Even though Catholic missionaries, he explains in his
article, were able to found a small mission in the Kathmandu Valley during the early part of the eighteenth century,
once the country of warring tribes had been united under King Prithvi Narayan Shah, the latter moved to expel all
priests of that Church from the Nepalese kingdom in 1760. Since then, and up until the latter half of the twentieth
century, "the policy of the Nepali government had been to prevent Christians from entering the country and to
mistreat those who managed to do so" (emphasis added). For centuries, Stephen adds, "Nepal was unusually
isolated" from most contact with the Christian gospel. And during this same period what was true in Nepal was
similarly true among the Buddhists of Tibet and to a lesser extent among the Hindus of much of India.
In the estimation of the present writer, therefore, Pastor Pfister dwelling in far-off Switzerland, and even his
"thorough knowers" about the Nepalese people, must have been living in a dream world that was far removed
from the actualities of the real world of Central and South Asia in the 1910s and '20s. See Pfister, Die Legende
Sundar Singhs, 180; and Stephen, "The Church at the Top of the World," Christianity Today (3 Apr. 2000):57.
unlike those for the Sadhu, could have been disastrous for the young man from Poo.
From Ghoom, then, Sadhuji went off to Elam (Ilam or Horn, on some maps) in Nepal,
from which, after his harrowing experience there alluded 10 already, he returned to Tharchin
at Ghoom. Since this part of Sundar Singh's ministry requires some critical consideration,
particular space has been devoted to its discussion later in Chapter 10.
According to Tharchin, Sadhuji always carried an Urdu New Testament with him. He
read it daily, prayerfully and thoughtfully. He also carried with him a copy of the holiest
Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita, which he later left with Tharchin at Ghoom.24 Tharchin
could not recall where he might have misplaced this copy of the Gita, but he remembered
that Sadhuji hacLuiiderlined certain passages in it with ink. Moreover, in the margins the
Sadhu had noted those references from the New Testament which seemed to him to contain
or convey similarity or even identity in thought. It would appear that the converted Sikh had
been studying the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita with that of the New Testament so as to
make a comparison of Hinduism with Christianity for the purpose of discovering possible
parallel elements. The discovery of the said copy of the Gita among Tharchin's belongings
would be a find of great importance, since it would afford an idea of Sadhuji's insight into the
thought patterns of Hinduism and Christianity.25
Commenting further on the Sadhu's visit to Ghoom, Tharchin had this to say:
Sundar Singh had a pocket-size New Testament. Possibly it was bound in black leather. I still
remember once while 1 was cooking food for both of us for the evening, he was reading from
the New Testament and going over it slowly in his mind. Usually he carried one blanket and a
spotted-deerskin, which he rolled up—as is customary with Indian holy men. Before his trip
back to the plains of the Punjab he left the deerskin with me, but after sometime it got spoiled,
perhaps due to the damp weather of Ghoom. Sundar carried with him an extra yellow robe.
Usually he would roll up the blanket inside the deerskin. He wore a thick piece of cloth on his
back. Sometimes he would hang the belongings from his shoulder and sometimes he would
carry them under his arms.26
A paraphrase of one of the Sadhu's statements made in 1924, and confirming much of what
Tharchin has described here, reads as follows: "When the Sadhu is working down on the
Plains he has two sets of clothing, a blanket and a shawl. But when he goes to Tibet he has
just the one set, apart from the blanket and the shawl."27 From this one learns that when
trekking along the Indian plains or in other warm climes, the evangelist had with him two
saffron robes, but when traveling in the higher elevations (whether they be in the upper
mountainous regions of a place like Sikkim or in Tibet itself) he had but one robe. The reason
for two in warmer areas was most likely due to the fact of sweat and perspiration caused by
the heat, which would necessitate a change of clean clothing much more often. In Tibet, on
the other hand, the people in the remote barren and mountainous regions seldom if ever
bathed, they preferring to allow the dust and grime which accumulated on the body to serve
as a protective coating against the harsh climatic elements there. Moreover, streams and
other sources of water in which to bathe were few and far between.
Hence as to the extra yellow robe referred to above by Tharchin, more than likely, in the
current situation, once the two of them might have gained the higher elevations of Sikkim
and/or Tibet itself, the Sadhu would probably have had every intention of letting go of the
extra robe in order to have lightened his burden for the more arduous climbing that lay
ahead. And with respect to the deerskin which Sundar had brought with him to Ghoom so as
to provide him the extra warmth for Tibet, once it became clear he must reluctantly return to
the plains, he left it behind, perhaps hoping some day to actually use it if the opportunity for
entry into Tibet via Ghoom and Sikkim presented itself favorably. In any case, he certainly
did not need it now for the plains, what with the onset of the hot Indian season before him.
On the other hand, it would be reasonable—in the light of his statement quoted above—for
the Sadhu to take with him to the plains the extra saffron robe.
And as to the "thick piece of cloth" on the evangelist's back alluded to by Thafchin, it is
more than likely "the shawl" or cloak which Sundar himself mentioned in the 1924 statement
and which, according to one of his biographers, he "wore as a scarf over his robe." It also
served, according to the biographer, as a towel with which he dried himself whenever he
bathed.28 Years later after the Sadhu's permanent disappearance in the Himalayas, this same
cloak, or one similar to it, figured prominently in a remarkable instance of divine healing, much
like what is told of in the Acts of the New Testament. Missionary scholar and writer, Dr. Kurt
Koch of Germany, and a friend of Tharchin's, published the following account in 1981 of what
happened in South India, which should prove interesting to the reader:
... In Madras I was told of a Christian leader, Daniel, and of his friendship with Sadhu Sundar
Singh. In his youth, Brother Daniel became a friend of this godly man. Before the Sadhu vanished
permanently in the Himalayas he gave his friend his .,. cloak... which ... gave him shelter against
rain and cold.... Brother Daniel was once called to a very sick person. Praying, he laid the cloak
of the Sadhu on the sufferer and the sickness was healed. As the story seemed rather strange to
me in spite of the account in Acts 19 verse 12,1 asked Brother Daniel: "How often have you done
this?" and he answered: "Only that once. I never did it again." And that satisfied me.29
Finally, although Tharchin nowhere mentions the famed turban with which the converted
Sikh evangelist capped his fine head of black hair, this was an important piece of the Sadhu's
garb. The same biographer of the Sadhu has provided some information on what it was like and
how Sundar Singh wore it: it was "about half a yard wide and about ten or twelve yards in
length ... Like all Sikhs, he was very particular about his turban being tied neat and tidy.
Among the Sikhs one could say from the shape of a man's turban what social class his ancestors
came from. I could guess that Sundar's people belonged to the higher social strata."30
Tharchin has given a vivid description of Sundar Singh's winsome personality. Hé remarked
that his friend's "appearance was balanced. He seemed to be in the same mood, always
possessing the most smiling countenance. During sleep he used to produce some sort of
sound which was not that of snoring; but what it was and why it was I could not understand.
I observed this phenomenon every day as he used to sleep very near me. I presume it may
have been due to some exercises in yoga or practices in some special kind of breathing."
That the Sadhu had in his earlier years indulged in the practice of yoga—both in terms of
(1) a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being, and (2) a
method of meditation by which to achieve self-realization and liberation from all pain and
suffering into union with the universal spirit—is confirmed by the testimony of his biographer,
A. J. Appasamy. The latter, when a postgraduate theological student at Oxford, first met the
Sadhu there in 1920, and came to know him rather intimately over the ensuing years. In his
biography of the converted Sikh, Appasamy reported the following:
At Oxford Sundar Singh told us that in addition to all this study of the sacred scriptures of
India he learnt to practice Yoga, which has been followed as an effective method of meditation
in India through the ages. He even attained a mastery of the Yoga technique and became
oblivious of the external world for short spells. During these moments he experienced in some
measure the peace and joy for which his soul craved. But when he returned to consciousness,
he was again plunged into the turmoil of unrest and discontent.31
At some early point in his Christian experience (if not almost immediately after conversion),
he must have dropped the method of meditation (though most likely retaining the system of
exercises) in the light of what he later told Appasamy's father. This was during the Sadhu's
six-week stay as a guest of the elder Appasamy at the lattef's holiday retreat in April and
May 1918. For the younger Appasamy reports that his father and Sundar Singh "often
discussed mysticism, particularly of the Yogic type; which the Sadhu said was not to his
liking."32 Doubtless this dislike stemmed from the fact that now he had found something far
better for experiencing "the peace and joy for which his soul had craved" than the limited
and transient results of the yoga technique; namely, an intimate knowledge of the Living
Christ in spiritual fellowship on a daily basis.
Before the proposed visit to Tibet Tharchin requested the Secretary of the Finnish Mission
to grant him leave to accompany the Sadhu, and this was readily given.33 Shortly thereafter,
on the 17th of June 1914,* these two set out on their mission to the Land of Snows,34 both of
them deeply imbued, remarked Tharchin later, with "a heart desire of going to Tibet to tell
* At the outset of the account to follow of the journey taken by Gergan Tharchin and the Sadhu, and described
in substantial detail in this and the next two chapters of the present work, the author needs to bring to the reader's
attention the two major sources available to him for corroborating the dates, places and events involved in the
evangelistic tour conducted by Sundar Singh and his interpreter. These two primary sources are:
(a) pages 49 to 72 of Gergan Tharchin's unpublished "memoirs"; and,
(b) a four-page inked handwritten draft document prepared by Tharchin and found among the Tharchin
Papers, Kalimpong. Because of its frequent helpfulness in documenting many of the details in the delineation of
the Sadhu's preaching tour that is presented in these three chapters, this original source will be footnoted directly
throughout the Text of these chapters rather than be cited so many times in the latter's End-Notes. Further, in the
about Jesus."35 Their first major stop would turn out to be Gangtok (in the land of Sikkim)
some 35 miles to the northeast (as the crow flies) across three low mountain ranges. But
they would pass through a number of villages and hill towns before reaching there. From
Ghoom (at 74CCT a.s.l.) Sundar Singh and his companion followed the descending route
through mountains and reached Peshok at an elevation of 3300 feet (called Pashok, on some
maps; famous for its beautifully terraced Peshok Tea Estate) where they spent the night in
a Mission primary school. But Peshok (which derives from Pe«Zok and means "jungle" or
"forest," for at this place begins the dense subtropical forests of the Teesta Valley) is also
noted for the fact that it is here where the two rivers-—Rangit ("the depression in the hills")
and Teesta ("the beneficent rock")—spring out from Sikkim and meet to form a stronger,
more forceful Teesta as they together make their way down into the plains and eventually
flow into the far mightier Brahmaputra.36
Next day the two companions followed the same descending route until they came to
Teesta Bazaar (ca. 700'), which is situated on the right bank of the dangerous and fast-
interest of simplicity and brevity of documentation, this particular source will bear in the said footnoting the
following shortened title of "Tharchin's Replies ..." instead of referencing the long, clumsily-worded title which
Tharchin himself had given to his draft document that with a number of bracketed words and phrases added for
clarity by the present author reads as follows:
[Tharchin's Draft of His] Replies to Remarks Contained in [a Questionnaire Sent from] Rev. H. Hosten, S.J.
to the Rev. [J.] Kelly, Darjeeling As Reply to Yours [i.e., as reply to Rev. Kelly's letter to Tharchin that
included a copy of the Hosten questionnaire] Dated 9th [Sept.? 1925?].
Some further background is needed here, however, as an aid to the reader's understanding of this document.
Found also among the Tharchin Papers and in close proximity to this primary source was a handwritten letter
addressed to Tharchin, signed by J. Kelly with the return address shown as the Tibetan [Mission House?—letter
torn here], Darjeeling, and dated simply 29/9 (i.e., the 29th of Sept.). From both internal and external evidence relating
to both this letter and the "Replies..." document, it is the confident conclusion of the present writer that the year
date for both is 1925. In the Kelly letter from Darjeeling, moreover, the clergyman writes in part as follows: "Dear
Mr Tarchin, Thanks for your last good letter. I have not seen the Father [i.e., Fr. Henry Hosten of Darjeeling] since
[receiving it?], but if he writes me again I shall tell him what you say [i.e., what you have written as replies to the
Hosten questionnaire]. I have no time [now?—word illegible] to write to him about the Sadhu."
From all the above data, therefore, the present author can with confidence lay out the chronology of the
Hosten-Kelly-Tharchin correspondence involved here:
Fr. Hosten, it is known, had written Rev. Kelly for the first time in late 1924 (see Chs. 10-11 for more details),
inquiring about a possible association between Gergan Tharchin and Sadhu Sundar Singh in the Darjeeling area
and in Sikkim, since he was investigating aspects of the Sadhu's life and career; furthermore, he intimated to Kelly
that he would probably mail to Kelly later a questionnaire earmarked particularly for Tharchin to consider.
It would appear that eventually Hosten did so, listing 15 separate items of inquiry in his questionnaire, which
prompted Rev. Kelly to forward it to Tharchin and requesting in a cover letter dated 9 Sept. 1925 (no longer
extant among the Tharchin Papers) to give reply
This Tharchin did, drafting the aforementioned "Replies ..." document that point by point gave reply to each
of the 15 inquiries put to him via Kelly by Fr. Hosten in his questionnaire. Internal and external evidence would
dictate, in this writer's considered judgment, that Tharchin's draft of his "Replies ..." was prepared sometime
between his receipt of Kelly's 9 Sept. 1925 letter with the Hosten questionnaire attached and 29 Sept., the date
of Rev. Kelly's letter acknowledging receipt of Tharchin's "Replies ..." ("your last good letter") and stating he
would use the same in response to any further letter of inquiry from Hosten.
Now in reviewing Tharchin's quite detailed "Replies ..." one can easily discern that the Tibetan associate of
the Sadhu has recapitulated from both his very good memory and his travel diary of the period all the dates, as
well as many of the places and events, surrounding his itinerary with Sadhu Sundar Singh and that this document
thus makes it possible for the author to be precise in delineating with confidence the preaching tour of these two
evangelists that is now under discussion.
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flowing river Teesta. From there they had to climb steadily uphill for about seven to eight
miles—again through dark and dense forests—until they arrived in the hill town of Kalimpong,
which during those days was still somewhat uncivilized and backward.
Now the first mention ever of this primitive settlement in official records was the impression
recorded by Sir Ashley Eden in his Report of a Government Mission to Bhutan in 1864. As he
made his way on this diplomatic expedition to that land Sir Ashley and his party stumbled
across a rude and tiny hill community which he described in the following colorful terms:
About two o'clock we reached a few huts constituting the hamlet of Kalimpong,* at an elevation
of between three and four thousand feet. The huts were supported on piles about four feet
from the ground; the flooring being formed of roughly-hewn planks, and their walls of matting
spread upon a framework of bamboo. The roofs were thatched.... The population of the hamlet
consisted of two or three families, looking very dirty and smoky. They were civil, but did not
seem to be anxious to be on intimate terms with us, and kept as much aloof as possible....
Toward sundown the cows belonging to the hamlet, eight in number, came home; having been
loose in the jungle since the morning.... The mountain slope about Kalimpong is partially
cleared, and a few plantain trees were growing near the huts. The soil is a rich black loam,
capable of being rendered very productive. The only crop we saw was a little rice growing in
isolated patches.37
As the reader will subsequently learn, Gergan Tharchin was to make his permanent home in
Kalimpong, where he lived for the rest of his life. Because of this, a closer look should be
taken of the place than would otherwise be warranted.
This Himalayan hill station, considerably smaller than her larger sister community of
Darjeeling, and located some thirty miles by mountain road east northeast of that rival town,
was once "a mountainous semi-Tibetan tract" of land and part of the territories belonging to
the Rajas of Sikkim until the beginning of the eighteenth century when it was taken from
them by the Bhutanese. For the most part Bhutan at that time had been in the hands of a
loose confederation of hill chieftains who hardly ever came down from their upland areas
except to make raids on the lowlands. Following one such raid on the State of Cooch Bihar
* More than one meaning of the name of this settlement has been suggested. One recent tourist guide publication
gives the following as the most commonly accepted meaning: "Stronghold of the King's Minister," and continues
by explaining: "Once the headquarters of a Bhutanese Governor, the word Kalim means king's minister, Pong is
the stronghold. It is also called Kalibong or the 'black spur' by the hill people. Kalibong in the local dialect stands
for kaulim, a fiber plant that grows in abundance in this region." A. P. Agarwala, ed., Tourist Guide to Darjeeling,
Sikkim and Bhutan, 40. The name in Tibetan is spelled "Kalonphug" and means "the Cave of Ministers"—giving
rise to speculation that it signifies the place of assembly of the ruler's Cabinet Ministers, since a kalon in Tibetan
is the word for a member of the ruler's kashag or cabinet.
Interestingly enough, however, another recent guidebook—an updated edition of one originally published in
1949—states that the meaning of the hill town's name which has found "the most favor" is that which the
indigenous Lepchas gave it: "ridge where we play"; for it is said that the Lepcha tribespeople "used to organize
field sports while not engaged in agricultural pursuits": and hence the name. See S. Jain, ed. and comp., Kalimpong:
a Guide and Handbook of information, 11.
in 1864, Eden had been sent to negotiate with the Bhutanese but went with inadequate
preparation and escort. When word reached the British that he had been ill-treated and
made a prisoner, troops were sent up from India. In consequence, a peace treaty was drawn
up which granted to British India 500 square miles of territory (with an estimated population
in 1865 of just over 3000) that became the Kalimpong subdivision of District Darjeeling.
There was also granted by this treaty of 1865 the large tracts of land which skirted the hills
facing the plains of Bengal and Assam and that were known as the Duars or Gateways (of
Bhutan) and which later became famous for their tea gardens. Thus did the village of
Kalimpong pass into the hands of the British, becoming in the nineteenth century the center
of an area known as British Bhutan and which would much later constitute part of what
eventually emerged as Bengal and later still as West Bengal.
Ranging in elevation from less than 4000 feet at one point in the town to almost 5600 feet
at another (causing one journalist in the 1950s to comment "that walking at a tilt becomes
second nature after a few days"), Kalimpong is situated in the Deolo (pronounced Daylo)-
Rinkingpong Ridge, above the east bank of the Teesta River. In fact, it is along the seat of
the saddle between these two Hills that the town's busy bazaar is located, haphazardly built
as it has been over the years on either side of the main road along a stretch of distance of
some two to three miles. Similar to Darjeeling in its "layout," Kalimpong not only straddles a
ridge but also consists of a series of interconnected streets and flights of steps. The hill
station is itself surrounded by higher peaks on all sides but one, that one overlooking the
Rangit Valley—with range upon range of hills sloping gently up from the riverbed.
The climate here is delightfully mild, the maximum temperature hardly ever rising above
75° R and the minimum, according to longtime resident David Macdonald, "never dropping
below 34 degrees." By comparison with Darjeeling, the temperature is generally ten degrees
warmer in Kalimpong the year round. And the rainfall is moderate, by Indian monsoon
standards, averaging only 80 to 85 inches annually, whereas that of Darjeeling is 120 to 125
inches and that of southern Sikkim averaging as much as 200; moreover, Kalimpong is
spared the heavier mists encountered in her District sister community to the west. Because
of these favorable climatic conditions, it has become one of the favorite hill towns for tourists
and other visitors.
In the opinion of one writer, in fact, the Kalimpong of today is "still a romantic place" for
tourists to visit. Writing in 1974, this former Headmaster and Principal of Kalimpong's famed
Graham's Homes Establishment notes that "even the most blasé traveler, the man or woman
who has seen everything and has the colored transparencies to prove it, feels something
different in Kalimpong." James Minto goes on to explain that
it is perhaps the blending of the beauties of nature and the blending of races and cultures in this
quaint corner of northeastern India which make the seasoned traveler pause and contemplate ...
[its] timelessness which is charming. Travelers find peace of mind, a strange detachment from the
problems which nonnally worry them. There is no industry there, no television, no railway, no
airfield. Life is peaceful and sedate.... The experienced European or American tourist in India,
jaded by a surfeit of Hindu temples with erotic carvings and by none-too-clean Buddhist
monasteries and the austere orderliness of mosques, finds his flagging interest reawakened in
Kalimpong, not by the relics of a past culture but by the striking beauty of faces, the color and
variety of costumes and all this surrounded by a panoramic sweep, breathtaking in its magnificence.
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It has been this latter aspect, in fact, that has been one of the features of the town which has
particularly drawn people here, and one that Tharchin must have enjoyed almost daily—namely,
the view of the Himalayan peaks which can be seen from its various hill sites. For example,
from the top of Rinkingpong (or Durpin) Hill—commonly called, on account of its position,
"The World's End" and that had formerly served as an artillery observation post in the town—
a grand view is afforded of the Teesta River, a sheer four-thousand-foot drop below, as well as,
on a clear day, an enviable overwhelming panorama of the majestic snows of Kanchenjunga
and beyond, "second only," writes Macdonald, "to that seen from Tiger Hill" at Ghoom near
Darjeeling. And as Minto himself has commented: "The remembered beauty of this scene
causes an almost physical pain for those separated from it. On an October or November day
when the monsoon clouds have finally scudded away and the air washed clean is like champagne
and visibility seems endless, Kanchenjunga stands towering above the town with an ethereal
quality that perhaps only Fujiyama can equal."
Called originally Dalingkote* by the Bhutias, Kalimpong as a community of hill folk was
once an obscure village indeed, it still being described even ten years after Eden's discovery
of it in the following rustic terms by another traveler through its meager precincts, Bengal's
Lieutenant Governor, Sir Richard Temple, who made an overnight stop there while on his
way to Sikkim in May of 1875:
The formation of the place is that of a large basin, with long sloping sides much cultivated,
principally with various kinds of millet, and tilled chiefly, though not entirely, by the plough.
The cultivators' cottages are built of wood, generally of bamboos, and the roofs are thatched
with grass. They are not gathered together in hamlets, but scattered about amongst the fields,
and near most of them is a pole erected, to which are attached white cloths, fluttering like little
standards in the wind, whereon are inscribed prayers in the Tibetan language. The breeds of
bovine cattle are fine, being of the best in the Himalayas, and so is the poultry. The soil is rich,
reddish, clayey, and probably very productive, and the culture and tillage are supposed to be
the best, as they are certainly the most extensive, in the Darjeeling district; but they appeared
to me to be very untidy and inefficient, and altogether inferior to that which is to be seen in the
western Himalayas. The cultivators are principally Bhutias, but some are Lepchas and Paharis,
or hillmen from Nepal. On the whole, there is a certain air of rural comfort about the place.
This "certain air of rural comfort" which Sir Richard felt about the village of Kalimpong
would soon change, however, as it gradually became a large town, developing by stages into
what grew to be, according to Giuseppe Tucci, "the largest emporium of northern Bengal."
Much of the reason for this flourishing of trade was due to the further development of the
main caravan trail to Lhasa in 1904 and the opening of an additional British trade mart at
Gyantse well inside the Forbidden Land as a result of the British expedition against Tibet in
that year (and described elsewhere), thus making Kalimpong the terminus of the chief trade
route from Tibet. These events contributed also to the eventual shift of much of the Darjeeling
* This name is derived from an old Bhutanese fort that was situated in the southeast section of the Kalimpong tract
to the east of the Teesta and is thus the name that was formerly given to the portion of British Bhutan east of that
River that is now a part of what is today called Kalimpong subdivision of the Darjeeling District. The fort, stormed
by the British in the Bhutanese War of 1864-5, stood at an elevation of 3350 feet above sea level atop a lofty
eminence that overlooks the Duars. Daling itself means "the place of the arrow," so called because the hill on which
the old fort had stood is sub-conical, similar in shape to an arrowhead. See O'Malley, Darjeeling, 181,214.
District's business center from its administrative headquarters at Darjeeling to Kalimpong,
where Tibetan mule trains coming down from the nearby Jelep and Natu Passes in southeastern
Sikkim now commenced to flood the heretofore 'moderate bazaar with countless loads of
wool bound for the factories in India and elsewhere in the world.
One estimate in the amount of wool which used to pass through Kalimpong has been
put at about 3840 tons annually. Yet in the early days of the hill town's brisk marketing
of Tibetan wool, the bazaar here had only been a receiving center, with all of the wool
received having been transported in its original state down to Calcutta via Siliguri, where
took place the sorting and baling for export to England. Later, however, the Tibetan
wool—almost none of which was consumed locally—came to be sorted and baled entirely
in the numerous godowns of Kalimpong, from whence it was immediately shipped down
to the plains of India. It must be understood that this much later godown activity would
initially be encouraged by the eventual entry of American merchants into the Kalimpong
market; so that by 1930 bales of Tibetan wool would now be exported from the hill
station direct to America.
To give some idea of the immensity of Kalimpong's wool trade during the days of its
prosperity, Arthur Jules Dash, writing in 1947 in the Bengal District Gazetteer (Darjeeling),
has remarked that nearly 3000 people "were employed in sorting and baling at a wage of Rs.
1/- per day per person." Furthermore, according to the Frontline Magazine journalist, Kalyan
Chaudhuri, who recently (1993) paid a visit to Kalimpong to write a feature article on the
Lhasa-Kalimpong caravan route, has noted that as many as twenty large abandoned godowns
stand today throughout the hill station's bazaar area "as a testimony to the largescale wool
trade of the past." Moreover, it was said of Tibet's economy that it began to be gauged
largely on the basis of her wool market being tunneled through Kalimpong, her wealth rising
or falling according to the price of the wool. In fact, regardless the products involved, by the
1920s half the entire Indo-Tibetan trade, wrote Sir Charles Bell, was traversing "this Lhasa-
Kalimpong route."
It was for this reason that Kalimpong came to be called "the Harbor of Tibet"; for
while neither European nor Indian traders were permitted deep inside the Great Closed
Land, Tibetans, explained the American traveler William McGovern, were free to come
down to India to barter their goods, mainly wool, in exchange for commodities which
they could then sell at the market towns back in their homeland.* And concerning
Kalimpong, McGovern, who visited here in 1922 and reached Lhasa in disguise the
following year, added that this hill station "served as the meeting-ground of Indian and
Tibetan traders, just arriving or returning to Lhasa, the Secret City; so that to see the
caravan merchant^ coming in from the North was like having communication with
another unseen, half-fanciful world." As a matter of fact, so close was the trade
* Some indication of the kinds of goods which these Tibetan traders—using the Lhasa-Kalimpong trade route as
long ago as 1898—brought down to India and took back to Tibet has been given by Major Laurence A. Waddell
of the Indian Army Medical Corps. While in Kalimpong himself that year he took note of a number of Tibetan
traders there whose caravan of loaded mules had only just then arrived in the hill station. Wrote Waddell of what
he was able to observe: "They bring in for sale or barter, ponies, wool, coarse blankets, furs, yak tails, musk,
"turquoise, gold dust, Chinese silk, brick tea,^borax and salt... And they take back English broadcloth, piece goods
and other European manufactures; tobacco, indigo, rice, sugar, madder and other tropical products, as well as
connection between India and Tibet that according to Chaudhuri, up until the 1950s
there were as many as three Kalimpong-based private banks in operation in Tibet!*
Now these economic and cultural developments naturally caused many merchants and
others from Tibet to settle down in the Darjeeling District, previously at Darjeeling, of course,
but even more so later in Kalimpong. Over the years at both hill stations, they and their families,
as well as others of Tibetan ancestry from elsewhere more locally, slowly but surely established
ethnic and cultural enclaves of their ownf where they "transplanted and fenced in, as it were,
a bit of their homeland." And by the 1920s and '30s, one could meet itinerant lamas, beggars
turning their prayer wheels while waiting for alms, and even eastern Tibetan Kham nomads—
"with their grim faces and their long daggers in sheaths of wrought silver." Commenting further
on the Tibetan community in Kalimpong and Darjeeling—in particu lar, the transient part of it,
Tucci, when there in 1948, noted that these Tibetans "look dreamy and giddy when they reach
those towns. They submit to the tyranny of trade, but behave like resentful captives, wistfully
yearning back for the boundless expanses and the lonely tracks of their deserts. They only stay
a few weeks, then others take their place."
But one must understand that beyond the Tibetan quarter in these hill stations there could
also be found a Chinese town as well: unfolding, as it was wont to do, along the main road,
with its cobblers and with its many faience, china and silk vendors. Tucci has explained this
historic China connection in the following terms: "From Shanghai the goods used to come to
Calcutta througji Singapore, and were then dispatched up the Himalayan slopes and stored
, s
coral, pearls, glass beads and precious stones "Among the Himalayas, 2d ed. (Westminster, 1900), 248. Throughout
the decades of Kalimpong's brisk bazaar trade there developed an even more diversified export of goods back to
Tibet carried by these traders. The Frontline journalist mentioned above has enumerated these goods in detail. He
writes: "Exports to Tifc^t through Kalimpong included woolen garments, cotton goods, iron, steel, copper,
brassware, stationery, fos>d grains, sugar, dried fruits, dyes and chemicals, kerosene, candles, lanterns, electric
goods, torches, batteries, brick tea, aluminum ware, pearls, coral beads, precious stones, cement, leather goods,
watches, cigarettes, leaf tobacco, and pharmaceutical materials." "Gateway to China," Frontline (17 Dec. 1993): 104.
* For an excellent well-documented recent discussion of the development of Kalimpong as the entrepot of this
period for Tibet's southern tfcade, the reader is directed to Amsterdam University's historical geographer Wim
van Spengen's article, "Geographical History: Long Distance Trade in Tibet," TJ(Summer 1995), esp. pp. 31-3,
42-3 and 46-7. In fact, writes van Spengen, "by the turn of the twentieth century, Kalimpong had definitively
replaced Kathmandu as the entrepot of Trans-Himalayan trade, even to the extent that Newar merchants from
Kathmandu shifted their locus of activity to Kalimpong." Ibid31-2.
t Indeed, L. S. S. O'Malley, quoted from three footnotes earlier, has provided an interesting profile on the various
classes of Darjeeling District's Tibetan or Bhotia population as it existed just seven years prior to Tharchin's and
Sundar Singh's evangelistic tour together. As previously defined in the present narrative (see Ch. 1 's End-Notes),
the word Bhod or Bhot has reference to the land of Tibet, and therefore Bhotia is synonymous with Tibetan. (In
fact, one modern-day anthropologist, Tanka B. Subba, has remarked: "Racially the 'Bhotias' and 'Tibetans' are
one and the same: the difference, if any, is political.") Now because "the native name of Tibet is Bod," writes
O'Malley, "and the Sanskrit form of this word was Bhot," therefore, "the Sanskritic-speaking races of India have
accordingly called the inhabitants of this region Bhotias." Moreover, he adds, "the country of Bhutan was so
called by the Bengalis in the belief that it was the [territorial] end of Bhot (Bhotanta), and the natives of Bhutan,
as well as of Tibet, are indiscriminately called Bhotias."
With that as background, O'Malley proceeded to describe briefly the four classes of Bhotias in District
Darjeeling—of whom in 1907 there were 9300—and where the majority of each class could at that time be found.
These four were: (a) the Sikkimese Bhotias, who were "a mixed race of Tibetans and Lepchas, being the
descendants of Tibetans who settled in Sikkim a few centuries ago and intermarried with Lepchas"; (b) the Sharpa
or Sherpa Bhotias (the famous Sherpa guides of a later day came from this class), who hailed from eastern Nepal
up at Kalimpong and Darjeeling. From these two markets they were subsequently spread
out fanwise to all the bazaars and the fairs in Tibet, thus reaching that country by a huge
detour weighing heavily on her meager resources. But no shorter way could be found as
long as the inroads of highwaymen and the borderland troubles made the overland route
unsafe between China and Lhasa."
Now because of Kalimpong having become the center of the eastern and central Tibet
wool trade, the winter developed into the town's busiest season, inasmuch as the wool had to
be brought in at that time of the year since during the monsoon period the wool packs would
become wet and heavy, and dampness was deleterious to the wool. Furthermore, in the hot
season the Tibetans refused to come to India altogether. As a consequence, therefore, of
both the enlarged bazaar and the brisk trade conducted in raw wool which ensued, Kalimpong,
like Darjeeling before it, came to be one of the "most cosmopolitan of hill stations in the
Himalayas." Here one could meet Tibetans, Mongolians, Chinese, Burmese, Nepalis, Lepchas,
Bhutanese, Marwaris, Bengalis, Biharis, Punjabis, Kabulis, Ladakhis, Europeans—and in
the words of David Macdonald, "every shade between"!! Such a multiplicity of peoples and
religions led one writer to dub Kalimpong "the City of the Seven New Years," inasmuch as
New Year was celebrated here at least seven different times annually! The European came
first, then the Chinese in February, followed a few days later by the Tibetan Losar, next by
the Marwaris in April, followed two months after that by the Nepalis, then the Moslems, and
finjally the Lepchas. Now the most dominant hill race in the Kalimpong area by far were the
vigorous, sometimes warlike, intelligent and hard-working Nepalese, many of whom, at the
invitation of the British officials and tea planters, came to the "wedge-district" of Darjeeling
as cheap labor to work the vast tea gardens in the area. These and the other hill folk to be
found in the Kalimpong bazaar, fascinating in the extreme, have been described in colorful
fashion by the Scotsman James Minto, himself a longtime resident of Kalimpong:
... the sturdy, shaggy maverick warrior resting from his nomadic struggle amid the forlorn
fringes of Tibet, the squat, swaggering Bhutanese down from the dzongs of Bhutan, curious
and suspicious, the Nepalese, and the gentle Lepchas smiling and self-effacing at the presence
in the bazaar of warrior-like hillmen who revered courage and strength and the manly sports.
This haphazard collection of [bazaar] huts on a hillside was and still is a watershed of many
cultures.... There were many of the Scottish virtues of independence, sturdiness and toughness
among these people. They walked the hillsides of their mountain states with a quiet dignity ...
the word shar simply meaning east; (c) the Drukpa or Dharma Bhotias, who lived in Bhutan; and (d) the Tibetan
Bhotias from Tibet.
Now the great majority of the Sikkimese Bhotias, who then numbered 1550, were at that time to be found in
and about Darjeeling hill station; the Sherpas, then numbering 3450, were found chiefly in the western sector of
the District (and neaf Nepal from whence they had come); the Drukpas, then numbering 2350, were practically
all confined to Kalimpong, where they became the descendants of the Bhutanese who had settled on the land
prior to the time of the annexation by treaty of the Kalimpong tract by the British in 1865 from the hands of
Bhutan, and where their numbers were gradually reinforced by Tibetans who immigrated from the Chumbi Valley
and its environs in Tibet itself, they having teen "attracted by a more fertile country and a more regular form of
government than that of Tibet"; and finally, the Tibetan Bhotias, then numbering some 1700, who being pure
Tibetans had immigrated from the tableland of Tibet and had settled mainly in the hill stations of Darjeeling and
Kalimpong. See O'MaUey Darjeeling, 45-6. Cf. also Subba, Flight and Adaptation: Tibetan Refugees ... (Dharamsala,
1990), 61.
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The hill peoples with their courteous behavior have a quiet pride which is in keeping with the
even tenor of their lives. The variety of clothes, the colorful weaves, the mixture of attractive
features, from the strong-boned Tibetan faces to the rounder, softer Nepalese faces', all help to
make the Kalimpong bazaar colorful and different.
This, then, was the extraordinary mixture of polyglot peoples and diverse cultures which
Gergan Tharchin doubtless had endless intercourse with throughout his life at Kalimpong
and in the surrounding District. One can catch still further something of the atmosphere and
flavor of this unusual milieu into which he was soon to be thrust by quoting one final time
from that keen Italian observer of life, Giuseppe Tucci, who tells the readers of his diary that
the borderland area between India and Tibet, particularly the two larger sister hill stations,
was "an unusual contradictory, motley show," something like a large fair, and which therefore
found its most natural expression in the bazaars—with its "mixture of scents, smells, tunes
and songs." Tucci, with whom Tharchin "in his scholarly activities" would himself be "happily
associated" at one time or another,38 went on to describe how the shops, as in the rest of
India, remained open till the wee hours of the morning, the people manifesting a total unconcern
in the business at hand, they talking, waving their arms, reading sacred books and dozing off.
Their voices, he recalled, mingled with the tunes of records played on old-fashioned horn
gramophones which projected "waves of shrill, jarring, deafening notes" into the surrounding
atmosphere. But then, in a most poignant passage from his diary, Tucci concluded his discussion
of life in Kalimpong by saying: "Yet, in these patches and shreds of music and in the songs
bandied in different languages from shop to shop a note of profound sadness can be detected.
Images and scents of distant countries crop up with their nostalgic appeal, hopes and memories
withered and buried in the course of time are revived for a fleeting instant by the magic of
music. Unaware, the people stand by, as silent and collected as if they were watching a
ritual." Such was the vineyard of humanity in which Gergan Tharchin was to labor fbr the
Lord for many, many years.
In summary, then, it can be said that since those earlier, more primitive days in 1914 when
Sundar Singh and his Tibetan companion came by, Kalimpong has made great strides in
many directions, though still retaining something of its original beauty, charm and peacefulness.
Today it is linked by road with Darjeeling, with the railhead at Siliguri that serves northern
West Bengal, and with Baghdogra aerodrome—thus putting the town within twelve hours of
Calcutta by rail and road and even more quickly by plane and road. Declared a municipality
in 1931, Kalimpong's population, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, had grown to
28,885 by 1981 (in 1950, the U.S. Time magazine of 4 December noted it was but 8800 and
before that, in the early 1920s, it boasted only 1200 souls, and before that, in 1907, it was
declared a village of 1069 inhabitants, and still before that, in 1892, the village had less than
a thousand souls!). Until recently, the town had held a mela—an annual agricultural produce j
and stock fair (begun by missionary Graham in 1891); and the town is still well known for its §
handicrafts, especially weaving. Among the other achievements to its credit, Kalimpong |
today boasts numerous private and public schools, several outstanding children's homes (one I
of which was founded by Tharchin himself), an arts and crafts training center (originally 1
inspired by Mrs. Graham), a Government hospital (initially begun by the Grahams), a j
Government agricultural farm (where, among other things, experimental work is carried on
in improving the crops of the District, with good tested seeds being distributed among the
cultivators), and a sericulture farm on its outskirts (again, originally inspired by Graham).
Aspects of some of these and other noteworthy features of the town's history and culture as
they intersected with the life and career of Gergan Tharchin will be carefully noted and
discussed as the narrative of his life is further unfolded in the pages to follow.39
Returning, now, to the journey of the two evangelists, when Sundar Singh and Tharchin
as his interpreter arrived on the afternoon of 18 June at Kalimpong,* they lodged for four
nights* as guests of F. Desraj (Fred. Desh Raj), an Indian Christian convert from the Punjab
who was then serving (1908-14)40 as a teacher in the local Scottish Universities' Mission
Institution.41 Later he worked as a supervisor in the storage and supplies department of the
Graham's Homes Establishment,42 and ultimately retired as a well-to-do contractor. At the
time of this story Desraj occupied rooms in the SUM Institution teachers' quarters—that is to
say, the first two rooms (now near the water tap) of Aath Dhuray in the Mission lines.43
One of those in Kalimpong who recalled with fond memory and appreciation the visit of
the Sadhu was the architect Mr. Prabhudas. He and his friend Hansadas Rai made a point of
seekin&out this servant of God, and ended up at the Desraj home conversing with him about
the things of God far into the evening, not leaving the Sadhu and Tharchin until 11 p.m. They
even offered to purchase for him a pair of shoes for his journey to Tibet; but as would be the
case later when the two evangelists arrived in Sikkim a few days hence, the Sadhu politely
but firmly refused the kind offer. Prabhudas recalls Sundar carrying a large umbrella (by this
time the monsoon season had begun) that according to the Sadhu served as his "home"
wherever he went and whenever "the night fell."44
While in Kalimpong on this visit Sadhuji spoke in the Sunday morning services at 11
o'clock on 21 June in the local Macfarlane Memorial Church.f Rev. Namthak Lepcha
was the minister of the Macfarlane Church at that time.45 Originally the evangelization
work in Kalimpong, out of which sprang this local church, had been initiated by the Church
of Scotland missionaries. The Scottish Mission's endeavors in the so-called Darjeeling
"wedge-district" had had its start in 1870 when the earliest Scottish missionary to come to
this area to labor for the Lord, and not simply to visit or to investigate its possibilities, had
been William Macfarlane. And it was after him that this Memorial Church building—
opened for worship on 1 November 1891—was named; for it was he who had so well laid
the foundations of the Mission. And hence it should not surprise anyone that this beautiful
but admittedly anachronistically-styled Gothic edifice, called by the area's longtime Scottish
missionary John Graham "the architectural feature and the pride of the district," should
* Date of arrival and number of nights spent in Kalimpong are per "Tharchin's Replies ..."
t Date per "Tharchin's Replies ..." This would have been the worship service hour that was nearly always
conducted in Nepali. Tharchin's longtime intimate friends, B. C. Simick Sr. and his wife, who were present at this
service and heard Sundar Singh speak, told their son later that the Sadhu "looked robust and healthy, was attired
in a saffron robe, and wore a turban on his head." Per interview with B. C. Simick Jr., Nov. 1992.
have been named after him. "Standing out against the hillside," wrote David Macdonald,
"the weathered pile of the Macfarlane Memorial Church, with its belfry, affords a landmark
for miles around, and is the first object that strikes the eye when approaching Kalimpong
from the plains."
The building had had several predecessors that in their development manifested the
progress of the missionaries' work in the area, as Graham has noted in his early little volume,
On the Threshold of Three Closed Lands (1897): "The first house of prayer would be the
little bamboo and thatch shanty built by Mr. Macfarlane for his reception when [over from
Darjeeling] he made his early occasional visits to Kalimpong. With it would come the frail
little schoolhouse of the same materials. These gave place to the low stone and mud walls
and shingle roofs of the two succeeding houses, and only after the spiritual Church had
grown to considerable proportions was it possible to have such a building as the present of
stone and lime." Graham's later biographer, James Minto, has pointedly made the observation
that the construction of a much simpler house of worship of local design and more in keeping
with the natural environment had never been considered! Indeed, at the time of its construction,
there was apparently no thought given that such an edifice might create in the minds of the
local populace a perception of the Christian faith as quité foreign. From the perspective of
those early Scottish missionaries to the area (Graham and W. S. Sutherland), a church
building, explained Minto, "had to be as large and as imposing and as similar to churches in
Western Europe as was humanly possible. The more Gothic it looked, the more acceptable
it would be. To build such a grand edifice in Kalimpong would require considerable finance.
Certainly the local peasant congregation could not raise enough money to pay for one of the
windows, never mind a building designed to hold over five hundred people." Sutherland had
selected a magnificent site: "a site," noted Minto, "where the church would be visible from
the five valleys which radiated out from Kalimpong. The church would be the symbol of
Christ's power, of the success of the Mission, the pride of the Christian community, and on a
Sunday its bell would call the faithful to service."46
As always, on the particular Sunday of the Sadhu's visit, the bell of Macfarlane's belfry
summoned the faithful and others to worship and to hear the guest evangelist from the
Punjab give a message from the word of God.* One of the stories which Sundar told his
audience gathered at Macfarlane, as a way of illustrating his message, was the following
anecdote, as recounted to a Kalimpong resident of a much later period by brother Prabhudas
who attended the service that morning:
Once there was an unbeliever who actually worshiped Satan. And on one occasion when this
man and Satan went into a graveyard. Satan fled away at the sight of the cross [apparently on
one of the tombstones]. On being questioned later by his worshiper as to the reason for his
* Among those who gladly heard the visiting speaker that day must have been the Rev. Evan Mackenzie, another
missionary from Scotland, who by this time was shepherding the small flock of Tibetan-speaking peoples who,
along with other ethnic groups in the hill community, gathered every Sunday at the Macfarlane Church for the
services conducted there. In the document cited frequently already, "Tharchin's R e p l i e s t h e Tibetan companion
of the Sadhu made a point of mentioning that Sundar Singh "met E. Mackenzie." But this would also have been
Gergan Tharchin's own first encounter with this dear servant of God whom the lowly Tibetan from Poo would
replace a decade hence as the one directly laboring ibr Christ among the Tibetans dwelling in the hill station of
Kalimpong. See Ch. 16 for details on the ministry of Rev. Mackenzie and of Tharchin, too.
flight, Satan told him that he was afraid of the cross. From that time onwards, the devil-
worshiper left Satan and began to worship the cross.
When a missionary subsequently learned of this unusual experience from the man, he
explained the significance of the cross to the man who then became a Christian.47
The Sadhu had earlier in the day visited the Sunday school, which was then being held in
the same Church building.48 He addressed the gathering of the children, all. of whom must
have been impressed with the Christ-like appearance of the Sadhu. In fact, wherever he
went, whether at home or abroad, people—especially the children—had their attention
immediately arrested by his face with its serenity and radiance, and caused them to think of
what Jesus might have looked like while He was on earth. To give but one of many examples
recorded of this phenomenon, one need only quote from an article that appeared in a New
York periodical just after the Sadhu had concluded nearly a two-month visit in America.
Commenting on his appearance and demeanor, the author reported the following:
Robed in saffron down to his bare feet, with a saffron-colored Indian turban and his girdle
thrown over his right shoulder in characteristic Indian style when in the house, the Sadhu
presents a remarkable Oriental appearance. As Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick [well-known Minister
of famed Riverside Church, New York] remarked on the day of his arrival, the Sadhu possessed
"a singularly sweet, a beautifully benign, countenance." A four-year-old little American girl,
after seeing him a while, was moved to run to him, and put her arms around him, and exclaim to
him, "Why you look just like the Jesus book!" Indeed, many persons are struck with the
similarity between the Sadhu's appearance and the traditional pictures of the tuniced, black-
bearded Christ.49
From Kalimpong on 22 June* the young sadhu and his companion took the shortcut
which passed through the Graham's Homes Establishment and proceeded steadily uphill for
a mile and a half or so over a cobbled causeway to Algarah Bazaar (ca. 5400'), a recognized
Jialting place for mule teams. From there they gradually descended to the border town of
Pedong (ca. 4800'), the last community on the Indian side of the boundary with Sikkim (and
some 13 miles to the northeast from Kalimpong). The path all along went through dark and
fearful Himalayan forests, in one part of which, above Pedong, can still be seen the ruins of
an old Bhutanese fort. (As a matter of fact, it is at Pedong where occurs the trijunction of
Bhutan, Sikkim and West Bengal.) The same footpath is still used today by the local inhabitants
although now the forests are much cleared out and the dangers less common. The roads,
although still rough, had been broadened. Near the fort ruins, incidentally, and doubtless seen
in passing by the Sadhu and his traveling companion, is the still existing Buddhist monastery
of Pedong built by the Bhutanese in 183 7.
J/ Pedong, even today, is famous for its mela or agricultural fair that each year turns the
settlement into a bustling town of thousands when, for a week, this "sleepy little village
* Information per "Tharchin's Replies ..."

308»
wakes to life for its day in the sun.'5 Visitors come from near and far to attend this annual
affair that takes place during the week concluding the month of February. This having been
June, however, the two itinerant evangelists would miss this crowded event and instead find
the village in its more normal state.
Pedong takes its name from Po-dong, or Incense-Tree Clearing or Halting Place, the
mentioned incense having been derived from the sal trees (a kind of cypress) which grew in
abundance there, the resin of which was used as incense in Buddhist temples.50 Here at
Pedong, Sundar and his friend lodged on the night of 22 June* with a Christian doctor. A
branch dispensary had been established years earlier under a catechist compounder supported
by the Scots Mission. There was also even a small, but thriving, native district church here,
with predominantly a Lepcha congregation, that had been established by Rev. Graham decades
before.51 The. village
•
was
•
later to• become the headquarters of a r large Roman Catholic
Mission to Tibet, a branch of the well-known Société des Missions Etrangères (SME), undeï*
the founding leadership of the famous Jesuit missionary Father Auguste Desgodins (1826-
1913). But there hangs a tale of more than passing interest because it stands in sharp contrast
to what these two current visitors to Pedong were themselves able to accomplish throughout
their lifetime in terms of gospel evangelism inside the Land of Monks and Monasteries. For
like Sundar Singh, Fr. Desgodins was to make frequent attempts to penetrate the closed land
of Tibet, but with nothing like the success of the Sadhu nor, for that matter, like the success
which Gergan Tharchin would years later enjoy in carrying out his own brand of quiet
evangelism while on numerous and lengthy journeys deep within his ethnic homeland. In
fact, their experience would be relatively free of the frustrations with which this Catholic
priest was continually confronted throughout his long missionary career, as the following
narrative summarizing his endeavors vis-à-vis Tibet will amply confirm.
Now Fr. Desgodins had originally arrived in India in 1856 and first visited Darjeeling for
the purpose of entering Tibet via Sikkim.f That country's Raja, however, courteously but
firmly denied him permission to do so. He then turned towards Simla in an attempt, if possible,
to effect entrance via Ladakh. His journey to Simla, though, was cut short temporarily at
Agra Fort, "where he formed a unit in the defense of that city" during the famous Sepoy
Mutiny of 1857, he having become "one of the besieged" in the Fort. Once peace had been
* Information per "Tharchin's Replies ..."
t What in fact had prompted Rome and Paris to dispatch Desgodins to Tibet in the first place was the tragic news
which the year before had reached Rome of the murder of two Catholic missionaries in neighboring Assam who
had attempted to enter Tibet from the south through the Brahmaputra Valley. They had been killed at the hands
not of Tibetans but of Michmi tribesmen in Upper Assam near the southern Tibet border. The deaths of these j
two, Frs. Krick and Boury, had therefore impelled the Church back in Europe to send Fr. Desgodins as a way of J
reinforcing the depleted Catholic Mission to Tibet. The SME, it should be noted, had in the 1840s received from j
the Catholic Pope the transfer of responsibility for Tibetan missionary work from the Capuchin Order that |
during the eighteenth century had labored in Lhasa. See Julien Louis, The Gates of Tibet...» 52, 145 and Dick J
Dewan, A Souvenir of the Centenary [of) Pedong Parish 1882-1982, 7.
restored, Desgodins resumed his journey to Simla where he then pushed forward as far as
Kanum, not far from Poo.
Here, however, orders were received from the Mission Bishop's headquarters in China
for him to abandon any attempt to enter Tibet from the Indian side and to join himself to the
other priests of the SME along the Sino-Tibetan border. Making his way to Canton in
southeastern China, the Jesuit missionary, with a guide and a few porters, crossed the Chinese
country disguised as a mandarin (one of a class of scholar-gentlemen); but he was not
permitted by the Szechuan provincial governor to proceed to the Tibetan border area. Required
to return to Canton, the disappointed missionary arrived back in this Chinese city in September
1858, and from there he went to Hong Kong where he marked time for another two years.
But then victory by a contingent of French-English troops against the Chinese in October
I860 and the resultant Treaty of Peking that same month provided Fr. Desgodins another
opportunity to make a second journey towards the Sino-Tibetan frontier, accompan ied this
time by two fellow missionaries.
Reaching the important Szechuan center of Tatsienlu in April 1861, Fr. Desgodins* would
shortly thereafter accompany the SME's China leader, Bishop Thomine-Desmazures, and
two of its other missionaries, on a journey to Markham in Tibet's southeastern province of
Kham, arriving there in June. Two months later, however, they moved much farther inside
Tibetan territory to Kham's political center of Chamdo, where all but the Bishop would
remain through much of the summer of 1862 (the Bishop having earlier withdrawn in March
to Peking). These journeys inside Tibet had been for the purpose of settling the Society's
claims to land in the Bonga Valley of Kham which another of the Mission's priests, Fr.
Charles Rene-Alexis Renou, had purchased in 1854 from a wealthy Tibetan landlord and to
whom Renou was to pay an annual rent of 15 taels and to his son-in-law a much smaller amount.
Strategically situated just a few miles inside Tibet proper within easy reach of the frontier with
China's Yunnan Province, Bonga could provide a base for expansion farther afield into the heretofore
Great Closed Land. Indeed, Bonga represented "no more than the first step" in Fr. Renou's mind,
writes John Bray, "towards establishing a mission in Lhasa itself."
With the settlement of the land claims having finally been achieved in favor of these
Christian missionaries in July of 1862, Fr. Desgodins, in company with Fr. Renou, next
attempted to advance from Chamdo all the way to the Tibetan capital, now that the Mission,
in Bray's phrase, had become "a direct tenant of the Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa."
But the two were turned back by Tibetan officials shortly after they had set out on the
journey. They were told that political conditions in the Tibetan capital were at that moment
Unsettled; and so, deciding to accept this as a legitimate reason for not proceeding farther,
they retreated to the Bonga Valley while insisting nonetheless that they had a right to go to
Lhasa at any time in the future. In the end, though, neither Fr, Desgodins nor any of the other
priests of this Catholic Mission Society would ever again penetrate so deeply inside Tibetan
{territory from the China side.
I* The source for virtually all the information to be found in the rest of this paragraph and the next two to follow
Js John Bray's excellent monograph, "French Catholic Missions and the Politics of China and Tibet 1846-1865,"
in H. Krasser et al., eds., Tibetan Studies, 1:83-95.
310»
Meanwhile, the French missionaries—ever since Fr. Renou's land purchase in 1854—
had continued to construct and expand their mission station in the Bonga Valley. But they
also evangelized in earnest throughout the area. These overt activities, however, set off a
reaction against the SME by the Tibetan government itself; for in late 1863 it issued an edict
requiring all Tibetan Christian converts to return to the Buddhist faith or suffer dire
consequences. Without the backing of either the French legation in Peking or China's Imperial
government, the French Catholic Mission in Bonga became increasingly vulnerable to Tibetan
pressure. For not surprisingly, the local Buddhist and Bonpo monasteries had viewed these
missionaries as competitors for both the local villagers' loyalties and the material income
they naturally provided these monastic institutions. It would not be long, therefore, before
Tibetan lamas and their alarmed accomplices, having witnessed over the years the
establishment and steady development of the mission station, as well as the highly successful
conversion to the Catholic faith of several entire villages in the Valley, now angrily attacked
the Bonga mission and the surrounding Christian communities in October of 1865. They set
fire to the homes of the Catholic Fathers, caused the death of one of their number, Fr.
Durand, killed some of their 700 converts, and forced most of the remainder of these converts
either to renounce their allegiance to the foreign faith or else to flee for their lives.
Greatly distressed over what had happened, but nonetheless undaunted, Fr. Desgodins
and the other missionaries—though having to withdraw from Bonga and Tibet forever—set
about over the next ten years establishing other stations at Batang, Yerkalo and Tatsienlu
(the latter place also known later as Dartsendo and Kanting), "with the hope of entering the
Dalai Lama's holy land" once again. Yet even at these places—all very much on Chinese-
controlled territory—the lamas mounted "violent incursions and persecuted the new Christians
who had left the Buddhist faith" as a consequence of the preaching activity of Fr. Desgodins
and his companions in the gospel. Summarizing the French missionary's experience there,
one historian wrote: "The labors of Fr. Desgodins in eastern Tibet, for a period of 22 years,
his captivity, the persecutions and dangers he endured, the successful establishment of á
large Christian settlement at Bonga, the subsequent destruction of that settlement by the
lamas, and his adventures with Chinese officials, are matters of history."
Then, in early 1880, it was resolved at Rome to renew the earlier evangelistic efforts
towards the Land of Monks and Monasteries by way of India, with the expectation of
making an approach once more through southern Tibet. Because of his long experience in
Asian Mission lands, Desgodins' Superiors in Paris chose him for this fresh attempt. Sailing
from Hong Kong for Calcutta,Jhe arrived at the British Indian capital on 5 September 1880.
The French cleric had brought with him, incidentally, boxes full of Tibetan linguistic manuscripts
which he, Fr. Renou and others had been preparing for publication during all the past years
of their lengthy missionary endeavor both inside the Snowy Land and along the Sino-Tibetan
border. Here at Calcutta the Jesuit missionary would remain for a year and a half awaiting
the arrival from France of a companion in the work, Fr. Mussot of the Capuchin order, and
giving lectures and writing articles for the English newspapers on Tibetan customs and
Himalayan geography. Because of these intellectual activities Desgodins was subsequently
able to approach the then Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon, who kindly informed him that the
road toward Sikkim was now open to Catholic missionary undertakings. He also learned that
since the time of his previous visit to the Darjeeling District in 1856, what was now known as
the Kalimpong subdivision of the District had been wrested from Bhutan in 1865. Moreover,
he was encouraged by the permission which the Darjeeling Deputy Commissioner and his
Private Secretary, Mr. Craven and Mr. Wace, both fellow Catholics, had granted him to
settle on a piece of land of his own choosing near the Sikkimese border once he and Fr.
Mussot reached their ultimate Darj eeling District destination.
Leaving Calcutta in late March 1882 they made their way to the Darjeeling hill station
where they would remain for seven months till the monsoons had passed and permits to
proceed farther had arrived. Ever the one to keep his sights on Tibet, Fr. Desgodins occupied
himself with the preparation for printing pf his and his colleagues' now-famous Tibetan-
Latin-French Dictionary and Grammar that would eventually be published at Hong Kong in
1899. But while waiting at Darjeeling, tragic news arrived from the Sino-Tibetan border
mission stations: four missionaries and many Tibetan converts to Catholicism had been killed
by the ever intolerant and jealous lamas from Tibet.*
With the cessation of the monsoon season and the arrival of the necessary permits, the
two Catholic missionaries now made their way the last few miles of their long journey from
China and France over to Pedong: the place which Fr. Desgodins hoped would spell ultimate
victory for him at last in his tireless but quite emotionally painful quest to enter once again the
Forbidden Land of Tibet with the Christian gospel. It would never be so, however; for in the
end Fr. Desgodins would have to settle for the erection of what proved to be a permanent, not
temporary, headquarters for this Mission to Tibet. Indeed, it was not unlike what the Moravian
missionaries had had to settle for along the Indo-Tibetan border of Northwest India!
Reaching Pedong on 10 November 1882, Fr. Desgodins and his companion in the gospel,
after reconnoitering the place and finding a spring trickling out from the rocky side of some
bushes, decided upon this latter spot as the place to establish the new headquarters of the
Mission to Tibet; and as Vicar Apostolic of this branch of the SME a grant of three acres of land
"at the usual rent" of Rs. 4.70/- was obtained personally from the hand of Mr. Wace (who had
come over from Darjeeling), a deal for 20 years was struck that was "renewable according to
the tenant's wish, with permission to build quarters thereon," the buildings presently here that
housed the Catholic presbytery and an orphanage were commenced to be constructed, and by
April of 1883 they and the modest chapel were completed.
But there was also given outright to the Mission by the Government in 1890 a grant of
300 acres of forest land situated on the opposite side of Pedong. It would in time be called
Maria-busti, the village of Mary, where it was stipulated that only Christians would be allowed
to settle, and where would be built a large stone church that still exists there today. The
British Government of India had proffered the grant in appreciation of the religious services
* Fr. Mussot would himself fall victim to the stubborn hatred of these Tibetan lamas. Only five months into their
mission work at Pedong, Frs. Desgodins and Mussot received word from Tatsienlu on 1 March 1883 that the
priest in charge there had become so seriously ill that he had to be replaced immediately. The Paris Superiors had
therefore decided to appoint Fr. Mussot to the vacant post. Remaining in the Sino-Tibetan border area for the
next 17 years, Fr. Mussot was finally "tracked [down] from two sides" during the Boxer Uprising of 1900-1:
from the lamas of Tibet and from the Chinese Boxer brigands; for along with four other Catholic Fathers he was
shot dead. Yet not only these five priests but also many Tibetans and other tribals (the Lissus), who had
embraced the Christian faith, were also sent to their deaths in martyrdom. Dewan, Souvenir ..., 4, 12.
which the Catholic Mission had provided during the time of a British military expedition in
1888-9 that under the command of Major Longfellow had been composed mostly of Irish
Catholic soldiers and whose mission had been to clear out Tibetan intruders who had previously
been making incursions over the frontier into Sikkim.
Fr. Desgodins was to remain for the longest time at Pedong, carrying on educational
work with a small staff of assistants, "lithographing tracts for distribution amongst the Tibetan
traders," and nourishing the hope continually of one day making a southern entry into Tibet at
last. Yet it was never to be in his lifetime nor in that of all his successors at the Pedong
Mission right up to the present day. This noteworthy apostolic pioneer of the Catholic Church,
after a severe bout of pneumonia, would die at Pedong just a year before the visit of the
Sadhu and Tharchin, totally frustrated at not having fulfilled his dream of evangelizing the
Great Closed Land, In fact, perhaps the most frustrating aspect of his lifelong career as it
related to Tibet—which, incredibly, extended from 1855 to 1913—turned out to be a
monumental irony All the Tibetan literary works he and others had so painstakingly prepared,
including the voluminous Dictionary and Grammar, had proven to be totally useless for him
among the Nepali-speaking peoples in whose midst at Pedong he dwelt during the final period
of his life that among other things was spent pining away for the opportunity just once in his
long thirty-year stay at Pedong to penetrate the forbidden frontier.* In profound disappointment
Fr. Desgodins wrote his Bishop a few years prior to his passing in the following vein:
There are some people who are so much broken down that they cannot rise up again: as for me
I am dying in a martyrdom of sterility.... Mules are allowed into Tibet but not the apostles of
Jesus Christ....!
Two servants of Christ who in their lifetimes did gain entrance many times into Tibet—
one always clandestinely, the other always quite openly—were Sundar Singh and Gergan
Tharchin; though as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, they would not be able to cross the
Tibetan frontier on this present journey. These two, incidentally, during their overnight stay at
Pedong, could not have avoided noticing an immense stone cross situated on one of this
border town's several hillsides. After the completion in 1885 of the Pedong stone church, the
mission founder Desgodins, in his then current state of disappointment yet still nourishing a
hope concerning the Christian gospel's ultimate entrance into the Land of Snows, had purposely
erected this cross on a hill that faced Tibet and the High Himalayas. Even today, more than
a century later, it still stands in mute testimony to the double-edged motivation which had
* Though useless to him at Pedong, the Grammar proved quite useful to one of his most successful linguistic
successors working in the Tibetan language, Sir Charles Bell. For in the latter's preface to his Manual of
Colloquial Tibetan (Calcutta, 1905), vi, Sir Charles cited this French cleric and his work as deserving special
mention: "In conclusion, I must acknowledge my obligations ... to the Grammars of the Rev. Graham Sandberg,
the R£v. H. H. Jaschke and the Rev. Father A. Desgodins ..." Undoubtedly aware of this recognition extended to
him several years before his death, Fr. Desgodins could in this regard, at least, take some solace.
prompted the French missionary to place it there. Writing in 1991, Dick Dewan has explained
in some detail the psychology which lay behind this act:
The Cross of Calvary was for Jesus' enemies the sign of His defeat, but for His followers it was
the mysterious and sure promise of His resurrection. When settling down in Pedong, after so
many sterile efforts to enter Tibet, the French missionaries wished to commemorate their bitter
defeat in front of Jesus' enemies, but also to proclaim their strong faith in the future victory of
Christ.... Fr. Desgodins, who erected this stone-Calvary, had personal, deep reasons for doing
it: all through his missionary life he had experienced terrible disappointments. This cross was
for him the Symbol of his temporary defeat in front of the lamas but also of his great hope for
the future. This cross might mean nothing for the pagans who pass by: for the new and the old
Christians of Pedong, it is a reminder that the ... Church has been suffering the passion with
Jesus right from the beginning, till the day of her resurrection at the end of the world,52
C H A P T E R 8
Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Cont'd)—Preaching

through the State of Sikkim
As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound ... I can do all things in him that
strengtheneth me.
They spake the word of God with boldness.
2 Corinthians 6:10; Philippians 4:11-13; Acts 4:31
FROM PEDONG Sundar Singh and Dorje Tharchin proceeded on the morning of 2 3 June
towards the town of Rhenock,* To do this they pursued a declivitous zigzagging route for
four miles all the way down to the river Rishi and its Bridge (ca. 3 0 0 0 ' ) , which marked the
actual frontier between British India and Sikkim. This route was the Kalimpong-to-Lhasa
mule track' which had continuously been trodden down by the mules and caravans from
Tibet that annually descended along this route into India for trade and commerce in wool,
skins and furs; in exchange for which—as was learned in the previous chapter—Tibetan
merchants would carry back with them cloth, kerosene, stationery and numerous other articles
from India. The terrain was naturally difficult and fraught with untold dangers, although
recent years have seen a lessening of the arduous conditions of bygone days. From the river
Rishi they walked steadily straight uphill for just over a mile until Rhenock Bazaar (ca.
3500') came into view. Rhenock (which means "the black hill")f is the first town inside the
State of Sikkim, which was then under the monarchial rule of the Maharaja. At that time the
territory of Sikkim (which means "New House" in the Nepali language) was ruled technically
by an absolute monarch or chogyal: a god-king who combined temporal and spiritual power.
By the very nature of his religious role as spiritual ruler, the chogyal was required to be a
Buddhist, the predominant religious faith of Sikkim.
u
Now of the so-called four Himalayan sisters—Nepal, Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan—none was
¿teemed more geostrategic than Sikkim. It is not without reason, for example, that she has
sometimes been called "the antechamber of Tibet." For this tiny almost square-shaped enclave
of a country into which these two itinerant evangelists had now entered was squeezed between
Tibet to the north, Bhutan to the east, Nepal to the west and Bengal to the south. One Western
traveler, who like the Sadhu would also engage Tharchin as an interpreter and guide, was
completely enthralled by Sikkim, calling it the most beautiful area in all the Subcontinent.
''Nowhere else," she declared, "can one push through dense tropical jungle at sea level, and in
a brief journey mount through a temperate zone to arctic regions where, from passes higher
than Mont Blanc, one may gaze across the most imposing mountains in the world." This land of
immense contrasts caused yet another of Tharchin's future traveling companions from the
west to exclaim: "Nowhere else on earth can one sit under an orange tree, eating bananas, and
feast one's eyes on orchids beneath a peak 2 8 , 0 0 0 feet high! But that is Sikkim."2
* Date per "Tharchin's Replies . . . "

t The name may also be, however, a corruption of a word that means "the hill whose outline is that of a nose."
O'Malley, Darjeeling, 218.
315»
Kanchenjunga, the peak to which this second traveler had made reference, is but one of
four mighty summits over 22,000 feet that rise to immense heights along or within Sikkim's
borders, Once independent but now one of the States of India (she became the 22nd in 1975)}
her 2745 square miles are divided between lofty mountain ridges and deep valleys. Sikkim
experiences heavy annual rainfall, and her climate varies from subtropical to arctic. Someone
has commented that within its small area, whose distance from north to south is only 70
miles, Sikkim contains types of every flora that can be found "from the tropics to the poles.5'
A special feature of its flora is the some 600 species of orchids of the land, which bloom in
wild profusion throughout the countryside and in sanctuaries. Moreover, "myriads of gaudily
colored butterflies and moths abound in many valleys. Six hundred species of the former and
two thousand of the latter have been recognized." The area's rains, winds and mountains
combine to produce "some of the wildest beauty God has created."
Since a large part of northern Sikkim is snowbound the year-round, most of the 110,000
people back in the 1920s dwelt on the lower slopes of central, southern and western Sikkim,
farming small plots of maize, rice, potatoes and cardamom. And though by 1981 the population
had increased to an estimated 315,000, most of the people were still leading the same kind of
village life, with those few living in the lower valleys still herding sheep and yaks.
Three major elements constitute the Sikkimese populace: Lepchas, Bhutias and Nepalese,
Only the Lepchas are considered indigenous. Like the Bhutias, who came from Tibet in the
thirteenth century, the Lepchas are Buddhist-Animist in religion and speak a Tibeto-Burman
language. During the late nineteenth century the Nepalese crossed over in a migratory
wave, the Sikkimese government having been compelled by the British (through their resident
Protectorate representative in Sikkim of that day, John Claude White) to import industrious
laborers from Nepal to help develop the land. This was because the Lepchas and Sikkimese
(the Bhutias), given their listless character, could not themselves be made to develop the rich
resources of the country, even though strong inducements had been held out to them by
White to open up the land. "These aggressive Nepalese Hindus, bringing with diem a powerful
new pantheon of deities, profoundly upset the balance of political power and the economy in
Sikkim." Indeed, by the mid-1970s the Nepalese had come to number over 70 percent of the
total population. Thus, in her recent history, much of Sikkim's internal politics "has been
involved in balancing power between the culturally dominant Lepcha-Bhutia group and the
economically and numerically superior Nepalese tribespeople."
Until joined to India, Sikkim, as noted already, had been an absolute monarchy. An eastern
Tibetan prince had in 1641 conquered the scattered indigenous Lepchas and proceeded to
establish an independent Sikkimese dynasty which continued rule over the land until very
recent times. When early in the nineteenth century Nepal made war upon Sikkim, this motivated
British intervention in 1816 in order to maintain sovereignty for the Maharaja of Sikkim, who,
like much of the local aristocracy that is related to Tibet's leading families, boasts descent
from a famous family there—the Rakashas. But in 1890 the British made Sikkim a protectorate
in a treaty that was recognized by both Tibet and China, a status that was still in effect at the
time of the visit by the Sadhu and Tharchin.3
What these two eager travelers could now expect to experience within Sikkim's borders
was an unusual variety of climate and topography, flora and fauna, sights and sounds, all of
Sadhu Sunday Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Cont'd)—Preaching through Sikkim 275
which has been aptly delineated by another traveler of a later generation as he journeyed
through this tiny kingdom on his way into Tibk. In his diary, Giuseppe Tucci, the Italian
archaeologist, explorer and Tibetan scholar, with his customary keen eye for detail, has
recorded his impressions of what he encountered along the way in April of 1948:
Sikkim, called Drenjong ("the land of rice") by Tibetans,4 ... has all kinds of weather and all
altitudes, from Kanchenjunga's peaks supporting the canopy of the heavens to the scorched,
malaria-ridden valleys. The white leopard lives on the borders of its glaciers and its deadly
lowlands teem with mosquitoes. The thermometer jumps from boiling to freezing point within a
few miles. On the rocks which, as they climb towards Tibet, stand barren and gaunt, pines and firs
bear lonely and stubborn the brunt of the storms; whereas giant red and white rhododendrons
wave and creep in the dark, treacherous tangle of the jungle where, as if the ground were not
enough, plants grow on top of each other in the brewing, pregnant moisture. Rice, cinnamon and
spices are grown in the valleys. It often rains in this paradise of leeches, and water gushes,
trickles and sputters at every comer as if an underground ocean were swelling and surging
towards an outlet. A shroud of gray fog weighs heavily upon the country for many months, like
leaden remorse: but winter is a glory of light and a dazzle of sparkling snows. Spring and summer
are the worst seasons. When we were there, what the Indians call the small monsoon had already
begun, and heaven and earth were daily dulled by a glum dripping of rain.5
At this time Rhenock Bazaar, the place to which the two evangelists had now come, was
an important halting station for the caravans from Tibet, since, among other reasons, the
Sikkim Frontier Station was located here. "The influence of British civilization," said one
writer in the Calcutta Review of 1900, "is seen in a post office, a telegraph office, and a row
of little wooden shops with things for eating and wearing unknown to the natives till we took
them there."6 The political developments of recent decades, however, have reduced this
halting station's one-time prestige and position. Tharchin and his companion reached Rhenock
sometime in the afternoon of 23 June* and were put up in the Mission school that was there.
Attached to the school was a Mission dispensary that met the medical needs of the public.
This being the particular Frontier Station relevant to their journey, it is not surprising that
the two visitors to Sikkim were questioned by Sikkimese authorities regarding "their [future]
movements" in the country. As was reported some ten years later, these two evangelists
"frankly" told the inquiring political officer there ("a Sikkimite") what "their intentions were."
In response, he advised them "to go via [Sikkim's capital of] Gangtok"; and though the two
"did not like his advice, since it brought them under notice of the Sikkim politicals," the Sadhu
and Tharchin "thought it best to obey."f6a
* The arrival date into Rhenock is per "Tharchin's Replies ..."

t This conversation at the Sikkim frontier is according to what Tharchin himself verbally recounted to Rev. J.
Kelly of Darjeeling while the latter was visiting the Tibetan at his Kalimpong home in December 1924. Kelly in
tern reported this and other aspects of the Sikkim journey in a letter he wrote to Darjeeling Catholic Jesuit Father
Henry Hosten, dated Kalimpong, 8 Dec. 1924. It was sent in response to Hosten's inquiry regarding any possible
Soon after their arrival at Rhenock, Rai Bahadur Pradhan—who was honorarily officiating
as the local magistrate-in-charge or Tehsildctr* —invited Sundar and Tharchin to his
residence. "Rai Bahadur" was a title of respect or honor bestowed at that time on deserving
individuals by the British Government of India and could be freely translated as "Gallant
Chief."7 Rai Pradhan was a wealthy landlord and a man of tremendous influence in both
local and State government circles. Moreover, he, together with his brother, owned and
operated the Chandra Nursery: famed for "a wonderful show of Sikkim orchids, flowering
shrubs and fruit trees."8 The Bahadur entertained the two travelers with fine food and
delicious tea. But besides this show of gracious hospitality, he advised them not to proceed
via the Jelep Pass (Tibetan for "Easy, Level Pass" or "Beautiful Flat Pass": so called because
it was the easiest and most level pass of all between Sikkim and Tibet)—which was clearly
the Sadhu's choice of route by which to enter Tibet from Rhenock via Gnatong*—but to go
instead via the Natu Pass ("Path of the Listening Ear").
Both these passes are on the eastern Sikkim-Tibet frontier at an altitude similar to each
other of roughly 14,300 feet,f perhaps only a mile or so from each other, and located some
27 miles east northeast of Gangtok. Two trails in those days (roads today) led from Sikkim
into the Chumbi Valley of Tibet. One of them, used mostly by traders and which was part of
the main Indo-Tibetan trade route, made its way from Kalimpong through the southeast
corner of Sikkim directly to the Jelep La (a Tibetan term for pass) without having to go
through Gangtok. The other trail-—the more usual route for travelers—led eastward out of
Gangtok, crossed over the Natu La just slightly north of J^lep, then made its way a short
distance to the village of Phema (located along the Amo Chu some four miles south of
Yatung near Chumbi Town), where it finally joined the said trade route that emerged from
the Jelep La. Both passes were only about 16 miles from the main Chumbi Valley town of
Yatung, the latter being some 43 miles from Gangtok. There was yet another trail into Tibet,
again out of Gangtok, but which led north from the Sikkimese capital up through the important
northern community of Lachen (to where, it will be recalled, Tharchin had first itinerated in
association by Tharchin with the Sadhu in both the Darjeeling area and Sikkirn. The Jesuit subsequently published
the correspondence in CHI (15 Apr. 1925):231-2.
Yet it needs to be pointed out here that a discrepancy exists between Tharchin's much later "memoirs" account
and what he is reputed to have told Rev. Kelly. For it is mentioned in the former that the first frontier station
through which the Tibetan and his companion had entered Sikkim was Rhenock, whereas Rungpoo (Rangpo) was
the place Tharchin is reported by Kelly to have cited as the frontier entrance point. But in another source—the
document found among the Tharchin Papers and cited in the previous chapter as "Tharchin's Replies . . — t h e
Tibetan specifically stated in Point 3 of that document as follows: "S.S. [and I] did not go via Rangpo, but via
Kalimpong, Pedong and Rhenock." Moreover, upon reviewing several maps showing the trail between Kalimpong
and the interior of Sikkim that was almost certainly used by these two travelers, the present writer is convinced
that the correct frontier station through which they had to have passed must have been Rhenock and not
Rungpoo. And hence the Text above reflects this conclusion.
* Information about the Rai Bahadur occupying the Tehsildar office at Rhenock and about the Sadhu's preference
of route and pass into Tibet is all per "Tharchin's Replies..."
t Tharchin's latter-day associate in British intelligence Hisao Kimura, who crossed the Jelep Pass numerous
times on his spy missions and other journeys between Kalimpong and Tibet, is most inaccurate in stating that the
elevation of this pass is 15,744 feet! Japanese Agent in Tibet (London, 1990), 127. All sources consulted by the
present author are nearly unanimous in asserting that the height of both passes is approximately as stated in the
Text above.
1912) and then over the Dongkya Pass, finally reaching the Tibetan town of Kamba Dzong.
This, however, was a less direct and much less traveled route to Shigatse and Lhasa than the
other two trails. The advice about taking the Natu La which the Rai Bahadur Sahib had
given the two traveling evangelists would, when followed, thus make it necessary for them
to go first to Gangtok the political center of Sikkim State.
In the meanwhile Rai Pradhan convened a special meeting in his courtyard, to which he
invited several of his friends and near kinsmen that they might hear the sermon of Sadhuji.
About two years before his death in 1976 Gergan Tharchin could confidently assert the following:
I still recall that in his sermon Sadhuji referred to a person who did not believe in God as later
fainting and falling down senseless whereas no harm came to God-believing and God-fearing
men. Sadhuji was careful to point out the fact that the incident he referred to occurred somewhere
in a Western country. After the message a few inquirers presented some thought-provoking
questions and problems to Sadhuji, who answered them convincingly and satisfactorily. One
gentleman inquired that if human and animal souls were identical, what happened to the animal
soul after death? ... Sadhuji answered in the following manner: At a certain place in a Western
country a man and an animal, almost at the point of death, were separately enclosed in airtight
cases with all sides shut and sealed. At the moment of actual death the glass case containing
the human body cracked while the glass case containing the animal body did not... Sadhuji
explained to his audience that he had not seen the experiment personally He had only heard
that the scientists had experimented in the manner described above. Sundar Singh argued that
if the experiment is assumed to be true, then logically and undoubtedly it proves that the
human soul is not identical but quite contrary to the nature of the animal soul. This exposition
seemed to appeal to his listeners. Their intellectual curiosity was satisfied.
In this connection, Sadhuji, said Tharchin, had a great gift for employing natural illustrations. They
were simple and yet forceful. With an ordinaiy illustration he could drive home a point which
otherwise could not be achieved by the use of mere abstractions. Two such simple yet quite
telling illustrations that can be cited are the following: (1) "In eveiy home there are spiders. Many
of us, in trying to get rid of sin," warned the Sadhu, "are like housewives who destroy the spiders'
webs without destroying the spiders." (2) "How can my poor prayers help anyone, when I myself
am so sinful?" asked someone of the Sadhu. Sundar pointed to the clouds. "The sun draws salt
water from the sea, yet when it falls again to the earth it is clear and pure and drinkable. The sun
has cleansed it. So it is with God and our prayers." As the Sadhu himself often said, his illustrations
were taken from the two books he knew best—"from nature and the Bible." But he also
acknowledged that many others he used in his messages had been given to him while in a state of
ecstasy.9 Tharchin also remarked that his traveling companion had a very keen sense of humor.
The audiences gathered for his messages laughed heartily with him.
After the conclusion of the program the host turned to Sadhuji and said, "You are a holy
man. You have touched our soil. You have no shoes. You also do not accept shoes, otherwise
we would have offered a pair. Nevertheless, since you have no shoes, it would be sinful on
our part to let you trek through our territory unshod." As a matter of fact, they did indeed
offer him a pair of shoes but the young Christian evangelist declined the offer and voluntarily
chose to walk barefooted over the cold and leech-infested soil of the Himalayas. Yet it
would not be the first time that the Sadhu's feet, bereft of any protective sandals or other
kind of footwear, would be cut up and bruised, "leaving a trail of bloody footprints" along the
trekking routes and village streets of the Himalayan kingdoms he so often in his life traversed.
And according to one of his biographers, it had eventually led to the Christian people of these
areas calling Sundar Singh "the apostle of the bleeding feet."10 Even at this present moment
the host of these two servants of God rightly surmised that the offer of the pair of shoes
would be declined by the Sadhu. The whole idea behind this act had been to convince
Sadhuji to divert his route so that he would go via Gangtok.
A pony was also offered to the Sadhu for use in traveling up to Pakyong, but he refused to
ride on the creature. Since the journey from Rhenock to Pakyong is very steep, it was kind of
his and Tharchin's Rhenock host to be so considerate of Sundar Singh. It ought to be mentioned
that in the Himalayas a person is generally supposed to ride a pony when the trail is uphill
anyway, and almost never when the path leads downhill, although this is not a hard and fast
rule. Nevertheless, the code observed by nearly all pony riders in these parts is defined and
enshrined in the well-known proverb of Tibet: "A horse that will not carry a man uphill is no
horse, and a man who rides his horse downhill is no man"—a paraphrase of the Tibetan:
Kyan-la mi chi-na, ta omen;
Turl-la mi papna, mi-men.
Which, roughly translated, would read:
If you do not carry him up the hill, you are no horse;

If you do not walk down the hill, you are no man.
In going down the hill riderless, of course, the horse is given a chance to rest and recoup his
strength. But perhaps an even more important consideration for not riding the horse downhill
is what one traveler in Sikkim had noticed about Tibetan ponies during his own travel experience
here. After making the usual comment about this oft-quoted Tibetan proverb, Bip Pares
went on to explain that "going uphill is very much easier, though more tiring for both man and
beast; but these ponies, surefooted as they are, are more likely to stumble and slide on the
rocks when on a downward path than they are when climbing the most precipitously angled
crest, be it over loose stone or wet rock."11
About this incident of the pony at Rhenock Tharchin apologetically remarked: "I rode the
pony at several places, although I felt awkward because it did not look proper (in fact it was
discourteous) for me to enjoy a pony ride uphill while Sadhuji was walking barefooted on the
rough surface. However, I was very much tired. Besides, Sadhuji told me to ride the pony
without the slightest hesitation, and so I took the opportunity but with a sense of humility
After a steady and steep climb of about 15 miles out from Rhenock the two evangelists
arrived at Pakyong (ca. 5000') sometime in the evening of the 24th of June.* From the dak
* Per "Tharchin's Replies ..."
bungalow12 that is here Gangtok can be seen defined on its ridge. In Pakyong they managed
their food and lodging with friends of Rai Bahadur Sahib, who had sent word ahead of their
impending arrival. No open-air meeting was conducted in Pakyong. Both young men left the
place before dawn the next day en route to Gangtok (ca. 6140'), one of the world's smallest
capitals, and reached their destination 11 miles distant at about 10 o'clock that same morning
of 25 June.13 The journey was quite difficult in this region inasmuch as the road passed
through dense forests and travelers were subject to the dangers of robbers lurking in the
dark. By contrast today, the constant traffic to be seen on the main highway up the mountain
slope to Gangtok (its very name itself meaning "the summit of the ridge" or "the mountain
spearhead") often provides an opportunity to catch a lift in the trucks or passenger vehicles.
More importantly, however, sinc§ jthese motor vehicles endlessly ply their way throughout
the day one can almost always cry out for help in case of an attack or accident. Sadhuji and
Tharchin could not have dreamed of such traveling advantages in their day. Instead, they
had to depend totally upon the journeying mercies of the Lord for their protection and provision.
And on this journey the Lord was continually faithful in all their circumstances.
In earlier days the Royal Court of Sikkim had resided some 13 mi les north from Gangtok at
the town of Tumlong that now only boasts of a small cluster of religious buildings. Gangtok
gradually displaced Tumlong as the seat of the Sikkimese government after the British
appointment of their own political representative for the region and when the Maharaja recognized
the necessity for the country's ruler to be in closer touch with trade and political affairs. Even
so, despite the newly-acquired royal character to the town, Gangtok has nonetheless remained
a spacious, charming and picturesque community boasting a population even in the 1970s of no
more than 15,000 inhabitants. Sprawled as it is along the southern tip of one of the many
disjointed spurs of the Chola Range of the Himalayas, the Sikkimese capital possesses two
prominent hills which are not far from each other (only a half mile or so). Back in the days of
these two Christian travelers, the ruling Maharaja had had his modest Palace residence and
Monastery atop one of these two high points, and atop the other had been located what was
called the Residency of the representative of the British Government of India (on this latter
important personage, known as the Political Officer, see more below). Visible from these two
vantage points could be seen the awe-inspiring range of snowcapped Himalayan peaks, including
the towering Kanchenjunga. In honor of the latter, which is the holy mountain of the State, one
day a year is given over completely to a feast called the "Worship of the Snowy Heights" and
on which every monastery in the land celebrates it with a war dance whose object is to invoke
the spirit of Kanchenjunga as the War God of Sikkim.
Sloping down the hillside from the Palace some two or three hundred feet could be found
the town dwellings and of course the main and secondary bazaars, whose weekly market
j day was always held on Sundays. The bazaars were built along a wide street, on the one side
| of which, opposite the sloping hillside, and behind the wooden shops, the hill then drops
i
i
sharply down to the valley some two thousand feet below. Because of the predominant
Tibetan Buddhist influence, every house supported a fluttering white prayer flag that waved
in the breeze atop a bamboo pole, some of the latter being short while others might be as
much as 30 feet tall.14 Doubtless these could be seen from a distance by travelers on the
trail; and the sight of these lines of rippling white along the hillside must have at first given the
city the appearance of gaiety and charm to the Sadhu and his Tibetan companion; but they
well knew that these flags symbolized a religious faith and practice which millennia later
bore little resemblance to the original teaching of Buddhism's founder. For as in neighboring
Bhutan, a major role is played by Tibetan-style Buddhism in the daily lives of the Sikkimese.
Even the Nepalese within her borders have a syncretic form of Hinduism that incorporates
a great deal of Tibetan Buddhist teaching. But as elsewhere among the Himalayan States,
Animism and spirit worship serve as the everyday religion of the people, with many aspects
of Sikkimese religion being pre-Buddhist. Charms and fetishes are not uncommon for major
decisions in both personal and political affairs.15 What therefore these two servants of God
now hoped to be able to offer, by their presence and preaching, would be an alternative and,
from the perspective of these gospel heralds, a more satisfying faith to the town's citizenry
But before their arrival at Gangtok Bazaar they had been met by a State policeman of
Sikkim who was armed with their names and full particulars since this information had been
intimated to the police headquarters in advance of their coming. It doubtless had been
forwarded up from the Rhenock Frontier Station. The policeman on duty on the trail advised
them to see the officer-in-charge at the Gangtok police station. When they reached the
station, though, the officer in question had already left for his residence. A policeman there
then instructed them to proceed to the officer's private residence to meet him there. The
policeman himself personally accompanied them to the residence, which was situated below
the bazaar. The walk took them about thirty minutes to go down. Yet upon arrival they still
had to wait for another hour to see the officer since he was sound asleep! Later, the officer
brought out a long sheet of paper which contained detailed information about them: including
their descriptions down to the last and most minute detail. Recalled Tharchin: "The identity
marks
on my face were correctly recorded. And my height was also mentioned,"
After a routine inquiry, the officer-in-charge informed them that without prior permission
from Sikkim's British Political Officer they could not possibly proceed to Tibet. Those who
occupied the post of Political Officer were civil servants who belonged to a special branch
of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) known as the Foreign and Political Service. Because of the
pivotal role this post of Political Officer played in Himalayan regional politics for the British
throughout much of the period that will be covered by the present biographical narrative, a few
words of explanation should be interposed here for the sake of understanding and clarity.
It ought first to be mentioned, as explained by
one writer on the region, that "in
unadministered frontier areas and Indian Native States the authority of the British Raj was
usually vested in a political agent or political officer" who, appointed directly by the Indian
Viceroy, thereby served as the political representative of the British Government of India.
The Political Officer was a lower-ranking official who represented British India at the local
level and was thus a post which required him, in the course of his duties, to make periodic
visits to those places that fell under his appointed jurisdiction. In the particular case at hand
he was the one who dealt with all diplomatic questions, relations and negotiations concerning
Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan, inasmuch as the Political Officer was a subordinate to the Chief of
the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India. Now although to some
extent an independent country with a monarch ruling over her, Sikkim had by this time
become a British protectorate of the Government of India, with Gangtok as its capital and
headquarters of the Political Officer for Sikkim and Tibet—with Bhutan later being added to
that Officer's jurisdiction. The Political Office, in fact, had been established at Gangtok ever
since the treaty of 1890 when Sikkim Was brought into the position of a protected Native
State. In theory, of course, the post of Political Officer in Sikkim was entirely diplomatic, his
status being equivalent to that of an ambassador or minister; and consequently, it was
impossible, wrote another writer on the region, for the Political Officer "to interfere too
much in the details of internal administration in Sikkim," and even less, it might be added, in
neighboring Bhutan, and none whatsoever in the Forbidden Land of Tibet. Even so, as the
senior British official stationed in Sikkim he exercised an enormous amount of power and
influence in this particular Native State, especially when it came to such a highly sensitive
diplomatic matter in those days as an attempt by travelers from British India to trek towards
the Tibetan frontier and beyond.16
In the light of this explanation, therefore, it is not surprising at all, though it admittedly
must have been frustrating for them, that these evangelists from India would have to deal
with this senior British official or his staff before proceeding towards Tibet. And hence
Tharchin and Sundar were required to trek back uphill all the way to the Political Office! By
now these two weary travelers were dog-tired. From the moment of their arrival in Gangtok
by foot from Pakyong they had not enjoyed any physical rest at all. On reaching the Political
Office—which was on the grounds of the Residency—they had an opportunity to observe
the charming and delightful surroundings in which the British Raj 5s Representative made his
home and maintained his headquarters.
The entire hilltop compound had been laid out in the late 1880s by the very first Political
Officer for Sikkim, John Claude White, who served in that capacity for nearly twenty years.
On these auspicious grounds White had built for himself and his successors a spacious house
that would ever afterwards be known as the Residency. A much later successor to White, Sir
Basil Gould—who as mentioned in an earlier chapter would become a very good friend of
Tharchin's, has described this structure as "perhaps the most attractive medium-sized home in
the whole of India." Yet not only the house, the entire grounds, too, were unusually attractive,
causing the wife of Sir Basil's immediate predecessor in the Pol itical post, Frederick Wil liamson,
to picture for her readers both house and grounds in the following warm, appreciative terms:
At first sight, the Residency struck me as looking just like an English country house, except
that it had a corrugated iron roof of a dull reddish color. The verandahs, where meals were *
taken when the weather was suitable, were hung with wisteria. The grounds were extensive
323»
and descended in three tiers to two lily-ponds. On the top terrace there were spacious lawns,
a fish-pond and the great flag-pole where the Union Jack fluttered proudly when the Political
Officer was in residence. The flag went with him on tour, when it was hoisted at each camp. A
hill rose up at the back, concealing the servants' quarters. All around there were masses of
flowers, trees and tree-ferns. But the crowning glory of the place was the magnificent view that
it commanded of the Kanchenjunga range to the west. Claude White,... who had built the
Residency between 1888 and 1890, had certainly chosen a perfect setting for it.17
On the day of the Sadhu's and Tharchin's visit to the Residency, however, the Union Jack
was not atop the great flag-pole, for they were told by one of the Political Liaison Officer's
staff that he had left for an undisclosed place along the border of Assam or Bhutan. This
was none other than John White's successor in 1908, Charles Alfred Bell, about whom a
few words need to be appended here, since he figured rather prominently during the life and
times of Gergan Tharchin, especially in the Tibetan's earlier period of residence at Kalimpong,
*
Now it has been pointed out already that the powers of a Political Officer were generally
limited. Because of this, writes Charles Allen, "his effectiveness as an administrator was
largely dependent upon the degree to which he could impose his will on peoples who were
often actively engaged in resisting government attempts to curtail their independence. In
consequence politicals tended to be strong-minded individuals who, because they often served
for long periods in isolated corners, tended to become a little idiosyncratic—if not downright
eccentric—in their ways." To some British officials in the Home Government, Sir Charles
Bell (1870-1945) appeared to be just that: "a kind of minor Lawrence of Arabia," as one of
Bell's book reviewers (T. N. Takla) was much later to describe him. Indeed, Alex McKay
has noted that because Bell was "very much the scholar-administrator of the ICS tradition,
devoting his spare time to the study of Tibetan language and culture," other frontier officers
such as Colonel Francis Younghusband, Lieutenant Colonel William F. O'Connor and Major
"Eric" Bailey regarded him, in the latter's words, as a "babu ... possibly alright in an Indian
district but ... not the man for the frontier." Nevertheless, adds McKay, these same
frontiersmen, who unlike Bell had a military background and more dynamic approach,
eventually came to realize that they had underestimated his abilities as a political officer. For
although Bell never rose any higher than Political Officer in the ICS, nevertheless, in the view
of another biographer (Christie), "the importance of his influence in the evolution of British!
policy towards the Himalayan states in the first part of the twentieth century has [now] beeii f
generally recognized." |
Born in India and educated at New College, Oxford, to where he had gone immediately j
after passing into the Indian Civil Service in 1889, Bell was posted two years later to Bengal j
where as a consequence of his having conducted the first revenue settlement of District j
Daijeeling's Kalimpong subdivision, he had his initial exposure to the peoples of Sikkim, J
Bhutan and Tibet. Bell's first introduction to Tibet itself had been as a member of the famed
Younghusband Mission to Lhasa in 1904, serving as one of that Mission's several interpreters;
followed very shortly afterwards by his being posted to Yatung in southern Tibet's Chumbi
Valley as British India's Assistant Political Officer in Chumbi for several years. Bell almost
immediately "fell in love" with the land and its people, treated those with whom he dealt on
an equal basis—though allowing for differences in rapk—and exhibited a remarkably sincere
concern for Tibet; so much so that members of the government both at London and in India
began to grow wary concerning his unvarnished pro-Tibetan stance. Moreover, they were
never fully comfortable with his close relations with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, spiritual and
temporal ruler of Tibet prior to the current Fourteenth.* It was during the Great Thirteenth's
Indian exile in 1910-12 that Bell—acting as the chief liaison officer responsible for the well-
being and protection of the Dalai Lama and leading members of his government who had
fled with him to India—had begun at Darjeeling what would develop into a longlasting
friendship with the Tibetan Grand Lama. Some idea of the close, even intimate, friendship
which blossomed between these two during this exile period can be gleaned from what Bell
himself related some years afterwards. For he told how the Lama King of Tibet, while living
at Darjeeling and Kalimpong, had frequently held private conversations with him and how on
these occasions the Dalai Lama had "invariably dismissed all others from the room so that
we two, sitting together alone, could converse without restraint." Even after returning to his
capital the Dalai Lama had several times invited his English friend to visit Lhasa. Bell,
however, was denied permission by his Government to accept any of these invitations until,
ironically, the Political Officer had retired from service only to be recalled to duty and sent
off to Lhasa in 1920 for nearly a year's residence there, where he renewed his friendship
personally with the Dalai Lama.f
Less ambivalent in attitude towards Bell than his British superiors were the Tibetan rulers
themselves, in particular the Great Thirteenth and the latter's longtime Prime Minister, Lonchen
* One reason for their uncomfortableness has been explained by the most recent writer on the frontier officers
of the British Raj in Tibet, Alex McKay "Many elements of the British government," he writes, had regarded the
Tibetan Grand Lama "as a spent force who was of little secular importance." On the other hand, adds McKay,
"Bell saw the advantages of aiding the Dalai Lama. He befriended and supported the Tibetan leader and when the
Chinese position in Tibet collapsed after the 1911 Revolution in China, Bell's foresight was rewarded. The Dalai
Lama returned to Tibet as the undisputed ruler of the country and declared its independence from China. Bell was
then in the position of being the most trusted foreign adviser to Tibet's religious and secular head, and he was able
to ensure that Anglo-Tibetan relations proceeded on a sound and generally friendly footing." McKay, "Historical
Foreword," in Peter Richardus, ed., Tibetan Lives, xvii.
t "Tibet was fortunate," writes one recent English historian on Tibet, "in that the British officials who dealt
directly with her," one of whom cited is Bell, "were, on the whole, favorably disposed and sincerely worked on
her behalf even if their efforts were often negated by London." Nevertheless, Adrian Moon continues, despite his
very pro-Tibetan attitude, Bell exhibited a tendency in some of his books he authored on Tibet "to present an
image of aristocratic life in Lhasa which resembled that of English country house life in the early years of [the
twentieth] century." And thus he left himself open, feels Moon, to charges of "orientalism"—what the latter
describes as the "recently fashionable discipline" which, "truthfully enough, shows how Westerners have often
observed the other societies through the viewpoint of their own culture and period."
Be this as it may, Moon is quick to add that Bell and other Westerners were not the only ones guilty of
"culturally grounded conceptions and misconceptions" concerning Tibet: so, too, have been Indians, Chinese and
,Arabs. Moreover, Tibetans themselves have not always been guiltless in this regard about other peoples. And
according to Moon, even the Arab writer Edward Said, who himself popularized the idea of orientalism in his
book by the same name and published in 1979, has manifested his own brand of bias and prejudice in some of his
recent articles that represent "prime examples of what he condemns in others" and which "have even drawn
criticism from other Arabs"! Moon, "Journeys into the Past," TR (Dec. 1991):18.
325»
Shatra. In the words of Takla, they "learnt to distinguish between Bell the diplomat and Bell
the man and friend of Tibet." Bell's book reviewer went on to point out that in the first role,
relations were constrained, but in the second capacity "Kushab Bell Lonchen"—or "Honorable
Minister Bell" as he was known in Tibet—"almost ceased to be a foreigner." As a matter of
fact, Bell has himself reported, in one of his many books on Tibet, what one prominent
monastic official had once written to Tibet's Grand Lama: "When a European is with us
Tibetans, I feel that he is a European and we are Tibetans; but when Lonchen Bell is with us,
I feel that we are all Tibetans together."173 An extract translated by Takla from the official
biography of the Great Thirteenth can well summarize the Tibetan attitude towards Bell and
especially the latter's relationship with the Dalai Lama:
Lonchen Bell, the administrator of Sikkim, being a man of sincere affection—having no difference -
between mouth and heart (i.e. being sincere)—towards the Government of Tibet, the Great Chief
of Buddhas (the Dalai Lama), worked with him concerning many civil and military matters. They
inquired and replied to each other in a straightforward manner; they scrutinized and compared
minutely, leaving no gaps, and then brought about benefits in the administration of Tibet. These
matters we found in a large number of letters written by the Dalai Lama's own hand.18
Without question, then, this British Political Representative came to be held in incredibly high
esteem by Tibet and Tibetans, and for that matter by Gergan Tharchin, too. For though thé
Tibetan from Poo would not on this occasion meet Sir Charles, the Political Officer was to
become a close friend of Tharchin's in the latter's future years at Kalimpong.
Now in the absence of Bell from Gangtok, his Secretary at the Residency, a European
gentleman by the name of Hodges,* personally met with the Sadhu and Tharchin and asked
several pertinent questions. He too declared that they must first obtain the permission from
the Political Officer; indeed, said Hodges, he "would wire to Mr. Bell inasmuch as he was
not there."* With this purpose in mind; then, Secretary Hodges hand-drafted a several-page
telegram and dispatched it to Political Officer Bell instantly.* Always the faithful recorder of
details, Tharchin recalled from his diary that '"the cost ofthe telegramcame to about Rs. 14/-, which
was paid from the Government accounts. The Secretary instructed us to wait in Gangtok for
the return reply. From time to time thereafter we continued to visit the Political Office to
inquire about the arrival of the reply-telegram." In fact, as it turned out, these two were to
visit the Office daily for the next eight days!f
During this interval, the two companions lodged with a Christian chowkidar caretaker of
the dak bungalow, located but a few minutes' walk from the Royal Palace. He was very
* The identity of Hodges, the latter's statement that he would wire Political Officer Bell, and the fact that this
several-page telegram was sent to Bell immediately: all are per "Tharchin's Replies ..."
f Moreover, according to "Tharchin's Replies . . a f t e r the first few days of inquiry, the two of them were told
by Mr. Hodges that "he wired two (2) telegrams to Mr. Bell the P.O.S.," the Political Officer for Sikkim. But in
recounting this event to his friend, Rev. Kelly, the Tibetan indicated that he seriously doubted the second
kind and hospitable. Tharchin had known him previously when in December of 1912 he had
gone via Gangtok to visit Lachen in the north of Sikkim. The chowkidar usually served food
in the morning. So they took their evening meals with a Christian catechist who lived about
amile away from the bazaar. After the meals, normally a family prayer meeting was conducted.
Sadhuji led these meetings with devotional messages. While the two travelers were in
Gangtok this particular catechist requested Sundar Singh to conduct the Sunday morning
worship. The latter gladly complied with the request. The service was held in the private
home of the head-clerk who was in the employ of the State government. Since there was no
church building in Gangtok in those days,19 the believers regularly assembled in the home of
this Christian head-clerk for worship and communion.
Commenting further about the journey to Sikkim, Tharchin observed that his friend "did not
have any money bag" on his person. "Usually," said the Tibetan, the young sadhu "carried his
Urdu New Testament in his hand and sometimes in his pocket. On one occasion we took tea20
in a shop on our way from Pakyong to Gangtok. Neither the shopkeeper nor I had any small
change with us. On noting this difficulty Sadhuji searched his pocket and took out a four-anna
coin and handed it to the shopkeeper. I do not know how Sadhuji had obtained the four-anna
piece.211 wonder to this day whether it was a miracle that had produced the money! For as a
rule," added Tharchin, "Sadhuji did not carry large sums of cash with him. And if he carried
any money at all, it was only money of small denominations he had on his person."
More than a week was spent in Gangtok. During this spare time the two evangelists
were given, as they had hoped, an opportunity to conduct open-air meetings in the Sikkimese
capital. Tharchin would interpret the messages into Tibetan. In this connection, one Qf the
Sadhu's biographers has noted that it was very difficult for the Punjabi evangelist to get
interpreters capable of translating Hindustani into the regional languages indigenous to the
telegram was ever sent. Both the daily visit for eight days and the follow-up telegram are pieces of information
which are per: (a) "Tharchin's Replies . . . ( b ) Rev. Kelly's letter to Fr. Hosten, cited in an earlier footnote to the
present chapter, and which appeared in CHI (15 Apr. 1925):232; and (c) cf. Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 67. It
should be added that the information about the original message sent having been a several-page hand-drafted
telegram is according to the same Kelly letter to Hosten as verbally related to Kelly by Tharchin.
Finally, it should be remarked that a discrepancy arises between Tharchin's statements that identify the
, Political Officer as Bell and the documentation published by Alex McKay which shows that Bell was temporarily
\ absent from his post of P.O.S. between October 1913 and September 1914 (after which Bell jresumed his duties
as Political Officer) so that he might attend the very important Simla Conference where he was to play a crucial
role in providing advice and information as needed to the higher officials there who represented the British vis-
a-vis both Tibetan and Chinese representatives. Since the Sadhu and Tharchin were at Gangtok during the last
week of June 1914, this meant, according to McKay's research, that the Acting P.O.S. on duty at this time had
to have been Basil J. Gould, another future friend of Tharchin's mentioned earlier. See McKay, Tibet and the
British Raj, 229-30. The present author can give no satisfactory explanation that would resolve this discrepancy.
But given Tharchin's near-perfect accuracy in recording details of his activities with the Sadhu, it would appear
to this writer well-nigh impossible that the Indo-Tibetan evangelist could have made such a glaring error in
identification; and hence, the Text above reflects Tharchin's identification and not McKay's documentation.
327»
areas in which he preached. Moreover, the Sadhu had once wryly commented that some of
the men who were in fact provided for this need "were more interrupters than interpreters"!22
Needless to say, the man from Poo was not an interrupter; quite the contrary, he served the
Sadhu well in the appointed task for which he had been sought.
Now on the very first occasion that Sundar and Tharchin preached in the open air at
Gangtok, which was three days after their arrival at the Sikkimese capital and happened to
be a Sunday market day, the two of them went to the main bazaar to proclaim the gospel.
But on Sundar's first attempt to speak to the crowd that was increasing in numbers as the
day wore on, one of the policemen on duty approached him, telling him after a few minutes
of conversation that the preaching could continue but at the corner of the bazaar to where
the officer now pointed with a wave of his hand. This instruction was necessary, explained
the police officer, so as to prevent any traffic difficulties developing. And with that, the
Sadhu and his Tibetan interpreter repositioned themselves at the designated spot and resumed
their preaching of the Christian message to the developing crowd. The police even began to
call to the people milling about, suggesting that they come and listen to the Punjabi evangelist
and his interpreter!—which thing they did, many of them; and, Tharchin later reported,
"much happened" of a positive nature. Thus Sundar arid Tharchin were able to conduct
these open-air meetings on several occasions in the main bazaar area; though on each
occasion that the Sadhu preached there, there were one or two police officers present who*
the Tibetan noted afterwards, were "keeping their eyes on him."*
Perhaps surprisingly to these two visiting evangelists, and despite the careful surveillance
by the police, there was absolutely no opposition at Gangtok to the preaching of the gospel—
whether that be in the main bazaar or in house-to-house visitation—from either the
Government or any segment of the predominantly and staunchly Animist-Buddhist population.!
This syncretic faith had its beginning, of course, among the original inhabitants—the Lepchas—
as well as the Bhutias, and spread even among the Nepalese Hindus who migrated later into
the land. The Lepchas, or Rong (the "ravine folk") as they styled themselves, were once
described by missionary John Graham of Kalimpong as being "the most sweet-tempered
and lovable of all the Himalaya peoples."23 These aboriginals together with the Bhutias
having gradually been displaced by the strong Nepali immigration into the country, these
displaced peoples finally ended up comprising but a small minority of the population.
Nevertheless, their pre-Buddhist religious orientation, similar to the pre-Buddhist indigenous
religion of Tibet and elsewhere in the Himalayan region, still very much remained as a part of
the syncretic faith which even continues to maintain a strong presence in the land today.
David Macdonald, who himself spent much of his adult life in the three Himalayan kingdoms
of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan, has provided a very interesting profile on the Lepcha and his
religion; which, when conjoined with the darker aspects of Tibetan Buddhism—thus making
the Lepchas (and the Bhutias, too) "animistic Buddhists"—can give some idea of the gross
spiritual darkness which Sundar Singh and Gergan Tharchin were up against in their preaching
* All information and quoted material in this paragraph are per "Tharchin's Replies ..." and GTUM TsMs, 64.
f Indeed, in the same Kelly-to-Hosten letter mentioned in previous footnotes (q.v.), Rev. Kelly could reportto
his correspondent that Tharchin had indicated to him that "after preaching in the bazaar and from house to
house," the two evangelists then departed Gangtok to continue their journey elsewhere in Sikkim.
of the gospel in these parts. Writing retrospectively in the early 1930s of his many years of
experience in the region, Macdonald noted the following:
.. The Lepcha is essentially a shy, retiring person, by religion, Animist, and a dweller in the
forests, worshiping the spirits of the mountain, river and tempest....
The Lepchas have no organized priesthood, the simple rites of their faith being conducted by
exorcists, who are termed "Bongthing." In times of stress—during crop failures or when epidemic
disease threatens the people—the Bongthing is called in to diagnose what particular evil spirits
are responsible for the calamity. His co-religionists provide various animals and birds for sacrifice,
including buffaloes and bullocks, cows, pigs and fowls, according to the wealth of the individual
or of the village calling for his services. The Bongthing, having slaughtered the sacrifice, examines
its entrails, and thus divines the cause of the trouble, and suggests the remedies necessary to
appease the angry spirits. In the case of very poor consultary the Bongthing has to satisfy
himself with ^ few eggs, which he breaks, and examine the yolks. Providing the necessary
sacrifices are forthcoming,-the Bongthing will undertake to divine any matter, from the cause of
simple stomachache to the failure of the crops in a whole district. Flesh of sacrificed animals
becomes the property of the Bongthing and his assistants, the suppliant party being strictly
forbidden to touch it. The Bongthing sometimes has a female counterpart, called "Mun." This
lady sings for hours at a stretch to keep evil spirits away from sickrooms and distressed areas. In
return for her services she receives her food, lodging and a small fee.
Yet another exorcist, termed a "Pao," is sometimes met with in Sikkim. This person specializes
in casting out demons from houses. When engaged at his work he dances round twirling a skull
drum, and tinkling a small bell, until the evil spirit enters into his body, and while thus possessed
the Pao discovers how to counteract the demon's machinations. Having given his advice, the
Pao finds that the spirit leaves him. This individual, of course, also receives a fee for his services,
sometimes in cash, sometimes in kind. I was fortunate in seeing the Bongthing and Pao at work
on several occasions, and I found that the Lepchas have implicit faith in them.24
Now it was within a darkly forbidding religious context of this sort that the two visiting
servants of the Most High God sought to preach the True Light of the Christian faith. Had
| the Sadhu and Tharchin not possessed an evangelistic boldness they could not and would not
have ventured forth as they did in the proclamation of the gospel in a land where not only a
primitive shamanism was all-pervasive but where also Lamaist Buddhism had been established
as the State religion of Sikkim and was thus entitled to all the Royal patronage. One can
[ therefore discern a quiet and effective ministry of the Holy Spirit behind the acts of these
modern-day messengers of Christ, a ministry of evangelism and teaching which would continue
to mark their activity during their days withjin the borders of this Himalayan kingdom. And as
fhe Tibetan would later indicate to Rev. K;elly, it was his intimate association with Sundar
I Singh on this evangelistic foray into Sikkim that inspired and motivated him to be more than
ever a proclaimer of the gospel. For Tharchin humbly acknowledged afterwards that on this
journey for the Lord, it was "the Sadhu [who] awakened me to a fuller view of my responsibility
to preach Christ to others."
C H A P T E R 9
Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Concl'd)—Disappointment:

Return Trip through Western Sikkim
There are many [plans] in a man's heart; but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts, saith the Lord.
To them that love God all things work together for good.
Proverbs 19:21; Isaiah 55:9; Romans 8:28
AT THIS POINT the reader will pardon the author for taking him aside to dwell for a moment on
the mystery and mysticism surrounding sorrow, suffering and disappointment which are
obviously part and parcel of life. But just because they are the warp and woof of human
existence does not signify they are of divine origin. Their universality does not elevate them
to the state of an eternal axiom, The question of who may be held responsible for their
existence and who may be exonerated is a philosophical matter which need not be addressed
jn this present biographical work. Throughout historic times both poets and philosophers
have intensely felt the trenchant reality of disappointment, sorrow and suffering and have
even sung about these matters in an attempt to explain or reconcile them by means of
reason. When, for example, Gautama Buddha was confronted with the problem of trouble,
disappointment and suffering, his attitude initially was little different from that of others; but
when he came to realize the stark reality of such phenomena, it was then that he noticed
their undeniable universality. In other words, for him the reality of disappointment and suffering
took on the character of a law of life. And the discovery of this law thus made it more
rational and scientific. The patriarch Job in the Hebrew Old Testament book of the same
name was wont to speak of the fact that man is born to trouble as the spark flies upward.1
This statement itself bespeaks the universal character of the law of sorrow and suffering,
and therefore becomes objective and scientific.
Whereas from his observation of the downward-falling apple in his family's orchard
Isaac Newton "discovered" the universal law of gravitation,2 Gautama Buddha, in observing
the unpleasant phenomena in man's existence that appeared to be as regular and predictable
as the fact that sparks everywhere and always fly upward, discovered for himself the universal
Itfw of suffering—that suffering was inherent in life." And if that indeed be so, one must, in
Buddha's view, tolerate this law of life, for only reconciliation with the various laws of life
ean alone bring peace and order. To deny them or to argue against them was, for Buddha, to
question the very rational foundation on which unity, development and purpose of life depend.
But where, then, lies the originality of Christ? Here one discovers a second and equally
important law of life—most certainly, at least, of the spiritual life. One's liberation from the
* Yet, it hardly need be said that in the case of both Newton and Buddha, these two laws existed in the universe
before the time of their "discoverers." "Just as the law of gravity existed before Newton explained it to the
world," so "the four noble truths of suffering ... were not created by Lord Buddha" but "existed in the universe
l^fbre him." Indeed, adds Sudin Shakya, it was "Newton's intelligence" which led to his particular discovery
while it was "Buddha's perseverance and enlightenment" which led to his. Shakya, "Four Noble Truths,"
%-athmandu Post, 31 Dec. 1995, p. 11 of the Sunday Post Weekly Magazine.
law of suffering does not lie in running away from it but lies in the act of facing it boldly in the
spirit of Christ. Suffering and all kinds of disappointment culminate in the cross, to be sure;
but beyond it, the agony of the cross is powerless. By suffering on the cross Christ triumphed
over it. He knew divinely well that it was the will of the Father in heaven that He should
suffer on the cross. If the universality of suffering is a scientific law of the physical world,
then the necessity to face the fact of suffering—or in other words, to embrace the cross—
is, may it be said, a scientific law of the mystical or spiritual world. Christ proved that after
the crucifixion comes the resurrection. But resurrection is not as it were a reorganization of
crucifixion but stands as the total triumph over the very fact of crucifixion. In short, to be
dead with Christ is to be raised up with Christ.*
Sundar Singh knew better than most anybody else the mysticism pf suffering. He rejoiced in
the cross of Christ. The joy of suffering opened to him the pearly gates of heaven. Or as one of
his great learned Christian friends in Europe would subsequently remark when writing on the life
and ministry of the Sadhu: "True suffering is part of Christian mysticism; it draws the Christian
into the closest living fellowship with Christ."3 Thus Dorje Tharchin at this time in his I ife must
have learned a great deal from Sadhuji in the school of suffering and disappointment. And though
admittedly it was indeed a great disappointment and moment of sadness for the Sadhu not to be
able to proceed farther and on into Tibet with the Good News of Christ, he accepted it with great
calmness of soul. For since no reply had come from the Political Officer after eight days of futile
waiting, the young sadhu "explained to Tharchin that perhaps it was not God's will that they
should go farther" towards Tibet "and so they would do well to return."4 The two evangelists
therefore decided to take the return journey, concluding that it was not the wi 11 of God—at least at
this time—for them to go to Tibet. How apt for Sundar in this current situation had been the very
first words of the inspired Scriptures which head up the present chapter: "There are many plans
in a man's heart; but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand." The Sadhu's Tibetan companion
was beginning to realize how much farther along the spiritual path his mentor in the faith had
advanced in experiencing true Christian mysticism at its most fundamental level: what the early
Catholic Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas, once defined as "a simple intuition of the truth" of
God and His will. Disappointments cannot be prevented, but certainly once accepted they can be
interwoven positively into the aesthetic pattern of one's spiritual life. With God as one's partner
great things can be achieved. St. Paul rightly observed that "to them that love God all things work
together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose."
*
It must be pointed out that Sundar Singh and Dorje Tharchin had clearly sought without !
success the permission from the Political Officer for the specific purpose of preaching the
* The author is indebted to Gergan Tharchin's amanuensis for the content of these first three paragraphs of the
present chapter, for they are an edited paraphrase of his brief but helpful and appropriate essay on "the mystery
of suffering" which had formed the opening section of Chapter 7 of the Tharchin unpublished "memoirs." See
GTUM TsMs, 65-7, for the original unedited version.
SSS: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Concl'd)—Disappointment: Return Trip thru West Sikkim 291
gospel in Tibet. It is interesting to speculate, however, what would have been the Sadhu's
reaction to the British disallowance of trekking onward across the Tibetan frontier had he
been alone. It is well known today what his usual pattern of conduct had invariably been
when confronted by governmental obstacles to his crossing the borders of closed lands, the
most recent instance of which had been the Nepal frontier less than a month before. In that
instance God's evangelist, by his own testimony, had "tried to enter Nepal from two places,"
but he "was checked by the officers of the state, because they do not allow any man to enter
without a passport; and for a Christian to obtain a passport is impossible, and especially for
a preacher." Nevertheless, these two thwarted attempts at entry into that Closed Land did
not deter this Christian sadhu, for he immediately thereafter plunged successfully forward
into the forbidden territory at a third entry point of his own making. Hence it can legitimately
be wondered that had the Sadhu not been accompanied by his Tibetan friend in this current
instance, then God's will would in all probability have proved quite different. But the Lord,
perhaps not wishing to jeopardize Gergan Tharchin's relations with those local authorities
with whom he in future would have to deal in performing God's work, apparently made it
clear to the Sadhu by means of the British forbiddance that he on this ocgasion must comply
with human law rather than attempt, as was his usual wont, to circumvent human law in
order that he might obey what he viewed as a higher law or commandment of taking the
Christian gospel to every nation. This latter constituted a divine mandate that, in most any
other circumstance for the Sadhu, neither knew nor recognized any boundary or barrier to its
implementation.*5
But armed with a heart attitude like St. Paul's, as Sundar most clearly possessed, it
was not difficult for the Sadhu to perceive and then to quietly accept—in his pursuit of
those spiritual disciplines of the true Christian mystic in which he by this time habitually
engaged—the working together of all things, whether negative or positive, in the instance
at hand. Sundar, to use the language of one writer on Christian mysticism, had, by a
process of vertical thinking, silently descended to the "still point" of his innermost being,
thereby allowing himself to enter into an ineffable knowledge which, while "existentialiy
shaking off concepts, images and essences" that "flow across the mind's surface,"
transcended for him, in a "superconceptual" sense, the desirable or the expected or the
habitual and which thus enabled him to "grasp the unity of all things" in the specific life
situation which had here confronted him.6 Indeed, a point is ultimately reached in the
experience of those servants of God like Sundar Singh wherein they see with their inner
eyes that all things in life—whether perceived to be good or bad, beneficial or adverse,
blessed and blissful or sorrowful, sad or disappointing—do in fact work together for good
* The Sadhu's understanding of this Higher Mandate is no better illustrated than in the emotionally charged
conversation he had at Elam in Nepal with one of the Officers intending to arrest him for preaching the Christian
gospel in the local bazaar there. "The Officer," the Sadhu wrote afterwards, "became very angry and asked who
had given me permission to enter Nepal and preach. I said that I did not come by anyone's orders or of my own
accord ... but 1 had been sent by Him who is the Officer of all officers, Raja of all rajas and Creator of you and
me " The Officer asked: "Why?" "Because God through Christ," explained Sundar Singh, "has called all nations
to life eternal, and when I came to know that Nepal is unaware of this fact, He ordered me to give you this
gospel...." Excerpted from the Sadhu's account published shortly after his harrowing experience at Elam, and
appearing in Nur Afshan, 3 July 1914; quoted in Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 63.
in the furthering of the Divine purposes, and even if the "all things" in and of themselves
cannot be fully understood at the moment by His servants. The issue of supreme importance
for such a servant of God is not to be concerned about the individual character of "the all
things" but to "grasp their unity" and embrace the latter with heartfelt equanimity.
Such, in fact, was what the Sadhu with tranquil heart had done on this current occasion in
his life, leaving to God any unanswered questions which may have temporarily surfaced in
his mind. For as Gergan Tharchin recalled some ten years after this incident: "We waited at
Gangtok eight days for a reply but no reply [to the Hodges telegrams] came. And so Sundar
Singh told me: 'Let us go back, as I came to know [during these days of waiting that] it is not
His will that we should go [to Tibet] this time.'" And with that, the peace of God descended
upon them both.*
5fc
Now once it hid become clear that no permission would be forthcoming, the two
companions in the gospel decided to seek permission to visit the Christian congregations in
the north of Sikkim—at Lachen (where Tharchin had been two years before) and at
Lachung.7 But quite interestingly, this was also turned down by the Political Office and
most likely even without any attempt at consultation by telegram with Sir Charles. The
reason for saying this will become clear by what is next said. As far as Sundar Singh
himself was concerned, by 1914 he was already becoming targeted as persona non
grata by the Tibetan authorities. For as one of his biographers, Cyril J. Davey, has pointed
out: "By ... 1919, Sundar had been a dozen times or more in Tibet. Lama had passed on to
lama the tale of his preaching tours and their results. The authority of the lama and the
priest was challenged wherever Sundar stayed. He appeared impervious to hints, indifferent
to threats and immune from death. Word was passed along to the frontier posts that he
must not be allowed to enter the country." Moreover, Davey went on to make a comment
whose pertinence to Sundar's situation in Sikkim is most unambiguous: "The Tibetan,
government made it clear to British officials that he was an unwelcome immigrant and
must be stopped."8 Most likely, therefore, Sundar Singh's name was on file at every
British Indian border crossing point contiguous with Tibet. It was doubtless because of
incidents like this one, where he was not even permitted to approach the Tibetan border
of northern Sikkim, that in almost every case compelled the indestructible evangelist, in
obedience to God's higher law of preaching the gospel among all peoples, to seek other
ways to circumvent the lesser laws of man, regardless the risk to his own safety and
welfare.f
;
* The contents of this paragraph are per "Tharchin's Replies ..."
t In the light of this discussion on the Sadhu's habitual practice of circumventing the lesser laws of man that he
might be found obedient to his God's higher law as revealed in the Christian Scriptures, it makes Oskar PfisterS
charge appear most weak if not downright ludicrous to have declared that "the joint travel which occurred in
Thus it was that by this decision of the Political Office at Gangtok these two Christian
evangelists were completely prevented from proceeding into northern Sikkim; but they
were granted permission to journey through southwestern Sikkim, Indeed, obtaining "a
pass from the Office for our return journey from Gangtok to Darjeeling," explained
Tharchin, the two of them were even allowed to make use of the facilities of several
dak bungalows on the way.* So that despite the rejections they had received with respect
to northern Sikkim and Tibet itself, these were unquestionably considerate concessions
on the part of the British Political Office. Davey, in his biography of Sundar S ingh, was
correct in stating on the one hand that "British government officers refused to permit
him to go farther [north] than Gangtok." But in the light of these concessions, it is
inaccurate for Davey to state on the other hand that these same government officials
"asked him to leave the country."9 The simple truth is that the officials allowed the
Sadhu and Tharchin, whom they well knew would continue to evangelize, to make their
return journey to Kalimpong by a different route instead of requiring the'two, as the
officers could have done, to return immediately by the same way they had come into
Sikkim weeks before.
1914" of Sundar Singh and Dorje Tharchin in Sikkim together constituted "an argument against the [notion of
any] travel to Tibet" having ever taken place by the Sadhu both prior to and after 1914. "For if the Sadhu was
already stuck in Sikkim" on this current journey argued Pfister, then "how would he really have fared in Tibet?"
Yet Pfister's charge here is most weak indeed and betrays his gross ignorance of the actual situation on the
ground along Tibet's incredibly sprawling Himalayan frontier with India and other neighboring states. As one
scholar on Anglo-Tibetan relations has most recently written, whereas "access to the central Tibetan heartland
of Lhasa and Shigatse" via Sikkim from the south and Nagchuka from the north "was effectively barred,"
foreigners were nonetheless "able to cross into Tibetan territory, and to travel extensively throughout the
Tibetan periphery,... largely due to the inability of the Lhasa government to protect its far-flung frontiers."
Lacking "the manpower and resources to prevent foreigners from crossing its far-flung frontiers," adds Alex
McKay, the Tibetan government's longstanding exclusionary policy (which, incidentally, "suited the interests
of Tibet's neighboring imperial powers" of British India and Manchu China, who therefore sought to support
and reinforce that policy) "was only effective in regard to central Tibet." And thus "a number of travelers
eluded the border controls along the ... western Tibetan frontier," where this particular part of "the poorly
guarded periphery of the Tibetan world attracted a steady stream of foreigners," beginning "in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century." McKay went on to conclude, significantly, that "those who wished to travel in the
inhospitable western and northern areas were generally able to do so, with or without official permission"
(emphasis added). And as has been made abundantly clear earlier in the discussion on Sundar Singh's various
Tibetan exploits (see Chs. 3, 4 and 7), the western frontier areas of that country constituted the locale for all
of the Sadhu's many successful attempts to penetrate the Great Closed Land with the Christian gospel.
Accordingly, it needs to be stressed here that the Sadhu fared quite well in penetrating Tibet, the views of
Pfister to the contrary notwithstanding, and despite this one unusual setback in Sikkim. See McKay, "Tibet:
the Myth of Isolation," in P. v.d. Velde and A. McKay, eds., New Developments in Asian Studies, 306, 312,
311,305,313.
Yet it ought to be additionally remarked here that for this well-known Swiss Christian leader and pastor, who,
as was previously noted, became one of Sundar Singh's severest European critics, to have even raised such an
argument apparently betrays a further ignorance; that is to say, an apparent ignorance of the Biblical mandate
which should govern all missioners of the Christian gospel to unbelievers wherever found. Furthermore, it reveals
the limiting mundane vision which controlled the parameters of much of his negative critique of the Sadhu'slife
and career. See Pfister, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 207.
* The quotation is from "Tharchin's Replies ..." and the rest of the information given up to this point in this
paragraph is according to both ibid, and GTUM TsMs, 68.
From Gangtok on the 3rd of July* the two companions took the route going southwest
toward Singtam (ca. 3000'), a big bazaar village 18 miles away. These days in Sikkim were
during the hot and sultry months of June and July. Tharchin was carrying about half a
maund10 of clothing and bedding and thus he could not walk quickly inasmuch as the route
leading to Singtam and beyond there to Temi was steep and rough. On the otjier hand,
Sadhuji was lightly dressed and burdened, and consequently could move ahead at a faster
pace. He told Tharchin to do his level best to climb the steep hill. The Sadhu humored him in
Urdu, spying, "Koshish Karo—Koshish Karo," that is to say, "Try your best—try your best."
Sadhujijmay have had a load of only five seers10 extra including his blanket, skin and an
additional yellow robe.
On the way, Sundar, in order to pass the time, employed several homely sayings and
illustrations as a means of inspiring his companion, who smilingly commented about this
much later when dictating his "memoirs," as follows:
Sundar Singh gave me theological training on the way to Temi farther to the southwest. He
emphasized two proverbs very much. First, God helps those who help themselves, and second,
There is no rose without a thorn.f He wanted to encourage me and inspire me to accompany
him in spite of all the dangers and difficulties of the travels. I must mention that Sadhuji's
favorite theme was the cross of Christ, of which he spoke with deep insight and genuine
experience. He always referred to the suffering of our Lord îth inward contemplation and
fervent spirit.
Now since the two of them had obtained in Gangtok a proper permit from the Political
Office, they were able to use the facilities of the two-bedroom dak bungalow when on the
4th of July they arrived in Temi (ca. 5500').* It so happened that situated in the adjacent area !
was a Mission bungalow where a missionary had been faithfully preaching the gospel as
well as looking after the spiritual needs of the handful of believers there. Sundar Singh and
Tharchin went to meet the missionary as brothers in the Lord, but the poor missionary—presuming j
d th
i
* These two dates of 3 and 4 July are according to "Tharchin's Replies ..."
f These are but several of many sayings and illustrations that were characteristically used by the Sadhu. An
Anglican Church paper in England, The Church Times, was wont to collect a number of others the famed Indian
evangelist had employed during his travels in Europe and England in 1920 (and later that same year in America).
Some of them are quite familiar even today: ;
Religion is a matter of the heart, not of the head. j
We must be able to drink the milk of the gospels; if we analyze it we spoi l the milk. |
The Christian worker must be as salt, which must be dissolved before it can become effective; the force j
of an appeal lies in self-sacrifice. f
We must live in a sinful world, and yet if we have Jesus in our hearts we shall not be contaminated by 1
sin; just as a fish living in salt water does not itself become salt. J
I took a stone from a stream and broke it—it was hollow inside, the cavity was quite dry So a nominal |
Christian can live in the Church and have streams of grace flowing round him, and yet be dry in his own f
heart. I
"A
We have not to know about Christ, but to know Him. |
We are not called to teach about Christ, but to witness to Him. I
;ff
Quoted in "A Hindu Convert Here to Christianize America," Literary Digest (3 July 1920):43. §1
them to be non-Christian beggars—drove them away from the Mission compound. Without
harboring any i 11-feeling, the two of them returned to their own quarters nearby, although Tharchin
frankly admitted, "I was quite a bit annoyed at the behavior of the missionary."
After an interval of half an hour, to their great surprise a servant from the Mission bungalow
came to them requesting that they come again because the missionary had sent for them.
When they approached his place, the missionary, in a most humble and apologetic tone, said
to them: "I did not know you were Christian pilgrims. I mistook you to be non-Christian
sadhus ..." Thereafter he conversed with them nicely and politely. Nevertheless, Sadhuji
lovingly but firmly reminded him that a missionary ought to be good and kind towards all
people irrespective of their caste, color, creed or culture. He ought to behave as becoming a
Christian. The missionary took the comments in good grace, and then took them upstairs
where his wife showed them well-furnished rooms and requested them to spend the night
and enjoy the Christian hospitality. But Sundar and Tharchin declined the invitation with
thanks. The invitation for the lunch was, however, gladly accepted by them.
The two travelers^pent two nights in Temi. On the day after their arrival, which was
Sunday the 5th of July,* a dozen believers from a place called Vok11 about six miles away
assembled for worship. The service was held on the verandah of the missionary's bungalow.
The young sadhu preached the Sunday sermon. Tharchin noted much later, however, that
unfortunately he could not recall the content of the message delivered there.
They traveled through western Sikkim but no open-air meeting was conducted at any
place on the way. All along the entire journey noted in the preceding pages, the Tibetan from
Poo acted as an interpreter for Sundar Singh. Concerning this privilege Tharchin years later
remarked, "This recollection gives me great joy and happiness today."
After leaving Temi behind they came south 11 miles to Namchi (ca. 5000'), located in the
southeastern foothills of the Nepal Himalayas just above western Sikkim's border with India's
District of Darjeeling. They spent the night of 6 July there.* Next day they came to the
beautiful Rangit River at a point in elevation of about 5700 feet, down from which point a fair
distance it merges with and becomes the Teesta River that flows on down to the Indian
plains.12 Here on the afternoon of the 7th* the Christian sadhu washed his yellow robe in the
river and took a bath, for which they both must have longed, after traveling along the dusty
paths of Sikkim. The brother of one of Sundar Singh's biographers has provided an intimate
picture of the Sadhu engaged in bathing and washing his clothes. The evangelist happened to
be an invited guest for six weeks in April and May 1918 at the Appasamy family's holiday
retreat location in India that year. In a letter to the biographer, the latter's brother wrote the
following recollection:
He often bathed in the stream just a hundred yards behind the house. Before bathing he
* These dates of 5th, 6th and 7th July are all according to "Tharchin's Replies ..."
washed his clothes and put them out to dry. He rubbed oil on himself, which made his fair body
glisten as if it were molded out of twenty-carat gold. He bathed ten minutes or more and dried
himself with the cloth which he wore as a scarf over his robe. He then sat cross-legged, half in
the shade and half in the sun. He often meditated, sometimes read, occasionally prayed, while
he waited for the clothes to dry.13
Doubtless this was something of the ritual which Tharchin must have witnessed at those
times when they bathed together during their trekking days in Sikkim. Here, while bathing
and relaxing by the banks of the lovely Rangit, Sadhuji sang his favorite hymns: "Like a River
Glorious" and "Glory to Jesus, Wonderful Jesus." Here also, the two Christian companions
could enjoy from the nearby dak bungalow a fine view of the Darjeeling ridge some seven
miles away across the deep Rangnu (Rangit) Valley with the snowy range in the background,
while "the great creeper-bound and moss-covered trees all round" presented to their eyes "a
magnificent picture of forest scenery" which according to one authority on the area "cannot
be equaled in the neighborhood of Darjeeling."14
After a night's rest at the bungalow, these faithful servants of Christ started off on the
next to the last leg of their journey back to Ghoom. Leaving the Rangit bungalow on the
morning of 8 July, the two travelers went all the way to Badamtan inside District Darjeeling,
And from Badamtan the next morning the Sadhu and his companion commenced the final
day's trek that would bring them to their final destination of Ghoom.* But on their way there
they came to Lebong (meaning in Lepcha, "the tongue-shaped spur") situated on the spur
just below and a little to the northeast of Darjeeling Town proper at an elevation of 5970 feet.
Enjoying more sunshine and a climate ten degrees warmer than at its larger sister hill station
above, Lebong had been one of the first places in the District to attract non-Indian settlers;
and eventually a large section of the spur was acquired for the establishment of a permanent
military camp by the British, a battalion of its infantry having begun to be stationed there well
before the time the two evangelists had made their way to the settlement.15
Here at Lebong Dorje Tharchin, a great lover of dogs, bought one for Rs. 8/- from a
British soldier and took it home with him.16 After the purchase of the animal the two went on
to Darjeeling. But Sundar, without stopping anywhere in the market, passed right through the
"Queen of the Kill Stations" and went on, with Tharchin and his pet, to Ghoom the same day.
They arrived back at their starting point on the afternoon of 9 July 1914,f17 and from here
the Sadhu left almost immediately for the plains of northern India, from whence he returned
to Kotgarh in the Simla Hills.
In fact, Sundar Singh almost instantly thereafter went to the home of his former fellow
sadhu of recent years, the American, Samuel Stokes. In 1911 the latter had married a i
Christian Indian lady from Kotgarh, purchased some land some four miles distant, and had i
settled down to become a Pahari (hill-man) Christian farmer.18 While he and his wife {
would be away in America during the rest of 1914 and most likely the early part of 1915,
Stokes had "left Sadhuji there to have general oversight ..." 19 It ought to be mentioned
that it was most likely while the Sadhu was here at the Stokes home that in February 1915
he wrote and had subsequently had published the little autobiographical Urdu volume of |
* All information as to places, timings and dates presented up to this point in the paragraph is per ibid.
t This date of 9 July 1914 is per ibid.
his travels under the title, A Collection of Incidents20—a publication which figures so
centrally in Chapter 11 below.
It would be most appropriate at this point in the narrative to note that concerning his close
companionship and association with Sadhu Sundar Singh, Gergan Tharchin—when dictating
his "memoirs"—gratefully and humbly remarked:
I would like to express myself that I am extremely thankful to my Lord Jesus Christ for bringing me
into fellowship with Sundar Singh. Sadhuji guided me spiritually and led my steps to Daud Singh,
from whom I learned many useful and practical things which later helped me a great deal in my
printing-press work. I have always looked upon Sadhuji with great respect and admiration.
Moreover, in A. J. Appasamy's biographical work on the Sadhu which has frequently been
cited already in the pages of this narrative, the biographer had taken note of the Tibetan's
appreciation of the Sadhu in these words: "Tharchin still holds Sundar Singh in great veneration
and says in matters of religion Sundar Singh has greatly influenced him."21 When later this
quotation was brought to Tharchin's attention by a close acquaintance, the Tibetan
acknowledged the truth of this statement of appreciation with all purity and sincerity of
heart. Indeed, in the words of one commentator on their association together, there lay,
unmistakably, behind the character and effectiveness of Gergan Tharchin's many later activities
and labors for the Lord "the lessons he had learned at the feet of Sadhu Sundar Singh." For
in his travels with Sundar, added David Woodward, this budding Tibetan evangelist had
"witnessed the strength of [the Sadhu's] love and commitment to be like Jesus."22
As still further testimony, Tharchin himself is reported to have told a European missionaiy
visitor to his Kalimpong home in 1964 that "the Sadhu was a great friend of his, through
whom he had developed spiritually."23 In addition to the statements about the Sadhu which
he made when dictating his "memoirs" towards the very end of his life, Tharchin at that time
also recalled another meeting with Sundar Singh:
In early 19211 met him again at Agra on a return journey from Delhi and discussed with him my
plans to avail myself of the opportunity to visit Tibet. I reminded him that we had both attempted
to enter Tibet to preach the matchless name of Christ, but we could not realize our plans. Now,
though, I might have an opportunity to visit Tibet. [This in fact took place later that same year,
beginning in May; see later in the present work, Chapters 14 and 15.] Sundar Singh was glad to
hear of this opening to enter Tibet. This was in the great providence of the Lord.
With respect to the Sadhu's reciprocal appreciation of him, the elder Tibetan was to
assert later with confident assurance: "Sundar Singh's love for me was demonstrated by the
feet that while I was in Gyantse, Tibet, he sent me his photograph from England. I still have
that memorable picture with me.* This indicated that he remembered me, and I am sure he
* This may well have been a copy of the photograph the Sadhu had reluctantly allowed to be taken of him while
he was ministering in Berlin, Germany, during April 1922, some three months prior to his ministry in England,
also prayed for me regularly." These remarks were in reference to the Sadhu's second
journey to Europe and the Tibetan's first major journey into Tibet. Sundar had left India for
Palestine in January 1922, was on the Continental late June, and was in England till late July
1922, when he sailed back to India.24 In the meantime, Tharchin had arrived at Gyantse from
Kalimpong in August 1921 and had remained there for over two years.
As has been seen, the proposed joint visit to Tibet with the gospel of Christ never
materialized in spite of all the efforts on the part of these two servants of the Lord. Regardless
the outcome of the unfulfilled trek to that country by way of Sikkim, none can dispute
Sundar's zeal and burden for the land of Tibet. A double portion of this vision for that Great
Closed Land later fell upon his Tibetan friend and fellow traveler. After all, God has His own
ways of which man cannot always know. For "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, saith the Lord."
and about which a German Christian had remarked, after viewing it, that "this man is quite ready for martyrdom."
A "memorable picture," indeed! See the end of Ch. 11 below for further details.
C H A P T E R 10
Sadhu Sundar Singh (Cont'd): Critical Study

I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.
Acts 9:16; Romans 8:18
SEVERAL BOOKS of a biographical nature have been published in India and abroad on the life of
Sundar Singh describing his unique experiences and mystical utterances. While some have
questioned the validity of his extraordinary experiences, others have challenged the veracity of
his arcane statements. Sides have been taken and the lines of argument drawn on the issues of
controversy arising from the unusual accounts of Sundar Singh's life and work. It would appear
that the debate still continues to assert itself almost endlessly: causing pain to some, provoking
irritation if not outright offense in others. For example, more than a half century following the
eruption of the debate, Religious Studies Lecturer Eric J. Sharpe of England's Lancaster University
felt it necessary by way of apology to say to the readers of an article he wrote on the Sadhu
and his critics: "It may be that some will still be offended, or at least irritated, at the painful
subject being once more brought to public notice. But I have no wish to cause offense. I wish
merely to examine an episode in the Christian history of half a century ago, reproducing just
some of the opinions expressed on either side of the debate ... [with the] purpose [being]... to
examine, not so much the Sadhu himself, as what people expected of him, and what they
believed him to be ..
That was in 1976. A few years later, in 1981, Dr. Kurt E. Koch, an eminent German
evangelical missionary scholar and writer (who happened also to be one whom Gergan
Tharchin knew personally and greatly admired), has intimated the ongoing existence of the
controversy when in one of his published works he made the following comment: "... there
are many Christians who attack Sadhu Sundar Singh—and indeed what man of God does
not experience that?..." But Dr. Koch went on to indicate what was his own attitude towards
the Indian saint: "I want to add that [although] there are things in the life of this holy man that
I cannot follow,... I am not his critic."2
Yet even more recently, a much younger German author on religious themes, Michael
Biehl (b. 1956), published in 1990 a lengthy tome about the Sadhu entitled Der Fall Sadhu
Sundar Singh: Theologie zwischen den Kulturen (The Case of Sadhu Sundar Singh:
Theology between Cultures). In his volume Biehl makes the observation that the debate
surrounding the Sadhu's character and ministry has not yet led—even at this late date—to a
definitive clarification as to whether he in fact had been an authentic servant of Christ or a
charlatan. (Needless to say, the present writer takes the former and not the latter view.) At
the center of the dispute, declares the author, "stood a range of events which led to the basic
debate: Had Sundar Singh, or had he not, invented events and woven [a] legend from these?"
Regardless what position his readers might take, Biehl concludes by observing that though
the content of the debate may now be forgotten, "the legend of the Sadhu lives on to this
day" (a legend, it should be added here, which others, and not the Sadhu himself, had
created). Indeed, notes the author, the attempt by his critics in the debate to "drive away the
Sadhu from the European and Indian power of imagination had not been successful, and
even today it [the legend] still drifts through wrapped-in-mystery Tibet" where the Sadhu
had apparently died. Far from having been successful, adds Biehl, "the Sadhu controversy
now finds a suitable place in the legend" itself.3 While a much more direct discussion about
this extraordinary controversy will be found in the next chapter, intimations of it must of
necessity appear now and again in the pages of the present chapter.
Now Gergan Tharchin, an intimate and trusted friend of the Sadhu, was quite aware of the
significance and implications of many points at issue in the life and ministry of Sundar Singh. In
the light of this, Tharchin was asked, when dictating his so-called memoirs, to express his
personal viewpoint on each of a number of these issues and whatever reasons—if any—he
could give for subscribing to each viewpoint. The specific purpose the questioner had in mind
was to shed additional light on a number of controversial incidents in Sundar Singh's life which
could help, if possible, to confirm or rebut the arguments of the critics of the Sadhu. What
follows are some of the Tibetan's responses—both pro and con—to these inquiries, along with
the inclusion of additional information and critical observations on the issues involved—as
seemed pertinent by the present author. For it is this author's fervent hope that what emerges
in these two concluding chapters on the Sadhu by way of additional source material on the
controversy, can help to overturn the opinion expressed by Lecturer Sharpe in his otherwise
commendable article that "it is very unlikely... that the bona fides of the Sadhu himself [that is
to say, what he was and what he claimed to be], will ever be finally settled, however many new
primary sources may be uncovered. Too much has already been lost for this ever to be a real
possibility." It is in the interest of proving wrong the opinion of Sharpe—and others, too—on
this point that the following matters are presented; for Sharpe himself had nonetheless
acknowledged, "There may yet be much to discover about the Sadhu."4
"From the plains," Tharchin noted, "Sundar Singh came straight to me at Ghoom. After a
few days there, Sadhuji proceeded to Sukhiapokhri (ca. 6000') and then to Elam still higher id
elevation, the first [major] border town inside the territory of Nepal. There he started to
preach the gospel but was forbidden by the authorities to engage in religious propaganda
activities. He was put in prison, and his hands and feet were fixed in wooden stocks known
in the Nepali language as 'Thyangro.' 5 [Neither] after the return trip from Elam to Ghoom
[nor] during his co-travels with me through the State of Sikkim did Sundar Singh ever narrate
his experiences in Elam to me.* I read about these incidents at Elam for the first time in an
Urdu publication." All this Sundar Singh's Indo-Tibetan friend had acknowledged in his so-
called memoirs dictated near the end of his life.
* Bishop Appasamy has explained that when questioned in later years about this silence the Sadhu stated that he had
not wanted "to create any sensation among his friends and others by accounts of the cruel treatment he had received
at Ilam." The Indian evangelist had also thought that as he was a British subject, were he to have given publicity to this
incident and his British friends to have then precipitated an inquiry among Government circles, "any chance of his again
entering Nepal, an independent State, would have been completely gone." Sundar Singh, 66.
, Sadhu Sundar Singh (Cont'd): Critical Study 301
Now the Urdu publication to which Tharchin had made reference here (and cited near
the end of the previous chapter) was the Sadhu's own memoirs covering his evangelistic
travels between 1905 and 1915 which in English translation was entitled^ Collection of
Incidents, its Urdu original having been published in 1915 or shortly thereafter. Much more
will be said about this little volume in the next chapter.
Just here it should be pointed out that the above-quoted lengthy statement of Tharchin's
gives the lie to the assertion which has sometimes been made by a few biographers of the
Sadhu to the effect that the latter had related his Elam experience in whole or in part to his
Tibetan friend upon returning to Ghoom. One example of such embellishment of the truth is
found in the biography by Cyril J. Davey, in which the author writes that "Sundar told Tharchin,
when he at last staggered into Ghum, [about] his rescuers" at Elam who had secretly bound
up his wounds and nursed him back to health.6
Sundar Singh is himself quoted as having declared about this incident at Elam: "I was
arrested and put in prison for six months." This statement is found in the little volume entitled,
Sermons and Sayings of Sadhu Sundar Singh during His Visit to the Khasi Hills,
Assam, March 1924, compiled by J. Helen Rowlands and Hridesh Ranjan Ghose. Indisputably
the statement of the Sadhu would appear to contain an error of time. Tharchin makes clear
that at most "Sundar Singh was away to Nepal for only six days" in June 1914 (i.e., from the
5th to 10th June, returning to Ghoom late on the 10th).* "Out of these, four days must have
been spent for the to and fro journey. This means Sadhuji must have been inside Nepal for
only two days [and having presumably been occupied with evangelizing from the Indo-
Nepalese border through the adjacent hill-and-valley villages towards nearby Elam and at
Elam itself]. The above quoted statement of Sadhuji may have been due to a mistake or
misunderstanding on the part of the [compilers]—that is to say, mistaking the sixth month of
June to be six months." Nevertheless, Tharchin notes, the compilers of Sermons and Sayings
did indicate in their Preface that in all the sermons and sayings quoted, "we have retained the
Sadhu's actual words and phrases—at least such has been our endeavor."
Upon closer examination, though, of the Sadhu's own recollections of the event, the
apparent mystery can be solved. For this seemingly inexplicable statement of the Sadhu's
made in 1924 ten years after the incident makes sense and is proven to be correct when it is
put alongside statements made in three other accounts given by the Sadhu. The first one was
published in the 3 July 1914 issue of NurAfshan, a Ludhiana weekly Christian paper edited
by his longtime friend Dr. E. M. Wherry, an American Presbyterian missionary. Wherry had
asked the Sadhu to submit reports of his work periodically for publication, which he did,
doubtless posting this particular account from Ghoom shortly after his return to Tharchin's
residence there from Elam on June 10th. The second account—it being the first time Sundar
was to mention anything about the Elam persecution that involved leeches—was written in
February 1915 some eight months after the event and appeared in his small Urdu book of
* Although Tharchin told Protestant clergyman Rev. J, Kelly of Darjeeling in late 1924 that the journey to Elam
and back lasted five or six days, and less than a year later told Catholic priest Fr. H. Hosten, also of Darjeeling,
it lasted about two weeks, here the Tibetan evangelist stated at near the end of his life that it was six days, which
is the most likely length of the trek. See a footnote a few pages hence for the Kelly documentation; and for the
Hosten source, see Pfister, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 186n.
travels previously cited a few paragraphs earlier. And the third account given by Sundar was
part of a well-prepared address he gave on the first day of his four-day stay in July 1922 at the
famed Keswick Convention in northern England. Now by putting these accounts of vaiying
lengths and of varying sets of details together into one composite whole, the chronology of
events surrounding the Elam experience turns out to be something I ike the following:
Upon the arrest of the Sadhu on 8 June 1914 for proclaiming the gospel of Christ at the
town of Elam in eastern Nepal, the arresting Officer and an Inspector fell into a discussion
in Sundar's presence about what should be the latter's fate. For in the light of Sundar's
already bold words to them that he did not fear imprisonment, that in fact he welcomed it and
said he would "not stop talking about my Christ" and "was ready to give my life," the
Inspector observed that "a man is thrown into prison that he may suffer there, but this
Christian takes it to be a thing of pleasure and comfort...." To which the Officer responded
that "it would be better if he were turned out from the territory, because if he be put into
custody, it is just possible that by his teaching/or six months other prisoners may become
Christians, and separate arrangement is difficult (emphasis added). The two officials
followed their own advice.
Even so, upon being put out of their jurisdictional boundary, the indomitably fearless Sadhu
came right back the very same day to Elam's bazaar and immediately began preaching the
gospel again! At that point, reported the Sadhu, "a high-caste Hindu grew very angry and
began to interrupt. I gave him a copy of the Gospel of Mark, but he tore it up and went off to
inform the police. An officer came down and arrested me, and I was sentenced to six
months' imprisonment. The jailor put me into prison with other prisoners, and I began to
preach to them about Christ. When the jailor saw that the prisoners listened attentively, he
ordered me to cease preaching, but I replied that I must obey my Master and preach His
gospel, whatever sufferings I had to endure" (emphasis added). When even the prisoners
refused the jailor's order to stop listening to Sundar, the jailor went off to his superior
authority and explained what had happened.
The prison authority, fearing that some of his prisoners might be converted and thereby
place himself in trouble, ordered the jailor to put the evangelist into a separate room; but, as
indicated above, that would be difficult inasmuch as "they had only one large common room
in the jail," explained the Sadhu in one of his accounts. As a consequence, he further explained,
"I was put into a cow-house belonging to the jailor, fouled by the cattle and very evil-smelling,
with no window and only one door." Moreover, he said, "the place was full of mosquitoes."
There, he added, "they took off all my clothes and fastened my hands and feet in a block of
wood"—that is to say, they put him in the stocks, "collected a lot of leeches from the jungle
and threw them over me, which fastened on my body and began to suck my blood."*
Concerning these leeches Sundar additionally observed that they "were ... round my eyes
* Jesuit Father Alfons Vath, who as a missionary in India had served for a number of years as a history professor
in Calcutta and at Francis Xavier College in Bombay but who was later to become one of the Sadhu's critics in
Germany, has opined that it is "impossible" to keep leeches in a basket, as he believed was claimed by the Sadhu
to have occurred. See Vath, Der Streit um den Sadhu (The Dispute Surrounding the Sadhu), Die katholischen
Missionen (The Catholic Missions), 53. Jahrgang (53rd Year): 1924/25, p. 290, and cited in Oskar Pfister, Die ;
Legende Sundar Singhs, 184. Yet could it not have easily been the case that the Sadhu's jailors—-incensed beyond
measure at what they perceived to have continued to be conduct unbecoming their prisoner: that is, unceasingly
shutting them and ... were sucking away all my blood. It was very painful.... By tomorrow,"
he thought, "I shall be dead from loss of blood." In the meantime, his jailors also threw "filth"
upon him and hurled epithets and "bad language" at him from outside "the open door."
Nevertheless, wrote Sundar, the Lord "by His Holy Presence, turned my prison into a
paradise"; and while he was suffering for a number of hours, the Sadhu further explained,
God "sent me such heavenly peace into my soul that I began to sing His praises. Such
wonderful joy!" It was a strange thing, he would later say of this experience. "It was not joy
in suffering that Christ gave, but He turned the suffering itself into joy." Many people,
Sundar continued, "even came to the door to listen and I again began to preach. Then they
released me" (emphasis added).
It becomes clear, therefore, that the prison sentence itself, which was eventually though
reluctantly meted out to Sundar Singh by the officials, was indeed for six months; but that
because their worst fears about doing so were so quickly being realized—namely, that their
prisoner was taking pleasure in his sufferings and sought to convert his fellow prisoners and
even those who listened at the "cow-house" prison door—they saw no point in keeping him
imprisoned and radicallyforeshortened iht period of his incarceration to less than 24 hours in
order to rid themselves of this religious trouble-maker once and for all.
Yet upon being set free, and even though, as he said, "I was very weak from the loss of
blood and pain," Sadhuji still "managed to preach the gospel through the whole town"!! Even
the high-caste Hindu who had been his earlier accuser was once more among his hearers,
but this time, according to the Sadhu, "begged me to give him another copy of the Gospel in
the place of the one he had torn up." (It should be noted that one of those who had come to
the cow-house door to look and to listen—though now "in astonishment" and no longer in
anger, was this very antagonist. "What do you think of him?" the high-caste Hindu had
asked the jailor. "I think he is mad," the latter replied. To which the former antagonist was
heard by the Sadhu to have responded, "If by becoming mad one can become so happy and
get such wonderful peace as this then I should like to become mad, too, and not only myself,
but I should like to see the whole world become mad, for this kind of madness would change
the whole world into Paradise"!) Furthermore, he was not to be troubled again by anyone,
whether by civil or religious authorities or by the people generally. This was because, as with
some before, now all were filled with superstitious dread, certain they were that this brave
man held some strange power they did not understand. After being nursed back to strength
overnight by a few kind people at the edge of the community, the wounded but joyful evangel ist
finally trekked his way back the thirty-odd miles to Ghoom ("I suffered with dizziness as I
walked," the Sadhu reported, it being due to the extent to which "the leeches had sucked my
blood"), leaving Elam on the morning of June 9th and arriving on Tharchin's doorstep late in
the day on June 10th.7
preaching the gospel—suddenly hit upon the idea of going to the jungle nearby, quickly collecting some leeches
in a container of some kind, hastily returning to the cow-house with the container that admittedly was crawling
with the loathsome creatures, and then immediately dumping and shaking the lot of them upon the bared body of
the Sadhu? Moreover, the container used in the jungle might easily have been capped by some sort of tightly
fitted cover or lid to keep the leeches from escaping. Such a scenario as this, and consuming just minutes, is not
a far-fetched notion in the least, it seems to this writer
Knowing the topography of the region in question and the local customs, Tharchin, in his
"memoirs," could confidently assert his views on Sundar's experience in Elam and immediately
thereafter:
I am inclined to believe the incident of imprisonment and the leeches on his body in the jail,
which events have been questioned by some.* When he returned to Ghoom I saw some sores
on his back, on which sores Sundar Singh himself had applied some iodine. These sores, from
their appearance, must have been due to leeches, which, as is commonly known, fall to the
ground after they suck human blood. An excessive suction of the blood may cause weakness,
and a person may even faint if a large number of leeches attach themselves to the body8 The
geographical area referred to above is definitely infested with leeches which by and large is
true of a large section of the Himalayan region. Leeches as a rule do not crawl up the human
body as high as the [top] portion of the back. This [would therefore] lead one to infer that the
leeches must have been thrown upon his body while in the jail at Elam. The reticence of Sundar
Singh on this facet of the experience may have been due to the fact that he did not want to
create a stir or sensation lest it might spoil his future prospects of visiting Nepal again. "Silent
suffering is a part of the mysticism of suffering "
Upon being further questioned while dictating his "memoirs," Tharchin reaffirmed his
earlier observation regarding the iodine and who applied itto the wounds. Said the Tibetan: "I
did not apply iodine to Sadhuji's sores on the back. Sadhuji himself applied the medicine
* One of whom was the Rev. Paul Gabler. Prior to his attendance at Leipzig University in Germany he had served
as a Lutheran missionary in South India and had therefore become acquainted with the Sadhu's ministry in South
Asia that according to Gabler had been greatly blessed by God. Nevertheless, in writing his University thesis
about the Sadhu that was published as a book in 1937, he had come to a negative conclusion with respect to
Sundar Singh in reference to the Elam event. It was his view, in the words of Bishop Appasamy, who had read
Gabler's book, that the Sadhu "was never persecuted with leeches in Ilom but... had only a mystical experience
in which he thought that he was so persecuted." Letter, Appasamy to Tharchin, Manorama in Palamcottah,
India, 14 Feb. 1950,ThPaK.
Another who has questioned these Elam events, of course, was Sadhuji's chief critic, the Jesuit priest, Father
Henry Hosten of Darjeeling. He made much of what he was able to learn from the Nepalese government; to wit,
that there was no official record of the Sadhu having been incarcerated in the Elam prison on 7 June 1914 (actually,
it has been shown convincingly that Sundar had mistakenly recalled his imprisonment as having occurred on that
date when in reality it was the following day, 8 June). Armed with this bit of intelligence from that Government
in his ongoing investigation of Sundar Singh, but never aware then (or later) of the mistake in date for the Sadhu's
imprisonment at Elam, Hosten proceeded to flippantly write the following: "The next point is to prove that oh
7lh June 1914 S.S. was either at Ghoom, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, or on a picnic in Independent Sikkim." Yet could
not this error in incorrectly dating the incarceration have easily provided that Government with a "diplomatic
out" from possible embarrassment? For it could truthfully assert, as indeed it implied in its response, that no
such event as inquired about by Hosten had occurred on that date (see below).
The present writer, upon reviewing the communication from the Nepali Prime Minister's Private Secretary,
must agree with Professor Friedrich Heiler's assessment of it when he declared: "The statement of the Nepal
government is non-committal and evasive." The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh, 74. Especially is this the casei
when one reads the following sentence from the brief Nepali report:"... inquiry showed that no incident as that:
stated in the [Hosten] inquiry appeared to have occurred ..." See Hosten, "Sadhu Sundar Singh: Interesting
Correspondence," CHI(8 Apr. 1925):215 (emphasis added); see also Hosten, "Sundar Singh's Crucifixion at Ilam
(1914)," ibid. (11 Mar 1925): 151-2 for background information on this issue and additional Hosten criticism of:
the Sadhu. And the observations about the Nepalese government report made by Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister^
another of the Sadhu's harshest critics, are no more convincing than those of Hosten. See Pftster, Die Legende
Sundar Singhs, 179-80. Moreover, the corroborative evidence presented by the present author a few pages hence
in the Text makes it even more difficult to repose any confidence in the Nepalese government's report. v
More will be said about the anti-Sadhu accusations of these two critics and others in the chapter to fbllowf.
somewhere on the way from Elam to Ghoom, possibly at Sukhiapokhri where he could have
easily obtained the medicine." The town of Sukhiapokhri (a Nepali name meaning "a dry
pool") is located just seven miles west of Ghoom on the route that leads from the latter to
phalut Peak; and it is even closer than that to the Nepal border but still inside the Darjeeling
District of India. A passage describing this village, to be found in L. S. S. O'Malley's well-
known geographical-historical gazetteer on District Darjeeling, lends significant support to
Tharchin's suggestion that the Sadhu most likely did obtain the iodine at Sukhiapokhri. Publishing
his book a mere seven years prior to Sundar's horrifying experience at Elam, O'Malley
writes of this village as follows:
It is a large and prosperous bazaar, under the management of the Deputy Commissioner [of
Bengal], which attracts a considerable amount of the trade from Nepal. The village is the
headquarters of the Nepal Mission, which was established there in 1896 with the object of
spreading Christianity among the Nepalese who come in large numbers to the market held there
every Friday The Mission maintains a dispensary located in a stone building in the bazaar, which
also contains a roomy mission hall. It is supported by voluntary donations, the missionaries
providing for their own personal expenses and drawing nothing from the Mission funds.
And E. C. Dozey, in his own volume on Darjeeling published just two years after the Sadhu's trek
to Elam, sheds further light on the activity of this small medical mission that had been founded by
Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Innes Wright. The author reported in 1916 that about 10,000 patients were
treated here annually. And though Mrs. Wright had died in 1902, Dr. Wright continued his medical
practice at this mission till 1916, when he was invalided back home to Scotland.9
Now in the light of this information, it is not at all difficult to believe that the Sadhu most
probably acquired the needful medicine from the Nepal Mission's Christian dispensary and
that, most anxious to have it applied as soon as possible, and given his still weakened state, he
had requested either the catechist or missionary on duty at the dispensary to apply it for him,
especially upon those areas of his body which would have been extremely difficult if not
impossible for him to see and reach. On his journey to Elam, in fact, Sundar—who, according
to Tharchin, spent at least one night at Sukhiapokhri*—must have noticed the presence of the
[ Mission's dispensary in the bazaar area through which he had doubtless made his way as he
passed on to his ultimate destination in Nepal; so that while hurrying along on his return journey
the wounded Sadhu may have thought ahead to stop at Sukhiapokhri for both a short respite
( and the available medical attention he knew was there. In any case, it is inconceivable that the
Sadhu could have obtained the iodine anywhere else unless possibly his rescuers at the edge of
Elam town were in possession of it and applied it upon his body at the time they had nursed
Sundar back to strength and set him forward on his return journey to Ghoom the next morning.
\ At this point in the discussion about Elam, the reader deserves to be apprised of what in
f totality Sundar Singh's Ghoom host had stated he saw on the Sadhu's body following his
feturn to Tharchin's residence from Nepal. This much fuller picture of what the Tibetan
| noticed about the Sadhu's body is drawn from various statements attributed to Tharchin
which appeared in several biographical and other works about the Indian saint first published
! in
: 1926,1927,1947 and 1958.
I • •
j * This the Tibetan had communicated to Fr. Hosten in June 1925 at Darjeeling during a lengthy conversation he
I had with the Catholic priest about his relationship with the Sadhu. See Pfister's Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 212.
in-
||.1
First of all, during the aforementioned conversation he had with Jesuit Fr. Hosten at Darjeeling I
in mid-1925, the report of which was sent to Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister and published by the 1
latter in 1926 in his psychological study of the Sadhu, Tharchin had given quite a vivid description J
of what he had been able to observe about Sundar's body after the Sadhu's return to the
Tibetan's Ghoom residence. Said Tharchin to Hosten: "He ... had some wounds on his body, !
tumors, red open inflammations, with one opening from which flowed water. They might have
been tumors or leech bites." Furthermore, added Hosten in his report to Pfister, Tharchin
"spoke in this conversation about a few more places on his body than what he did to [Rev. J.]
Kelly" less than a year earlier (see a few paragraphs hence for the details).
Second, in response to Marburg University Professor Friedrich Heiler's written inquiry
to Tharchin in 1926 regarding the Elam incident and other events in the life of Sundar Singh,
the Tibetan had indicated that more than just sores were on the Sadhu's body. Wrote Heiler
in his 1927 biography of the Sadhu: "Sundar's Tibetan friend, Tharchin, whom he met" at
Ghoom "immediately after his return from Ilam, says that the Sadhu's body had a number of
wounds, sores and swellings ..." Third, Rev. Thomas Riddle, another Sadhu biographer and
a person very close to the Indian saint, published in 1947 the observation that Tharchin had
not only remarked that the Sadhu's body was covered with "wounds, sores and swellings"
but had also "specially mentioned the swollen condition of the eyes."* And finally, in his own
biography of Sundar Singh, Bishop Appasamy stated in 1958 that Tharchin had testified
having seen the Sadhu applying iodine on h i t h i g h s as well as on his back.f 10 Hence,
according to this testimony given by Tharchin in the 1920s, '40s and '50s, together with the
remarks he made while dictating his "njemoirs" during the last years of his life, one can
assume that the Tibetan had seen either wounds, sores, watery and non-watery but red
inflammations, or swellings on the Sadhu's back, thighs and other areas of his body and also
around his eyes. In short, by the time of his "memoirs" Tharchin had come to believe or
assert (a) that the Sadhu had indeed preached the gospel in Nepal, (b) that for this activity he
had been imprisoned at Elam, (c) that after the SadhiTs return to Ghoom his Tibetan friend
had observed that there were a substantial number of wounds, sores and swellings on various
parts of his body, and (d) that the cause of them must have been due to leeches having been
flung upon his naked body by his jailors.
But there was another bit of testimony Tharchin had given about the Elam affair. This he
had intimated privately to a friend in 1924 that was published the following year and which
sharply contradicts much of the foregoing testimony. And because of this, it becomes
incumbent upon the present author to address as best he can this serious discrepancy.
* In his case against the Sadhu, Oskar Pfister tried4o make something negative out of the fact that to Fr. Hosten
in June 1925 Tharchin "had said nothing about the wounds around the eyes claimed through Sundar"; and added
that "after all he ought to have surely seen them" when his friend returned to the Tibetan's Ghoom residence from
Elam. Yet, though Tharchin may not have recalled this aspect of his esteemed colleague's physical condition in hisj
talks withTJosten and Kelly, he did so later on to others who, like Riddle, made a note of this facet of the j
Tibetan's morexotnpiete eyewitness testimony See Pfister's work again, 213. J
t This iodine, Tharchinmade clear to Fr. Hosten, the Sadhu, upon his arrival back from Elam, had requested of his |
Ghoom host and had obtained it-from his Tibetan friend. See Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 213, wherein the |
author, Sundar's Swiss critic Oskar fiTsterî§ found summarizing information about the Elam experience—of |j
which this bit of intelligence was a part—that Tfiarchm^had related to Hosten in a three-hour conversation thes£ f|
two had engaged in on 4 June 1925 at Rev. J. Kelly;s Darjeeling home. 1
In Chapter 8 reference was made to the Hosten-Kelly correspondence which figured in

Catholic Jesuit priest Henry Hosten's investigation during the 1920s of Sundar Singh's life
and experiences, he believing the latter to be a deceiver and impostor. Making inquiry by
letter to Tharchin's friend, Protestant missionary Rev. J. Kelly of Darjeeling, about Gergan
Tharchin's association, if any*with the Sadhu and their supposed travels together into Sikkim
right after the Elam event, this arch critic of the Sadhu received a reply from Kelly in early
December 1924. It just so happened that Rev. Kelly who, it will be learned in the next
volume of the present biography, had only recently married Tharchin and his bride -to-be
from Lhasa in March, was at that very moment a guest in the Tibetan's Kalimpong home!
And because the missionary had been out of station for several weeks, Hosten's letter of 28
November had to follow Kelly to Kalimpong from elsewhere in India but it finally did find its
way into the visiting missionary's hands on 8 December, prompting Rev, Kelly that same day
to pen his immediate reply to Hosten.
At the outset Kelly explained the following to his Catholic inquirer: "Your letter... reached
me only today.... I am lodging with Tharchin and only last night we had a free talk about the
Sadhu... " From his Kalimpong host he was able to confirm Sadhuj i's visit to Ghoom in 1914,
his trek to Nepal, and the fact that after five or six days he returned to the Tibetan's residence
at Ghoom but said nothing to anyone there about any imprisonment or ill-treatment at Elam.
Tharchin also told his visitor that after the Sadhu's return the Tibetan saw Sundar Singh
"several times anoint four or five wounds on his body with iodine" over the seven- or eight-
day period his Punjabi guest was in Ghoom before they trekked into Sikkim together to try to
enter Tibet.
But Tharchin and Kelly also "read together in the Hindustani publication of 1918"—a
reference to Alfred Zahir's biographical work about the Sadhu, entitled Shaida-i-Salib and
first published at Agra in 1916—"about this episode" at Elam "which tells of his having been
put in the stocks and of leeches having been poured over him." Continuing with his account
to Hosten, Kelly wrote this:
I found that Tharchin and another friend11 had made notes, in Hindustani, on the margin of the
pages in which this episode is narrated, and these notes express doubts as to the genuineness
of the story. Tharchin doubts the story of the leeches, as they are bloodthirsty creatures, each
bite leaving a troublesome sore.... He thinks that the Sadhu ought to have been weaker on his
return to Ghoom, on account of the loss of blood, or at least should have had many more
wounds on his body than the four or five he saw.12
Now assuming that Rev. Kelly's report to Fr. Hosten was accurate, then on the face of
it, it would appear quite difficult for anyone to reconcile such sharp differences in Tharchin's
testimony of 1924 with that which, on the one hand, he gave to the Sadhu's various biographers
and other inquirers, and with that which, on the other hand, he presented in his "memoirs"
some fifty to sixty years after the Elam incident as recounted a few pages earlier in the
present chapter. Nevertheless, several observations ought to be offered here which may be
helpful in undertaking such reconcilement.
First, unless the word "doubts" in both its noun and verb forms as employed in Kelly's'
account of Tharchin's statements signifies an unalterable conviction of disbelief, then one
could say that the Tibetan is seen to be expressing uncertainty here, not certitude; thus
indicating that he wished to maintain an open mind on these claimed unusual events if other
information supportive of a different conclusion became available.
Second, it is obvious from all the non-1924 testimony that Tharchin was confronted with
the task of trying to explain how the leech-wounds, if that is what they were, could appear
around the Sadhu's eyes and upon his back so far up beyond the normal "crawl-reach" of
these bloodsucking creatures. Having said elsewhere in his conversation with Rev. Kelly
that night in 1924 that "he does not believe [the Sadhu] would deliberately lie," Tharchin
ruled out the notion that his esteemed friend lied in saying these were leech-wounds. But
further, unable—upon more mature reflection over the years since 1924—to explain to himself
satisfactorily the location on Sundar's body of these swellings, sores, inflammations and
wounds, Tharchin must have become convinced that what the Sadhu later claimed of leeches
having been collected and thrown upon his naked body could have been true after all. And if
that could be true, then the probability of Sadhuji having been arrested and imprisoned for
preaching the gospel could likewise be true, since it was very well known by all Christians
along the Indo-Nepal border area that such a consequence awaited anyone who tried to
evangelize in staunchly-Hindu Nepal
A third observation has to do with the fact that Sundar's Tibetan host at Ghoom had told
Rev. Kelly that he had seen only five wounds on his back. Yet, as has been learned regarding
Tharchin's testimony less than six months later given directly to Fr. Hosten at Rev. Kelly's
Darjeeling residence on 4 June 1925, the Tibetan had by that %
time been able to recall more
accurately that he had observed "a few more places" on the Sadhu's body than just the five he^
had earlier spoken about to Kelly. Could it be that these five wounds, in the Sadhu's opinion,
were the most serious of all, and to which, over a period of a week at Ghoom, he had several
times applied iodine? And could it be thatthe others (Tharchin having subsequently acknowledged
that there were indeed others), by now of less severity, had begun to heal sufficiently from
earlier applications of iodine days before and whose red color had now totally or almost totally
disappeared from off his skin and were therefore no longer noticeable unless his back were
carefully scrutinized? That it is known that his back had become pitted and scarred all over
from some such mishap in the Sadhu's travels came later to light through Bishop Appasarny's
biographical documentation; see, for example, the testimonies he tells of in his Sadhu biography
of two who had opportunity to view the Sadhu's body closeup while he was a guest in their
homes many years after the Elam event and could still notice these scars and pits. Moreover,
a Christian journalist in America, in giving her eyewitness account of a preaching service
engaged in by Sundar Singh along the shores of Lake George in upstate New York in June
1920, had described the Sadhu's arms as manifesting "scars of the leeches."53
And fourth, ignorant about the aid which after his prison release the Sadhu had received
at the edge of Elam by those who showed him compassionate care overnight, Tharchin
would naturally be led initially to conclude, as he did to Rev. Kelly, that Sundar's display of
less than severe weakness upon his return to Ghoom seemed to belie the Sadhu's later
assertions of having experienced harsh imprisonment and cruel treatment at Elam for having
preached the gospel there. Yet can it not be argued that the severity of the Sadhu's ordeal in
having seriously weakened his physical condition had been greatly ameliorated through the
kindness of those at Elam who he said had ministered needful help at that critical moment?
But then, too, one must also not ignore the known fact that the Sadhu's physique by this time
in his life had been greatly toughened by the privations, persecutions, dangers and arduous
travels he had encountered during the frequent preaching tours he had engaged in already.
And hence, his tolerance of physical hardship, extreme pain, and severe punishment had
been raised to a very high level over the years prior to his Elam adventure*
Tharchin himself would soon witness an example of this when after the Nepal experience
the two of them, just one week following the Sadhu's horrendous ordeal at Elam, went off to
Sikkim at the Sadhu's own urging. Each of them was still in his mid-twenties at this moment;
and thus, it should have been expected that both these young men ought to have been able
to withstand in relatively equal fashion whatever rigors and hardships the trekking trail might
present to them along the way. As one younger friend of Gergan Tharchin's in Kalimpong
was wont to describe the latter's own physique as it still was even during his much later
years: "He enjbyed robust health and was stout of frame."14 Yet Tharchin, it will be recalled
from Chapter 8, soon grew weary at the very beginning of a long and quite steep unbroken
ascent extending for some fifteen miles from Rhenock Bazaar to Pakyong. He was therefore
most relieved to be able to ride the horse Sadhuji had been proffered by their wealthy
Rhenock host for this very portion of the trail; while Sundar Singh himself, having only just
returned from iuntold physical suffering at Elam, insisted upon walking—and barefoot as
usual!—the entire distance to Pakyong, and did so with relative ease!
Accordingly, it may be said by way of conclusion that when all the above considerations
are together taken into account, one may minimize with considerable justification the
significance of Gergan Tharchin's earlier expressed "doubts as to the genuineness of the
story" about what happened to the Sadhu in Nepal. Especially is this justified in the light of
the remarkable corroborative evidence the present writer is now able to present in the
remaining pages of this section of the present chapter. In fact, the responsible investigator of
today—with access to much more evidence than was available decades before—would
have to reject out of hand the concluding observations made by one of the Sadhu's harshest
critics of an earlier day, the Swiss pastor Dr. Pfister. For he had declared (a) that "the
voyage to ... Nepal in the year 1914, as well as the martyrdom of Elam, appear to be
untrustworthy"; (b) that "the grand Elam miracle is essentially a self-made-up legend"; and
(c) that Father Ho$ten, who had "contested the miracle of Elam," had "the indisputable right
to reject totally the shameful horror story."15
In any event, by the time of his twilight years, Gergan Tharchin, by his own
acknowledgment, Was now "inclined to believe" the entire Elam incident as later described
by his esteemed friend and despite the Tibetan's recognition that at one time or another these
"events have been questioned by some" as never having happened. What now follows will
make it clearer than ever that the event at Elam did happen after all, just as the Sadhu had
affirmed from the very beginning.
Now it will be of interest to the reader to learn that there has come to light an additional
and quite significaht piece of corroborative evidence with regard to Sundar Singh's
imprisonment at Elatn. The incident now to be related was told to the present author on two
Separate occasions iin 1984/5 (once in America, the second time in Nepal) by the very
person centrally involved in the incident. Moreover, this same person was given an opportunity
in July of 1987 when in America again to read the account that follows as a way of thus
reconfirming all details, dates and events for their accuracy, arid at the same time granting
permission to the author for it to be printed. What follows is truly a remarkable sequel to the
Sadhu's experience at Elam and belies the charge of Sundar Singh's severest critics that the
Punjabi evangelist had not even been imprisoned at Elam and could therefore not have
suffered the inhumane treatment at the hands of Nepali prison guards as subsequently reported
by the Sadhu.
A Newar Christian greatly used by God in the last half century to bring the gospel to his
heretofore closed homeland of Nepal was Prem Pradhan (d. 1998). He had been converted from
Hinduism in 1951 through the street-preaching efforts in Darjeeling of a few followers ofBakht
Singh. The latter, like Sundar Singh before him, has become another famous Punjabi Christian
convert from the Sikh religion; although in Bakht Singh's éase he had been born in 1903 to
well-to-do devout Hindu parents, Chabre by name, but who as their firstborn son had for family
reasons been dedicated to the Sikh religion, in which faith he was thereafter devoutly reared.16
Now coincidentally Prem himself had been born at Elam (in 1924), but was brought up a Hindu
and sent off to Calcutta at a very early age for his education, and was therefore shielded from any
knowledge of what had happened to the Christian Sadhu in his home town in 1914.
Upon returning to his birthplace following his Christian baptism in Darjeeling, brother
Pradhan himself began preaching the gospel in Elam and was subsequently arrested and
imprisoned too, It turned out to be the same large common prison cell into which the Sadhu
had been thrown decades earlier. This he learned when, upon noticing a form of the Christian
cross carved on the wall of the prison room with the date 1914 beneath it, he enquired of his
jailors how this cross and date had come to be inscribed there. He was told that a holy man
from northern India attired in a saffron robe had come preaching the forbidden Christian
religion even as Pradhan had done, had been imprisoned as punishment for his crime, and
had carved the cross on the wall.
When brother Pradhan—well before the end of his sentence—was miraculously released
from prison, he discovered in his home town a few devout religionists who reported having
heard "the holy man" preach some forty years before and had become devoted followers of
this sadhu. This was, of course, the first time Prem had ever heard of Sadhu Sundar Singh.
In addition, they showed him one or two old copies of the Gospel of Mark which they said
Sundar Singh had given them, and which had been printed in what was by that time a very |
old, almost undecipherable, Nepali script. Indeed, reported Prem, at the very moment they
had handed him the Gospels, these followers of the Sadhu had remarked how difficult it had
been for them to read, let alone understand, this old Nepali script. Whereupon, like Priscilla and
Aquila with Apollos in the time of the New Testament (see Acts 18:24-26), Prem took them
aside and was able, in the words of the Holy Scriptures, to lead these devoted followers of the
Sadhu into a "more adequate" understanding of "the way of God" in Christ, whom they then
received into their hearts. They were ultimately baptized by Prem, too. From this second -
witness in forty years' time a small body of believers eventually arose in that place and as far
as is known is still meeting today.
Now the particular detail related here regarding the Gospel of Mark is not only confirmed
by Sundar's statements about this portion of Scripture vis-à-vis the high-caste Hindu but
also by the remark he made in the NurAfshan account cited above, in which he stated that
"many people" as he preached in the Elam bazaar "heard me attentively and I distributed the
Gospels which were in the vernacular of Nepal."17
Most likely the old and now nearly undecipherable Nepali script in which the Gospel of
Mark had been printed was the particular dialect, from among many dialects in use by the
people of Nepal, that was spoken in the eastern parts of the country (including the Kathmandu
Valley and Gorkha areas) and which came to be known as Nepali or Gorkhali or Parvati. It,
like most dialects in use in Nepal, had been derived from Sanskrit rather late, thus making it
á relatively young and quite unsolidified language at that time. It employed an alphabet called
Deva Nagri which had likewise been derived from Sanskrit. Now because Nepali was the
court language of the conquering Gorkha kingdom which in the eighteenth century had
united the various Nepalese hill states under its king, this language eventually became the
dominant one throughout the unified larger kingdom of Nepal.
It so happened that by the early nineteenth century certain missionaries at Serampore in
the Bengal State of India had become the first Bible translators for Nepal; so that in 1821
they issued from their "Bible factory" at Serampore near Calcutta a New Testament in what
was still an unstabilized and unsolidified Nepali language which these missionary translators
themselves called "Nepala."18 By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, this Nepala
New Testament, according to Robert Kilgour of the British and Foreign Bible Society, "was
not found to be of practical use."19 Indeed, as one missionary historian of Nepal, Jonathan
Lindell, has recently observed, this Nepala Testament—in its sentence structure, grammar
and numbers of words—had been "mixed and influenced by other languages" with which
[/••• the translators of that day had been dealing. And as a result, Lindell continued, this early
nineteenth-century Nepali translation was "stilted and awkward," with later students even
l declaring that it was "not fit to be called Nepali." The missionary historian went on to note
Jhat little or nothing is today known as to how much this 1821 translation was subsequently
{ used, but added that if the Serampore Nepala scriptures were to be reprinted today it "would
j be unusable because of the language."20 "What ever happened to most of the copies," wrote
Kilgour, "we know not."21
As has been seen, however, at least one portion of this earliest New Testament translation
was put to good use, by Sadhu Sundar Singh. For the copies of Mark's Gospel which the
\ Sadhu had handed out at Elam's bazaar in 1914 must have been leftovers of the original
£•' separate printings of St. Mark in this so-called Nepala script which had been made available
I along the way in the process of completing the 1821 version of the entire Nepali New
Testament.22 Somehow Sundar Singh nearly a century later was able to pick these leftover
copies up somewhere, most likely at Ghoom, since the Darjeeling/Ghoom area in upper
I Bengal State would have served as one of the main distribution points for the dissemination
of these Scriptures to the Nepalese living there and in nearby Nepal itself
j Finally, it may be mentioned that the present author, while trekking in April 1985 from
near Elam to the Nepal-India border over the same trail used by the Sadhu in his return
journey to Ghoom, was told by his porter (who was a local in the area) that the original prison
structure was no longer standing in Elam. It had been torn down recently to make way for
the erection of a new local government bu ilding.
In conclusion, therefore, on the entire Elam matter, it needs to be stated most emphatically
that when confronted by all the mounting evidence available today in support of Sundar
Singh's assertions, it becomes a far more difficult exercise of mind to ¿//¿believe the Sadhu's
Elam experience than to abcept it as true and genuine.
II
Tharchin was also inclined to accept the claim made by Sundar regarding the reported
existence of the Maharishi (from two Sanskrit words meaning "a great sage")23 at Kailash24 in
the high Tibetan Himalayas. He made it clear that at no time in 1914 did Sadhuji ever mention
to him anything about the Maharishi or the latter's Christian ministry of prayer and meditation
on the Scriptures, although the Sadhu had elsewhere claimed to have met and stayed overnight
with the Maharishi two years earlier. Yet Sundar's Tibetan friend was prepared to accept the
claim of the Maharishi's several centuries' existence, on the ground that various reliable sources
have maintained that in Tibet perfected sages (called Siddhas) who are more than two thousand
years old are still living. One such source, the Sadhu's friend and renowned Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore, was once asked in America by another and very close missionary friend
of Sundar's, Miss Maiy Dobson of Bombay, whether he "had ever met the Christian hermits
far up in the Himalayas." To which the 1913 Nobel Laureate, who happened to be at Wellesley
College near Boston at the same time as missionary Dobson, answered, "No, but it is of
%
common knowledge that they are there."
Interestingly, this chance encounter in 1918 with Tagore had occurred just a few weeks
after another intriguing conversation the Bombay missionary had had about these ancient
Christian hermits—on this occasion with a young Englishman. Miss Dobson, the eldest daughtei
of the English poet Austin Dobson, had begun a speaking tour as a Traveling Secretary for the
Christian Student Volunteer Movement visiting various colleges in the American southland
before heading north where she met Tagore. The young Englishman in question, a college
student in South Carolina, had listened intently to what missionary to India Dobson had to say
about her esteemed friend, Sundar Singh. Upon speaking with the student afterwards, she was
treated to a singular story about his father who had been a prospecting engineer, traveling
"where no white men had ever been before." Just prior to his death the English mining engineer
had spoken to his son "very solemnly about the mountains north of India, and told him there
were Christian hermits there of great age." The young Englishman added that he was determined,
once he was free, to "go and explore the Himalayas and find the Christian hermits." It was this
conversation which had prompted Miss Dobson to put her question to Tagore.25
Tharchin went on to observe in his discussion of these venerable religious recluses that they
are said to be sitting in mountain caves engaged all the time in meditation. These sages, or
Mahatmas as they are sometimes also called, are believed to have been contemplating like this
for severalyugas or epochs. Tharchin was quick to point out, however, that the Tibetans do not
regard this mode of contemplation as essential to the obtaining of the highest bliss for the human
soul. As such, this way of life is not considered by them to be satisfactory. They regard it as
selfish and only conducive to one's own happiness. It really has no value for others.
These Maharishis or great sages, Tharchin went on to say, are not conscious of the
external world. On the contrary, ceaselessly, their thought is engrossed and attention indrawn
within a spiritual world of their own creation. The Maharishi of Kailash, on the other hand, is
said to in fact be conscious of the present passing world, is engaged in a ceaseless, selfless
ministry of prayer for the world, and is therefore different from these other sages in these
two important respects. "In view of all the aforesaid data," Tharchin argued, "the fact of the
existence of the Maharishi in the Himalayas is not unbelievable."
In this regard, it will perhaps prove helpful to quote a lengthy passage from a book by
Paul Brunton, an Englishman who spent some years in lonely exile among the Tibetan
Himalayas, especially in the region around Kailash. First commenting on the superstition and
sorcery of the priests on which the ill-fated Tibetan army of 1904 had depended to withstand
the attack of the British army, believing "with complete and complacent confidence" as they
did that "no British bullet would be able to penetrate their bodies," Brunton went on to
observe the following:
The episode illustrates the habitual mixture of ridiculous superstition and profound wisdom
which one finds in Oriental races. Yet no people can afford to go on believing in arrant untruths.
The coming of the white races in the East is like a clean strong wind which blows away the
repulsive cobwebs of outworn beliefs and barbarous customs. For the whites bring sanity,
common sense and scepticism. There is room and necessity for these things in life, too.
Civilization has almost destroyed our faith in the supernatural. Yet let it not be thought that
the superstition of the Tibetans is all arrant nonsense. It is not. There is fire behind the smoke.
Truth continues amid the distortions in which we find her engulfed. The lamas cannot suspend
Nature's laws but they can take advantage of laws which to us are unknown, to them long
known. Men with genuine magical powers do exist there, but they are not to be found in the
monasteries. Such men always disdain the herd of common monks and take themselves off to
isolated places or high up in the mountains. And naturally they are very, very few. They are not
at all interested in impressing the masses with displays of their supernormal gifts. But the
boasters and pretenders, the blindly credulous among the orthodox lamas, even as in India,
acquire and keep a hollow reputation for miracle-working which would crumple up with the first
touch of scientific investigation.
I have met more than one pretender in India and Africa who offered to provide me with
amulets that would make my body bullet-proof!
Nevertheless, not only is there some residue of truth behind Tibetan claims (and Indian
claims) for the existence of psychic powers and of forces, otherwise inexplicable, but there is
also something behind the tradition of high spiritual wisdom in the bleak plateau. I believe,
from my varied researches, that Mount Kailas and its vicinity, including Lake Manasarowar,
possesses a magnetic atmosphere of intense spiritual vibration, as does Mount Arunachala in
South India. I am sure that any genuinely sensitive person would automatically find his thoughts
being caught and held in reverence, at least, when he approached this mountain, which is
Asia's spiritual center and Tibet's spiritual pride.*26
* It needs to be pointed out that there has recently been published an autobiographical work by Jeffrey M.
Masson, My Father s Guru, in which a negative and highly critical case is made against the guru of the title, Paul
Brunton. In the light of this, therefore, the present writer has thoroughly considered the implications of including
as credible the testimony of Brunton with regard to the subject of supernormal powers now under discussion.
The reader is hence directed to this chapter's End-Notes at this point for a detailed delineation of Masson's book
and a presentation of the present author's reasons—despite Masson—for deciding to retain the excerpted
Brunton passage given above.
This same balance between scientific inquiry and an acknowledgment of psychic

phenomena of a supernormal character as it pertains to Tibet in general and the Sacred
Lakes area in particular can be seen in the writings of Swami Pranavananda. Born in the
East Godavari District of South India in 1896 and a graduate of D.A.V. College, Lahore, in
1919, the Swami worked briefly thereafter in the Railway Accounts Office at Lahore before
joining the non-Cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party and
serving for six years till 1926 as an active Congress worker in the West Godavari District.
But he then sensed a religious call on his life "as a consequence of an internal urge for the
search for Truth," taking on as his guru the great "Swami-Scientist," Dr. Swami Jnanananda,
D.Sc., Ph.D., who whetted Pranavananda's appetite for things scientific. In fact, as a
consequence of his numerous lengthy visits to the Kailash region between 1928 and 1950,
Swami Pranavananda became the "unrivaled authority on all matters relating to the sacred
mountain, its lakes and general environs" (Snelling)—and whether these matters have been
religious or scientific in nature. For the Swami was much more than simply a religious
ascetic; in his spare time he had undertaken extensive scientific researches in various fields
that resulted in his collecting an incredible amount of data on all aspects of the sacred region
of West Tibet and about which he afterwards frequently lectured to learned groups in India
and elsewhere.27 But he also published this encyclopaedic knowledge in a number of volumes
both in English and several Indian languages. And in two of these works, The Pilgrim's
Companion to the Holy Kailas and Manasarovar, published in 1938, and Kailas-
Manasarovar, first published in 1949, there is repeated an insightful and balanced treatment
dealing with the Mahatmas and giving a description of the atmosphere that in his day obtained
throughout the Sacred Region. In tone it is similar to Brunton's in terms of both questioning
and affirming. What follows of Pranavananda's discussion has been extracted from the
latter of these two works, and is couched in the third person:
Several sensational articles are freely published both in the East and the West about the
Mahatmas and Siddhas [the latter term meaning "one who has attained high psychic and
supernatural powers"—the Swami] in this little seen and less studied part of the world ... Most
of the stories gaining currency here are mere exaggerations or misrepresentations and are more
of the nature of journalistic stunts than anything else. It may, however, be mentioned here that
the author had visited about 50 monasteries (i.e., almost all the monasteries of western Tibet
and most of them in Ladakh) and met not less than 1,500 monks,... but he did not come across
any great siddha or a yogi worth mentioning in the whole of western Tibet.... People in general
are very superstitious, religious-minded, devotional, and mystic in temperament.... Some people
claim to have seen sages like Vyasa and Asvatthana and other monks and Christian saints
thousands of years old with corporeal bodies. Personally the author would neither accept
such credulous statements nor would force others to disbelieve them but would prefer to leave
the matter to individual judgment and discrimination.
This is not to say, however, that really great mahatmas or saints and yogis do not exist; nor
the above statement be misconstrued to mean that the author is sceptical about the reality of
the existence of these advanced souls... The simple fact remains that really spiritually advanced
yogis or lamas are as rare a phenomenon here as anywhere else.... There is no doubt, however,
that the surroundings of the Holy Kailas and Manasarovar are highly charged with spiritual
vibrations of the supreme order, which make one exhilarated and elevated.28
As but one example of the "magnetic atmosphere of intense spiritual vibration" of a

A
"supreme order" which the vicinity of Mount Kailash and the Sacred Lakes reputedly
possessed, a young American traveler, Edwin G. Schary, who trekked almost the entire
distance alone between Leh and Gyantse and back into India during the summer and early
fall of 1918, tells of an unusual experience he had one night while camped at the Sacred
Lakes. Having already appreciated the incredible beauty of the much larger holy lake of
Manasarowar, he and his companion of this portion of the journey were astounded to see a
second moon shining in what they thought was the ground in the center of the valley that
separates the two lakes and where the trail continues on eastward across Tibet. It was at
this moment that Schary discovered there was a second and smaller sister lake here (the
Rakas Tal). The American described what happened next:
As we traversed the shores of this lake, I beheld a natural phenomenon, if it can be called that.
Rising on my right beyond the shores of the lake were a range of low-lying hills, and suddenly
above the edge of these hills, which were sharply outlined against the stars, a large luminous
disc rose, silvery in color, and seeming to be a ball. I glanced to the left at the moon and
estimated the possibility of a reflection from it, but noted, when turning back, that this could
not possibly be, as the ball rose steadily above the level of the hills until it seemed several
yards higher and then quickly dropped back beyond the hills once more. I have never yet been
able to account for this.
Schary recorded this bizarre incident in his fascinating volume, In Search of the Mahatmas
of Tibet. Now in the book its author acknowledges that the main object of his many journeys
to India, Lesser Tibet and Tibet itself between 1915 and 1920 had been the desire to meet
with some of the great sages or so-called Mahatmas "who were said to dwell somewhere
within the confines of the Himalayas" and who were reputed to possess a deeper knowledge
of life's secrets. Schary never did fulfill his ambition to find the Mahatmas in whom he so
firmly believed; but he did encounter the strange experience of the "second moon" at the
sacred area of Kailash-Manasarowar.29
Nicholas K. Roerich, the well-known Russian traveler, explorer and mystic philosopher,
was one who also did not find it an incredulous thing to believe in the existence of sages or
Mahatmas in the Himalayas. And again, Kailash figures prominently in such belief. In a discussion
on the subject to be found in his books about the travels and archaeological explorations he
conducted in Central Asia for five years during the 1920s, Roerich took note of the fact that
"the great Mt. Kailas" was famous among Asians for being the "abode of mighty hermits" and
believed, as others did, that "in the direction of the sacred lake Manasarowar, even quite
recently several ashrams [retreat locations] of the Mahatmas of the Himalayas existed." He
went on to observe that in his day there were still "living old people" who had recalled having
had "personal meetings with the Mahatmas." Continued Roerich:
Having traveled through these unusual uplands of Tibet with their peculiar magnetic currents
and electric phenomena, and having listened to witnesses and having also ourselves witnessed
much, one feels one knows much about the Mahatmas.... A great many people have seen
Them, have talked to Them ....
... To the outsiders, who have not personally been in [certain Himalayan dwelling places of
the sages], this question of the Mahatmas is not conceivable.
But traversing the Trans-Himalayas you discover that there is not one mountain range but
a whole mountain country with a peculiarly complicated design of ranges, valleys and streams.
At every step, you are convinced that the maps are only relatively correct. Because of their
complexity these regions remain not fully explored. The hermit, hidden in a cave, the dweller in
a remote valley, may rest undisturbed.
Having personally wandered through these labyrinths, you realize the hidden places,
accessible only through some happy "chance."30
It may have perhaps been just such a "happy 'chance'" as this which Sundar Singh
experienced. For when accidentally slipping downward on the ice a great distance while
descending a mountain in the Kailash region near the Sacred Lake, the Sadhu, upon "coming
to" after the severe fall ("the mark of the wound is even now visible on my foot," he would
remark four years afterwards), found himself immediately in front of the mouth of a cave
where sat "with closed eyes" in meditation a most "venerable man": the nearly three-centuries-
old "Christian Maharishi" whom Sundar Singh claimed he met, then conversed with, and
ended up staying for an overnight with, in the summer of 1912.31 (In fact, he would claim that
he visited the Maharishi of Kailash oh three different occasions: in 1912, 1916 and 1917.)
The Sadhu's initial description of this Great Sage is quite remarkable:
There was no cloth upon his body, his hair and nails had grown very long. At first on seeing
him I was afraid, but when he opened his brilliant eyes and signed to me to be seated, my heart
was comforted with the thought: He is not a man to be feared, but he is a true Rishi.
He said: "Before we begin to converse together it will be well for us to pray to God." Then
raising a book in which the Greek language was written on leather leaves, he began to read. As
he was reading, I understood it to be the fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. Now was my joy
inexpressible. It was a mysterious thing that there should beâ Christian in such a place. I
requested him to tell me about himself.
He said: "My birth was in Alexandria (Egypt). When I was thirty years of age, Jarnos, the
nephew of St. Francis Xavier, baptized me.... Up to my seventy-fifth year I preached in the
whole world. I spoke twenty-one languages well. When I knew that I could no longer travel
about, I gradually made my way to this place. I have been living here for two hundred and nine
years. God has committed to me the ministry of prayer, that I should pray for different places in
turn. As the coming of the Christ is imminent, I shall remain alive until His coming ..."
Inhabited dwellings begin at a distance of about eighty miles from where the Maharishi
lives. His food consists of various forest roots, which are exceedingly strength-giving. He also
gave me one of these to eat, but I could not digest it and immediately vomited it.32 Afterwards
he gave me some advice and dismissed me with prayer.33
Yet not only did the Maharishi manifest an inordinately old age, he also, according to the
Sadhu, manifested supernormal—what the Christian Sadhu would term divinely supernatural
or miraculous-—powers of the Spirit. One such power displayed during this initial visit with
the Rishi was the utterance of words of knowledge concerning Sundar Singh himself and
acquaintances of the Sadhu: knowledge which this hermit sage could not have acquired
other than by extraordinary means. "He told me," wrote the Sadhu afterwards, "of things
personal to myself and also things in relation to others." Another demonstration of supernormal
power on this first visit was a word of prophecy that was directed at Sundar Singh personally:
"One more amazing thing he mentioned to me and prophetically said was that within a short
time a wonderful occurrence would happen to me which would greatly strengthen my faith."34
The Sadhu would not have to wait long to witness this prophecy's fulfillment. For upon
departing from the presence of the Maharishi, Sundar left the Kailash region and reached
"the inhabitable part" where he inquired of the people there the way to the nearest village. But
seeing that he was a Christian, they, out of enmity, directed him along a dangerous forest path
that out of ignorance he naively followed. With no village having appeared as night was coming
on, Sundar soon arrived at a river bank but could not cross to the other side, so swift did its
waters flow. Sinking into despair and sensing that the end of his life was near because of the
sounds of wild animals which now came to his ears, the Sadhu sat down with "eyes filled with
tears." But then, upon raising his tear-stained eyes he saw across the river a man warming
himself by a fire who called to the Sadhu that he should not be troubled and that he was coming
over to help him. Asking Sundar Singh to sit on his shoulders and to not fear, the man lifted him
up and gently carried him across the raging stream.
Assuming that because the man was a resident of the place he must be well practiced in
crossing the dangerously flowing river, the Sadhu had decided that after rendering sincere
thanks to the stranger he would sit with his benefactor and preach the gospel to him. "But
when I turned and looked back," he later explained, "immediately both the fire and the man
disappeared: and there were no bounds to my awe, wondering what this was. Then I
remembered the words of the venerable one that £a wonderful experience will come to you,'
and my heart was filled with gladness and with gratitude to God ... According to the saying
of the Rishi I received great strengthening through this help from the invisible world."35
There was yet another display of the Maharishi's remarkable spiritual power. This was
manifested and confirmed during and immediately after the Sadhu's second visit to "the
Christian hennit of Kailash" four years later in 1916. Recounting in a letter very soon
afterwards what happened on this visit, Sundar first wrote that he had found the Maharishi
"exactly the same" as on his earlier visit. Furthermore, in going beyond what he had
communicated to the Sadhu on the previous visit, the Rishi now "described all my past life as
clearly as if he had been with me every moment." But then, Sundar Singh reported something
equally astonishing about the Maharishi's unusual spiritual power:
One of my intimate friends, a missionary, said: "When you visit him again, recommend me to
his prayers." When I made this request on his behalf, I was much ashamed to hear the saint
say, "There is no need for your recommendation. I pray for everybody without being told, as
my whole life is devoted to the ministry of prayer. Go and tell your friend the missionary that as
long as he does not give up that sin ... I can never pray for him. Because if I do, then his sin will
prevent an answer." I was greatly surprised to hear this. How did he come to know my friend's
internal state? On coming back 1 wrote the whole story to this friend. He was very upset and
with tears repented of that sin, about which he had thought that, besides God and himself, no
one else knew anything.36
Now with regard to "these spiritual and mystical powers which were said to belong to the
Maharishi, there need be no doubt" about that, Tharchin observed. Not only because it has
"commonly been supposed" but also because there have been "good rational grounds" for
believing, added the Tibetan, it can be said that in "practicing certain spiritual exercises"
sages and other Mahatma-types (including the Maharishi of Kailash) "can develop and have
indeed developed amazing yogic and mystic powers of mind and spirit."37
It would appear from these remarks by the Sadhu's good friend that he had no hesitation
in lumping the Kailash Christian sage's extraordinary abilities with the similarly extraordinary
abilities of Hindu M^hatmas and Buddhist lama-anchorites. For the Tibetan made no
distinction—as would s^me Christian thinkers and writers—between the supernormal powers
which emanate from the soul (ovpsuche) of man and those which emanate from the deepest
and noblest part of man's being, his spirit (or pneuma), and in concert with the Spirit of God.
On the contrary, apparently from Tharchin's viewpoint, because the Christian Maharishi's
remarkable powers—including his longevity—and those powers exhibited by the venerable
Mahatmas and lama-hermits appeared to be quite similar in their outward character, both of
them seemingly violating thfe ordinary physical laws of the universe, he therefore assumed
they both must be the same as to their source. For he can be seen here employing
synonymously the terms spiritual and mystical, mind (or soul) and spirit, and yogic and mystic.
All these manifestations of supernormal power, whether performed by the Christian hermit
of Kailash or by the Hindu Mahatma and Buddhist anchorite, were apparently to Tharchin
amazing displays of spiritual power whereas in point of fact, say some students of religion,
those of the Hindu-Buddhist hermits were astonishing feats of psychic or soulish power that
appeared to "flout"—in the words of one noted traveler to Tibet—"the best established laws
of nature."* Perhaps it would do well to inquire, therefore, into some of these unusual
phenomena which have been witnessed frequently by observers while traveling through the
Himalayan regions in and around Tibet.
In this connection, then, Nicholas Roerich has related the following newspaper account
of a British officer who witnessed an extraordinary incident that would seem to confirm the
existence and expertise of such amazing powers on the part of certain individuals:
The Statesman, the most precise newspaper of India, published [in the 1920s] the following
experience related by a British major: "Once before sunrise while camping in the Himalayas, the
major went from his camp to the neighboring cliffs to see the majestic snow-capped outlines of
the mountains. On the opposite side of the gorge rose a high rock. Great was his astonishment
when through the morning mist he noticed on the rock the figure of a tall man, almost naked
and with long black hair. The man was leaning on a high bow [sic; bough?], attentively watching
something behind the rock. Then, apparently noticing something, the silent figure, with great
* Harrison Forman, a Western secularist, in his book of travels, Through Forbidden Tibet (1935). One Christian
writer who makes ¿distinction between soul power and spirit power is George Patterson, a former missionary
in East Tibet, and who happened to have been, incidentally, a close but younger acquaintance of Gergan
Tharchin's during the latter's years at Kalimpong. In his most recent writing about his experiences in Tibet,
Patterson gives an insightful account of his firsthand observation of the process of Tantric trance-possession that
invariably resulted in the initiate (the chod-gyad) receiving and exercising supernormal knowledge and power.
And in the course of this account Patterson made the following observations:
It was beginning to appear to me that these psychic phenomena were non-human beings, or certainly spirit
intelligences, who could be invoked to appear at will through certain acquired techniques with messages and
powers from another world....
I had ... noticed ... by repeated observations that in the commitment of the chod-gyad, or oracle-
medium,... the psyche (mind, soul) was brought to a fine point of obedience to the requirements of the
particular familiar spirit being contacted....
This psyche methodology could be followed by the Christian ... seeking an equally total commitment but
operating out of the pneuma, or spirit, instead of the psyche.... The Christian in his or her total commitment
to the Spirit of God is filled with the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit but always left with the power to perceive or
discern. God said [in I John 4:1] ... "Test the spirits whether they are of God."
Patterson of Tibet, 151, 152, 153. See a few pages hence in the Text above for a nearly identical distinction
between soul and spirit that is made by other Christian thinkers and writers.
strides, leaped down the almost vertical slope. Completely amazed, the major returned to the
camp and asked the servants about this strange apparition. But to his utter surprise, they took
it quite calmly and with reverence told him: 'Sahib has seen one of the snowmen, who guard
the forbidden region.'"
We [Roerich and his exploration party] asked a lama about the snowmen and again the
answer came in a surprisingly calm and affirmative way: "These snowmen are very rarely seen.
They are faithful guardians of the Himalaya regions, where the secret Ashrams of the Mahatmas
are hidden.... These wise Mahatmas of the Himalayas direct our lives through unceasing work
and study. They master the highest powers." .. .38
An incident somewhat akin to this though possessing its own unique character was what
was witnessed in Tibet at about this same time by a party of Europeans. In the late summer
of 1922 these Westerners had collectively seen a remarkable display of supernormal power
atop a 16,000-foot summit above the plain of Phari in south central Tibet. The incident was
afterwards reported by the leader of their Expedition, George Knight, whom Gergan Tharchin
would himself meet subsequently that same year—but under unpleasant circumstances—at
the larger Tibetan town of Gyantse farther into the interior of the country (discussed in
Volume II, Chapter 14 of the present work). According to Knight, he and his party were
making their way along the main trade route that leads from the Sikkim-Bhutan frontier to
Phari when "in one of the fastnesses" just inside Tibet they made the acquaintance of a most
unusual personage: a Tibetan yogin39 from Bhutan. It should be kept in mind that Knight was
a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Corresponding Member of the Royal
Botanical Society, both of London, and was therefore not one who could easily be fooled by
any pseudo-manifestations of the supernormal.
Now the man whom these Europeans encountered was dressed in the typical garb of a
yogin—a cotton loin cloth—and looked to them to be about sixty years old, possessed of
sparkling eyes, and wearing a heavy beard which covered an otherwise bare chest. "Through
our interpreter," wrote Knight later, "we learned that the yogin had lived in the hollow of a
mountain for over twenty years, some 15,500 feet above sea level." The yogin had been
taught by holy men, had tasted life's bitterness, but was now gradually experiencing liberation
from the Wheel of Life—the Buddha's description of the cycle of seemingly endless rebirths
which all beings experience.
Although confessing to the Europeans that he had not yet attained, spiritually speaking,
complete maturity, believing as he did that he was still marked out for further rebirths and the
sufferings attendant upon them before achieving Nirvana, the yogin asserted he had
nonetheless been favored by the gods and spirits and was thus enabled to exhibit "supernormal
powers at will." Knight and his colleagues learned from the yogin that "life had long since
lost its terrors for him," that "he was in a state of blissful communion with many of the gods
of the Tibetan Pantheon," and that "he had but one remaining desire"—which was to attain
"to full spiritual knowledge and experience." The yogin then reported to Knight that the few
wild beasts who had come his way had done no violence to him; indeed, he was able to do
good things for these creatures, said the yogin to Knight, "by preaching to them the Law" of
Buddha. Some of them, in fact, had sat at his feet and purred their thanks to him "for the
knowledge he imparted to them."
The yogin claimed he had acquired power over both men and animals, over the elements
360»
like lightning and thunder (turning the former from its path, making nought of the roar of the
latter), and over his own body (he stating he could sleep standing on one leg without any
support). He further asserted he could float in the air and walk on the water, and that "at his
will," he could cause flames of fire and jets of water to emanate from his body. And as for
food, drink and clothing, these he had dispensed with long ago as no longer necessary for his
survival.
Now after making a rather thorough acquaintance with the Tibetan yogin from Bhutan,
the members of the Expedition felt inclined to accept the invitation of this unusual ascetic to
accompany him to the summit of Mt. Chu-mi (16,450') that rose nearly a thousand feet
above the elevation of the hollow of his mountain fastness. Knight and his party agreed to
climb this additional thousand feet above the yogin's cave retreat, not realizing what an
extraordinary event awaited them there. Here is how Knight described what then happened
on Mt. Chu-mi, referring to himself in the account as "the European" but obviously signifying
by the use of the first person plural pronoun that he was not alone with the yogin:
The peak of Chu-mi ... had never previously been visited by a white man. The yogin was
anxious for us to make the ascent, as it would give prestige to the eminence!
The morning we made the ascent was bitterly cold. The yogin was the first to attain the
summit, Obviously he was familiar with the road. While the European was standing gazing at
the stupendous precipices before him,... the yogin was talking about the stern realities of the
mighty Himalaya—depths and heights, barren rocks, cold, snow, winds, treeless deserts, and
far, far below, many a surging cataract. We had heard of the many things the yogin could do—
would he float in the air and disappear from mortal vision for the\>enefit of the White Man? We
were asked to watch him for a moment or two. With a few peculiar movements of the body, the
yogin disappeared in a very mysterious manner. We could not vouch for any feat in levitation,
but he certainly did disappear on a piece of level ground with no obstacles within fifty feet of
the observer. No trace of the yogin could be found. Then, suddenly, out of the ground as it
were, he reappeared. We asked him how it was done, and received the reply that we should
have to reincarnate ten thousand times ten thousand before we could make such an approach
to excellence in things spiritual!40
One distinguished authority on Tibetan Buddhism is Thubten Jigme Norbu, the eldest brother
of the current Dalai Lama of Tibet and who at age eight had been recognized as an Incarnate
Lama in East Tibet (but who has since been released from his vows as such by the M a i
Lama) and who later served for a while as Abbot of one of the Labrangs within the extensive
monastic complex of the most famous monastery in East Tibet: Kumbum. In a book he co-
authored in 1968 entitled Tibet, Norbu acknowledged as "possible" what Christian missionaries,
he said, had long believed about Tibet being "full of miracles, populated by monks who live for j
hundreds of years, and by magicians who can change their form at will and transport their
bodies instantly from one part of the country to the other." But he insisted that "such things?'
were "rare, and that when they do occur there is good reason for them to occur.'"41
Whether rare or not, there is evidence that such power as described by these missionaries^,
especially the ability to change one's form and to transport one's body instantly or almost
instantly from one place to another quite-distant place, has been observed by a considerable
number of people inside Tibet. A very good example of this phenomenon was apparently J
witnessed by the American explorer and social scientist Harrison Forman, whose other f
fascinating experiences in Tibet relative to the paranormal and supernormal are discussed
later in the present chapter. In the book of his travels in Northeast Tibet in 1932, Forman
related the following:
I recalled a queer experience [of]... how once, while brewing a pot of noonday tea, a passing
itinerant lama stopped for a bowl and a chat with us. There was nothing out of the ordinary in
our conversation—other than that he had set us straight about the route to a certain lamasery
which not any of my [guides] had been sure about. There was something about his features,
however, that left a more than casual impression, and 1 recall that I thought it a singular
coincidence that the first lama to greet us upon our approach to the lamasery looked enough
like the fellow we met on the road several days before to be his twin brother. At the time I didn't
think much about it, for it is considered a special merit for a family to dedicate twins to the
[Buddhist] Church. But some weeks afterwards in casually mentioning the incident to another
lama who belonged to the same small lamasery, I was not a little surprised to hear him say he
knew the second lama described, and very well indeed, but insisted that the man had no twin
and was, in fact, an orphan! Of course, 1 passed it off with the thought that the whole thing was
to be set down as merely coincidence.
A Tibetan Buddhist anchorite-lama, an Adept in psychical power, who was famous in the
area where this had occurred, and to whom Forman had subsequently related the incident,
explained to the foreign visitor that this experience was an instance of the "manifestation of
the control of the body-organ functionings." It had been exercised by the lama in question
who by this means had thus been able to send his "real corporeal self" on a several-days'
journey at "supernormal speed" and "intended solely" for "setting right" on their route to the
lamasery the American and his companions. But it can be deduced from this that the
concerned lama must have also possessed the extraordinary psychical power to read the
visitors' thoughts and/or overhear their conversations that had taken place several days'
traveling distance away about their intention to visit this lama's lamasery.
This incident is not unlike that experienced just eight years earlier by the famous Buddhist
traveler-explorer in Tibet, Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel. She it was who in disguise in
1923-4 achieved the distinction of being the first white woman ever to walk the streets of the
Tibetan capital. Now as she and her Tibetan lama companion Yongden were nearing Lhasa,
one night a strange lama came in out of the darkness and sat down uninvited beside their
eampfire. Staring fixedly at Madame David-Neel for the longest while, he spoke not a word.
Suddenly, though, he made a remark about her appearance which made it clear to her that the
lama had penetrated her disguise as a Tibetan peasant pilgrim.
"My heart stopped beating," she reported afterwards. "This man knew me!" But how and
from where? Perceiving her confusion, the stranger added even more inexplicably: "Do not try
to remember. I have as many faces as I desire, and you have never seen this one." What
followed was a long discussion far into the night between these two about the Tibetan religion
and various aspects of mysticism. And as a consequence Madame David-Neel came to know
intuitively that this enigmatic figure seated at her eampfire would never betray her.
Abruptly thereafter, however, and without further word, the lama walked out into the
night. "He arose," she later related, and with "staff in hand" he "vanished like a phantom, as
he had come. His footsteps made no sound on the stony path. He entered the jungle and
seemed to melt away."43
An incident quite similar to this was experienced in 1931 by an American traveler to Gyantse
in south central Tibet, Mrs. Henrietta (Sands) Merrick. It just so happened that she had engaged
Gergan Tharchin in Kalimpong to be her guide and interpreter on the long trek there. Mrs.
Merrick was one who, though full of unanswered questions, was not unsympathetic towards
the possibility of persons possessing the kind of unusual powers now under discussion. At one
point in her party's march along the elevated Tibetan plain this side of their destination, suddenly
out of nowhere there appeared a mysterious figure on horseback. In her book detailing this
Tibetan journey with Tharchin, Mrs. Merrick described what happened:
... I noticed that a strange horseman had joined my caravan, a lama, hooded, his face wrapped
as was my own and that of my men, in a wool scarf. I saluted him, but received no answer. líe
merely rode silently beside me, focusing my attention. Then, just as I was about to call to
Tharchin who rode some paces behind me, from the woolen scarf came th^ words: "There are
no rewards or punishments ... only consequences."
... The words were in English, and over the roar of wind I spoke to the lama. But instead of
answering, he lifted his reins high and taut, and his pony shot forward at a gait that I tried to
emulate. But my horse stumbled and almost fell, and I was forced to halt him and see the lama
vanish as if the plain had swallowed him.
Had I actually witnessed one of the phenomena described so accurately by L. Adams Beck?
She had written me that she could vouch for the truth of every word in her wonderful stories of
the occult.441 turned to question Tharchin, but it was evident that he had seen nothing, for he f
merely cautioned against so fast a gait that might break the pony's leg if he stepped into a hole.
The loneliness of the vast plain gripped me ... the mystery of the East enveloped me .. .45
There is yet another unusual story to be added to this particular genre of the paranormal.
And once again it is recorded by Madame David-Neel. Hers is apparently an instance of
what Tibetans have called lung-pa, or wind men, who, upon following a rigorous years-long
regime of extreme asceticism and preparation, have been able to free themselveá from their
bodies' normal weight and defy the law of gravity, they "flying" long distances in a given
day. And Madame David-Neel claimed to have witnessed this very phenomenon while
traveling through Tibet previous to her famous Lhasa-bound journey. She has written that
while crossing a deserted plain one day, she happened to spot a black speck in the distance
that was quickly advancing towards her. Whipping out her binoculars and focusing them on
the object, she was amazed to see that it was a man and that by means of a series of
remarkably high leaps he was moving rapidly towards her.
As he approached nearer to the Frenchwoman, she could determine that his sight was
fixed in an upturned gaze on some invisible, apparently far-distant point in space. Describing
more fully what she saw, Madame David-Neel wrote: "The man did not run. He seemed to
lift himself from the ground, proceeding by leaps. It looked as if he had been endowed witlj
the elasticity of a ball and rebounded each time his feet touched the ground. His steps had
the regularity of a pendulum."46
Before leaving this particular genre of the paranormal one ought also to add here the
testimony of the world-renowned historian of religions and literary figure of no mean stature,
MirceaEliade of Romania (1907-1986), later in his life to become a celebrated Professor of
Religion at the University of Chicago USA. For it provides a striking variant on this theme of
body transport. Eliade it was who while in his early 'twenties had spent six months as a
disciple oftheTantricyogi Swami Shivananda. This episode in his Indian experience of over
two years had taken place at the Svarga Ashram located along the sacred river Ganges just
beyond Rishikesh in the Northwest Indian Himalayas not too far from the Tibetan border.
Here he had dwelt in his own hermitage hut devoting himself daily to meditation and yogic
exercises. In his published autobiography Eliade mentions how he had attempted "to evoke
some yogic experiences" of his in his novella, "The Secret of Dr. Honigberger," the second
of Two Tales of the Occult he had originally published in Romanian in 1939/40. In this tale,
which is quite representative of his well-known littérature fantastique, there are described
the practices of yoga and their results, those such as the lévitation of one's own body;
suspended animation (or "stepping out of time"); seeing and identifying objects beyond normal
physical obstacles to sight such as walls; the ability to read the thoughts of others; and the
invisibility of the body to the eyes of others.
Even more startling was what Eliade shared in the first of these two occultic novellas,
"Nights at Serampore." Here Eliade in particular relates how he was himself actually projected
from the present to another place and time, a further result of his own yogic experiences
which had occurred while meditating at the Svarga Ashram in Northwest India. Specifically,
claims Eliade, he had been carried back some 150 years earlier to the very site at Serampore
near Calcutta in Northeast India of a celebrated murder about which he had known absolutely
nothing but which he later learned had been well-documented in the Indian newspapers of
the period.47
A less dramatic but equally fascinating manifestation of remarkable paranormal powers
at work in this part of the world was experienced at the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in 1937 by
Gergan Tharchin's American friend, Theos Bernard. Bernard, accompanied by Tharchin as
his guide and interpreter, had gone to Tibet for the purpose of enlarging his knowledge of
Buddhism and yogic philosophy and practices. While there, in fact, he would be received into
the Buddhist priesthood and come to be known, on his return to America, as "the White
Lama." (See Volume II, Chapter 20 of the present work for further details.) On the afternoon
of Bernard's scheduled last day of nearly a two-month stay in the Tibetan capital, two
Lamas from one of the nearby monasteries paid him a visit at his lodgings. They and he had
never before met. Their purpose, the American wrote afterwards, was "to have a long talk
with me," and he went on to describe what happened:
Here again I must note how truly mysterious it is that they are able to keep track of one and to
know of one's every act—1 might almost say, thought. I sat with them while they told me how
Î had been spending my early mornings in prayer and what progress I had been making. More
than that: they told me the precise developments in my attitude of mind, the contacts I had been
able to make, and why I was able to experience that which 1 did experience when participating in
the various ceremonies at the great monasteries.
I was dumbfounded at what they told me, and perplexed as anyone could possibly be.
There was not the least doubt of it: what they told me about myself was quite accurate, and I
really had the feelings which they ascribed to me.
Then they came out with the astonishing statement, that all that now remained for me to do
was to take the last step, to go through with the ultimate initiation ceremony, which would
make it possible for me to become conscious of these inner processes in me, would enable me
to contact my inner self at will, and to the end of my days.
364»
They said that word had come from the great monastery east of Lhasa [i.e., from Ganden],
that the Ti Rimpoche had returned, and that preparations were being made to recei ve me there
for the last ceremony and to inculcate in me some knowledge of the ultimate native mystery.
It will never be possible for me to convey the fervor tad ecstasy of my feelings on receiving
this momentous news. Nor could I get over the wonder of their knowledge concerning me.
They revealed to me every thought I had since my arrival in Lhasa, the precise nature of my
reactions to the various ceremonies, and the depths I had sounded in the course of them. I
thought that this life was all my own, but they seemed to have some mystical power that gave
them an insight into the understanding of others.48
As but one more example of additional feats of supernormal power that have been exercised
by the mind over matter is what Bernard and others have witnessed among Tibetan Buddhists
with regard to the art of thumo. Wrote the American just after his journey to Tibet with
Tharchin in 1937: "During my visits to monasteries I studied thumo—the art of raising thé
heat of the body to fever pitch and of lowering it to icy cold. Some of the lamas can concentrate
all their vital force in one part of the body so that it becomes too hot to touch, the rest of the
body being as cold as if they were dead."49
The American, Harrison Forman, cited a few pages earlier, was also one who had witnessed
this phenomenon. Schooled in the Western scientific tradition, he was not one who could so
easily be taken in by religious imposture (see below for further on his background). Amid a
cluster of hermit caves that overlooked the prominent Northeast Tibet gompa of Radja, he
had fallen into conversation with a number of the hermits there and had learned of a famous
Buddhist anchorite among them who lived in a tiny cave of fiis own located much farther up
in elevation near the top of a high peak and a half-day's journey away. This recluse was
credited with possessing a number of supernormal powers, one of which, upon visiting him in
1932, Forman and his Tibetan Bonpo guide would discover to be this very practice of thumo.
The mountainside was already blanketed with snow—a sign of impending winter. Indeed,
when the visitors had climbed the last thousand feet or so to the anchorite's hermitage, they
found that snowdrifts had nearly shut up the opening of the lôw-ceilinged cave that was
nothing but a niche in the face of the cliff and across which was no semblance of a door or
barricade. "I wondered," Forman recalled later, "how the hermit kept from freezing to death
when the winds of winter really blew in earnest." He would soon learn how. Looking withiii
the cave they saw that it was empty. Thinking, though, that perhaps the anchorite had gone
for a walk, Forman and his Tibetan companion began climbing the last 200 or so feet to the
mountain's summit; and upon rounding the final promontory on their zigzagging climb, they
beheld the recluse seated silent and alone in the midst of a snowbank—and totally naked!
Forman recorded his reaction upon viewing this sight:
I was astonished. Of course, I had often heard of the supposed ability of those anchorites to
create sufficient internal heat that by its mere radiation from their bodies they were able to melt
snow for a circle about them many feet in diameter. But though 1 had visited many of them, and
talked with Tibetans who assured me that they had seen such things, it was the first time I had
personally witnessed this extraordinary feat.
The two of them seated themselves on the rocks nearby to watch and to await the j
completion of the hermit's tfyumo ritual. In fact, it would be an hour later before he would I
speak to them, finally acknowledging their presence but never once looking in their direction,
so concentrated was his mind's focus on the art of accomplishing this manifestation of
psychic power over matter. Forman went on to describe what he saw:
I could see his features clearly His eyes were staring, as if unseeing; while a faint smile
hovered about his slightly parted lips through which he inhaled with deep, regular breaths.
Otherwise he sat cross-legged, with his hands resting lightly in his lap—his reddish-tanned
nude body a striking contrast to the whiteness of the snow. The melted circle, in the center of
which he sat, must have reached its maximum diameter before our arrival. It was approximately
fifteen feet across.
Having at last told them to wait for him in his cave dwelling below, which the two visitors
dutifully did by retracing their steps back down to the tiny cave, the thumo-practitioner soon
afterwards arrived clad only in a flimsy ragged toga which he had carelessly flung over an
emaciated torso. What then followed was an exceptional conversation between the anchorite
and his American visitor, the initial segment of which—a monologue by the hermit—is most
germane to explaining the exceptional feat which Forinan had just witnessed. It also revealed
the psychic power the hermit displayed of being able to read the mind of the American
unaided by anything which Forman had said which might have provided a clue to the anchorite
of what the American had been thinking, inasmuch as the latter had said absolutely nothing.
"You are wondering," began the monk hermit pointedly,
whether the snow-melting exhibition you witnessed was merely an hypnotic illusion produced
for your special benefit... or whether I really did melt snow for a radius of seven to eight feet
around me simply by radiation of heat from my body
Bewildered by the ease with which the anchorite was reading his thoughts, Forman could
only nod his head mechanically. The hermit continued:
You are unwilling to accept what you saw as an hypnotic illusion. Also, you discount the
possibility of the supernatural element in this—to you—phenomenal feat. That forces you to
attempt a reasonable explanation.
This much I can tell you. You are correct in your belief that I have supernormal mastery and
control of my body organs and their functions; but it is not necessary for me to place myself in
an hypnotic trance to exercise this control. Nor should this frank admission of my mental
supernormalcy amaze you. We hermits devote a lifetime—nay, many lifetimes—in not only the
subjection and negation of material and physical desires but also in the concentrative effort to
develop the mind to its highest possible degree.
Much more was said by the psychically-oriented recluse about his other astonishing mental
powers to convince Forman that the thumo phenomenon he had just witnessed, was no
illusion.50
Another testimonial regarding this particular paranormal phenomenon has been given by
another Western traveler through Tibet: by none other than Madame David-Neel, who was
cited earlier. She, however, had not only witnessed this feat performed by others; she herself
had successfully done it, having resorted to this ritual when confronted by a situation critical
to her survival during one of her travels in the Snowy Land. Madame David-Neel has
related the experience in her travel account of her journey to Lhasa. She recounted how she
had been initiated into this practice earlier when living as a hermit. In her current situation,
when her flint and steel had become quite wet and were therefore useless during one freezing
night of her travels, she decided to dry them by means of thumo. Whereupon Madame
David-Neel pressed both clammy flint and steel to her body under her ragged clothing and
commenced the process which demands intense concentration.
"Soon I saw flames arising around me," she later reported; "they grew higher and higher;
they enveloped me, curling their tongues above my head. I felt deliciously comfortable."
Though a bitter wind had been blowing, her body was aglow. Quickly gathering together
some dry grass and animal dung, she struck the flint with the steel; this time it immediately
produced a shower of sparks, resulting in the grass being ignited within seconds, and a
campfire created by which to survive the frigid night.51
Roger Hicks is yet another from the Western scientific tradition whose sympathetic
testimony can also be added here regarding the Tibetan Buddhist art of thumo. Hicks has
asserted that though many stories of mystical powers which have been related by Tibetans
are "pure fiction," others of them are "certainly true." One well-known example which he,
like Forman, David-Neel and Bernard, has cited is "th Q thumo yoga of psychic heat control"—
"there really were tests in which monks sat in icy caves, stark naked, and dried out sheets
which had been soaked in tubs of glacial water." But Hicks then went on to say that "even
the tales of conjuring up demons and apparitions are sometimes true: Tibetan Buddhism
accepts that such things are illusory, but does not necessarily distinguish between them and
the illusion of the 'real' world."52 *
Illusory or not, the same American previously mentioned, Harrison Forman, was an
eyewitness and, initially, a reluctant participant in such conjuration that in this instance
occurred in Northeast Tibet near the same Buddhist monastery cited in the story of the
Buddhist cave-dwelling anchorite who had engaged in the practice of thumo. The gompa
was situated not far from the banks of the Ma Chu, the Tibetan name for the upper
reaches of the Hwang Ho or Yellow River. Forman was a well-known explorer, aviator,
and salesman of military aircraft to the Chinese government in the early 1930s. But he
also was one who had been schooled in comparative literature, abnormal psychology and
Oriental philosophy. In 1932, upon completion of his business in China, he organized a
motion picture expedition to Chinese East Turkestan from whence he would plunge into
northeastern Tibet to investigate the tales of magic which had fascinated him for years.
The two men who had accompanied him on the journey—an American and a Russian—
were killed in an encounter with Chinese bandits before the party had reached the Tibetan
borderland. Nonetheless, Forman, who had steeled himself for any eventuality, continued
on alone into Tibet. "I had hoped there," he later explained, "to find the answer to many
things which were a mystery to the best of learned minds in the West. I wished to know
how it was that many of the best established laws of nature were apparently flouted by
these strange people of the world's highest plateaus. I wished to know their demons and
devils close at hand."
Making friends with Old Sherap, a Bonpo sorcerer, who served as the explorer's munshi
(language teacher), companion and guide, Forman spent many months with the old Tibetan,
becoming well grounded in Tibetan lore and ritual. Considering the American a fellow-
sorcerer, thanks to the foreigner's skill "in exorcising interior devils" by means of the "powerful
magic" of Epsom salts, castor oil, salves, powders, and other medicinal products from the
West, Old Sherap soon initiated Forman into the lore of "Tibetan wizardry." In short, the
foreign visitor later wrote, "so far as was possible for any white man, I had become not only
a Tibetan, but a Nukhwa—a sorcerer—in my own right."
In preparation for witnessing the Bonpo ceremony of demon-materialization in the Sacred
Forest of Radja Gompa (one of the largest Buddhist monasteries in northeastern Tibet,
housing some three thousand monks), Forman had had the ritual described to him step by
step; he had even been given a description of Yama, the King of Hell, and his satellite
demons and devils, whom the two of them and some ten other Nukhwas were about to
conjure up out in the Forest across the valley some distance away from the gompa. The
American had also been told explicitly what the consequence might be: "It was one thing to
materialize demons and devils out of nothingness, another to control them when they became
visible and tangible. If they escaped those who materialized them they would run rampant
through the land"—wreaking havoc upon pastures, spreading pestilence, killing animals, and
"causing more mischief than even the highest of lamas, or even Living Buddhas, could ever
make right again." No, "they must be held there by the will of those who brought them, until,
by that same exercise of will, they were forced back into the nothingness whence they had
been evoked." Yet what was the reason for this ritual out of Tibetan Bonism in the first
place? It was performed simply because the Nukhwas had to continually demonstrate their
power over these wicked beings "to assure themselves that they still controlled them. It was
part of their training."
Though himself a total skeptic and disbeliever in the supernatural, in demons and devils—
even less a believer that they could be made visible to men's eyes, and one who denied the
existence of the human soul; nonetheless, said Forman, "I was determined in this instance to
experience whatever was to come with an open mind." On the one hand, he wished throughout
the ceremony to remain as much as possible the scientific inquirer, but on the other hand to
play the role of fellow-sorcerer with all the sincerity he could muster. One part of his mind
would watch and listen and the other would absorb and become a part of what transpired.
He would soon find, however, that this division of mental focus would be extremely difficult
to maintain.
So into the Sacred Forest at twilight one day Forman—well-disguised as a Nukhwa53—
went along with his Tibetan mentor and joined in with a semicircle of other sorcerers already
gathered at the place for the appointed ritual. Under the direction of their Grand Wizard who
himself arrived shortly afterwards and who was soon ensconced atop a huge flat-topped
boulder a short open space away in front of them, the Nukhwa sorcerers were indeed
successful in conjuring up in that limited open space the mdStliideous of evil appearances,
whose detailed description of them by the American in his record of the event is in and of
itself quite extraordinary. First came the horrible-looking Yama, and afterwards, in turn one
by one, came forth his subordinate devils (the demons of Lust, Hunger, Anger and others).
Yet the grand finale as it were to the entire ritual proved to be for Forman the most obscene
aspect of it all: the King of Hell's danse macabre\ "for every movement of it mocked at the
miseries of mankind."
Finally, it was only with monumental effort that in unison of wills, the Nukhwas, aided by the
American himself, who by this time was no longer a reluctant participant, were completely
triumphant in preventing the demons from breaking through their invisible bonds. "Strangely"
Forman later recalled, "though even now I told myself that all this was some trick of mass- or
self-hypnosis, I found myself applying my will, adding it to those of the others, to beat back the
surge of those demons and devils ..." Wanting to put out his hands to push them back but
realizing that his hands would be useless against them, the disguised skeptic confessed that
"only my spirit—my soul, if you will—could avail anything against Yama and his satellites.
Whatever I had pretended before, however much I had tried sincerely to be a Tibetan, I now
was a Tibetan in very truth, a Nukhwa amongst Nukhwas, fighting against the devils and
demons as the Nukhwas did." One by one, each, from Yama on down to the least of the
demons, was now banished back to nothingness from whence each had come. The NukhWas
had proven to themselves once again that they were still in control.
As for Forman, he had gone into the experience "a hard-shelled skeptic"; he emerged
from it an inquiring agnostic, unable to deny that there had indeed been something which he
had heard, felt and seen there "in that twilight in the high Tibetan forest," but which, he
concluded, "I could not, and cannot, describe in any way that entirely satisfies me."54
This encounter by Forman with the dark side of the supernatural in Tibet was not unique
to this American secularist. Whereas he had himself willfully sought out this aspect of the
paranormal, Christian missionaries in the Forbidden Land were often confronted by it in the
course of their ministry of the gospel to the Tibetans. One such missionary was the American,
Victor Plymire (1881 -1956). He had been able intermittently to spread the Christian message
in the Great Closed Land during much of the first half of the twentieth century, even having
been able to make an almost unheard of and most dangerous trek of the entire country from
west to east. From his perspective, the strange phenomena which he encountered appeared
to him to have been quite sinister in character. "Far more mysterious than the mountains,"
his biographer would later write, "are the forces of spiritual darkness which hide there. The
powers of this darkness are very real to the Tibetans. It is a darkness too horrible to understand
by the mere reading of these pages. Be he missionary or explorer, whoever climbs the
Himalayas inevitably meets with this sinister force. Many a missionary has had to fight ;
almost physical battles with it, faith in God his only weapon."
In th£ account his son David published in 1959 of the elder Plymire's ministry in the Snowy
Land, the author readily acknowledged at the outset that "missionary tales are sometimes j
doubted." And hence, he added, "it may be better to begin this one by relating the experience
of a man who was not a missionary" but "a noted explorer, author and foreign correspondent."
And with that the younger Plymire proceeded to present to his readers—"with the permission
of the explorer" himself—a condensed version of Harrison Forman's mind-boggl ing true tale
of the occult just now recounted, "I See the King of Hell."55
Another former Christian missionary to Tibet is the Scotsman George Patterson, cited in
an earlier footnote of the present chapter. Recognized as an authority on the country, especially j
its eastern region, Patterson remains a very good personal friend of the current leader of j
Tibet's people, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He, too, during his years of living and working j
among the Tibetans, sensed something extraordinarily sinister and dark in the country In his I
most recent book on his incredibly diverse experiences in Tibet (published in 1998), Patterson
tries to explain his unease about the occultic phenomena he witnessed all about him there:
Real power in T i b e t . . . was not in words but in power, like the Christian's kingdom of God.*
Those occultic powers were recognized by the whole population of Tibet to a remarkable
degree. The life of every one of them was dominated by this recognition, from rosaries, prayer
wheels and god-boxes, to sacrificial offerings of wealth and time and personal commitment...
And I, who preached [the] omnipotent God, was faced in Tibet with powers that I was only
beginning to know. Powers that I suspected were demonic in origin. It seemed there existed a
hierarchy of demonic powers under Satan in the Tibetan form of chod-kyi-gyal-po, or King of
the Underworld, to whom he delegated malevolent powers commensurate with the fulfillment
of his purposes of frustrating the benevolent will of God. These ranks of malevolent beings
were regularly contacted by the Tibçtan^chod-gyadpractitioners [i.e., oracle-mediums], whose
personal powers were determined by the number and rank of the guardian deities contacted.!
1 watched these chod-gyads go into their possessions and I heard their oracular messages as
they metamorphosed in the persons of the chod-gyad, I saw their miraculous powers
demonstrated as a consequence of the Tantric techniques applied. 56
Finally, one ought to include here the narration of a remarkable feat of supernormal
power that was recently manifested among Tibetan Buddhists residing in Lesser Tibet of
Northwest India. The reciter of this unusual event, Rev. Stephen Hishey, is a personal
acquaintance of the present author, the latter having met and spent a long evening with him
when Rev. Hishey was on a visit to Kalimpong several years ago. A former Buddhist monk-
novice in far-off Amdo of East Tibet, Hishey is now a Christian leader among Tibetans in an
area of Indo-Tibet that is not far from the Tibetan border. One evening his and his wife's
attention was drawn towards their neighbor's house from whence strange noises were
emanating. Noticing from their window that a huge crowd of over a hundred people had
gathered both inside and outside the house, they quickly went next door and stood at the
entrance way. What they then witnessed, though not surprising to Rev. Hishey, was nonetheless
disturbing to both of them. For in looking inside the home they could see a Tibetan Buddhist
priest in one corner of the room banging together a silver spoon and plate. Opposite him, next
* An allusion by Patterson to the declaration made by Christ's apostle, Paul, in a letter sent to the Corinthian
church after his visit there that his "word" and his "preaching" among them had not been "in persuasive words
of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of
men, but in the power of God." I Corinthians 2:4-5 mgn.
t In a very recent letter to the present writer, former missionary Patterson wrote the following: "... I worked on
a film project at Kalimpong in 1952 or so with Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark" which dealt with "a Tibetan
chod-gyad who was able to contact nine different guardian deities. (The film eventually ended up at the University
of Copenhagen, and both Prince Peter and his associate at that time, [Austrian Baron] René de Nebesky-
Wojkowitz, wrote books about the episode which were later published ...)." Patterson to the author, Bonita CA
USA, 18 July 2000. Indeed, in two of the Austrian's books that, among many other subjects covered, describe in
part the extraordinary ability of this oracle-medium, several still photographs of the "Nine-Demon Adept" are
included which show the state of this Tibetan chod-gyad before, during and after one of his "possession"
performances. More of the stills are shown in the Austrian's later volume, The Oracles and Demons of Tibet; but
for several of the same stills, see also his earlier work, Where the Gods Are Mountains; a volume, incidentally, that
relates quite prominently to particular events in the later career of Gergan Tharchin. In fact, all three of these
Western scholars and writers on Tibet were close acquaintances of the Indo-Tibetan at Kalimpong during the
decade of the 1950s; and both the Prince and the Baron had each engaged in joint activities with Tharchin while
staying at the latter's hill station. These activities will be discussed in Volume III of the present work.
370»
to a fiery coal furnace, sat a young man in a cross-legged position on the floor. The priest
commenced calling on the "household god" which not long afterwards came and possessed
the young man. Soon the latter was flying about the crowded room some three feet above
the floor, and still positioned in his cross-legged fashion. But then, coming to rest again upon
the floor, the possessed man reached his hand into the fiery hot furnace, grasped a few live
coals, and ate them! He then resumed levitating once more.
Greatly troubled by what they were witnessing, Rev. Hishey and wife, firm believers in
the resurrection-ascension power of Christ, bowed their heads in prayer as they stood at the
doorway of their Tibetan neighbor's home. Believing that what they saw was "the power of
the evil one" or Satan, they "invited the Lord Jesus Christ to be present and to show His
power." In an apparent response to this prayer, suddenly the man who moments before had
recommenced levitating about the room fell straight to the floor, bewildered. "After some
moments of confusion," recalled Pastor Hishey, "the Buddhist priest walked over to where
we were, paid the highest respect to us by bowing down, and politely asked us to leave,
Clearly, a greater power than what he knew had been at work."57
Brunton, Schary, Roerich, Knight, Forman, David-Neel, Merrick, Beck, Eliade, Bernard,
Hicks, Plymire, Patterson, Hishey, Tharchin, and of course the Sadhu himself are not the
only ones to have either witnessed, experienced, or at least believed in the existence and
exercise of, such yogic and psychic powers on the part of certain individuals in Asia. Nee
To-sheng, known more familiarly to many Christians throughout the world as Watchman
Nee, has provided what some feel to be an insightful (others, perhaps, controversial) evaluation
of the subject from an evangelical Christian point of view in his little volume entitled The
Latent Power of the Soul. Originally written by Nee in 1932 as a series of magazine
articles, it was first printed as a book in China in 1933 and finally translated and published in
English forty years later. Though evidence of deception is not lacking, says the Chinese
author, he nonetheless readily acknowledges as authentic and "undeniable" the tremendous
power of the mind and soul over the physical world as practiced by many Buddhists, Taoists,
Hindus, and others of no religious persuasion—including all the feats of supernormal power
thus far mentioned in the discussion above, and even more; but Nee also issues a warning to
both Christian and non-Christian alike as to the dangers inherent in such release of what he
has termed the soul's latent power. It might therefore be well to pause for a few moments to
consider what Nee has had to say concerning such phenomena which, far from abating,
have increased in their manifestation in both numbers and frequency over the past few
decades. For it may very well be that his assessment can go a long way in explaining to the
satisfaction of many what precisely lies at the root of all such manifestations and how these
differ in their essential nature from those supernatural powers which have been identified
by the Sadhu as having been manifested by the Christian hermit of Kailash.
In order better to understand Nee's discussion of these mystifying psychic phenomena in
his Latent Power volume, it will perhaps be helpful first to summarize what is more fully
explained in another and earlier work of his regarding his view of man. In the opening
chapter of a lengthy three-volume treatise entitled The Spiritual Man (originally published
in China in 1928), the author points out that the ordinary conception of man's constitution is
dualistic: soul and body. "According to this concept," he writes, "soul is the invisible inner
spiritual part, while body is the visible outer corporal part." From his Biblical understanding,
however, Nee sees this to be inaccurate and derives from the Christian Scriptures a conception
of man as tripartite: a trinity of spirit, soul and body. "That the body is man's outward sheath is
undoubtedly correct," he admits, "but the Bible never confuses spirit and soul as though they
are the same. Not only are they different in terms; their very natures differ from each other."
Nee then quotes from Hebrews 4:12 in the New Testament which states: "the word of God is
living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of
soul and spirit,... and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." From this and
other Scripture passages (for example, the statement of the Apostle Paul in I Thessaionians
5:23: "May your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire ... at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ"), Nee concludes that "since soul and spirit can be divided, they must be different
in nature," and thus it becomes evident "that man is a composite of three parts, not two."*58
Hence it is Watchman Nee's view that when humanity was first created by God, the
body of the first man, who is called Adam in the Old Testament book of Genesis, was
formed of the earth's matter ("the dust of the ground"), then given spirit by God when He
* It may be of interest to note here the views on this and related matters espoused by the well-known American
Roman Catholic thinker and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (d.1968), who was a personal friend of Tibet's
current ruling spiritual leader, Dalai Lama XIV, and one whom the latter very much admired and appreciated.
Merton's own understanding comes quite close to Watchman Nee's trinitarian conception of man's constitution—
so central to the rest of Nee's discussion on the supernormal phenomena in the world today—and certainly differs
substantially from what an earlier more illustrious Catholic thinker, Thomas Aquinas, posited. As Merton himself
acknowledges, Aquinas, in commenting on the passage quoted by Nee from Hebrews 4:12, concedes that the author
of this passage (whom both Aquinas and Merton believe was St. Paul) "adopts the Platonic division of man into
body soul and spirit," but the earlier Catholic thinker, adds Merton, goes on and "denies a real distinction between
the soul (life principle) and spirit (principle of understanding and freedom)." In his quite illuminating and well-
written little volume entitled The New Man, Merton, unlike Aquinas, seems to entertain the belief in the idea of some
kind of distinction indeed between the soul and the spirit, the latter term of which he calls at various times in his
treatise "the summit of man's nature," and even "the summit of the soul" in man,
"Let us pause a moment," further writes Merton in one of his book's meditations, "to consider the meaning of
the word 'spirit' that we have been using." He then proceeds to say with approval that "in St. Paul, who sets the
tone for all Patristic thought on this particular point as in so many others, the 'spirit' or 4pneuma' is distinct from
the 'soul' (psyche) and even from the intelligence (nous)." (p. 45) To substantiate his point Merton immediately
quotes this same passage of Hebrews 4:12. And in a subsequent meditation two pages later, the Trappist monk
declares what Nee himself clearly affirms; to wit, that "when God breathed into the face of Adam, everything in man
came alive: not only his body, not only his mind [or soul], but also his spirit in which the image of God was hidden
Moreover, on pages 45-6 Merton further defines the spirit of man in a way that Nee would most certainly
have no hesitation in subscribing to; namely, that in the spiritual rebirth of a person before God, man's pneuma
(the Greek word in the New Testament for spirit) "has acquired an entirely new and different modality by the
fact that the Spirit of God is present within it. The pneuma is then not only man's alone, but man's spirit united
with the Spirit of God. It is the deified or transfigured spirit of man, justified by faith and activated by divine
grace, living a life of charity The actions of this pneuma are strictly our own, and yet at the same time they belong
to God. When aman prays 'in the spirit' [Paul's words in Ephesians 6:18] it is he who prays indeed, but it is also
the Spirit of God who prays in him, guiding him and showing how to commune with God beyond language and
understanding. The pneuma is the spirit of man moved and directed by the Spirit of God, liberated by deep faith
and illumined by the wisdom of God Himself."
All quotations, including the one on Aquinas (p. 45), are taken from The New Man (1961; reprint ed., New
York: New American Library, 1963, a Mentor-Omega Book). There has also more recently appeared a Bantam
Books edition, New York, 1981. For a further word on the friendship which developed between Merton and
Dalai Lama XIV just prior to the Trappist monk's untimely death, see the note at this point in the present
chapter's End-Notes.
"breathed" into man's nostrils "the breath of life," and thus Adam, by this coming together of
spirit and body, became what the writer of Genesis calls "a living soul." Accordingly, the
spirit in man gives him Goaf-consciousness, the soul gives him subconsciousness, and the
body, wor/rf-consciousness. Of these three constituent elements in man, explains Nee, the
spirit is the noblest part, for it joins with God and thus occupies the innermost area of man's
being. On the other hand, the body is the lowest, occupying the outermost place. But between
these two lies the soul, "serving as their medium," and taking its character from them.
Hence, "the body is the outer shelter of the soul, while the soul is the outer sheath of the
spirit." The Chinese author goes on to say that by the spirit transmitting its thought to the soul
and the soul exercising the body to obey the spirit's order, the soul stands, as it were, as the
pivot making it possible for the spirit and body to communicate and to cooperate. Such, then,
is the meaning behind his assertion that the soul serves as the medium.
It was God's intent from the very beginning, Nee contends, that the spirit of man would
control the whole being through the site of man's personality: the soul. Yet because man's will,
besides his intellect and emotions, belongs to the soul, "it is only when the soul is willing to
assume a humble position that the spirit can ever manage the whole man. And hence it is the
will of the soul which determines whether the spirit, the body, or even itself is to rule." Now it
is because of the fact that this part of man possesses such power and constitutes the organ of
his personality and individuality that the writer of Genesis has termed man "a living soul."
With that as background, it is hoped that the reader will now be better able to understand
the treatment Nee gives, in his later smaller volume, concerning what he has there called the
latent power of the soul. It is Watchman Nee's contention, again derived from his interpretation
of the Christian Scriptures, that the soul which the first man, Adam, possessed had been
endowed with "unthinkable supernatural power," with "unusual and astonishing abilities," as
delineated in the early chapters of Genesis and discussed at some length by Nee in the first
chapter of his little volume on the soul. Yet this special supernatural ability Adam possessed,
though appearing to us humans of a later day to have been quite remarkable, was in actuality,
says Nee, "not at all special or supernatural"; it was simply God's provision for enabling
Adam to fulfill the immense task He had given him of managing the entire earth!
But Adam would not be in a position to exercise such remarkable powers very long; for
at the time of man's moral and spiritual fall in Adam, an event recounted in Genesis chapter \
3, the soul power which distinguishes Adam from us today became, asserts Nee, immobilized, |
hidden; that is to say, it fell dormant, assuming a latent status within man's being. As Nee
tells it, "When Adam fell in the garden of Eden ... he had not lost this power altogether, only
it was now buried within him." Rather than opting to become spiritual in his orientation, he
had become fleshly and worldly; and as a consequence, man's flesh has enclosed this marvelous
soul power within itself—that is, within the flesh. Instead of his remaining a living soul, which
was God's original intention for man, having now fallen, "man becomes flesh," as the Scriptures j
have made abundantly clear (see, for example, Genesis 6:3,12; Exodus 30:32; and Romans |
3:20). Man's soul had been meant to submit to the spirit's control, but it had now become |
subject to the dominion of the flesh. "Generation has succeeded generation, with the result I
that this primordial ability of Adam," declares Nee, "has bpcome a 'latent' force in his |
descendants. It has turned to become a kind of 'hidden' power. It is not lost to man, it is J
simply bound up by the flesh." As a matter of fact, notes the author, this Adamic power is
resident within every person who has ever lived on the earth, though it is confined in everyone
and unable, as the soul once was able, to freely express itself.
Nee went on to explain this point further. Prior to man's fall Adam could quite naturally
and readily exercise this "near miraculous ability." After the fall, though, God felt it necessary—
for man's well-being and as a protection for man from the enemy, Satan—to "imprison
man's psychic powers in his flesh." Before the fall, man's body had been a help to his
incredibly strong soul, but then the soul of man fell through willful disobedience when tempted
by Satan in the primeval Garden; in consequence of which man's "almost unlimited power"
of the soul was thereafter circumscribed by the shell of his flesh—meaning, therefore, that
though it was still present, this near miraculous ability of the soul was no longer active.
There are many people, of course, including Christians, who believe that at his fall Adam
forfeited all these extraordinary powers of the soul and only retained the more ordinary,
natural and humanly comprehensible ones. However, the evidences which have resulted
from the researches of modern parapsychology, Nee points out, indicate that Adam had
never lost his original powers; on the contrary, these have been proven to still exist within
man—though now they be hidden in his soul and imprisoned by his flesh. During the past
several thousand years, in fact, quite a few people, says Nee, "were able to demonstrate this
soul force" in remarkable ways;* furthermore, he asserts, writing in the early 1930s, "within
the last one hundred years, more and more people have been capable of manifesting this
latent power of the soul." As a matter of fact, Nee devotes some fifteen pages of his small
* No better example of this from ancient times can be cited than the phenomenon of shamanic transformation that
for centuries occurred among the Olmec people of Mesoamerica (part of what is more commonly known as
Central America) between 1200 and 300 b.c. They were descendants from Ice Age ancestors who from northern
Asia (perhaps even from the area of Central Asia now known as Tibet?) came to the Americas via the landbridge
which once traversed the Bering Strait. And in their rise as a thriving prehistoric society, the Olmec culture had
its ruling and priestly elites, besides farmers, artisans and a developed urban populace. Believing in a three-tiered
cosmos of heavens above, earth at the center, and a watery world beneath, Olmec peoples looked to their rulers,
priests and especially their shamans to intercede on their behalf with the cosmic forces which they believed
animated all things that move and grow and which, they believed, controlled all natural phenomena such as wind,
rain, fire and thunder: elements which could either ensure successful harvests and the common good of the
community or else decimate the land and destroy much life, depending on the mood of these cosmic spirits.
Now the belief »vas quite pervasive throughout the Olmec culture and the rest of ancient Mesoamerica that in
their intermediatorial service to the community shamans possessed "the mystical power to travel forward and
backward through time and to all levels of the cosmos." Through meditation, intense mental exercises, even the
assumption of contorted body postures, and sometimes with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs derived from the
glands of a toad species, these shamans would enter into deep trances and, as if by magic, transform themselves
into their spirit companion, the jaguar, one of the fierce predators indigenous to the Olmec region.
At first kneeling in a static pose of meditation or in the aforesaid contorted position, the faces of the shamans
would grow alert in anticipation of the beginning of the transforming process. Midway through the crossover and
still in a state of intense meditation, a shaman's head would progressively become that of a jaguar. Then, as spirit
forces commenced to possess his entire body, the shaman would gradually rise up till finally he would rear to his
feet, totally transformed into a jaguar and ready to roam the cosmos on behalf of his fellow Olmecs. For "during
their ecstatic journeys through the universe" these shamans would communicate with cosmic spirits, thus
"gaining knowledge that enabled them to consult ancestors, predict the future, heal the sick, bring rain to the
fields, and ensure the welfare of the community."
The preceding information and quoted material are based on: (1) several of the displayed Notes that described
the Exhibition "OLMEC: Art of Ancient Mexico," shown at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 30
June - 20 October 1996; and (2) the Exhibition's accompanying brochure, written by Susan M. Arensberg, Dept.
334 CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN ^
book to describing in detail the various kinds of manifestation he had either witnessed himself
or had learned about from others as having occurred: many of them similar to, or precisely
the same as, those already cited and described above.
The author went on to declare that in his day, and in fact ever since man's fall in the
Edenic garden, Satan has attempted to have this latent power in man's soul released and
displayed for his own ends against God. According to Nee, since, as a result of the fall, all
psychological forces are now governed by physiological forces, Satan's objective has
been "to liberate man's soul power through the breakdown of the outer shell of his flesh so
as to free his soul from its fleshly bonds, thereby manifesting his latent power." Throughout
these millennia Satan has been exerting his utmost to achieve more fully what had been
foiled by God in the Garden when as a consequence of man's disobedience in having
succumbed to Satan's partially successful attempt to gain control over his soul, man's
psychological powers came under the dominion of his physiological powers. God's enemy,
notes Nee,
has found, now and then, here and there, persons from whom he succeeds in drawing out their
soul force.... But in the last hundred years, since the discovery [of hypnotism in 1778] of Franz
Mesmer in parapsychology, many new discoveries of psychic phenomena have followed. All
these are due to but one reason: the enemy is attempting to finish his previously unsuccessful
work. He intends to release all the latent powers of men. This is his singular purpose which he h^s
been cultivating for thousands of years. This is why he trades in the souls of men besides such
merchandise as gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, and cattle and horses [see Revelation 18:13],
As a matter of fact, he has exerted his utmost strength to obtain this special commodity.... He will
use man as his instrument for his final resistance against God's plan in this last age.
Now Nee's relevance to the earlier discussion about various yogic and psychic phenomena
becomes clear in what the Chinese author has to say next. For it is his view that down
through history, and no matter the religious persuasion—whether among the Babylonians,
Arabs, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Theosophists and other occultists, or even certain sects in
Christianity—all have tried in their respective way to
release the power which Adam has left to our soul. In any religion, using whatever means or
ways of instruction, there stands a common principle behind all their apparent differences.
This common principle is to aim at overcoming the outward flesh so as to deliver the soul power
from all kinds of bondage for freer expression. Some lessons of instruction given in these religions
are directed at destroying the obstruction of the body, some at uniting the body and the soul,
while some are aimed at strengthening the soul through training and thus enabling it to overcome
the body. Whatever the ways may be, the principle behind them all is the same....
...The ascetic practices of the Buddhists, the breathing and abstract meditation of the
Taoists, the meditation and thought concentration of the hypnotists, the silent sitting by
those in the Unity Club, and all the varieties of meditations, contemplations, concentrated
thought to no thought at all, and hundreds of similar actions which people practice, follow the
same rule—however varied their knowledge and faith may be. What all do is nothing more than
of Exhibition Programs, NGA. The description of the shamanic transformation ritual is derived from a series of
some seven or eight small sculptures on display which the ancient Olmec community's artists had created and
which clearly illustrate the phases of this supernormal phenomenon that was widespread in its manifestation
throughout ancient Mesoamerica.
bring man's external confused thought, wavy emotion, and weak will to a place of tranquillity,
with his flesh completely subdued, hence making possible the release of the soul's latent
power. The reason this is not manifested in every person is because not all can break through
the barriers of the flesh and bring all common psychic expressions to perfect calmness... .*
I do not know how people are informed of the marvelous energy dormant in man's soul, the
release of which, presently bound by the flesh, will result in the display of miraculous power...
Probably they are all informed by ... the evil spirit. Their elucidations may vary, nevertheless
the underlying principle is the same, which is, the use of special means to release the power of
the soul.59 They may not employ, as used by us, this terminology of soul power; yet the fact is
unmistakable....60
And the danger, as Nee sees it, is that once this latent power of man's soul is manifested or
released—and no matter if its manifestation appear good, useful or beneficial—God's and
man's enemy will seek to control and make use of such tremendous force for his own
nefarious purposes. On the other hand, Nee points out, God never works with man's latent
power of the soul, simply because "it is unusable to Him." When a person is regenerated or
born anew, that one is born again of the Holy Spirit, after which God works by the Holy Spirit
and the renewed spirit in the person: it is not His desire or will to employ the extraordinary
power of the soul. Writes Nee, "since the fall God has forbidden man to again use his original
power of the soul. It is for this reason that the Lord Jesus often declares how we need to
lose our soul life, that is, our soul power."
* In Tibet, however, there was a particular class of individuals, as George Patterson could readily testify, who
were able to manifest this ability to an exceptional degree—but at what tremendous cost to the practitioner's
well-being. These were the Tantric Buddhist chod-gyad practitioners or oracle-mediums, mentioned earlier,
whose contact with the spirit world, involving an act of surrender to a selected guardian deity, Patterson had
observed time and again in the East Tibetan province of Kham while serving as a missionary there in the late
1940s and early '50s. This contact, the former missionary explained, was accomplished "by cultivating a quiet
attitude of mind. With the help of breathing exercises, meditation processes, invocatory Tantric mantras and
vocal and lung techniques, a state of trance-possession was reached." He went on to describe this process in more
detail, in so doing echoing much of Nee's own descriptions:
... every distracting influence in the mind had to be brought under control. Then, [by] whatever means was
used—breathing, yoga, meditation, repetition of mantras, voice, music, percussion, or a combination of them—
the psyche (mind, soul) was brought to a fine point of obedience to the requirements of the particular familiar
spirit being contacted. At that point the volition was impelled towards willing the spirit-being to possess the
oracle-medium's psyche in a total submission.... [And] in the submission of the oracle-medium he passed from
every consciousness except the feeling of ecstasy. He was left without the power of ratiocination—the ability
to perceive or discern—and became simply an unthinking vehicle of the spirit-occupant's will.
On the other hand, the Christian in his or her total commitment to the Spirit of God is filled with the Spirit,
indwelt by the Spirit but always left with the power to perceive and discern [emphasis Patterson's].
This latter distinction was for the missionary the absolute, irreconcilable, difference between the quality of submission
offered by the Tibetan Buddhist chod-gyad to his familiar spirit and that offered by the Christian to the Spirit of God.
The secret of occult power which Patterson saw demonstrated all around him was dependent, as he further
explained, "on the choice, commitment and ultimate submission of the practicing chod-gyad in determining the
range and intensity of his extraordinary or even miraculous powers." Such powers, added Patterson, as the
healing of diseases of people and animals, rain-making, raising the spirits of the dead, miraculous deliverances
from death in battle, and the unusual ro-lang, or corpse-raising, ritual. But the cost to the chod-gyads in terms of
physiological and psychological trauma, he noted, "was enormous," for the majority of those who were most
profoundly committed to these soulish demonic practices "ended their lives prematurely, physically and mentally
destroyed." Patterson of Tibet, 140, 152-3, 153, 152, 143.
s
God therefore wishes the Christian today never to use man's original soul force, as it is in
fact being used by others in the world. For Nee readily admits that all the wonders performed
in the world are not false; "we have to acknowledge that many of them are real." Yet, "all
these phenomena are produced by the latent power of the soul after Adam's fall," and the
Christian, he warns, "must be very careful in this last age not to stir up soul's latent energy
either purposely or unwittingly"—and even should the resultant release of such soulish energy
appear useful or helpful.
All who possess spiritual insight and sensitivity, Nee feels, will recognize the reality that was
once expressed in a statement made by a correspondent to a Christian magazine and which
employed the Greek New Testament terms for soul and spirit: "the forces ofpsuche (soul) are
arrayed against the forces of pneuma (spirit)." In describing the state of affairs in the secular
and religious world then current in his own day of the 1930s, Nee had this to say:
Soul power is rushing towards us like a torrent. Making use of science (psychology and
parapsychology), religion, and even an ignorant church (in her seeking excessively supernatural
manifestations and in her not controlling supernatural gifts according to the guidance of the
Bible), Satan is causing this world to be filled with the power of darkness. Yet this is but Satan's
last and final preparation for the manifestation of the Antichrist. Those who are truly spiritual
(that is, those who reject soul power) sense all around them the acceleration of opposition from
the evil spirits. The whole atmosphere is so darkened that they find it hard to advance.... Let
me say that before the Lord's return similar things to these will be greatly increased, perhaps
even more than a hundred-fold. Satan will perform many astonishing feats by utilizing this soul
power so as to deceive God's elect. *
In one final note of caution, the Chinese author warns Christians and others as follows:
Satan ... is trying his best to use the latent energy of the soul to accomplish his goal. For this
reason, all who develop their soul power cannot avoid being contacted and used by the evil
spirit.... Satan is now engaging this soul power to serve as a substitute for God's gospel and
its power. He tries to blind people's hearts, through the marvel of soul force, into accepting a
bloodless religion [that is to say, a religion that has no place for the shedding of Christ's blood
on the Cross for man's sins]. He also uses the discoveries of psychic sciences to cast doubt
upon the value of [divinely ordained] supernatural occurrences in Christianity—causing people
to consider the latter as likewise being nothing but the latent power of the soul. He aims at
substituting Christ's salvation with psychic force. The modern attempt to change evil habits
and bad temperaments by hypnosis is a forerunner to this objective.
Watchman Nee ends by providing the necessary spiritual antidote to the dangers lurking
in the unseen realm: people "can be protected only by knowing the difference between the
soul and the spirit." Great caution must be exercised against Satanic deception, for, adds
Nee, "where soul force is, there also is the evil spirit." In sum, therefore, people must
especially deny the latent power of the soul, lest in employing this forbidden extraordinary
power they "fall into Satan's hands."61
It would thus be Watchman's Nee's conclusion to the matter under discussion that the
various phenomena mentioned by those whose observations, experiences and writings were
cited earlier, were in all probability none other than examples of the release of the soul's
latent power, a release, he would say, that everyone today—both Christian and non-Christian
alike—should avoid at all costs for the reasons given. It is one possible explanation well
worth considering by those who may at some point be confused when confronted by such
phenomena in the world that in many instances do take on the appearance but not the
reality of bona fide and quite legitimate spiritual manifestations of supernormal, supernatural
power that are present within various segments of the Christian community.
It is nearly indisputable, on the other hand, that Nee's evaluation and judgment would be
different with regard to the phenomenon represented by the Maharishi of Kailash, if the
testimony given by Sundar Singh can be accepted. For it must be acknowledged that, based
on the Sadhu's lengthy and quite positive descriptions of his three separate encounters with
the Maharishi, it becomes evident that this saintly sage of Kailash did indeed keep-close
spiritual fellowship with Christ. Certainly Sundar Singh himself thought so, the Sadhu calling
him "this Christian saint" and testifying about him again and again that "he said he dwelt in
Christ," that the Rishi once told him that "our dear Lord is always near us," that he continually
practiced the reading of the Christian Scriptures, of which he possessed "a very old manuscript
in Greek bound in leather," that he has a "wonderful Christian life," and that he continually
prayed in the name of Jesus.62 And if all this be true, Gergan Tharchin observed, then as a
consequence "of his close communion with Jesus through the Spirit of God the Maharishi
could have received and exercised several of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit63 to such a
degree that he would have been able to exhibit tremendous spiritual powers," even as the
Sadhu has asserted he possessed and which were singularly confirmed to the Sadhu later in
the latter's own personal life each time he had left the presence of this "holy personage."
Watchman Nee would therefore have most likely concluded that the life of this Christian
anchorite of Kailash was indisputably dominated in both body and soul by the spirit in him
and not by the released power of his soul, and certainly not by his flesh, thus making him in
the eyes of Nee a "spiritual man" indeed! Moreover, given Nee's readiness to accept as
credible many of the wonders performed by the practitioners of "soul force"—including that
of extraordinary longevity, he would have had little difficulty in believing that a man imbued
so completely by the Spirit of God to live by the superior power of the spirit could be divinely
enabled, in conjunction with an effective plant diet, to reach well beyond the "normal" period
of years allotted to mankind generally for their earthly existence.
Finally, in further defense of Sundar Singh, it should be mentioned that the renowned
German Christian scholar and history of religions Professor, Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967),
who otherwise deeply admired the Sadhu and valued a "true and grateful friendship" he
personally had with him, was nevertheless himself skeptical, as were others, of certain
aspects of the Indian mystic's life, and sought by the most meticulous means of critical
investigation to ascertain the truth or falsity with regard to them. One such "problem" in the
Sadhu's experience centered around his claims with regard to the Maharishi of Kailash,
especially whether any credence ought to be given to his claim of the Rishi 5s existence.
Upon concluding his investigation Heiler was compelled to alter radically his former skepticism,
as he makes clear in his biographical study of Sundar Singh. In it he writes:
I have examined with great care the accusations both of the Jesuits and of Pfister, and I have
caused thorough inquiries to be made in India in all directions. The result has been most
astonishing. I have been forced to modify my own critical attitude towards the miraculous
element in the Sadhu's life and to revise my theory of the legendary element. In spite of the fact
that all the questions which have been raised have not yet been answered, it is exactly those
narratives which were most difficult to accept (such as the story of the Maharishi ...) which
have been most unexpectedly confirmed.64
Other thorough investigators of the Maharishi episode have also come away from their
researches with a sympathetic attitude toward Sundar Singh's claims about the Christian
hermit of Kailash. Anglican Bishop Appasamy, whose well-balanced biography has been
one of the key sources about the Sadhu consulted by the present writer, was one such
inquirer regarding the question of the Maharishi's existence. He concluded that there were
probably only three possibilities one could come to as to the truth of the matter: (a) that the
Sadhu had made up the entire story as a way to stir up people's curiosity; (b) that the
Maharishi was a person who appeared in visions to which the Sadhu was continually subject.
These two possibilities the Bishop rejected for various reasons given and which appear to
the present writer to be legitimate and convincing. And (c) that the story was true. Appasamy
writes in his biography that he was "inclined to accept that there was a very old man engaged
in prayer in one of the caves near the Kailash mountain."
In partial support of this position he reported what Professor Heiler had learned from
Rev. Yunas Singh of the London Missionary Society. Yuhas Singh was himself to travel to
Tibet in 1916, would author a book in Hindi about the country, Kailash Darshan (Allahabad:
North Indian Christian Tract and Bible Society), and was therefore conversant to some
degree by that time with the relevant geographical area under discussion. The primary purpose
for making the trip was to conduct his own investigation concerning the Rishi. Before traveling
to the Kailash region he had a conversation with the Sadhu about the latter's earlier trip to
Tibet in 1912 and about his discovery of the Maharishi that year and his visit with the old
sage. Hearing about the Sadhu's discovery, Rev. Singh had then shown a map of the country
to Sundar and asked him to point out the route he had taken in 1912 and the places he had
visited. Having been shown these things correctly, Singh was later convinced that the Sadhu
was very much acquainted with the way to Tibet.
Embarking shortly thereafter on his own journey to Tibet, Rev. Singh came to the small
bazaar town of Gianama, located 80 miles from the Indian border and 40 miles from Kailash.
Here, writes Appasamy, Yunas Singh heard "from the Tibetan merchants there that numerous
ascetics lived at Kailash in hidden caves and that a very, very old ascetic lived in the region
of the snows." They were not, however, "able to tell him exactly how old he was or to lead
Yunas Singh to him."65
But Appasamy was also impressed, as was Professor Heiler, with the testimony of the
English mining engineer's son to missionary Mary Dobson and with the echo of the same by
Rabindranath Tagore in his own testimony to Dobson, both mentioned earlier in this discussion,
and which give credence to the notion of the existence of ancient Christian hermits having
lived in the Kailash region of Tibet.66
Based on all the available data, it is the present author's view that Gergan Tharchin was
on sufficiently solid circumstantial ground to believe that the Christian Maharishi of Kailash
was not a figment of the Sadhu's imagination but was in fact a real human being several
centuries old who had dedicated himself to a long life of intercessory prayer as a Christian
recluse in the Sacred Mountain area of the High Himalayas of southwestern Tibet.
III
The story of the cruel martyrdom in Tibet of Kartar Singh (who hailed, incidentally, from
the Sadhu's very own district of Patiala in the Punjab) is perhaps quite familiar to the readers
of Sundar Singh's biographical literature.67 Tharchin acknowledged there were two types of
capital punishment of the grossest kind meted out to criminals in Tibet. According to the first,
a criminal was thrown into a deep dry well where he then died a cruel death. According to
the second, a criminal was encased in the wet rawhide of a yak which was sewn up and then
placed in the hot sun. As the intense heat dried up the rawhide the victim inside the skin
gradually shrank until days later he met the logical but most horrible end to his life. According
to the story which Sundar Singh was told when he, like Kartar Singh before him, was himself
preaching in Tibet in 1912, Kartar had met this second fateful kind of punishment—having
been consigned to a yak skin.
Commenting on this story, which the Sadhu repeated many times in his addresses and
sermons, Tharchin made the following observations:
First, this sort of punishment was given to criminals only. Second, I find it difficult to accept as
fact that the religious-minded Tibetans would choose this kind of punishment for a person
who was a preacher of a religion. Third, Tibetans, at least, could not have acted in such an
inconsiderate manner. Fourth, they would have subjected Kartar Singh to an alternative—that
of expelling him from the country [actually, according to the Sadhu, this they had unsuccessfully
attempted to do] before resorting to the unkind treatment noted above.
Fifth, the preaching of Christianity was not a new thing to Tibet or the Tibetans. The Roman
Catholic Mission in the capital city of Lhasa is a case in point. In fact, on one occasion in
Lhasa, the missionaries were accused—of course falsely—of invoking divine wrath or
displeasure which caused the destructive floods in and around that city. Interestingly, they
were not given any punishment, and far less was there any talk of "rawhide" treatment. On the
contrary, the missionaries were protected by an official not unlike a prime minister,* who ended
up by attributing the cause for the catastrophe to the sins of the people themselves.68 It is true
that a missionary was killed in the province of Kham in eastern Tibet, yet this was not due to
any anti-Christian feeling or any animosity towards missionaries or Christians. This heinous
act was motivated purely by the thought of plunder. The bandits who slew the missionary fled
away with his foreign-made belongings.69
Sixth, the rawhide punishment had already been abolished by the Tibetan government by
the time Kartar Singh came on the scene. Seventh, on the other hand, it possibly .may have
been that Kartar Singh succumbed to natural causes of sickness such as pneumonia in the
high Himalayas, or he may have committed a [trekking] mistake if he did not know the regional
topography well or lacked proper practical knowledge of climbing techniques.
It was quite true that by the time of Kartar Singh's presence in Tibet in 1912, a law had
long before been enacted (in 1898) by the Tibetan National Assembly and a decree thereafter
issued by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama which henceforth forbade capital punishment as well
as any kind of physical mutilation, torture or any other form of cruel or inhuman punishment
* This was the able Tibetan nobleman named Pho-lha Sodnam Tobgay whose rule, write Tibetan cultural
historians David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, ushered in "a golden age of good government in Tibet" for
twenty years "under a truly great Tibetan ... whose conciliatory and just behavior" was able "to keep monastic
resentment to a low level." See their Cultural History of Tibet, 217-23.
of criminals (or of anyone else, for that matter) except in cases of treason or conspiracy
against the State. This proscription would of course have included the yak rawhide type of
punishment. It should nevertheless be recognized that nearly every Western writer or cultural
historian 011 Tibetan society has observed that though such kind of punishment may have
indeed been abolished by decision of the central Tibetan government in Lhasa, the arm of
governmental enforcement of its decisions and decrees in the distant provinces clearly left
something to be desired in almost all aspects of Tibetan life.
To quote one respected authority on Tibet, Hugh Richardson, after noting the 1898 act
of abolishment, went on to observe that it was possible that "in the more remote districts
mutilation and torture were occasionally and illegally inflicted by district officials or by
landlords, who enjoyed magisterial powers over their peasants ..." And a more recent
writer, Michael H. Goodman, in his massive biography of Dalai Lama XIV, noted that "the
farther away their districts were from Lhasa, the more likely Dzongpons [Governors]
would be to impose larger fines and greater punishments. In remote areas they would not
hesitate to lop off the hand or foot of a habitual offender or decree that a miscreant's eyes
be gouged out, despite the fact that such measures had been forbidden by the Thirteenth
Dalai Lama."
As one example of the flagrant violation of the Dalai Lama's decree of 1898, Moravian
missionary/archaeologist A. H. Francke, while visiting Gergan Tharchin's home village in
1909, reported the following horrible incident which occurred at Shipki (not far from the
area of Kartar Singh's demise): "... tax-collecting is carried on in the most cruel way all
over Tibet, and they have to part with all their few rupees when the tax-collector comes.
Only recently news was brought to Poo that an unfortunate wretch whose taxes had not
been paid for the last three years was whipped to death at Shipki," a town located inside
Tibet two to three days' march from Poo. It should not be overlooked that this illegal
punishment in 1909 in the far western Tibetan border region had been inflicted on one of
Tibet's citizens a full eleven years after the issuance of the Lhasan decree, therefore
precluding the possibility that by that year any excuse could be put forward by the local
administrators of justice claiming ignorance of the law. Perhaps missionary Francke had
this in mind when he added: "No wonder, that most of the Tibetans would prefer to become
British subjects."
Yet it needs additionally to be reported—and despite Gergan Tharchin's observations to
the contrary—that members of the Tibetan clergy, too, have been guilty of violating this new
law; yet not in a far-off hidden corner of the country but in Tibet's third largest city, and a
mere 150 miles from the Tibetan capital! The gruesome infraction of the law now to be told
of took place in 1904 at Gyantse and was reported by a person who was there at the time,
Laurence A. Waddell, the Chief Medical Officer of the Younghusband Expedition. The city
had only just been captured by the British when, as reported by Waddell, "Captain Parr's
house in the town was gutted, all his papers destroyed, and his [three] servants hacked to
pieces alive [by lamas] in the same brutal manner as was one of our Gurkha followers, who
was mutilated and cut in pieces this morning outside our [Fort] wall." Furthermore, at the
same Tibetan city during the decade of 1908 to 1918 the acting clerk of the British Fort at
Gyantse, Mr. Martin, was able to document with numerous photographs a series of actual
executions and beheadings which had been carried out by the Tibetan authorities on the
citizenry in the area, in violation of the Lhasan edict outlawing capital punishment.*
Yet, not only in Central Tibet, but so also in the far eastern part of the country, it could
likewise be reported that a savage and bizarre series of tortures had been inflicted by Tibetan
monks upon the captured soldiers of Chao Ehr-feng, a Chinese general who was ruthless and
brutal in his own right. Between 1905 and 1910 he had been engaged in "pacification" military
campaigns of the most cruel and barbaric sort in East Tibet, particularly in Kham Province.
The prominent longtime Australian missionary to that part of Tibet, James Edgar, after first
noting the merciless conduct which "Butcher Chao's" forces had themselves wreaked upon
the Tibetans, could nonetheless recount the following techniques of savagery which the so-
called pacifistic monks had in retribution meted out upon the Han soldiery, some of which
obviously ended in the victims' demise: "We heard also of others being impaled on stakes; of
wretches suspended by hooks in the lips and cords round the thumbs; of tongues torn out; of
boiling tea or butter being poured down captive throats; or of pinioned sufferers being fed daily
on the grilled flesh of their own bodies." So much, then, for Tharchin's charitable belief in the
peace-loving and considerate behavior of all Tibetans, but especially of Tibet's "religious-minded"
among them! To the contrary, in this instance Tibet's pacifistic Buddhist clergy proved that they
could be as barbaric as anybody else.
Even much later than 1918 at Gyantse, cruel and inhuman punishment could still be
documented. The grandson of the celebrated Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, Colonel Ilya
Tolstoy of the United States Army, reported that in 1942 he saw on the streets of the city a
young man, a convicted murderer, wearing heavy leg irons joined by a rigid iron bar. Most
likely, thought Tolstoy, he had killed a person of high rank, since the usual murderers, he said,
were placed in irons which were somewhat easier to shuffle along in. Tolstoy added, however,
that any convicted murderer would be required to remain in irons for life; and although he
was free to move about during the day as best he might, he had to report to Gyantse's fort by
nightfall.
Conditions of punishment would be even harsher the farther into the distant parts of the
Forbidden Land Colonel Tolstoy traveled. The Colonel and his Army companion, Tibetan-
speaking Captain Brooke Dolan, were on a special World War Two assignment which took
them on an expedition through Tibet all the way to China.70 At Nagchu on the desolate and
remote northern plain called the Changthang, Captain Dolan reported a hair-raising
conversation he had with a government official, Changchi Kenchung, concerning the kinds
of punishment meted out there. Wrote Dolan in his diary: "Murder and lesser crimes are
very common in the Changthang... The commonest punishment is a lashing... One hundred
lashes is not considered severe for a misdemeanor. For thievery, armed brigandage, or murder,
the penalty is loss of one or both hands or legs, which are cut above the knee. To seal the
arteries the stumps are at once plunged into boiling oil, but the Changchi complains that many
* Professor Nicholas Roerich could report that even into the 1920s, albeit occurring in some of the more remote areas
of Tibet where he had journeyed in 1927-8, beheadings were still taking place, and with a bizarre—even gruesome—
twist to their conclusion. In one passage from his volume of travels he could write this: "To deprive the criminal of
further incarnations is considered the severest form of punishment. To effect this, the heads of the worst criminals
are cut off and dried in a special place where an entire collection of similar remains is preserved." Heart of Asia, 82.
culprits die after amputation of the legs. Such death compounds a sin which may rebound
upon the justice and his minions. 'Many prisoners,' remarked the Changchi, 'prefer lashing
to amputation but after severe lashing delivered on the buttocks, and just below, the culprit is
seldom able to walk again as the muscles and tendons are destroyed.' As many as a thousand
lashes are administered and death may ensue!" Now it was against Buddhist belief to kill,
and that is the reason the Changchi had been dismayed when prisoners he had flogged had,
as he was wont to say, the "bad taste" to die!
From this it is obvious that far beyond the time of the 1898 decree—yea, well beyond
even its subsequent partial re-enunciation in 1913 by the same Dalai Lama who had issued
the earlier decree*—Tibetan custom was still condoning illegal reprisals and harsh
punishments short of death upon criminals, even though such actions were not only unlawful
but ran diametrically counter to the Buddhist religious teaching of the country as well,
Such was the assessment of Western travelers to the Land of Pacifistic Buddhism. The
testimony to such a situation has also been given by Tibetans themselves. One such witness
to this state of things in Tibet has been Tsewang Y. Pemba, who was born at Gyantse in
1931 and grew up at Yatung and Lhasa till 1940, after which he left his Tibetan homeland
to be educated in an "English" school at Kurseong in India and later in medical school at
London. He acknowledged in a biography of his early years in Tibet, which he had had
published at London in 1957, that serious infractions of certain aspects of the 1898 law
had continued to be rife in Tibet long after the Dalai Lama's decree had been issued. He,
like Tolstoy and Dolan, addressed in particular the matter of inhumane punishment—short
of the death penalty—of all types of criminals, both petty and otherwise. Writing
retrospectively, Pemba drew a sorry picture of how criminal justice had been administered
in Tibet before the Chinese invasion and occupation of the land in the 1950s but long after
the issuance of both the 1898 decree and the 1913 proclamation, and gave examples of
what he himself had witnessed while growing up in his homeland during the 1930s:
Just below the Potala [the Dalai Lama's winter palace] is the jail of Lhasa. I went there with some
friends to see what the place looked like. There was a deep dark pit in whose depths a human
voice could be heard. It was a dungeon for criminals, some of whom were destined to spend their
whole lives within these holes. Capital punishment as such was abolished some years back,
because the Buddhist religion does not allow the taking of human lives, a tenet that, like most
religious tenets, is certainly not strictly followed. Anyway it would be far more merciful to give a
quick death than to let men linger in such an abominable hole for years.
... In spite of the oft-spoken spirituality of Tibet and the noble regard of Buddhism for all
living things and its abhorrence of all forms of suffering, Tibet had a cruel and terrible form of
justice. People were whipped for petty crimes, the lashings amounting sometimes to two hundred
or so, and were deformed for life. Monks who stole were pilloried, and had to sit in the Lhasa
streets and beg for food. One saw quite a number of these gentlemen basking in the sun with a
* Apparently because mutilation by amputation had continued to be widespread throughout his realm despite
his decree of 1898, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama felt compelled to enunciate again part of the earlier decree, but in
more specific terms. At the conclusion of the expulsion from Tibet of all Chinese, His Holiness took the occasion
when proclaiming his formal Declaration of Independence in 1913 to include in Article (3) of that historic
document the following proscription:"... Furthermore, the amputation of citizens' limbs has been carried out as
a form of punishment. Henceforth, such severe punishments are forbidden." Quoted in W. D. Shakabpa, A
Political History of Tibet, 248.
lapful of momos or dumplings, patiently bearing their yokes and the jeers of the gaping crowds.
When I was at school in India and was being taught the history of Elizabethan times, my innocent
friends had some difficulty in understanding what a pillory was, a thing that to me was all too
familiar! Many criminals had their hands chopped off, and the bleeding stumps immersed into
boiling oil to arrest the bleeding. Others were shackled in pairs and had to beg for their food....
Justice was very much a matter of how influential one was in the country and how heavy a
purse one could give as a bribe to the Government. There was a great deal of bribery.
[At] the prison that we saw [in Lhasa] ... we heard a woman shrieking in the compound and
appealing to the "tourists" above. "The Deba Shung (Tibetan Central Government) has no justice
... I am quite innocent, but I have been locked in here for years ... just for nothing ... just for
nothing...Someone told us that the woman had seduced a high-ranking monk into the pleasures
of the world, and so committed a terrible crime against religion. I suppose it takes two to make love,
but most probably the monk got away with little punishment except being thrown out of his order.
These examples (and more could be cited from the literature) stand in sharp contrast to
some of Tharchin's observations enumerated above concerning the Kartar Singh incident. It
could very well have been that Tharchin's vision of the land of his ancestors which, to borrow
a phrase from another writer on Tibet, he "so passionately loved, had been not a little biased."
Far from Tibetans not being capable of acting "in such an inconsiderate manner," one would
fairly have to conclude that at least some of them, including "the religious-minded" among their
number, were indeed capable of doing so and did; it leading Waddell to make—but certainly
too harshly—a far too sweeping indictment of all Tibetans when in his woeful tale of Gyantse,
he added, with obvious bitterness, the following words: "The Tibetans have hitherto been credited
by many with being so deeply imbued by Buddhist principles as not to take life, much less inflict
pain; but we now know that they are sheer barbarians at heart ..."7I Although Waddell was
excessively harsh and sweeping in his judgment, one must face up to the conclusion that given
the reality described of how central governmental enforcement of Tibetan laws was lax in the
remoter areas of the realm such as Shipki in the far west, Nagchu in the distant north and
Kham Province in the far east, given also the fact that Tashigang (the locale where the alleged
martyrdom of Kartar Singh took place) is in the distant southwest corner of Tibet proper, and
given the well-known fact as well (and discussed earlier in Chapter 2) of the brittle opposition
to the Christian message in this same geographical area at that time by the lamas who were
known to inflame quite easily the passions of the people against the foreign religion, it surely is
not beyond the realm of possibility that just such a type of capital punishment could in fact have
been meted out upon this person.
According to Sundar Singh's account, Kartar had been preaching the gospel in and around
Tashigang for three whole months, repeatedly refusing to withdraw from the area when
challenged to do so by the locals, who were becoming increasingly agitated and angry with
him for his holy boldness. In fact, the Sadhu declares concerning Kartar Singh that "all the
people became his enemies." If, from their perspective, they were sufficiently provoked,
could not anger turn to malice, malice turn to hatred, and hatred turn to the unthinkable:
especially if there were no constraints present from the central authority or even the local
authority to thwart an intent to rid themselves of a "public nuisance"?
Nevertheless, in the final analysis, no one other than the Sadhu himself can be absolutely
sure. For there were 110 objective witnesses to the supposed martyrdom by this means and
no one else was with Sundar as a confirming witness to what it was he received in the form
of verbal accounts of Kartar Singh's demise from the local townspeople, who themselves
might have purposely distorted the truth of what actually happened in order to intimidate the
Sadhu and frighten him away from carrying out his own evangelistic efforts among them.72
Having said this, though, the following observations ought nonetheless to be put forward
for consideration:
(a) that this alleged story of Kartar Singh's Christian martyrdom had so deeply impressed
Sundar Singh that in his addresses over the years since 1912 the evangelist was moved to
repeat the story over and over again, it thus indicating his firm belief that such a martyrdom
in the way described by the Tashigang townspeople had in fact occurred;
(b) that in his Urdu account of this incident published several years later, Sundar Singh
was able, retrospectively, to give specific and detailed information relating to Kartar Singh
and his family, which, he wrote, "I afterwards myself confirmed": the name of his father,
Sundar Harnam Singh; his family's place of abode—Patiala; details of Kartar's Christian
conversion and of the hostility, humiliation and ostracism which the father and family had
then inflicted upon their religious rebel; who it was who had baptized him (Rev. Rabarsanki);
and the fact that he had studied day and night to learn the Tibetan language;
(c) that subsequent to his visit to Tashigang, Sundar Singh had fortuitously encountered Kartar's
father while preaching at Patiala railway station about this very witness of martyrdom; and,
(d) that after the Sadhu's testifying to the crowd assembled about Kartar's ignominious
death in Tibet, the bitterly weeping father stepped forward from the crowd and confessed
concerning his cruel treatment of his son at the latter's conversion to Christ but now
acknowledging that he had himself become a Christian as a consequence.73
All such specific information—if untrue—could have been challenged at the time by
those concerned, but as far as can be determined, nothing of the kind ever occurred. Hence,
when the above developments, as reported by the Sadhu, are placed alongside the discussion
of Tibetan laxity in restraining cruel and illegal punishment within the Great Closed Land's
boundaries, it is difficult for the present writer to accept the claim that the story of Kartar
Singh and his martyrdom in the way described was untrue, beyond the realm of possibility, or
the imaginative invention of a mystical mind.
IV
The 1912 incident at Rasar somewhere east of the Sacred Lake in Tibet of Sadhuji being
thrown into a deep dry well with the lid firmly fastened and locked in place over his head has also
been given wide publicity, with much being made out of it.74 Through what the Sadhu would term
divine intervention, after three days and nights of sitting on a mass of human bones and rotting
flesh of murderers at the bottom of a forty-foot well, he was dramatically rescued at night: the
hinged lid was unlocked, he was hauled up by a rope after a voice from the top told him to grab
hold, and once at the top of the well, the lid was replaced and put in a locked position once again-
all apparently performed by unseen hands! Even his right arm that had purposely been nearly
broken by his persecutors to preclude any possibility of escape was now completely healed.
Sundar Singh's close friend once again admitted the difficulty of accepting this occurrence
as fact. Especially was this difficult for the Tibetan to accept since, he said, "I have never
read or heard of any such place as Rasar." The well incident, mused Tharchin, "may have
been due to Sadhuji's vivid imagination. At times the imagination tends to objectify or make
seem real the existence of subjective phenomena." Moreover, he just could not reconcile
such an incident with the religious temperament of the Tibetans, who, he asserted, could not
have stooped so low as to treat the young sadhu, a preacher of religion, in such a dastardly
manner. But as intimated in the previous section, it would appear upon reflection that Tharchin
of a later day had either forgotten, or was unaware of, the excesses—yea, illegal actions—
perpetrated in the past by some of his ethnic brethren, even some of the religious-minded
ones among them, inside the borders of the Land of Monasteries and Monks.
In this connection, a biographer of Sundar Singh, missionary to India Thomas Riddle, has
pointed out what Tharchin, if he in fact was indulging in any ethnic bias here, may have
chosen to forget; namely, that though Tibetan Buddhists—both clerical and lay—had been
forbidden by their religion to kill any living creature, "they have found indirect ways of
accomplishing the same and without breaking the letter of the law." Riddle then proceeded
to describe what he meant by this. Whether in sewing up a condemned man within a wet yak
skin and putting it out into the sun to dry or, as in this present case, in casting a person into a
deep well and placing a locked lid atop it, all responsibility by the Buddhist for the killing
which might happen afterwards ends for him with the sewing of the skin and the locking of
the well lid. The forces which cause the shrinking and perhaps dying within the yak hide and
those forces which cause terrible suffering and even the termination of life at the bottom of
the well are beyond the Buddhist's control. In his thinking, therefore, he is not guilty of any
severe injury, ill-health or death which might ensue.75
Tharchin additionally observed that had "the Head Lama, as has been asserted in some
accounts of this incident, indeed noticed the miraculous escape of Sundar Singh from the
well, then the Lama, and along with him the Tibetans, would have elevated Sundar to the
level of divine incarnation. They would have worshiped him as a heavenly personage." Yet
could there not have been another and equally plausible reaction on the part of the Head
Lama: that of fear? When the Sadhu came right back into town to preach after his ordeal in
the well, he was arrested again and brought before the judgment seat of the Head Lama;
who, when told by the evangelist the story of his incredible escape, was both amazed and
frightened. This, according to the account of the event as related by the Sadhu to his close
friend (Mrs.) Rebecca J. Parker and narrated by her in her biography of Sundar Singh. For
when search for the only key to the locked lid was made and had been found to be still on the
Head Lama's girdle, "he was speechless with amazement and fear. He then ordered Sundar
to leave the town and get away as far as possible, lest his powerful God should bring
some untold disaster upon himself and his people"16
Furthermore, granted that there are several valid objections to accepting the story without
some critical evaluation [for example, no eyewitnesses, no identification by others of any
place-name known as Rasar (Risar) in Tibet, and Sundar's lack of a more specific date for
this event]; nonetheless, another of the Sadhu's biographers, A. J. Appasamy, has put forth
two reasons for giving weight to believing the story in its basic outline. These are the fact of
the almost universally-acknowledged honesty of Sundar Singh, and the fact that the Sadhu
had often recounted this story in his many addresses (and interviews, too) over the years
since.77 For example, at one point during an interview he gave in 1920 to a group of American
journalists who had met him at the New York docks upon his arrival by steamer from England,
the Sadhu remarked upon the initial bigotry but then subsequent friendship he had encountered
at some places of his ministry, using his experience at Rasar as one illustration of this. At
first, observed the Sadhu to the reporters about his deliverance from the well, "I did not think
it was something extraordinary. I thought it was just a good man [who had freed me]. But
later I knew it must have been something extraordinary. 'Lo, I am with you even unto the
end of the world,' Christ said. And He was with me!" But then he related to the assembled
journalists that before the frightened Head Lama had ordered him to depart from his district,
this same Lama, explained the Sadhu, "asked me to forgive him and to take his woolen shawl
as a sign that I forgave him." "Since then," Sundar concluded significantly, "the people in
that village of Rasar have been my friends."78 Even to the extent, it ought to be added here,
that a Christian congregation eventually emerged there (see below).
Yet not only did the Sadhu continue to recount the story in his messages and conversations
as an illustration from life of how God delivers His servants from suffering and death; he
also did not hesitate to invoke Rasar as an authentic geographical place in Tibet, despite his j
awareness of those critics who maintained there was no such place in Tibet by that name. In
fact, at the height of the controversy surrounding his stated experiences, Sundar Singh was
found describing in a June 1926 letter to his dear friend R^v. Riddle his past preaching tours
to Tibet including the one that took him to Rasar. "From Kailash I went [eastward]. There
are several places between Kailash and Rasar, which is a small place. From Kailash it took
about two weeks to reach Rasar." And in a personal conversation with Rev. Riddle, the
Sadhu, in recounting his harrowing experience of the well at Rasar, had told his friend that he
"had penetrated ten marches beyond Kailash Mountain and had reached the village of Rasar^
and "was arrested for preaching another religion." Moreover, a year earlier (1925) Sundar,
in response to Professor Heiler's inquiry about the Rasar event as a means by which the
German scholar could answer the Sadhu's critics, gave further geographical details about the
village's location: "Unfortunately, he (Tharchin) was not with me at Rasar. This place is at a
distance of over 600 or 700 miles [west] from Gyantse and Darjeeling, and such news does not
spread out easily in this prohibited and wild country. Therefore, he cannot be a witness to the
miracle of Rasar. When I will be hearing from Thapa, another young Tibetan in western Tibet,
I shall let you know." Clearly the Sadhu knew where Rasar was, if nobody else did!
Furthermore, four years later the Sadhu was claiming, quite significantly, that Christians were
there (the result of his fearless preaching?) and making reference to his harrowing experience
seventeen years earlier in the dry well! For in his very last conversation he ever had with Rev.
Riddle (which was in early 1929just before his disappearance and presumed death) Sundar Singh
spoke excitedly "of his great desire to see the little group of Christians at Rasar to the east ofLake j
Manasarowar." "He was convinced," noted Riddle in reporting the conversation, "that he would |
not come back again; and as he spoke, the thought of the Great Adventure so laid hold on him that |
he trembled with emotion as he visualized, not death, of which he had no fear, but another such J
frightful experience as he had already had in the well there."79
Whatever may be the true nature of the events with regard to the Maharishi, Kartar
gingh and the well incident at Rasar, Tharchin was never informed by his friend of these
three unusual incidents of 1912 during the latter's stay with him in Ghoom two years later or
Qt\ their Sikkim travels together immediately thereafter. "The first time I ever became aware
of these three experiences of the Sadhu," Tharchin noted, "was when I read about them in
the Urdu book mentioned before." Yet the fact that he had never been told by Sundar Singh
of these unusual experiences is not actually something to be surprised at when it is once
understood that the Sadhu usually only related such supernormal or miraculous events—and
almost always only in public speaking engagements—as a means of buttressing his witness
to the truth and power of the gospel. Although he was never one to deny the miraculous in
his own life (as did occur, he claimed, in the latter two of these experiences), the young
evangelist did not focus upon this element in his spirituality.
Far from it being a source of boasting, Sundar Singh viewed the miraculous, ironically, as
something God had granted in his life to keep him "small and humble"! This, and the motive
for his ever sharing such experiences in the first place, were made abundantly plain in a
letter written to one of his biographers, Friedrich Heiler, by Dr. H, W. Schomerus of the
Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mission who had worked in South India as a missionary of that
Society and later had joined the faculty of the University of Kiel, Germany. In the letter
Schomerus related a conversation he had had with the Sadhu in 1922 when the latter while
on tour in Europe had been a guest for three days in the home of the Kiel professor:
On the second evening of his visit here he spoke in our main church, specially giving warning
not to remain outside the door [of salvation] but to enter in. In affirmation of this he told some
of his well-known miraculous experiences, not to boast about them but to give emphasis to his
witness. Afterwards when we sat in my home talking together, I mentioned Luther and how
little value he paid to all subjective experiences. I had the impression that I had spoken out
what was in his own soul. Certainly his miraculous experiences mean much to him but they are
not the foundation of his faith. He looks upon them as a special gift which God had granted to
him because he needed it. Luther did not need that; he therefore was the greater man, he said.
What he had experienced was rather meant to make him small and humble and not proud and
high.80
Sundar Singh reported that heihad seen "a stone cross" in the West Tibetan Himalayas
"which was set upon a rock."81 This particular cross was said by some to have been
constructed of pieces of stone joined together. Tharchin was prepared to accept this statement.
The Sadhu's testimony indicates that this sighting had occurred as he "was going in the
direction of Lake Manasarovar" (that is to say, in the vicinity of that Sacred Lake and its
neighboring Sacred Peak, Mount Kailash). The Sadhu claimed that almost immediately after
his discovery of the stone cross he was told by the Maharishi of Kailash "that when the
Nestoriain Christians came to preach in Tibet, they had set up that cross here." Sundar's
reaction upon seeing "this banner of victory in that lonely place" was one of intense rejoicing:
"my heart danced with amazing joy and I had the desire to see something more; but when I
had wandered all around I [found myself] descending the hill with disappointment." It was at
this moment, then, that the Sadhu made the even more incredible discovery, already discussed
above, of the venerable sage of Kailash: the Maharishi himself. For having slipped on the ice
and having fallen farther down the hill, he finally landed at the mouth of a cave near the
Sacred Mount, where the Maharishi was meditating.82
"It is quite possible," Tharchin has asserted, "that this particular stony cross may have
indeed been planted there by the Nestorian Christians who went about preaching Christianity
even to the borders of China." Ample evidence from Church history bears out this reference
by Tharchin to the presence and formal and informal evangelizing activities of the Nestorians
in eastern Asia. Not the least of this evidence was the discovery in 1625 of the so-called
"Nestorian Monument" (with inscriptions containing among other things an extensive Christian
doctrinal statement) that had been erected in 781 a.d. in China and which later came to be
housed at the former ancient Chinese capital of Sian.83
Yet there is another and quite extraordinary piece of evidence that goes a long way to
substantiate the Sadhu's claim of there having been a Nestorian presence in Tibet, at least in
western Tibet, and which furthermore lends credence to his assertion that he had in truth
discovered a Nestorian stone cross in the West Tibet Himalayas. This evidence—of which
Gergan Tharchin may or may not have been aware—has been documented by, among other
Westerners, the Moravians stationed in Lesser Tibet and confirmed by a German scholar at
Berlin, Professor F. W. K. Müller, who over the years had been supplied with information
about such evidence by Moravian missionaty and respected archaeologist, Dr. A. H. Francke,
Mission Superintendent Rev. Fred E. Peter, and others. It so happened that in June 1906 a
discovery had been made by Dr. F. Ernest Shawe of Leh while he was on a medical tour in
the outlying region. East of Leh and just outside the village and ancient hilltop lamasery ruins
of Drangtse (Tangtse, Tankse, etc., on some maps) very near the eastern frontier of Ladakh
that borders upon what was then Tibet proper, Moravian Shawe found carved on the face of
an immense rock a number of large crosses.
Actually, more recent scholarship on this Drangtse artifact describes the boulder—which
looks north—as having inscriptions and petroglyphs that are visible on its east, south and
west sides. One scholar, Professor G. Uray from Budapest, Hungary, in a Tibetan studies
symposium paper he delivered at Vienna in 1981, has given a description of these rock sides
as follows (though it must be mentioned that when compared with scholar Rohit Vohra's
much later, more complete study on the various Drangtse inscriptions and their rock side
locations,84 Uray's several compass point designations with respect to these said rock sides
are found to be faulty):
The east side ... bears hunting scenes, images of stupas, swastikas, etc., as well as several
very short inscriptions in a script which is obviously Sogdian [an earlier form of the Syriac
language] and a short Tibetan inscription which has no interest for the topic of the present
paper ... On the south side ... one finds a large Sogdian inscription of nine lines and a short
one of a single word as well as three great Maltese crosses. Both the left and right crosses are
supported—one by one—by stalks rising from flower-patterns; the middle cross seems to be
unfinished, ... it [having] only a stalk but no flower. A similar cross with stalk but without
flower is to be seen together with an inscription and two further signs on the west side of the
rock.85
Concerning these various crosses—at least concerning the group of three—they appeared
to their discoverer, Moravian medical missionary Shawe, to be, as he himself asserted, "plainly
not Tibetan or Buddhist, but Christian, and probably Byzantine in character." And though
both early and later scholar-specialists have disagreed on what is the correct translation of
the nine-line inscription and whether the latter and the nearby carved crosses are connected,
time-wise, with each other, all scholars do agree that these anciently-carved series of crosses
are Christian and not «on-Christian in origin.
Without question, Shawe's discovery was truly a great find, Professor Uray calling it "the
most significant, relatively well documented, and most frequently treated inscriptions and
carvings of crosses" to be found among the so-called Nestorian artifacts. Moreover, he
went on to point out that besides the Drangtse find, there were other examples of crosses
which had been carved into the rocks of Ladakh, and often located in close proximity to
inscriptions in various languages.86 These finds, too, it would appear, provide still further
support for the believability of the Sadhu's report: the inference to be drawn from which is
that the people of western Tibet had long ago witnessed the arrival of Nestorian Christians
into its precincts. Professor Uray had himself said as much when he opined in his paper that
the Drangtse crosses, together with other epigraphic and archaeological monuments as well
as passages from certain literary texts, do unquestionably "provide historical and philological
evidence for Tibet having had contact with Nestorian Christianity and Manicheism from the
eighth to the tenth centuries." Furthermore, the aforementioned scholar Vohra, who has
more recently investigated on-site the cross carvings and inscriptions at Drangtse, made it
clear in his summary study that this famous cluster of boulders in Ladakh had at one time
constituted "an important campsite on the southern artery of the Silk Route where ... Nestorian
Christians [among others] ... interacted with the Tibetans."87
In the light of all this that has been said, then, Gergan Tharchin was certainly on solid
ground to have accepted the statement of the Sadhu of having discovered what the latter
believed to be a stone cross erected by traveling Nestorian Christians in the district of the
Sacred Mountain of Tibet. That this latter area was linked by key caravan routes with
Drangtse (which in turn was the place very near to where the tracks met that led from
Bactria, the Pamir and the western Tarim basin to India and central Tibet)88 is an important
fact which should not be overlooked when assessing the probability of what Sundar Singh
saw and the conclusion he came to that it was in truth a Nestorian artifact.89
To the intriguing question which Moravian missionary Peter raised—Whether those who
carved the Christian crosses at Drangtse (and for that matter those who fashioned the
Sadhu's discovered stone cross) were possibly one of the links which connect Lamaism with
Nestorian (and by extension, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic) Christianity?—the response
must be that apparently the jury is still out on that issue. Nevertheless, it should be observed
that the extensive similarity which exists between both faiths i» terms of certain outward
symbols and ritual elements such as vestments, images, rosaries, candles, the symbol of the
fish,90 and the like seems to be far more than mere coincidence.91 This, in fact, became the
perception of many Western travelers and scholars who have visited among, or studied the
religious practices of, Tibetan Buddhists. As one such traveler in Indian Tibet remarked after
visiting numerous monasteries and temples throughout Kashmir and Ladakh in 1904:
... the thought fo/ced itself on the attention that, though all Christian sects would repudiate
with horror the suggestion that their own forms of worship resemble in any way that of
idolaters, yet it is the fact that the rituals of Hindus and Buddhists, of the Orthodox Greek
Church, of Roman Catholics and a section of Anglicans, have alike developed in a greater or
less degree in the direction of vestments, images, pictures, banners, flowers, lights, incense,
handbells, rosaries, offerings, and of a taste for darkness in churches and temples.... The
earliest Roman Catholic missionaries, who penetrated into Tibet in the 16th century, were so
uncomfortably impressed by the resemblance of Buddhism to Romanism that they thought it
must be an imitation by the devil of the religion of Christ.92
A link of some sort between the two religious systems would appear to be well-nigh indisputable.
However, the weight of the evidence would seem to support the notion that Tibetan Buddhism
derived these outward elements from the traveling Christian missionaries to Central Asia rather
than that Christendom had somehow derived these traditions and practices from Lamaist
Buddhism. *93 With respect to other parallels in the two faiths—those pertaining to the biographical
events, lifestyles and teachings of Buddha and Jesus—that is quite another matter, and one
which is still the subject of great debate among scholars in both schools of thought.94
VI
"Sadhuj i's encounter with the robber," Tharchin comments, "may have been partly truth
and partly exaggeration by the publishers. Sundar Singh did \not relate this experience to me
either." Most likely Tharchin has reference to an extraordinary encounter the Sadhu once
had with four robbers in the forests of Bheelera, one of whom had drawn a sharp knife on
him. Although since the event the story had been recounted at different times by the Sadhu
in a number of different ways and has been narrated by his various biographers in likewise
a variety of forms, nevertheless, the basic outlineof the encounter has remained faithful to
the fundamental facts of the case as originally told by Sundar. It might do well to lay out here
a composite account based upon these various delineations o£ it:
Passing through a thickly wooded forest area known as Bheelera that was a favorite haunt of
robbers and murderers, the Sadhu suddenly came upon four men sitting by the side of the
path. "One of them," recalled the evangelist, "sprang at me with a big knife in his hand." Seeing
no way of escape and unable to protect himself, Sundar, thinking his end had come, bowed his
head to await the blow. But the man for some reason hesitated, "staring fascinated over" the
* As Dr. Ernest J. Eitel of Hong Kong had stated in a published work of his in 1884: "About the middle of the fifth
century Nestorian missionaries reached Central Asia and made numbers of Buddhist priests of Tibet acquainted
with the story of Christ's life and with the ceremonial of the Catholic Church. True to the eclectic instincts of
Buddhism, the Tibetan priesthood then, and in subsequent centuries, adopted as many Christian ideas, traditions
and ceremonies, as they thought compatible with Buddhist orthodoxy." Buddhism, 30. See also the observations
on this matter in the End-Note indicated above for this point wherein Julien A. H. Louis, writing in 1894, is
quoted, giving additional testimony in support of the notion that Buddhism in Tibet and elsewhere in the Orient
derived the elements under discussion from Near Eastern Christianity through its early missionaries to distant
Asia, and that "the first introduction of Christianity and of Buddhism in Tibet would seem, therefore, to have
been almost coeval..." Gates of Tibet, 96.
For a counter view on the matter published a century later, the reader can consult Holger Kersten and Elmer
Gruber, The Original Jesus: the Buddhist Sources of Christianity (Shaftesbury, 1995).
Sadhu's shoulder. Instead of striking him, the robber demanded that he should hand over
everything he had. And upon searching Sundar for money and finding none, the man seized
the blanket from off his shoulder, but then allowed him to go his way.
"When I had gone about a furlong," however, the robber "called me back." Certain now that
only death awaited him, Sundar turned back, "but it turned out exactly opposite to my
imaginings," reported the evangelist. The robber then point blank asked him, "Who are you?"
Whereupon, said Sundar, "I told him about myself and my purpose in touring these parts," and
then "read to him the story of the rich man and Lazarus." This produced in the man great dread
over the fact that "if the rich man who had never robbed was in hell, then what would be his
own fate, who had robbed hundreds of times?" "He then repented on the spot," recounted the
Sadhu, "and asked for my forgiveness." Returning Sundar's blanket to him, the thief then led
him to a cave where he prepared food for the Sadhu and begged him to eat.
After further conversation, Sundar reported that he prayed with him, "but he was [still] very
distressed." The man next removed his own coat, spread it beneath his visitor, and then going
to one side of the cave, "he began to weep over his condition," pouring out an incredible story
of guilt and sin amidst many sobs and tears. The two men then retired for the night.
But very early the next morning the man awoke the Sadhu, brought him outside, and led him
to another cave where he showed the stunned servant of God a ghastly heap of human remains—
skulls, thighs, arm bones, ribs and vertebrae—all tossed and jumbled where the bodies of his
victims had been thrown together! With loud weeping the man pointed towards the pile of bones
and cried out: "These are my sins! And but for the One who walks with you, your body, too,
would have been thrown here last night. Tell me," he implored, "is there any hope for such as
me?" "Then," recounted the Sadhu, "I pitied hjm very much; but for myself I thanked God that He
had been with me, otherwise today my bones too would have been found on that heap."
Sundar then told the robber the story of the thief on the cross to whom the Lord had spoken
those words of cheer, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Whereupon the Sadhu
once more prayed with the man, and, the evangelist recalled, "he was comforted in his heart
with the thought, 'The Lord will save even me.'" The converted robber, Sundar reported, now
"desired that I would baptize him, but on my advice he set out for the plains that he might
receive baptism at the hands of some clergyman." The two of them together went to a place
called Labcha, Sakkum, where this new man in Christ was handed over to missionaries and
ultimately baptized. The other three men, we are told, also gave up their bad way of life and
began to pursue honest work.*95
It may be of interest to note that the Rev. C. W. Emmett of Ridley Hall, Oxford, in his
article on "The Miracles of Sadhu Sundar Singh," has dealt especially with those mysterious
* It must be mentioned that Hosten and Pfister, two of the Sadhu's severest critics, had made much negative
comment about this incident, labeling it pure imagination on the part either of the Sadhu or of his publishers, or
both. As has been noted, even Tharchin deemed it partly the truth so far as Sundar Singh was concerned and
partly an exaggeration perpetrated by his publishers: in this case, the original publisher of the story being the
Sadhu's young admirer Alfred Zahir. Yet the focus of much of their criticism had mainly centered upon the
geographical location of the alleged Bheelera (Bhulera) forest and the same for the alleged place to where the
Sadhu had brought the converted thief for baptism, they believing that if these matters could be proven "fraudulent"
then the entire narrative must be also. See, e.g., Hosten's various discussions in The Catholic Herald of India,
1925, passim. Here it is worth noting what Pfister, in collaboration with Hosten's investigation of the robber
incident, had to report in his unfavorable study of the Sadhu, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 213, 217 (as priv.
translated from the German for the present author by Domnica Filotti Ghimus):
What to think about the Bhulera forest, Tharchin does not know. Where this lies is unknown to him. He read
from Hosten's copy of Zahir's Shaida-i-Salib [his biography of the Sadhu, first published in 1916 in Hindustani
by Zahir himself] the story of the converted robber and underlined, on Hosten's request, the name of [Church
of Scotland missionary Rev.] McKean, who baptized the robber, according to Zahir. His friend Fred. Dash Raj
deliverances which had time and again been the Sadhu's experience in moments of great
peril, of which the story just recited was but one of many. In these events Emmett saw \ ?
choice between two ways in which God" could "be thought of as working": (1) helping or 1
protecting His servants by sending an angel or angels—what Emmett termed "a special 1
interposition of a supernatural agency"; or (2) by the operation of the Holy Spirit on the
hearts of men—the Spirit of God working through the personality of such a one as Sadhu
Sundar Singh, thus drawing out the response and the latent powers of good in one's fellowmen.96
Now it would appear that in the particular event just described above (and if accurately
related by Sundar Singh), both ways were in operation: The robber became frozen in his
tracks when overwhelmed by the sight over the Sadhu's shoulder of the "Unseen One," thus
shrinking back from adding still another victim to his murderous thievery. And in the interaction
that followed, Sundar Singh was greatly used by God's Spirit in that He worked in and
through the Sadhu to, in the words of Emmett, "thrill and touch" the robber "with the immediate
consciousness of the presence of 'the Beyond that is within'." With the result that a man and
his three confreres in crime were rescued from the grossest of sinful lifestyles!
That Sundar Singh is not the only servant of God in recent times to have experienced "the
guardian angel's vigil" of protection on his behalf is made quite clear from the testimony of
Tharchin's German friend already quoted from earlier in this chapter, Dr. Kurt Koch.
Recounted below are several remarkable instances, related by Dr. Koch, and occurring in
widely-scattered places on earth, of God's supernatural intervention in defense of His servants.
These are then concluded with one final, extraordinary everft which occurred most recently
of Kalimpong and Tharchin himself had noted on the margin on Tharchin's copy that this is wrong, and if the
Sadhu said so, then be it a wrong Sadhu. Raj wrote about this to Zahir, who wrote back that there was a
misunderstanding on the part of himself or Sundar Singh and that he would wish to correct it.... In fact, Zahir
later took out the Timi location [in Sikkim], where the story with the robber should have played, as well as the
name McKean, yet kept the adventure unaltered. In exchange, "Labcha Sikkim" was given as the place to
where the robber was brought for a missionary soul-searching. Hosten established that here it could only mean
Lachen or Lachung in Independent Sikkim, whereupon Tharchin acknowledged that they had not advanced as
far as that ...
... The fraud regarding the Bhulera robber is confirmed. One can ask oneself whether Zahir fulfilled his duty
when he simply left out the names, but moreover let this real "robber story" further happen. With his absolute
belief in Sundar's reliability, one surely cannot reproach him for believing that the story really happened at
another occasion. It is bad, however, that he [Zahir] passes off "Labcha Sikkim" as the location where the
converted robber would have been taught Christianity—a place which is absolutely non-existent, behind which
Lachen Sikkim surely exists, and in any case a place where Sundar could not have accompanied the robber, such
as he claimed, for the reason already that the Sadhu was not there at all.
It is obvious from Tharchin's testimony that this event could not have occurred in Sikkim since he was with
the Sadhu the entire time of their venture into that State and could testify that he had witnessed nothing of the
sort. But it is also obvious that the blame for whatever incorrect or "fraudulent" aspects of the story which
were added to the Sadhu's original narration of the incident to Zahir cannot at all be laid at the feet of Sundar
Singh.
It is the opinion of the present writer that the encounter with the murderous thief had indeed taken place as
described by Sundar Singh, for the reason that the Sadhu—whose honesty has been well-nigh universally
acknowledged—was found repeating the story again and again in his messages, an indication that he firmly
believed it had happened to him just as he had recounted it; but furthermore, that the incident had probably
occurred somewhere in India proper. Moreover, in the light of the testimony of other modem-day Christians (see
a few paragraphs hence in the Text above), what is alleged to have happened in the Sadhu's encounter with the
Bheelera forest robber has certainly not been all that uncommon a phenomenon, and therefore does not constitute—
for the orthodox Christian, at least—an unbelievable narrative at all.
¡A 1997 and is recounted from his own experience by a Christian medical missionary from
America serving in Africa. They all deserve mention here inasmuch as the central phenomenon
in every instance is strikingly similar in character to the Sadhu's experience.
A.
I personally believe in guardian angels.... Let me give an example from Germany first: As a
young minister I served in Hornberg in the Black Forest. This congregation was my first
love.... I am grateful to the then bishop of the country for offering to me this wonderful
appointment to assist his son in the work there.
On the long roads through the forest where this far-flung congregation lived, I had often
passed the Huber Rocks which have a peculiar history. One night a couple of [older boys] lay
in wait for the preacher, the Rev. Blum, in order to attack him with sticks. [It so happened that]
several young girls were converted and instead of keeping their boyfriends' company they
preferred to go to Bible Study [a consequence which the two boys blamed on Rev. Blum]. The
ambush was planned at the Huber Rocks. When the preacher reached the spot and greeted the
boys, nobody moved or answered. On his way home the minister again passed the [boys] and
the same thing happened, whereupon he said: "It is about time that you went home."
Three months later the same minister was called to [nearby] Prechtal where a young man lay
on his deathbed. The dying man confessed to the Rev. Blum that he and his gang had planned
to beat him up. However, there had been a white figure accompanying the minister and the
sight of this had paralyzed them. They decided to tackle him on his way home, but the same
figure was still with him. This white figure had held his hand over the head of the old man and
they were completely dumbfounded.
This true story is one of many that could be recounted and clearly proves the existence of
guardian angels. From my own experience I know several such stories but I do not consider it
wise to expose them to the scepticism and ridicule of rationalistic theologians.
Here is an example from China: Before Mao had assumed power in China, many gangs of
robbers menaced the population and small mission stations. One day a small town in the
province of Kweichow was surrounded by a strong gang of robbers. In the mission station all
the believers were on their knees praying to God for protection. After a few days, the gang left
without attacking. Months later the missionaries heard from a defector the reason for this: The
whole town was surrounded by one or two rows of white soldiers. The gang, thinking that they
were Europeans, dared not attack. To us, however, it is obvious who those soldiers were:
emissaries sent by God to defend those who placed themselves under His protection.
C.
The [gospel] team was busy with an evangelization campaign in Ladysmith [a town among the
Zulus of South Africa]. Many girls were converted and broke off impure relationships with
their boyfriends. The latter were furious and wanted to take vengeance. They planned to tear
the [gospel] tent to pieces at night. When they approached they saw that the tent was
surrounded by soldiers and fled forthwith. The team had never asked for soldiers to defend
them, nor had they seen anything of such a nature.97
[A missionary on furlough told the following true story while visiting and speaking before his
home church congregation in the State of Michigan USA:] While serving at a small field
hospital in Africa, every two weeks I traveled by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for
supplies. This was a journey of two days and required camping overnight at the halfway point.
On one of these journeys, I arrived in the city where I planned to collect money from a bank,
purchase medicine and supplies, and then begin my two-day journey back to the field hospital.
Upon arrival in the city, I observed two men fighting, one of whom had been seriously injured.
I treated him for his injuries and at the same time witnessed to him of the Lord Jesus Christ. I
then traveled two days, camping overnight, and arrived home without incident.
Two weeks later I repeated my journey. Upon arriving in the city, I was approached by the
young man I had treated. He told me that he had known I carried money and medicines. He said,
"Some friends and I followed you into the jungle, knowing you would camp overnight. We
planned to kill you and take your money and drugs. But just as we were about to move into
your camp, we saw that you were surrounded by 26 armed guards." At this I laughed and said
that I was certainly all alone out in that jungle campsite. The young man pressed the point,
however, and said, "No sir, I was not the only person to see the guards. My five friends also
saw them, and we all counted them. It was because of those guards that we were afraid and left
you alone."
At this point in the sermon, one of the men in the congregation jumped to his feet and
interrupted the missionary and asked if he could tell him the exact day that this happened. The
missionary told the congregation the date, and the man who interrupted told him this story:
On the night of your incident in Africa, it was morning here and I was preparing to go play golf. I
was about to putt when I felt the urge to pray for you. In fact, the urging of the Lord was so strong,
I called men in this church to meet with me here in the sanctuary to pray for you. Would all those
men who met with me on that day stand up?
The men who had met together on that day stood up. The missionary wasn't concerned
with who they were—he was too busy counting how many men he saw. There were 26!98
Now from these several instances recited by Koch and the American missionary it is not
difficult at all to conclude that what the Sadhu had testified with regard to the case of the
four robbers could quite easily have occurred in his experience and is therefore not something
incredulous to accept as having happened.
VII
Sadhuji is alleged to have said to the Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury that if
his mother were not in heaven then he would go to hell with her. Yet the actual words spoken
to the Archbishop were as follows: "If I do not see my mother in heaven, I shall ask God to
send me to hell so that I may be with her."99 The one who had reported these actual words was
Sundar's biographer, Anglican Bishop A. J. Appasamy. The latter could vouch for the accuracy
of this statement since he was present with the Sadhu when the latter conversed with the then
Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Randall Davidson. Bishop Appasamy went on to
comment that Sundar Singh "had the greatest affection and respect for his mother as she was
a deeply religious woman and he could not believe that God would send her to hell because she
was not a Christian.5'100 Quite to the contrary, "he was convinced that if she had lived longer
(she died when he was fourteen) she would have become a Christian."101
Moreover, while in Europe in 1922 and a visitor for ten days in the residence of the Rev.
Dr. Nathan Soderblom, who at the time was Sweden's State Lutheran Church Archbishop
0f Uppsala, the Sadhu had asked that country's highest ecclesiastic "how Westerners, so
many of whom seemed to him to be very worldly, could call his mother a heathen: she rose
early in the morning and made her devotion with the Gita"]02 Furthermore, his mother had
longed from his birth to dedicate Sundar, her youngest son, totally to God to become a sadhu.
Indeed, in the words of one Anglican divine, speaking of Sundar Singh's mother, she had
"prayed to God, served God, loved God, far more warmly and deeply than many Christians."103
Now it was the opinion of Tharchin, when commenting on the distorted version of the
Sadhu's statement to the Canterbury Archbishop, that "although Sundar Singh's mother was
not openly baptized, still, he may have had some concrete evidence of her secret and genuine
faith in Christ; otherwise, he would not have uttered such a statement before a high Church
dignitary." Nonetheless, "on the face of it," he added, referring once again to the garbled
version, "the statement is definitely disturbing and certainly contrary to the accepted creed
of the Christian Church."104 However, when one considers what Sundar Singh actually said
to Dr. Davidson, then it seems to the present author that the Sadhu's statement reflects the
deep affection and esteem he held his mother in rather than a doctrinal statement unacceptable
to Church orthodoxy.
VIII
This critical evaluation of some extraordinary experiences and unusual statements of

Sundar Singh is now ended. It may not be inappropriate, however, and may perhaps prove
quite helpful to the reader to conclude this critical study by quoting from one of Gergan
Tharchin's former missionary mentors who at one point had been stationed at Poo for a
considerable length of time. As the reader must by now be aware, many of the Moravians in
the northwestern Himalayas of India had spent as much as several decades of their lives
observing, and interacting with, at close range the Asiatic—and more specifically the Indian
and Tibetan—culture, and had therefore become quite conversant with the Asiatic mind.
Tharchin's former friend and counselor, the Rev. Hermann Kunick, had had an extensive
opportunity at Poo to fellowship with the Sadhu himself on two separate occasions. The first
had been for a week or more in 1908 and the second, during two successive weekends in
1912.
Years later, at the height of the controversy which had broken out during the 1920s about
the honesty and integrity of the saffron-robed evangelist, the Moravian missionary wrote a
letter to the Secretary of his Missionaiy Society in which he gave an estimate of the "Apostle
ofthe Bleeding Feet," doubtless basing it on his long association with Asian cultures and on
his contacts with the Sadhu at Poo during those occasions just cited. That estimate is worth
quoting in part as follows:
Sundar Singh is a deep, sincere Christian who lives in continuous communion with our Savior.
He is an Asiatic, not a European. This, one ought never to forget when judging him. The
spiritual life of an Asiatic is not just simply the same as that of a European. In his spiritual life
the Asiatic sees, hears, feels, expects, experiences, believes, hopes, loves and suffers differently
from the European. What we consider imagination is reality for him. What appears to be reality
for us is for him often imagination.
396
CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GERGAN THARCHIN ^
To believe, see and experience belong together for him necessarily. What our Lord during
His life on earth did to sinners, He can and will and must do even today for humanity.... God's
omnipotence, love and care as well as all the promises of our Savior are taken literally by the
Asiatics.... It is difficult for the Asiatics to understand that we Europeans, though we are so
thorough in other matters, do not take literally the Word of God in our day-to-day life as well as
in the life of thé nation, nor live it out literally as Sundar Singh does when calling himself
publicly a Christian.... [He]... connects the name with its action and lives it out.... Therefore,
it is my opinion that there is not much point in exploring psychologically the spiritual life of
Sundar Singh and trying to prove anything. Most of such proofs will always miss the mark.105
C H A P T E R 11
Sadhu Sunday Singh (ConeI'd): Controversy and Clarification 397

Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in
heaven.
Matthew 5:11-12
There is nothing in the world which cannot be criticized. In this dark world even the Creator
has not been left without criticism. What, then, can we expect? Matthew 10:25.* If I had lived
a hundred or two hundred years ago, the critics would have denied and proved that I never-
existed in the world. Satan must be laughing at the clever and cunning people of the world who
deceive themselves in their own baseless cleverness. We must pray for such people that God
may have mercy upon them.
Sadhu Sundar Singhj
The Sadhu dispute can be considered as an example of how the real saints are always
pursued in this world with malicious criticism and hate, because they tell the world... the truth
about its character.
Michael Biehl J
FROM TIME TO TIME in the history of religious and theological thought an event takes place, a
statement is made, or a person appears on the human stage, to which the religious world of the
time is compelled to react. The history of religions is full of such catalysts of opinion. We may
of course choose our own examples, but some might be the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the
Indian Mutiny of 1857-58, the Great War of 1914-18, the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, and
perhaps even the publication of Honest to God in 1963. Of varying degrees of importance in
themselves, they all succeeded in forcing an issue before the eyes of the theologians, the
literati, and through them, the eyes of the general Christian public....
I believe that the brief emergence of Sundar Singh in the religious world of the 1920s was
precisely such a catalyst of public religious opinion,,.. The claim that he was then known
throughout the Christian world is, I think, scarcely an exaggeration. Twice in the 1920s he had
visited the West, where he had carried out long preaching tours. His books, and the vast secondary
literature which sprang up around him, were read by hundreds of thousands. By most Christians
in Europe he was regarded with virtually unqualified reverence as a mystic, as an unaffected man
of God and as a living proof of the coming of age of Christianity in the East; but by a few he was
looked upon either as an impostor, or ... as a psychopath and almost a confidence trickster.
In the 1920s, then, there sprang up an extraordinarily violent debate around the person and
work and credentials of the Sadhu. On one side there were his admirers and defenders, numbering
among them some of the most outstanding of the liberal theologians of the period. We may
mention the names of B. H. Streeter and Friedrich von Hiigel in England, Nathan SGderblom in
Sweden, Friedrich Heiler in Germany, Eivind Berggrav in Norway, and A. J. Appasamy and the
* The words of Jesus to His disciples, which reads: "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the
servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub [Lord of the Flies], how much more shall
they call them of his household? Fear them not..."
t Quoted in English in Biehl, Der Fall Sadhu Sundar Singh: Theologie zwischen denKulturen [The Case of Sadhu
Sundar Singh: Theology between Cultures], vol. 66 in the Series: Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity
(Frankfurt /New York/Bern /Paris: P. Lang, 1990), 33.
I Ibid., 248; privately translated from the German for the present author by Domnica Filotti Ghimus.
missionaries L. R Larsen and C. R Andrews in India. On the other there were the less well-
known names of a Belgian Jesuit, Fr. Hosten in Darjeeling, and [the Swiss Protestant pastor
Oskar] Pfister, supported by the Norwegian church historian Kristian Schelderup—all of whom
were convinced for varying reasons that the Sadhu had been less than honest in his dealings
with the Christian public.
So wrote Dr. Eric J. Sharpe, Religious Studies Lecturer at England's University of Lancaster,
in an extremely insightful article on the Sadhu and his critics published a half century after
the virulent controversy had begun to subside.* And one of the literary sources which had
contributed in fanning the flames of controversy further was a publication which had appeared
quietly in 1915 or so, only to be seized upon a decade later as a weapon in the arsenal of
Sundar Singh's critics. It would also engulf Gergan Tharchin in one of the most unmitigatingly
painful experiences of his life. What follows is an account of that experience, interspersed
here and there with some helpful background material to better enable the reader to
comprehend the storm of controversy which swirled around the person and work of the
Sadhu for some seven years.
When the semblance of an autobiography of Sadhu Sundar %

Singh originally produced in
Urdu was later translated into English under the title A Collection of Incidents, several
critics made efforts to contradict the incidents narrated there. Sadhuji himself had recognized
the presence of some serious errors in the original Urdu version of the work and had intimated
that the printer would not be permitted to reissue the little Urdu volume in the future. This
small book, essentially an account of his early travels, had been published by the Sadhu in
1915 or shortly thereafter. It consisted of longer and briefer descriptions about all the important
places at which he had labored for the Lord between 1905 and 1915—both in the Himalayas
* "Sadhu Sundar Singh and His Critics," Religion (Spring 1976): 49-50,48,49 (hereafter cited in the rest of this
chapter as Sharpe, "SSS and His Critics"). It may be of interest to note that in his careful analysis of the debate
Dr. Sharpe appeared to be sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, the Sadhu. In his quite impartial
treatment of all players in this highly inflammatory drama, Sharpe nonetheless seemed, at times, to hint at where
his own sympathies lay—which to this writer appeared to come down more on the side of the besieged Sadhu
than on that of his virulent opponents. One passage in particular (p. 63) would seem to give some credence to this
observation; yet, whether or not true, the passage is most instructive, lumping quite favorably as it does the name
of Sundar Singh with those of two other Indian giants of the period, Tagore and Gandhi. Writes Sharpe:
Although Sundar Singh had been active for a very brief period of time, he had made a remarkable impact on
the Christian world ... During the 1920s, Christians in India and in the West alike feTt constantly compelled
to react to three persons, namely Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Sadhu Sundar Singh. From
Tagore came an aesthetic challenge, from Gandhi an ethical challenge, and from^Stmdar Singh a spiritual
challenge, and in a period when confidence in Western values was at a new low ebb, there was no lack of
response to all three.... Where Sundar Singh differed from the others was of course in the fact of his being a
Christian, and not a Hindu. But he spoke to the same Western consciousness. He was still "of the East." He
embodied, in fact, the kind of vision of Indian Christianity that many in the West had long cherished. He
looked like Jesus Christ wearing a turban. He spoke in terms equally reminiscent of The Acts of the Apostles and
The Ocean of Story. He had come out of obscurity, worked for the most part in the most obscure and romantic
of all lands, Tibet, and finally disappeared abruptly into a still greater obscurity. He touched the West, but he
was never mastered by the West. And it is doubtful whether the West ever even began to understand him.
and on the plains of India. Because of the controversy this Urdu publication eventually
engendered around the world, it may be helpful to the reader to quote a passage from A. J.
Appasamy's Sadhu biography which deals with the little volume itself.
It must have been about this time (February 1915) that Sundar Singh wrote it at Kotgarh. Since
6 October 1905, when he became a sadhu, he had traveled widely in India, Afghanistan, Tibet,
Kashmir, Garhwal, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam. He published in Urdu a brief account of
these evangelistic tours under the very clumsy title, A Collection of Incidents. He said that he
wrote this book in response to the request of his friends.... Sundar Singh complained that the
printing of this Urdu book had been done most carelessly, several names of places and persons
misspelt, some pages of the manuscript lost and a story which he himself had not written
added to the book from the printer's own knowledge. Sundar Singh therefore refused to allow
the republication of this little book. We do not know all the mistakes which were made in the
press. The book, even with its mistakes, is a particularly valuable document for various reasons.
It is the only record which gives us a consecutive, though brief, account of his work for the
first ten years of his ministry. It shows us how incessantly he was engaged in preaching the
gospel and what difficulties and hardships he encountered in the course of this work. It
describes in his own words many of his spiritual experiences, to which he referred constantly
in his later years. It also gives us the stories of the martyrs which deeply impressed him,
influenced his life and were frequently used as illustrations in his addresses.1
Regarding especially the travels of Sundar Singh in northeastern India, some persons
had presumptuously questioned the authenticity of these travels. Some of them openly denied
Sadhuji's visit to the Darjeeling area and to Gangtok in Sikkim. A controversy surrounding
the historicity of Sundar's travels was thus created and continued to gain momentum,
particularly in Germany. The debate not only focused upon this issue but also upon (i) the
matter of the Sadhu's saintly character and (ii) the element of the miraculous which Sundar
had innocently but quite naturally recounted was a part of his life. This latter aspect of the
controversy was briefly alluded to at the beginning of the previous chapter. In his excellent
biography of the Sadhu written in 1956 and first published in 1958, Bishop Appasamy has
been able, with the passage of time since those controversial days, to place the entire debate
in perspective, and has as well provided a succinct summary of these several currents of
criticism which is well worth quoting at some length:
After Sundar Singh's return from his second tour in Europe in 1922 a violent controversy broke
out about his honesty. There were two sets of critics who viewed with alarm the growing fame
and usefulness of Sundar Singh. The Roman Catholics had the firm belief that their own
Church was the mother of saints and were troubled when they saw a man of Sundar Singh's
spiritual stature appearing outside their own Church. Father Hosten, S.J., of Darjeeling began
writing a series of hostile articles against him in The Catholic Herald of India from the year
1923. He claimed that he was a historian and that it was his task to sift carefully all the evidence
available, before he could accept the authenticity of any event. Father Alfons Vath, S.J. [a
former professor of history in Calcutta and at Francis Xavier College in Bombay!, took up this
controversy in Germany [publishing anti-Sadhu articles in the Jesuit journal Stimmen der Zeit
in 1926]. Sundar Singh was not a historian. He kept no diary nor written records of his life. He
continually described from memory various incidents in his life on hundreds of platforms and
in his articles and books. He described again and again from memory many incidents in his life
as illustrations of the saving power of God. His critics collated the different versions carefully
and found many discrepancies among them. They also sought the evidence of eyewitnesses,
which in many cases was not forthcoming; some of the incidents described by Sundar Singh
happened in remote places and it was not possible to get firsthand information, particularly
long years after the events took place. Father Hosten, therefore, came to the conclusion that
Sundar Singh was an impostor.
The other set of critics were the Protestant Liberals who did not believe in the miraculous
element in religion. These Modernists were baffled by the many miracles which Sundar Singh
narrated as having occurred in his life. They were disturbed when this popular evangelist, who
wielded an immense influence, laid claim to various miracles in his own life. They also began
investigating critically the many supernatural incidents which Sundar Singh described. The
most distinguished of these critics was Dr. O. Pfister, a Protestant pastor in Switzerland,* who
wrote a book in German entitled Die Legende Sundar Singhs [the English translation of its full
title being: The Legend of Sundar Singh; a Religio-Psychological Analysis Based on the
Disclosure of Protestant Witnesses in India] in which he made out that the miraculous experiences
to which he laid claim were nothing more than his own subjective fancies. He held that Sundar
Singh had not been able to distinguish between the objective and the subjective. He said that
Sundar Singh often mistook for objective reality his own desires and that a great deal of the
experience which he described was nothing but wishful thinking.f
Both the Roman Catholics and the Modernists joined hands and every event of his life was
examined with the minutest care.$
When Sundar Singh's honesty was called into question, Professor Heiler entered the
controversy and took up his defense. In 1925 he published in German a book entitled Apostel
* Oskar Robert Pfister (1873-1956) was much more than a local Swiss pastor in Zurich. A prominent intellectual
and prolific writer in German, he authored numerous books on a wide variety of subjects such as psychoanalysis,
the relationship between the latter and art, religion and education, child psychology, and religious psychology
and philosophy. In fact, Pfister carried on a voluminous correspondence between 1909 and 1939 with the world-
renowned founder of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud, which was collected and published in German in
1963 and appeared in English translation later that same year under the title, Psycho-analysis and Faith: the
Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister (London: Hogarth Press).
f One of the key participants in the debate over the Sadhu, Professor Friedrich Heiler, was even more pointed in
his description of the Swiss pastor's conclusions. According to Heiler, Pfister "regards the Sadhu as a neurotic
person whose sense of reality has been impaired, and who therefore tends, although unconscious that he is doing
so, to misrepresent historical facts. He believes, too, thai he has discovered other morbid traits, such as sadism,
in the Sadhu's psycho-physical life. From the point of view of a psychoanalyst, he believes that his love to
Christ is rooted in repressed infantile sex-complexes." Heiler, The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh, 11. Moreover,
Erjc Sharpe has pointed out that though he (Sharpe) came away from reading Pfister Js huge tome of 327 pages
concluding "mainly by implication" from it that the Swiss pastor had deemed the Sadhu "a psychopath and
compulsive liar, who was simply unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood and who lived in a fantasy
world," nevertheless, a short time later, adds Sharpe, "Pfister expressed his misgivings plainly and forcefully in
a pamphlet entitled Sadhu Sundar Singh s Evident Untruths: a Warning and an Appeal, undated, prob. 1927."
See Sharpe, "SSS and His Critics," 61 with 66 note 39.
X As Bishop Appasamy has commented elsewhere: "Many enemies were out to destroy the Sadhu's work by what
they considered their scientific investigation of his past record. The majority of the people, however, still revered
him and did not agree with the exaggerated skepticism with which his critics were inclined to treat his works and
teaching." It is most unfortunate that in the course of the harsh critique they unitedly but unwarrantedly inflicted
upon the Sadhu, these Western critics and their Western-trained Indian accomplices failed to appreciate this Eastern
saint's unusual situation and the peculiar demands which the divine call had made on his life as a constantly traveling
evangelist. Echoing the sentiments of Appasamy, one of the Sadhu's other biographers, the New Zealand Presbyterian
missionary in India, Rev. Thomas Riddle, has observed: "One of the characteristics in Sundar Singh that caused
trouble to precise Western minds was that they were often unable to get from him a definite statement of where and
when a thing happened. This vagueness on matters of geography and history is common to many Indians, but in his
case he could keep no diaries of his tours to fix the times of his wandering, and his recollection of places was apt to
be blurred when he was seeing new places every day." See Appasamy, "Introduction," in Sundar Singh, The Real
Pearl (1966; reprint ed., Madras, 1968), ix; and Riddle, The Vision and the Call, 28.
Oder Betrüger? [the translation of its foil title being: Apostle or Impostor? Documents Relating
to the Sadhu Dispute], This book contained twelve letters written by the Sadhu, offering his
own explanation of the many difficulties which his enemies had raised. It recorded the impression
which he made upon his friends, both in India and in Europe. Long extracts were quoted in it
from the books and articles which had appeared on the continent of Europe about him. They
were theological judgments about the life and teaching of Sundar Singh and were not particularly
concerned with the controversy about his truthfulness. A section of the book was devoted to
an examination of the charges brought against him by his enemies.
Professor Heiler also sent out to ail those who had had any personal contact with the Sadhu
a long questionnaire about the incidents in the life of Sundar Singh and asked for every piece
of information available about him. This questionnaire was circulated very widely and many
letters reached the Professor in response to his inquiries. In 1927 he published these letters
and the conclusions to which he came after studying them, in another book entitled Die
Wahrheit Sundar Singhs [the English translation of its full title being: The Truthfulness of
Sundar Singh; New Documents Relating to the Sadhu Dispute].
I may also add that the Rev. Paul Gabler in 1937 (eight years after the death of Sundar Singh)
wrote as a Leipzig University thesis a book in German entitled Sadhu Sundar Singh [the
English translation of its full title being: Sadhu Sundar Singh; a Historical-Critical Analysis]
examining afresh all the evidence available in connection with the controversy, both by his
enemies as well as his friends. Mr. Gabler had worked as a Lutheran missionary in South India.
He maintained that Sundar Singh's ministry had been abundantly blessed by God, but the
conclusion to which he came was that being a frail human being Sundar Singh had told many
lies. 1 am unable to accept this conclusion, for reasons which I have set out [in my book] ...
Pastor Gabler continually seeks to be fair and impartial in his judgments. But without a personal
i knowledge of Sundar Singh he errs fatally in many of his conclusions.
The main charges of the critics against Sundar Singh were these: He never fasted and in any
case he did not fast for forty days. He never went to Tibet [including Sikkim on the way] to
preach there. The supernatural events which he described as having taken place in Tibet,..
cannot be believed as we have no eyewitnesses and Sundar Singh's own statements are full of
contradictions. His account of the Maharishi of Kailash should also be dismissed as unhistorical
for the same reasons.
This summary of the currents of criticism against Sundar Singh quoted here at length from
Appasamy constitutes a composite joined into one of the author's discussions he sets forth at two
different places in his book, Sundar Singh, a Biography: at pages 10-11 and 205-6. Immediately
following the second of these discussions, on page 207, Appasamy himself takps the opportunity
to respond to both Hosten 5s conclusion that, because of lack of eyewitness evidence, Sundar was
an impostor; and Gabler's conclusion that the Sadhu had been a persistent liar:
... I had many opportunities for coming in close contact with him. I can emphatically say that
I never found him deliberately twisting facts or telling lies. A man who is given to prevarication
{
is likely to betray himself in many ways, particularly in the intimacy of his private life.* A great
j1 deal was written about him by various people. Some of this was submitted to him for his
* Like Appasamy, Gergan Tharchin could provide similar testimony to the truthfulness of the Sadhu after having
traveled and worked with the Punjabi evangelist intimately in both Northwest and Northeast India and in Sikkim.
Protestant missionary Rev. J. Kelly of Darjeeling could report to the Jesuit critic of the Sadhu, Henry Hosten,
what Thar chin's own view was on Sundar Singh's veracity. Kelly and the Tibetan had had a lengthy evening
conversation together about the Sadhu at Tharchin's Kaiimpong home in late 1924. The very next day Kelly,
writing in response to Hosten's inquiry to him about Tharchin and Sundar Singh, reported among other things the
following: "Tharchin states ... that he never saw the Sadhu do anything inconsistent with his profession [of
correction. But he led an exceedingly busy life and could not find the time to revise carefully
the manuscripts which were sent to him. Several books, pamphlets and articles were written
about him which he never saw before they came out in print and he could not have corrected
all the misstatements in them about him.* It is unfortunate that we cannot get eyewitnesses for
all the events described by him. Professor Heiler's books give the evidence of eyewitnesses
for many of the events but not for all. To say that the events did not happen or that Sundar
Singh was a liar because of the lack of evidence from eyewitnesses is quite unreasonable,
whatever value it may have as a method ofhistorical investigation.!
Now when Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967), the eminent scholar, churchman and professor
of the history of religions at the University of Marburg in Germany, earnestly took up the
faith]; that he does not believe he would deliberately lie ..." Kelly to Hosten, Polhill Hall, Kalimpong, 8 Dee.
1924, published in Hosten, "SSS: Interesting Correspondence," CHI(15 Apr. 1925):231-2.
* Gergan Tharchin was one of those who had attempted to have corrected certain misstatements which he saw
printed. In the Kelly letter to Father Hosten cited in the previous note, Rev. Kelly relates one such instance which
the Tibetan had pointed out to Kelly during the latter's visit with him in his Kalimpong home. In reviewing with his
guest the 1918 edition of the Hindustani-language biography of the Sadhu written and first published in 1916 at Agra
by Sundar's young admirer Alfred Zahir, Tharchin is reported by Rev. Kelly to have noticed a glaring mistake.
Writes Kelly to Hosten: "One statement in the Hindustani booklet he definitely says is false. It is that where the
Sadhu says that a powerful converted thief was baptized by Mr. McKean, in Timi. Tharchin was with the Sadhu
during his visit to Timi [in Sikkim], and says that this did not happen there. He wrote to the publisher of the book,
pointing this out, but was told in reply that the Sadhu or the publisher must have made a mistake in this instance."
Though believing in thie absolute sincerity of his esteemed Punjabi friend and fellow worker in the gospel, the
Indo-Tibetan nonetheless confided to Rev. Kelly that he was "troubled because of his [Tharchin's] inability to
accept without question all that the Sadhu has allowed to be written about himself." So reported the Protestant
missionary Kelly to the Catholic Jesuit Hosten about Tharchin's concern. Most likely the Tibetan's concern had to
do, most notably, with the published work$about the Sadhu which the latter had innocently allowed to be produced
by London Missionary Society missionary in India, (Mrs.) Rebecca J. Parker (Sadhu Sundar Singh: Called of God,
a biography that first appeared in 1918) and those also by Zahir (a number of small books in English and the much
larger work about Sundar Singh in Hindustani referenced above and entitled Shaida-i-Salib that appeared in English
under the title The Lover of the Cross, Agra 1917, and that constituted the very first biography ever written and
published about the Indian evangelist). As one of the Sadhu's close friends once remarked in a letter long after Sundar
Singh's disappearance and written to the much more responsible biographer of the Sadhu, Bishop Appasamy: "We
found Sadhuji very humble and shy in recounting his experiences and his visions. His whole attitude was not one of
boasting and he never made dogmatic statements. Mr. Alfred Zahir's books... made him out to be what he was not
in our contact with him. He did really bad service unwittingly to Sadhu Sundar Singh." Quoted in Appasamy,
Sundar Singh, 67. And about the Parker biography, Appasamy himself entered a cautionary note as follows: "In
after-years, when several sketches of his life had been published, Sundar Singh regarded Mrs. Parker's book as being
his most accurate biography. However, we need to remember that Sundar Singh kept no diaries or journals and
narrated from memory the outstanding events in his life!. There were certainly many discrepancies of facts as well
as dates in what he said to Mrs. Parker." Ibid., 110. For additional helpful information about Parker and Zahir and
the shortcomings of their biographical writings about the Sadhu, see ibid., 69-70,110-11,161,199; also, cf. Sharpe,
"SSS and His Critics," 51-2,60-1, with 64 notes 8-10.
t At the height of the controversy, Professor Heiler expressed the same opinion on the principles which should
have governed, but did not, the historical research and writing undertaken by Sundar Singh's critics: "If the
Sadhu's opponents, who have often declaimed against him with polemical bitterness, have fastened on other
points as well, that is because, blinded by their own theories, they have completely lost sight of the most
elementary rules ofhistorical criticism ..." Heiler, Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh, 12.
responsibility of preparing the case in defense of Sundar Singh, he contacted Sadhuji, inviting
jxis comments on various controversial points. Among other things, the Sadhu quite naturally
instructed Professor Heiler to communicate with Tharchin since he had accompanied him as
his interpreter in Sikkim State and had acted as his host in Ghoom for a considerable length
oftime.
Tharchin had very accurately and meticulously recorded details of the Sikkim journey in
his personal diary.2 In it he had carefully noted the time and date of their arrival and departure
at various places in and around Ghoom as well as in Sikkim, and these have been duly
incorporated into the account of their journey together that has already been presented to the
reader in earlier chapters of this present work on Gergan Tharchin. The diary report of the
itinerary was so factual that it proved Tharchin almost to be a historian. Both Heiler in
German and Appasamy in English quote in their works from Tharchin's correspondence
with them which helped these biographers to establish a case in favor of Sundar Singh, thus
refuting the arguments of the critics: especially with respect to the debatable question of
Sadhuji's visit to the Daijeeling District and Sikkim.*
*
In 1927 Tharchin journeyed to Darjeeling Town in connection with some legal business.
There he put up in a hotel. One day a Roman Catholic priest, a person who was already
known to Tharchin as belonging to a very high order in that Church, came to the hotel
seeking an interview with him. This priest had heard about Tharchin's role in the travels of
Sundar Singh in both the Darjeeling area and Sikkim. Doubtless he had learned of Tharchin's
association with the Sadhu from having read Friedrich Heiler's book on Sundar Singh which
had first appeared in German in 1924. Moreover, it will be recalled from a few pages earlier
that in a spring 1925 issue of the Calcutta religious journal, The Catholic Heyald of India,
there had been printed the correspondence between a Jesuit priest and Tharchin's friend
Rev. J. Kelly having to do with the Sadhu's association with Gergan Tharchin as it pertained
to Sundar Singh's presence in the Darjeeling District and Sikkim. In addition, it is known that
this Roman cleric and Tharchin had even talked face-to-face for several hours about this
and other related matters at Rev. Kelly's Darjeeling residence later that same spring.
Furthermore, in the spring of 1927 Heiler's Sadhu volume had just then been issued in an
updated English version, the same year Tharchin recalls having been approached for the
said interview at his Darjeeling hotel. It should be noted that in this English edition of Heiler's
book Sundar's traveling companion is mentioned three times, on pages 69, 73 and 74,
respectively. And these entries had to do with the Tibetan's role in the Sadhu's life before
and after the Elam (Nepal) prison incident (which thus necessitated the Indian mystic having
* It would appear from the documentation in Bishop Appasamy's biography of the Sadhu that Tharchin may
i s o have supplied testimony in the 1930s about his travels with Sundar Singh to one of the latter's later
European critics previously mentioned, Rev. Paul Gabler; although, it should be added, this cannot be ascertained
With certainty from that documentation. Cf Appasamy's footnoting in Sundar Singh, 36-7, 67.
to be in the Darjeeling District) and the period in Sikkim. TJiis information, of course, Tharchin
had supplied to Heiler in written response to the latter's inquiries about the Tibetan's personal
knowledge of and acquaintance with Sundar Singh.
Now in his interview with Tharchin this particular Catholic priest made it known that he
desired to borrow the Urdu publication on the life, particularly the travel experiences, of the
Sadhu which (as was indicated above) contained from the Sadhu's viewpoint a number of
minor but also serious inaccurate entries. At this point in the narrative, therefore, it needs to
be inquired as to just who this priest was and what he truly had in mind in approaching
Sundar Singh's friend and former traveling companion at the latter's hotel in Darjeeling. By
this point in the narrative, however, the actual identity of this priest should come as no real
surprise to the reader.
Although Tharchin himself never named him in his remarks when dictating this portion of
his "memoirs,", from other sources it becomes obvious,who this Catholic priest was and
what his ulterior motive had been in seeking the Darjeeling hotel interview with Gergan
Tharchin. One need only read Heiler and the priest's own biographer, Fr. Eelen, S.J., of
nearby Kurseong, to learn his identity and something about his activity that was highly critical
of Sundar Singh. First, in Heiler's November 1926 Preface to the aforementioned updated
English translation (published in London early the following year under the title The Gospel
of Sadhu Sundar Singh) of his earlier 1924 German work entitled Sadhu Sundar Singh:
Ein Apostel des Ostens und Western, the author identifies the cleric in question as Father
Henry Hosten, as follows:
At the present time Sundar Singh is the object of heated controversy. Father Hosten, a Jesuit
at Darjeeling, writing in The Catholic Herald of India (1923-25), has tried to prove that the
Sadhu is a shameless impostor, who has invented the greater part of his life story in order to *
win the reputation of sanctity. German Jesuits published these accusations in the paper entitled
Stimmen der Zeit (1924-26), omitting, however, the charge of deliberate imposture; rather, they
take the view that he is an "Oriental deceiver," a childish visionary, who confounds the creations
of his fantasy with reality. The Jesuits have been supported by the Protestant pastor Dr. 0.
Pfister, who, in close collaboration with Father Hosten, has published a large book against the
Sadhu, which bears the significant title The Legend of Sundar Singh (Berne, 1926).*3
* A remarkable touch of irony must be remarked upon here about Pastor Poster, who at the time was Chairman
of the Swiss General Mission Association. Prior to the Sadhu's visit to Switzerland in March of 1922, this critic j
of Sundar Singh had published a brief but vigorous attack against the Indian mystic. In his pamphlet of criticism I
against the Sadhu, Pfister had declared that Sundar's manner of life constituted a return to medieval European
asceticism, that he was a pietist and a worker of miracles by magic—i.e., he was "a thaumaturgist" But from
another Protestant Swiss pastor, G. Secretan, who had served as an escort to the Sadhu during the latter's month-
long speaking tour in Switzerland, it is learned that Dr. Pfister, upon seeing and hearing Sundar Singh for himself h
at Zurich, had withdrawn these criticisms. For in a personal communication which Pfister addressed to the 5
President of the Zurich Auxiliary Committee of the Kanarese Mission, he made the following observations: "The |
living piety and the popular eloquence of this noble personality have made a profound impression on me:
produced an even more profound impression than [fellow Swiss pastor P. VL] Schaerer's book [favorably |
The key facts in the life of Henry Hosten are provided by Eelen. Born in Belgium in 1873,
the future cleric had, according to his biographer, already made up his mind to serve as a
missionary. And by 1893, after taking his vows as a Jesuit, Hosten was sent to Kandy, in
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he stayed up to eight years as a teacher of Latin, English
and Rhetoric. His mind began to be drawn to the past of India, and particularly Indian
Christian history, with the origins of the Mar Thoma Church in South India constituting one
of the dominating interests for the rest of his scholarly life. Upon completion of his three-
year course of Philosophy at Shembaganur in South India (1900-02), he was posted by the
Jesuits to St. Joseph's College in Darjeeling; and but one year later Hosten began a four-
year course of theological studies in the Jesuit St. Mary's Seminary at Kurseong (1904-07).
The next few years found him occupying a number of teaching positions in various places
until by the end of 1917 he was transferred back to St. Joseph's College once more as a
professor there. He was finally relieved in 1926 of his duties as a professor in order that he
might devote all his time and energy to his historical researches. And it is shortly thereafter
that he had his hotel encounter with Gergan Tharchin, having already some years before
entered into the Sundar Singh controversy, a fact confirmed by Fr. Eelen in his biographical
sketch of Hosten that was published a year after the latter's death in 1935.
Now as the increasing amount of historical evidence and personal testimony of friends
and acquaintances of the Sadhu have come to light over the many years since the outbreak
of the controversy, it becomes quite clear that what Eelen had to say in 1936 about Fr.
Hosten's involvement in the heated debate was nothing short of premature and highly misplaced
triumphalism when he wrote in the following vein:
No notice about the life and work of Father Hosten would be complete without a reference to
the Sadhu Sundar Singh episode. Heated discussions around the figure of the Sadhu arose in
Europe, and especially in Gennany between the years 1924 and 1930. He had many admirers
and the well-known scholar F. Heiler was one of fyis most convinced believers. Even Catholics
were taken in for some time.
Just here the reader needs to be made aware off a significant piece of documentation which
Eelen footnoted at this point on how these u Catholics"—even Jesuits themselves! as it
turned out and to their everlasting credit, it might be added—"were taken in":
written, and published in 1921, about the Sadhu] would have led me to suppose." Letter, Pfister to Pastor J.
Schlatter, quoted by Secretan in the Foreword the latter contributed to the book Par Christ et pour Christ, a
collection of the Sadhu's addresses and sermons he gave throughout Switzerland. This incident is reported in
Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 176 (with translation of the letter into English having been done for Bishop Appasamy
by Rev. M. C. Langton).
It would appear, however, that Pfister's attitude towards the Sadhu once again reverted to what it had earlier
been upon his reviewing Hosten's Catholic Herald articles which just two years later began appearing in German
translation in the German newspaper cited above and which then led to the Pfister-Hosten collaboration resulting
in Pflster's hyper-critical tome against God's faithful Indian servant.
In 1922, Fr. L. de Grandmaison, S. J., taking occasion of two recent books... by... Parker (1919)
and ... by Streeter... and Appasamy ... (1921), wrote a remarkable article: "Le Sadhu Sundar
Singh et le problème de la sainteté hors de l'église catholique" (Recherches de Science religieuse,
1922, pp. 1-29) in which he admitted the possibility of miracles and of genuine mystical
experiences outside the visible [that is to say, Catholic] Church. Similarly the well-known
Bollandist H. Delehaye, S. J., Analecta Boll., 1923, p. 249.4
Fr. Eelen then continued with his discussion sympathetic of Hosten *s critical efforts against
Tharchin's friend:
However, from the very beginning some clear-sighted men [!!] looked with suspicion upon
the Sadhu, and very soon began to denounce him, Dr. Pfister being in the foreground. Fr.
Hosten too was among the first to sound a note of alarm. Historian as he was, he began at
once to collect facts about the new prophet. And if the famous Heiler-Pfister controversy
about the historicity of the Sadhu Sundar Singh's miracles and heroic experiences has come
to a close in favor of Pfister, it is largely thanks to Fr. Hosten's laborious researches. Armed
with his voluminous documentation, Pfister succeeded in enlightening the public in Europe
and convincing it that F. Heiler's "Apostle of the East and of the West, Saint and true Vicar
of Christ," the Sadhu Sundar Singh, was an impostor and downright liar [at one point, in fact,
Pfister included in his published critique (p. 54) the caustic remark, "Sundar's gross lies"].
Most papers have come to this conclusion. "Der Protestant" wrote on 25 August 1928: "The
balance inclines more and more in disfavor of the celebrated man of the East ... Of the
wonder-worker and apostle there remains nothing ... It will now be good that one begin to
keep silence about him in the West." And the "Religiöses Volksblatt, St. Gallen," 6th October
1928: "The Sadhu cannot be cleared from the reproach of simulation, of having told lies and
of failing to own up." There is no need of going further into this controversy which is a thing
of the past. We must, however, be allowed, by way of a conclusion, to quote a page from P.
Braeunlich's book Sundar Singh in seiner wahren Gestalt where the author pays a well-
deserved tribute to Fr. Hosten's services and serviceableness in this Sundar Singh affray.
"On 4 July 1923, the Jesuit Father H. Hosten published in the Catholic Herald, Calcutta, his
first article against the Sadhu. He simply called him a barefaced swindler From that time
onwards he collected—helped by Protestant missionaries—an immense amount of material
against Sundar Singh. Already in summer 1926, it amounted to not less than 2000 typewritten
pages. Through his diligent, careful inquiries into the innumerable deceits of the Fakir, he
rendered Truth and Christendom an immense service."*5
* It must be stated here in no uncertain terms that insofar as the present writer is concerned, it is his firm
conviction that his own research into the Pfister-Hosten negative critique of the Sadhu, together with the
thorough investigation which Bishop Appasamy conducted about the so-called Sadhu debate in preparing his
balanced and commendable biography of Sundar Singh, fully answers in the Sadhu's favor nearly every question,
doubt, reservation and outright charge of fraudulence, prevarication, deception, imposture and dissimulation
which Pfister and Hosten repeatedly made against Sundar Singh, as is presented in the Swiss Protestant pastor's
hostile study of the Sadhu, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, and in Catholic Jesuit priest Hosten's equally hostile series
of articles that appeared in The CatholicHerald of India, 1923-26. The findings and conclusions to which the
present writer, Appasamy, and others, too, came have been noted at the appropriate places in those chapters of/the
present work which have dealt with the life and ministry of Sadhu Sundar Singh and which demanded a response
from this writer. (See in Vol. I, Chs. 3-5,7-10, and in this present chapter; and in Vol. II, Ch. 14). The reader's careful
review of these various findings and conclusions which have been spread over these several chapters will, it is
believed, confirm the validity of the unequivocal statement made by this writer at the beginning of this footnote.
It should therefore come as no surprise to the reader that in this writer's considered judgment the letter about
the Sadhu which Pfister sent to his esteemed friend Sigmund Freud immediately after the publication of Die
Legende Sundar Singhs is yet another example of premature and unjustified triumphal ism. In his letter to the
founder of psychoanalysis, the Swiss pastor, writing from Zurich on 1 April 1926, had the following to say
about his book on the Sadhu and his sense of accomplishment in having, from his perspective, exposed the
supposed fraudulent Indian fakir:
Sadhu Sundar Singh (Concl'd): Controversy and Clarification 361
If the good Father Hosten considered the Sadhu "a barefaced swindler" and an "impostor"
and deceiver of men, the conduct this very priest himself displayed towards Tharchin with
respect to the Urdu book was, to say the least, anything but honest and commendable. It
might, with some justification, even be termed a case of "the pot calling the kettle black"—
as the reader will now learn as the recounting of the episode of the hotel interview in Darjeeling
and its aftermath is resumed.
The primary purpose for borrowing the book, stated the priest deceptively, was to get it
translated out of the Urdu. The Catholic cleric requested that the book be given him
temporarily if not permanently. Tharchin declined to turn over the book to him since in the
first place he did not have the volume with him at the hotel. Secondly, he further explained
that as he himself had not read the book thoroughly, he could neither spare it nor part with it.
Reflecting on this hotel interview long afterwards, Tharchin ruefully remarked, "I... did not
realize that the priest had approached me to borrow the book with the idea of writing something
critical against Sundar Singh."
Failing to obtain the book directly from Tharchin the Jesuit tried instead to obtain the copy
through the back door. To do this he contacted one of Tharchin's friends. One day after the
1 am taking the opportunity of sending you a just published book about a fashionable Indian miracle worker.
You will perhaps be surprised at my taking so much trouble about a sterile subject, and I am even more surprised
myself. I wrote an article denouncing the stupid belief people had in the fakir's superhuman claims, with the
result that I was attacked, not just as if, like Luther, I had laid hands on the sacred person of the Pope, but as
if I had made a bad smell in the Holy of Holies. Now these gentry have got their deserts. The saint is exposed
like a prima donna extricated from a stinkbutt [meaning unclear] and the outcry his fanatical admirers are
making is enough to make the devil sick. The fre^r Protestant circles are delighted at my disclosures. 1 wanted
to strike a blow at superstition, stupidity and goggle-eyed self-abasement, but one should really spend one's
time less unprofitable One makes no real headway against the stink, and the worse the stink the more quickly
do worthwhile people seek fresh air. I assure you therefore that it is with the greater pleasure that I am
returning to the [psycho-] analysis which predominates in the last part of the book....
In reply, Freud, writing from Vienna ten days later, evinced, not surprisingly, a similar negativity about the Sadhu
just as his would-be psychoanalytical confrere had:
I now lie down for an hour every day with a hot water bottle and am using the leisure to read the book about
the Christian fakir which your son brought.... The book amused me more than it pleased me. For myself 1 was
glad that I have no religion and therefore do not find myself in the cleft stick which you cannot avoid. So far
as you were concerned, I was sorry that you had to busy yourself with such (let us call it) muck. No doubt it will
do good in some circles, or you would not have done it All the same, it is a pity that even you could not be
completely honest [in the book]. You could not possibly count it a virtue of the psychopath [the Sadhu] that
he made such fine speeches, the patterns for which have for a long time been available to all. But that seems
to be the whole of his merit.
See Freud and Pfister, Psychoanalysis and Faith; the Letters of..., trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York: Basic
Books, 1964 cl963), 102-3.
Suffice it to add here that what Freud termed psychopathic "muck" and Pfister labeled "stink" and "stupidity"
was, to Almighty God's nostrils, a sweet and pleasant fragrance arising out of faithful selfless service to Him
rendered up by one of His choicest servants. For has not the Lord God, in the words of His apostle Paul, chosen
"what the world calls foolish to put the wise to shame, what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame,
what the world calls of low degree, yea, what it counts as nothing and what it thinks does not exist,... to put a
( stop to what it thinks exists, so that no mortal man might ever boast in the presence of God"? (Paul's First Letter
|i to the Corinthians 1:27-29 Williams New Testament Translation)
Tibetan's return to Kalimpong, the particular friend in question surprised Tharchin by saying,
"I have heard about an Urdu book on the life of Sundar Singh. I have not seen it or tead it."
Now as a matter of fact this friend, the Tibetan noted, had never asked for the book in all the
many years since it had first come out, some twelve years before! He had simply requested
it, as it were, out of the blue! Unaware, however, of this indirect and behind-the-scenes ruse,
Tharchin very innocently handed over the book to the friend knowing full well about the
presence of a number of mistakes in the copy yet not realizing the sinister design that lay
behind the request for borrowing it. Tharchin came to believe that this particular friend
ended up translating the book for the priest, although he could not be certain.* One thing,
however was certain to Tharchin; which was, that the friend failed ever to return the book to
its owner. On one occasion the Tibetan had reminded him to return the little volume, but the
friend acted as though he did not know where he had placed the work and therefore pretended
that he might have to search for it.
Tharchin later recalled "that this particular priest checked my times and dates which I
had recorded or narrated in connection with the travels of Sundar Singh. The priest even
contacted the Political Liaison Office at Gangtok to verify the dates and found them correct.
In the end he was at last completely convinced about the historicity of Sadhuji's visit io
Darjeeling and Sikkim State." In addition, the priest is reported to have remarked to one of
Tharchin's other friends, "I find that man a good 'diary-man'."f
About this entire matter Tharchin sadly had to report the following: "In 1928 Sadhuji
wrote me a letter saying that he was disappointed with me. He thought that I knew, and of
course I did know, about the Urdu book which contained several mistakes and even about
the fact that Sadhuji had written to the publisher for corrections." In his letter to Tharchin
Sundar Singh further stated, "You have given the book to our enemy and have revealed its
contents to them." Upon receiving this letter Tharchin was terribly shocked to realize how
he had been tricked by the Jesuit who by subterfuge had secured the book through his friend
and had gotten it translated. Tharchin had been completely innocent in the whole affair, yet
continued to feel extremely sad over the fact that his innocent action had created trouble and
further controversy for Sadhuji which in some ways has perhaps not yet subsided even till
now. In casual conversation i on more than one occasion before his death,j Tharchin had
!
. /
* It is known for certain that Father Hosten could not speak Urdu (or Hindustani), and one can therefore assume
with a certain degree of confidence that he could not read it, either. See his letter of inquiry to Rev. Kelly about
Tharchin and Sundar Singh, dated 28 Nov. 1924, which Hosten subsequently had published in the CHI(\5 Apr.
1925):231, In the letter the Jesuit writes: "If Tharchin happens to come to Darjeeling before Christmas, could
you persuade him to pay me a visit? If he does not speak English or Hindi or Paharia, could you arrange for an
interview at your place, where I could find an interpreter?"
f Could this other friend of Tharchin's have been Rev. Kelly of Darjeeling cited above and in several other
previous footnotes to the present chapter? It was he with whom it is known that Hosten had been in contact by
correspondence two to three years earlier and who by this time was now thoroughly acquainted with the subject
matter that was of more than passing interest to Hosten.
opened his heart to a close acquaintance reciting in regretful tones how the book had been
taken away from him and the incalculable difficulties it had subsequently created for his dear
friend Sadhu Sundar Singh.
Yet the Sadhu, far from exhibiting concern for himself, was deeply saddened over what
the controversy and the attacks upon him personally were costing his friends and supporters
in terms of persecution, misunderstanding, and time and energy voluntarily expended in his
defense. Nevertheless, in and through it all he experienced great peace and rest that only the
Lord could give. These and other similar feelings he expressed over and over personally to
his friends and in his correspondence. For example, at about the same time that Tharchin
was having his unpleasant encounter with Father Hosten in Darjeeling, far to the west at the
Sadhu's home in Subathu among the Simla Hills, Sundar was sharing some thoughts on the
controversy over his truthfulness with Rev. E. Schwab, a Swiss missionary then laboring in
Bombay State who had come the long distance to Subathu to investigate on the spot how the
charges against the Sadhu could be dealt with. He it was who had been one of Sundar
Singh's interpreters in both Switzerland and Germany during the Sadhu's preaching tours
there. In a letter which Schwab wrote on 5 May 1927 back to Switzerland, the missionary
conveyed some of Sadhuji's sentiments on his personal crisis, as follows:
He did not cafe-much about the attacks made against him, but he was terribly sorry that his
friends had so much trouble because of them. Again and again he said how sorry he was that
I had to travel so far because of them. The most reasonable of all judgments on these attacks
was what I heard from his own lips: "It does not matter if I am attacked, even if I am called in
Europe an impostor." Very simply, without any boasting, he continued: "If through my work
only one soul has found God, I shall feel more than rewarded for all my effort. But I can even
hope—God be thanked—that more than one soul has been blessed. If these souls have heard
and believed the true Gospel, then their salvation cannot be impaired through the attacks made
on me. But if these people suffer because the Sadhu is called an impostor, then they have not
heard the true Gospel, but they have heard only the Sadhu."6
A year earlier, on 17 June 1926, Sundar wrote to his friend Professor Heiler on this wise:
1 am not sorry or worried about the criticism and attack of my dear enemies because the time will
come w&en everything will be revealed and truth will conquer. But it pains me that you are
being persecuted op my account. Dear friend, I beg you to stop defending me because you
must use your valuable time not for me but for your good work for the Lord. I thank you heartily
for your love, but do now allow the people to persecute me in all possible ways!7
And just a week before the above letter, the Sadhu was found writing to his very close friend
and eventual co-executor of his estate, the Rev. Thomas E. Riddle, the Presbyterian missionary
from New Zealand who labored many years in the Sadhu's home State of the Punjab:
Well, my dearest friend, I don't bother much about this criticism, because God knows that, in
j| spite of my unworthiness and weakness, I have by His grace tried my best to do my part and
ISft;
now let the world and Satan do their part; the result in the end will be quite satisfactory for the
glory of God; that is why He permits such things to happen. I know my shortcomings and
unworthiness, but it is not hidden, nor will the Heavenly Father allow it to remain unknown,
that my whole desire and aim has been to spend the days of my youth for Him and in His name
for my fellow beings. I leave the rest in His hands. Now my prayer is that He may allow me to
go to Tibet once more, before my departure from this world into His glory.8
And finally, just six months prior to his disappearance and presumed death, his biographer
A. J. Appasamy spent a week in late October 1928 with Sadhuji at his Subathu home.
Appasamy could report the substance of his many conversations with Sundar Singh on the
debate still rife in Europe and India:
We also talked often of the controversy which had been raging in India and Europe over him.
He always referred to it with a smile as "an interesting controversy." There was no bitterness
or ill-feeling towards any of the critics who had been so severe on him.9 On the other hand, he
was convinced that his Roman Catholic critics were led by the desire to exalt their Church and
could not face the fact that anyone outside their Church could lead a.life like his. He also felt
that the Modernists were interested in disproving his claims, as otherwise their view of the
supernatural would meet with an effective repudiation. While himself not much concerned
about this controversy, he was grateful to Professor Heiler and the numerous friends who had
worked for him so nobly.10
The Sadhu's supporters were both numerous and influential, ranging from the Nobel
Prize Recipients for Peace and Literature, respectively, Archbishop Nathan Soderblom of
Uppsala (Sweden) and Rabindranath Tagore11 to the distinguished devout and learned Catholic
theologian and philosopher in England Baron Friedrich von Hiigel to the eminent German
theologian and giant scholar of comparative religion Friedrich Heiler to the Anglican (later
independent) missionary and teacher Charles F. Andrews to the American founder of the
Oxford Group Movement (subsequently renamed the Moral Rearmament Movement) Dr.
Frank Buchman12 to the famed American Methodist missionary in India for half a century
Dr. E. Stanley Jones13 to the Rev. F. J. Western (later Anglican Bishop of Tinnevelly), who
as mentioned in an earlier chapter had spent many years in India as a missionary teacher-
evangelist and had interacted with the Sadhu on many occasions.132 One whose testimony of
support for the Sadhu was conspicuously absent, though, was that of Samuel Stokes, the
fellow sadhu in the very early days of Sundar's walk with the Lord.* Representative, however,
* Although in his long letter to the Sadhu of 21 June 1926 Stokes gave a glowing tribute to Sundar and honored
him for his service to the Lord and the hardships he had bravely endured for Christ in those early days, he was
obviously not happy with the accounts of Sundar's later "adventures in Tibet and Nepal." "Of some of these,"
he wrote, "I am not for a moment in a position to offer an opinion, forLwas not with you, and of the strict
accuracy of others, I prefer as far as possible to say nothing, for I feel that they fail in accuracy" This did not
mean, he was quick to add, that he held the Sadhu guilty of intentional lack of accuracy. But because of Sundar 's
"mystical temperament," Stokes continued, "I think that you at times fail to distinguish, as clearly as might be,
the borderline that runs between the subjective and objective in experience.... I am not referring so much to your
among the many whose testimonials did convey support, and very unequivocally so, to the
truthfulness, integrity and spirituality of Sadhu Sundar Singh were those of Archbishop
Soderblom (1866-1931), in whose home the Sadhu had spent ten days as a guest in 1922; Dr.
£. E. Fife, Sundar's beloved former school headmaster at Ludhiana who had sent him up to
Rev. Redman at Simla to be baptized; Church of South India Bishop S.Kulendran, who had
the privilege of fellowshiping with the Sadhu shortly before his disappearance in 1929; and
Rev. Thomas Riddle, one of the dearest friends Sadhuji ever had and who came to know the
Sadhu intimately from 1912 onward. In his letter to the Sadhu dated 12 January 1925, the
Archbishop wrote:
As soon as I read about the attacks on you, I published at the request of our greatest papers
an explicit declaration, and I am glad that I was right in my supposition or rather I am sorry to
see how un-Christian and immoral Roman Catholic polemics can be. I am now writing an article
on you more from a theological point of view, stating that the Roman Catholics who are sincere,
accounts of heaven as to your accounts of things that you experienced in this life." At the end of this less than
ringing endorsement of the Sadhu, Stokes let fall the coup de grâce :
Finally, if 1 see that you rise in the end to caring nothing for what people think of you, and to complete
allegiance to that only which is the very truth, at whatever cost to your personal reputation, then indeed I
shall feel that your life has not only been a remarkable and striking one, but a triumphant example of the
ennobling and transfiguring power of the Spirit of God, who is Truth.
Possibly you have done so. I cannot say. I seem to see inaccuracies and other things which have not been
true to the objective side of life. Yet to you, subjectively they may have had a complete reality.
I have tried for old friendship's sake to be frank, for I should love to be able to add my testimony to that
of others. Be patient with me if 1 am unable to do so.
After quoting this letter in nearly its entirety in his biography of the Sadhu, Bishop Appasamy went on to
indicate the Indian saint's reaction to it, which doubtless was communicated personally to the biographer:
"Sundar's own view was that Stokes was a modernist and did not believe in miracles." Sundar Singh, 225-6. The
later writings of the American ex-Quaker would appear to support this view. Also, in a letter of November 1928
to his old friend Charles Andrews, Stokes had intimated retrospectively that when he (Stokes) had ceased to
accept the Christian doctrine regarding the nature of God and the person of Jesus Christ, "I had ceased to call
myself a Christian." Referenced in Chaturvedi and Sykes, Charles Freer Andrews, 235.
As a matter of fact, in the estimation of both the Sadhu and his close friend, Rev. Thomas Riddle, the former
American Quaker and later Indian citizen had turned out to be quite unstable in his religious faith following the
breakup of the Brotherhood of the Imitation of Jesus. Here, first, is Rev. Riddle's assessment, followed by the
Sadhu's, neither of which was in the least flattering to Stokes. For a number of years, writes Riddle,
Mr. Stokes lived in conditions of extreme poverty, though his bank account, unused, was still there as a rear
line of defense should need arise. After a few years the brotherhood broke up. Its members left the rule of
poverty and most of them married. Mr. Stokes bought property in the [Kotgarh] hills and took a hill
woman as his wife. In the [first world] war he served in the Indian Army, but later let himself go in the [Gandhi-
led] agitation for Indian self-government and served a jail sentence of six months for sedition. Hindu philosophy
began to attract him and he found satisfaction in sitting in meditation in Hindu temples. Finally he joined the
Arya Samajh sect of Hinduism by allowing the priests to perform the shuddi, or purification, rite over him. He
was unstable in character and his spiritual development depended on feeling more than on faith.
And on the last occasion when Sundar Singh met with Samuel Stokes, the Sadhu—in what can at best be termed
a gentle rebuke—spoke to him in the following terms: "I never believed in the doctrine of transmigration till I met
you. You are always changing. You live in poverty, then in riches. You are a sworn celibate, then you marry. You are
an army officer, then in prison for disloyalty. You find satisfaction in work for Christ, then in meditating in a Hindu
temple. Finally you become a Hindu. Every six months you are something new. The truth of transmigration has its
proof in you." These final words to the American were tinged with a modicum of humor, since the Sadhu, following
his Christian conversion, abandoned any belief he might have previously had in the twin notions of transmigration
of the soul and reincarnation. For both these assessments of Stokes, see Riddle, Vision and Call, 27-8.
ask themselves with anxiety: Can there be saints outside the Roman and Papal hierarchy? and
Roman apologists try to get rid of that difficulty by using any means, even untruth. I also try
to show that the miracle, in the sense of a miraculous event against the laws of Nature, has a
great place in popular and learned Roman religion, as well as in primitive faith. But, according
to our Lord, miracle is nothing negative but something positive, the revelation of God's wonderful
answer to the prayers of the heart. You have advanced the same evangelical theory of miracle.
You have no better friend in Europe than Professor Heiler in Marburg, whom I love and
admire, and with whom I have had the most intiihate spiritual communion since he sent me his
first great book on Prayer, where he has adopted my general view of religious development,
and the differences between revealed religion and general mysticism. He is the greatest genius
Roman Catholicism has ever had on comparative religion. But by reading Martin Luther, he
recognized the New Testament and became an evangelical.*
God bless all sincere and true hearts, who love Him for His own sake, and their fellowmen for
their own sake, and who put God's rule above human consideration. Therefore I bless you, and
I am, with benediction and friendship, sincerely your N. SODERBLOM.
On 18 March 1925 the Archbishop wrote again to Sundar:
This story is a dark chapter in the history of the Jesuits and of the vices of "Churchianity." But
it cannot but serve God's Kingdom, and I wish you heartily strength and trust for fulfilling
your great vocation.14
With respect to Dr. Fife, the aforementioned Rev. Schwab could report to the latter's
European friends in May 1927 the view of Sundar Singh's elderly headmasterf
In North India I had the privilege of meeting several people who love and esteem the Sadhu.
Among others I met Dr. E. E. Fife, the missionary who had the boy sadhu in his school and who
ever since has been his fatherly friend. Among missionaries in India I find few who are as
learned as this old gentleman and, above all, I know few who think as sharply andclearly as he
does. He regretted, of course, that there are incorrect statements in the biographical literature
about the Sadhu, which can only with difficulty be corrected now. He said that if someone
could prove that the Sadhu himself, with a view to deceive, sent those well-known telegrams,
that would be a slap in the face for us. But he knows the Sadhu too well, as a very healthy man and
as a very genuine Christian, to believe this charge of his adversaries without well-founded
proofs.f Thus he feels that we should not bother about the cries of his accusers. In one or two
things one could leave one's judgment in suspense. He was of the opinion that the time will come
* Eric Sharpe has pointed out that a primary reason for Catholic suspicion about the Sadhu prompting that
Church's entry into the debate over Sundar Singh's character and ministry was the very fact that it was Friedrich
-Heiler who had so strongly championed the Sadhu'$ cause. As far as the Roman Church was concerned, "Heiler
was a renegade" from the Catholic fold who for sorcie time now "had been living in a spiritual no-man's-land and
who was ultimately to indulge in further still more dangerous ecclesiastical adventures. Heiler's passionate
advocacy of the Sadhu's cause was, one fears, ample reason for the Catholic Establishment to begin to question
his [Sundar Singh's] bona fides." Sharpe went on to comment further that "from his Marburg stronghold, Heiler
... put up a doughty defense of his beloved Sadhu—though one suspects that this was partly because his own
integrity had been called into question." Sharpe, "SSS and His Critics," 60, 61.
t As a matter of fact, even one of the Sadhu's critics, after an exhaustive inquiry into this episode in "the Sadhu
debate," had to acknowledge that Sundar Singh had absolutely nothing to do with the authorship of these telegrams,
that he neither sent them himself nor arranged with anyone else to send them. So stated Bishop Appasamy, after
reviewing the impartial and minute investigation that is found on pages 68-102 of Rev. Gabler's otherwise generally
negative critique of the Indian saint in his German treatise, Sadhu Sundar Singh (Leipzig, 1937).
These telegrams—rwhich simply said: "Sundar Singh slept in Christ," that is to say, he had died; and which
were signed "Smith'*—had been sent on 22 January 1913 from a small railway station in Central India called
when the Sadhu will be splendidly justified. When a man like Dr. Fife does not give up Sundar
Singh we may conficiently dare to be on his side.... The Sadhu is not afraid of the light...15
In one of the very last extant portraits of Sadhu Sundar Singh, written just two months
before his disappearance and presumed death, Bishop Kulendran, at the time a theological
student in Serampore College just outside Calcutta, has described a most noteworthy interview
which he and some of his fellow students had so much enjoyed with the Sadhu in the Bengal
capital. Far from it reading like a description of a charlatan or an impostor or a deceiving
seeker after fame and fortune, the Bishop's description breathes of genuine spiritual life and
light and truth. The time was February 1929, when Sundar Singh had spent a day or so in
Calcutta after a visit to the hill tribes near Nagpur. Staying in the house of a railway officer
on the eastern side of the city, the Indian saint received his younger visitors gladly. Kulendran *
wrote an account of the interview almost immediately afterwards and it was published in the
National Missionary Intelligencer for May 1929. In part it reads as follows:
It is said that when Dante passed through the streets of Florence, people would draw back and
whisper to one another, "That man has been to Hell." And few indeed who have seen the
strange Indian mystic, who passed through Calcutta the other day and whose name has
become so familiar to the world during the last decade, could withhold from him the claim he
makes, that he has seen Heaven. Those who read in cold print of his visions and raptures, his
story of the Maharishi and his miracles, may sh$ke their heads or smile good humoredly but
skeptically. But the cynic's smile of unbelief wqtild fade when he looks upon the face of the
man. And he would begin to feel somewhat ashamed of himself for having had any doubts
regarding the sincerity or honesty of such a person.
Nimode to six of the Sadhu's closest friends. At that very moment the Sadhu was on his way by train from
Bombay to begin a 40-day fast "to ask [God] for blessing on the past work and power for the future"; a fast
which actually lasted a maximum of 23 days before he was rescued when near death from the site of the fast: the
thickly wooded, secluded Kajliban forest, a two-hour walk out from Rishikesh, the pilgrim path community that
lies between Hardwar and Dehra Dun.
According to Sundar Singh, he had met in Bombay a Roman Catholic medical man who went by the name of
Swift. During their travel together on 22 January on the train going to Muttra, the Sadhu had confided to Swift
that he was planning to inaugurate a 40-day fast. Dr. Swift urged Sundar not to extend his fast to that limit for it
would result in certain death. But he also asked the Sadhu for his friends' addresses so he might inform them
should he die. Believing in this man's good intentions the Sadhu had obliged Swift.
Upon learning about the telegrams during his recovery from the fast, Sundar Singh came to believe that Swift
detrained at Nimode station that same day of 22 January, dispatched the telegrams, and caught the next train to
Muttra. As a consequence of these telegrams, the Sadhu was accused of having sent them himself, of never having
fasted at all, and that he went directly to Simla and not the Kajliban forest in January of 1913. It can be said today,
however, that all such malicious assertions have been proven false after careful inquiry.
The only aspect in this entire bizarre episode for which legitimate blame can be leveled at Sundar Singh is his
claim, made immediately afterwards, that he had in fact fasted for 40 days, when, on the contrary, objective data was
available to him, part of which he had himself created, which would have proven the case to be otherwise. As his
biographer Appasamy has observed: "He could have calculated the length of the fast by looking up the date on
which he began his fast (as recorded in his New Testament which he had with him at Annfield [the place to which
he was taken for recovery]) and reckoning how many days had passed before he broke it." But to say, as his critics
asserted, that the Sadhu had consciously lied in the matter would be grossly inaccurate. As Appasamy went on to
say, by way of explaining Sundar Singh's conduct, "In his spiritual enthusiasm he does not seem to have thought of
this simple and obvious method." It was because of his "compelling belief in the overruling Providence of God in all
his actions" which had "led him to make statements which were not true, judged by ordinary standards of historical
accuracy." It must be added here, in defense of the Sadhu, that in later years he still rightfully asserted he had fasted
but that he did not know for how many days. See Appasamy, Sundar Singh, 54-61.
For upon the face of that person there is a look he seldom sees anywhere else. It is the look
of one whose eyes have gazed upon the unseen, whose ears have heard things others do not
hear—to whom the beating of angels' wings is as real as the street cries outside. And why
indeed should we doubt his claim? The Beatitude cannot admit of two interpretations. "Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And whoever would challenge the purity df his
heart?... /
We had not gone to ask questions, but merely to have the privilege of seeing him and being
with him for some time. But emboldened by his kindness and his own suggestion we began to
pelt him with questions of various sorts, dealing with different aspects of Christian life and
thought ...
The above is only a summary and can by no means reproduce the atmosphere in which we
listened to the actual words, with "the aroma of the unseen" clinging around us. As we
struggled back through the small alleys into the din and traffic of Calcutta, the spell of that
peace and quiet assurance was still upon us and a feeling that the lips that spoke that day had
indeed drunk of the waters that make glad the city of God.
Rev. Riddle, in two articles he wrote which appeared in the March and August 1946 issues
of The United Church Review (India), gave the following testimony concerning the Sadhu:
[Upon first meeting him in 1912] I was convinced of his sincerity, and in the many intimate
contacts that 1 have had with him during the next seventeen years I never had cause to change
that first impression of his sincerity, truth and humbleness, or of the power of his pleasing
personality. As the years went by, he grew in world experience and spiritual power, but it was
always a wonder to him why God had given him that high calling of witnessing before kings
and nations, and of sending out to the world his written messages, translated into the tongues
of many people. More than all he was humbly thankful to God for those visions of the unseen
world, which were so indelibly imprinted on his memory that he was ever after able to tell in
clear-cut words the things he had seen and the messages he had heard.
... It is not necessary for us to vindicate him. We know that he was a man of God. His
personal spiritual life was a consistent witness to the fact that God was with him.* God called
him and used him in South India, and in Eastern and Western countries. We know that he did
visit Tibet frequently, that he did fast to the limits of his strength near Dehra Dun; we know that
his visions were no hallucinations but real unveilings of unseen mysteries. We know that he
was sane, shrewd, and level-headed in hisjudgment and was not dominated by gusts of
sentiment. To him the presence of the living Lord was very real, and the joy of that presence
dwarfed every other human joy.16
* Many others who lacked the intimate contact with the Sadhu which Rev. Riddle could claim but who nonetheless
heard him speak and minister among them were able to come to the same conclusion about him as had Riddle:
namely, that far from being an impostor or deceiver of men, here was one who walked with God, that God walked
with him, and whose impact on them was both uplifting andmost appealing. Wrote Tharchin's friend, Rev. Kelly,
to Sundar Singh's arch critic Father Hosten:
I have heard doubts expressed in many quarters as to the genuineness of many of the Sadhu's experiences, and
hope that he will not be found out to be an impostor. We must remember that the promises of miraculous signs
"following those that believe" has never been abrogated, that many of the "Saints" (in the Roman Catholic
sense—I am still in the habit of reading Catholic books, such as Surin, Francis de Sales, Thomas a Kempis, Father
Baker, etc.) have been the subjects of ecstasies and strange powers and deliverances and that there is no reason
why a man who yields himself wholly to God may not be the subject of just such manifestations of Grace.
I do not know the Sadhu personally, nor does he know me. So I am writing from a perfectly neutral point of
view. .. I was absent from India during the years 1914-1919. Since my return I have visited many Protestant
Mission Stations, and wherever the Sadhu has been only fragrant memories of him remain.
See Hosten, "SSS: Interesting Correspondence," CHI (15 Apr. 1925):232.
It is a matter of some significance to the present author to have noticed in his reading and'
research about this infamous "Sadhu dispute" that not one of his published critics had ever
met or spent time with Sundar Singh.* If they had done so, their accusations of impostor,
charlatan, swindler, deceiver, thaumaturgist, liar and self-seeker would have soon been
withdrawn in the face of a clearly recognizable manifestation of undeniable authenticity,
integrity, veracity and transparency of heart in this Indian saint. For when the character,
personality and conduct of this man in all their facets are carefully scrutinized, it becomes
plain for all to see that Sadhu Sundar Singh could never have been guilty of any of these
defamatory charges. For would a religious impostor, swindler, magical miracle-worker, or
self-seeking religionist do any of the following things—things which in every instance an
eyewitness, and not the Sadhu himself, claimed he did or said? Any objective observer must
acknowledge that such things as are presented below just do not fit the well-known profile of
the religious fraud or the self-serving religionist who by subterfuge or any other deceptive
means seeks fame, material gain, or a reputation of sanctity. On the contrary, if these had
truly been Sundar Singh's objectives, then in the representative incidents from his life described
below he should have exhibited precisely the opposite attitude, behavior or practice from
what he actually did exhibit.
As the reader therefore considers one by one the following eyewitness testimonials as
they relate to various aspects of the Sadhu's life and work, he should answer the question: Is
this the attitude, conduct, statement or practice of an impostor? of a charlatan? of a seeker
after celebrity status or fame? of a swindler who deceptively exploits others for material
gain? of an arch deceiver in quest of a saintly reputation? The answer in every instance, it is
believed by this writer, will be a resounding negative.
1. Vincent S. David, the young Indian Christian from Bombay who as interpreter traveled
with Sundar Singh for several weeks in West India and elsewhere on the Subcontinent, told
of the Sadhu's practice with regard to offerings collected towards his needs. Because the
Sadhu strongly objected to collections of money being taken in churches or at meetings for
his own needs, some people at the town of Kodali did so privately among themselves to meet
the cost of tickets for Sundar Singh to travel on to Bangalore. As it happened, as the train
was about to start, the Sadhu refused, in the instance at hand, to accept Rs. 25/- offered to
* It was only after noticing this significant phenomenon in his research that the present writer came across Eric
Sharpe's fine article in which he, too, took knowledge of this fact, though not investing this observation with as
much significance as the present author would have liked. Writes Sharpe:
Throughout this frantic debate, one quite remarkable fact stands out, namely that the debaters were all far more
concerned with what Sundar Singh had been, rather than with what he was. Discussion centered on the veracity
of past narratives, not on his observable conduct, his preaching, or his spiritual life [something which the present
writer has attempted to do in what follows ii\ the Text above]. And this is surely odd: for there was so much to
report. Those who had known him were unanimously his supporters; his enemies for the most part had never
encountered him face to face. Those who had encountered him seemed not to want to discuss his bona fides,
being content to accept him much as oriental piety accepts a guru—as a representative of the Supreme, hardly
subject to the limitations which determine the lives of lesser mortals. "SSS and His Critics," 62 (emphasis
Sharpe's).
him for his use. So the bearers of this offering dropped the gift packet onto a seat of his train
carriage and quickly exited the slow-moving train. Later, at one of the stations where the
train halted, the Indian evangelist, moved with compassion at the sight of an old beggar clad
in ragged clothes and shivering in the cold, placed in the hands of the astonished man the
packet of money. "It was the Sadhu's strict practice," added David, "not to receive any
money or even food for the journey. The only thing he was ready to accept was a railway
ticket to his next destination; he could not be persuaded to receive anything else. When
money was forced on him he gave it away to others."
2. Rev. H. A. Popley of the London Missionary Society in South India accompanied
Sundar Singh on a preaching tour there. He tells how the Sadhu would often be surrounded
by admiring crowds of people who wished to touch his feet. Any such signs of homage "he
always deprecated" and even asked that no one should come to the train station to see him
off except those who were responsible to place him on the correct train and buy his ticket.
He would even refuse presents unless they were things absolutely essential to his work or
jburneys. For a time, noted Rev. Popley, the Sadhu owned but one outer garment, the saffron
robe, but later he did accept a second one, "Once at Erode, when he stayed at our house,"
explained Popley, "a friend wanted to make a present to him and gave him a fine rug. He
took the rug graciously and then asked the friend to accept it from him as a present"!
3. Miss Goodwin, the shorthand typist assigned to accompany the Indian evangelist on his
entire preaching tour in Switzerland, relates the story about a gold watch. Upon arriving at
the Geneva train station the Sadhu was presented with a beautiful gold watch as a gift from
young people involved in Mission work. Bearing an inscription and his initials S.S.S., it was
admired by all on the station platform; but showing his own pleasure very quietly, the Indian
saint simply remarked: "It is useful here, but I shall not want it in India."
4. There having been established a very close friendship between Rev. Popley and the
Sadhu, the latter, in one of his letters to the Reverend, made an unusual request. He asked
his good friend and fellow believer in Christ not to write to him any longer using the form of
address of "Sadhuji"—an honorific term of salutation showing profound respect and honor.
"I am a little brother in Christ," Sundar explained. "I shall be glad if you will write 4 little
brother' instead of'Sadhuji'," and then he signed the letter: "Your loving little brother Sundar
Singh." When reviewing this letter for his biography of the Sadhu, Bishop Appasamy
commented how revealing this was. "This touch of... humility on the part of Sundar Singh,
who was drawing such immense crowds and to whom people showed the greatest marks of
veneration, is quite significant."
5. In Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), there was a wealthy businessman and leading
Methodist, K. R. Wilson, who was an eyewitness to an incident of divine healing that involved
the Sadhu. A 12-year-old boy had some internal trouble and had been operated on for it. As
he lay in a city hospital, the leading doctors had judged that recovery—which was far from
certain—would require many months. At first declining to visit the boy at the behest of the
mother, the Indian saint on his own initiative did so the following day right after one of his
meetings. The boy requested that he pray for him and lay hands on his head. Saying that he
was not God, the Sadhu told the boy he should look to Jesus for healing. The boy indicated
that he knew this but still hoped the Indian evangelist would satisfy his request. Upon the
Sadhu explaining through his interpreter that he could not pray in English and would prefer to
pray in Urdu, the boy agreed. Then offering up a prayer Sundar Singh laid his hands on the
boy's head. Within one or two days the boy was healed, and a week later came to one of the
Sadhu's meetings and met Sundar at its conclusion. Looking at the lad earnestly, he asked
him to be "a good boy."
Because the news of this incident rapidly spread causing people to look upon him as a
wonder-worker, the Sadhu, who had always been reticent about allowing any ministry to
develop for himself in the area of divine healing, now made a decision; "I tried to get them to
see that it was the power of Christ in answer to prayer that had healed the boy. As they
would not be convinced, I determined not to do it again. For I felt that it would encourage
superstition and distract from the gospel I had to preach." Commenting on this decision and
the limitations the Indian evangelist thereafter placed upon himself, Bishop Appasamy
remarked: "It is a great pity that Sadhu Sundar Singh refused to exercise widely and regularly
this gift of Divine Healing which we know he possessed from this as well as from other
instances.... He would have greatly added to his influence if, like his master Jesus whom he
was so anxious to follow, he had been moved with compassion and exercised his gift ... as
an essential part of his.Christian ministry"
6. Sher Singh, Sundar's father, who had so fiercely opposed his son's Christian conversion
and subsequent adherence to this alien faith, finally told his son in 1919 that he now wanted
to become a Christian. "You have opened my spiritual eyes," said the father to his son, "and
you must baptize me." This confession thrilled the heart of the Sadhu who for fourteen years
following his own baptism had prayed incessantly for his father. But Sundar had to decline
the honor and privilege of baptizing his own father because of the stand he had firmly taken
on the matter from the veiy beginning of his ministry that he felt it was his duty to evangelize
but not to baptize. That work, he believed, should be done by the ordained ministers of the
Church. "How can I baptize you," he said to Sher Singh, "when I have refused to baptize
hundreds of others?" The Sadhu's father would die in 1923 without receiving baptism from
anyone. Yet despite his son's staunch adherence to his principles, Sher Singh was still
determined, despite the Sadhu's insistence that he needed no land or money, to bequeath in
his last will and testament half his property (consisting of lands and money in the bank) to his
son Sundar, who then handed over all the lands to his brother upon the death of his father!!!
7. Vincent David, mentioned previously, was invited to spend some time with the Sadhu
at the latter's home in Subathu among the Simla Hills. He was therefore in a position to
observe Sundar's prayer life. "He never sat for his prayer outside, where men could see
him. He entered his room, closed the door and prayed to his Father in secret. For hours his
door would be closed and if I had any business with him I would peep in through the glass
window to see whether he was still in prayer or whether he was free. My impression was
that he generally spent about four to six hours daily in prayer ..."
8. Rev. Schwab, mentioned earlier in the chapter as one of the Sadhu's interpreters in
Switzerland and Germany, has provided a particularly revealing recollection of the Indian saint:
One heard him speak less and less about the Sadhu and more and more about Christ. I had an
unforgettable experience in this connection. We went by train to a far-off place for a meeting,
the pastor of that place traveling with us. This pastor told the Sadhu that at the meeting in the
evening a lady would come and speak to him, a lady who could not find peace, though she had
gone to see many a famous worker in God's Kingdom. The Sadhu remained for a while quiet
and absorbed in thought. Then addressing the pastor he asked him not to introduce him to the
lady. The pastor was surprised, almost offended, that he refused such a cure of souls, but he
kept quiet. The Sadhu noticed with his fine intuition that his attitude was not approved.
Therefore he explained: "Dear Pastor, this lady has to learn something, which she would not
learn if I received her. She ought to learn that Christ is so much nearer to her, and can mean
much more to her, than any man."
9. Another episode revealing the character of the Sadhu occurred during a luncheon h£ld
in one of the Swiss communities. Most of the guests were boys, who were somewhat shy in
asking questions. Miss Goodwin, the shorthand typist among the Sadhu's party, thought the
boys would enjoy hearing about "the wonderful old hermit in the Himalayas," the Kailash
Maharishi. So she asked Sundar Singh if he would speak about this ancient recluse, even
attempting to coax him to do so after she got the answer, "It is very interesting but not
useful." "The dear Sadhu," she wrote, "was not going to satisfy mere curiosity, and he never
did.... He always made it quite clear that he had come to give his message about the Living
Christ, not to answer idle questions."
10. Towards the end of the Sadhu's extensive preaching tour of the West and Australia in
1920, national feeling in India had reached a fever pitch. So much so that the nationalist-
minded among the Christians felt that the Indian saint's return should be marked by special
celebrations. In Madras and South India, for example, plans for huge receptions in his honor
had already been underway just as he was being touted in advertisements as "The man who
conquered the West."* Hearing about these matters at Colombo after having departed
Australia by ship bound for Bombay, the Indian evangelist quaked at the very thought of
having to endure such lionizing; and so he wrote ahead to Vincent David to meet him at
Bombay but to maintain absolute secrecy about his arrival so that nothing in the way of an
enthusiastic reception might materialize there as was being prepared for him in South India.
The Sadhu was thus able to slip away from all publicity of this sort which he intensely
disliked. Later he was heard to say this about the South Indian preparations: "I thank my
Christian brothers and sisters for their love. [Yet] I feel it a very hard cross to bear when
preparations are made for my reception. It is easier to starve, or to be in prison for Him—but
a reception is a very great cross ..."
11. Sundar Singh was not interested in ministering to the rich, the wellborn or powerful if
it meant compromising the principles which guided his every step. A charlatan or impostor,
* Eric Sharpe has remarked, incidentally, that such claims as this that were then being made should not be
overlooked. "That the Sadhu was already presenting to the [Western] world an authentically Indian Christian
spirituality'1 was a point not "to be passed over lightly." Scarcely less important, he added, was "the need which
the Christian Church in India was beginning to feel for such an indigenous expression of the Christian faith. The
Gandhian dawn was awakening more than merely a sense of nation among Indians; it was awakening a new
national pride among Indian Christians, suddenly aware that their destiny ought not to be so completely in the
hands of the West as it had seemed to be hitherto. In 1920 the Sadhu seemed to some to be the man of the hour."
In this connection, an editorial of one Indian Christian journal at that very time had declared: "To the Sadhu we
are grateful that he has broken forever the spell under which Indian Christians have slept... In the domain of the
spirit there is nothing essential in Christianity for which we need to go out as pupils. As for Christ He is of the
East, and is in the heart of the East..." Quoted by Sharpe from The Christian Patriot in his article, "SSS and His
Critics," 54. Sharpe's own commentary is found on the same page.
or one who sought fame by exploiting any opportunity to establish a relationship with the
famous, would have jumped at the chance to meet with them; or, on the other hand, a
religious impostor or charlatan would not hesitate to trim his message to ingratiate himself to
as wide an audience as possible as a means of furthering his acceptance and fame. The
Sadhu, however, always spoke as he felt the spiritual condition of the people to whom he
was ministering warranted, regardless the consequences to him personally: certainly not the
kind of behavior generally conducive to winning friends and achieving popularity. Three
incidents bear out what has been said here: the first two regarding two world-famous
personages; the third, a hard-hitting address he delivered in Holland.
a. The Dowager Empress of Russia was now living in Copenhagen, Denmark at the time
when Sadhu Sundar Singh visited in 1922. She was the mother of Tsar Nicholas II who, with his
entire royal Romanov family, had been brutally murdered by the Russian Communists in 1918.
Impressed by what she had heard about the Indian saint, the Empress Dowager now requested
that he come to see her at her castle. Instead of rising up in response to her summons, the
Sadhu inquired why he should specially go and see the Empress—thus indicating that in his
thinking, unless there was some very compelling reason, he saw no point in visiting with this
well-known person. Rev. R Lange, later a Danish missionary in India, was present in the Danish
capital at this time and could report that only after the Sadhu was told "that no woman had
suffered like her" did he finally go to see her.
b. The Empress of India, Queen Mary of Great Britain, had invited to tea the sadhu messenger
from the East during his lengthy visit to England in 1920. "With his Oriental respect for the
command of Her Majesty," wrote one of his biographers later, the Sadhu "was greatly
embarrassed" because a speaking engagement for him had been announced for the same hour.
In a quandary over what to do, he finally wrote Her Majesty asking to be excused since an
estimated two thousand people would be assembling at the same hour as her tea function and
"he did not wish to disappoint them." The Queen-Empress graciously acceded to his request.
In the end he never did meet with her.
c. Baron van Boetzelaer, in his book Keur Uit De Toespraken van den Sadhoe Soendar
Singh, could report the severe warning which he heard the Indian evangelist fearlessly issue
to his audience at Rotterdam. In summary form the Baron wrote that the Sadhu declared in his
message that unlike India which was asking more and more for the Christian gospel, Holland
and the rest of Europe were in danger of becoming more and more indifferent, even though
Europe owed all her blessings of culture, freedom and education to Christianity. Europe, said
the Indian preacher, was like Judas Iscariot who ate with Christ and then denied Him. But now
Europe has also to fear Iscariot's fate: "She may hang herself on the tree of learning." In
conclusion, spoke the Eastern saint, "You have so many privileges. We, in the East, have to
give up many things when we become Christians. You do not have to. Be therefore careful that
you don't lose your only possibility for external happiness."17
Unlike the Sadhu's various critics, who had no personal knowledge of him, the German
Lutheran pastor, Rev. J. Kohl, spent ten whole days in intimate interaction with Sundar Singh
in his capacity as the latter's personal host during part of the Sadhu's tour of Germany in
April 1922. At first the Lutheran clergyman was quite skeptical and even "suspicious" of the
Indian saint, even refusing "very firmly" to be his interpreter. Rev. Kohl was nonetheless
able, as he years later reported in a German religious journal, "to identify myself with him to
such a degree" from the very first day that at the end of their time together "we separated
as brethren ... and have kept up our friendship to the present day." And though differences
in thinking and theology did surface in their days of fellowship, Pastor Kohl could still write
a most intimate and positive account of his time with the Sadhu. Appearing in 1925 as part of
Professor Heiler's book in support of Sundar Singh ("Apostle or Impostor?"), his letter to
the Professor read in part as follows:
I am a convinced Lutheran and have been blamed that I felt coldly towards him [the Sadhu],
especially Swiss people have blamed me much....
I myself have been in India for twenty-five years and know something of the rich imagination
of Indians, but I have the sure conviction that the Sadhu would tell nothing, really nothing, but
what are facts, would tell nothing which he had not experienced and experienced in the very
same way he was telling it. Certainly ten days are not sufficient to get to know a person, but
from all that I wrote to you in the beginning you can see that they helped me much to understand
the Sadhu's innermost personality.
In a big meeting it might be possible for a clever impostor to answer the questions put to
him, always in such a striking way as the Sadhu did without previous preparation, but we often
sat face to face with him in small circles, for example in Kiel when Mr. Schmidt almost cross-
examined him to get behind his true conviction about the vicarious sacrifice of Christ and
about the Bible (also his visions). If here was a case of deceiCshould nobody have noticed it?
Were we not twenty people there! Of course he did not express himself in our dogmatic ways;
that would rather have been suspicious to us....
It is possible that I would have seen many things differently from how the Sadhu saw them,
yet I am fully convinced, not only that the Sadhu has been in Tibet but also that he has really
experienced all the miraculous things of which he has spoken.18
Those who knew the Sadhu best and interacted with him the longest are more reliable
judges of his character and ministry than those with a hidden agenda or who cannot approach
the spiritual and intuitive with anything other than a rational, psychological or scientific point
of orientation. As Moravian missionary at Poo, Rev. Hermann Kunick, who knew Sundar
Singh personally, once observed about the Sadhu and his critics: "... it is my opinion that
there is not much point in exploring psychologically the spiritual life of Sundar Singh and
trying to prove anything. Most of such proofs will always miss the mark."*19
* Even as "such proofs" presumably derived from the lips and life of Gergan Dorje Tharchin by Pfister and
Hosten missed the mark! It is most interesting that in their "collaborative" critique of Sundar Singh, these two
critics not only engaged in a psychological analysis of the Sadhu that in the end proved to be greatly flawed; they
also attempted the same—but likewise failed—with the Punjabi evangelist's Tibetan associate as well. At two
places in Die Legende Sundar Singhs, on pages 185 and 207, Pfister can be found delving into Tharchin's psyche
in an attempt to prove that the Sadhu was a gross liar and impostor. "In his letter to Heiler," wrote Pfister,
"Tharchin does not express any doubt regarding the [Elam] torture." Yet "what does that demonstrate?" he
disbelievingly inquired. Probing Dorje Tharchin's mind for anything which could buttress the Pfister-Hosten
case against the Sadhu, the would-be Swiss psychologist confidently declared: "This doesn't mean, of course,
that he [Tharchin] believes in it [the Elam torture]. It is understandable that, despite all his suspicions [expressed]
to Kelly as well, he wouldn't want to denounce the master he admires, who ... has supported him financially" in
the educational and other gospel work Tharchin had later undertaken in Tibet.
Returning one last time to Tharchin and the Urdu book of the Sadhu, it should be noted
that upon further and deeper reflection concerning this whole matter, the pained man from
Poo—when dictating his "memoirs"—confided the following:
Probably this is the reason Sadhuji misunderstood me, although I did not knowingly and
intentionally give away the book. I am innocent about this matter. Had I known that it was a
trick I of course would never have deliberately handed over my copy of the work to the critics
or the enemies of Sundar Singh. Furthermore, perhaps this is the reason why Sadhuji did not
remember me in his will. Otherwise, in view of all the assistance I had extended to him at Ghoom
and in Sikkim and of my burning desire to preach the gospel of Christ to Tibetans, it was taken
for granted he would have remembered me in his last will.
In actual fact, however, Sundar had made a will almost two years before the incident with
the Urdu book had occurred. And according to his biographer and friend Charles Andrews,
the Sadhu "left everything for the encouragement of the Christian education of young children,
and for the furtherance of mission work in Tibet."*20 Had Tharchin been privy to this
And at another place in his negative critique of the Sadhu, Pfister first quotes Professor Heiler's summation of one of
Tharchin's communications to the German defender of the Sadhu: "The Tibetan Tharchin... is convinced of the fact that
Sundar Singh had the opportunity every year to come to T i t o through Garhwal and Nepal." But then, Pfister attempted
to destroy this conviction by parsing this statement of the Tibetan, impugning his motive for holding such a strong belief,
and in the process presumptuously jumping to unwarranted conclusions. "I know from the best source," he with great
assurance began, "that Tharchin is not in the least sure about Sundar's journeys to TibetOn 4 June 1925 at Rev. Kelly's
Daijeeling home, he informed his readers,
Hosten had a three-hour conversation with him [Tharchin] about his relationships with Sundar and established categorically
that Tharchin believes the journeys merely on the authority of the Sadhu, if he believes them at all. Is this belief of a man
whom Sundar freed from the position of coolie a proof? Tharchin, though, says only that Sundar "had the opportunity,"
not, however, that he used this opportunity. Does this not speak exactly for the fact that Tharchin himself does not
believe in these travels to Tibet? Yet it was important to him to give Sundar as good a testimony as possible!
This entire psychological exercise, to borrow again Rev. Kunick's apt phrase, misses the mark entirely when one
considers: (a) the mutual trust and deep understanding of each other which had developed and grown over the years and
decades of frequent contact and lengthy association between Sundar Singh and Gergan Tharchin; (b) that given the latter's
acquaintance with the area of Garhwal and western Nepal because of his nearby Poo experience for the first twenty years
of his life, the Tibetan would not find incredible in the least a frequent visitation to Tibet—despite the known physical and
geopolitical obstacles—by his robust, determined and zealous follower of their mutual divine Master, Jesus; and (c) that
at the very end of Tharchin's life, as was so clearly seen in the two previous chapters, the Tibetan was still found to be a
staunch supporter, grateful admirer, and devoted believer in the Sadhu and his experiences both in Tibet and elsewhere, and
this despite the feet that he had been left out of Sundar's last will and testament! Surely, once this latter disappointing
development became known to the Tibetan, why would he continue to endorse the Sadhu's saintly character and to believe
in most of his extraordinaiy exploits (including the Elam torture experience) if his motive for having done so in the past had
not been based on firm conviction but had rested on some base material consideration? If it had been the latter, Tharchin
would have quickly disowned the Sadhu as damaged spiritual goods long before delivering up his unchanged, quite
positive, adulatory end-of-life assessment of his longtime friend and fellow evangelist.
* The Sadhu, were he alive today, would be greatly encouraged by what belatedly has developed with regard to
further evangelistic efforts towards the Tibetan-speaking peoples in the cis-Himalaya region of South Asia, As
reported in Kalimpong to the present author by one of Gergan Tharchin's younger-generation friends, there was
established in 1991 by the Daijeeling Diocese of the Church of North India (CNI) a "Sadhu Sundar Singh
Evangelistic Fund" to which all Christians had been invited to contribute. B. C. Simick Jr., whose parents had the
privilege of hearing the Sadhu speak in Kalimpong in 1914, has observed that because "Sundar Singh has achieved
intelligence it doubtless would to some extent have assuaged the pain and regret he so
deeply felt pursuant to the unpleasant affair over the Urdu volume; it would have also doubtless
softened the blow that fell on him in his not having been named a beneficiary in the Sadhu's
will as a means of providing assistance to Tharchin in his gospel work among Tibetans.
By way of conclusion to these several chapters on the Sadhu, such an extensive treatment
on the relevant aspects in the life of Sundar Singh as they intersected with Gergan Tharchin's
life would remain incomplete without including his thought on the final end of Sadhuji. Very
pensively, Tharchin mused: "No definite proof is forthcoming to declare whether Sundar
Singh is alive or dead. If the statements regarding the Maharishi be given any credence, then
it is quite possible he may be with the Maharishi. It is also quite possible that he may have
died due to an epidemic." In a similar vein of uncertainty yet tinged perhaps with a measure
of hopefulness, when a certain evangelist was wont to ask the longtime friend of the Sadhu's
about Sundar's death, Tharchin was heard to reply: "Whatis the proof that Sundar Singh is
dead, and again, what is the proof that Sundar Singh is alive?" Both these remarks were
uttered by the Tibetan towards the very end of his life.*21
It would appear as though Tharchin gave different opinions at different times about the final
end of his esteemed friend. Some ten years prior to the opinions just now quoted, he had replied
as follows when asked if he thought the Sadhu had been murdered on his way to Tibet: "I think
that he was an accident-victim of the mountain-world. Otherwise, he would surely have gotten
such high eminence among the CNI," this Fund, named in his honor and in recognition of his great burden that the
gospel of Christ be proclaimed to all Tibetans, had as its initial goal a total contribution of five lakhs [i.e., 500,000]
Indian rupees. The interest on it, to be gained from the Fund's deposit in the bank, would be allocated for the
personal needs of evangelists whose territorial area of gospel ministry would embrace the entire Himalayan Hill
regions that approach the Tibetan border. Interview with Simick Jr., Nov. 1992.
* Gergan Tharchin was not the only one who entertained the notion that the Sadhu—even long decades after his
disappearance—might still be alive. In the year 1950, following Easter, a close acquaintance of Tnarchin's was in
Kotgarh beyond Simla. There he happened to meet Tarnyed Nasib Ali from Poo who, it will be recalled (see Ch.
3), had often traveled with Sundar Singh (particularly in 1908 and 1912) deep into the Gartok area within Tibet.
He asked this gentleman concerning the whereabouts of Sundar Singh. Ali replied that the Sadhu was still alive
somewhere in the Himalayan forests. No reason was advanced, however, for this claim. GTUM TsMs, 88n.
Furthermore, some 16 years later, Bishop Appasamy could report having received a most remarkable letter
concerning the status of the Sadhu since his disappearance in 1929. It was from Rev. Robert F. Rice, a former
missionary in Korea, and dated from November 1966. By that time Rev. Rice was teaching Religions and
Missions at the well-known Christian, charismatic-oriented Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma USA.
In the letter Rev. Rice wrote these striking words: "I know that Sundar Singh is no less active now than he was
many years ago. I could say more but will forbear. I know of no one apart from the Apostles who has given a
better picture of Jesus Christ, at least to me." See Appasamy's "Introduction" to the Indian ed. of Sundar Singh,
Reality and Religion (1924; 1st Indian ed., Madras, 1968, reprinted 1971), viii.
But by far the most extraordinary claims about the Sadhu's continuing presence in this world—and that, many
decades after his disappearance and presumed death—can be found in a series of letters which the present writer
stumbled upon while sorting through the voluminous Tharchin Papers at the Indo-Tibetan's residential compound
in Kalimpong. A lengthy discussion about these letters and Gergan Tharchin's assessment of the said claims
therein are presented at this point in the End-Notes for the present chapter.
through."22 As for A. J. Appasamy, it was his judgment that "Sundar Singh died in 1929." So
this Sadhu biographer declared in an introduction he provided in 1965 to one of Sundar Singh's
posthumously published books.23 Earlier the biographer had written this assessment:
It has not been possible all these years to find out what really happened to Sundar Singh. He
might have had one of his heart attacks and died from heart failure. He might have been swept
away by an epidemic of cholera or some other dread disease. He might have fallen down a
precipice and perished. Or he might have died the death of a martyr for preaching the gospel in
a closed country. To die such a death was his greatest ambition.*24
On the other hand, the British legal community in England and India—at least that part of
it which must deal with testaments, wills and estates of deceased persons—waited till 1933
to act. For by 24 April of that year a wireless message datelined London was transmitted to
the New York Times which read quite simply: "Sadhu Sundar Singh ... has now been officially
presumed to be dead by the courts."25 In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the
legal community could take no other step than this.
Yet despite the uncertainty which may still linger in the minds of many surrounding the
ultimate end of the Sadhu, there is at least one thing of which the Church can be most certain
concerning the known concluding period of Sundar Singh's life; which is, that to the very end
his zeal and consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ never wavered. In a late 1931 article
published more that two years after the Sadhu's disappearance in April of 1929—and entitled,
"Is Sadhu Sundar Singh Still Living?"—Sadhuji's close friend and confidant, Charles Andrews,
wrote about the evangelist's unwavering commitment to his Lord and Master. Writing in
obvious uncertainty as to whether or not his Indian friend were still alive, Andrews gives a
final portrait of the Sadhu that reveals the state of his spirituality during the twilight years of
his known life on earth. It is worth quoting here at some length:
... In some ways his utter sacrifice for the sake of the poor is on a level with that of Mahatma
Gandhi himself.f His burning faith in God is no less intense, and the fire of his love is kindled
at the altar of his worship of Christ as his divine Savior and Lord, the one Master of his spiritual
life....
... A more burning devotion to Christ than his I have never known. He is entirely absorbed
in the things of the soul and is not of this earth at all. He longs to go his own way. Probably he
never felt so miserable as when he was paraded over Europe. His whole heart and soul were
longing for the Unseen. And anything that brings him into the middle of this material world,
except for the comfort of sorrow and the relief of suffering and the testimony of his Lord and
* It should be observed here that not long after Sundar Singh's disappearance a search party, consisting of Rev. Riddle
and Dr. John Taylor of the Reformed Presbyterian Mission at Roorkee, spent nearly a month in extremely hard
trekking of over 200 miles right up to the Tibetan border and up to an altitude of 18,000 feet in an exhausting but
devoted quest of the Sadhu, yet without finding a single trace of him at all. No one, it seemed, had seen or heard of him
anywhere along the entire known route he had planned to take in company with some Tibetan traders with whom he
had earlier corresponded. Clearly, a peculiar mystery has enveloped Sundar Singh's final end. For a remarkable account
ofthe search party's quest to find the Sadhu, see Riddle's biography of Sundar Singh, The Vision and the Call, 76-88;
there is also a condensed version of it in Riddle's autobiography, The Light of Other Days, 181 -90.
t Andrews was perhaps even closer to the Mahatma than he was to the Sadhu, and therefore the Britisher was
in a position to be able to make such a comparison between these two remarkable Indian personages in respect
of their compassionate self-sacrifice on behalf of the least fortunate segment of society. It should be added here
that Gergan Tharchin's own generosity and self-denial for the sake of the poor was an aspect of his life which
became legendary in his own lifetime.
Savior, is something he longs to escape from. His one desire is to get into communion with his
Lord; to experience afresh the pure wonder and love that it brings him....
From all the sensational and loud popularity and parade which he received in the West he
has gone back into obscurity. No one even hears about him or knows where he is. He had tried
[again] to penetrate into Tibet, for he wanted to die for Christ's sake. But the first time he had
to turn back ill [in 1928]. Then he stayed with the lepers at Subathu and made his home with
them. Now he has gone again and no one knows today what has happened to him.
I met him for the last time more than two years ago [early spring 1929?] when he came to the
little Christian church [at Kotgarh] and spoke a few words at the end of the service. We had a
meal together afterwards. He was just the same. I did not find any difference in him. He was,
however, looking very ill and worn and somewhat sad. But again and again his face would
gleam with joy when anything brought the name of his Lord before him.
That then is the last picture I saw of him. Since then 1 have only heard the indirect news that
his illness had further increased and his eyesight had been still more impaired. Yet he has gone
that terrible journey to Tibet. Truly he has learned to suffer with his Lord! And if he has been
privileged to win a martyr's death, in the service of Christ, it will be the one joy for which he has
ever waited, longing for it to be fulfilled.26
It may be of interest here to mention that during his visit fo Berlin, Germany in April 1922,
the Sadhu had been requested to be photographed, something he did not like to be done. In
this instance, however, Sundar Singh relented and gave his permission. When Karl Kotthaus,
a Christian who happened to be skilled in reading the faces of people, saw the photograph,
he immediately observed: "This man is quite ready for martyrdom."27 Exactly seven years
later, at the age of only 39, Sadhu Sundar Singh commenced his final and fateful journey
towards what he had once called "the Dark, Closed Land." Indeed, the Sadhu had on one
occasion confided to his dear friend Rev. Riddle that going to Tibet and whatever might
await him there held no fear for him at all: "I feel no fear at the thought of one day dying in
Tibet. When that day comes I shall welcome it with joy. Each year I go back to Tibet, and
perhaps next year you will hear that I have lost my life there. Do not then think, 'He is dead';
but say, 'He entered heaven and eternal life, and he is with Christ in the perfect life.'"
In this same vein, moreover, on the very day on which he departed from Subathu for
what proved to be his final known attempt to cross the distant Tibetan border, the Sadhu
intimated to Rev. Riddle, in the last letter he probably ever wrote, that he might not return. It
nonetheless contained the note of joy and life's accomplishment. On 18 April 1929 the
Christian sadhu wrote:
I am leaving today for Tibet, fully aware of the dangers and difficulties of the journey, but
I must do my best to do my duty. But then I set no value on my own life as compared with
the joy of finishing my course and fulfilling the commission I received from the Lord Jesus
to attest the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24). I wanted to come to see you before
leaving but I have received a letter from a trader to meet him at once on our way to
Tibet.... I hope to be back with one or two Tibetan Christians by the end of June. If
anything happens, 1 will send down Thapa to meet you,* and if you do not hear anything
* This young western Tibetan, frequently mentioned by Sundar in his correspondence with Professor Heiler,
served as yet another controversial facet to the infamous Sadhu dispute. Oskar Pfister, for one, could not bring
himself to believe that such a person ever existed except, perhaps, in the mind of the sadhu dissembler; since
Heiler in Europe, who could only rely on the supposed Sadhu's word, could present no evidence which could
satisfy the Swiss pastor for the existence of Thapa in far-off Tibet. See Pfister, Die Legende Sundar Singhs, 201,
from me, or about me, then please come to Subathu in July in order to see to all my things in
my house here.* 28
Unknown to this day as to where, how and when, Sadhu Sundar Singh had with joy fulfilled
his Lord's commission and finished his course on earth.
Commenting on the controversial authorship of the book of Hebrews in the New
Testament, Origen, one of the early great Fathers of the Christian Church, is reputed to have
said, "But who wrote the Epistle God only knows certainly."29 In the final analysis one may
quite properly apply these striking words to the problem of assessing the ultimate end of
Sundar Singh; namely, that God only knows certainly.
207, 219. Here, however, in this letter to Rev. Riddle, there is proof that the young Tibetan Christian did exist;
else how could Sundar ever perpetrate such a heinous lie upon his dear friend? Furthermore, it would appear from
the Sadhu's wording that both Riddle and Thapa knew each other. So much once again, therefore, for Pfister's
hollow suspicions about Sundar Singh's truthfulness and integrity.
* He wrote a similar but shorter letter on the same date to his "revered friend," Archbishop Soderblom. The text
of it can be found in Sharpe, "SSS and His Critics," 62-3.
PI I The son of Gergan Tharchin, Sherab Gyamtsho, and his wife Nini, with the author at the Batasia
turnaround loop for Darjeeling District's famous "toy train" with the massive, expansive display of Mt.
Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest summit (28, 156'), looming in the background.
PI. 2 "Missionary entrepreneur par

excellence"!—Dr. C.F.A. Gutzlaff.
PI. 3 A view of Kyelang mission station established in
1856 by Moravians Ileyde and Pagell.
PI. 4 A view of Poo mission station (founded 1865) as it looked shortly before its demise in 1925.
PI. 5 Moravian missionary Augustus William Heyde and wife with Tibetan Christians at
Kyelang mission station. 1896.
PI. 6 Moravian missionary J.

Edward Pagell, founder in 1865
of the mission station at Poo
village where Dorje Tharchin
would be born in 1890.
PI. 7 The Poo congregation in front of the Poo mission church structure.
PI. 8 Moravian missionary and renowned scholar August Hermann Franeke,

shown here with some of the indigenous Christians at the West Himalaya
mission station of Khalatse. W N W of Leh in Ladakh
PI. 9 The Dralang or dancing-place in the middle of Poo village.
PI. 10 H.A. laeschke (1817-83). the great

German Moravian linguist and Tibetan
Bible translator who labored at Kyelang
(1857-68).
PI. 11 Raja Shamsher Singh (b.1831) of Bashahr, the former Indian Native State that included Dorje
Tharchin's Poo village.
PI. 12 View of Gartok village in far western Tibet.

PI. 13 The river Sutlej just above Poo not PI. 15 Crossing the frightening chasm
far f r o m the Indo-Tibetan frontier. formed by the raging river Sutlej, at Poo.
PI. 16a,b New wire-rope suspension bndge erected 1910 over

PI. 14 "A very memorable day for us at Ihe river Sutlej near Poo: at left, as seen from the west looking in
Poo"—the arrival of Dr. Sven Hedin, August the direction of the Indo-Tibetan
1908. frontier, and at right, as seen from the east
PI. 17 Dorje Tharchin's excellent Urdu
schoolmaster at Poo, Paulu (b. 1856).
PI. 18 Tarnyed Nasib Ali. the new Urdu teacher

at Poo, with wife and family, 1911.
PI 19 "Hooked on the I l o o k a h ! " — w a s Gergan Tharchin for
most of his life.
PI 20a.b Birthplace of Gautama, the Buddha (7563 b.c.-?483 b.c.);

and the Great Departure from his father's palace of Gautama
Siddhartha. soon to be Buddha, here depicted in a 3d century a.d.
Indian marble relief.
PI. 21 Statues of the three so-called Great Religious (i.e., Buddhist)
Kings of 7th-. 8th- and 9th-century Tibet (housed lat Gyantse's Palkhor
Chhode Monastery): Songtsan Gampo, Tri-song Dotsen and Ralpachen.
PI. 25 Russian explorer, esoteric painter. Oriental scholar and mystic
philosopher. Nicholas Konstantine Roerich (1874-1947).
PI. 26a,b An example of the ubiquitous Tibetan Buddhist

mani stone, shown here at the foot of Mt. Ama Dablam in
Solu Khumbu, Nepal; and an example of an extensive mani
wall, located at Kema Gompa, NE Tibet, early 1940s.
PI. 27 A Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel.
4
1»: w
kSJ
•A'
S
• , r- • "ii-
28 The Dorje and Drilbu. basic emblems of Tibetan Buddhism.

PI. 29 Tsarong II, Tibet Army's Commander-in- PI 30 American Methodist Bishop Frederick Bohn
Chief, and "the most consistently pro-British Fisher and wife Welthy
Tibetan" of all
PI. 31 Colonel Francis E Younghusband at PI. 32 Kailash, the SW Tibet mountain sacred to
Darjeeling, 1903. many Asian faiths.
PI 33a,b 8th-century stone carvings near Drangtse (Tankse) east of Leh in Ladakh believed by scholars to
have been made by Nestorian Christians: general and close-up views.
PI 34 St Stephen's College, Delhi
PI 35 American Army Officers, Major (later Colonel) Ilya Tolstoy (grandson of famed
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy) and Captain Brooke Dolan, as they began a
reconnaissance mission through Tibet for U S President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942-3.
PI. 36 Sundar Singh with Nathan Soderblom, Archbishop of Uppsala, the Primate of Sweden's
State Lutheran Church, and recipient in 1930 of the Nobel Prize for Peace, shown here at the
Archbishop's home, where the Sadhu was his esteemed guest for ten days, Spring 1922.
PI. 40 Rai Bahadur Sarai PI. 41 Fredrik Fränson (1st row, center) visits
Chandra Das (1849-1917). Ghbom Mission, India, in 1894.
PI. 42 David Macdonald, surrounded by his Gurkha escort, at Yatung. Tibet, c ! 9 1 l

PI
и 44
T Ä S • -
K,
ndergmen Q Ю ftO0t
of origioaI
Ш house of r,h„
PI. 47 Partial view of SAM's Ghoom Mission church building now neanng a century old,
showing a more recent congregation standing outside its entrance
PI. 48 Inside the sanctuary of the church PI 49 Karma Sumdhon. c l 9 2 3 , just prior to his
structure, Ghoom Mission, where in 1914 dismissal as Headmaster of the Scandinavian Alliance
Sadhu Sundar Singh preached. Mission Christian School at Ghoom.
Pl. 50 Tibet's Vice-Pontiff and his entourage at Calcutta, December 1905, during a State visit to
India as guests of the British Indian government
PI. 51 Trashilhunpo Monastery at Shigatse, SW of Lhasa. Tibet

PI 52 Man Albert Johan van Manen (1877-
1943). shown at about age 22
c ^ N F F C ^ ' F C ^ » - » - —
P.l 55 Statue of Maitieya, the Buddha of the Age to Come
PI 56 Partial view of Kalimpong, where 111 1914 on their way to Sikkim and Tibet Sadhu
Sundar Singh and Gergan Tharchin visited for the first time and shared the Gospel, and where
Tharchin, beginning in 1917, would spend the rest of his life.
PI 57 One of many large godowns (warehouses)

erected in Kalimpong, built primarily to store huge
quantities of wool brought down from Tibet;
decades later, however, most would be abandoned
PI. 58 A typical daily scene today in the
like the one shown here that was then converted
formerly celebrated Kalimpong bazaar.
into ' The Central School for Tibetans."
PI 59 The room in Kalimpong where for four nights—beginning on 18 Junel914—Sadhu
Sundar Singh and Gergan Tharchm lodged
PI 60 Macfarlane Memorial Church belfry, Kalimpong

tvbet
great vV
.
contemP' pedotvS-
,f Tibet 1
had *
Pl. 64 The British Residency, Gangtok. Sikkim.
PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
with
Photo/Illustration Credits
REV. AND MRS. S.G. THARCHIN, WITH THE AUTHOR, AT BATASIA LOOP,
DARJEELING, WITH MT. KANCHENJUNGA IN BACKGROUND.
The author is extremely indebted to this couple, especially Nini with her phenomenal
memory, for providing him with a wealth of information about Babu Tharchin that is nowhere
else available. Their numerous vivid and colorful reminiscences of this extraordinary man, the
countless true stories they were able to recall, together with dates, places and events which
figured prominently in the life and career of their illustrious relative, assisted the author
greatly in laying out the Tharchin biographical narrative. Without their help in this regard, as
well as their incredible hospitality during the author's many visits to the Tharchin compound,
the multi-faceted story of Gergan Tharchin could never have been written.
Photo Credit: David Tharchin, 1987.
"MISSIONARY ENTREPRENEUR PAR EXCELLENCE"!

Dr. Charles Friedrich Augustus Gutzlaff, pioneer German Protestant missionary to China,
is shown here in the dress of a Fukienese sailor. His urgings personally made to the Moravians
at Herrnhut, Germany, in 1850 to reestablish their work among the Mongols in far-off Asia
resulted instead in a missionary effort by them among the Tibetans at Dorje Tharchin's home
village of Poo and at other West Himalaya centers of Indo-Tibet.
Photo Credit: F.H. Taylor, Hudson Taylor in Early Years (London, 1923), 88.
VIEW OF KYELANG MISSION STATION LAHUL, ESTABLISHED IN 1856 BY

MORAVIANS HEYDE AND PAGELL.
It was here where was established a printing press whose output of good Christian
literature in Tibetan was phenomenal. Here, too, young Dorje Tharchin and, much earlier, his
stepfather-teacher Madtha Zering were each to spend time imbibing the highly intellectual
and academic environment that was richly available there because of the presence of first,
Heinrich Jaeschke, and much later, of August H. Francke, scholars universally acclaimed as
being of the first rank. Thus both here and at the Poo mission station (see Plate 4) where at the
latter place the schoolmaster was his stepfather, Tharchin would be grounded and prepared
to appreciate the classical Tibetan language and literature in which he would excel later in life.
Photo Credit: J. T. Hamilton, A History of the Missions of the Moravian Church... (Bethlehem PA
USA, 1901), 153.
VIEW OF POO MISSION STATION (FOUNDED 1865) SHORTLY BEFORE ITS DEMISE
IN 1925.
Photo Credit: Moravian Missions (July 1930):52.

5 MORAVIAN MISSIONARY A.W. HEYDE AND WIFE WITH TIBETAN CHRISTIANS AT

KYELANG, 1896.
Missionaries Heyde and Pagell (see Plate 6 for the latter's picture) were the two original
Moravians sent out in 1853 from Herrnhut, Germany, to carry the Christian gospel to Chinese
Mongolia, but were stopped along the closed Indo-Tibetan border, unable to travel farther.
And hence, the mission station at Kyelang in Lahul Province was established by them three
years later. The Heydes never once returned on furlough to Europe till after 50 years of
continuous service on the mission field.
Photo Credit: Gerhard Heyde, 50 Jahre unter Tibetern (Herrnhut, 1921).
6 MORAVIAN MISSIONARY J. EDWARD PAGELL, FOUNDER IN 1865OF THE MISSION

STATION AT POO VILLAGE WHERE DORJE THARCHIN WOULD BE BORN IN 1890.
Photo Credit: Marshall Broomhall, ed., The Chinese Empire (London, 1907), 16.
7 THE POO CONGREGATION IN FRONT OF THE POO MISSION CHURCH STRUCTURE.

Shown here are Rev. and Mrs. Reinhold Schnabel (center left) and Mrs. Bruske, wife of
missionary Julius Bruske. The latter, in the absence of Rev. and Mrs. Schreve, would be the
one who in 1898 would unite in marriage Dorje Tharchin's future stepfather Madtha Zering
and his mother Sodnama. Both the Schreves and the Schnabels were the Moravians who had
the greatest spiritual impact on Dorje Tharchin during his growing-up years. It was Br.
Schnabel who in 1906 took young Dorje to Kotgarh for six months to be further trained in the
Christian faith and where he would have his first encounter with Sadhu Sundar Singh.
Photo Credit: Moravian Missions (Oct 1906):185.
8 MORAVIAN MISSIONARY AND RENOWNED SCHOLAR A. H. FRANCKE, WITH

SOME OF THE CHRISTIANS AT KHALATSE MISSION STATION IN LADAKH.
A giant of a scholar in Tibetan Studies, especially regarding Little Tibet, Francke would
make important historical and cultural discoveries at Gergan Tharchkfs home village of Poo
and elsewhere in Indo-Tibet. But his primary desire while on the mission field was always the
spreading of the Christian gospel. He first arrived on the mission field in 1896.
Photo Credit: Moravian Missions (Sept ¡915): 135.
9 THE DRALANG OR DANCING-PLACE IN THE MIDDLE OF POO VILLAGE.

On the occasion of an annual festival for the invoking of Poo's tutelary deities to grant more
children to the community, human child sacrifices were made here at the Dralang, the practice not
ending till just before Doije Tharchin's time at Poo. Such sacrifices took place in the cave-like
holes or pits that can be seen just beyond the pile of stones which lie immediately behind the
perpendicular rude kind of symbolic lingam (erect phallus) stone standing on the right.
Photo Credit: A.H. Francke, Antiquities of Indian Tibet 2 vols (Calcutta, 1914,1926),1:22.
10 H. A. JAESCHKE (1817-83), THE GREAT GERMAN MORAVIAN LINGUIST AND

BIBLE TRANSLATOR WHO LABORED AT KYELANG (1857-68).
Heinrich August Jaeschke, like his two Kyelang brethren, Heyde and Pagell, was
self-sacrifice incarnate both in his life as a missionary and in his literary labors as a translator:
Photographic Essays and Photo Credits 389
all for the purpose, as he himself once said, "to win Tibet" for Christ. Gifted in so many
academic and artistic areas, it was this man's remarkable linguistic abilities which would truly
and forever shape his future course once he had concluded his academic studies in Germany.
In fact, it was remarked about him that Jaeschke's "talent for the rapid acquisition of languages
was only equaled by his zeal in utilizing every opportunity for learning them."
A classic case in point was how he had devoted himself to learning one of the world's
most difficult languages: the Tibetan classical. For shortly after joining himself with his
missionary colleagues in the work at Kyelang, off to the village of Stok near Leh in Ladakh he
cheerfully went, there to closet himself for an entire summer pursuing, undisturbed, his study
of the Tibetan language. And by the end of that summer of 1857 he had at last gotten a firm
handle on what even for him had proved to be a troublesome language to learn. Jaeschke
would soon be able, after further Tibetan studies and researches, to commence, with the help
of his missionary brethren, upon a course of linguistic labors which over the next twelve
years would produce a literary and scholastic output that must be termed nothing short of
extraordinary.
Day after day at Kyelang this mighty linguist sat, translating into popular Tibetan a
number of very useful books: Barth's Bible (i.e., Old Testament) Stories, a Harmony of the
Gospels, a Liturgy, a Hymn Book, a Catechism, a Geography, a Book of Fables, a Church
History, an Arithmetic book, various school readers, tracts and pamphlets, and even excerpts
from Martin Luther's sermons! All these, and far more, incredible as it may seem, came
issuing forth from the Kyelang mission station's small hand-operated lithographic press. No
wonder, therefore, that Dorje Tharchin, while growing up and learning at both Poo and
Kyelang, benefited so greatly from the rich academic and cultural environment to which
Jaeschke had contributed so much.
Above all other of his numerous accomplishments, however, it was Heinrich Jaeschke's
Grammar and Dictionary which proved to be so decisive in assisting both his contemporaries
on the Tibetan mission field and those missionaries who came after him in mastering the
language of the Tibetans that thus enabled them all-including Jaeschke himself-to finally
translate the Christian Bible into Tibetan. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful whether the lowly
Tibetan from Poo would ever have found Christ without the literary achievements of this
"true linguistic genius." As this giant of a scholar had himself confessed in the Preface to his
monumental Tibetan-English Dictionary (1881): "The chief motive of all our exertions lay
always in the desire to facilitate and to hasten the spread of the Christian religion ... among
the millions of Buddhists who inhabit Central Asia, and who speak and read in Tibetan
idioms." And certainly no task of Jaeschke's could have furthered that aim more effectually
than the one to which he had so sacrificially applied all his linguistic talents: the creation of
the Tibetan Bible, especially the New Testament portion. Surely for this he must have indeed
received the "well done" of Heaven.
Photo credit: L. Icke-Schwalbe & G. Meier, eds., Wissenschaftsgeschichte und gegenwärtige
Forschungen in Nordwest-Indian (Dresden, 1990), 21.
RAJA SHAMSHER SINGH OF BASHAHR, THE INDIAN NATIVE STATE WHERE

DORJE THARCHIN'S POO VILLAGE WAS.
This king, the last of a long line of 120 Rajas, ruled over Bashahr for over 60 years, and
was the ruler on the princely throne during Tharchin's boyhood and adolescence. The Raja's
summer palace was at Sarahan, located some 90 miles up from Simla along the famed Hindustan-
Tibet Road.
Photo Credit: A.H. Francke, Antiquities of Indian Tibet 2 vols (Calcutta, 1914, 1926), 1:8.
12 VIEWOFGARTOK VILLAGE IN FAR WESTERN TIBET.

Little would change at Gartok (whose name quite appropriately means "the highest camp'5)
between the time of Gergan Tharchin's youth at Poo in the 1890s-early 1900s and 1939 when
this photo was taken. This village is of interest for two reasons. A considerable number of
older citizens of Poo engaged in trading the year round, but especially during the late summer
and autumn seasons. At that time of year a series of great melas, or fairs, were held at which
merchants from far distant places wpuld gather and barter their wares with their counterparts
from the hill regions of Northwest Iridia (including those from Poo)—first at Gartok in nearby
Tibet, then at Kanum along the Hindustan-Tibet Road just one to two days down the river
Sutlej from Poo, and finally at Rampur, much more distant down the same river valley. The
traders from Gartok, for example, would bring down to Rampur as their chief goods, the
following: preeminently, of course, bales and bales of wool of a fine quality, salt, as much tea
from China as Tibet could afford to trade away, a little fine Chinese cloth, some musk, borax,
yak tails, and other items in great demand. In exchange, the Tibetan merchants would take
back with them articles which had come up from the Indian plains: those such as sugar,
sugarcandy, cloths both coarse and fine, indigo, ironwork, brass utensils, all sorts of spices,
silk manufactures, etc. And from the hill regions like Poo's district these same merchants
would return to Gartok with such highly prized commodities as raw iron, blankets, tobacco
and opium, ghee, various grains for the nearer and barren parts of Tibet, and, last but not
least, the much needed wooden cups for tea.
But secondly of interest about Gartok was the fact that it was the immediate goal of a
British exploratory expedition in late 1904 commissioned by Colonel (later Colonel Sir) Francis
Younghusband as an outgrowth of the Treaty of Lhasa that had only just been signed in the
Potala Palace on 7 September at the conclusion of the now celebrated Younghusband military/
diplomatic mission. Article 5 of the Treaty had stipulated that besides trade marts to be
established at the well-known localities of Gyantse and Yatung in the southeast, one more
was to be opened at Gartok in far-off western Tibet to serve the trade needs of British
Northwest India as well. It was therefore decided to appoint Captain Cecil G. Rawling to head
up an expedition to Gartok to examine this obscure hovel-and-hut-village for its suitability as
a trade mart and at the same time use this venture as an opportunity to add to British India's
geographical knowledge of the Tibetan country.
An important future acquaintance of Tharchin's, Lieutenant Frederick (Eric) M. Bailey,
who had been a member of the military escort which had accompanied Younghusband in
his Mission to Lhasa, had been personally chosen for the Gartok Expedition by the Colonel
because his knowledge of the Tibetan language would "likely prove to be useful." And
indeed it did. Beginning on 10 October 1904 at Gyantse just before winter set in, the
Expedition's route along the north of Nepal took the exploring party some 800 to 1000 miles
to Shipki Pass on the Indo-Tibetan frontier not far from Poo, and another 200 miles or so to
Simla via the Hindustan-Tibet Road so familiar to young Dorje Tharchin. The expedition
would learn that between Gartok and the Indo-Tibetan border village of Shipki farther west
there were few villages permanently inhabited, the traveler only finding groups of tents.
Gartok itself was in those days an important center in summer, but in the winter no one
could be found there. Instead, its inhabitants invariably descended to a village lying a
thousand feet below. This latter case would be the situation when the Rawling Party
arrived there.
Finally, it may be added that the British officers of the Gartok Expediti on, when it arrived
on Christmas Day 1904 at Dorje Tharchin's village of Poo, "amply repaid the Poo missionaries'
hospitality^ by giving the local Christians there a Christmas present of thirty rupees. This
generous gift was greatly appreciated." A lad of 14 at the time, young Dorje Tharchin, who
was present to witness the event, was one of the recipients of the gift presented by Bailey
and the others in his party. Decades later, this time at Gyantse in southeastern Tibet, Tharchin
was to encounter Officer Bailey again but under quite different yet just as pleasant
circumstances.
Photo Credit: Geographical Journal (Jan. 1942): 10.
THE RIVER SUTLEJ JUST ABOVE POO NOT FAR FROM THE INDO-TIBETAN
FRONTIER
Photo Credit: Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas (New York, 1949), 10.
"A VERY MEMORABLE DAY FOR US AT POO."

Thus wrote Moravian missionary Rev. Hermann B. Marx about the arrival at the mission
station of the world-famous Swedish explorer, Dr. Sven Hedin (shown here with members of
the very last of his many Tibetan expeditions, as photographed by Marx himself after the
explorer and his sizable party of travelers and transport animals had crossed over into Indian
territory). It was only through the help of Dorje Tharchin's two missionaiy friends-Rev.
Reinhold Schnabel and Rev. Marx-that Hedin and his caravan were able to reach the other
side of the raging river Sutlej in safety.
On the afternoon of 28 August 1908, wrote Marx later, "a special messenger brought a
card written by... the great traveler apd explorer of Tibet, who had already arrived at the wire-
rope bridge below Poo, and was waiting therefor help to be pulled across ... For a whole year
and more the world had not heard anything of me famous explorer.... We went at once to meet
Dr. Hedin at the bridge. He sat sketching on the other side when we arrived [an example of his
sketches is shown in Plate 15]. After sending across the wild torrent some of his horses and
loads, he crossed himself, and I snapped his photo when he was hanging from the wire-rope"
(a frightening pose not unlike that of the man in his party whom Hedin had sketched while
waiting to be pulled across the awesome chasm himself!).
The Lhassa dog in the photo's right foreground, incidentally, had faithfully guarded the
great traveler on his journey across Tibet. But in his immense gratefulness to the Poo
missionaries for their critical assistance and gracious hospitality, Hedin had presented his
favorite dog to the missionaries, which then became the guardian of the Poo mission compound.
It so happened that Doije Tharchin had himself possessed an uncommon affection for dogs,
and therefore must have greatly appreciated the opportunity of getting acquainted with
Hedin's treasured animal during the remaining few years he would spend at Poo on the
mission compound.
Photo Credit: Rev. Marx, as published in Moravian Missions (Jan. 1909): 7.
CROSSING THE FRIGHTENING CHASM FORMED BY THE RAGING RIVER SUTLEJ.

r
"We were on the left or southern bank," wrote Sven Hedin later. "Poo, the first village on
the Indian side, lay high up in the hills on the right side, embedded in luxuriant vegetation.
Here there was a Moravian mission, established many years ago, and still conducted by
German missionaries. But how were we to cross the immense river, which at this point was
squeezed into a narrow passage, between perpendicular rocks, and roared in foaming eddies
through its bed? Not a living creature was to be seen on the shore, and Poo was obscured.
Only a steel cable, as thick as my thumb, stretched across the abyss, which yawned about a
hundred feet below. The bridge that once was there had broken down. The only remains were
the stone abutments at both ends, and the adjoining beams which used to be the
bridge-heads." Only after the missionaries had brought yokes and ropes to fit the cable could
Hedin and his party begin the treacherous transit across. "Mules, horses, dogs, boxes, and
men were hauled across. I put my legs through loops in the ropes, grasped the yoke with my
hands, got another rope looped around my waist, and was thus hauled across the abyss. It
was a hazardous trip. With legs dangling I swayed between heaven and earth. It was a
hundred and fifteen feet to the middle, but the distance seemed endless. With a sense of
relief, I finally glided in over the bridge-head on the right bank, and felt safe." Hedin would
further clothe his feelings in these candid words: "This bridge is a proper place for people
desirous of committing suicide!"
Sketch Credit: Hedin, My Life As an Explorer (Garden City NY USA, 1935), 525.
16a,b THE NEW WIRE-ROPE SUSPENSION BRIDGE ERECTED 1910 OVER THE SUTLEJ
NEAR POO, AS SEEN FROM THE WEST, AND AS SEEN FROM THE EAST.
Sven Hedin would have been overjoyed to have had this bridge available to him for
crossing over to the Poo side of the Sutlej. Nevertheless, this new suspension would still
have provided a moment's fright, as Moravian missionary Marx would later observe after
making his own initial crossing over it: "This new wire-rope suspension bridge is about two
miles distant from the old wire-rope bridge up the valley... We... are thankful that it has at last
become reality. At a height to make one feel giddy, the swaying light bridge spans the
wild-foaming, loud-roaring Sutlej River from one high precipice to another, thus linking together
two mighty mountain ridges. It is really a wonderfijl structure of modern skill in this
out-of-the-world, wild, romantic Himalayan valley. The height of the bridge above the rushing
water is 3 00 feet. It is 150 feet long, but only a little more than one yard wide [but fortunately,
as can be seen in the photo, it has hand-rails!]....When crossing the bridge for the first time
my thoughts went back to two years ago, when I had to côss the Sutlej (two times with my
wife) still on that old wire-rope below Poo sitting only in two rope-loops while one was pulled
across!"
The construction of this new and much more secure means of negotiating the roaring
Sutlej, built during the summer of 1910, must have been watched with great interest by many
Poo villagers, including Dorje Tharchin. By that time he would be back in Poo from Simla long
enough to have observed the new bridge going up before he would leave the area for good
a few months later.
Photo Credits: Rev: H.B. Marx, both as published in Moravian Missions (June 1911): 103.
17 DORJE THARCHIN'S EXCELLENT URDU SCHOOLMASTER AT POO, PAULU.

His name as an unbeliever had been Sodnam Gyaltsan, but when baptized at Poo he
became known to all as Paulu (becoming like his namesake, the Apostle Paul of the New
Testament, a very effective evangelist). Born at an isolated village in Spiti Province to the
north of Poo, Sodnam had been sent off to the Moravian mission school at Kyelang specifically
to learn the official language of India at that time: Urdu.
But besides acquiring Urdu and the other academic skills in good measure, he in addition
acquired a knowledge of much Christian truth during his six years' stay at Kyelang. Yet he
remained in spiritual darkness till, finding his way to Poo in the year of Tharchin's birth,
Sodnam found the light as it is in Jesus that now ended, he later testified, his "former times"
of "dense darkness." His happy discovery of God's grace and power in Jesus Christ launched
him into a remarkable life of faith, becoming one of the most talented and helpful "native
assistants" in the entire West Himalaya Mission of the Moravians: faithful evangelist, excellent
Urdu schoolmaster, and, due to the superior knowledge and training in that language, a
translator of portions of the Old and New Testaments into the Tibetan dialects in use within
and around Tharchin's mountain village. Indeed, the Poo missionaries could not say enough
about him that was praiseworthy. And because of Paulu's accomplished facility in Urdu,
Dorje Tharchin benefited greatly from him, which later enabled young Dorje to serve Sadhu
Sundar Singh so well as the latter's interpreter among Tibetan-speaking peoples during
several of the Sadhu's evangelistic tours throughout the Simla Hills region and in Sikkim.
Photo Credit: Moravian Missions (Aug. 1905): 130.
TARNYED NASIB ALI, THE NEW URDU TEACHER AT POO.

Tarnyed Ali had originally hailed from Baltistan, an area northwest of Ladakh, where,
having inherited Balti blood from his mother's side, he had been brought up a Moslem before
being orphaned when a young teen-ager. Although raised a Moslem till orphaned, young
Tarnyed had subsequently become a Christian, having been instructed in the faith by his
new parents-the Moravian missionaries-and then baptized by them at the Ladakhi capital of
Leh. He would go on to serve as Urdu instructor at three mission station schools located at
Simla, Kyelang and Poo. In 1911 he replaced Dorje Tharchin's Urdu schoolmaster at Poo,
Paulu, due to the latter's retirement; but by that time young Tharchin had already departed
the village for good to seek a new life elsewhere.
Tarnyed Ali, who like Tharchin spoke both Urdu and Tibetan, had the distinction of
serving Sadhu Sundar Singh as his Tibetan interpreter on the Sadhu's very first evangelistic
journey into Tibet, which occurred in the spring of 1908. But he would likewise do so on a
subsequent gospel tour of the Sadhu's exactly four years later. On both occasions the Sadhu
would travel through Tharchin's Poo village in advance of making his way across the frontier
into the Great Closed Land. Tarnyed would later term Sundar Singh "a dear friend" of his.
Yet not only did Tarnyed visit Tibet in company with Sundar Singh, he also at various
other times through the years made a number of trips into the Snowy Land on his own.
Traveling as far as Lhasa itself, he made some interesting contacts there with a number of
people who showed interest in the Christian faith, one of them being Tibet's Prime Minister
himself!
Photo Credit: Periodical Accounts (Sept. 1912): near p. 365.
"HOOKED ON THE HOOKAH!"

Like this Nepali woman, Gergan Tharchin, early on in his life, became a hookah-smoking
addict. Only very late in life did he finally conquer-by God's grace-this debilitating habit and
that of a cigarette "chain-smoker."
Photo Credit: Kathmandu Post photographer, Bikas Rauniar.
BIRTHPLACE OF GAUTAMA, THE BUDDHA; AND THE GREAT DEPARTURE.

Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, was born at this ancient uninhabited grove near the
town of present-day Lumbini within the boundary of what is now southern Nepal. Yet, even
though the Buddha's birthplace had since then become a part of Nepal, Tibetans have for
centuries continued to regard India as the holy land of Buddhism to which, after Lhasa, they
have always hoped to make a pilgrimage once in their lives. And though versions and stories
about the Buddha's beginnings may vary, the Lumbini grove, shown here, has never been
effectively challenged as his birthplace.
In approximately 250 bx., a majestic stone pillar with an inscription thereon was erected
by the mighty but eventually devoutly Buddhist Indian Emperor Asoka while on a visit to
Lumbini to pay homage to the Buddha and to commemorate that it was here at Lumbini where
was born Buddha Sakyamuni. The pillar, visible at the left in the photo, still stands at this
sacred Buddhist site.
Sheltered from the harsh realities of the outside world, Gautama dwelt in luxury by comparison
till one day while venturing forth from his father's palace he beheld for the first time three sights
which would change his life forever: a man enfeebled by old age, another infected with a horrible
disease, and an abandoned corpse lying by the side of the road. Now realizing that life was not as
he had been led to believe by his father's artificial environment, the Prince Siddhartha stole out of
the palace one night without a word, leaving behind his wife Princess Yosodhara and their baby
son. This event, called the Great Departure in Buddhist tradition, is depicted in Plate 20b.
Only after many years of wandering and searching for the truth did Gautama the Buddha-
now enlightened (for that is the meaning of this Sanskrit word)-make a return visit to his
father's palace at age 45, but now as a recognized "saint." There he was able to convert his
father and most of the royal court to his teachings. The Buddha then spent the remaining years
of his life preaching and teaching his doctrine everywhere to whoever would respond. Leaving
a community of monks, the Sangha, to carry on after him, the "Light of Asia," as he has come
to be called, passed from this life at Kusinagara, India, a mere fifty miles from his birthplace.
Like Confucius, Buddha in his later life was personally an "expounder of an ethical code,
and a mirror of virtue, not professing to be a redeemer of fallen humanity, but declaring that
man can work out his own salvation." Indeed, about God he talked not at all, he carefully
avoiding any discussion of a Supreme Being; and on his lips as he lay dying were words to
his disciples which plainly underscored his emphasis ofi human effort as opposed to grace or
magic: "I am as a worn-out cart; therefore, you be lamps to yourselves, you be a refuge to
yourselves, betake yourselves to no external refuge ... Look not for refuge to anyone besides
yourselves.... Work out your salvation with diligence."
Through both his life and teachings Gautama Buddha became the inspiration for what
subsequently developed into one of the most influential and pervasive religious systems of
the world. But it was out of a Buddhist background of a deeply entrenched Tibetan variety
that Dorje Tharchin during his young adolescent years was converted to the gospel of Christ
whose core belief concerning initial salvation was neither works nor magic but grace through
faith plus nothing more.
Photo Credit: Plate 20a, Safari Nepal (July-Aug. 1991) :3; and Plate 2 Oh, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York-Fletcher Fund, 1928, as published in Encyclopedia Americana-International Edition
(Danbury CT, 1998), 4:691.
21 STATUES OFTHE THREE SO-CALLED GREAT RELIGIOUS KINGS OF TIBET.

Although on the one hand these Kings did extend royal patronage and other official
favors in increasing measure to the new foreign faith of Buddhism, on the other hand, they
continued to follow the beliefs and practices of their non-Buddhist, pre-Buddhist ancestral
religion as carried on by its animistic-shamanistic Bon and gShen priests whose services had
by this time been organized into a recognizable religious framework of priesthood and ritual
ceremonies.
But with the coming to Tibet during the latter half of the eighth century of the Indian
Tantric-Yoga Buddhist Padma Sambhava (see Plate 22) and the other court-invited northern
Indian Buddhist missionaries, there was presented to the previously dominant primitive
religion of the shamanistic Bon and gShen priesthood a strong challenge that was both
imitative and innovative in nature. For they too exhibited a reliance on shamanistic magic and
even on demon worship-the latter an eventual result of a compromise with the older indigenous
faith of Tibet. By duplicating and even excelling the magical, shamanistic arts of the aboriginal
Tibetan religion, whether that be achieving equal or superior proficiency in such practices as
oracles, divination and the cult of local divinities, the position and influence at the court of
these Kings of this older faith were bound to grow weak with the passage of time while
concomitantly the prestige and power of the foreign religion from the south were bound to
increase.
Indeed, the conflict between these two creeds was primarily resolved by the simple fact
that they gradually but inexorably commenced to resemble one another. In fact, ever since
this contact between the "Tibetan native religious genius and the fantastic philosophical
and religious extravagances of late Indian Buddhism," Tibetan Buddhists as a whole have
remained "almost innocently unaware of the great variety of pre-Buddhist beliefs and practices
that they have absorbed as an accepted part of their daily thoughts and actions."
In the long term, then, Tibet's aboriginal faith was defeated because "the syncretic form
of Buddhism peculiar to Tibet, and generally called Lamaism,... provided all that the old
religion could give in the way of magic and ecstasy, and in addition offered the consolatory
doctrines of Mahayana"-that later form of Original Buddhism which in the minds of some
scholars posited the highly unwarranted new notion of a pantheon of numerous Bodhisattvas:
those who prefer not to enter in Buddha hood till all the world can enter in with them, but
have become saints helping those still traveling, and were in fact worshiped as gods.
Now it was out of a Buddhistic-Shamanistic- Animistic religious background such as this
that Dorje Tharchin was converted to the Christian faith while growing up at his Indo-Tibetan
home village of Poo. And unlike his Ghoom Mission School Headmaster of his young manhood
years, Karma Sumdhon Paul, he would never return to the Tibetan Buddhist religion of his
ancestors but would even go on to be officially ordained a minister, pastor and teacher of the
Christian faith.
Photo Credit: N.N. Jigmei etal, Tibet (London, 1981), 275.
A RICHLY DETAILED THANKA PAINTING OF PADMA SAMBHAVA.

This "Apostle of Tibet"-known in Tibetan as Padma Jungnai-was a native of Udyana in
present-day Pakistan. The meaning of his name, "The Lotus Born," is reflected in the series
of lotus petals that appear at the feet of the painting's central figure: Padma Sambhava.
Invited to Tibet in the 8th century to teach Tri-song Detsen, the second of that land's three
so-called Great Religious Kings, Guru Rimpoche (as this Buddhist missionary was also known)
introduced the foreign faith to the country and went everywhere preaching the new doctrine
that eventually supplanted though not in the least eliminated the animistic-shamanistic priestly
religion of former centuries.
But besides their reliance on shamanistic magic and demon worship, this great master of
occult Buddhism (see Plate 21's essay) and the other representatives in Tibet of what some
scholars believe to have been an eroded Buddhism from northern India had also in their
teaching and practice an emphasis on various sexual elements. Placing considerable stress
on what has been described as "the philosophic concept of the union between the spiritual
and material forces in the universe," Padma Sambhava's Tantrism represented this aspect of
their teaching by paintings and images portraying the physical union of god and goddess,
and "practiced and encouraged sexual excesses as a form of worship."
All this was to have a tremendous impact on the adherents of the old aboriginal
pre-Buddhist faith in Tibet. Indeed, the debased Buddhism's initial appeal to the Tibetans
was because they saw it "as a superior form of magic and healing art." And whether or not
one chooses to believe the many legends surrounding the exploits of these bearers of the
adulterated Doctrine from India, which told of a series of extraordinary victories over the local
deities and demons of Tibet by these Buddhist newcomers, it can at least be asserted with
much justification that by their use of magic and sorcery, Padma Sambhava and his
co-religionists from northern India made a lasting impression on the Tibetans and gained
many followers who aided this Guru missionary and his colleagues in establishing temples
and monasteries as centers for the new faith, the earliest founded being the monastery at
Samye in 779 a.d.
What Padma Sambhava's form of Buddhism did with respect to the old Bon and gShen
priestly system was not a unique phenomenon peculiar only to the ancient religion of Tibet.
On the contrary, in all countries where Buddhism has thrived to any extent, this faith "has
shown a wonderful power of consorting with the previously existing religions'-whether that
be "with the idolatry of the Hindus of India, the demon worship of the aborigines of Ceylon,
the Confucianism and Taoism of China, the Shintoism of Japan, or the Shamanism of Tibet
and Mongolia."
Illustration Credit: From a printing of it made at Lusha Press, Baneshwor, Kathmandu, Nepal.
23 TIBET'S CHIEF STATE ORACLE SHOWN IN TRANCE AT HIS NECHUNG MONA-

STERY, LHASA, 1942.
If ever one needed evidence of the continuing presence of the much older pre-Buddhist
Shamanistic-Animistic faith of Tibet, it is to be found in the person of the Nechung State
Oracle. In all of Buddhistic-Shamanistic Tibet, he is on$ of the most important figures, whose
task has always been "to connect the Government with the occult." The Nechung Monastery
just west of the Tibetan capital a few miles had for centuries been the residence of "the
greatest mystery of Tibet," where was "made manifest the presence of a protective deity
whose secret oracle" guided the destinies of Tibet and was consulted by the central Buddhist
Government prior to any important decision being taken. Here, then, is pictured the members
of the Kashag or ruling Cabinet Ministers several (with tkeir backs to the camera) who are
awaiting the State Oracle's intimations of the future from the unseen realm which he will
discern by looking upon the polished steel mirror in front of him and which the ruling Pontiff
of Tibet-the Dalai Lama-and his Government ministers are bound by ancient tradition to
follow in leading the country through periods of crisis.
Like the familiar spirits of old, there is one called Pe-har that takes possession of the
Tibetan Buddhist Nechung Oracle and enables him to ejaculate his oracular utterances while
in a state of wild ecstasy and while often writhing on the ground in convulsions. Shamanistic
beliefs and practices like this one still very much exist today within the framework of Tibet's
Buddhist religion as practiced inside the land of Tibet and outside among the Tibetan exile
community following Red China's annexation of the Snowy Land in the early 1950s.
Photo Credit: Ilya Tolstoy, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia USA, as published in TibeL
the Sacred Realm: Photographs 1880-1950 (Millerton NY USA, 1983), 79.
24 AMERICAN EXPLORER HARRISON FORMAN, TIBET 1932.

In NE Tibet, near the Buddhist gompa of Radja, and involving monks therefrom, Forman
was an eyewitness to, and participant in, a ritual of conjuring up demons of the grossest kind.
"I wished to know," he later wrote, "how it was that many of the best established laws of
nature were ... flouted by these ... people of the world's highest plateaus."
Photo Credit: Frontispiece in Forman, Through Forbidden Tibet (New York/ Toronto, 1935).
25 RUSSIAN EXPLORER, PAINTER, AND MYSTIC PHILOSOPHER, N.K. ROERICH.

In search of "a composite Messiah in Tibet," this respected student of Asia was reluctantly
moved to declare that Tibet, once reputed to have been the stronghold of Buddhism, had
sunk into "depraved Shamanistic religion." "Does Buddhism exist here,* he rhetorically
wrote in 1928 after spending nine months in the land, "or is it, rather, Shamanistic Lamaism?
Do not let us be afraid to call things by their proper names."
Photo Credit: National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1930), Current Vol C: 146/7.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE UBIQUITOUS TIBETAN BUDDHIST MANI STONE, IN SOLU

KHUMBU, NEPAL; AND AN EXAMPLE OF AN EXTENSIVE MANI WALL, AT KEMA
GOMPA, NE TIBET.
Over the centuries of Tibetan Buddhist history, there has been an accumulation of literally
billions of these wayside stones (like the one shown in Plate 26a) all over the physical
landscape of wherever followers of Tibetan Buddhism have been found in Central Asia.
Indeed, Ilya Tolstoy estimated that at the monastery of Kema Gompa alone the numerous
mani stones making up the particular mani wall appearing in Plate 26b would be numbered in
the millions! The height of these praying, or more correctly praising, walls can vary from two
to ten feet, while their length can stretch from a few yards to as much as a mile! Countless flat
stones have been laid one upon another carved with prayers (praises) on them-thus
constituting the "accumulated offerings of local piety."
The most common inscription to be found everywhere has been the simple invocation to
the Buddha of the six mystic symbols, as verbalized in the six syllables of "Om! Mani padme
Hum!" As can be guessed, therefore, the name of such walls as the one seen at Kema Gompa
is derived from the second word of this most famous of mantras in Tibetan Buddhism-
"mani."
By passing one of these walls on its left with one's right arm inwards a person safely
invokes luck or adds to his or her credit the merit of having gotten the benefit of all the
prayers inscribed on the entire mani wall! And thus, this superstitious practice "of scrupulously
following the course of the sun is probably an outcome of the nature-worship which preceded
Buddhism in Tibet and which is still largely mingled with it." And what has accounted for so
many of these stones having come to dot the Tibetan Buddhist cultural-geographical
landscape everywhere in the past is the fact that they were prepared and then deposited on
the mani wall for some special reason: to ensure safety on a journey, for the undertaking of
any considerable enterprise, to guarantee a good harvest, for the birth of a son, and so on.
Consequently, because of their ubiquity, these mani stones and walls had kept the idea of
religion and of Buddha's law ever fresh before the people's eyes wherever they went. And
because of many of them having been whitewashed, the mantra carvings are able to stand
out in sharp relief, as shown in these two Plates.
Photo Credits: Plate 26a, Author, taken along the trekking trail to Everest Base Camp, in the
Tibetan Sherpa country of Solu Khumbu, Nepal, 1991; and Plate 26b, Ilya Tolstoy, American
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia USA, as published in Tibet, the Sacred Realm:
Photographs 1880-1950 (MillertonNY USA, 1983), 107.
A TIBETAN BUDDHIST PRAYER WHEEL.

Prayer wheels, or "praising wheels," as some are wont to call them, are of four kinds: those
twirled in the hand, those driven by a jet of water, those driven by the wind, and those of huge
size placed in the passages and/or doorways of monasteries, temples or shrines and that are
to be set spinning by those who pass by-whether inmates of these religious institutions,
pilgrims or other visitors. The first kind, which is the most common and is illustrated here, has
been described as very much in the shape of a baby's rattle, and "is the inseparable companion
of the Buddhist devotee." This small wheel is always a cylindrical metal case, hollow, and
420
with an opening at either end. Mantras and other kinds of invocations are written on pieces
of paper and wound round a bamboo or wooden rod and then inserted into the cylinder. This
rod is kept in place by means of a carved shell washer which, is placed about the rod at the
cylinder's top. The religious person then turns the wheel with a rotating hand gesture.
The one most frequently inscribed mantra to be found inside the Tibetan prayer wheel is
the universally accepted and most often invoked one by Tibetans and other adherents of
Tibetan Buddhism throughout Central Asia: "Om! mani padme Hum!" (whose meaning, among
several is basically translated into English as "Hail! oh Thou Jewel in the Lotus! Amen!") and
which may be considered more of a statement of praise than of prayer. For in the original
Buddhism of long ago and in the real Buddhism of today there is and can be no such thing as
prayer, inasmuch as Gautama the founder of Buddhism, and the purest in doctrine of his
followers ever since, alike do not admit that gods or men can save mankind from the results
of karma (cause and effect). Nevertheless, in centuries past, and even today, the ignorant
masses of Tibetan Buddhism (and for that matter, ignorant peasants in other Buddhist lands)
have undoubtedly made use of so-called prayer mantras, even though the words of this most
' pervasively employed formula in Tibet, which have been twirled about in thousands upon
thousands of prayer wheels day and night for centuries throughout the community of Tibetans,
are actually an ejaculation of praise and not of prayer!
Now the idea among Tibetan Buddhists seems to be that the more "prayers" a person
offers up the quicker that one will achieve Nirvana (indefinable bliss or, "the final result of
the extinction of the desire or thirst for rebirth"), and that the person will obtain the same
benefits from such contrivances as prayer flags, prayer wheels and mani stones or walls as if
he had uttered the mantras himself.
Illustration Credit: Moravian Missions (Dec. 1906):222.
%
28 DORJE AND DRILBU, EMBLEMS OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM.

Dor in Tibetan means stone; rje, noble; and thus a precious stone, ajewel, also ameteoric
stone; and hence, an ecclesiastical scepter that is emblematic of the thunderbolt. On the
other hand, drilbu means bell. Accordingly, "it is no exaggeration to call them spiritual tools"
of Tibetan Buddhism.
Now it would be the name Dorje which Gergan Tharchin would be given by his parents at
his birth on 18 April 1890. The extant record of Tharchin's entire life is devoid of any explanation
as to why he subsequently chose not to have this given name identified with him. It could be,
however, that sometime after his conversion to Christ he may have decided that Dorje is too
closely associated with the ecclesiastical trappings of Tibetan Buddhism and that it was
therefore fitting from that moment forward to divest himself of the use of this given name.
Photo Credit: Roger Hicks, Hidden Tibet (Longmead UK, 1988), 8.
29 TSARONG II, TIBET ARMY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, AND "THE MOST

CONSISTENTLY PRO-BRITISH TIBETAN."
Though the most progressive-minded and outward-looking Tibetan of his day, Tsarong,
second most powerful leader after the Dalai Lama, nonetheless harbored, like his compatriots,
a conservatism, suspicion and mistrust towards foreigners, in particular, the Europeans. This
he expressed rather strongly in an interview he gave in early 1925 at Calcutta to an American
Church bishop and his wife, pictured in Plate 30. Tsarong, incidentally, would become a very
close personal friend to Gergan Tharchin.
Photo Credit: Sir Francis Younghusband, comp., Peking to Lhasa: the Narrative of Journeys
by... General George Pereira ... (London, 1925), 185.
BISHOP FREDERICK B. FISHER AND WIFE.

Youngest Methodist bishop in his Church of that time, Fisher was appointed so over
Burma and India. He and his wife, both Americans, became champions of the Indian
independence movement, becoming close friends of Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru and C. F. Andrews.
Mrs. Fisher would also, in 1960, serve on an Educational Advisory Committee whose
membership under the Exile Tibetan government ruler Dalai Lama XIV included as well Gergan
Dorje Tharchin.
Photo Credit: WelthyH. Fisher, To Light a Candle (New York 1962), 200.
COLONEL FRANCIS E. YOUNGHUSBAND AT DARJEELING, 1903.

Poised to launch Britain's invasion of Tibet that year, Younghusband (1862-1942) had
his photograph taken at Darjeeling, the starting point of his famed diplomatic/military
mission to Lhasa. Most, if not all, missionaries were convinced that Younghusband's
entry into the Vatican of Tibetan Buddhism, finally realized in August 1904, would
pronounce the death-knell to the long-held exclusionary policy of Tibet towards Christian
missionaries, teachers and evangelists. If anything, however, British India and Tibet
worked in tandem more vigorously than ever to keep the Christian God's servants out of
the Land of Monks and Monasteries and, for that matter, so far as the British were
concerned, out of the neighboring Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan.
Especially did Britain view with concern the desire and intention of missionaries to
penetrate on their own initiative these Closed Lands lest if unrestricted permission were
granted wholesale, Christian activity might trigger religious unrest among the citizenry
of these lands, thus jeopardizing carefully negotiated trade agreements and political
treaties such as the Treaty of Lhasa of 1904. And hence, the likes of a Sadhu Sundar
Singh roaming at will around Tibet and other sensitive frontier areas of British India was
looked upon with great disfavor.
Photo Credit: George Seaver, Francis Younghusband, Explorer and Mystic (London, 1952), 201.
KAILASH, THE SW TIBET MOUNTAIN SACRED TO MANY ASIAN FAITHS.

Near here was where Sadhu Sundar Singh claimed to have come upon a centuries-old
Christian Mahatma, the Maharishi of Kailash, in 1912. Never confirmed definitively by
objective observers, even so, some well-respected scholars and writers, including Gergan
Dorje Tharchin himself, were of the belief that the Sadhu had in fact encountered such an
individual in this most sacred region of Central Asia that encompasses not"only the Holy
Mount Kailash but also the nearby Holy Lakes of Manasarovar and the much smaller
RakasTal.
Photo Credit: Gyanendra, in Kathmandu Post, 1 March 1998.
8TH-CENTURY STONE CARVINGS NEAR DRANGTSE IN LADAKH BELIEVED

MADE BY NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS: GENERAL AND CLOSE-UP VIEWS.
Shown in Plate 33b is a close-up view of a barely visible Maltese Christian cross and
nine-line inscription which can be seen on that portion of the immense boulder which
appears above the head of the darkly-clad man standing left in the photo of Plate 33a. This
world-famous epigraphic petroglyph is strongly supportive of Sadhu Sundar Singh's claim
of having accidentally come across, during one of his evangelistic forays into Tibet in
1912, "a stone cross set upon a rock" that was erected in the vicinity of the adjoining
420
sacred Mount Kailash region of Southwest Tibet. He had been led to believe by the Maharishi
of Kailash that this particular stone cross had been built by Nestorian Christians.
Photo Credits: Plate 33a, Loren Tutell, in Nicol Smith, Golden Doorway to Tibet (Indianapolis
USA, 1949), 177; and Plate 33b, M Bosshard, in F E. Peter, "The First Christian Missionary in
Ladakh, " Moravian Missions (Oct. 1934):76.
34 ST. STEPHEN'S COLLEGE, DELHI.

Whenever not evangelizing in Tibet and closer to his home base area in the Simla Hills,
Sundar Singh would often spend time whenever in Delhi visiting his very great friend, the
Principal of the College, S.K. Rudra, as well as another of his intimate friends, Charles F.
Andrews, who was himself a professor there at the time. Moreover, the Sadhu had a
tremendous impact for Christ upon many of its students, whose attitudes and life goals were
dramatically changed because of their interaction with this saintly servant of God. "The
Cross was not preached only, but lived" before these students, wrote Andrews about the
Sadhu's experience at St. Stephen's, "and that made all the difference in the world" in the
remarkable influence he exerted upon them.
Photo Credit: S. E. Stokes, Arjun, the Life Story of an Indian Boy (Westminster, 1920), 110.
35 AMERICAN ARMY OFFICERS, TOLSTOY AND DOLAN, AS THEY BEGAN A

RECONNAISSANCE MISSION THROUGH TIBET FOR U. S. PRESIDENT F. D.
ROOSEVELT IN 1942-3.
Their eyewitness reports of cruel punishment of Tibetans refuted Gergan Tharchin's
assertion that Christian evangelist Kartar Singh could nevefhave suffered martyrdom in 1912
at the hands of religious-minded Buddhist Tibetans by means of the infamous punishment of
being encased in a sewn-up wet yak rawhide and left to die in this gradually shrinking state
for days under the hot sun, as was claimed by Sadhu Sundar Singh to have in fact happened.
For though this kind of punishment-as Tharchin had been quick to point out-had been
outlawed by 1898, enforcement of the ban in the remoter areas of Tibet was lax in the extreme,
as many Tibetan and non-Tibetan scholars have remarked upon. And hence, Kartar Singh
could easily have been a victim of such laxness, even at the hands of Tibet's religious-
minded citizenry if provoked enough by the activities of this Christian evangelist in preaching
the foreign faith.
Photo Credit: US. National Archives Still Picture Collection, as published inJohnKnaus, Orphans
of the Cold War (New York, 1999), 50.
36 SUNDAR SINGH WITH ARCHBISHOP SODERBLOM, PRIMATE OF SWEDEN AND

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE, PICTURED AT THE ARCHBISHOP'S HOME,
WHERE THE SADHU WAS HIS GUEST FOR TEN DAYS, SPRING 1922.
From time to time in the history of religious and theological thought an event takes
place, a statement is made, or a person appears on the human stage, to which the
religious world of the time is compelled to react. The history of religions is full of
such catalysts of opinion.... The brief emergence of Sundar Singh in the religious
world of the 1920s was precisely such a catalyst of public religious opinion.... By
most Christians in Europe he was regarded with virtually unqualified reverence as
a mystic, as an unaffected man of God and as a living proof of the coming of age of
Christianity in the East; but by a few he was looked upon either as an impostor, or
... as a psychopath and almost a confidence trickster
In the 1920s, then, there sprang up an extraordinarily violent debate around the
person and work and credentials of the Sadhu. On one side there were his admirers
and defenders, numbering among them some of the most outstanding of the liberal
theologians of the period. We may mention... Nathan Soderblom in SwedenOn
the other there were less well-known names ...
Caught in the middle of this dispute was not only the Sadhu himself, but also Gergan
Dorje Tharchin. Of this controversy and its harsh critics Sundar Singh had this to say:
"There is nothing in the world which cannot be criticized. In this dark world even the
Creator has not been left without criticism. What, then, can we expect? Matthew 10:25. If I
had lived a hundred or two hundred years ago, the critics would have denied and proved
that I never existed in the world. Satan must be laughing at the clever and cunning people
of the world who deceive themselves in their own baseless cleverness. We must pray for
such people that God may have mercy upon them." As for Tharchin, he had nothing but
the highest praise to heap upon his "dear friend" the Sadhu. And as for the Archbishop, he
could not defend enough, and most energetically so, his younger friend Sundar Singh.
Wrote this high Swedish Churchman and future Nobel laureate, in two letters he sent the
Sadhu: "This story is a dark chapter in the history of the ... vices of 'Churchianity.' But it
cannot but serve God's Kingdom, and I wish you heartily strength and trust for fulfilling
your great vocation.... God bless all sincere and true hearts, who love Him for His own sake,
and their fellowmen for their own sake, and who put God's rule above human considerations.
Therefore I bless you, and I am, with benediction and friendship, sincerely, your N.
SODERBLOM."
As it turned out, not one of the Sadhu's published critics had ever met or spent time
with him. Had they done so, their accusations of impostor, charlatan, swindler, deceiver,
thaumaturgist, liar and self-seeker would have soon been withdrawn in the face of a clearly
recognizable manifestation of undeniable authenticity, integrity, veracity and transparency
of heart in this Indian saint. For when the character, personality and conduct of this man in
all their facets are carefully scrutinized, it becomes plain for all to see that Sadhu Sundar
Singh could never have been guilty of any of these defamatory charges.
Photo Credit: C. J. Curtis, Soderblom, Ecumenical Pioneer (Minneapolis USA, ¡967).
37a-h GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN'S ESTEEMED FRIEND AND CO-LABORER IN THE

GOSPEL, SADHU SUNDAR SINGH (1889-1929?).
Presented here is a photo montage of the Sadhu, depicting him at various times during the
last decade of his illustrious life and career (see Plates 37a through h).
In 1925, just four years before the Sadhu's disappearance and presumed demise, Gergan
Tharchin was moved to ascribe great honor and deep respect towards his friend out of his
profound appreciation for what the latter had done for him in the days and years from 1908
onward. This he had communicated personally to one of the Sadhu's harshest critics during
a lengthy conversation he had had with Catholic Jesuit Fr. Henry Hosten in Darjeeling. As
reported by Hosten later, Tharchin had said about Sundar Singh that
he looked up to him and reverenced him as his spiritual "Guru," who influenced him
tremendously in his religious devotion. It was Sundar Singh who took him up from
his low estate and put him in a position to improve his lot little by little. He therefore
feels a great love and gratitude towards him.
And in his final recorded comment about Sundar Singh which was delivered up while
dictating his so-called memoirs just two years before his own death, Tharchin Babu, in explaining
the reason for his then current prosperity-spiritual and otherwise-was heard to say:
The blessings of my dear friend Sadhu Sundar Singh have fallen upon my life
abundantly because, I believe, I served him and also served my Lord sincerely and
faithfully during the days of my youth. This is the goodness of the Lord, unto
whom I ascribe all the glory, honor and majesty.
Photo Credits Plate by Plate:
37a Frontispiece in A. J. Appasamy, Sundar Singh, a Biography (London, ¡958). Taken while on
tour in Europe, Spring J920, at age 30 Vi.
37b Frontispiece in Rebecca J. Parker, Sadhu Sundar Singh: Called of God (New York, ¡920).
Most likely taken at about age 25 and showing how Sundar Singh probably appeared at the
time of his solitary trek to Elam in East Nepal and of his trek to Sikkim shortly thereafter with
Dorje Tharchin. Note the Sadhu s characteristic signature written in Urdu.
37c Frontispiece in Canon Burnett H. Streeter and A J. Appasamy, The Sadhu: a Study in Mvsticisrn
and Practical Religion (London, ¡921). probably taken at about age 30.
37d Missionary Review of the World (July ¡920):6U. While on tour in America during the late
spring and early summer of 7 920, Sundar Singh visited New York, where he is shown standing
on one of that city's streets with a young friend, Robert Hume, whosefathef and grandfather had
been missionaries in India. Here the Sadhu was nearly 37 years old a/the time.
37e Missionary Review of the World (Apr. 1922):291. This photo was taken while the Sadhu was
on tour in Europe during the early spring of 1922, and he is shown at 32 V2 years of age
standing barefooted in what is presumably the garden of one of his numerous hosts.
3 7f Missionary Review ofthe World (July 1924) :492. A t nearly 35 years of age, Sundar Singh is
shown in a mood of laughter rarely captured in his extant photographs.
37g Una M. Saunders, Mary Dobson: Musician, * Writer and Missionary (London, ¡926), ¡49. A
missionary primarily in the Bombay area of India, Miss Dobson had been a fairly close
friend of the Sadhu's. This particular photo shows Sundar Singh at the age ofprobably 36,
and standing with rare footwear on his feet.
3 7h Missionary Review of the World {Jan. 1926):31. In one of the last portraits for which Sundar
Singh ever sat, the Sadhu spremature aging can readily be discerned in this photo taken in
late 1925, just a little more than three years before his disappearance and presumed death in
April 1929 at the age of 39}/2.
38 jygy FREDRIK FRANSON (1852-1908).

This American servant of God, "the spiritual giant that Church historians overlooked,"
was probably the greatest foreign mission society organizer of all time. One such society he
founded was the Scandinavian Alliance Mission of North America, which soon established
a mission station at Ghoom, NE India, to reach Tibetans and others for Christ. It was to this
very mission station, in fact, that Gergan Dorje Tharchin would join himself in 1912.
Photo Credit: Vernon Mortensen, God Made It Grow (Pasadena CA USA, 1994), 432.
39 THE FIRST GROUP OF SAM MISSIONARIES FROM THE USA SENT TO

INDIA BY FRANSON IN 1892.
All are shown here together in North America before embarking on their journey to NE
India. Two of the twelve would separate themselves from the group at Shanghai (desiring,
they said, of "getting directly to the Chinese"), leaving the rest to establish their Mission to
the Tibetans at Ghoom in Daijeeling District situated on the southern slopes of the Himalayas,
they being hopeful of one day entering Tibet. The leader of the group, identified by the
number 2 in the photograph, is John F. Fredrickson, Franson's dearest friend and former co-
evangelist traveling companion in America. It would be in early 1912 that Dorje Tharchin
would leave NW India and join himself to the Ghoom Mission as a teacher there and as an
evangelist throughout the District and beyond.
Photo Credit: Otto C. Grauer, comp./ed., Fredrik Fransont Founder of the Scandinavian Alliance
Mission of North America (Chicago, n.d. 1940?), 92.
RAI BAHADUR SARAT CHANDRA DAS (1849-1917).

This renowned explorer, linguist, lexicographer, ethnographer, educator and eminent
Tibetan scholar befriended three missionary men of the Ghoom Mission to the Tibetans-
John Fredrickson, A. E. Shoberg and Fred Gustafson-by providing living quarters at his
famed Daijeeling home, "Lhasa Villa," while they were engage in Tibetan language study
there in 1892. Though no Christian himself, Chandra Das was nonetheless sympathetic to
their desire to reach Tibetans with the Christian gospel, indeed, over the years since his
student days at the (Anglican) Cathedral Mission College in Calcutta, Das had conceived "a
great admiration for Christianity, and owned it to be superior to any other religion." Moreover,
though he regarded Northern Buddhism (as distinguished from simply Tibetan Lamaism) to
be far superior to the Southern; even so, he declared, significantly, that "Buddhism has no
moral governor," adding that Buddha had given his followers a law, but the path of rectitude
was actually one of self-evolution.
Chandra Das, of course, was most famous for being the last of the great explorer Pundits
commissioned by the British Indian government to secretly explore the vast uncharted regions
of Tibetan territory in the British Raj's zealous desire to keep pace with Imperial Russia and
China in the "Great Game" rivalry among the three for control or dominant influence over
Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Das's clandestine survey mission through
Tibet brought him to the Tibetan capital itself in 1882.
Photo Credit: Frontispiece in S.C. Das, Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, ed. W. W Rockhill
(London, 1902).
FRANSON VISITS GHOOM MISSION, INDIA, IN 1894.

An indefatigable Christian evangelist, Franson was mightily used to lead many to Christ
while visiting in India, Sikkim and along the Bhutanese border. One of his most celebrated
converts was David Macdonald (see Plate 42), who spent 20 years in Tibet serving the
Government of India. This convert to Christ would also become one of the most intimate
friends Gergan Tharchin ever had.
Photo Credit: Otto C. Grauer, comp./ed., Fifty Wonderful Years (Chicago, 1940), 153.
DAVID MACDONALD WITH GURKHA ESCORT AT YATUNG, TIBET, cl911.

This young man, once he was converted to Christ through the instrumentality of Fredrik
Franson in 1894, would almost immediately become a most earnest Christian and an incredibly
active worker for the Lord. So much so, in fact, that it was reported in 1896 that "the leading
Buddhists write him threatening letters, warning him not to preach Christ, but he continues
and is growing in grace."
Now it so happened that this formerly devout Buddhist had had a great-grandfather, Rev. Dr.
John Macdonald, who had been a tremendous evangelist in the Highlands of Scotland. On the
other hand, young David's father had been a Scotch tea-planter near Daijeeling before departing
India for good when the boy was only six years old. Nevertheless, the fattier did mercifully leave
David's mother-a Sikkimese Lepcha-with what was then a generous sum of Rs. 20/- per month for
the lad's education. This took place at Daijeeling's famedBhotia Boarding School.
Because of David Macdonald's acquaintance with many languages including Tibetan
while growing up, this young man would be chosen to accompany the famed Younghusband
Expedition to Lhasa in 1904 as an interpreter and translator (see Plate 31). And thus, in this
manner, though indirectly so, was Fredrik Franson's earnest desire fulfilled to bring the
gospel of Jesus Christ into the very heart of Tibet. For while in Lhasa, Macdonald was invited
by the Lamas of the most holy Tibetan cathedral, the central temple of Lamaist Buddhism
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called the Jo-khang (because it enshrined what is believed to be the world's oldest image of
the Buddha), to read to them portions of "his Holy Book." It was an invitation to which
Macdonald most happily responded, and was an act the execution of which must have
undoubtedly constituted the first and only time in Tibetan history that the Christian Scriptures
had ever been publicly read aloud at this most sacred of all Buddhist temples in Tibet by
anyone whether from East or West.
In addition to this unusual privilege which this Eurasian experienced at Lhasa, he was
also responsible for the distribution among Lamas, monks and laymen there of the British
Bible Society's Tibetan Gospels, on which, coincidentally, he had himself labored as one of
the New Testament Revision Committee's members during his preceding years at Ghoom. But
probably the most distinctive act he performed on behalf of the Christian gospel in Tibet
came on the last full day of his presence in Lhasa. Early on this day Macdonald had sent,
handcarried, three of these same Gospels to the then Ruler of Tibet, the extremely high and
respected Lama, the Ti Rimpoche. (He had been appointed by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to
manage the affairs of state in his absence just as the latter himself was in the process of
fleeing Tibet's Holy City in the face of the approaching British Army.) Now upon receipt of
the Gospels, the Ti Rimpoche granted an interview to Macdonald later that same day.
Reporting the incident afterwards, this recent convert to Christ from Buddhism noted that he
found the Lama-Ruler quite anxious to know about ''the white man's religion." Whereupon
the former devout Buddhist Macdonald had the, unique privilege of speaking to this High
Lama of Tibet "about the one God and His Son Jesus Christ."
In a letter he wrote shortly after his arrival in the Tibetan capital, Macdonald, upon
recounting much about his spiritual activities in this Great Closed Land, added this: "It is a
pity there are no Christian missionaries inside Tibet. I have had some opportunities of
witnessing for Christ on the way [up to Lhasa], and I hope, God willing, to be able to do
something among the people as soon as I have an oppbrtunity." That very opportunity
would come just a few years later; for after being posted to Yatung in southern Tibet in 1909
as British Trade Agent (as shown in the photo here), this Anglo-Indian Christian convert
would win others to Christ and even organize there a congregation of worshiping believers
inside the Forbidden Land! Furthermore, during the years which were to follow he would
become one of the chief reviewers of much of the entire Tibetan Bible as it was being translated
by the Moravians in the far-off West Himalaya Mission of Indo-Tibet. But he would also be
a participant in the revision of the Lepcha New Testament. And finally, David Macdonald
would for many, many years co-labor in the gospel with Gergan Tharchin among the community
of Tibetans in the Darjeeling Himalayan hill station of Kalimpong and its immediate environs.
Truly did there emerge much spiritual fruit from that one brief but momentous encounter
between the intrepid American evangelist Franson and this formerly devout Eurasian Buddhist.
Photo credit: Macdonald Collection, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, as published in Alex McKay,
Tibet and the British Raj (London., 1997), 134.
43 THE SCANDINAVIAN ALLIANCE MISSION UPPER PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASS,

GHOOM, INDIA, 1913.
The young man on the left dressed in white is schoolmaster Dorje Tharchin. This is the
earliest extant photograph of the Tibetan from Poo known to exist, and shows him as a
handsome young man of 23. Another early extant photograph of a similar group of the
Ghoom Mission's school students is presented in Plate 44.
Photo Credit: Since both pictures in Plates 43 and 44 were originally in the possession of Headmaster
Karma S. Paulfor the longest time and only presented to Tharchin as a gift decades later ("To Mr
Tharchin, Tibet Mirror Press, Kalimpong, from K. S. Paul; 2/2/50"), one can perhaps justifiably
assume that the person who took these photos was the Headmaster himself
ANOTHER PHOTO OF GHOOM MISSION SCHOOL'S STUDENT BODY, 1914.

This picture shows a fully frontal view of Dorje Tharchin's face (see upper left of photo).
Could one of these Upper Primary School students shown in either one or both of these
photographs be the future Rai Sahib, Pemba Tsering? For it is definitely known that he had
been a student of Tharchin's, and when becoming an adult had gone on to serve as a clerk in
the British Trade Agency at Gyantse, where incidentally, his more famous son, Tsewang Y.
Pemba, would be bom in 1931. In that same year the father Pemba was promoted to a new post
at Yatung's Trade Agency. Later, Rai Sahib Pemba would be transferred to the British Mission
at Lhasa, where he would be employed for many years as a most important member of the
office staff. Tharchin would reacquaint himself with Rai Sahib at the Tibetan capital in 1937
and with both father and son there in 1940. Pemba the son would go on to become a well-
known surgeon and medical officer (for a period of time he would be attached to the royal
court of Bhutan), and a celebrated Tibetan author.
Photo Credit: See Plate 43.
GERGAN THARCHIN AND HIS KINDERGARTEN CLASS, IN FRONT OF ORIGINAL

MISSION HOUSE OF GHOOM MISSION, 1915.
This original house of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission was eventually sold to a Mr.
Samden (not to be confused with Karma Samden or Sumdhon Paul, the Ghoom Headmaster)
and known thereafter as Samden House.
Photo Credit: It is unknown who took the photo, but it was found among the Tharchin Papers with
a penciled note on the reverse side in Tharchin s unmistakable handwriting.
EVELYN COTTAGE AT THE SAM MISSION STATION, GHOOM: LODGING

PLACE FOR MANY LUMINARIES IN ASIAN MISSIONARY HISTORY.
PARTIAL VIEW OF SAM'S GHOOM MISSION CHURCH BUILDING, NOW NEARING
A CENTURY OLD.
INSIDE THE SANCTUARY OF THE CHURCH STRUCTURE, WHERE SADHU
SUNDAR SINGH PREACHED.
Among the many of God's missionary "spiritual giants" who at one time or another have
lodged at Ghoom Mission's still existing Evelyn Cottage (Plate 46) were the following: Fredrik
Franson, founder of the Alliance Mission which established the mission station in the first
place; one of the famed "Cambridge Seven" missionaries to China, Cecil Polhill-Turner, and
his wife; the renowned founder of the China Inland Mission, J. Hudson Taylor, and his wife;
the outstanding West Himalaya Moravian missionary to the Tibetans and President of the
Ghoom-based Revision Committee of the Tibetan New Testament, Augustus William Heyde,
and his wife; Gergan Tharchin and his (second) wife, who spent their honeymoon days here
in 1956; and last but far from least, the world-famous Christian sadhu evangelist, Sundar
Singh, who as guest of Gergan Tharchin during the latter's teaching years at Ghoom Mission
shared rooms with his host in Evelyn Cottage off and on during May, June and July 1914.
Indeed, it was here that the Sadhu stayed before and after experiencing his harrowing and
controversial imprisonment at Elam in nearby East Nepal; but it was here, also, that the Sadhu
420
stayed before and after he and Tharchin made their evangelistic trek through the Teesta
Valley, Kalimpong, and Sikkim on their aborted journey to Tibet.
It was while visiting with Dorje Tharchin at the Ghoom Mission in May of 1914 that the
Sadhu, on Sunday the 17th of that month, "addressed the Christian congregation in the local
church" there. In those much earlier days this would have been a congregation composed
predominantly of Tibetans who had been attracted to the Darjeeling-Ghoom area from several
of the neighboring countries in the region. This congregation had met in a church structure
which even today still stands where it has always stood for nearly a century now; the same
structure, in fact, which appears in Plate 47, showing, however, an assembled congregation
of a much later day standing outside the church building's entrance.
Here, in this very same church structure (and still situated today adjacent to Evelyn Cottage
but on higher ground atop a short ridge some one to two hundred feet above the Cottage), and
from the very same pulpit (see Plate 48), was where the celebrated Sadhu preached to a crowded
gathering of Christians and other people. "It was a blessed time of fellowship," observed
Tharchin, "to hear the word of God from this great servant of the Lord."
Photo Credits: Plate 46, Author, 1985; Plates 47 and 48, Michael Mason, 1986.
49 KARMA SUMDHON, cl923, JUST BEFORE HIS DISMISSAL AS HEADMASTER

OF THE SAM CHRISTIAN SCHOOL AT GHOOM.
For five years beginning in Janunry 1912 Dorj e Tharphin taught Tibetan and Hindi at the
Ghoom Mission School under the headmastership of Karma Sumdhon. The Headmaster
often assisted Tharchin in the latter's advance preparation of both the English and Hindi
units of instruction. Upon his conversion to Christ the Headmaster had ever afterwards been
known as Karma Sumdhon Paul. Coincidentally, the life andxareer of this particular gentleman
happened to have crossed paths with those of numerous other individuals who, like him,
were to figure rather prominently in the life and career of Gergan Dorje Tharchin.
Now the lives of these two contemporaries at Ghoom present a very sharp contrast in how
they each responded to the Christian faith over the long term, once each of them had become
identified with it. Yet, interestingly enough, these two men had much in common: both of
them were Tibetans who had been born within two or three years of each other inside British
India quite near the Tibetan frontier but at opposite ends of the Himalayan arc; both of them
had been educationally and professionally "trained in Western culture along Western lines";
both of them had become fluent in several different languages beyond their own native
tongue; both of them would become better than ordinary achievers in their respective fields
of endeavor; both of them had experienced continuous intercourse with Western missionaries
over a considerable length of time; and both of them, not unlike the experience of most
anyone else born into their particular lower-rung stations of life, had not been immune to the
harsher realities of existence but had encountered their share of the "hard knocks of life."
Nevertheless, with regard to just the Ghoom period of their lives, it can be said that in the case
of Gergan Dorje Tharchin, his was a life marked by much joy and happiness, of solid Christian
spiritual development, and a deepening sense of inward well-being and fulfillment. Whereas
in the case of Karma Sumdhon Paul, his was a life marked by, yes, intense expressions at times
of great thankfulness to God for His mercy and grace, but also by a nagging undercurrent of
sadness, disappointment, and disillusionment with life. Indeed, the note of joy is difficult to
find; and ultimately, there is manifested a dissatisfaction with, and a renunciation of, the
foreign religion from the West he many years earlier had embraced and an almost palpable
sense of relief in finding justifiable grounds-from his perspective-for returning to his
indigenous Buddhist practice.
Despite this change of heart towards Christ and His Church by this fellow Tibetan friend
of his, Dorje Tharchin, though no longer at Ghoom by the time of K. S. Paul's dismissal as
Ghoom Mission School Headmaster, was still keenly aware long afterwards of his indebtedness
to this remarkable man. As one who always sought to see the good side of every person,
Tharchin in later years would often be heard to speak kindly in casual conversation about
Karma Sumdhon—and in words always tinged with a deep sense of immense gratefulness and
appreciation for all that the Headmaster had done for him during his entire stay at Ghoom. On
his part, there likewise developed in Paul a deep respect and admiration for the unwavering
Tibetan Christian from Poo in the course of the latter's rise to prominence in a number of
cultural and intellectual fields of endeavor. The two of them, in fact, corresponded frequently
with each other and visited one another Whenever their two paths would cross until Karma
Sumdhon's death sometime in or after 1967.
Photo Credit: Peter Richardus, ed., Tibetan Lives (London, 1998), 74.
TIBET'S VICE-PONTIFF AND HIS ENTOURAGE AT CALCUTTA, DECEMBER 1905,

ON A STATE VISIT TO INDIA AS BRITISH INDIA'S GUESTS.
The two British officials left and right of the Panchen Lama are Captain (later Lt. Col. Sir)
William F. T. O'Connor, then the British Trade Agent at Gyantse in Tibet, and the Trade
Agency's Medical Officer, Lt. Dr. Robert Steen. These two officers served as the British
government's official escorts for the Lama during his entire visit on the Subcontinent. But
they were also the employers of Gergan Tharchin's future Headmaster and very close friend
at the Ghoom Mission School, Karma Sumdhon Paul, who served as Dr. Steen's Tibetan
interpreter during the entire Indian stay of His Serenity. K. S. Paul would return with the
Vice-Pontiff's party in January 1906 back to the latter's ecclesiastical seat of Trashilhunpo
Gompa at Shigatse in Tibet (see Plate 51).
Photo Credit: O'Connor, Things Mortal (London, 1940), 96.
TRASHILHUNPO MONASTERY, SHIGATSE, TIBET.

Founded in 1447 by Tibet's First Dalai Lama, it would later become the ecclesiastical home
of the countiy's second highest cleric in the Tibetan Buddhist Church, the Panchen Rimpoche.
It was here where Gergan Dorje Tharchin's future Ghoom Mission School Headmaster, Karma
Sumdhon Paul, had stayed for nearly the entire year of 1906 instructing the youthful Panchen
Lama of that day in the use and/or operation of an array of Western gadgets and other
practical objects the Lama had acquired while on his State visit to British Imperial India the
previous year.
Photo Credit: N.N. Jigmei et ai, Tibet (London, 1981), 276.
MARI ALBERT JOHAN VAN MANEN (1877-1943).

An acquaintance of Gergan Tharchin's-at both Ghoom and Kalimpong-this self-made
Orientalist scholar and linguist of more than ordinary repute had relocated to Ghoom from
Adyar, near Madras, South India. Heretofore at this latter place he had served for over seven
years-commencing in early 1909-as Assistant Director, and then Director, of the Library
attached to the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society, an occult religious
organization to which he himself with great enthusiasm had joined when a mere but quite
precocious teen-ager back in Holland.
The Society, a worldwide movement which sought to introduce to Western thought
elements of both Hinduism and Buddhism (with its motto being: "There is no religion higher
420
than truth"), had been founded in New York in 1875 by Russian-born Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
(née Hahn) and her ideological soul mate, the American, Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, a
former spiritualist. They together then went off to India to establish the Society's world
headquarters at Adyar, the place that ever since its founding in 1882 has served as the center
of world Theosophy up to the present day.
By late spring of 1916, however, van Manen had abandoned the intellectual circles of
Theosophy at Adyar, his "interest in Theosophical ideas" having perhaps "faded somewhat"
by this time, especially after some serious differences of opinion had arisen between him and
Annie Besant, the successor in leadership of the Society following the deaths of Madame
Blavatsky and Cblonel Olcott. It would appear, in fact, that over the years at Adyar the Dutch
thinker-scholar had become dissatisfied with Theosophical thought and methods as the
intermediary to the acquisition of ultimate spiritual truth; instead, he would settle down in the
Ghoom area because he "apparently felt the need to acquire firsthand knowledge of the
Tibetan Buddhist culture and language ..." Realizing, however, that a study of the latter
would require great concentration and more than ordinary perseverance, he sought out the
guidance of a thoroughly competent Tibetan munshi or language teacher. And that is why he
eventually selected the Darjeeling area of India for his next place of abode and study, knowing
full well that the various Mission schools there employed teachers who besides Tibetan
could also speak and understand English fluently.
Accordingly, van Manen approached some of the Ghoom Mission staff, and through
them the Dutch scholar was brought into contact with Karma Sumdhon Paul; who by that
time had been a Christian and the Mission School's Headmaster for a number of years.
Needing someone to tutor him in the difficult Tibetan colloquial language, van Manen
immediately employed Tharchin's close friend and fellow educator, K. S. Paul, to give him
daily language lessons in classical and especially colloquial Tibetan. This the school
headmaster would do faithfully for over two years, along with two other munshis, one of
whom was extremely skilled in the classical literary language of the sacred Tibetan Buddhist
texts.
Near the close of 1918, however, all this collective labor came to an end at Ghoom with
the appointment of van Manen to the post of Librarian of the Imperial Library in Calcutta
for two years. He would subsequently become a member of the Senate of Calcutta
University and soon thereafter the General Secretary of the prestigious Asiatic Society
of Bengal where he would serve in that post of the Society frotn 1923 to 1939. During that
period and later van Manen would make frequent trips up to Kalimpong where he interacted
on several occasions with the Tibetan from Poo. Indeed, on his final visit to the hill
station, in early March of 1943, the Dutchman would see the house he had previously
requested Gergan Tharchin to find for him and his household servant, Twan Yang, the
latter of whom Tharchin had many times befriended over the years. However, the death
of van Manen in Calcutta several weeks later ended this plan of the Dutch scholar's to
relocate permanently in Kalimpong for the sake of his declining health and the completion
of a voluminous Tibetan dictionary during whatever years would have remained of his
life.
Finally, it should be noted that van Manen often hosted at his Calcutta home a large
number of well-known political, intellectual and literary figures, some of whom were very
close friends or acquaintances of Gergan Tharchin: those like David Macdonald, Theos
Bernard, and Prince Peter of Greece. But besides these visitors, such luminaries as Sir Francis
Younghusband and even Somerset Maugham frequented his residence on occasion.
Photo Credit: Peter Richar dus, The Dutch Orientalist Johan van Manen (Leiden. 1989), Plate ÎL
K* S. PAUL, SERVING AS INTERPRETER TO THE 1922 EVEREST EXPEDITION

LEADER, GENERAL C. G. BRUCE.
In early 1922 the Political Officer for Tibet, Lieutenant Colonel "Eric" Bailey, had written
his former employee, K, S. Paul, reinstating the latter's right to serve the British government
in any department he wished to choose. By this time Dorje Tharchin's friend and school
Headmaster had nearly completely fallen out of favor with the Christian administrators of
Ghoom Mission because of his lapse back into the Tibetan Buddhist faith. Seeing Bailey's
offer, therefore, as possibly an opportunity to return to the Snowy Land in a somewhat
different capacity from his previous experience there, the soon-to-be-dismissed Headmaster
applied for and got an appointment to serve that same year as interpreter to the first of several
Everest Climbing Expeditions. This initial attempt to scale the world's highest summit would
be under the direction of General Charles G. Bruce, and Karma Sumdhon would find himself
serving at the very side of the General himself. Indeed, Plate 53 presents a scene from Captain
John Noel's classic motion picture of the event, Climbing Mount Everest (1922), in which
Karma Paul (as he was identified in the movie) is shown verbally translating to General Bruce
a message which he has brought to the Expedition leader from Lama Zatul Rimpoche, abbot
of Tibet's nearby Rongbuk Gompa. Not only did this appointment afford Karma Paul the
opportunity to "rub shoulders" with the British General, it also enabled him to associate with
the likes of the climbing team's most celebrated member, George Leigh Mallory.
Photo Credit: a still from Captain Noel s movie cited above, as published in Mvthos Tibet (Kdln:
Dumont, 1997), 91.
YIGA CHOLLING MONASTERY, GHOOM.

Established in 1850, Yiga Cholling (meaning: "The Religious Continent of the Joyful
Soul") is the oldest gompa in the entire Darjeeling District, is the largest of all three Ghoom
monasteries, has generally 20 monk inmates in attendance, and belongs to the Gelugpa or
Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, to which Tibet's spiritual ruler the Dalai Lama belongs. It
was founded by the famous astrologer of Tibet, Lama Sherap Gyantsho (a Mongolian monk),
the same Mongol priest who had been engaged by famed Pundit Sarat Chandra Das to teach
Tibetan to three of the first Ghoom Mission missionaries (including its leader John
Fredrickson) and also engaged by Das to assist, initially, the noted Japanese Buddhist monk,
scholar, author and traveler in Tibet, Ekai Kawaguchi, in learning the Tibetan language.
Inside the monastery can be found statues of fierce-looking Tantric deities which stand in
rows behind glass, while bowls of holy water are stationed in front of the main image of the
temple, Maitreya: the Buddha of the Future (see a sample depiction of the Coming Buddha in
Plate 55). This image and monastery must have become familiar points of interest to Dorje
Tharchin once he had settled at Ghoom in 1912.
Photo Credit: Author, 1987.
THE MAITREYA BUDDHA

The Coming One in Hindi is Maitreya; in Tibetan, Gye-wa Champa (or Jampa); this
Buddha is also referred to as the Buddha of Mercy or "the King of Love." Whenever, as is
the case at Ghoom's Yiga Cholling, he is imaged as seated it is represented in the European
fashion-not cross-legged like an Oriental in the familiar lotus position of meditation.
Moreover, "Tibetans say that the ... Buddha Maitreya will be a white man." And in fact, at
Lhasa, the images of Maitreya Buddha are frequently "portrayed almost as a European ...
with white skin and blue eyes."
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Indeed, it is said that the Maitreya will come from the West to save the world in a time of
darkness. A universal tenet of Buddhism holds that Gautama was but the fourth or fifth
(Buddhist belief varies) of a long line of Buddhas (as many as a thousand who have promised
to come to save the world from disaster), each of whom presides over a single kalpa or epoch
(5000 years) of the world's history, only to give place to a successor who manifests himself
when conditions revert to chaos. It is believed by the Buddhists that "during the first half of
this [kalpa] period the doctrine spreads and grows, but during the second half it decays and
atrophies until a new Buddha, the Maitreya, even greater than Gautama, will appear on earth
to lead humanity on a new and higher spiritual path. The second part of the cycle, the period
' of decadence in which we are now living, can be shortened by prayers; and this is the
spiritual task to which Tibetans everywhere have dedicated themselves." Now "of Gautama
it is said that he was the Lord of Compassion; of Maitreya, that he will be the Lord of Love:
a curious distinction ... for a Buddhist to make, implying as it does that in the Maitreya alone
will be seen and worshiped Buddhism's ultimate fulfillment."
In view of the fact that the final phase of world history, according to Buddhism, will be the
coming in manifest form of the Maitreya Buddha, all faithful Buddhists are watching, praying
and waiting for him to bring an end to suffering, injustice and poverty by his love. It is said
that Maitreya Buddha, who at present exists as a Bodhisattva waiting for his time to come to
the earth as the future Buddha, is currently dwelling in the Tushita Heaven, "where the last
historical Buddha-Sakyamuni [i.e., Gautama:]-left him in charge of teaching the
Bodhisattva-host, there assembled." In many monasteries throughout Buddhist lands
constant prayers are therefore "ascending" for his eventual arrival; for example, at Yiga
Cholling Gompa the author, when on a visit there in December 1987, saw on a table positioned
in front of the huge Maitreya Buddha image a mobile prayer wheel that was in constant
motion, spinning the great Tibetan mantra-Om! mani padma Hum!-continually throughout
the incense-filled main hall.
Furthermore, at every Tibetan New Year Festival at Lhasa (known as Losar), the most
important announcement Gautama the Buddha ever made is continuously repeated-"as if it
were a magic incantation"-by thousands of monks and lamas during the 21-day Monlam or
"Great Prayer" (which coincides with and constitutes the paramount event of the New Year
Festival). It had to do with Maitreya, the Coming One, and in its essence was a prayer to this
next Buddha, "the King of Love," to come quickly. Declared Gautama:
I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth nor shall I be the last. In due time, another
Buddha will arise in the world, a Holy One, a Supremely Enlightened One, endowed with
wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a
master of angels and mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths which I have
taught you. He will preach his religion, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax and
glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will proclaim a religious life, wholly
perfect and pure, such as I now proclaim. He will be known as Maitreya.
And thus this Great Prayer Festival's fundamental purpose is to shorten the time which is
left in the spiritual reign or kalpa of Gautama Buddha, whose power has passed its zenith,
and to hasten the coming of Maitreya Buddha or Gye-wa Champa (All-Conquering Love)
. Now it used to be that when the Festival would be over, all participants would disperse to
their homes far and near, singing as they went the following refrain: "Lhasa's Great Prayer
is now ended; / And the King of Love invited."
Let it be added here that were Gergan Dorje Tharchin, who had the good fortune to be in
the Tibetan capital during one of its Great Prayer Festivals, or for that matter were any other
Christian,. to hear or read Gautama Buddha's "pronouncement" and to ponder the singing
response of the Lhasan populace , he would not find it too difficult to make a transfer from the
Maitreya, shorn of all incompatible Buddhist doctrine and nomenclature, to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Photo Credit: Roger Hicks, Hidden Tibet (Longmead UK, 1988), 6.
PARTIAL VIEW OF KALIMPONG, WHERE SADHU SUNDAR SINGH PREACHED

AND WHERE GERGAN THARCHIN, BEGINNING IN 1917, WOULD SPEND THE
REST OF HIS LIFE.
A LARGE KALIMPONG WOOL GODOWN (WAREHOUSE).
A TYPICAL DAILY SCENE IN TODAY'S KALIMPONG BAZAAR.
This Himalayan hill station, considerably smaller than her larger sister community of
Darjeeling, and located some th irty miles by mountain road east northeast of that rival town,
was once "a mountainous semi-Tibetan tract" of land and part of the territories belonging to
the Raj as of Sikkim until the beginning of the 18th century when it was taken from them by the
Bhutanese. Possession of the land then passed into the hands of the British by treaty in 1865,
becoming in the latter part of the 19th century the center of an area known as British Bhutan
and which would much later constitute part of what eventually emerged as Bengal and later
still as West Bengal.
Ranging in elevation from less than 4000 feet at one point in the town to almost 5600 feet
at another, Kalimpong is situated in the Deolo-Rinkingpong Ridge, above the east bank of
the Teesta (Tista) River. In fact, it is along the seat of the saddle between these two Hills (with
the Rinkingpong or Durpin Hill showing in Plate 56) that the town's busy bazaar is located,
haphazardly built as it has been over the years on either side of the main road along a stretch
of distance of some two to three miles. Similar to Darjeeling in its "layout," Kalimpong not
only straddles a ridge but also consists of a series of interconnected streets and flights of
steps. The hill station is itself surrounded by higher peaks on all sides but one, that one
overlooking the Rangit Valley-with range upon range of hills sloping gently up from the
riverbed.
At first a rude and tiny hill community, Kalimpong would gradually become a large town,
developing by stages into what grew to be "the largest emporium of northern Bengal." Much
of the reason for this flourishing of trade was due to the further development of the main
caravan trail to Lhasa in 1904 and the opening of an additional British trade mart at Gyantse
well inside the Forbidden Land as a result of the Younghusband Expedition against Tibet in
that year, thus making Kalimpong the terminus of the chief trade route from Tibet. These
events contributed also to the eventual shift of much of the Darjeeling District's business
center from its administrative headquarters at Darjeeling to Kalimpong, where Tibetan mule
trains coming down from the nearby Jelep and Natu Passes in southeastern Sikkim now
commenced to flood the heretofore moderate bazaar with countless loads of wool bound for
the factories in India and elsewhere in the world. And as a consequence immense wool
godowns sprang up all over the hill station as a means of handling the incredible increase in
the Tibet wool trade.
To give some idea of the immensity of Kalimpong's wool trade during the former days of
its prosperity, it has been pointed out that nearly 3000 people "were employed in sorting and
baling the wool at a wage of Rs. 1/ - per day per person." Furthermore, as many as 20 large
godowns, like the one shown in Plate 57, stand abandoned today throughout the hill station's
bazaar area "as a testimony to the large-scale wool trade of the past." Moreover, it was said
of Tibet's economy in those long-ago prosperous days that it began to be gauged largely on
the basis of her wool market being funneled through Kalimpong, her wealth rising or falling
420
according to the price of the wool. In fact, regardless the products involved, it has been
estimated that by the 1920s half the entire Indo-Tibetan trade was traversing this Lhasa-
Kalimpong route.
It was for this reason that Kalimpong came to be called "the Harbor of Tibet"; for while no
European and very few Indian traders were permitted deep inside the Great Closed Land
Tibetans themselves were free to come down to India to barter their goods, mainly wool, in
exchange for commodities which they could then sell at the market towns back in their
homeland. Thus, by the 1920s the hill station of Kalimpong had emerged "as the
meeting-ground of Indian and Tibetan traders, just arriving or returning to Lhasa the Secret
City; so that to see the caravan merchants coming in from the North was like having
communication with another unseen, half-fanciful world."
As a consequence, therefore, of both the enlarged bazaar and the brisk trade conducted
in raw wool which ensued, Kalimpong, like Darjeeling before it, came to be one of the "most
cosmopolitan of hill stations in the Himalayas " Here one could meet Tibetans, Mongolians,
Chinese, Burmese, Nepalis, Lepchas, Bhutanese, Marwaris, Bengalis, Biharis, Punjabis,
Kabulis, Ladakhis, Europeans-and, in the words of David Macdonald, "every shade
between"!! Indeed, such a multiplicity of peoples and religions led one writer to dub the hill
station "the City of the Seven New Years," inasmuch as New Year was celebrated here at least
seven different times annually!
This, then, was the extraordinary mixture of polyglot peoples and cultures which Gergan
Tharchin would have endless intercourse with throughout his long life at Kalimpong and in
the surrounding District. But such, too, was the vineyard of humanity in which he was to
labor for the Lord for many, many years.
Photo Credits: Plate 56, Michael Mason, 1986; Plates 57 and 58, Author, ¡987.
%
59 THE KALIMPONG ROOM WHERE SUNDAR SINGH AND GERGAN THARCHIN

LODGED IN 1914.
The two Christian evangelists were the guests of Fred. Desh Raj, an Indian Christian
convert from the Punjab who later became a well-to-do contractor. At the time of his guest's
visit Desh Raj was a teacher in the local Scottish Universities' Mission Institution, and he
therefore occupied rooms in the teachers' quarters, one of which is shown in this photo. In
this particular room a floor cot was placed in the corner shown here, on which-by his own
choice-the Sadhu slept.
Now two of those who greatly appreciated the visit of the Sadhu to their hill station made
a point of seeking out this servant of God; they ended up at the Desh Raj home conversing
with the Sadhu about the things of God far into the evening, not leaving him and Tharchin
until 11 p.m. One of these two night visitors recalled Sundar having a very large umbrella (by
this time the monsoon season had begun) that according to the Sadhu served as his "home"
wherever he went and whenever "the night fell."
60 MACFARLANE MEMORIAL CHURCH BELFREY, KALIMPONG.

It is a beautiful but anachronistically-styled Gothic edifice, the construction of a simpler
house of worship of local design and more in keeping with the natural environment having
never been considered by the Church of Scotland Eastern Himalayan Mission leaders. They
nonetheless rightfully named it after their pioneering, visionary founder, Rev. William
MacFarlane.
It would be here in 1914 that Sadhu Sundar Singh, accompanied by his

interpreter-companion Dorje Tharchin, would speak to the assembled throng in the main
sanctuary on Sunday morning 21 June. The Sadhu and Tharchin were on their way to Sikkim
and closed Tibet, but their journey would be aborted at Gangtok by the British.
As always, on the particular Sunday of the Sadhu's visit, the bell of Macfarlane's belfry
summoned the faithful and others to worship and to hear the guest evangelist from the
Punjab give a message from the word of God. The Sadhu had earlier in the day visited the
Sunday school, which was then being held in the same Church building. He addressed the
gathering of the children, all of whom were impressed with the Christ-like appearance of the
Sadhu. In fact, wherever he went, whether in India or abroad, people-especially the children-
had their attention immediately arrested by his face with its serenity and radiance, and it
caused them to think of what Jesus might have looked like while He was on earth.
61 JESUIT MISSIONARY TO TIBET, FR. AUGUSTE DESGODINS (1826-1913).

Founder of the Pedong Mission to Tibet (a branch of the Société des Missions Étrangères
headquartered in Paris, France), Fr. Desgodins would never enter Tibet from India during his
thirty years at Pedong near Kalimpong. "As for me, " he wrote before his death, "I am dying
in a martyrdom of sterility. Mules are allowed to enter Tibet but not the apostles of Jesus
Christ!"
Gergan Tharchin and Sundar Singh, far more successful in penetrating Tibet with the
gospel, would visit the Pedong Mission just a year after the Jesuit's death.
Illustration Credit: Souvenir ofthe Centenary of Pedong Parish... (Pedong, 1983).
62a, b THE GRAVE OF JESUIT FR DESGODINS, AND THE GREAT WHITE STONE CROSS
HE BUILT IN 1885—BOTH ATPEDONG, NE INDIA.
Having founded the Pedong Mission to Tibet in 1882, Fr. Desgodins would be frustrated
for the rest of his life in not once having been able to gain entrance into Tibet from the Indian
side. He would die in 1913 and be buried in the Mission station's cemetery totally defeated in
his goal. By contrast, two servants of Christ who in their lifetimes did gain entrance-and
many times at that-into Tibet from India-one always clandestinely, the other always quite
openly-were Sundar Singh and Gergan Tharchin.
As for the immense white stone cross, it stands, more than a century later, in mute testimony
to the double-edged motivation that had prompted the French missionary to place it there:
"This stone-Calvary was for him the symbol of his temporary defeat but also of his great
hope for the future."
Photo Credits: David Tharchin, 1992.
63a, b THE GOD OF MOUNT KANCHEN JUNG A, AND THE WORSHIP OF THIS
MOUNTAIN-GOD IN SIKKIM.
Few mountains in the world have excited as much awe, wonder and delight in the beholder
as has this particular summit. It is situated on the Nepal-Sikkim border and is pronounced in
Tibetan as KANG CHHEN DZONGA, meaning "Five Great (or Sacred) Repositories (or.
Treasuries or Storehouses) of the Great Snows" (i.e., Kang snow, chhen great, dzo treasury,
nga five). Dwarfing four other surrounding peaks that together with it form a gigantic mass of
snow and ice, Kanchenjunga (28,156*) is the world's third highest mountain after nearby
Chomolungma/Everest (29,032'), and Mt. Godwin Austen or K2 (28,251 this latter summit
420
located far away to the west in the far northern Indian Karakoram Himalayas. The monstrous
overwhelming mass of Kanchenjunga can be seen not only from Darjeeling but also quite
easily from the hill town of Kalimpong where Gergan Tharchin ultimately settled down.
"This mountain is such an important part of the western horizon of so many parts of
Sikkim that there is little wonder it is regarded as the guardian spirit of the country." Indeed,
in the Sikkimese mind the people of their land are dependent upon the good humor of the
deity they believe is enthroned on Kanchenjunga's summit; for, they credulously ask
themselves, "Has he not the power to destroy human habitations with devastating floods
and avalanches-and ruin crops by sending terrible hailstorms?" In fact, this god is often
pictured in the minds of the Sikkimese as "a fiery-red-countenanced deity with a crown of five
skulls, riding the mythical snow lion, and holding aloft the banner to victory (Gyaltsen)." He
must therefore be appeased if they are to secure his blessings on their lives. So significant is
this mountain for the original inhabitants of Sikkim-the Lepchas-that "they believe the
Lepcha soul comes from a place up in the dizzy mountain heights and that when they die the
soul must be directed back to be reunited with the souls of their ancestors. They not only
worship this towering mount but seek its blessing in marriage and in their daily lives." And
hence, the worship of this mountain-god (see Plate 63b), dating back to long before the
Buddhist period, "is celebrated with great pomp every year throughout Sikkim. It is of the
devil-dancing or Shamanist kind." As a matter of fact, "there are dark stories that in the olden
days these ceremonies were accompanied by human "sacrifices made to the spirit of the
mountain." And as can be seen, the Lamas clothe themselves in the costumes of the
pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion "and carry out the ritual of the devil-dancers,... receiving the
offerings from the people of money, jewelry, etc., to defray the cost of these ceremonies,"
It was within the context of this kind of religious milieu in Sikkim that Sundar Singh and
Dorje Tharchin came in 1914 preaching the Christian gospel to many from house to house,
from village to village, and bazaar to bazaar.
Illustration and Photo Credits: both appear in Laurence Waddell, Among the Himalayas. 2d ed.
(Westminster, 1900), 217, 387.
64 THE BRITISH RESIDENCY, GANGTOK, SIKKIM.

"Perhaps the most attractive medium-sized home in the whole of India." Built between
1888 and 1890 by John Claude White, this structure became the home to all Political Officers
for Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan, of whom White was the first. Frequented quite often by Gergan
Tharchin during his long career, it was first visited by him and Sadhu Sundar Singh in 1914 in
pursuit of permission, never granted, for them to go farther north through Sikkim and on into
Tibet. Tharchin himself alone, however, would be granted it-often; indeed, he would even be
invited by the Political Officer to accompany him and his entourage to Lhasa.
Photo Credit: Bell Collection, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, as published in Alex McKay, Tibet and
the British Raj (London, 1997), 134.
END-NOTES
The reader is referred back to the "Abbreviations" page at the front ofthe volume for an important statement
and explanation about the abbreviations employed in these Notes for documenting the use of the Tharchin
Unpublished "Memoirs" (GTUM). A further word, however, needs to be appended here about this same
documentation.
The reader will perhaps notice from a perusal of these Notes that the documentation of the use of the
GTUM material appears in the following places within the listing of each ofthe Text chapter's Notes:
(1) at the very beginning of the section of Notes for each chapter there appears a
general citation which includes:
(a) the total pagination of the relevant part of the GTUM material used in
composing the Text of that chapter of the present narrative, and
(b) a summary enumeration of the specific pages of the GTUM material from
which were taken particular quotations appearing in the Text of that chapter of
the present narrative (see at the head of Ch. 1, e.g., which reads: GTUMTsMs,
1-6,10; quotes: 5,10);
(2) in the those important instances where unambiguity about the specific GTUM
pagination was felt necessary to provide the reader with beyond what (1) (b)
above already provides, there is indicated in some of the individual end-notes for
each chapter of the present narrative a GTUM source citation which gives the
particular page(s) that was used or quoted from (see, e.g., note 64 of Ch. 1); and
finally,
(3) in those individual end-notes themselves in which quotes and/or information

have been included that were derived from the GTUM material, appropriate
documentation, with an indication of the specific page(s) of the GTUM, has been
provided (see e.g., note 44 of Ch. 3).
Author's Preface
1. The Bhutanese pastor in question here, Rev. Ishmael Tshering, has a most fascinating background. He is the
son of Stephanus (Stephen) Kuchu, a young Bhutanese who had come down for trade from his home in Bhutan
proper to a village in what was then British Bhutan called Buxa Duar located along the southern border of Bhutan.
It so happened that prior to this, a young Bhutanese widow and well-known local witch from Adama village in
British Bhutan was converted to Christ through the encouragement of Finnish missionaries residing nearby. She
was given the Christian name of Magdalene and became an evangelist in British Bhutan, in North Sikkim, and later
in Bhutan proper. On one such occasion in Bhutan she and her group came upon a young man whom they
converted to Christ. He was none other than the father of Ishmael, Stephanus. Later, in Buxa Duar. he received
Christian teaching and baptism from the Finnish missionaries stationed there. Subsequently becoming a Christian
evangelist and remaining so for twelve years among his own people, Stephen was allegedly poisoned to death by
those in opposition to his conversion and evangelizing activity.
Meanwhile, Stephen had married a S i a m e s e woman, the daughter of one of the original Bhutia evangelists who
had come over to Buxa Duar with some Finnish missionaries from the northern Sikkimese settlement and mission
station of Lachung. After Stephen Kuchif's death, his Sikkimese wife Tabitha and their two children, Ishmael and
Esther, were moved to Ghoom by the missionaries so that they could be cared for by the Finnish Mission
headquartered there. Tabitha eventually remarried with a Tibetan bom in Tibet, Pema Bhutia, who was born in about
1926. Brought down from Tibet by hisi mother when a young lad to a neighboring village of Ghoom called
Jorebungalow, Pema was converted to Christ in 1948 at age 22 and baptized in Kalimpong by Indian evangelist and
teacher Jordan Khan (whom, coincidentally, the present author had met both in Switzerland and America in the
1960s and '70s!), and given the Christian name of Paul. Ishmael's stepfather, now known as Pema Paul Bhutia,
refused an offer from his Tibetan Buddhist brothers to build him a house if he would renounce his new faith. Instead,
he grew into an even stronger Christian and became a prominent Christian evangelist. In fact, he worked for some
years in Jorebungalow itself, then went on to Kalimpong, where he labored in the Christian gospel with Rev. Gergan
Tharchin for several months, before finally fulfilling his desire to enter the "closed land" of Buddhist Bhutan to
preach the message of Christ there. Pema Paul would do so for many years thereafter. Both his stepson and
stepdaughter, Ishmael and Esther, became evangelists themselves: Ishmael in Ghoom, Esther in both there and
Sikkim and later in Bhutan where she presently lives as a shopkeeper. Ishmael then became the ordained pastor of
the former Free Church of Finland Mission church at Ghoom where he still labors on behalf of Christ and His gospel.
As can be discerned from this brief sketch, there was much geographical movement and intermarriage among
the converts of the missionaries, especially much intermarriage among the Sikkimese-Bhutanese-Tibetan Christian
Bhutias (all Bhutias are ethnically related to the Tibetans). For further details about the above-mentioned
families, see Perry 1997, pp.139, 159, 161 note 24, 168 note 123, 380, 434, 437, 441.
2. The present author is most gratified to learn that he is not alone in the desire to see prepared and published
such a narrative. In his intriguing paper presented before a scholarly symposium on Tibetan studies held at
Vienna in 1981, and entitled in part, "Towards the Complete History of the Tibetan B i b l e t h e East European
Tibetologist, P. Klafkowski, had made the following observations in the very opening sentences of his presentation:
Apart from a few old scattered books and papers, very little has so far been done in the field of the
study of the Tibetan Bible translations. Indeed, to many a Tibetologist, the entire rich field of
Tibetan Christian literature is something to be passed by in silence, if not to be laughed at. After
all, Tibetology is generally—and not always correctly—regarded as the study of Tibetan Buddhism.
True, one can think of only a few cases in which the secular life of a people has been under so
strong an influence of the "state religion" as it was in the Land of Snows; however, the recent
appeals in different media on behalf of the Tibetan Moslems revealed what's been a surprise to
many that not all Tibetans are following the Buddha's teaching. One could argue that, after all, we
do have the monumental work on the missionaries to Tibet by L. Petech (I Missionari Italiani nel
Tibet e nel Nepal. 7 vols., Rome 1952-6). The point is, that both that, and all the remaining few
publications in the field, concentrate on the lives of missionaries and related events, while paying
little or no attention to what the missionaries to Tibet themselves deemed their most important
task: giving the others the word of the Christian God in the people's language.
And he ended his brief but illuminating summary of his own efforts with these encouraging words: " . . . let.
me close this paper with words of hope that Tibetan Christian literature, so long neglected, may be found
interesting by those who would never give it a thought before." Klafkbwski, in Steinkellner & Tauscher (eds.)
1983,1:151, 162. It is hoped, too, that what the present author has contributed in this regard will interest and
motivate others to complete more fully the history of the Tibetan Bible.
End-Notes: Tharchin Unpublished "Memoirs"—Further Clarification 421
1. Because a question has arisen in the minds of some as to whether or not the late Tibetan publisher
possessed the ability at this particular period under discussion to perform certain duties normally incumbent
upon him to carry out with respect to his Press, a word of explanation needs to be offered here regarding the
physical condition and state of mind of the Babu some two to three years prior to his death. Speaking as one who
sat by Babula's bedside day after day receiving his dictation and who was therefore one who was able to observe
at close range his true state, Tharchin's amanuensis, at the conclusion of his labor of love some one or two years
before the Babu"s passing, had this to say:
Practically all the material in this biography has been derived from Tharchin personally. Tharchin
at the age of 85 has excellent health, keen eyesight, good hearing and clear thinking, and above
all a good appetite. His general temperament is most cheerful. He enjoys intellectual humor and
lively discussions. Over and over I have found his memory most trustworthy and reliable. Still, an
allowance should be made for the [few] lapses of memory which [are] apt to reorganize [themselves]
differently [in his mind]; at least, such possibility should be granted in view of [his] long life ...
Source: a photocopy of the draft of a preface by the amanuensis given by him to the present
writer and that was anticipated would have been appended to the Babu's "memoirs" had the latter
ever been published.
As though to underscore what Gergan Tharchin's amanuensis has said, it should be added that at about this
same time, which was well into the typesetting, proofreading and printing activity on the biography, the Babu's
! personal physician was offering a similar though briefer assessment of the late Tharchin's health. On 4 April
j 1974 at the signing ceremony required of witnesses and held on the occasion of the Babu's formal execution
] before his Advocate of his Last Will and Testament (which document was shown to the present author by the
: Babu's son), Tharchin-la's doctor himself signed the following declaration: "I, Dr. Andrew Pradhan of Kalimppng,
j have examined the Testator and found him physically and mentally capable of executing this his Will." This
: declaration, it must be noted, was made by the Doctor immediately after conducting a thorough physical
; examination of the Babu that very day at the Tharchin home. This declaration has been further corroborated by
| Dr. Pradhan during a lengthy interview he gave at his home to the present writer on 30 November 1992 when the
;j latter paid a subsequent visit to Kalimpong. In the interview, which was conducted almost entirely in English, the
j good Doctor reiterated and amplified further on his statement he had issued back in 1974: "At the execution of
f the Babu's Last Will and Testament conducted by his Advocate, Mr. D. K. Khaling, I examined him fully and
\ found him to be quite clear-headed and in as normal a state of health as one could expect for one his age."
Far from suffering unduly from senility at this juncture in his twilight years, and far from being bedridden
beyond any mobility whatsoever on his part, the late Rev. Tharchin at the time of the dictation, proofreading and
printing of his life story was generally able to be up and about. As a matter of fact, the testimony of the group
of involved individuals provided the present writer confirms that during this period, it was not at all unusual to
see him up and about on any given day, or even to see him going down the hill from the Tripai hilltop home to the
Press room along Kalimpong's Rishi Road on publishing business. The current Mrs. Tharchin, who was by this
time a firmly integral part of the family setting at the Gergan Tharchin home and who greatly assisted in the care
of the Babu during these last years of his life, has also testified that on a given evening he might feel badly
! physically when retiring for the night, but that the next morning he might feel much better (her emphasis).
\ Nevertheless, she noted, there were some mornings in which he had not improved at all from the previous night's
I j deleterious condition; even so and against his doctor's wished, the Babu would often push himself to fulfill that
j day a number of obligations both personal and social, and continue, as he often did, to assist those in need of
j counsel, fellowship or whatever. Morever, it must not be ignored here that during this same period under
j discussion he nearly always was able, say the Tharchins and Rev. Rapgey, to maintain his role as pastor and
?! shepherd of the flock of God that was under his care. And despite an obviously weakened physical condition at
\ times, he would nonetheless faithfully attend as often as he could the lengthy Sunday morning services of his
church and quite frequently stand up to preach the word of God to his flock.
Accordingly, during the late-1972 to early-1975 period under discussion above, Tharchin Babu was most
\ certainly in a sufficiently viable state of health in which he could and did: (a) continually dictate his "memoirs";
| (b) continually discuss the same over and over again with his amanuensis on nearly a daily basis; (c) continually
I engage himself in proofreading not only the typeset matter pertaining to his biography but all other material then
I being typeset and printed at his Press; and (d) continually give the orders personally to his Press staff to print
this, that and the other, but especially to print the biography.
Finally, Dawa Norbu's testimony can be added here as reinforcement of the solidly-based conviction that
Tharchin Babu was very much alert of mind and still readily capable of performing the above undertakings. For
when much later in 1975 he had the opportunity to visit the Babu again after an absence of many years, he
reported the following observations that formed apart of the record of a lengthy interview with him which he had
conducted at Tharchin's home and which was subsequently printed in the December 1975 issue of Tibetan
Review:
When I revisited him he was resting peacefully in his bed, and to my pleasant surprise, he had
the latest issue of Tibetan Review in one hand and a dictionary in the other. "Now," he said
welcoming me and waving the journal, "India will repent." (It was the focus issue on the military
situation in Tibet ...)
Now at nearly 87, he is still in good health, but his once-good memory power seems to fail
him every now and then. We talked till he was almost exhausted.
2. The time-frame for these various activities has been confirmed from a number of different sources: (a) the
group of individuals cited already, who assert that the beginning of the typesetting was initiated before all
twenty-eight chapters had been completed by the amanuensis, and that to their best recollection the typesetting
did indeed begin in early 1974; (b) the amanuensis himself, who maintained in a conversation at his Kalimpong
home with the present writer in February 1992 that when not all, but nearly all, twenty-eight chapters had gone
through the process of his several reworked drafts, the typesetting had begun; (c) a signed office copy by Rev.
Tharchin of a letter dated 8 Nov 1973 which he sent to S.R. Luthra, owner of the Printers Supply Company in
Calcutta, in which he was ordering "some specimen copies of type faces in English 12 Pt., 8 Pt. for footnotes and
heading types for Chapter headings etc..."; he goes on to say the following in the same letter: "One of my friends
is writing my biography which is almost finished and I want to get it printed in my Press. So for this same
purpose, I am planning to order a new font of type with the latest faces"; furthermore, in a signed office copy of
a follow-up letter to Luthra dated 13 Nov 1973, the Babu writes; "Hope you are in receipt of my previous letter
of the 8th inst., a copy of which is enclosed herewith. The bearer of this letter... is a friend of ours and who has
been so kind to write my biography about which I had mentioned in my earlier letter.... In case you have not sent
the catalogue of types you can send it through h i m . . . ( d ) Luthra's reply dated 13 Nov 1973, in which he writes:
"I am pleased to note that [one] of your friends is compiling your biography ... I am sending herewith a special
book of types along with a sheet of Universe Types which I have just added [to our stock].... Please let me know
your requirements which will receive my personal attention...."; (e) Tharchin's reply of 27 Dec 1973, sent to
Printers Supply Co.: "Thank you so much for sending me that catalogue of types. Kindly send me the following
very urgently [the Babu's emphasis] by road to Kalimpong: 10 Pt. Universe Types (English) One font (bigger),
8 Pt. Universe types (English) One font" along with eight other items of supply for typesetting and printing
needs related to the biography; and (f) a transport receipt dated 16 Jan 1974 listing most of the items ordered by
the Babu on 27 Dec ult. and received shortly thereafter at the Kalimpong Press.
From these various sources of information, therefore, it can readily be deduced that in view of the near
completion of the biographical narrative by his amanuensis in late 1973 and which most likely was finished by
the amanuensis sometime in early 1974, Babu Tharchin was "very urgently" ordering new type faces and other
accessory items so as to move ahead on the typesetting—which indeed got underway in early 1974, and to move
ahead on the eventual printing that same year of at least the first sixteen chapters. Despite the interruptions at the
Press because of work orders which came in from various quarters, the biography's printing, according to the
testimony of the then Manager of the Press and of its Chief Typesetter, was able to be finished by late 1974 or
at the latest by early 1975, easily a year before the passing away of the Babu in early 1976.
3. Since collecting in early 1992 the testimony of the group of involved individuals previously referenced, the
present writer has also been able to glean further corroborative testimony from another witness. He, too, had
been in a position to observe all the main features thus far mentioned which are related to the process whereby
Babu Tharchin had dictated his "memoirs" to the helpful amanuensis. This witness, Rev. Tshering Wangdi, the
writer was able to interview nearly three years later at the Tharchin compound. Rev. Wangdi, at the time the
Superintendent of the Worldwide Faith Mission Children's Home located at Mangan in North Sikkim, happened
to be visiting Rev. S.G. Tharchin and family in late December 1994 at the time of the interview. (It so happens
that Nini Tharchin's maternal grandmother and the mother of Rev. Wangdi's wife were sisters.) What follows is
a summary of that which Rev. Wangdi clearly (his emphasis) recalled of the "dictation process" conducted by the
Babu relative to his biography:
From April 1970 to March or April 1975, he and his wife were befriended by Gergan Tharchin and thus lived
in the Tharchin's Main House during all these years. At first, "for nearly a year," the Babu would dictate to the
End-Notes: Tharchin Unpublished "Memoirs"—Further Clarification 421
amanuensis from his bed that was in the original Master Bedroom of the Main House; for that was where at this
time Tharchin-la and his wife Margaret had maintained their Living Quarters for bed and bath. Rev. Wangdi
remembered seeing a variety of papers spread out around the Babu's bed for the latter to consult now and then
as he dictated and as his assistant by his bedside would jot down what he said.
This witness also recalled to the writer being able to observe and to hear the amanuensis reading back to '
Tharchin Babu the previous day's dictation that the assistant had put into narrative form. And as the latter would
read along, the Babu—at this or that point in the reading of it—would either say "Correct" or "That is not
correct" or "That is not right" and would immediately give the correction to the amanuensis: whether the nature
of the correction have been the spelling of a person's name, correcting a place name or a date, or something more
significant. But once this had been concluded, the Babu would commence the new day's dictation.
Rev. Wangdi recalled that each dictation session "would last anywhere from one to three hours, but never
more." But he also remembered that on some days the amanuensis "would come for both morning and afternoon
sessions." On the other hand, the Babu would sometimes have him come for dictation "only two or three times
a week."
At a certain point, Rev. Wangdi reported, Babu Tharchin and his wife changed their bedroom to a smaller
room that was immediately adjacent to the Sitting Room of the Main House. And here the same process as just
now described, said the Reverend, would continue to occur "for a year and perhaps a little longer," except that on
a few occasions during this period when Tharchin-la felt physically all right to do so, he would sit with his
assistant in the Sitting Room rather than conduct the dictation from his bed.
This second and longer phase, Rev. Wangdi made clear, "had been concluded well before the time" of his and
his wife's departure from the Tharchin compound in March of 1975. Indeed, he recalled, the typesetting and
printing of Chapter 1 of the dictated "memoirs" began almost a year before that date—which according to this
testimony, the present writer concludes, would mean that the typesetting of the Tharchin biography had to have
begun no later than the spring of 1974 nearly two years prior to the Babu's death. And thus Rev. Wangdi's various
recollections corroborate all the essential facets of the earlier testimony given by the group of involved individuals
cited already. Interview, Dec. 1994.
4. According to the printing supply records of Tharchin's Press, this lack of funds actually began to manifest
itself even at about the time the typesetting and printing of the biography's sixteen-chapter segment wchrc well
underway. On 14 March, 30 April and 11 May 1974, the Printers Supply Company Shanti Type Foundry firm
in Calcutta, whose Owner, the aforesaid Mr. Luthra, was a dear close friend of the Babu's, was compelled to write
urgent reminders and appeals to the Tibet Mirror Press to remit the payment of two long overdue bills that
together amounted to well over a thousand rupees. In one of these letters, in fact, the firm's Manager wrote that
"we... would request you to please send us the draft immediately as we are in urgent need of money." The two
bills cited in the appeals actually represented the cost of most of the types and other accessories that had
personally been ordered by the Babu himself in late 1973 in anticipation of the typesetting and printing of his
biography and that were now being used to bring the printing of the said sixteen chapters to as rapid a close as
possible.
In the Owner's letter of 11 May 1974, S.R. Luthra reluctantly wrote to his friend Tharchin as follows: "My
Office has addressed a few letters for the outstanding dues which are delayed enough. There is no reply from your
office, so I would like to draw your kind attention with the request to please cooperate with us in these days of
shortage of funds since all [our] purchases have to be made in cash. I am sure you will bear with us and extend
your cooperation as usual." The bills were eventually paid, but with great difficulty.
Chapter 1
GTUM TsMs, 1-6, 10; quotes: 5, 10.

1. Hoffmeister 1848, p. 431.
2. Poo is situated but a mere stone's throw north of the Sutlej. The names of this river are as various as the
countries, regions and districts through which it flows. In Tibet it is called Langchhen-Khabad, or "elephant-
mouth-fed river." The river retains this name for some 200 miles, but near Namgia, the first neighboring village
east of Poo and only a little more than two miles from the Indo-Tibetan border, its usual appellation is Muksung,
a word signifying river, or great river; lower down the Sutlej Valley from Poo, the names Sampot Sangpo and
Sanpo—all conveying the same meaning as Muksung—are applied. At a sandy place below Murung, where gold
dust in small quantities is at times found, the river is commonly referred to as the Zung-Tee: the first word
signifying gold, the second, water. In the lower parts of Kunawar (the province in Northwest India through which
the Sutlej flows first) the only appellation for the waterway is Sumudrung, or "the river." Near Rampur outside
Kunawar, it is called Sutroodra, or Sutoodra, by which it is likewise known as far down the river Valley as its
union with the river Beah: but its common name thereabouts is the Sutlej or Sutlooj—which words, together with
Sutroodra, are quite often used by all the Kunawarees, even up to its source in Tibet. See Gerard 1841, p. 28.
3. Himalaya is a word apparently borrowed directly from the Sanskrit compound, Himaliya, composed of
hima (snow) and ally a or alaya (abode, or home, or place), and hence "the abode of snow"; although one observer
of the area, a long-ago missionary to China and Tibet with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, has written that
"it might be interesting to trace the derivation of 'Himmel,' which in some European languages means heaven."
Ekvall 1907, p. 122n. One Western explorer among the Himalayas, Andrew Wilson, did note this, he writing that
inasmuch as "the great Abode of the Gods is held by the Hindus to be in the Himaliya, and the word Him&liya
itself is used by them in that sense, it is obvious that Himmel, the German word for heaven, comes from the same
source; and it is the only instance I know of in European languages which takes in both compounds. This must
surely have occurred to the lexicographers, but I have not noticed any reference to it." Wilson 1875, p. 221.
4. As one travels up the Sutlej Valley towards Poo, the first Neoza pines (Pinus Gerardiana) can be seen
between Rogi and Barung, and found, then, in great profusion all the way along the valley to the very borders of
Tibet; but interestingly, it is only met with in this very limited region of the Himalayas. For a description of the
Neoza tree and its nutty fruit see, respectively, Hoffmeister 1848, pp. 369-71, 440 and Gerard 1841, pp. 70,
299. The readers may have perhaps guessed, incidentally, that the Latin botanical designation for this particular
tree was named after Gerard, who had apparently been the first Westerner to have discovered and described it.
5. In the same volume by August Francke cited in the footnote on the opening Text page of the present
narrative, tills celebrated Moravian Tibetologist tells of his great archaeological find at Poo when on a visit there
in July 1909 over an extended three-week period of time. Having been told of an inscribed stone in the village of
dKor immediately below Poo's elevated heights, he learned upon examining it that its Tibetan inscription of
eleven lines confirmed the story of the late lO^to early 11th* century priest-king of Tibet, the early ruler of Guge,
Lha-gla~ma-Ye~shes- 'od, one of the most famous personages in all of Tibetan history (d. between 1005 and 1015
a.d.). "I was so overjoyed at the discovery of this important record," confessed Francke later, "that I could not
help jumping about in the field" where the six-foot high stone lay, "and then embraced the lama (in whose field
it was) who was just on the point of becoming displeased with my treatment of his crop."
The reason for Francke's great excitement over the find was the fact that up to that moment there had been
no artifact brought forward of any kind to confirm the statements of the earliest Tibetan historians concerning
King Ye-shes-'od. His story had been recounted in the second part of the Tibetan historical work dPag-bsam-
Ijon-bzang. No one had previously known for certain if the story contained in this work was true or if the persons
mentioned in it had actually lived or not. These questions were now put to rest by Francke's unusual discovery,
and furthermore the latter provided extremely interesting information about Poo itself Piecing together the data
gleaned from the ancient literature about the famed royal priest and from the Poo/dKor stone inscription, the
following brief historical narrative can be deduced and delineated.
Ye-shes-'od, one of the early kings of Guge (that is to say, of West Tibet, which at that time also included Poo
and much of what later came to be known as Bashahr), ruled his domain at the old Guge capital of mTho-lding
situated on the south bank of the river Sutlej ESE of Poo inside what is now Tibet proper. (Actually, secular
members of his family handled most of the practical affairs of the kingdom, thus leaving him free to devote most
of his time to religious matters.) This priest-king, according to historians, dissatisfied with the Tibetan form of
Buddhism (Lamaism) as it then prevailed in his extensive dominions, resolved to purify it by bringing Lamaism
into contact with Indian Buddhism, from which Lamaism had originally sprung but had then been separated. "He
gave a careful education to twenty-one Tibetan boys, the name of one of whom was Rin-chen-bzang-po, and sent
them to Kashmir and other parts of India to receive instruction in Sanskrit and philosophy. Although through
their agency
the king secured the services of thirteen Indian pandits, most of the boys died of unhealthy climate, and only
two, one of whom was Rin-chen-bzang-po (c.958-1055) eventually became the spiritual adviser to King Ye-shes-
'od and founded at mTho-lding one of the most famous and celebrated monasteries of Tibet—built by the king
and that ultimately came to be administered directly from Drepung Monastery outside Lhasa. At the time of the
Catholic Jesuit Mission in West Tibet during the early 17th century (and headquartered at the nearby ancient Guge
town of Tsaparang) this monastery boasted over 500 monks (by the mid-1970s, though, it had dwindled to 30).
From the Poo/dKor inscription it is definitely known that these two neighboring villages had existed as early
as in the days of the famed Guge king, that Poo even possessed a palace (pho-brang), and that one or both sons
of Ye-shes-'od—Na-ga-ra-dza and De-ba-ra-dza—and more than likely even the priest-king himself, had personally
journeyed together from their palace in mTho-lding to the palace at Poo. This visit at Poo, according to one
modem-day archaeologist, L.S. Thakur, who has carefully examined both the dKor inscription and the history of
Ye-shes-'od, would have occurred in 1004 a.d.—a dragon year in the Tibetan calendar, as called for by the
inscription itself Furthermore, the purpose of this royal visit, again according to the inscription, had presumably
been to personally observe and further encourage the progress of Buddhism there and to establish some kind of
religious structure at Poo/dKor. In fact, it would appear from the wording of the partially obliterated stone
inscription that the priest-king and his sons had erected something sacred, it most likely having been the first
Buddhist temple ever to be constructed at Poo, concerning which the local Poo tradition had it that it was built
in the lama's field where the inscribed stone was later found by Francke. However, because this site turned out
to be lower in elevation than most of the dwellings in Poo and inasmuch as no sanctified object could be permitted
to stand below the level of ordinary houses, a new temple or monastery (called Lo-tsa-ba'i-lha-kang) was
subsequently built on a higher elevation at a central point in Poo and, according to Francke, "embellished with the
furnishings of the old one"—with "all the traditions connected with the letter ... probably being transferred to
the former." It was this newer monastery (though still the oldest of all existing ones today in Poo) that was
claimed to have been erected later by Rin-chen-bzang-po, king Ye-shes-'od's spiritual adviser. It would appear
that Thakur is mistaken in commenting that this "Lo-tsa-ba lha-khan located in the center of Poo village... seems
to be the same monastery recorded in the Kora inscription," Indeed, this claim about.Rin-chen-bzang-po's
construction activity in Poo is not without some foundation when it is understood that this king's adviser had
become famous during his long life for having built a vast number of temples and chapels throughout West Tibet,
the total number being, in fact, 108 (a number chosen because of its sacredness in Tibetan Buddhism). One could
therefore say with justification that there had been more than passing interest shown in Poo by the powerful
rulers of West Tibet and their advisers.
It should finally be mentioned concerning this ancient priest-king of Guge that it was he who had initially
sought, but in vain, to draw the widely-celebrated northern Indian Buddhist monk Dipankara Atisa to his Tibetan
kingdom. It would be one of Ye-shes-'od's successors on the Guge throne, his grand nephew Od-lde—but
directly through the invitation personally issued by this successor Guge king's younger monk-brother Byang-
chub-'od—who would eventually be successful in bringing Atisa (actually not his real name but an honorary title
meaning "the great lord") from his Vikramasila monastery in Magadha to mTho-lding in 1042 by way of western
Nepal and then by way of the nearby sacred lake Manasarowar that pleased Atisa so much that he lingered there
by the lakeshore for seven days. At mTho-lding he met and had numerous discussions with Rin-chen who was
now 85 years old while the learned visitor was only in his early 60s. Nevertheless, the older man soon acknowledged
the superiority in philosophy and piety of the younger man. After a residence in Guge three years teaching the
form of Buddhism he had learned from the Buddhist masters in the great North Indian universities and what is
now Indonesia, Atisa next went to central Tibet where—after many years of teaching the Buddhist doctrine
which these universities and teachers had taught him, at Samye, Lhasa, etc.—he died at the monastery of
Nyethang some twelve miles south of Lhasa on the Kyi River at age 73 in 1053 a.d. But due to his exertions before
his death, there was founded in Tibet a number of so-called half-reformed sects of Lamaism, one of which was the
Kadampa Sect in whose monasteries the Great Reformer of Tibetan Buddhism in the fourteenth century, Tsong
Khapa, studied before he inaugurated the great reform movement that ended in the creation of the Yellow Hat
(Gelukpa) Sect to which the Dalai Lamas of subsequent centuries belonged and still belong today.
It was Francke's view that insofar as the early period of Tibetan Buddhism was concerned, it was West Tibet,
"and in particular the vassal kings of Guge, that held up the torch of guidance for the whole of Tibet." Indeed,
End-Notes: Chapter 1 425
according to Luciano Petech, it was Francke's theory, though not subscribed to by Petech at all, that "Tibetan
monarchy had its origin in western Tibet," in which domain, of course, Poo had at one time been situated. See
petech 1939, p. 21. On pages 3-4 of his Study Petech argued that Francke's "preconceived idea" of western Tibet
being "the cradle of the Tibetan monarchy" was "a wholly baseless theory" which he then proceeded convincingly
to disprove in the pages that followed of his Study. Sources for this note on the Poo/dKor stone inscription, King
Ye-shes-'od, Guge, AtisaandRin-chen-bzang-po: Francke 1914,1:19-20,23,50-2; Thakur 1997,11:970-2; F.A.
Peter, "Glossary of Place Names in Western Tibet," TJ (summer 1979): 23, 30, 32; Tung 1980, pp. 16-17; and
Finegan 1986, pp. 59-65.
6. This is not the same apricot tree cultivated in the West, but a wild apricot. It was planted in this region
in great numbers for the sake of its fruit; and almost invariably, one can see in the center of every village along
the upper Sutlej Valley a grove and more of them. For more on this popular fruit tree see Hoffmeister 1848, pp.
340,464,393,401.
7. Ibid, 377-8. The baskets in which the grapes were carried were long receptacles called dossers, or back-
baskets, which were pointed at the end. These baskets are still today a common sight throughout the Himalayas.
For packing the grapes for transport, cotton was sent upcountry by the merchants to the few places where they
were successfully cultivated, one of them being Poo. The grapes were then gathered not in bunches but singly and
packed by assigned people in alternate layers of cotton; so that "when they came to table at Simla, the grapes had
by no means the tempting appearance of a handsome, full-grown cluster, but rather resembled gooseberries."
Nevertheless, added Hoffmeister, "an immense quantity of them were disposed o f ' each season, with a typical
English merchant realizing a 400 pounds sterling profit in a given trade season, and with the demand for the fruit
far exceeding the supply!
8. The making of Tibetan butter tea and tsamba are extremely interesting procedures, and are well described
by Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian who spent seven years in Tibet: "Butter tea plays a great part in the lives of all
Tibetans, who consider that 50 cups a day is a moderate intake. They make it by boiling an inferior grade of
Chinese brick tea for hours in a solution of salt and soda, then churning the mixture with yak butter until it is more
solid than liquid. Unfortunately, the butter is usually rancid and tends to be full of yak hairs.... Tibetans prepare
tsamba by heating an iron pan filled with sand and then pouring on the barleycorns. When the corns have popped,
the mixture of sand and parched barley is put through a fine-meshed sieve. The sand runs out and the barley is
then ground into meal. Mixed to a paste with yak milk, beer or butter tea, tsamba is the foundation of Tibet's
national diet." Harrer, "New Turn of the Wheel in Tibet," New York Times Magazine, 24. May 1959, p. 69.
"Simple but nourishing fare, tsamba had the added advantage of being virtually imperishable: the Tibetan climate
was so dry that under proper conditions the tsamba could be kept indefinitely. In both monasteries and government
storehouses great quantities of tsamba were hoarded as insurance against the ever-present threat of crop failure.
Famine was unknown in Tibet." Goodman 1986, p. 27. Incidentally, the tea from china had been mixed with small
quantities of moistened yak-dung to act as a kind of cement, since it was difficult to make the tea leaves stick
together, they being a very coarse grade. The Tibetans had always in the past regarded tea itself as a preventive
of Typhoid and other kinds of fever, not realizing the truth, of course, that the germs in the water were killed not
by the tea but by boiling the water in the preparation of making tea! See McGovem 1924, pp. 207, 309.
9. The world-renowned Tibetan scholar from Italy, Giuseppe Tucci, who himself led two scientific expeditions
into western and Lesser Tibet in 1931 and 1933, actually visited and spent some time in the Poo-Namgia area
during the latter expedition; and in the chronicle kept of his 1933 travels he has provided an excellent description
of the summer and harvest seasons around Poo that evokes something of the rhythm of life and labor that as late
as 1933 had little changed from what must have been the daily routine among the local peasant folk there during
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Speaking of nearby Namgia, Tucci writes at the end of July:
The village is at the height of its activity in the ingathering of the apricots and the barley harvest,
the most important agricultural resources of northern Kunawar.
The ... apricots are dried in the sun and exported into Tibet and even into India; the barley-
meal represents, instead, the principal food of this people who are unbelievably strong, when one
thinks of their frugality.... There are fields of buckwheat and a fine walnut tree. The fields are
extraordinarily fertile; but their cultivation must entail immense labor, so hard and stony is the
soil; and with this climate which is subject to such extremes the place would be a desert, such as
exists throughout Tibet, if the people with patient efforts did not distribute, through a system of
channels, the water coming down from the hills and from the snowfields at higher levels, and did
not excavate in the rock the little field which spreads out and runs along the edge of the precipices
which fall towards the Sutlej.
Even on the high mountain, wherever there is a small level space and a little water, they
succeed with infinite pains in winning something from the soil during those few months of
summer in which cultivation is possible in such high altitudes.
They call these fields riscin "fields on the mountain"; they are not rare in northern
Kunawar and in the belt surrounding western Tibet.
Tucci and Ghersi 1935, pp. 81-2.
10. In India and the rest of Asia yak tails were prized as fly whisks, and, before the advent of synthetics, they
were shipped off to America to be made into the better white beards worn by the Santa Clauses or Father
Christmases in American department stores during the holiday season. In fact, there is hardly a part of this
remarkable creature that the Tibetans did not know how to use or consume. Indeed, this creature well lives up to
the meaning of the Tibetan generic term for yak—nor, for the latter signifies "wealth"! Actually, add two writers
on Tibet, the more commonly used word for this "wealth-producing" animal, the term yak, refers only to
castrated males, whereas dri is the name employed by the nomads of the Tibetan plateau for female nor.
Goldstein and Beall 1990, p. 8. Nevertheless, "What an animal!" exclaimed Lowell Thomas,Jr. when writing
afterwards about his adventure to Tibet in 1949 with his celebrated father, the American newscaster, Lowell
Thomas. "Without him I doubt if there could be a Tibet." Indigenous only to Tibetan regions and able only to live
in high altitudes (such as at Poo's elevation and higher), these incredible creatures of the Tibetan Himalayas have
an ability, as few other animals have, to graze on the short fine grass which grows at elevations of 17,000 to
20,000 feet. These beasts methodically forage for themselves by snipping off this sparse vegetation and coarse
thorny herbage with their long, barbed tongues. They even scrape away ice to get at the stubby grass still growing
beneath. Thomas, Jr. went on to outline how this animal—living or dead—lends itself to such a variety of uses
in Tibet; see Thomas, Jr. 1951, pp. 80-1. And other writers on Tibet have*added their thoughts on the many uses
to which the yak has been put throughout Tibetan history: e.g., Taring 1970, p. 12; Goodman 1986, p. 24; and
Cutting 1940, p. 187. Because of the incredible number and kinds of uses to which the yak has been put, there is
no wonder that for Tibetans, down through the centuries of their highly isolated existence, it came as not a little
surprising "that other countries could get along without their indispensable pack carrier." So wrote Lt. Col. Ilya
Tolstoy in his article, "Across Tibet from India to China," NG (Aug. 1946^: 187.
11. For additional information the reader is referred to a recent article by Amsterdam University historical
geographer Wim van Spengen. Here can be found an excellent well-documented discussion on the wool trade
which developed between western Tibet and British Northwest India in the early 19th century and continued
during what the author has termed the Tibetan "iong' century of 1850-1950" between Tibet and her borderlands.
There is also a good discussion of the mela commerce which also thrived during this same period. See van Spengen
1995, especially pp. 28-9, 40-1.
12. So wrote Thomas Hutton, Lieutenant, 37th Regiment, North India, Assistant Surveyor to the Agra
Division, in his "Journal of a Trip through Kunawar... in the Year 1838," which appeared serially in a prominent
British Indian publication. For this particularly moving passage of his travel diary, see Hutton 1839, p. 932.
13. "I heard the first of many explanations of why Tibetans refrain from eating fish. When [dead human]
bodies are dumped into rivers, they are usually eaten by fish. The fish are thus contaminated and unfit to eat.
Later,... I heard another explanation: Fish live in water and do not compete with people, so one should not kill
them. Still another version,.. holds that the taboo is a merciful act of Lamaism towards fish, which carry so many
eggs inside their bodies. The most bizarre explanation of all... was ... that since a fish has no tongue, it cannot
gossip. Because Tibetans consider gossiping a cardinal sin, they thus reward the fish for its virtue." Wong How-
Man, "Peoples of China's Far Provinces," NG (Mar. 1984):291. Wong, a Chinese-American journalist, traveled
in Tibet in 1982. Yet another explanation has been given by Chapel Tsetan Phuntso: "In former times fish'were
considered 'gods of the river,' and to eat them was contrary to the Buddhist faith." Phuntso 1981, p. 91.
That the Tibetans were most serious about the ban against fishing is reflected in the comments of the
Austrian Heinrich Harrer who traveled and lived in Tibet between 1944 and 1951. He writes: "In the whole of
Tibet there was just one locality which enjoyed fishing rights. This was on the Tsangpo River, in a sandy desert
unsuitable for arable or livestock farming. There was no grazing whatever, and fish were therefore the only source
of food, which explained the exception. Admittedly, as a result the population of the village was regarded as
inferior, as indeed were the guilds of butchers and blacksmiths." Return to Tibet, trans. Ewald Osers (New York,
1985), 60. The place Harrer had reference to is the Yamdrok Tso or Turquoise Lake area that occupies part of a
barren plateau some 15,000 feet above sea level and is located not far south of the Tsangpo. Not only was the
population of the area regarded as inferior, the entire vicinity was deemed to have been a very sinful one because
491
End-Notes: Chapter 1
of the violation (though necessary) of the religious injunction against taking the life of fish; and this thus required,
Tibetans believed, the continual reincarnated presence of Dorje Phagmo, the famed Abbess of nearby Sam-ding
Monastery (which overlooked the Lake) for the population's spiritual benefit. Unlike most Tibetan lakes, whose
saline content is very high, the water of Yamdrok is sweet; and though it is extremely cold, the lake's water had
abounded with fish. See Goodman 1986, p. 55 and Bonavia and Bartlett 1981, p. 117. Sam-ding, incidentally, is
the only Tibetan monastery to have had as its Superior the only female incarnation in all of Tibet; and until
recently this Abbess had been regarded as Tibet's most holy woman. Her story is told more fully in the End-
Notes for Vol. II, Ch. 16.
14. James Fraser, who toured Poo's locale in the spring of 1815, wrote quite informatively on the partridge
or quail, and on the cuckoo bird in the same area. He also waxed very descriptively about the musk deer that the
hills of Poo and the surrounding districts is known as custoree. See, respectively, pages 356,357, and 352-3 in
Fraser 1820.
As for the lammergeier, the largest European bird of prey, it is nonetheless indigenous to mountain regions all
the way from the Pyrenees to northern China. For instance, Dr. Hoffmeister noticed some of them only two days'
journey from Poo just inside Tibet proper at the village of Shipki, causing him to exclaim: "How much did I envy
the lammergeiers the freedom of their flight, as, poised in midair, they circled high above our heads!" See Hoffmeister
1848, pp. 445-6 as well as an excellent description of this aerial creature in Matthiessen 1979, p. 237.
And finally, with respect to the dove, Hoffmeister mentioned that he and his trekking party spotted "numerous
flights of wild doves ... fluttering above our heads." This was just down the Sutlej from Poo one or two days'
journey. KHe added that "the same species, which with us [back in Europe] is kept tame in dove-cotes, are here
in all their primitive freedom ..." Hoffmeister 1848, p. 410.
15. The sources consulted for all quoted material and information on Poo and its people up to this point in
the narrative which have not already been documented are the following: (a) Th. Rechler (an early Superintendent
of the Moravian Mission at Kyelang and Poo), letter from Kyelang, 14 Oct. 1867, PA (№ar. 1868):406; Rev. F.
Redslob (a later Mission Superintendent), "Account of Journey... from Kyelang to Poo,... 1874," ibid. (Mar.
1875):281-3; Br. J. Weber (the "resident missionary"), letter from Poo, Oct. 1884, ibid. (Sept. 1885):35l-2;
Redslob, letter from Leh, 23 June 1887, ibid. (June 1888):315; "Central Asia: Another Missionary Attempt to
Enter Chinese Tibet," ibid. (Mar. 1889):453; and "Report of the Poo Station for 1897," ibid. (Sept. 1898):530.
(b) The book by Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas, was extremely helpful, providing quotations which were taken
either from the original edition, Pallis 1939, p. 72 or from Pallis 1949, pp. 60-2. Pallis, from England, traveled
through Poo during the summer of 1933 (where he stayed a number of days), and was later to become a valued
and generous friend of Gergan Tharchin's. (c) Certain other pages used from Hoffmeister 1848 and already
documented in these notes: pp. 369n., 392, 408,435; the same for Fraser 1820, kpages not already documented
being: 274-5; the same for Hutton 1839, pp. 905, 936.
16. Francke 1914,1:7,11. In fact, Gergan Tharchin, about whose life this book is chiefly written, has himself
stated in two places elsewhere that (a) "my birthplace is at Western Tibet" and (b) that he was "bom in West
Tibet" and "was educated and converted" at Poo "in the ... school of the Moravian Mission in Tibet." See,
respectively, Tharchin, in a typewritten document, only the first page of which is extant, and entitled "[A
Sketch?—torn here] of Myself and My Tibetan Newspaper," dated—as determined from internal evidence—as
clearly being the late spring of 1942, ThPaK; and Tharchin and Woodward 1975, p. 652. It should be pointed out
that the term "Tibet" first occurred about 950 a.d. in the works of the Arab writer Istakhri, who called the
country "Tobbat," which is similar to the Mongoloid term for the country, "Thubot." The word Tibet is
therefore "the European form of to-bhod, i.e., 'Highlands of the bhod people'; still more usual is the term bhod-
yul, 'Land of the bhod people.' The inhabitants of this mountain region who speak Tibetan call themselves bhod-
par, 'Bhod people'; this term is also used by Indians in speaking of the Tibetan inhabitants of the mountains"
dwelling within the territory on the Indian side that stretches along the northwestern Indo-Tibetan border area.
See Heiler 1927, p. 66.
It needs to be further explained that in 1841 a large part of this western Bhod country of Tibet proper, namely
Ladakh, Spiti, Zangskar, and Kunawar, was severed from the recognized territory of Bhod-yul and came under the
rule of British India. As Professor Heiler has pointed out, however, these areas disconnected from the Bhod-yul
still looked "exactly like the rest of Tibet," were "inhabited by a purely Tibetan population," and contained
"many lamaser^s." Ibid., 66-7.
Henceforth, the common people in India—whether the Tibetan mountaineers or the Indians themselves—
"did not make any distinction," observed A.J. Appasamy, "between Tibet proper with its own government in
420
Lhasa and the border of Tibet," which latter part was to remain politically a part of British India and then
independent India ever afterwards. This lack of distinction, Appasamy continued, "was because the people, the
culture, the language, the religion and the manner and customs were all the same, in spite of the difference in
political affiliation. The Moravian Mission had dedicated itself to work in Tibet, but its most important mission
stations such as Kyelang, Poo and Leh," established from 1856 onwards, "were on the border of Tibet."
Appasamy 1966, pp. 40-1.
It is not necessary, therefore, to call these border communities and their inhabitants Indian and to reserve
the term "Tibet" exclusively for the rest of Tibet. As Heiler, writing in the mid-1920s, has rightly pointed out:
"The only correct way to describe this country is to distinguish between Lesser Tibet (i.e., the separated
regions under British control) and Greater Tibet (i.e., the region whose capital is Lhasa). This exact terminology
fits in with the Tibetan use of the names," and "this alone clears away the misunderstanding aroused by the
inexact use of the names" (Heiler 1927, p. 67), in connection with Gergan Tharchin, and later, as shall be seen,
with Sundar Singh.
In the light of all this, then, it would seem that Tharchin's own attitude on this matter of birthplace and ethnic
origin differed not at all from that of the rest of the Tibetan common people then living along the border on the
Indian side: he ever afterwards deemed himself to be ethnically and culturally a Tibetan who had been born in
western or Lesser Tibet and not in India, though of course he was an Indian citizen.
17. This discussion of the geography and topography of Kunawar is derived from Captain Gerard (Himalayan
explorer-surveyor cited previously in these notes), in Gerard 1841, pp. 1-2, 4.
18. A.D. Carey (Bombay Civil Service), "A Journey Round Chinese Turkestan and along the Northern
Frontier of Tibet," Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (Dec. 1887):731.
19. Hutton 1839, pp. 902-3.
20. The particular site where the commingling of these two waterways occurs is very near the tiny hamlet of
Khab. One who visited here in October 1818, Captain Alexander Gerard, has provided a vivid picture of this
scene:"... the Sutlej >.. is joined by the Lee or Spiti, which is the broader; but in October it did not seem to contain
near so much water as the other river. The Spiti is so hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs that a traveler passing
along the other side would scarcely perceive it, and the rocks that confine both the Sutlej and it, are equally abrupt
for many hundred feet. The contrast between the two rivers is remarkably fine; the Lee issues forth in a placid
body of water, with a moderate current, whilst the Sutlej is muddy, and breaks violently upon the rocks with
horrid din. The prodigious bulk of the impending crags strikes with terror the spectator who views them from
below, and the clashing of the two streams, re-echoed by the surrounding caves, is stupefying in the extreme. The
rocks that flank the Spiti appear to have evidently been once continuous, but the period when the passage was
opened must be very remote." Gerard 1841, p. 29. Young Tharchin was well acquainted with the area as is evident
from the fact that a European hunter hired him as an interpreter and guide on a tour here all the way from Simla.
See Ch. 4 for details.
21. The "termites-hill" quote is from Hoffmeister 1848, p. 446. Dr. Hoffmeister tells of his experience upon
first glimpsing these mighty peaks of the Purgyal mass: "But what a surprise awaited us on reaching the highest
ridge!... The instant we entered upon it, the most magnificient Alpine panorama, beyond what fancy could have
pictured, burst upon us: the mountains of the Chinese territory—Purgyal—which we now beheld for the first
time. How strange, how interesting, the thoughts that filled the mind on thus finding oneself, as it were, magically
transported to the very gates of the Celestial Empire!... The mellow violet blue of the long lines of hills towering
one behind another, had something in it so mysterious, sd enchanting, that the most intense longing to see them
more closely, to perambulate them at our leisure, was kindled in our minds. We did not then know how little they
gain by nearer approach—how, at last, that landscape which from a distance appears so attractive, resolves itself
into cold, naked, ruinous-looking rocks, crowned with everlasting snow." Ibid, 402-3.
22. Except where already documented, the sources for the discussion of the Hindustan-Tibet Road are:
Appasamy 1966, p. 31; Andrews 1934, pp. 5-6; Gerard 1840, pp. 147, 161; Gerard, 1841, pp. 26, 34, 51-2;
"Hindustan and Tibet Road," Scottish Geographical Magazine (Sept 1906):494-5; Lamb 1960, pp. 82-3; LaTrobe,
"The Regions Beyond Our Tibetan Stations," MM (Apr. 1907):63; ibid. (Feb. 1906):39; Swinson 1971, p. 45;
Torrens 1862, pp. 357-61; and "Trade with Western Tibet," Times (London), 30 Aug. 1906, p.3.
23. Tucci and Ghersi 1935, pp. 87-8. Moravian Tibetologist Francke gave similar though much briefer
assessment of the Road between Namgia and the town of Shipki. See Francke 1914,1:24.
24. This description from Peeming Pass is a composite of two different accounts of Gerard's impressions of
the view into Tibet he saw on that day in October 1818 and recorded in the following two sources, the first
serving as the basic account dating from 1818 itself and the second providing reminiscent thoughts of the 1818
experience but which he recalled when there again three years later during the month of August: (a) Gerard 1841,
pp. 282-3; and (b) Gerard 1840, pp. 150, 153. Note: Bekhur is 20 miles SE of Poo, and Garoo is the same as
Gartok.
25. Though indeed a native state, Rampur-Bushair was nonetheless under the tutelage in those days of the
British Indian Superintendent of the former Simla Hill States of the Punjab. In fact, it was by far the largest among
the nine larger and nine smaller of these Simla Hill States, and located to the NNE of Simla, on the borders of Spiti
and Greater Tibet. In fact, the town of Rampur farther down the river Sutlej from Poo had been in more recent
times the former capital of this once princely state, with the ancient capital of Sarahan—the other of these two
chief towns—having later served as the summer capital. Besides these two towns there were 14 others in
Rampur-Bushair, together with about 70 villages (of which Poo was one), thus making a total of 86 towns and
villages scattered throughout the state. None of the Simla Hill States were ever heavily populated, the average
density in 1930, for example, only being 56 persons to the square mile. See McLeish 1931, p. 92.
26. Ibid., 89.
27. Besides the instance of this nature which Moravian Francke encountered and which is described in the
Text's footnote, several other instances, quite amusing in character, of this penchant by the Raja to suddenly
appear out of nowhere and join himself to perfect strangers can easily be cited. See, e.g., Andrew Wilson's
encounter in 1874, as told of in Wilson 1875, pp. 85-6; a British Forest Department Officer's experience in the
1890s, as recounted in Samuel Stone (friend of the Officer), In and Beyond the Himalayas; a Record of Sport and
Travel in the Abode of Snow (London, 1896), 249-50; and the experience at Rampur with the Raja in 1883 by two
Moravian missionary families, the Webers and Redslobs, as briefly related in PA (Sept. 1884): 116.
28. A Rajput is a member of a dominant military caste of Kshatriya rank (the second of the four important
Hindu castes) and of the Indo-Aryan race numerous in northern India.
29. In the 19th and early 20th centuries European writers invariably employed the terms Tartary and Tartar(s)
in referring to Tibet and Tibetan(s), derived as they were from the Greek word Tartaros, meaning hell. A passage
from one of Englishman L.A.Waddell's volumes, whose 2d ed. dates from 1900, explains the use of this appellation
of Tartar to refer to an inhabitant of Tibet: "His cold, bracing climate and full animal diet has given him a robust
body full of rude blustering animalism, that tends to make him when uncontrolled a turbulent bully, with all the
fierceness which his European name of Tartar ... suggests." Waddell 1900, p. 212. Such was the inaccurate
perception of the Tibetan which has lingered in the European mind down through the centuries since the breakup
of the mighty military empire of Tibet from the 9th century onward.
30. Hoffmeister 1848, pp. 447,431-3,435-6. Other travelers whose descriptions of Bashahr's mountaineers
can be consulted are: Fraser 1820, pp. 264-6,332,335-7 (whose travels occurred in 1815); Gerard 1841, pp. 102-
3,106, 108-9 (travels in 1817,1818 and 1821); and Hutton 1840, pp. 556-60 (travels in 1838).
31. So wrote Br. Julius Weber, the missionary living and laboring at Poo up to just a year before Tharchin's
birth there, in a letter from Poo dated early 1887, and quoted in PA (Mar. 1887):34.
32. Allen 1983, p. 63.
33. McGovem 1924, p. 266. See also Bonavia and Bartlett 1981, pp. 113-4.
34. Norbu 1987, pp. 85-6.
35. This observer, a Moravian missionary of a later era to this same region under discussion, was Pierre
Vittoz; see Vittoz 1954, p. 2. (Gergan Tharchin would himself spend some time with Vittoz in 1960; see later in
Vol. Ill, Chs. 27 and 28.) Rev. Walter Asboe, sometime Superintendent of the Moravians' Himalayan Mission in
this same region during the 1930s and '40s, has pointed out that "no matter how skilled in their craftsmanship,"
the blacksmiths never ceased to belong to one of the lowest classes in Indian Tibet. Moreover, as a rule they were
paid for their work in kind; so that at certain times of the year they would "make a round of the houses of their —
customers and collect their dues in the form of flour, butter and grain." Asboe went on to say that it had been left
for Christianity "to uplift and help these low class people and to give them a sense of self-respect." At the time
of writing (1937), the Superintendent indicated that at Kyelang in Lahul where he was often based, the church
there had one or two families of the blacksmith class "whose habits and enlightenment" were "far superior to
those of their own class who are still untouched by the regenerating influence of Christianity." As an indication
of the low estimation the rest of the Tibetans had for the blacksmiths, Asboe made note of how members of this
class were held up to ridicule by being made the butt of a well-known proverb among the people that says: "The
advice of an inexperienced physician is like the purposeless speech of a blacksmith" (the blacksmiths being
regarded, wrote Asboe, "as low caste and therefore of no importance"). See Walter Asboe, "The Tibetan
Blacksmith," MM (Feb. 1937):16 and "Wise Sayings in Tibet," ibid, (June 1936):46.
36. LaTrobe 1902 (June), 83-5 (emphasis original). Bishop LaTrobe (1847-1917), who died at the Moravian
community of Herrnhut in Germany, was for 21 years the Representative of the British Province' of-the
Moravian Church on the General (International) Mission Board. In 1901 he had been commissioned by his
Mission Board colleagues to pay a visit of inspection to the West Himalaya Mission (of which Poo was but one
of its station sites), and, in fact, was consecrated a bishop at Herrnhut just prior to his departure for India.
Apropos LaTrobe's use of the term Pepas, it should be noted that elsewhere among Tibetans, both inside and
outside Tibet proper, the word Chipas is another, synonymous term for Pepas. Sometimes the latter term is also
spelled Pipas. For more on the "Nangpa-Chipa" nomenclature and their use by and about Gergan Tharchin and
others, see Vol. II of the present narrative, Ch. 14.
37. Letter of Br. Pagell, quoted in PA (Dec. 1866): 132. ;
38. "Reports of the Mission Fields—West Himalaya for 1910," ibid. (Sept. 1911): 145; see also in a similar
report for 1909 in ibid. (Sept. 1910):662.
39. "Reports from the Mission Fields—West Himalaya for 1915," ibid (Sept. 1916):521.
40. Bray 1992, p. 373.
41. The evidence for asserting that Gergan Tharchin was born into the blacksmith caste is twofold: (a) the
Moravian missionary cited a few notes earlier, Pierre Vittoz, makes this assertion in Vittoz 1954, p. 2; and (b) the
Vittoz assertion is confirmed in Phuntsok 1988, wherein Mrs. Sungkil Phuntsok's letter to the present writer was
in response to the latter's earlier letter to her citing the Vittoz article and asking for her confirmation. It should be
noted that Mrs. Phuntsok (b. 1916) is the daughter of the famed translator of the Tibetan Bible, Joseph Gergan,
and wife of the late E.T. Phuntsok who became a very close friend of Gergan Tharchin. At the time of her 1988
letter she was residing at Rajpur-Dehra Dun, one of the areas not too distant from Poo. She is quite knowledgeable
in matters concerning the Poo-Kyelang-Leh region dating from the period under discussion.
42. Andrews 1934, p. 8. See also "Circular Letter...,"/M (Dec. 1865):530, where the observation is made that
the Tibetan language is spoken at Poo. Indeed, famed Moravian Tibetologist Francke has written that when
traveling up the Sutlej Valley from Simla along the Hindustan-Tibet Road in 1909 he noted that "Poo was the first
village on our road [whose] language is entirely Tibetan ... [Its] scenery was now quite Tibetan in character." See
Francke 1914,1:18. Andrew Wilson made a similar observation after he had been there in 1874: "In language,
dress, religion and manners, the people [of Poo] are thoroughly Tibetan ..." See Wilson 1875, p. 122.
43. According to the Tibetan calendar this birthdate is reckoned as falling within the year of Chag-Tak-Lo,
i.e., Iron-Tiger-Year. See GTUM TsMs, 5. For nearly a thousand years this unique calendar has been in operation,
having been derived, along with Buddhism, mainly from India and was adopted in 1027 CE. The Tibetans, like
most Central Asians, "have a cycle of sixty years, divided into five periods. Each year of such period is
distinguished by the name of some animal, and the periods by the name of one of five elements. The years are also
alternately masculine and feminine; thus a year may be termed a 'female iron-pig-year,' another, a 'male wood-
horse-year/ etc." PA (Mar. 1883):403n. The five elements are earth, iron, water, wood and fire. The twelve
animals are dog, pig, mouse, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey and hen.
44. Tharchin claimed to still have this document stored away somewhere in his personal records. See GTUM
TsMs, 5. It could not be found, however, when thoroughly searched for. For additional confirmatory evidence as
to the precise date of birth—month, day and year—see note 46 below.
45. The term "Western reckoning" or "Tibetan reckoning" will be used throughout the narrative at those
places in the text where in the absence of any such clarifying term it might be thought that some doubt could
possibly arise in the reader's mind as to the age that is meant in any particular instance. "One does not know the
reason but a Tibetan will not call a year old baby as one year old [as would a Westerner]; no, the baby becomes
two years old as soon as one year passes after his birth. Calling a baby one year is a bad omen." Bhuchung K.
Tsering, "1983—The Year of Reckoning?" TR (Sept. 1982): 15. Hence, in the instance with respect to the age of
Tharchin indicated on his baptismal certificate, since it was a Westerner who performed the rite, one can safely
assume that the age meant must have been according to the manner in which the Western mind would calculate the
age of the child in question. Another Tibetan has provided a second plausible explanation for this discrepancy
between the Tibetan and Western ways of reckoning people's ages. He observes that every Tibetan New Year
Festival (called Losar) "is like a birthday party for everybody [because] ... in Tibet... everybody counts his
years, not by the number of his birthdays but by the number of the New Years he has seen..." Khyongla Nawang
Losang Rato, My Life and Lives: the Story of a Tibetan Incarnation (New York, 1977), 83; and thus the formula—
whether among Tibetans, Chinese or Mongolians—is "that on the first (lunar) New Year day after his birth, a
child is counted as 'in his second year.'" Mehra 1968, p. 132n.
46. The source for this baptismal date is Entry Nos. 10-11 of PCRH (1). See also as corroboration Br.
Schreve's Annual Report for 1892, PARH (1865-1900), Year 1892, Sheet 5.
47. Schreve and his wife had only arrived at Poo in the autumn of 1890, but they were not unseasoned
missionaries, having previously been stationed at the Kyelang mission (the first to be established in the border
region) ever since the autumn of 1887. During a July 1890 conference held at Leh of all the missionaries of the
Moravian Himalayan Mission, a discussion arose concerning the state of the mission work at Poo. It should be
mentioned that Br. E. Pagell (the founded of the Poo station in 1865) and his wife had both died in January 1883.
They had been replaced by two Moravian couples, the Webers and the Redslobs, who arrived at the little village
by December of the same year. By 1885, however, the latter couple had been called elsewhere in the work,
departing for Leh in Ladakh via Kyelang in June, thus leaving the Webers in charge of the Poo station. By 1889
Br. and Sr. Weber had become quite discouraged with the situation there; so that at the July 1890 conference the
Schreves made an offer to relieve the Webers at Poo. This kind offer was agreed upon, with the Kyelang-based
Schreves arriving in the fall of 1890 to spend the winter and spring with the Webers before the latter in mid-May
of 1891 departed Poo for service at Leh. Because of failing health, though, the Webers ultimately returned to
Europe in the autumn of 1895 never to return again to the Himalayan Mission. The Schreves themselves
eventually had to leave the Himalayan Mission field, doing so in the summer of 1903 on account of Mrs.
Schreve's own ill-health. They were never to return. The Schnabels immediately thereafter took charge of the Poo
station. See PA (June 1887): 141; (Dec. 1890):195; (June 1891):286-7; (Dec. 1891):386-7; and (Dec. 1907):755.
48. Per Vittoz 1954, p. 2; and Phuntsok 1988.

49. Vittoz 1954, p. 2
50. The source for this given name of Tharchin's mother, as well as for her place and date of birth, is PCRH (1).
51. Pierre Vittoz (Superintendent), "Annual Report of the West Himalayan Mission for 1951-2,"/M (1953):56.
Although in his Report Vittoz nowhere identifies Gergan Tharchin by name, it is obvious he has reference to
Tharchin when he states that the publisher of a Tibetan newspaper "in Kalimpong" is "a Christian who was
brought up in the old Moravian station of Poo." That Taschi the blacksmith had apparently migrated from
Kyelang to Poo and there fathered Gergan Tharchin is a justifiable conclusion to be drawn when one puts together
the following sources of information: the two articles by Vittoz already cited which appeared in 1953 and 1954,
respectively; the Moravian church records of Poo, as reflected in PCRH (1); and Phuntsok 1988. PCRH (1) was
likewise the source for Tharchin's given name of Dorje at birth.
52. The source for the name Dorje in Taschi's name is twofold: (a) per "West Himalaya: Extracts from the
Reports for the Last Two Years," PA (June 1912):305—where "Dorje, the blacksmith" is discussed at some
length and where, by internal evidence combined with (b) below, the present writer came to the fairly certain
conclusion that the blacksmith being discussed was indeed Taschi, and that Taschi and his son had the same given
name; and (b) per PCRH (1)—wherein is stated that the given name of Gergan Tharchin at the time of his child-
baptism at the ¿ge of two was declared to be Dorje.
53. Tharchin being the youngest son of Taschi is per Vittoz 1954, p. 2.
420
54. The origin and meaning of the names Gergan and Tharchin will be explained subsequently as this
biography of the man from Poo further unfolds.
55. As stated in PCRH (1).
56. This was told to Margaret Urban, a missionary visitor for two weeks to Tharchin's home in Kalimpong,
NE India, in 1964, and reported by her on page 5 of her book; see Urban 1967. The pertinent sentence in her
German-language book reads: "Als Gergan [Tharchin] geboren wurde, verlieb sein Vater die Mutter und zog zu
einer anderen Frau."
57» "It is one of the paradoxes of Tibet that polyandry should prevail in a land where one-fifth of the men are
committed to a life of celibacy [the monks and lamas] and there is always a surplus of women. The inequality is
somewhat balanced, however, by the practice of polygamy in certain other parts ofthe country" Cutting 1940, p. 202.
58. The sources for all information and quoted material in this and the preceding paragraphs dealing with the
sexual and marital customs of the Tibetans are as follows: Bernard 1939, p. 254; Bruce 1934, p. 237; and see also
p. 222 for date of journey; Das 1902, p. 252; Manohar S. Gill, Himalayan Wonderland; Travels in Lahul-Spiti
(Delhi, 1972), 143; Michael 1982, pp. 128-30; Prince Peter, to whom are attributed statements on the subject in
Explorers Journal (Winter 1949):22; Anna L. Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking, 1959), 98; Taring 1970, p. 24
(see also "Family Tree of Tsarong," 274-5), and cf. Harrer 1956, p. 168; Fred Ward, "In Long-Forbidden Tibet,"
NG (Feb. 1980):254; Edith Waugh, "Black Magic in the Himalayas," Travel (Nov. 1931):21; and Wilson 1875,
pp. 122, 187, 191, 193. Harrer, on the same page of his volume, went on to tell of several other situations more
bizarre than the one concerning Tsarong Shape. One of them was the^case of the Tibetan Foreign Minister
Surkhang being separated from his first wife. "The second, the mother of Jigme," his son, "was dead. Surkhang
now shared the young wife of a nobleman of lower rank. In the marriage contract Jigme was brought in as the third
husband, because his father did not wish to leave all his fortune to his widow. Similar complications are found in
many families." See also Prince Peter 1963, wherein the Prince discusses in even greater detail the Surkhang case.
Harrer then related an even stranger case "in which a mother was the sister-in-law of her own daughter." And in*
the foreword he contributed to Dorje Yudon Yuthok's House of the Turquoise /?oo/( Ithaca, 1990), Harrer writes
(pp. 11-12) that the author "describes with great candor and knowledge the complicated, and to us almost
incomprehensible, family ties which resulted from legalized polygamy and polyandry." D. Y. Yuthok (Yuthok
Lhacham Kusho), born in 1912, was the daughter of the aforementioned Surkhang Dzasa and bom, therefore, into
one of the highest aristocratic families in all of Tibet.
59. As stated in Entry Nos. 10-11, PCRH (1).

60. Per Vittoz 1954, p. 2.
61. Per LaTrobe 1902 (June), p. 82. The exact day of the baptism was Sunday, 26 May 1901, in which a total
of five adults and two children received the rite. Dorje Taschi himself was baptized with a new name: Dashenga
(meaning: "I rejoice in all great happiness").
62. "West Himalaya: Extracts from the Reports for the Last Two Years," ibid. (June 1912):305.
63. This can be stated on the basis of internal evidence in ibid, and of the fact, mentioned in the next two
sentences of the narrative, that he had to have died after 1906, the year young Tharchin's mother died.
64. See later in the narrative for the certitude of this date. Pierre Vittoz, who was otherwise correct in several
other important details pertaining to the life of Tharchin's father, was inaccurate when he asserted that "the
Blacksmith Taschi . .. became and remained a faithful Christian." Vittoz 1954, p. 2. The testimony of the
pertinent Poo missionaries as well as of Tharchin himself (GTUM TsMs, 10)~~both of whom knew the
situation best and at firsthand—must be accepted as the final judgment on the matter. It should nonetheless be
noted in defense of Vittoz that in his article he did observe that because of the inferior social position of the
Tibetan Buddhist blacksmiths, they and many ostracized people among the Hindus living in India came to
"accept Christianity as a religion of justice and of fraternity." And that "perhaps that is also one of the motives
which decided the Blacksmith Taschi and all his family to enter the Church." If it was indeed this motive that
impelled Tharchin's father to become a baptized member of the little church congregation at Poo, then it was not
a profound enough one to sustain him in his "faith" in standing the test of time. It is devoutly to be wished,
nevertheless, that the hope Rev. Marx entertained for Taschi of a deathbed conversion did at the last occur. Only
eternity, of course, can tell.
Finally, some observations made by the missionaries at Poo about the converts there need to be appended
here in response to a statement found in Phuntsok 1988. In it Mrs. Phuntsok had asserted, quite correctly, that
"all the [Christian] converts from Poo were blacksmiths, including Taschi..." But it needs to be pointed out that
a considerable number of them ended up being, like the case of Dorje Taschi, of only a nominal sort—as is verified
by the same two-year missionary report which told of Dorje the blacksmith's wavering faith. In fact, within the very
paragraph of the report where Dorje is being discussed, those reporting could declare, with some foreboding, that
"Poo is passing through a time of sifting. The number of Christians at this station has decreased from 69 to 39 during
the five years from 1907 to the end of 1911. And a further reduction is impending." And the reason given? "The
majority of the members," the report observed, "were baptized in times of outward distress [read: ostracism and
persecution of the blacksmiths], and their Christianity has not stood the test of time. So now they are leaving of their
own accord or their names have to be struck off the lists.... One such case... is that of old Dorje, the blacksmith...."
"West Himalaya: Extracts from the Reports for the Last Two Years," PA (June 1912):305.
65. Marston 1895?, p. 80. The title and verso pages of even this second edition lack any publication date.
Nevertheless, the book had come out originally by late 1893 as is confirmed by an objective piece of evidence
which reveals a facet to the book which will be of more interest to the reader than merely providing a publishing
date. For in the June 1894 issue of a Moravian publication that has already proven to be an invaluable source for
much of the ancestral, religious and social data of this early period in Gergan Tharchin's life, there is a brief
reference to the fact that Cecil Polhill-Turner and his sister-in-law Miss Annie W. Marston had together prepared
a newly-published book, The Great Closed Land, that nonetheless bears only Miss Marston5s name as author.
PA (June 1894):295. The year is further confirmed by a complete bibliographical listing of the book given at the
end of an article on Tibet by F.B. Shawe that shows its year of publication as 1893. Shawe, "The Siege of Tibet,"
MRW(Feb. 1897):95. Polhill-Turner and his wife were themselves missionaries to the Tibetans, but on the China
side of the Tibetan border. He and his second wife (his first having died late Dec. 1904) became good friends and
supporters of Gergan Tharchin himself after the latter had established in far-off Kalimpong his own ministry to
the Tibetans during the first quarter of the 20th century. See later in this present chapter and in Ch. 16 of the next
volume for more on the Polhill-Turners and their more than passing acquaintance with Tharchin.
66. Bray 1992, p. 370.
67. Marston 1895?, p. 105. The Raja's words were actually reported to the Moravians by Baptist missionary
Rev. James G. Potter of Agra, near Delhi, who had only just recently completed a tour in the Northwest
Himalayas in late 1890 or early 1891. Unable to reach Poo himself, Potter, upon inquiring of the Bashahr Prince
(whom he doubtless met along the Hindustan-Tibet Road) about the Moravian missionaries, received the answer
just now quoted by Marston. See "The People of Poo and Their New 'Father and Mother'," PA (June 1891 ):286n.
68. The source for this quote is found in Year 1892, Sheet 5 taken from PARH (1865-1900).
69. As stated in Entry Nos. 10-11, PCRH (1). See also Phuntsok 1988. In her letter Mrs. Phuntsok writes
that "after [i.e., at] baptism Tharchin was added to his name." Most likely it was because Sodnama had never
married Taschi the Blacksmith that aonther Tibetan name was given Dorje as either an additional name or
substitute surname for Taschi—although among Tibetans, writes Tsewang Y.Pemba, "a child does not automatically
take the surname of its father as in the West." Pemba 1957, p. 51-2. Furthermore, the name may have more
significance attached to it than simply it being a name added. That the Tibetan name chosen means "success" may
have been an indication of hope on the part of the mother that her child's reception of the rite of Christian baptism
had the potential for auguring future "success" that need not be overshadowed by the parents' past "failure." As
to the reason for the child not receiving a Christian name at the hands of Rev. Schreve, that remains a mystery to
this day. It was quite common for the Moravians of the West Himalaya Mission to bestow Christian names upon
candidates for baptism in their midst. For example, unlike the case of little Dorje, a relative of his, Tsewang by
name, ¿ftd receive a Christian name at his child-baptism at the hands of the same Poo missionaries—he receiving
the name of "Peter." This information is per Phuntsok 1988.
Again with respect to the name Tharchin, it should be pointed out that Margaret Urban is mistaken when she
states in her book that "'Tharchin' translates to 'saved'." See Urban 1967, p. 5. In a letter to the present writer,
Tharchin's son Sherab Gyamtsho is quite emphatic in stating that "the very exact meaning of our surname
Tharchin' (as I already mentioned earlier) is 'success'." "However," he adds, "there is also a similar Tibetan
word-form—'Thar-lam'—which in translation does mean 'saved'." S.G. Tharchin to the author, Kalimpong, 10
Aug. 1990.
70. J.E. Hutton, one of several historians who have written histories of the Moravian Missions, has noted the
problems which at that early period generally characterized these services, which, it should be added, were not
entirely the fault of the citizens there: "For many years the regular Sunday services held at the three stations were
both dull and poorly attended; the Tibetans, though fond of some kinds of music, could not sing the Moravian
chorales, and during the service they would giggle, and spit on the floor. In due time, however, there was a slight
improvement; at Poo and Leh, [magic] lantern services proved attractive, and finally, by attending week-night
Prayer Meetings, the people began to realize what prayer really means." Hutton 1923, p. 365.
71. Marston 1895?, pp. 105-6.
72. F.A. Redslob, "Report..., Leh, 24 May 1887," PA (June 1887): 142.
73. Quoted in Schneider 1891?, pp, 81-2.
74. Again, as told by Tharchin to missionary Urban in 1964 and reported in her book; see Urban 1967, p. 5,
She adds as either her own or Tharchin's commentary (it is unclear which): "So it came about, that out of evil,
what was best for the child occurred." Ibid.
75. Variant other spellings showing up in the records available are: Madta, Matha, Mattha. The information
about the marriage to Madtha and the date of it was provided in PCRH (4), page 27, Entry No. 8.
76. That Madtha's father was from a blacksmith family wa§ learned from Phuntsok 1988, in which Mrs.
Phuntsok mentions that a Christian convert by the name of Thakurma was, of a blacksmith family. This "Thakurma"
is the same as "Trakur," the daughter of Madtha's parents, Jonathan and Hannah Zering at Poo, mentioned in
LaTrobe 1902 (Sept.): 125. This thus majde her to be Madtha's own sister.
77. The rest of the information in this paragraph (namely, the "poorer class" quote, the Zering name, the
details about the baptism, the name Jonathan, and the latter's association with Pagell) was all obtained from:
Phuntsok 1988; PCRH (2), Entry No. 1; PCRH (4), page 27, Entry No. 8; and "Circular Letter of the Synodal
Committee Signed at Berthelsdorf, August 1871," PA (Dec. 1871):167.
78. The sources for the information mentioned In this paragraph are: ibid.; and Pagell letter from Poo, 27 Aug.
1871, ibid. (Mar. 1872): 194.
79. The missionary added, with obvious great feeling: "We are extremely thankful for the respect thus shown
to Christianity." All information in this paragraph was gleaned from the following sources: Redslob letter from
Poo, 12 June 1883, ibid. (Dec. 1883):562; "Account of Br. Redslob's Journey from Kyelang to Poo, 27 May to
8 July 1874," ibid. (Mar. 1875):283; and, with regard to Jonathan's employment, Pagell letter from Poo, 7 Apr.
1875, ibid. (Sept. 1875):412.
80. Per PCRH (2), Entry No. 1.
81. Pagell letter from Poo, 29 Mar. 1876, PA (Sept. 1876):42-3.
82. "Extracts from Letters of Br. Redslob from 27 February to 12 March 1884," ibid. (Sept. 1884): 103.
83. Redslob letter from Poo, 27 Feb. 1884, ibid. (June 1884):71.
84. "Extracts from Letters of Br. Redslob from 27 February to.12 March 1884," ibid. (Sept. 1884):104.
85 .Ibid.
86. The chronology for the staff changes at Poo was as follows: (a) the Pagells died within a week of each
other on 2 and 9 Jan. 1883; (b) the Redslobs, at Kyelang, instead of relieving Br. Heyde at Leh's temporary
station as previously planned, now come to Poo, arriving there late spring 1883 (with Br. Heyde returning to
Kyelang); (c) the Redslobs meet the Webers at Simla in early Nov. 1883 to bring them safely to Poo, where after
an incredibly difficult and dangerous winter trek they all arrive in early Dec.; (d) because the Maharaja of Kashmir
finally gave consent in Feb. 1884 to a permanent mission station at Leh, Br. Redslob travels to Leh in spring of
1884 to make plans for establishing permanent facilities, but returns to Poo that autumn to be of further
assistance to the Webers who would ultimately be left alone at Poo; and (e) the entire Redslob family remove
themselves the following spring (1885) to Leh, thus leaving the Webers in permanent charge of the Poo station
from then onwards. Ibid. (June 1883):474, (June 1884):68-70, (June 1888):314 and (Dec. 1889):605. At least
until the death of Br. Redslob in 1891 at Leh, he and his wife had the distinction "of having not only seen the three
Himalaya stations, but of having worked some time at each." From 1872-83 they were at Kyelang, from 1883-
5 at Poo, and from 1885 onwards at Leh. Ibid. (June 1888):314.
87. Quoted in ibid. (June 1890):65-6; see also ibid. (June 1892):530.
88. The sources for the information found in this paragraph are: ibid. (Dec. 1890): 195; and "Report of the
Tibetan Mission from 1887 to 1892," ibid. (June 1892):530.
89. Although, it must be noted, it would not be till 1895 that she who had married him in 1884 as his second
wife—his first having left him—would actually be baptized.
90. The sources for the information and quoted material to be found in this and the preceding paragraph are:
"Work of the Last Decade," ibid. (Dec. 1889):605; "Recent Tidings," ibid. (Dec. 1891):386 in conjunction with
"Poo, on the Border of Chinese Tibet," ibid. (June 1892):530; and "Mission Life at Poo," ibid. (Dec. 1895):609.
91. As a matter of fact, two of his younger sons (not yet born) would in 1923 be enrolled at the famed Biscoe
School at Srinagar; these two, plus a third boy from another family, would constitute the first students ever sent
there from Lahul. These three would also have the privilege of being escorted to Srinagar by none other than one
of that School's most illustrious alumni, the Rev. Yoseb (Joseph) Gergan, the great Tibetan Bible translator. MM
(Nov. 1923):82-3.
92. There is no uncertainty as to the identity of Ga's wife. For the Moravian Bishop from the West, Benjamin
LaTrobe, on a journey to the various stations of the West Himalaya Mission during the summer of 1901, visited
in May at Poo where he met Jonathan and Hannah living on the Mission compound there, and then a few weeks
later he visited at Chot where, according to his record of the journey, he met "Trakur [Thakurma], Ga Phuntsok's
wife, and the daughter of Jonathan and Hannah, at Poo ..." LaTrobe 1902 (June), p. 81 and (Sept.), p. 125.
93. The source for all Diary quotations in this and the preceding paragraph is found in the entry for 7 Dec.
1898 taken from PDH (1864-1920).
94. See Luke 13:30.
95. Except where already cited, the sources for the narrative dealing with Ga Phuntsok are: "Annual Report
of the Mission Board," PA (Sept. 1897):352; "Report of the Kyelang Station for 1897," ibid. (Mar. 1898):460-
1; LaTrobe 1902 (Sept.), p. 125; "Reports of the Mission Fields—West Himalaya" for 1908, ibid. (Sept.
1909):401; "West Himalaya: Extracts from the Reports for the Last Two Years," ibid. (June 1912):305-6;
"Experiences of a Tibetan Evangelist," MM (Oct. 1929):76; and Phuntsok 1988.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 10; quotes: 10.

1. "Extracts from Letters of Br. Redslob from 2 February to 12 March 1884," PA (Sept. 1884):104.
i 2. "Work ofthe Last Decade... between ... 1879 and 1889 ...—Poo, on the Border of Chinese Tibet," ibid.
(Dec. 1889):605.
| 3. The source for this quotation is from the Year 1888, p. 2b of KARH (1854-1897).
4. The source for all this material is KARH (1854-1897), and the specific page nos. where the material quoted
from for each year can be found are as follows: 1889, p. 3 and 1890, pp. 2a & b; 1893, pp. 3b thru 3d; 1894, p.
I Id; 1895, pp. 3d, 4a thru the beg. of 4d.
i
5. The year entries quoted from here are taken from either of the following two sources: (a) PARH (1865-
1900) or (b) PDH (1864-1920). In the instance at hand, the specific page nos. where can be found the material
j quoted from for each year of PARH are as follows: 1895, p. llf. 1896, p. 3ff. The rest ofthe year entries here
listed—that is, 1897, 1906 and 1907—were quoted from the unnumbered PDH vol.
6. According to Dr. Elizabeth Marx, daughter born at Poo of Moravian missionary Hermann B. Marx,
|| "speaking" was that practice in all Moravian congregations everywhere "for the communicants to have a
personal conversation with the minister in charge prior to the Holy Communion. Where a missionary had a parish
of several congregations, the lay pastor talked with the communicants. But in those small congregations in the
Himalaya, the missionary would have done it himself. It was a time to talk over the progress in the Christian life,
i and if there were irregularities of a serious nature—a quarrel, sexual misconduct, etc., the individual would be
; asked to get the quarrel, or whatever, straightened out, or if that did not take place he or she would be advised to
stay away from that Communion and get right with his neighbor or his Lord before the next one. In the case of
!! grave misconduct they were put on discipline, sometimes for a specified period of time, or, as happened in the
; case of Madtha..., they were excluded, and would have to apply for readmission and might even be asked to go
through a period of instruction. Later, as the [Himalaya] congregations were made of more mature Christians,
; there were preparatory services and the believers were expected to discipline their own lives and, if they felt that
! they needed to, would stay away from the sacrament....'Speaking' was individual, except that in the case of
married couples, the minister had the 'speaking' with both spouses together." Marx to the author, letter,
! Winston-Salem NC, 29 Nov. 1990.
7. KARH (1854-1897): Year 1891, pp. 2c, 5c; 1894, pp. Id, 3c. Except for Year 1900, the rest ofthe listed
j year entries quoted here are from PDH (1864-1920), an unnumbered vol. The two quoted passages from Year
\ 1900 are from PARH (1865-900), p. unknown.
8. See Br. Hermann B. Marx's Poo Diary entry for Nov. 1906 to May 1907 in PDH (1864-1920).
9. PARH (1865-1900), Year 1900, p. unknown.
10. LaTrobe 1902 (June), pp. 82-3.
Hi
j 11. Bray 1993, p. 53. The meaning of "Langka" is unclear.
j: 12. Where not already documented, the sources for much ofthe material in this and the preceding paragraph
| are Schneider 1891?, p. 62; John Bray "Language, Tradition and the Tibetan Bible," TJ(Winter 1991):51; and
"Circular Letter...," PA (Dec. 1863):74. The Church history, incidentally, had been written by Jaeschke in 1866
! and proved to be 188 pages in length when printed at Kyelang in 1870. It not only served as a very interesting
1 reading book for the schoolchildren but also was suitable for distribution especially among the lamas. Per letter
of Br. Th. Rechler (Mission Supt.), from Kyelang, 12 March 1870, ibid. (June 1870):338. Jaeschke's description
i of his return journey to Europe in 1869 had been forwarded to Kyelang by its author from Gnadau, Germany, in
| time for it to be printed in 1870. Ibid.
13. "Reports from the Mission Fields—West Himalaya for 1915," ibid. (Sept. 1916):521.
i 14. Tharchin, BB TwMs, p. 1.
420
15. Per Phuntsok 1988.

16. Tharchin, BB TwMs, p. 1. He recollected this sometime after 1946.
17. That this was when Tharchin most likely received this title was the opinion of his son, Sherab Gyamtsho
Tharchin, as expressed to the author in a letter, Kalimpong, 9 Mar. 1989. The source for the spelling of the title
for "Teacher" in Tibetan shown in the Text here as dge-rgan is Tshering 1987, p. 7.
18. Louis 1894, p. 111. Moreover, in the case of the children initially intent upon the monastic life, they
would seek, under the guidance of their gergan over a two or three year period, to learn by heart 125 short leaves
of these various sacred texts. The reciting of these from memory and the answering of certain formal questions as
to the child's parentage and past life form the test for his admission to the first of several degrees within the
monastic hierarchy—in this instance, to the beginning degree of Tapa, or novice monk. Ibid., 110. Obviously,
therefore, a person's gergan was most critical in his advancement.
19. Graham 1898, pp. 62-6, 76, 76-9. By the time of the Moravian Mission to Tibet there were three
provinces (or ecclesiastical territorial divisions) of the Church: the German, the English, and the American. And
it would be the German and English Provinces that would figure most prominently in the establishment, work
and growth of the Moravian Himalaya Mission in Lesser Tibet, the locale of Gergan Tharchin's birth and
upbringing.
20. Richter 1908, p. 108.
21. "Missionary entrepreneur par excellence" would be abetter and ipore exact description of Gutzlaff, even
as one of his biographers, Jessie G. Lutz, has described him. And as such, he was "flamboyant, talented, and
indefatigable," as her own interesting biographical sketch of this man amply reveals. In a chapter of an anthology
of essays entitled Christianity in China, Ms. Lutz paints a thoroughly entertaining picture of this pioneer
evangelist in China who, among other things, assumed a Chinese clan name for himself, sailed the China coast "on
a British opium smuggler," served as Chinese secretary and interpreter for the British superintendent of trade and
a similar post to the Government of Hong Kong, and, last but certainly noMeast, distributed Christian tracts to
all and sundry who came into contact with him. Moreover, Gutzlaff, who had acquired knowledge of a dozen
languages and was able to compose in at least six of them, authored numerous works in Chinese on Protestant
Christianity and on Western history and geography; he even served as a Corresponding Member of London's
prestigious Royal Geographical Society, contributing articles to its Journal on Tibetan, Chinese and other Asian
cultures (see, for example, his lengthy offering, "Tibet and Sefan," in the RGS Journal for 1851, pp. 191-227.
And in the West, he greatly popularized China as a mission field by means of many works in English, Dutch and
German. "His readers were many, his influence far-reaching."
Fellow workers in China would later remark that GutzlafFs boundless energy literally exhausted his colleagues,
"of whom he expected equal drive and energy." Truly only a person of such vigor could have ever undertaken the
numerous responsibilities of magazine editor, publisher, translator, writer, and itinerant evangelist, and serve
simultaneously as interpreter and secretary for the British administration in China. Then, too, "only an inveterate
optimist" like Gutzlaff "would have entitled a book published in 183 8 China Opened. Even his fellow missionaries
lacked his assurance that China was ready to receive hundreds of evangelists." Nevertheless, four years later,
having assisted in negotiating the opening of five treaty ports subsequent to the Opium War (1839-42), this
would-be missionary entrepreneur commenced to lay plans for gathering support from various Western quarters
to send Christian proselytizers "to every province of China."
Although, as Lutz pointed out, Gutzlaff's fellow workers in Asia may have demurred at his Utopian
declarations about China being inclined to open its doors to missionaries and others from the West, German and
English Christians "were ready to believe such a message and responded with alacrity." And the Moravians
proved to be no exception in responding swiftly to this call for action. Lutz, "Karl F.A. Gutzlaff: Missionary
Entrepreneur," in S. W. Bamett and J.K. Fairbank (eds.), Christianity in China (Cambridge MA: Committee on
American East Asian Relations of the Department of History in collaboration with the Council on East Asian
Studies, Harvard University, 1985), 61-71. For additional insights into Gutzlaff's life and work, see Marshall
Broomhall, Hudson Taylor, the Man Who Believed God (London, 1929), 215-6 and F.H. Taylor, Hudson Taylor
in Early Years; the Growth of a Soul (1911; reprint ed., London: CIM, 1923), 88, 91.
22. "Retrospect of the Missionaxy Work of the Moravian Church during the Past 150 Years," PA (Sept.
1882):296. His exact words were: "Who knows how soon a door will be opened, to preach the wounds and death
of Jesus to the Persians and the Mongols—in the ear, if not upon the housetops?" Ibid. (Mar. 1860):363.
23. The Mongols had been—and still are even today—a hardy and predominantly nomadic race of men
whose greatest achievement in their history had been the meteoric rise of a vast Mongol Empire that at its zenith
in the late 13th century had literally stretched the entire width of Asia, they achieving "such a series of conquests
as has no parallel in history." (H.G. Wells) The Empire's capital, founded by the Great Khan, Genghis (1162-
1227), and then further established by his son and successor, Ogdai Khan, was located at Karakorum on a plain
just west of the present capital (Ulan Bator) of the former Soviet Mongolia. For the most part, the eastern
Mongols of the Empire became Buddhists, like the Chinese whom the Mongols under Kublai Khan had totally
conquered by 1279; the western Mongols, on the other hand, became predominantly Moslem. However, within
this western part of the Empire, the Calmuck Mongols had embraced—and thereafter remained faithful to—the
Buddhist faith. Although many of the Mongols intermingled with their subjugated races during the subsequent
centuries of decline and eventual breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Calmucks for the most part did not. Even
today, though separated by thousands of miles from the main concentration of Mongolians which currently
exists in the East Central Asian homeland, there is still a Calmuck presence in Astrakhan, along with perhaps
several other distinct branches of the Mongol race. And even as recently as the 1930s, there existed the Kalmuck
(or Calmuck) Autonomous Area of the Soviet Union located in the same Lower Volga region of Astrakhan
northwest of the Caspian Sea, consisting of a population of some 142,000 in an area of over 38,000 square miles.
See Wells 1951, pp. 206-8; Thomas B. Allen, "Time Catches Up with Mongolia," NG (Feb.l985):246-7, 252;
and Webster's 1934, p. 3075.
24. "Retrospect...,"PA (Sept. 1882):297.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., and also per Torrens, 1862, p. 114. Torrens had visited at Kyelang with the three earliest Moravian
missionaries (Heyde, Pagell and Jaeschke, along with their wives) during the summer of 1861 and had doubtless
heard the Calmuck story from them.
27. "Retrospect...," PA (Sept. 1882):297.
28. Quoted in ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 298.
31 .Ibid.
32. Ibid. (Dec. 1851): 161-2; "Circular Letter...," ibid. (Dec. 1853):61. Br. Zwick would shortly thereafter die
in early 1855, having as it were passed the torch to a new generation of gospel heralds.
33. "Miscellaneous Intelligence—II, Mission to the Mongols," ibid. (Sept. 1853):538; "Circular Letter...,"
/¿/¿/.(Dec. 1853):61.
34. Interestingly, neither these Moravians nor any other Christian workers would be able to extend the gospel
to the Mongols there till the early 1990s as a consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
35. This refusal was due once again to "the Czar's fidelity to the traditions of the Orthodox ... Church" in
Russia, which thus meant a negative to the request for permission by the two Moravians "to take this most direct
route." Rev. J.T. Hamilton, "Laying Siege to the Stronghold of the Dalai Lama—The Moravian Mission Among
the Western Himalaya," MRW (May 1891):376.
36. "Retrospect...,"PA (Sept. 1882):296.
37."MiscellaneousIntelligence...,"/^. (Sept 1853):538.
38. Ibid.
39. It so happened that Prochnow was at home in England on furlough at the time when, having been rebuffed
by the Russian government, the Moravians through their Board in London turned their attention to an alternative
route by which their two missionaries might eventually reach Mongolia with the Christian gospel. But the Board
needed advice, and so they consulted Rev. Prochnow "as to the practicability of penetrating into Mongolia
through India." He was enthusiastic about the idea and "recommended the plan most strongly," offering to give
420
the Moravians every assistance possible. Moreover, Dr. Prochnow urged the Moravians to implement their
strategy immediately, suggesting that they make his Simla Hills CMS mission station ofKotgarh their headquarters
until their two missionaries could acquire sufficient knowledge of Tibetan which could then enable them "to
press forward into the 'regions beyond'." Rev. Prochnow had even held out the hope that the two Moravians to
be sent, while based at Kotgarh, "would be brought into contact with some of the Mongolian tribes as they
passed along the great Hindustan-Tibet Road; but in this it was found that he had been in error, having confounded
them with the Tibetans"! Rev. John Barton, "Report of Missionary Work in Tibet," CM/(Aug. 1863): 184. See
also Rev. Th. Rechler, "The Moravian Mission in Tibet (Part 4. Historical Skctch of Missionary Work in Tibet),"
PA (Dec. 1874):237. By the time the Brn. Heyde and Pagell had arrived in India. Dr. Prochnow had already
returned to Kotgarh from his furlough and was therefore able to welcome the two Moravians to his hill station
himself and to proffer them every assistance he could in the implementation of their plan to reach Mongolia for
Christ.
40. This brief background on the founding of the Kotgarh mission station and related events is based on
information gleaned from Richter 1908, pp. 194, 197.
41. "Miscellaneous Intelligence...," PA (Sept 1853):538.
42. Termed this by J.G. Breutel et al., in their "Circular Letter ...," ibid. (Dec. 1854):278. "It may seem
surprising that they should learn so many languages; but they required English and Hindustani, as they would
often come in contact with Englishmen and Hindus; Mongolian was indispensable for the work originally
proposed to them; and to reach Mongolia they must needs pass through Tibet, which lay hundreds of miles in
extent between them and Mongolia. Little did they think, as yet that*they would never reach that land, nor
penetrate more than a day or two's journey into Chinese Tibet. The most pareful inquiries made in Europe before
their departure had failed to gain all the information desired. It had to be acquired by experience on the spot, amid
difficulties and sacrifices." Schneider 1891?, p. 51.
43. It needs to be pointed out, however, that at this moment the full details of the double murder were not
available; and hence, Pagell and Heyde were not aware that these two Catholic missionaries, Messrs. Krick and
Boury, had not been murdered by Tibetans, as was supposed, but by "the lawless Abors" who belonged to the
Michmi tribesmen of Upper Assam near the southern Tibetan border. Louis 1894, p. 52.
44. Hamilton 1901, p. 135.
45. Weber letter from Poo, 28 Aug. 1888, quoted in Schneider 1891?, pp. 93-4 (emphasis Weber's). Cf. with
PA (Mar. 1889):454-5.
46. This litany of reverses to Tibet's neighbors and the consequent fear engendered among Tibetans themselves
have been summarized by Harry Paxton Hoivard writing in the China Weekly Review (Shanghai):
The apprehensions of Tibet's theocratic rulers were by no means without foundation. This great
country...had already seen the British Empire in India expand to the very borders of the Lama
kingdom. In 1774 Warren Hastings had sent a mission to Tibet, hoping to use the kingdom
against its neighbor Nepal, but had no success. In 1816 the British succeeded by a hard-fought war
in establishing themselves in Nepal—formerly tributary to China—and had reached the border of
Tibet on the southwest. To the east of Nepal, Sikkim (tributary to Tibet) was compelled to bow
to Britain in I860, and Bhutan (also a tributary) in 1865. Ladakh, the western extremity of Tibet,
was brought under British rule as a part of Kashmir. Assam, south of Tibet, was annexed in 1826,
and Burma further east (a tributary of China) in 1886. Tibetan attempts to assert old rights in
Sikkim were driven back by British forces, and China finally recognized (in 1890) the British
protectorate there. Tibet was before the end of the century half surrounded by British dependencies,
which stretched from Burma and Assam on the southeast to Kashmir—including Tibetan Ladakh—
on the northwest. The Dalai Lama's fears would seem to have been justified.
See Howard 1934, p. 341.
47. Quoted in Bonvalot, Across Thibet, trans. C.B. Pitman, 2 vols (London, 1891), 11:4, 45.
48. A Manchu-Chinese word for the title given the Imperial Chinese political officers who were stationed at
the Tibetan capital from roughly 1728 to 1912 as the chief representatives of the Manchu Emperors. It had been
the Manchu ruler in China, Emperor K'ang-hsi, who had been responsible for the defeat of the Turkestan Mongol
invaders of Tibet. The Emperor had then followed up this victory by establishing two "mandarins" at Lhasa who
now bore the title of"Amban" and were given wide political power. These Chinese High Commissioners, almost
invariably assigned in pairs at Lhasa at any given time, were with rare exceptions only selected from high Manchu
or Mongol officers belonging to the Manchu race. For the longest time the two Lhasan Ambans were able to
secretly control Tibet. For although following the murder of the dissolute Sixth Dalai Lama the successor Dalai
Lamas were effectively controlled by the Regents ruling during their minority period, the Ambans would
nonetheless successfully contrive through intrigue to control the Regents; and thus these two interloping
"authorities"—Amban and Regent—would reputedly see to it that the young Dalai Lamas were eliminated
before ever reaching their majority. In fact, none of the Dalai Lamas after the Sixth ever lived beyond twenty years
of age until the time of the Great Thirteenth. He was wiser and more clever than his predecessor "Incarnations,"
for just prior to reaching his own majority age he had secretly made an alliance with a group of young Tibetan
nobles who had founded a nationalist party and who helped mount a successful coup against the Ambans that
removed the latter from a position of power. Able to keep the coup a secret from Peking until he had officially
attained his own majority, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was finally enthroned in 1880 and took over the reins of
government with a firm hand, using his power "shrewdly and vigorously thereafter. Ultimately, with the overthrow
of the Manchu dynasty in 1911/12, the stationing of Ambans ceased with the removal of all Chinese officials and
troops from Tibetan soil in 1912/13. See Lowell Thomas, Jr., The Silent War in Tibet (Garden City, 1959), 31-2.
For more on this reputed intrigue by the Ambans, and a slightly contrary view by Michael H. Goodman (The
Last Dalai Lama), see the beginning of Ch. 28 of vol.III of the present narrative and the pertinent early end-notes
for that chapter.
49. All information and quoted material in this paragraph are taken from Clements R. Markham (ed.),
Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London,
1876), 44-9.
50. As a matter of fact, University of Michigan Tibetan and Buddhist Studies Professor Donald Lopez, Jr.
has stated that among the many reasons why European powers were deterred from dominating or controlling
Tibet was the fact that in 1792— no doubt as a consequence of Nepal's several-years invasion and war with Tibet
which ended that year and the looting of the Panchen Lama's own monastery which required a costly imperial
Chinese military expedition to be sent to expel the Gorkha forces from the land—the last great Manchu Emperor
Ch'ien-lung "had declared imperial control over all Tibetan communications with foreign powers"; though, of
course, added Lopez, "this did not sever Tibet's longstanding relations with Inner Asia and China." From that
date onward "until the twentieth century, further relations of Europeans with Tibet had to be positioned from the
borderlands." Lopez, Jr., "New Age Orientalism: the Case of Tibet," TR (May 1994): 17; cf. his later larger work,
Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago/London, 1998), 5,20.
51. In the account of his journey to Lhasa in 1846, the French cleric indicated on the one hand that the Lama
kingdom was most friendly and hospitable towards outsiders in general at that time: "Everyone is allowed to
enter Lhasa; everyone can go and come, and engage in commerce and industrial pursuits without the least
restraint." Everyone, that is, except the British; for on the other hand, noted Abbé Hue, "it is probable that the
English would not be excluded more than any other nation, had not their invasive march into Hindustan [India]
inspired the Dalai Lama with a natural terror." The Tibetans, he added, had "taken it into their heads that the
English are an encroaching people, who are not to be trusted." Quoted from Hue's account in Howard 1934, p.
341. Yet even he and his priest companion Father Gabet were searched for possible possession of maps that
might have implied to the Lhasan authorities plans for a foreign invasion. Though none were found on their
persons and though the two French visitors were received with kindness by the Regent himself, they were
compelled, under Chinese pressure, to depart the Tibetan capital after a stay of some two months and to return
the same way as they had come; namely, the long eight-month caravan route from Peking, rather than being
permitted to travel the much easier one-month trail south to the British Indian border that was then considered
closed!
52. Dawa Norbu, in his probing study quoted from in a footnote several pages earlier in the Text, flatly
disagrees with the assertion made by Ahmad Shah and others relative to this proscription. As previously noted,
Professor Norbu observed that it was the informed fear and suspicion about British colonialism in South Asia—
as portrayed to Tibet by her immediate neighbors—which caused the Lhasan lords and lamas to believe that
British India posed the greatest threat to their country's security. "Viewed from this perspective," Norbu then
adds, "the view that the Chinese Imperial court ordered Lhasa to ban the entry of Westerners into Tibet does not
hold much water." And here the Tibetan scholar may have been unduly influenced in his judgment by George
Bogle's own conclusion (which Norbu alludes to by way of a footnote citation) that the Panchen Lama's
420
reference to the Chinese order as a reason for his initial refusal of Bogle's admission into Tibet was "a pretense."
Even so, it must not be overlooked that though Bogle believed no such Imperial order existed, he nonetheless did
believe, as he himself wrote, that the assumed pretense "proceeded from a suspicion of Europeans." And hence,
if, as Ahmad Shah asserts, the desire for the issuance of such an Imperial ban originated not at Peking but at Lhasa
itself, then this would appear to the present writer to buttress Norbu's contention that it was the concern about
the encircling affect of British imperialism all along the cis-Himalayan region (as communicated to Lhasa by
Tibet's neighbors of like culture) which, in the view of Professor Norbu, drove the Tibetans after 1775 (the year
of Bogle's visit to the Panchen) to inaugurate a closed-door policy that in the end stood entirely at variance with
Tibet's previous centuries-long open-borders policy that had allowed for the entrance into her precincts of nearly
everyone from the outside.
Given the "priest-patron" relationship between Tibet and China, therefore, would it not be natural for
Tibet's ruling Lama, when confronted by what proved admittedly to be a m/sperceived danger from the south, to
ask his country's patron, the Chinese Emperor, to issue a new and stronger decree which would ban all Europeans—
and even more inclusively, nearly all residents of British India—from entering the now Forbidden Land? The ban
was not rigidly enforced by the Tibetans in every instance, as is readily demonstrated by Norbu in his study
Nevertheless, can it not be argued that a desire emanating from Lhasa—and whether impelled by the concerned
reports of either her cis-Himalayan friends or the Imperial Ambans, or both—could serve China's own strategic
interests in Central Asia vis-à-vis the Emperor's well-perceived enemy in South Asia: the British? See Norbu
1990, pp. 34-5.
53. Kawaguchi 1909, pp. 402-3. See also Bell 1924, pp. 59-60, for a similar description of the consequences
of the Pundit's Tibetan travels on behalf of the British Indian government.
54. These figures are the result of an in-depth study undertaken by the Council for Religious and Cultural
Affairs of the currently reigning—but exiled—Priest-King of Tibet, Dalai Lama XIV, who resides at Dharamsala
in Northwest India. Detailed research, compilation and analysis was carried out by the Council on some of the
sources used, and in which the monasteries had been listed by name, location, sect, founder's name, and the
number of monks and nuns. Most of these 600,094 inmates are now, as of 1989, either "dead or have disappeared
without a trace." For in one of the most physically and culturally destructive episodes "seldom equaled in human
history," the Chinese Communists ruthlessly and unmercifully eliminated both monastic institutions and their
inmates in a methodical attempt to eradicate religion from the land. As evidence of the devastation, it has been
reported that at the peak of the infamous Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, "not a single monk in robes could be
seen anywhere in Tibet"; and that of the 6,259 religious centers in the land only five remained in 1989, with even
these few having been left in a damaged state! Consult Ingram 1990, pp. 10, 293-4.
55. This stated requirement in the Tibetan polity may have been more legendary than real in its outworking.
Everyone in Tibet could become a monk (or nun), and many did, writes one respected modern scholar on Tibet,
"even if," he adds, "the legend that each family gave at least one of its sons for the monastic life cannot be
statistically proven." Franz Michael, "Survival of Tibet," TJ (Summer 1991):80.
56. Sources for this discussion on the monkish influence among Tibetans are: Rolf A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization,,
trans. J.E.S. Driver (London, 1972), 139-40; Chinlei 1981, p. 171; Tung 1980, p. 66; Mirsky, "Lost Horizons,"
The New York Review of Books (20 Dec. 1990):54; Charles A. Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore, The Pamirs; Being
a Narrative of a Year's Expedition on Horseback and on Foot through Kashmir, Western Tibet, Chinese Tartary,
and Russian Central Asia (London, 1893), 1:111; the "huge monastery" quote is from Hopkirk 1982, p. 13; and
Harrer, 1956, p. 162 (emphasis added).
57. Ahmad Shah 1906, pp. 73-4.
58. This term refers "to the symbiotic relationship between a religious figure and a lay patron. Chôyôn is an
abbreviation of two words: chôney, 'that which is worthy of being given gifts and alms' (for example, a lama or
a deity), andyondag, 'he who gives gifts to that which is worthy' (a patron). Thus, for Tibetans, the Dalai Lama
and the Manchu Emperor stood respectively as spiritual teacher and lay patron rather than subject and lord/'
Goldstein 1989, p. 44.
59. Dalai Lama XÏV 1962, p. 73.
60. Howard 1934, p. 341.
61. Much of the material and the Norbu and Das quotations to be found in this and the preceding paragraphs
are from Norbu 1990, pp. 30, 32, 33, 34; the Richardson quote is from Richardson 1962, p. 71; and the "bowl
broken" quote is from Mehra 1968, p. 138n. For an excellent, more recent in-depth study of Tibet's closed-door
policy, see further in the Norbu article, pp. 29-39.
Moreover, an article by another student of Tibetan history and culture, Heather Spence, sheds further light
on what really forms the basis for all this which Professor Norbu has described in explaining the paranoia of the
Tibetan monastic hierarchy towards the foreigner. In a masterfully written passage which is part of a recent paper
she wrote and published in the Tibet Journal that was derived from her doctoral thesis ("Tsarong II and Anglo-
Tibetan Relations 1903-1959"), Ms. Spence has set this profound hostility of the Tibetan monastic order
towards outsiders within the Tibetan Buddhist historical/mythological context, as follows:
Because of the unique culture of Lamaism, Tibetans regard their country religiously as something
unique and have, over a long period, developed an attitude of exclusiveness in relation to non-
Tibetans. This exclusiveness is the result of a monastic idealization of their country. It is motivated
by a religious idea, rather than by the thought of territorial possession, mid rests on the belief that
Tibet is the most congenial home for Buddhism.
Tibetans claim that Tibet is the Pure Land of Avalokitesvara, the patron deity of Tibet.
Traditionally, they believe in a revelation that is recorded in the "Manjusri-paramartha-
namasamgiti" which proclaims that Buddha Sakyamuni spoke to Avalokitesvara, saying: "Beyond
the Himalayas there live people to be saved. Go there instantly and save them." Tibetans
maintain " the land beyond the Himalayas" is Tibet, and hence Tibet is the world entrusted to
Avalokitesvara. In his [1913] Proclamation of Independence the Dalai Lama began thus: "... I
am speaking to all classes of Tibetan people. Lord Buddha, from the glorious country of India,
prophesied that the reincarnations of Avalokitesvara, through successive rulers from the early
[Tibetan] religious kings to the present day, would look after the welfare of Tibet." Embodied in
this concept is an emphatic belief that, through Buddha's grace, this pure Buddhist land will always
be secure, and that, even if misfortunes occur, they will be effortlessly surmounted. Incorporated
in this notion is the conviction that if foreigners intrude, the pure Buddhist land would be
instantly spoiled, the people would lose their happiness, incur the Buddha's punishment and fall
into misery forever. This profound principle formed the basis of the exclusivism which [later]
underpinned the antipathy of the monasteries for modernization. Consequently, it seemed both
logical and rational for the monastery lamas to encourage the government to prohibit the
entrance of foreigners into Tibet.
As the political influence of the Manchus began to decline in Tibet, an attempt to exert
influence through religious channels was made. Chinese monks in residence in the main Tibetan
monasteries persuaded the Tibetan monks that foreign travelers would pose a threat to the
Buddhist religion. Under pressure from the monks of Lhasa's main monasteries, the Government
issued instructions to all district officers on the borders to prevent foreign travelers from entering
Tibetan territory. This policy had such an effect on the minds of the Tibetans that even in later
years it was believed by many Tibetans that one's faith would be endangered by eating sweets or
using soap imported from India.
Tibet was open only to the Newar merchants and craftmen of Nepal, Ladakhi merchants and
tradesmen, many of whom were Moslems, Mongolian pilgrims, and to the Chinese, whose suzerainty
was generally recognized in the person of the Manchu Emperor who lavished gifts on many of the
dominant Tibetan monasteries. All these various neighboring peoples, except for the small
Moslem minority in Lhasa, were generally regarded by the Tibetans as subscribers to, if not actual
practitioners of, their religion, thus posing no threat to traditional values....
... The monasteries perceived that their function within the Government was to prevent
[any open-door policy], which they asserted was deleterious to the economic base of monasticism
and the religious values of Tibet. Their cardinal loyalty was to Buddhism and the [ruling] Gelugpa
monastic order rather than to any nationalistic entity called Tibet. They were committed to
supporting the Tibetan government only as long as it advanced the interest of the Gelugpa sect's
version of Tibetan Buddhism.
Spence 1991, pp. 46-8,46. Her source for (a) the reputed Buddha statement, was Hajime Nakamura, The Ways
of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (I960; reprint ed., New York, 1988), 610; for (b) the Independence Proclamation
quote, was Shakabpa 1967, pp. 246-7; and for (c) Tibetans' belief regarding Indian sweets and soap, was
Fernand Grenard, Tibet: the Country and Its Inhabitants (London, 1904), 135.
62. This Tsarong interview is a complete composite of the pertinent conversation as formed by putting
together both accounts of the interview (one longer, one shorter) that were set down by Bishop Fisher's wife
(who was also present at the interview) in her two books; (a) (Mrs.) Welthy (Honsinger) Fisher, The Top of the
420
World (New York, 1926), 45-6; and (b) To Light a Candle (New York, 1962), 187-8. Interestingly enough,
Tharchin would himself meet Mrs. Fisher in 1960 at Mussoorie, India! See Ch. 27 of the present narrative's third
volume. It should also be noted that present at this same interview as interpreter when only about 16 years old
was another future friend of Tharchin's, Mary La (Rinchen Dolma), who would eventually marry Jigme Taring,
about whom more is mentioned elsewhere later in the present narrative. The "consistently pro-British" quote_in
from Riencourt 1950, p. 184. The year for the interview is not clear from the two Fisher volumes, but 1925 as the
year is confirmed in Rinchen Dolma Taring's autobiography, Taring 1970, pp. 68, 105, 266 and caption of
Calcutta photo shown on the page opposite to p. 33. The Tibetan leader had left Lhasa in September of 1924 on
an assignment from the Dalai Lama of that day to inspect the National Mint at Yatung in southern Tibet, from
where he had then proceeded orhârd to India. See Spence 1991, p. 52. It is further confirmed by a Reuters
dispatch which appeared in the London Times of 2 Dec. 1924, p. 13 which read: "Tsarong Shape, the Tibetan
Commander-in-Chief, is to pay an informal visit to India shortly."
63. Taylor and Little are quoted in Louis 1894, pp. 145-6 and 147, respectively. The earlier JamyangNorbu
quote is from "Letters: Tourism in Tibet," TR (May 1987):26 (emphasis added). See also another and similar
statement by Little, an entry in his Diary for early September 1897, upon his arrival near the Tibetan border just
two days west of Tachienlu in western Szechuan Province, in A.J. Little, Mount Omi and Beyond; a Record of
Travel on the Thibetan Border (London, 1901), 171. The Littledale quotes are from Littledale, "A Journey
Across Tibet, from North to South, and West to Ladakh, G/(May 1896):467. The Curzon and Younghusband
quotes are from Mehra 1968, pp. 205, 205n.
64. Peter Hopkirk has extensively reviewed the pertinent travel literature in his book, Hopkirk 1982, passim.
There he cites instance after instance of various travelers and exploiters from nine different countries who
attempted to reach Lhasa and in the process encountered an almost identical response from frontier Tibetans—
whether officials or common citizens—who gave as their reason for thwarting their advance into the country that
if they did not turn these outsiders back they would literally lose their heads or limbs for not having done so.
65. A passage in Alex McKay's quite recent and very fine study, "Tibet: the Myth of Isolation," wherein he
quotes from an essay by the highly regarded Tibetan scholar, Luciano Petech of Italy, is supportive of this notion
of a "tandem operation" at work at this time between China and Tibet for their mutual self-interest:
Treaties between China and the European powers in 1858 and 1860 allowed Europeans to travel
freely throughout the Chinese Empire, and travelers could obtain Chinese passports supposedly
allowing them entry in Tibet. But Tibetan officials refused to accept China's authority in this
matter and continued to deny entry to foreigners. While acknowledging their treaty obligations,
the Chinese actually lacked the power to enforce their nominal authority at Lhasa, which was
increasingly autonomous.Yet it was also in China's interests to maintain Tibet's isolation. China
had a monopoly in economic areas such as the supply of tea, Tibet's ^primary beverage, and
regarded Tibet as being part of its empire. British India was seen as posing a threat to both China's
(steadily diminishing) economic and political supremacy in Tibet.
In his essay, "China and the European Travelers to Tibet, 1860-1880," Luciano Petech has
demonstrated how China and Tibet colluded in excluding foreign visitors. The Tibetan authorities
favored an isolationist policy and refused to follow Chinese orders to allows foreigners entry. But
although this was "a serious affront to imperial authority," "the Chinese themselves were not
happy about the voyages of the foreigners, and thus the disobedience of the Lhasa government
served as a convenient screen, i.e., as an adequate reason for dissuading and obstructing by every
means the foreign travelers without going so far as an outright refusal." Thus, during this period,
Chinese and Tibetan authorities cooperated in keeping Tibet's borders closed to foreign travelers.
Source: In van der Velde & McKay (eds.) 1998, pp. 304-5 and quoting from Petech's article that appeared in
T'oungPao ... (Leyden, Holland), vol. 62 (1972):232-3.
66. Besides the sources already cited, much else of this discussion on the China connection, exclusion policy
and related matters is based on brief presentations found in the following sources and given here in no particular
order of importance: Isabel S. Robson, Two Lady Missionaries in Tibet (London, 1909), 33-4, 48; Annie R.
Taylor, "My Experiences in Tibet," Scottish Geographical Magazine (Jan. 1894):8; Hopkirk 1982, pp. 55-8;
Waddell 1972, pp. 4-5; Bell 1924, pp. 59-60; DawaNorbu, "The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion: an Interpretation," TR
(Feb.-Mar. 1982):7; Ingram 1990, p. 381; and in "Introduction" in F. R. Hyde-Chambers, Lama, a Novel of Tibet
(1984; reprint ed., New York, 1985), 20.
67. Schneider 1891?, p. 51.
68. And as one chronicler of their efforts, writing in 1935, observed: "A long wait it was, for their followers
are waiting yet. The names of these two men have been handed down to us as models of patience." Hutton 1935,
168. Pagell would die on the mission field, but Heyde, who lived a long life, was to remain in Lesser Tibet for
much of the 50 years he was absent from the land of his birth, he never once having gone home for a furlough or
holiday. His wife, who had joined him on the mission field a few years after his own arrival in India, shared in his
kingdom labors for 44 of those years overseas. Both of them were able to return to Europe together in their old
age, thus being able to end their days in the familiar surroundings of their childhood. Of these 50 years, a little over
40 were spent by Heyde at Kyelang, but the last six years of his and his wife's labors in India (1898-1903) were
spent at Ghoom, to which place he had been transferred to chair a Tibetan New Testament Revision Committee
that included Tharchin's later good friend David Macdonald (see Vol. Ill, Ch. 28 for more on this). While still at
Kyelang, Heyde was able to write both a Tibetan Arithmetic and a View of the World, translate Beck's Manual of
Doctrine, and, at the request of the British Government of India, revise H.A. Jaeschke's monumental Dictionary.
When eventually he and his wife retired from Ghoom to Herrnhut in 1903, Heyde requested, and it was agreed
upon, that the Pentateuch part of the Tibetan Old Testament (whose translation, incidentally, had been revised
by Heyde's colleague ATI. Francke) be printed at Berlin. Besides seeing the Pentateuch through the press, among
his final services rendered to the Lord and His people were the correcting of an Oxford University Press reprint
fo the Tibetan New Testament in new medium type—a task which Mrs. Heyde continued after her husband's
death in 1907. Sr. Heyde would live on for another decade; she died at age 79 in 1917 at Schoenebeck, Germany.
Truly Br. Heyde and his wife were remarkable servants of the Lord. F.B. Shawe, a Moravian missionary
stationed at Leh during the Heydes' latter years at Kyelang, gave a glowing tribute to Rev. Heyde after his death
which not only is beautifully written but also provides an adequate measure of the man in a most meaningful way.
In it Shawe declared, among other things, that Heyde was truly a giant among missionaries and had "wielded a
giant's influence"; that to many in North India—both within and without the circle of mission workers—
'"Moravian Missions' spelled 4Mr. Heyde'"; that "the work was honored in him." Sources: Hutton 1935, p.
170; Hooper 1963, pp. 142-3; Hutton 1923, p. 361; and Shawe, "A Tribute to the Late Rev. A.W. Heyde, of
Tibet," MM (Nov. 1907):202-3.
69. This estimate per Bishop Benjamin LaTrobe, "Tibetan Missions and the British Advance towards
Lhasa," MRW (Apr. 1904):291. rr
70. Andrews 1934, p. 5.

71. These four telltale evidences of Tibetan Buddhism (but there are others as well) were quite ubiquitous in
both Lesser Tibet and Tibet proper. A description of each can perhaps be helpful to the reader who may not be
an courant with things Tibetan and Tibetan Buddhist And when finished reading what follows, the reader, if he
was not aware of it already, can begin to understand why it is that Tibetans have been called the most religious
people on earth.
(a) Prayer flags are pieces of cloth, usually white, btit may also be of other colors, which may be strung on
a length of string affixed to Tibetan homes or attached to high poles situated outside monasteries, shrines and
temples as well as outside the homes of Tibetan lamas, atop mountain passes, and along the footpaths and trails
dotting the Tibetan landscape. The colors used may be blue, red, white, yellow or green; these signifying,
respectively, the five elements of Tibetan Buddhism: sky, fire, cloud, earth and water. Inscribed or printed on
these flags are one or more Tibetan Buddhist mantras or so-called "prayer formulas," the most frequently found
on them being the universally accepted and most often invoked mantra of Tibetans everywhere: "Om! mani
padme Hum!" (whose meaning, among several, is basically translated into English as "Hail! O Thou Jewel in the
Lotus! Amen!") and which may be considered more of a statement of praise than of prayer. For in the original
Buddhism of long ago and in the real Buddhism of today there is and can be no such thing as prayer, inasmuch as
Gautama the founder of Buddhism, and the purest in doctrine of his followers ever since, alike do not admit that
gods or men can save mankind from the results of karma (cause and effect). Nevertheless, the ignorant masses of
Tibetan Buddhism (and for that matter, ignorant peasants in other Buddhist lands) undoubtedly make use of so-
called prayer mantras, even though the words of this most pervasively employed formula in Tibet, which have
fluttered from thousands, perhaps millions, of flags and which are twirled about in thousands of prayer wheels
(see below) day and night throughout the land of Bhod, are actually an ejaculation of praise and not of prayer. (See
the end-notes for Ch. 15 in Vol. II of the present narrative for a fuller explanation of this mantra and its use.) Now
the idea among Tibetan Buddhists seems to be that the more "prayers" a person offers up the quicker that one
will achieve Nirvana (indefinable bliss or, "the final result of the extinction of the desire or thirst for rebirth"—
N. Dutt), and that the person will obtain the same benefit from such contrivances as flags, wheels and mani walls
420
(see below) as if he had uttered the mantras himself. These flags are sometimes called "the horses of the wind/'
it being supposed that the breeze, as it causes the inscribed or printed cloths to flutter, carries off the "prayers"
over the land at the speed of swift steeds, and transporting them to the gods. But because the flags may not only
be inscribed or printed with the mantra formula but also sometimes with images, they are thus dubbed by
Tibetans as "wind pictures." Tibetans believe their "prayers" on these flags are repeated continually by the
wind, with all nature joining in with the celebration of the Tibetan religion. See Pemba 1957, p. 55; Louis 1894,
p. 56; Matthiessen 1979, p. 253; Enriquez 1914, pp. 201-2; Duncan 1906, p. 33; and Tung 1980, p. 24.
(b) Prayer wheels, or "praising wheels," as Capt. Enriquez was wont to call them, are of four kinds: those
twirled in the hand, those driven by a jet of water, those driven by the wind, and those of huge size placed in the
passages and/or doorways of monasteries, temples or shrines and that are to be set spinning by those who pass
by—whether inmates of these religious institutions, visitors or pilgrims. The first kind, which is the most
common, has been described as very much in the shape of a baby's rattle, and "is the inseparable companion of
the Buddhist devotee." This small wheel is always a cylindrical metal case, hollow, and with an opening at either
end. Mantras and other kinds of invocations are written oh pieces of paper and wound around a bamboo or
wooden rod and then inserted into the cylinder. This rod is kept in place by means of a carved shell washer which
is placed about the rod at the cylinder's top. The religious person then turns the wheel with a rotating hand
gesture. The so-called prayer wheels which, vast in size, are placed at monastery and temple sites have to be
turned clockwise and must always be done with the right hand. "To offend against either of these rules," one
Western writer on Tibet observed, "is to ally oneself with the practitioners of black magic." See Enriquez 1914,
p.202; Louis 1894, p. 107; Tung 1980, p. 69; and Lang-Sims 1963, p. 68.
(c) Mani walls (or mendong walls) are but one of two types of wayside monuments which have dotted the
landscape of Tibetans wherever followers of Tibetan Buddhism are fouád in Central Asia—but especially in the
Indian Himalayas and Tibet, and not only on the lower elevations but eveji higher up. The height of these praying,
or more correctly "praising" walls, might vary from two to ten feet, and their length from a few yards to as much
as a mile! These structures are low cemented breastworks upon which have been laid countless flat stones carved
in low relief with prayers (praises), texts from the sacred Tibetan scriptures, and even, but more rarely, beautifully-
executed bas-reliefs of Buddha, of various saints and of sacred Buddhist^ symbols—all thus constituting "the
accumulated offerings of local piety." Some of the textual inscriptions on the stones are quite lengthy, but the
most common inscription to be found everywhere has beeifthe simple invocation to the Buddha of the six mystic
syllables, "Om! mani padme Hum!" And as can be guessed, the name of these walls is derived from the second
word of this most famous of mantras in Tibetan Buddhism—"mani." By passing one of these walls on its\(eft
with one's right arm inwards a person safely invokes luck or adds to his or her credit the merit of having gotten
the benefit of all the prayers inscribed on the entire mani wall. And as one Western traveler through Indian Tibet
has commented, "this practice of scrupulously following the course of the sun is probably an outcome of the
nature-worship which preceded Buddhism in Tibet and which is still largely mingled with it." Now these
inscribed flat stones are usually prepared and then deposited on the mani for some special reason, such as for
safety on a journey, for the undertaking of any considerable enterprise, for a good harvest, for the birth of a son,
and so on. And hence, after so many centuries of these individual pious acts, the whole country of the Tibetans
had at one time become literally covered with these unusual monuments, thus having kept the idea of religion and
of Buddha's law ever fresh before the people's eyes wherever they went. As but one example, when an American
Army officer, Colonel Ilya Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy's grandson) was traveling on assignment through Tibet to China
during World War Two, he came upon the monastery of Kema Gompa in Northeast Tibet where no foreigner had
ever been before. But many Tibetans had been there before, as pilgrims, and had left behind them an innumerable
host of mani stones piled hither and yon near the monastery, they believing that a mani stone deposited near a
monastery would continue the prayer (praise) inscribed on it after the pilgrim had departed this holy ground. In
fact, Tolstoy estimated the number of stones at Kema Gompa to have been in the millions! And many of these,
he reported, had been whitewashed so that the mantra carvings, many of them of which were inscriptions of the
most famous mantra of all, would stand out in sharp relief. The Tibetans have been careful to ensure that %
roadway is always available on both sides of the wall, thus making it possible for both travelers and beasts to
pass to the left of the wall from either direction so as to earn merit, since merit even attaches to animals. As with
the large prayer (praising) wheels, so is it with the mani walls and the chortens (see below), that it is an inviolable
rule among Tibetans that any sacred object must be passed on the left, that is to say, the person must turn his of
her own right side towards it. Neglecting to observe this rule will not only be considered disrespectful but also
unlucky: "Beware of the devils on the left-hand side!" goes a popular Tibetan saying. But to turn the right side;
writes one Tibetan scholar, "is a sign of assent to the doctrine inscribed on the stores or enshrined in the chortetH
the left side is turned towards the devils, personifying sins and errors, in token defiant rejection of theif
blandishments." See Pallis 1949, p. 61; Enriquez 1914, p. 201; Wilson 1875, p. 255; Tung 1980, pp. 18,27; and
Duncan 1906, p. 32.
(d) Chortens, which are tombs or religious shrines in memory of the dead—especially of the saintly dead—
are the second type of wayside monuments to be seen in Tibetan lands, and may even be more pervasively
present than the manis. One Western traveler-scholar through Lesser Tibet has observed that both these types of
monuments fall into decay quite slowly, since, in these elevated mountain areas, scarcely any rainfall occurs, with
the only real destructive agent being the wind-blown sand. And hence, there has been an incredible accumulation
of these sacred objects over the centuries since their introduction into the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism.
Now the term chorten literally means in Tibetan "receptacle of offerings," or "reliquary," with some of them
sheltering religious relics of the actual ash remains of saints—lamas or monks who were great teachers—"as a
protection against the entry of evil influences"; others quite often only contain the intimate possessions of the
dead person—for example, sacred books which had belonged to him or some frequently-used utensils like a plate
or a cup; while still others merely stand as cenotaphs, having been erected for the mere merit which accrues from
simply building such monuments. Marco Pallis has called the Tibetan chorten "the Buddhists' emblematic
monument, replacing the crucifix of Catholic lands." Like the ancient Buddhists of North India, Tibetan Buddhists
of a later era had a penchant for pagoda building, no doubt borrowing the idea from India, For it is known that this
latter land had at one time been covered with stupas, the antecedent to the Tibetan Buddhist chorten; and relics
of the Buddha, as well as exquisite carvings of the stories of his life, have been recovered from these ruined shrines
all over Hindustan. The Tibetan chorten "comes in all sizes and degrees of sophistication in detail and execution,"
writes Rosemary Tung, "but the familiar silhouette, that of the ancient Indian stupa, remains constant." For each
Tibetan chorten, Tung explains, "there were usually thirteen rings, representing the thirteen stages of advancement
towards Buddhahood. The entire structure, including the square base, represents the five elements: earth, water,
fire, air and space. The top of the chorten is crowned with sun and half-moon forms. The sun represents wisdom;
the moon, compassion. The sun and moon forms are said to unite at the moment of achieving enlightenment.
Enlightenment is synonymous with becoming a Buddha." Now chortens, which were fashioned from hewn stone
or plaster, were often built on high points near monasteries. With their spires, these monuments were reminders,
added Tung, "of the transcendence from earth to ether, and of the triumph of the spirit over worldly attachments,
symbols of Buddhism's goal of release from the material world and its suffering." The more influential the
monasteries and temples were, near or around which the chortens were erected, the longer the row or the greater
the collection of these monuments there would be. Chortens may also appear on solitary rocks and at other
vantage points, along lonely caravan trails, outside towns, in the midst of a busy bazaar, and may appear either
singly, in long rows, or stand in groups of three (if they be merely religious monuments and not tombs): one
painted red, one white and the other blue, in honor of the spirits of the earth, sky and water-—doubtless a
survival, again, of the nature-worship among Tibetans already mentioned above and which dated from pre-
Buddhist times. Generally however, chortens are uncolored and contain the ashes of the dead. For example, the
Tibetans in Ladakh (way to the north of Poo), like other Buddhists, bum the dead; they then collect some of the
bones, grind these down and mix with clay, and—by means of wooden molds—are shaped by the lamas into
miniature chortens or figures of Buddha. These are then placed in the monumental chorten, where they can easily
be seen through a small aperture about halfway up the side. Like the mani walls, chortens are held in such high
esteem that no Tibetan would presume to pass on the "wrong" side of them; it would be impious if not
inauspicious for the person to do so. And hence, as in the case with the manis, when chortens were erected along
a road or trail, the latter had to be bifurcated around them in order to permit traffic to pass on both sides—with
the right shoulder respectfully turned towards them. See Enriquez 1914, pp. 199-201; Duncan 1906, pp. 32-3;
Pallis 1949, p. 61; Lama Anagarika Govinda (an Indian national born in Germany of European descent and
Buddhist faith), "The Gyantse Palkhor Chorten," TR (Oct.-Dec. 1969): 11; and Tung 1980, pp. 16, 21.
It should be noted finally, that in post-1950 Tibet itself, very few of the many thousands of chortens and
mani walls which had dotted the Tibetan landscape remain today. They were destroyed by the rampaging Red
Guards set loose by Mao Tse-tung during the period of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution (1966-76),
if not earlier.
72. Here would be an appropriate place to define a few terms which have found their way into the narrative
within the last few pages. Buddhism as a religious faith, including an explanation as to how Tibetan Buddhism
diverges from the original teaching of the founder, will be described later in the Text of the present chapter. For
now, though, it is important that the reader understand to some degree what is meant by certain terms which will
continue to be employed in the Text and that until recently have generally been applied not by Tibetans
themselves but by foreigners as a way of identifying particular elements within the Tibetan Buddhist "Church"
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and its hierarchy. However, such terminology, though widely accepted and employed by Western writers, and
used even by some Chinese writers, have not been altogether acceptable to the Tibetans, to say the least. These
are the terms Lamaist Buddhism, Lamaism or Tibetan Lamaism, as well as the terms Lama on the one hand and
monk, nun or priest on the other.
The third and last so-called Religious King of Tibet, by name Ralpachen who ruled in the early 9th century
a.d. (which was only shortly after Buddhism from India had been introduced in earnest into the country), was
reputedly a very pious Buddhist who soon decreed that the position of the monks in the land was to be elevated
and that they should be held in high esteem by all. This "Religious" King's action thus generated the special place
which the monks have ever since come to enjoy in Tibetan society. Now monk and nun (gedun) are the basic
terms for all who enter Buddhist monastic life in Tibet. Meaning "those in search of virtue" or "those who have
the wish for liberation," the Tibetan word gedun is descriptive of those who, having entered upon the monastic
pursuit, devote themselves to the service of the noble ideals taught by the founder of Buddhism. This involves
service for mankind, and hence the activities of the monks and nuns presumably have as their aim the amelioration '
and resolution of the problems of fellow human beings. All monks (and the few nuns among the Tibetans) who
perform such noble service are highly respected and even revered for it.
But there is another term which overlaps that of gedun, which is the Tibetan term bla-ma from which h^s
been derived the word lama that has been employed by Chinese and other foreigners when referring to almost all
priests or monks of the Buddhist monastic order in Tibet and Mongolia. The Tibetans themselves, though,
restrict the application of the term to those monks famed for wisdom and saintliness, and hence the term lama
was much narrower in its definition than that of gedun or monk. The word itself means "superior one," "spiritual
master" or "one who is above all" and was early used by Tibetans to translate the English word "teacher" or the
Sanskrit ttrm guru (which means "one who is heavy with knowledge" arid moreover one who is benevolent with
knowledge—that is, one who helps others to understand). Lama therefore implied in Tibetan society a teacher of
religion; accordingly, not all monks, (or nuns), not even those fully ordained monks, are Lamas. Those in the
monastic community who deal mainly with the management of affairs, the crafts, or the professions provide a
service which is different from that of teaching the Doctrine (the Dharma of Buddha) and would consequently not
be deemed as Lamas. In other words, a monk would only become a Lama if and when he has been able to impart
some religious instruction to the other monks; otherwise, he would remain a mere friar or gedun. On the other
hand, learned religious teachers who are not monks would nonetheless be addressed as Lamas. These would be
lay and married Lamas, and they might be members of certain sects of the Tibetan Buddhist "Church" that allow
non-monastic membership or they might be outstanding learned laymen of any Buddhist sect in Tibet. Thus,
more strictly speaking, Lama is a title to which only the great religious figures distinguished by their ascetic lives
or the miracles performed, the heads of monasteries, and the so-called "incarnates" (who are always trained as
\ teachers) had a right to hold.
\ With respect to the terms Lamaism, Tibetan Lamaism or Lamaist Buddhism, it should first be noted that not
only do ordinary Tibetans not use these terms when referring to their religion, they do not even use the term
Buddhism! In fact, there is no word for Buddhism in the Tibetan language. On the contrary, as the eldest brother
of the present spiritual ruler of Tibet has pointed out: "In Tibet, we refer to our religion as 'the' religion, and at
the utmost perhaps as "the religion of Buddha'." On the other hand, Sir Charles Bell had "preferred to call this
religion Tibetan Buddhism'... rather than 'Lamaism"' because "many Tibetans ... resent the term Lamaism, as
implying that their religion is not Buddhism at all."
It has to be acknowledged that scholars and writers on Tibet and its religion have been at a loss as to how
precisely to refer to its religious establishment. This is because in the minds of many, the so-called Buddhism
of Tibet in both its doctrine and practice would not in its final form have been recognizable to the founder of
Buddhism, the historical Buddha. Tibet's religion, moreover, eventually came to be called Lamaism by many
outside observers because of its numerous priestly upholders, the Lamas. In effect, notes Peter Hopkirk,
Lamaist Buddhism simply "came to mean rule by a religious hierarchy headed by the Dalai Lama." Not unlike
Bell, though, in the minds of others such as the Dutch Tibetologist P. H. Pott, this use of the word Lamaism
was looked upon by Tibetans as "an abusive term, comparable with the word 'Papism' for Catholicism," and
was "therefore undesirable." Nevertheless, even he was hard put "to find a satisfactory substitute," because
in his view "Tibetan Buddhism" had "too narrow a meaning" since the same form of religion could also be
found in China, Mongolia and in some parts of India. As it turned out, Pott would himself end up employing
the "abusive term" in-his own scholarly discussions of Tibet's religion! Surprisingly, too, even the great
Tibetan scholar, archaeologist and anthropologist from Italy, Giuseppe Tucci, who once declared like Bell that
"Tibet's religion ought rather to be called Tibetan Buddhism than Lamaism," had not followed his own advice
but had frequently used the latter term in some of his own writings, albeit his earlier works; see, e.g., Tucci and
Ghersi 1935, pp. 198, 199,201.
Now because the terms lama and monk have come to be so interchangeably employed down through the
years by many non-Tibetan writers and scholars to refer generally to members of the Tibetan monastic community,
so it will be the case in the present narrative, except in those instances where a more precise differentiation is
absolutely required for clearer communication. But then, too, and for the same reason, when referring to the
religious faith and practice of Tibet, the terms Lamaism, Lamaist Buddhism, Tibetan Lamaism and Tibetan
Buddhism will likewise be used interchangeably, even as some modern-day scholars from Tibet itself have chosen
to do; e.g., the highly respected Professor of International Studies, DawaNorbu.
Sources for this note: Michael 1982, pp. 93, 132; Tucci 1956, p. 21 and Tucci 1973, pp. 201-2; Goodman
1986, pp. 49, 54n.; William W. Rockhill, Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet, Based on the Collections in the United
States National Museum (in Annual Report of the US. National Museum, 1893, Washington, D.C., 1895, pp. 665-
747), 730; Norbu 1961, p. 88; Hopkirk 1982, p.13; Pott 1951, p. 14; and Bell, "The Struggle for Mongolia,"
JRCAS (Jan. 1934):51.
73. Andrews 1934, p. 5.
74. Although these two never did reach Mongolia, Pagell, had he lived long enough, could have taken further
solace in knowing that his son, born at Poo, would some day become a schoolmaster at the original Moravian
settlement at Sarepta, already mentioned, that in the 18s1 and early 19th centuries had seen the conversion of some
of the Mongolian Calmuck Buddhists and the establishment of a congregation there before the Russian edict
ended the Herrnhut gospel witness in the area. Pagell's son's presence in Sarepta in 1914 is known from the
report of a journey which another Moravian missionary in the West Himalaya Mission, A.H. Francke, had taken
from his European home territory of Silesia that year into Central Asia and onward to Leh in Indo-Tibet. See
Bishop Benjamin LaTrobe, "Dr. Francke's Journey through Russian and Chinese Turkestan to Leh," MM (Sept.
1915):136,138.
75. The Sepoy Mutiny was set off when these sepoys heard a rumor that animal fat was being used in
cartridges which the soldiers would be required to bite to load their rifles. On the one hand, Hindus had heard it
was beef fat; on the other, Moslems, that it was pig fat; but in both cases it would violate a taboo of each religious
group. British troops were barely able to put down the rebellion, having to race up and down the new Grand
Trunk Road that had so recently been built. At Kanpur, the British garrison with its many women and children
was slaughtered, causing the word "Cawnpore"—as it was then spelled—to become a rallying cry for British
retribution. The mutiny almost immediately precipitated the end of the East India Company's rule over the
Subcontinent and led to the British raj—direct rule by the Crown.
76. For further amplification on this subject, see Bray 1993, 182-3, where the author in part has written:
The British were afraid that the missionaries would antagonize the Lhasa authorities, thus
jeopardizing the future of Anglo-Tibetan relations—and possibly their own lives. They therefore
discouraged missionaries from entering Tibet and by the 1920s this had become established
Government of India policy. No one who was not an Indian or a Tibetan was allowed to cross the
frontier into Tibet without a pass. In an internal discussion note of 1922, Government of India
Foreign Secretary Sir Denys Bray proposed that passes should be given freely "except to sportsmen,
missionaries and undesirables." However, he thought it inadvisable for the government formally
to bar missionaries as a class—possibly because he feared criticism from British church leaders. He
therefore suggested that the government should, where appropriate, consult Lhasa before refusing
passes to certain "undesirables" so that the Tibetans would carry their share of responsibility. The
British would have preferred Lhasa to issue a formal statement banning missionaries, but the
Tibetans never did so. In practice both sides found it convenient to blame the other for a policy
they both accepted.
77. Although there were many critics and detractors—especially those active in, and supportive of, Christian
Missions in India—of the entire British policy just described in the foregoing paragraphs, it had its defenders too.
One such defender, eloquent in his presentation, was Lieutenant General Sir George Macmunn. KCB, KCSI,
DSO. At one time he had been Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery in India, and it is therefore quite
understandable the position he took on the matter when writing retrospectively on this subject in his published
, study on the religions and cults of India. Penning his remarks in the 1930s, Sir George felt led at one point to
| digress for a moment to render a lengthy ringing endorsement of British policy in the Subcontinent towards all
I religions. It can be found on pp. 44-6 of Macmunn n.d.
420
78. The sources for this discussion of the East India company and British policy towards Christian Missions
are five in number: (1) Webster's 1934, entry: "East India Company," p. 811; (2) Wallbank et al. 1967, pp. 620-
1; (3) Lindell 1979, pp. 43-4, 96; (4) Hooper 1963, p. 30; and (5) Wells 1951, pp. 242-3, 292-3.
79. In the instance at hand, Major Lake donated Rs. 200/- towards the initial expenses of building at Kyelang,
and further promised Rs. 10/- monthly once the intended school would open at the mission station. Furthermore,
wrote Pagell and Heyde, the Major "engages to assist us in any way and to any extent in his power." Letter to the
CMS Treasurer, Kotgarh, 6 Nov. 1856, quoted in PA (Mar. 1857):201. ten years later, but now a Colonel, found
Lake "and other influential Christian gentlemen" advising the Moravians at Kyelang on the "proper steps to be
taken" in securing additional property on a nearby hillside and on level ground adjacent to the mission compound;
and one of their number mentioned in a letter how Colonel Lake and the others "do all they can to further our
object, for which we owe them many thanks." Br. Th. Rechler, in letter from Kyelang, 14 Sept. 1865, ibid. (Mar.
1866):582. Even as late as November 1871, Lake—by now a retired General living with his wife at Simla—
continued to support the Mission with money and material gifts. Ibid. (June 1872):261.
80. For 18 years Pagell rendered excellent service at Poo. "On 3 Jan. 1883, Pagell fell dead in his surgery; six
days later (9 Jan.) Mrs. Pagell died; and, with her last breath she urged the three Christians in the village to hold
true to the faith." Hutton 1923, pp. 363-4. Thus, after 30 years of faithful and patient service among the
Tibetans, he, and his wife a few days later, were buried together at Poo by these same three local Christians.
Hutton 1935, p. 170. These three were none other than Jonathan and Hannah, the parents of Gergan Tharchin's
stepfather Madtha Zering, and Benjamin.
81. Redslob, "A Mission 11,000 Feet Above Sea Level," PA (Mar. F886):484-5.
82. See Finegan 1986, p. 184; Kenneth Mason (ed.), Himalayan Journal (1933): 103n.; and Nawang Tsering
Shakspo, "Historical Perspectives of Nubra in Ladakh," in Icke-Schwalbe & Meier (eds.) 1990, p. 104.
83. One objective appraisal of the Leh station and its influence for good comes from an unusual source.
Exactly 16 years after its founding, the famed Swedish explorer Sven Hedin had occasion to spend 10 days at Leh
in late Dec. 1901, at the conclusion of a six-month expedition in Tibet; he spent an even longer period in the
Ladakhi capital five years later while preparing for his departure on still another journey into Tibet that began on
14 Aug. 1906. In describing his experience there on both occasions, Hedin had the following to say about the
Moravians, their Mission, and the Mission community. Of his 1901 stay, he could write: "I was overwhelmed
by the many and great kindnesses shown me by the missionaries at Leh ... I visited the missionaries every day,
and have seldom known a station conducted in so exceptional a manner and with such promise of success." And
of his longer stay in July-Aug. 1906, Hedin had further praise for his missionary friends and their community:
The Moravian missionaries in Leh rendered me invaluable service. They received me with the
same hospitality and kindness as before, and I passed many a memorable hour in their pleasant
domestic circle.... In Leh the missionaries have a community which they treat with great gentleness
and piety, for they know well that the religion inherited from their fathers has sunk deep into the
bone and marrow of the natives, and can only be overcome by cautious, patient labor. Even the
Ladakhis who never visit the Mission stations always speak well of the missionaries, and have a
blind confidence in them, for apart from their Mission work they exercise an effect by their good
example. The Hospital is made great use of, and medical science is a sure way of success to the
hearts of the natives....
See Hedin 1903, II: 38 and Hedin 1909,1: 54-5.
84. Br. Romig (Moravian Mission Board at Herrnhut), "Our Mission School at Leh," PA (Mar. 1890):45. It
ought to be noted that at the time of this decree the schoolmaster was none other than the father of Yoseb
(Joseph) Gergan, the great Tibetan Bible translator, whose personal story, together with that of his father's, is
recounted in Vol. Ill, Ch. 28 of the present narrative. Yoseb would himself later serve as one of the Leh mission
school's masters and would eventually assume its Headmastership as well.
85. McLeish 1931, p. 95.
86. It has been the opinion of a number of highly respected modern day scholars that the historical Buddha
was not of Indo-Aryan but Tibeto-Mongoloid stock. Their opinions are based on solid scholarly grounds. Two
such scholars who have posited this notion are Sir Charles Bell, in Bell 1946, pp. 175-6 and Nirmal C. Sinha,
"India and Tibet: Historical considerations," Bulletin o/Tibetology (8 Feb. 1978):20. Cf. also Tanka B. Subba,
Flight and Adaptation: Tibetan Refugees... (Dharamsala, 1990), 59,61. Professor Sinha mentioned in his article
that on several occasions he had told Tibetan Lamas "that in modern Indian opinion Buddha Sakyamuni would
be traced to Tibeto-Mongoloid stock and not Indo-Aryan." "Far from pleasing the Lamas," he later remarked,
"my statement was a sort of blasphemy which pained them considerably. To a Northern Buddhist all moral and
spiritual values are from Aryabhumi and Buddha Sakyamuni could not but be Arya ..."
87. There have been those writers on Buddhism—both West and East—who have claimed that the historical
Buddha did believe in a Supreme Being and even taught about such a deity. Hindu Swami Satyananda, for
example, made this claim in his book, The Origins of Christianity (Calcutta, 1923), 36-7, 60-1, citing several
translated discourses or statements of the Buddha to support this claim. Commenting on this in a letter to the
present author, Buddhist scholar Dr. Gary Houston, formerly an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church
(English Catholic) but now a full-fledged Buddhist, observed the following: "Buddha was not interested in God
in any way. Any other reading of his words is based upon a Western bias and/or a mistranslation of the text. In
the [Satyananda] case you quoted, the translators were Western and Christian and hence interested in finding
common ground so to speak." On the other hand, "Swamis are interested in showing that everyone is really a
theist or Hindu at heart." Swami s, adds Houston, are not at all to be trusted on Buddhist matters. Houston to the
author, Bedford IN USA postmarked 14 Oct 1996.
In regard to a related matter, however, Western Buddhist scholar of great repute, David Snellgrove, asserts
that during his lifetime Gautama made extraordinary claims to preeminence in the world. In fact, he had claimed
for himself to be superior to both gods and men. Writes Snellgrove about the historical Buddha: "he seemingly
claimed to be, and was certainly acclaimed by his early followers as,, the superior of gods and men." What this
scholar in particular had reference to is what the earliest known Buddhist tradition has claimed Gautama both did
and said at his birth. As a babe just born he did or said the following, according to this earliest tradition:
1. He took seven firm steps to the north.
2. He then turned in succession and surveyed all four directions of the earth.
3. And having done this he then verbally proclaimed: "I am the chief in the world. I am the best in the world.
I am first in the world. This is my last birth. There is now no existence again."
4. He also asserted: "I am the greatest of all beings." (1-3, Snellgrove; 4, Franson source, see below).
Apart1 from the fact that it strains credulity to believe that an infant just born, if truly human, could do and
say these things, one ought to point out here that not even the body of canonical Christian writings has claimed
for its God-Man protagonist, Jesus Christ, such supramundane abilities at His birth, and not simply for the
reason that He, a babe just born, never did these things but also for the reason that such acts performed within the
context given here must be judged by rational, logical minds to be totally absurd, as well they should be.
Here, also, is what the Buddhist record has claimed Gautama said subsequent to his enlightenment experience,
such experience having earned for him from his followers the title of Buddha, "the Enlightened One":
1. "I am the all-knowing. By my own power I possess knowledge; whom should I call my master?" (recorded
in the Mahavagga; see Franson source cited below).
2. "I am the Lord of All, the Omniscient.... I am the Worthy One in the world, the Teacher Supreme. I alone
am the Perfect Buddha..." (from a Theravadin text, the Majjhima Nikaya, quoted by Snellgrove).
Accepting for the sake of discussion that all these statements were in fact uttered by the historical Buddha
(and not inventions made up, many critics believe, by his devoted followers and four-centuries-later biographers),
it would do well to consider the observations which one Christian writer on Buddhism, Fredrik Franson, made in
the course of his published inquiry into Tibetan Buddhism.
1. If Gautama Were, indeed, as he supposedly claimed at his birth, the greatest of all beings, then it needs to
be asked how he could have made such a monumentally grievous mistake as to have engaged in the so-called Great
Renunciation. Only after six painful and unfruitful years did Gautama come to realize that in his quest to resolve
the questions of existence he had been in error in renouncing family, suitable raiment, food and shelter, and in
inflicting upon himself an ineffective radical mortification of the flesh. "This act alone," Fraason observed,
"shows that Buddha was only a man and exposed to errors as anybody else."
2. Further evidence of Buddha's humanity in that he lacked full knowledge and wisdom, and thus was
vulnerable to error like any other earthly mortal, can be demonstrated from the record of his life that has not been
questioned by his Buddhist followers.
a. If, as Gautama claimed after his enlightenment, he was "all-knowing" and "omniscient," then how is it,
Franson inquires, that in the account of Buddha's life it is mentioned that following his enlightenment he thought
itiat first useless to preach because men would not understand him? Yet the same Buddhist record indicates that
the god Brahma Sahampati had to show him his mistake. Where, asks Franson, was his omniscience on this
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particular occasion? And how, one can legitimately ask, could he have had the temerity to claim for himself
superiority over all gods, including this god Brahma?!?
b. When Gautama finally did intend to preach, he as "the Enlightened One"—the all-wise, "all-knowing"
decided to go to his two former teachers, Alara and Uddaka, and preach to them the new Doctrine: not knowing,
however, that they were dead. Where, again, asks Franson, was his omniscience here?
3. Yet Gautama Buddha, says Franson, was equally lacking in all-knowledge when it came to the realm of the
physical sciences.
a. For example, it is said in the Saptasuryodgama Sutraya that Buddha taught that there was a mountain
(which he called Maha-Meru) in the middle of the earth of each planet or world that was far more than 8000 miles
in length, breadth and height; whereas the planet earth itself is but 8000 miles in diameter right through. If such
a teaching of the "all-knowing" one were true, there would be no room for such a mountain on earth, and on the
moon there would be even less room for it. How, then, can this highly inaccurate assertion at all square with the
"Teacher Supreme" status he supposedly claimed for himself?
b. Buddha, notes Franson, spoke in absurd terms also about fishes which in size, said "the Omniscient" One,
greatly exceeded 1000 miles in length.
c. But the "Teacher Supreme" taught as well that the sun was many, many times smaller than the earth, when
in actuality it is many thousand times larger.
d. And Buddha's reputed knowledge in the field of astronomy pertaining to eclipses of the sun and moon and
in the realm of medical science reveals even further and greater ignorance in one whom many have deemed to be
the Enlightened One of the Ages.
Just as had Franson, one can only conclude from all this that Qautama Buddha, far from being the Omniscient,
All-Knowing One, was bereft of even the most ordinary and basic knbwledge possessed by the average little
school boy of today. Or is the average rationally-endowed earthly human being missing something here? A review
of all the above, concludes Franson, lends great credence to a particular dialogue reported in the Buddhist records
to have taken place between Gautama and an Indian Raja. While the Buddha was still alive he was asked by Raja
Bimbisara who he was, and in the light of what has been discussed it can readily be said that in this case he uttered
an accurate assessment of who he truly was. Demanded Bimbisara of "the greatest of all beings": "Who or what
are you? Axt you a god, or a Naga, or Brahma, or Sakra, or a man, or a spirit?" To which "the Lord of All" replied,
"I am not god, or spirit, but a plain man seeking for rest."
Well did Snellgrove hedge a bit in his otherwise categorical statement about the historical Buddha, when this
Buddhist scholar declared: "he seemingly claimed to be ... the superior of gods and men." See Snellgrove 1987,
1:7-8, 27, 32, 34n.; and Franson 1897, pp. 2, 28-31, 39.
88. Main sources for this outline of the life and death of Buddha are: on Asoka and Lumbini, cf. "The
Birthplace of Buddha," Times (London), 28 Dec. 1896, p. 3 with "Lumbini Pillar Celebrations...," Kathmandu
Post, 8 Dec. 1996, p. 1 and Nagendra Sharma, "Hallowed Lumbini Garden," Safari Nepal (July-Aug. 1991):3-5,
and see also "Here Was the Blessed One Born," TR (Apr. 1973):5; on Queen Maya's dream, see Wallbank et al.
1967, p. 97; Hicks 1988, pp. 6, 8; Saunders 1998,4:687-96; Wells 1951, p. 113; forthe "ethical code" quote, see
Ekvall 1907, p. 132; and for the Buddha's dying words and lack of talk about God, see: Franson 1897, p. 32;
"Buddha's 2,500th," Time, 21 May 1956, p. 60; and Norbu and Turnbull 1968, p. 157.
89. Some of the sources used for this discussion of the Buddha's enlightenment are: Bell 1931, p. 22; Hicks
1988, p. 8; Saunders 1998,4:687-96; Wells 1951, p. 112; SanthaRamaRau, "Benares: India's City of Light," NG
(Feb. 1986):222, 224-5,228,237,241,251; and for "wheel and deer" seeFinegan 1986, p. 126.
90. In a masterfully-written brief summary of Tibetan Buddhism published in 1981, Jampei Chinlei, at that
time the Vice Chairman of the Tibetan branch of the Chinese Buddhist Association (as well as Vice President of
the Chinese (Communist) People's Political Consultative Conference), provides a clear and concise delineation of
the difference that exists within the Buddhist belief system between the Arhat ideal of the Hinayanists and the
Bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayanists. He writes (in Chinlei 1981, p. 158):
An Arhat, "a Worthy One," who has attained the blissful serenity called Nirvana through the
extinction of karma ... has [thus] attained salvation and accepts his individual beatitude; a
Bodhisattva, on the contrary, attains illumination but postpones the enjoyment of celestial bliss,
remaining actively present in the cycle of births and deaths until every sentient being shall have
reached complete deliverance from suffering. As one immediately realizes, the Bodhisattva ideal
contains a highly inspiring message of love, charity and altruism ... [and thus in the Mahayana *
school] the Arhat ideal gives way to the Bodhisattva ideal.
By contrast, the Christian combines both these ideals into one new way of life in Christ Jesus. And that new
pathway of life begins with initial enlightenment of the truth as it is in Jesus and with the experience of initial
salvation in Him, and then the pathway continues with further and further enlightenment and with the performing
of good works in the power of His Holy Spirit throughout one and one life only on earth until salvation in its
fullest sense is finally realized at the return of Christ. The reading of the text of the following references from the
Christian Scriptures can make this abundantly plain: the Gospel according to John the Apostle, John 3:16; John
3:19-21; John 8:12; the Epistle of Paul the Apostle t0 the Colossian believers, Colossians 1:9-14; Epistle of Paul
to the Ephesian believers, Ephesians 2:4-10; the General Epistle of James the Apostle, James 2:14-26; and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, 9:24-28.
91. Yet it need to be noted that much of Buddha's thinking was not original with him. As Fredrik Franson has
observed: "With regard to all the good moral precepts given by Buddha such as not to steal, commit adultery, use
intoxicating drinks, tell lies, etc., these and many more were given by God [of the Hebrews through Moses] about
1000 years before they were spoken by Gautama... .We ... may term him an inventor of a philosophical system,
or rather an organizer of the system, as most of his ideas were already existing before." Franson 1897, pp. 16,17.
92. Wells 1951, p. 113. Among other things, it has been claimed that Gautama had had a miraculous birth,
having had no earthly father; yet history reveals that in fact he had an earthly father and that his name was
Suddhodana. "All such stories about his miraculous birth and other supernatural events in his life are only
inventions." Franson 1897, p. 3.
93. Various critical writers and scholars on Buddhism have noted the consequences of the Buddha's ban on
deities among his followers who, like him, had heretofore been Hindus, Christian missionary leader Franson, for
example, has written: "Buddha exerted no external pressure to enforce submission to his doctrines, but used only
moral suasion. He removed from his own and his followers' contemplations the innumerable deities in which his
contemporaries believed; he showed that the Hindu gods were changeable, ignorant and full of passions like
human beings. But after he had taken away their faith in their old gods,... he gave them nothing else to worship
in their stead, but left to man himself to fight the great battle with sorrow, sin and death. The result naturally was,
that his followers soon made themselves new gods.... People must have something to worship, and so ... they
began to make themselves idols, and even began to worship Buddha although he himself said that he was only a
man....Tibetans, as well as other Buddhists, have begun to worship lower deities and invisible spirits." Ibid. 6,
18, 20; cf. also McNeill, 1967, pp. 83, 169-71.
94. Other than those already cited, this outline of Buddhism as a religious faith and its subsequent Mahayana
development has been largely based on the following additional sources: Chapman 1975, pp. 668-70; Macmunn
n.d., pp. 44, 46-7, 49, 53-4, 57, 59-63; Bell 1931, pp. 21-31; Stcherbatsky 1989, p. 36; the Principal Grant and
Professor Monier-Williams quotes are from Graham 1898, pp. 133 and 131-2, respectively; other quoted
material used here from Graham's volume has also been derived from ibid., 131-4; the "counseled moderation"
quote is from Norbu and Turnbull 1968, pp. 157-9; for non-worship of Buddha by Hinayanists, see Finegan
1986, p. 67; for the Dawa Norbu quote, see Norbu 1987, p, 32; for the Saunders quote, see Saunders 1998,4:692;
Goodman 1986, p. 49; McNeill 1967, pp. 81-4, 160-1, 170-1; Wallbank et al. 1967, pp. 96-9; and Hoffmann
1961, p. 30. See also ibid., passim, for an excellent treatment on the historical development of Tibetan Buddhism
up through the Tsong Khapa Reformation of the 14th-15th centuries in Tibet.
95. Julien A.H. Louis, writing at the same time as Professor Monier-Williams, gave an even less charitable
assessment about Buddhism's declension from its pristine origins. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
and member of the Buddhist Text Society of India, Louis offered his readers the following indictment on True
Buddhism's demise: "There is no doubt that in the course of its propagation over different parts of Asia,
Buddhism has had the complaisance of amalgamating to a considerable degree with the religions already established.
This, doubtless, has been one of the reasons for its extensive and welcome acceptance, but the natural result has
been such fundamental modifications of the original doctrine, that the true Buddhism of Sakya Muni no longer
exists anywhere at the present day, neither in practice nor even in the sacred writings, which have been
accommodated, in their several versions, to the ideas of each sect, of each people, of each religion, with which, in
the course of centuries, it has come in contact." Louis 1894, p. 98.
96. David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, in chronicling in their volume on Tibetan culture history the rise
and development of Buddhism in India, have employed some remarkable phraseology at times to describe the
radical deviations from the original Dharma of Siddhartha Gautama that occurred during the centuries which
420
followed his death. Buddhism, of course, had begun, they write, simply "as a special way of life for gentle
ascetics ... who deliberately forsook their homes and normal responsibilities for the homeless life of religious
mendicants.... The Buddhists began as one order of Indian ascetics among many others, but it happened to be the
one that succeeded... beyond all others.... But as Buddhism became the religion of the many [some two centuries
later], it became increasingly necessary for its accredited representatives to attend to the wants of its lay
supporters. Thus Buddhist monks began to act as priests, acknowledging, as did the [Hindu] Brahmans, the
power and influence of local gods....
"Yet the greatest change that Buddhism was to undergo seems to have been largely an internal development,
for it concerned the actual goal and forms of practice of those who were seriously devoted to Buddhism as a
religion in its own right.... [At about the beginning of the Christian era the]... new and ambitious theories... of
the 'Great Way' {Mahayana)... involved a radical shift in Buddhist philosophy and morality, and ... it was this
later form of Buddhism that the Tibetans received from their neighbors from the seventh century a.d. onwards...
This process [of the practical differentiation] between early Buddhism and the Mahayana, unfortunately perhaps
for the subsequent history of Buddhism, did not stop even here.
"As a pan-Indian religion Buddhism was now ready to adopt any religious practices whatsoever, so long as
they might be used as a means towards the perfection of enlightenment, and since the decision about what was
usable or not depended upon no recognized authority, but upon those practicing the religion, there was no form
of Indian religious practice that did not now have some Buddhist equivalent...." Snellgrove and Richardson then
proceed to delineate for their readers some of these borrowed Buddhist equivalents.
Yoga, for example, which as the present author noted earlier, had been introduced into Hinduism at around
150 b.c., was now added to Mahayana during the first few centuries of the Christian era. But there was also added
the necessary spells (or mantras) for inducing through deep meditation personal contact and even identification
with a whole new pantheon of newly-accepted Hindu divinities as a means, these practitioners believed, of being
transferred "to the higher spheres of extra-sensory experience" through the powers of spiritual grace that
presumably were at the disposal of these divine "beings of power*' who in the minds of these Mahayana devotees
were "sometimes even consubstantiated in buddhahood."
Tantras, too, became a part of Mahayana, they constituting new forms of Buddhist literature; and within
these new texts were described or referenced the various sets of divinities and the rituals used for contacting them;
but this new literature also extolled the supremely blissful states which might be experienced. And finally, Tantric
yoga forms, "involving the controlled use of sexual processes," were likewise introduced into Mahayana Buddhism,
chiefly by "free-roaming schools of [Buddhist] yogins" who, unlike their monkish co-religionists, had been free
to marry. These sexual forms of Buddhist yoga involved concentrating upon pairs of male and female divinities;
and to the extent that these methods of the Mahayanists "were found effective for the realization of a kind of
transcendent bliss that was identified with enlightenment," these pairs of gods and goddesses "were logically
conceived as possessing buddha-rank." Indeed, explain these two historians, "the criterion by which any method
was judged" by the Indian Mahayana Buddhists "was its success in gaining [the] object" of their new philosophy;
and whoever of them who might use such methods and techniques "were convinced" that by such means "they
could experience the real nature of things which lay beyond all forms and names"—the latter even being, within
the terms of this new Mahayana Doctrine, "ultimately unreal and empty, the gods themselves as much as those
who meditated upon them."
Snellgrove and Richardson make very clear that these various changes and developments within the entire
framework of later Indian Buddhism that occurred between the first century a.d. and its general disappearance from
India by the end of the twelfth century "were enormous"; it was during this period, in fact, that in this later form
Buddhism "gradually became the religion of the greater part of Asia." Furthermore, it was these "extraordinary
developments" that had taken place "in Buddhist theory and practice" down in India which the people of the Roof
of the World would now take to themselves "rather hesitatingly in the seventh century" but to which they would
commit themselves later "quite wholeheartedly." Indeed, conclude these two scholars, "the Tibetans became in
effect the inheritors of the whole Indian Buddhist tradition..." Snellgrove and Richardson 1995, pp. 66-72.
97. Lhalungpa 1983, p. 39.

98. Tucci and Ghersi 1935, pp. 198-200. The bracketed "goat sacrifice" source inserted within the lengthy
Tucci-Ghersi passage quoted was Francke 1914, 1:20-22. Francke in his volume went on to observe that the
Tibetans at Poo and elsewhere in the upland Kunawari region at one time did indeed practice human sacrifices,
but for different reasons from what were the motives of others elsewhere in the Sutlej Valley. "Oaths at important
treaties were emphasized by human as well as animal sacrifices. New houses were inaugurated by immuring
human beings and a person was killed when a house was first inhabited. Thus, at the village of Poo, a lama had
only recently [1909] beheaded his own father while asleep, to make a new house he had built, properly
habitable." Ibid22. Reference made to the ancient custom, only in more recent times stopped, of the annual child
sacrifice at Poo was documented further when the following proverb was discovered by the Moravian missionary
at Poo, Rev. Reinhold Schnabel:
Dang-po~nga-rgya-gar~nas-yong-tsa-na,
glang-phrug-lo-gsum-byis-pa-lo-brgyad.
Translated:—-When I (Tara) came here from India,
[I used to receive] a calf, three years old,
and a child of eight years of age.
Quoted in ibid., 2In.
99. Hoffmann 1961, p. 26 and quoting—apparently having first made his own English translation of the
German—from Rib bach's volume, Drogpa Namgyal; Ein Tibeterleben (Munich-Planegg, 1940), 187, A more
recent English translation of the entire Ribbach volume has been accomplished by John Bray of London in
Ribbach 1986. The full account of the shamanist performance in Ribbach's work cited by Hoffmann, together
with a fascinating description of the Naskorpas, can be found in the published Bray translation on pp. 177-80.
It should be added that Moravian missionary Ribbach from Germany had been a close observer of Tibetan life
and culture in Ladakh and the other nearby Indo-Tibetan borderlands for over 20 years (1892 to 1913). Indeed,
"throughout his time in Ladakh," writes Bray in the Introduction to his translation, "Ribbach collected information
on the life and customs of the local people. In this he was assisted particularly by Ga Phuntsog, a Ladakhi of
Buddhist origin whom Ribbach describes as one of the most intelligent of his people." One can therefore rely
completely upon the credibility of the incidents recounted in this admittedly "semi-fictional biography" of a
Ladakhi farmer and his family. Bray assures the readers of the Ribbach volume that though events and conversations
included did not occur precisely as described, the author's fictionalized story "is nonetheless closely based on
fact." (iii-v) Ga Phuntsok, it may be recalled, was the husband of Gergan Tharchin's stepfather's sister. And as
was learned in the opening chapter of the present work, this Christian brother had quickly developed into one of
the outstanding converts to the Christian faith.
100. About this term Religious King (in Tibetan, Chos-rgyal), Dawa Norbu believes, on good scholarly
grounds, that it betrays an exercise in myth-making on the part of what he calls "lamaist hagiography" which
flourished during the Buddhist renaissance in Tibet between a.d. 978 and 1419. He writes (in Norbu 1997, pp.
363-4):
So far, there is no evidence to prove that any of the Tibetan kings ever called himself or was
called by his contemporaries Chos-rgyal. We search in vain for the term in any of the ancient
edicts and treaty documents that Hugh Richardson has published over the years... .The myth of
chos-rgyal...appears to be a post-Glang Darma phenomenon...an honorific title conferred
posthumously on those Tibetan kings who were believed to have patronized Buddhism by the
authors of Chos-byung works [of religious history] and by other lama scholars in gratitude. The
surprising fact is that not only has this myth survived in Tibetan literature to this day but that it
has also found its way into the Western scholarship on Tibet as well.
101. This Tantric aspect of the Later Buddhism of northern India that was introduced by Sambhava and the
others into Tibet, added Cammann, "took a firm hold on the Tibetan mind, and has tended to nourish unhealthy
minds among the predominantly ignorant lamas. The monks of the older (Red) sects of Lamaism were rarely
celibate, and have frequently had wives or concubines, but the lamas in general have been, and are, notorious for
their licentiousness.... Rare is the monk who can see beyond the very graphically portrayed images to perceive
the doctrine of the ultimate union of the soul with the Infinite.... The majority are extremely literal-minded."
Cammann 1951, pp. 8-9.
Hugh Richardson, in his review of Cammann's volume, took the author to task for having given the title lama
a "courtesy" application to all Tibetan and Mongolian monks. Observing that Cammann was aware that this title
"is properly used only of the higher orders in the Tibetan church," and that therefore vagueness of this kind in a
scholarly work "is injudicious," especially when it leads to such statements as the one quoted above that "the
lamas in general... are notorious for their licentiousness." The present writer would respond, however, by noting
that a careful reading of the entire passage quoted above indicates an interchangeable use by the author of the
terms monk and lama. So that, if the statement in question had instead read that "the monks in general are
notorious for their licentiousness," it would not be too far off the mark, if one can accept the findings of more
recent anthropological and sociological studies of Tibet and the reports of recently published retrospective travel
literature relevant to Tibet. Furthermore, Richardson did acknowledge that the celibate monasticism imposed by
the ruling Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism had "probably" exerted "a far more unhealthy influence on the
minds of the ignorant monks" than had been "the images and teachings" of any Tantric cult in Tibet, though not
denying outright the latter's unhealthy influence either. Certainly one could legitimately posit the notion that
both influences working in tandem could have had a serious impact on the thought-life of the generality of the
Tibetan and Mongolian monastic population. See the Richardson review in JRCAS (July-Oct. 1952):285.
Dr. Cammann in 1950 was a professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate
Curator of the Chinese section of the University Museum. He was also at that time an editor of the Journal of
the American Oriental Society. "His knowledge of Buddhism is largely a result of his extensive travels and studies
in China, Inner Mongolia, on the Sino-Tibetan border, in India, Burma, Sikkim and Ladakh. He visited many
lamaseries and spent some months in Chengtu cataloging the large Tibetan collection at the West China Union
University Museum. He has assisted with the identification of Tibetan material at the British Museum, the
Ethnological Museum in Paris, the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, the Newark Museum and others."
Catalogue of the Tibetan Collection and Other Lamaist Articles in the Newark Museum (Newark, 1950), 50.
102. Graham 1898, pp. 133-4.
103. Geoffrey Samuel has remarked that it has been demonstrated by the example of monastic oracle priests
like the Nechung Oracle that such shamanistic procedures "have been incorporated to varying degrees within all
the Buddhist orders, including the [ruling Yellow Hat] dGe-lugs-pa"; and "it is reasonable to assume that their
origins are, for the most part, Tibetan..." Samuel, "Shamanism, Bon and Tibetan Religion," in Ramble & Brauen
(eds.) 1993, p. 327. Yet not only in all the Tibetan Buddhist orders but even in the later development of the
Tibetan Bonpo tradition, this and other kinds of less sophisticated shamanistic practices are still being observed
today among Tibetans—whether in Tibet itself or among those in exile following Red China's annexation of the
Snowy Land. The Nechung Oracle tradition itself has been continued at Dharamsala in Northwest India for the
benefit of the Tibetan community in exile and its exile Government headquartered there. And with respect to
inside Tibet, itself, Ma Lihua has noted in a recent article on current shamanistic belief and practice among
northern Tibet's nomads that such still very much exists. See Lihua's paperñn ibid., 193-7.
For more about Tibet's State Oracle and his relation to the Tibetan government and nation while in crisis, see
much later in the present narrative, Ch. 24. Moreover, a history of the Nechung Oracle as an institution, as well
as descriptions of numerous other oracles, spirits and deities, are thoroughly presented in Nebesky-Wojkowitz
1975, 444-54 & passim.
104. Reported in MRW(June 1905):472-3.
105. Despite this most favorable reception in Asia, however, it needs to be noted that recent research
conducted by scholars into the life and work of Nicholas Roerich reveals a somewhat murky, if not altogether
sinister and dark, side to this Russian's motives in having carried out his five-year Central Asian expedition—at
least the Mongolian and Tibetan portions of its itinerary. It has been discovered, for example, that in the midst
of his Asian travels, but prior to these two segments, he and his family had made a side journey to Moscow in
1926. In historian John Snelling's words, "an air of great secrecy surrounds Roerich's Moscow venture of June
1926." In fact, no mention of it can be found in any of several accounts which were later published by the Russian
and his son Yuri (aka: George). But after all, notes Snelling, "there was always something mysterious about the
man—Igor Stravinsky once remarked that 'he looked as though he ought to have been either a mystic or a spy,'
Perhaps he was a bit of both; many indeed thought so."
In any case, it would appear that while in Moscow, and later in Mongolia, he made contacts with high Soviet
officials and also with the exiled Panchen Lama who was then living in China, As a matter of fact, the Russian, just
before leaving Urumchi to go to Moscow, had confided to the Soviet consul stationed there, A,E. Bystrov, that
he and his entourage were "acting on the instructions of the Mahatmas"—the so called Theosophical masters of
wisdom who reputedly dwelt as hermits in nearly inaccessible Tibetan valleys. These instructions had called for
the said contacts with Moscow and the Panchen Lama, the latter to be urged to link up with Roerich and his party
in Mongolia for the purpose of launching a spiritual procession all the way to Tibet in order to liberate the
country from the British! The Mahatmas' ultimate objective, in the words of Roerich himself, was "to merge the
Buddhist and Communist teachings with a view to creating a great union of Eastern Republics." Moreover, in a
small casket which the Russian carried to Moscow that contained some sacred Himalayan soft-far the tomb of the
Jate Soviet leader V.I. Lenin (d. 1924), Roerich had also included in its contents a message reputedly from the
Mahatmas for the Soviet people which was replete "with high-flown eulogies" that ended with these words:"...
likewise, we recognized the timelessness of your [Communist] movement and send you all our help, in affirmation
of the Unity of Asia!" This casket with its unusal objects he had personally presented to Joseph Stalin's Foreign
Affairs Commissar, G.V. Checherin, whom the expedition leader had known from his much earlier university
days during the final period of Tsarist Russia.
Roerich would now need to obtain permission for his expedition to proceed through Soviet territory were he
to be able to travel through Mongolia and make the necessary contact with the Panchen Lama's party in China.
This permission he would receive personally from Checherin himself. Proceeding, therefore, to the Mongolian
People's Republic—which by then had become, through Soviet penetration, an unofficial Communist satellite of
Moscow—Roerich and his party went to its capital of Urga (renamed by the Communists as Ulan Bator) and
thence south into Tibet as far as the vicinity of Nagchuka. His expedition, however, was detained many bitterly
cold winter months at this latter place awaiting permission to proceed to Lhasa, allowance for which was
ultimately denied. Following the advice of British Political Officer for Tibet, F. M. Bailey, the Tibetan authorities
refused to allow these "Red Russians" to enter the Tibetan capital.
It is Snelling's view that Roerich at this time had most likely come to believe that "Buddhism might flourish
in Russia under the new [Communist] order" and that such a prospect, if realized, might well augur that the
predictions regarding the legendary Shambala were about to be fulfilled, with the late Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin
having already paved the way for the establishment of a new world age of enlightenment and universal brotherhood.
Certain it is, states Snelling, that a short while later Roerich was beginning to bruit it about that Buddhism and
Communism were "one thing." Moreover, according to Boris Pankratov, an official then serving in the Soviet
Embassy in Peking, it was his understanding that Roerich's intention, had he been successful in reaching Lhasa,
was to enter the Tibetan capital in the guise of the legendary Shambala's 25 th king, Peldan Rigden. (It is know that
Roerich was by this time thoroughly acquainted with the Shambala myth—thanks to his conversations in 1909
with the Mongolian-Buriat Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Dorjieff—his books having mentioned its details often. And
as was commonly believed, this king was, as Roerich was himself intending to do, supposed to come from the
North, leading his Shambala hosts, and thus by this act bring salvation to all mankind.) Upon entering the gates
of Lhasa, Roerich would then have met with the Dalai Lama, for whom he was carrying a letter and a painted
image of Maitreya, the coming Buddha of All-Conquering Love, and offer up large contributions to Lhasa's three
Great State Monasteries.
Now the significant element in Roerich's intention here centers around the fact that according to the Shambala
legend, its 25th king had traditionally been identified as one who would be a Panchen Lama. And because it is
known that the Russian did make contact with the Panchen Lama's entourage, speculation has it that the Roerich
expedition to Tibet had possibly been designed by Moscow either to bring about reconciliation between Tibet's
two highest Incarnations, or more plausibly, thinks Russian scholar Alexandre Andreyev, to widen the gulf still
further between them, thus providing the catalyst by which to foment in Tibet a "Lamaist revolution" (the
Shambala war).
It must be added, furthermore, that a latter-day Moscow journalist and scholar, Oleg Shishkin, claims that an
investigation of his conducted in the 1990s has revealed that Roerich's Tibetan expedition (perhaps unintentionally
on the expedition leader's part) had in fact constituted one part of a well-laid-out scheme by the Soviet secret
services that if successful would have effected a dramatic change in Central Asia's political status quo. Among
other things, the plan had called for bringing a military force to Tibet (possibly Mongolian in character) and
liquidating the Dalai Lama!
Finally, it ought to be noted that though entrance into Lhasa was denied the Roerich party, it was, nonetheless,
permitted to traverse Tibetan territory west of the capital and make its exit south through Sikkim in 1928. But
while in Tibet, so the story goes, Roerich, reports Snelling, had masqueraded as the "Prince of Shambala" wearing
"a suitably sumptuous suit of oriental-style clothing that he had had run up in Urga for the purpose." This,
however, cannot as of this moment be confirmed. Unbelievable as it may seen, there are still other bizarre facets
to the Roerich life which shall be recounted for the reader at the appropriate place in a subsequent volume of the
present narrative.
Sources consulted: Snelling's Buddhism in Russia (Shaftesbuiy, 1993), 228-31; Andreyev, "Bolshevik Intrigue
in Tibet," in Krasser et al., (1997), 1:13; and Andreyev's "Soviet Russia and Tibet: a Debacle of Secret Diplomacy,"
77 (Autumn 1996), 26-7.
106. Thus was Professor Roerich quoted in the New York Times, 15 July 1928, p. 22, from a 5,000-word report
on the conditions of Buddhism in Tibet which he had specifically communicated to the Buddhist Center of New
York, one of the organizations whose officers had sponsored his lengthy expedition into Central Asia. Some
backgr ound as to the man's stature in the world's academic and cultural community ought briefly to be sketched here
420
before proceeding with further candid observations of Roerich's from his lengthy Buddhist Center report and
published travel diaiy. (Further background as to his worldwide stature is also provided in the Notes for Chs. 16 and
23 in the later volumes of the present work.)
This gifted artist, writer, scholar-explorer, and mystic philosopher was greatly admired and respected
throughout the world—both East and West—by the likes of the Indian poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath
Tagore, the renowned physicist Albert Einstein of Berlin, fellow Asian explorer Sven Hedin of Stockholm, and
Tibetologist Professor Jacques Bacot of Paris: the last three named of whom, among other great scientists and
scholars, were at this time about to serve on the Advisory Board of the Urusvati Himalaya Research Institute
which in early 1929 Professor Roerich and his son George (as Director) would establish in Northwest India's
Kulu Valley, West Himalayas, immediately following the conclusion of their five-year-long Central Asian Expedition
to Tibet and elsewhere. But it could then be reported after just three years of its work that the Institute had
already drawn to Its Kulu headquarters at Naggar "American, British, Hindu and Tibetan scientists ... working
together there to explore the fields of medicine, of cancer, of biology, astro-chemistry, astronomy, archaeology"
and other scientific areas of inquiry. As one Roerich supporter wrote regarding the Institute's establishment: it
was "an essential and inevitable outgrowth of the Roerich Central Asiatic Expedition made by Roerich through
Ladakh, Chinese Turkestan, Mongolia and Tibet."
In the opinion of the present writer, one of the prime reasons why the Institute's founding was so "essential
and inevitable" in the mind of Roerich was because of his profound disappointment in what he had found in the
lands of Tibetan culture and influence—especially in Tibet itself, where the members of the exploration party
had alone spent a minimum of nine months. For at the very beginning of his Central Asian travels (1924) Roerich
had declared with great confidence: "The greatest spiritual country in the world today is Tibet. There we can
learn much of the mysteries that have so far been concealed from us." But by the time those travels had been
concluded with his lengthy stay in the land of Monks and Monasteries, Roerich's opinion had suffered a drastic
change, as reflected in the opening observation just now quoted in the text from his lengthy communication
addressed to New York's Buddhist Center. In this unusual document, some excerpts from which are next quoted
in the Text, Roerich made no attempt to gloss over the forms of degradation he saw nor to hide from his readers
how appalled he had become as a result of what he witnessed at close range everywhere he went through northern
and much of central Tibet Sources: Newsweek (22 Mar. 1948): 27; New YoritTimes 30 Mar. 1930, p. 17; Frances
R. Grant (Vice President, Roerich Museum, New York), "Nicholas Roerich's Plan for World Peace," World Unity
Magazine (Feb. 1932):309-10; and Times, 25 Oct. 1924, p. 25.
107. Here are further, much fuller excerpts from Roerich's devastatingly frank report on the conditions of
Buddhism in Tibet that appeared in the New York Times, 15 July 1928, p. 22, followed by quoted passages from
his travel diary published a year later:
What, then, have we seen in crossing the regions of Tibet, meeting the people of various ranks,
beginning with the high officials, favorites of the Dalai Lama, and ending with the dark, savage
nomads? Tibet has been veiled in the reputation of being a country of religious covenants, but let
us not be afraid of the truth—penetrate it. Does Buddhism exist here, or is it, rather, Shamanistic
Lamaism? Do not let us be afraid to call things by their proper names. Instead of the former
dedication to the spiritual commune, instead of the former serious studies of the literature,
teaching and knowledge of natural forces, one can perceive the mechanical repetition and primitive
demonstration of hypnotism, occasional clairvoyance and materialization, levitation and radiation,
but all this is not in a high form, but is shown chiefly from the terrorizing of the benighted,
superstitious people.
Let us show you several pictures of contemporary Tibetan reality. Here are high Lamas who,
on their sacred beads, are calculating their commercial accounts, occupied completely with
thoughts of profit. Did Buddha ordain such usage of sacred objects, or does this rest on the
shoulders of Shamanistic unbelief?
Lamas, "teachers of the people," tell your fortune for compensation according to the
haunches of mutton, or dice, or on sacrilegious objects and, according to certain books published
in Lhasa, they predict the future success. Lamas under pretext of studying the Tantras, use the
vilest of suggestion of will and terrify the ignorant people by playing with human bones and with
squeaky conjurations. This is exactly what is being done by the Shamans also.
Lamas, with the aid of guns, chase away the evil spirits and burn their effigies—of course, for
a commensurate recompense. Thus the lowest bone-bedecked Shamans do precisely. Not far from
the Governmental Dzong [a District Governor's place of residence and his official headquarters]
stands a pagan altar. It proves that not the savage tribes but the Lhasan government has sanctioned
this shrine in honor of the Governmental oracle. The Government has established this cult of
idolatry.
Lamas denounce the killing of animals, but, to achieve further hypocrisy, the animals are
driven to the edge of a rock so that, falling, they kill themselves. Thus are being followed the
covenants of Buddha.
The Times article then broke into its own prose that combined both direct and indirect quotations, as follows:
Professor Roerich went on to say that ... the Lamas affirm that Buddha forbade agriculture [which
he did not] and invent slanders against Buddha himself....
Near Lhasa, the letter continues, ... it is a custom to roll naked on corpses, that are hacked
and thrown to the birds of prey and pigs, for the preservation of health. The letter devotes several
paragraphs to the savages, nomads and forest dwellers, who worship arrows and revere "absurd"
amulets.... The communication continued: ... "It is fearful to think that the name of Buddha is
intermingled with this spiritual dirt."
Conscious reverence for Buddha in Tibet, according to Professor Roerich, is held by a
strikingly small number of persons, many of whom are in far-off hermitages, "unable to tolerate
the official manifestations of the Lhasan Lamaism."
That was what Roerich wrote in 1928. A year later he published the diary he had kept of his years-long
venture into Central Asia, and on the last few of its pages, the Russian traveler and Buddhist-Theosophical
philosopher set down in summary form various reminiscences of, and conclusions to, what he had seen and
experienced. In some ways, these honest musings were even more brutally frank than his presentation to the
Buddhist Center. Wrote Roerich in Altai-Himalaya published in 1929:
There is something of predestination in the dying of old Tibet. The wheel of the law is turned.
The mystery is gone. Tibet has none to guard; and none guards Tibet. The exclusiveness of its
position as guardian of Buddhism no longer belongs to Tibet. Because Buddhism, according to the
Commands of the Blessed One, becomes a universal possession. There is no need of superstition
for the deep teaching. Prejudices are inimical to the search for truth.... I have been asked, "How
shall you speak of Tibet after your experiences?" Truly I shall praise what is full of light and shall
condemn what is obscured in darkness. [Roerich gave very little space to what he felt was full of
light in Tibet to praise.] ...
Let us consider the Black Magic of Tibet. Let us recall the revived corpses, the celebrated
Rolang-resurrection—which is nothing but a crude form of vampirism. Let us recall the wandering
spirits who kill and do all manner of evil; and they are often the spirits of lamas. Let us recall all
sorts of obsessions, how, under evil influences, people are completely changed and temporarily
fall into actual insanity. Let us recall evil conjurations and invocations with which the lamas arm
themselves to frighten the ignorant people. Let us recall the suicidal magic daggers, dark fortune-
telling, spells, werewolves, entities which have assumed the appearance of animals; and all kinds
of inventions of an evil will. First of all, such dark practices of lamas do not give very good
evidence of their uprightness.. Second, the sorcerers of the Coast of Malabar [in South India]
perform the entire black necromancy much more powerfully. They are known, feared, but no one
worships them and they are not regarded as sacred personages. Malabar "miracles" antedate
Tibetan magic.
Many authors who have written about Tibet have called it the miracle of miracles. But this
title could refer only to old Tibet or is due to the misconception of those writers who have been
hypnotized by tradition....
It would be absurd to condemn the entire population of Tibet. The lamas again may become
educated. Again an enlightened government may appear. And people again may become regenerate.
Much of that which appears to us as fallen "has not as yet risen."
In the teaching of the Blessed One there are practical indications about the whole routine of
life. It is very easy to know and apply them. But now those who have desecrated the high
teaching, must understand that their criminal actions are condemned and cannot continue....
Thus we distinguish two Tibets: One is the Tibet of officialdom—of those officials of whom
the Tibetans themselves assert that their hearts are blacker than coal and harder than stone.
These are the ones who reflect so much prejudice and violence and falsehood, who desecrate art
and petrify learning with degeneracy.
But we also discern another Tibet, even though it is smaller in numbers This is the Tibet of
the few educated lamas and of an even smaller number of enlightened laymen. This is the Tibet
which aspires towards enlightenment. It is the Tibet of its spiritual leaders.
It is of course not enigmatic which Tibet is closer to our consciousness—the enlightened ones
we value, and may the obscured and corrupt ones disappear in their own darkness!
In letters from America, friends have expressed their regret that the actions of Tibet have
urged the necessity of such strong criticisms. But Truth is not blindness; on the contrary it must
be far-sighted. Moreover, a small and valuable minority may yet produce greater results than the
dying, decomposed majority.
420
See Roerich 1929, pp. 386,389,387 ? 388,390. For a still further elaboration of Roerich's scathing condemnation
of the degraded Tibetan Buddhism, see his volume published a year after Altai, Roerich 1930, pp. 74-84.
Finally, it needs to be indicated here that the Russian traveler-explorer did not depart Tibet with a superficial
understanding or perception of things Tibetan due to a lack of knowledge of the Tibetan language. Not with his
son George Roerich constantly at his side. For the elder Roerich was significantly and critically aided in his
interaction and dialogue with Tibetans—whether in Kashmir-Ladakh, Chinese Turkestan, Siberia, Mongolia or
Tibet itself—by his learned and scholarly son, a superlative linguist of the first rank who could speak fluently 27
languages, including Sanskrit (!), Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, Mongolian and several necessary dialects of
Tibetan. Indeed, in his diary volume Nicholas Roerich made his son's linguistic ability known as follows; first,
while they were at Stok-Leh in Ladakh, and lastly after penetrating deep into Tibetan territory from Siberia and
Mongolia: "How wonderful that George knows all necessary Tibetan dialects. Only without a translator will
people here speak about spiritual things"; and, "It is fortunate that George's knowledge of the language is
considered by the Tibetans second only to Sir Charles B ell"—the British Political Officer for Tibet from 1908 to
1921, who lived at Lhasa for nearly a year 1920-21, and who became a close confidant of the Great Thirteenth
Dalai Lama, supreme ruler of Tibet. Roerich 1929, pp. 122 and 380, respectively. And in his companion volume
published a year later that details these same Central Asian travels, Roerich received from other Tibetans in the
Land of Snows an even more adulatory comment on his son's linguistic accomplishment. "For the first time," he
explained, "an expedition has no need of an interpreter, even as the Tibetans themselves affirm that George
knows Tibetan better than Sir Charles Bell, who is considered an authority on the language." Roerich 1930, p. 77.
Hence, in the nine months that they were on the Roof of the World, there was little if any chance for a misreading
or misperception by the Roerichs of what was in the minds and hearts of the Tibetans—both cleric and lay, both
rulers and ruled, both educated and ignorant—with George Roerich a part of the team.
In short, Nicholas Roerich, in his critical assessment of Tibet, Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism, now knew
whereof he spoke and wrote. Earlier he had naively entered Tibet believing it to be the most spiritual country on
earth; he departed it far better informed, now believing it was one of the most degraded.
108. Besides those sources already cited, the following additional sources were used as a basis for the
preceding discussion on the debasement of original Buddhism in India, its subsequent importation into Tibet, and
its resultant mixture with and ultimate absorption of the old Tibetan religion to become Lamaist or Tibetan
Buddhism: Chinlei 1981, pp. 160-1; Woodcock, "The Theocrats of Tibet," History Today (Feb. 1965): 89-90;
Michael 1982, pp. 17, 190; Oden Meeker, "Tibetans Out in the World," New Yorker, 12 Dec. 1959, p. 179; Bell,
"Tibet and Its Neighbors," Pacific Affairs (Dec. 1937):429; Cammann 1951, p. 7; Hoffmann 1961, p. 27;
Hopkirk 1982, pp. 12-13; Pott 1951, pp. 14,15; Snellgrove 1987,1:160-3,236; Snellgrove and Richardson, 1995,
pp. 54-5, 59, 69, 73-4, 77-8,92-4, 108, 173, 175,266; Roerich's report on Buddhism's state inTibet, New York
Times, 15 July 1928, p. 22; Roerich, 1929, pp. 386-90; obituary article on Nicholas K. Roerich, New York Times,
16 Dec. 1947, p. 33; Kvaerne, "Introduction," in Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1975, p. vii; Samuel, "Early Buddhism in
Tibet: Some Anthropological Perspectives," in Barbara Aziz and Matthew Kapstein (eds.), Soundings in Tibetan
Civilization (New Delhi, 1985), 392-3; and Bonavia and Bartlett 1981, p. 12.
109. /M (Dec. 1889):622.
110. Quoted in Templeman 1998, p. 31.
111. Torrens 1862, pp. 119-20. The doctrine of reincarnation is in both Buddhism and Hinduism. Reincarnation
is the belief that each living being will repeat the cycle of life-death-rebirth until that one achieves either union
with the Godhead or Impersonal Essence (as in Hinduism) or the state of enlightenment or buddhahood (as in
Buddhism). This concept is not unique to the East, for some of the Greek philosophers, such as Empedocles,
Plato, Paracelsus and Plotinus, as well as more recent thinkers like Jacob Boehme, G.E. Lessing and Arthur
Schopenhauer, held to a similar notion—though employing the term transmigration rather than reincarnation or
rebirth and soul instead of person or living being—and even some early Christian sects entertained the idea. This
doctrine has been vividly described by one Tibetan, Tsewang Y. Pemba (whose father Tharchin taught at
Ghoom), who had lived in England since 1949, where he for years practiced Western medicine. He left Tibet in
1940 at the age of nine to be educated in English schools both in India and Great Britain. In his reminiscence
volume of his own Young Days in Tibet (London, 1957), pp. 17-18, Pemba has painted a graphic picture of the
implications for the Tibetan of the doctrine. Upon reading it one can perhaps better understand the tremendous
grip such a doctrine has on the average Tibetan and why it is so difficult for him to exchange it and the religious
system to which it belongs for a different faith by which to live. Writes Pemba of the Tibetan citizen:
If he has led an ordinary life, he will be born again into the world of humans. A life of sin may lead
him into hell, and he may be born as an animal. One of the worst sins is the taking of life, any kind
of life, be it an insect, animal or human. Tibetans regard all living beings as creatures who are
related to each other by the thread of life. Thus ... [rebirth] affects the whole living universe, "the
world of sentient beings"—fowls, fishes, animals, all that live and move. All are dying and being
reborn according to their lives in this world. It is not made too clear how an animal may be said
to live a "good" or "bad" life.
This belief of Tibetan Buddhists is best illustrated by a religious painting known as the Sibar
Kholo or "The Wheel of Existence." It is a wheel held in the embrace of Shenji, the ruler of the
Dead. Shenji is represented as a ferocious god with fangs. In the circle are shown the milestones
of human existence—birth, marriage and death. When a person dies, he is led before Shenji. There
his past good deeds in the form of white pebbles are weighed against his evil ones represented by
black pebbles. Upon this weighing depends his next rebirth.
A good person goes to the abode of the gods. A bad one is stripped naked and led by devil
guards' to the various zones of hell. In the hot hells the person is boiled alive, and in the cold ones
he is drowned in icy lakes. He may be hurled from a precipice onto sharp stakes. A man who has
abused the religious texts is crushed under piles of these tomes. Sometimes human beings are sawn
into bits or quartered. All these gruesome details are depicted with great accuracy in this painting.
A man of greed may become a Yidag. This is a creature with a huge belly but a narrow gullet,
who is always hungry and wanting to satisfy his ravenous hunger. But he is unable to do so, and is
thus tortured by his desires. This is indeed an ingenious symbol of human greed.
After a person has undergone the appropriate punishments of hell, he is born again as a man,
has another chance to strive for a higher birth. The aim is that all living beings, cows, dogs, birds,
human beings and even gods, should reach Tong-pai-nyi (the Void) [the Tibetan term for the
Sanskrit word Nirvana], and so pass from this endless round of births and deaths, and the sufferings
which are inseparable from the act of existence. Tibetans believe that life itself is suffering. We
may be happy sometimes, but on the whole anguish and pain cloud the total field of existence in
this universe.
Thus, this belief in the round of births and deaths, a man's place in the hierarchy of existence
being determined by his past deeds, the punishment of sins in hell, and the accumulation of merit
by constant prayers and meditation for a higher birth—all these colored the whole religion of
Tibet and permeated the mind of the country.
112. Hamilton 1901, pp. 151-2. This remarkably ingenious way of getting around the inconsistency, if not
hypocrisy, of this attitude was not just limited to the Buddhists of Lesser Tibet of that day but was pervasive
among Tibetans generally, then and up to the present. This is made evident by the testimony of one young
Tibetan lady, Dolkar Tseten, who grew up in Tibet—at Lhasa itself—but later emigrated to the West to live
following the Chinese invasion and occupation of her land in the 1950s. She writes: "Some extremely pious
Buddhists are vegetarians, but most of us do eat meat, though we will not take life. For this reason, in Lhasa and
other towns, most of the butchering is done by Moslems, a religious minority among us who do not share our
scruples about killing. No doubt this attitude may seem hypocritical. But our belief is that the body is only a
transient shell to house the spirit. Violently dispossessing a spirit by taking a creature's life is evil, but once the
deed has been done the carcass has little further significance and can be eaten without sin." Tseten (as told to John
Windsor), Girl from Tibet (Chicago, 1971), 58. Samuel Ribbach, longtime Moravian missionary in Ladakh till
1913, also testifies to the hypocritical stance taken by Tibetan Buddhists. In his cultural study of the Indo-
Tibetan borderlands he writes: "Few Tibetans or Ladakhis abstain from meat altogether; apart from the very
strictest sects, even the majority of lamas are meat-eaters. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in outwardly
obeying the command not to kill. People buy the meat from Muslim butchers or they kill the beast, whether
sheep, goat or yak, by tying up its mouth so that it suffocates painfully. Then the people say: Tt had died; we
have spilt no blood.'" Ribbach 1986, p. 151 n.2.
And Charles Cutting, an American naturalist and leader of museum expeditions to Tibet as far as Lhasa in the
1930s, has noted how this Buddhist law of not taking life had been violated with impunity by even the Highest
Lama among the Tibetans, the Dalai Lama himself He wrote: "It is a corollary of reincarnation that all life, human
and animal, is sacred. All followers of Lamaism are enjoined from taking life—even the fleas that torment their
bodies.... But needless to say, the law is commonly broken. High lamas and secular nobles consume flesh
whenever they can find it, and even the late Dalai Lama [the Great Thirteenth] ate mutton twice a day." Cutting
1940, p. 193. The American, incidentally, had been one of the few Westerners to have had the privilege of
engaging in frequent correspondence with the Great Thirteenth till the latter's death in 1933.
113. Hutton 1923, pp. 366-73.
114. Nicodemus and his son Samuel proved to be faithful servants of the Lord and were extremely helpful to
the Moravians in a number of ways. Samuel especially bore a winsome testimony for the Lord throughout his
long and distinguished adult life. Both men figure prominently in the pages to follow of the present narrative; see
both Text and End-Notes for Ch. 28 in Vol. III.
115. It needs to be explained, of course, that never during the history of the Mission in Lesser Tibet had any
striking numerical success ever been achieved. Given the strong and persistent opposition of the lamas, it was no
wonder that throughout the entire Mission in 1885 the total number of converts (that is to say, baptized
communicants) was only six; in 1895, only 30; and in 1903, only 63. Ibid., 365. The number still remained only
63 two years later (1905), LaTrobe, "Our Tibetan Mission after Fifty Years," MM (Aug. 1906):143.
116. Rev. James Johnston, "On the Frontiers of Tibet," MRW (Apr. 1903):262.
117. Besides the documentation already noted, the sources for the rest of the foregoing information regarding
the early efforts of the Moravian Mission both in Central Asia and along the Indo-Tibetan border area can be
found in the following: Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols. (New York,
1938-45), 6:129; Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York, 1929), 225; Hamilton 1901,'
pp. 134-5, 151-3, 170-1, 184, 207; Heiler 1927, pp. 66-9; Hutton 1935, pp. 168-71; Hutton 1923, pp. 357-73'
506-7; Marston 1895, pp. 75-80, 105-6; and PA (Dec. 1851):161-2, (Sept. 1853):538, (Sept 1855):431-2, and
(Dec. 1874):237.
118. "Report of the Tibetan Mission from 1887 to 1892^~Poo, on the Border of Chinese Tibet," ibid. (June
1892):530. ,,
119. "Central Asia," ibid. (Sept. 1889):557.
120. Ibid. (Mar. 1890):44.
121. Ibid. (Dec. 1889):622.
%
122. Ibid. (June 1894):294.
123. Ibid. (Mar. 1890):45. -
124. "Central Asia," ibid. (Mar. 1891):235-6. See in the next volume of the present narrative at Ch. 16,
passim, for additional information concerning Polhill-Turner, "the Cambridge Seven," and the Polhill-Turners'
work in China among the Tibetans.
125. Ibid., 236.
126. H. Louis Fader (ed.), "Preface," in Stephen Kaung, The Songs of Degrees (New York: Christian
Fellowship Publishers, Inc., 1970), vi.
127. PA (June 1890):65-7 (emphasis added in all three letters).
128. Shown as Spitti on some maps. It is the name of what was then an eastern subdivision of the Kangra
district in northeastern Punjab. It was bordered on the north by Kashmir, on the west by the Lahul and Kulu
subdivisions of Kangra, on the south by Himachal Pradesh (not, however, the Indian state of today), and on the
east by Tibet (frontier undefined). The area is topographically defined largely by rugged mountain ridges,
snowfields, rock-strewn valleys, forests, and animal wildlife; and boasts several Buddhist monasteries. A river
by the same name courses its way through part of its territory.
129. In some of the items of this detailed chronology new information has been added, the sources for which
have heretofore not been documented for the reader. These sources, listed according to the item numbers in the
chronology containing such new information, are as follows:
(13) "Report of the Tibetan Mission from 1887 to 1892—Poo, on the Border of Chinese Tibet," ibid. (June
1892):531.
(14) The sources for the quoted material regarding Tharchin's mother are: PARH (1865-1900), Year 1892*
Sheet 5; and "Tidings from the Three Moravian Stations" (subsection for Poo), PA (Mar. 1894):235. In this latter
source ("Tidings... "), no names are given; but based on other independent evidence, the mention of a "a widow's
daughter" as being "the first to be admitted etc. etc." can only have reference to Sodnama, while the widow is none
other than Dorje Tharchin's maternal grandmother, Abo Tachung, the widow mentioned in Item (16) of the
chronology. See further below in this present end-note for the documentation of Item (16). The source for the
date of baptism and the baptismal names both mother and child received is Entry Nos. 10-11 of PCRH (1).
(15) All the information here concerning Paulu (Sodnam Gyaltsan) was obtained from Rev. R. Schnabel, "Our
Tibetan Evangelist at Poo," MM (Aug. 1905): 130-1. See also "A Native Evangelist in Chinese Tibet," PA (June
1895):515-6 and"Paulu's Second Tour," ibid. (Dec. 1895):609ff.
(16) The sources for the information and quoted material regarding Tharchin's maternal grandmother are the
following: (a) Entry No. 13 ofPCRH(l); (b) PARH (1865-1900), Year 1894, p. 2; and (c) Missionsblatt, Issue No.
10 (Oct 1894):301 and 302 (the latter page includes the Schreve letter from Poo of 23 Apr. 1894), translated from
the German by Dr. Elizabeth Marx. Missionsblatt was a monthly Moravian publication which appeared from 1837
to 1941 as a bound pamphlet, containing the annual reports from the various mission fields as they were received.
Later on, such Moravian publications as Periodical Accounts, Moravian Messenger, etc., were larger in content and
were more than simply a pamphlet in format.
130. "Miscellaneous Intelligence," iM (June 1897):305.
131. "Tidings from the Stations," ibid. (June 1895):512. See also "Report of the Mission Department
[Herrnhut, Germany] " ibid. (Dec. 1891):380; "Tidings from the Three Moravian Stations" for 1893, ibid. (Mar.
1894):235; and ibid. (Dec. 1894):420.
132. "Mission Life at Poo," ibid. (Dec. 1895):609.
133. "An Awakening at Poo, Central Asia," ibid (June 1897):305-6,
134. Letter of Br. Schreve from Poo, 27 Mar. 1897, quoted in MRfF(Aug. 1897):622-3.
135. LaTrobe 1902 (June), p. 82.
136. PA (Sept. 1897):352.
137. "News respecting the Converts of the Year 1897," ibid (Dec. 1899):213.
138. "Annual Report...," ibid. (Sept. 1900):348.
139. Ibid. (Sept. 1903):330. One of these exceptions, sad to say, was the Blacksmith Dorje Taschi, who, as
was discussed in the opening chapter, wavered between "heathenism" and the Christian faith and was accounted
by his son Gergan Tharchin as never having been truly converted to Christ.
140. Ibid.
141. R. Schnabel, "Our Tibetan Evangelist at Poo," MM (Aug. 1905):131. This particular wedding was
unique in all of Poo history in that it constituted the first and only Christian marriage ever performed there
between persons of higher "caste" in contradistinction to those others married at the Poo mission who were
always of the low "caste" from the Tibetan Buddhist population (that is to say, those of the smiths and weavers).
142. But this very development among the poor Poopas—an increased interest in the religious side of the
mission while simultaneously benefiting from the mission economically in terms of employment, cheaper grain
prices, and instruction in cottage-industry crafts—points up what the Poo missionaries themselves recognized
were potential dangers for the integrity of the gospel message and the spiritual well-being of prospective
converts. They well knew that any villager who might become a Christian would automatically forfeit his social
as well as his religious status since both were inseparably linked together within Poo's caste-ridden staunchly
Buddhist society. For as was made clear in the previous chapter, every convert risked being ostracized and losing
one's employment. Faced, then, with this reality in Poo's Pepa community, the missionaries had felt it necessary
to take the above-mentioned practical steps as a way to assist the poor Christians in coping with their new
situation though not by any means ignoring the spiritual dimension of their mission's program.
In so doing, however, the mission station, as John Bray put it, had become "a major local employer." In a
paper he wrote specifically on the Poo mission and its impact on the surrounding community, Bray went on to
note that though Rev. Schreve was well aware of the danger that the Pepas, so desperately poor, might be
tempted to change their religion out of consideration for economic advantage rather than spiritual enlightenment,
the missionary took the position that it was better, in the words of Bray, "for the Christians to be dependent on
the mission than to remain forever in debt bondage to [non-Christian] masters." But though Br. Schreve and his
successors at Poo made every effort to make sure there were no "barley-Christians" among their station's ever-
420
enlarging flock of church members, the record—as will shortly be seen—proved to be otherwise: the large number
of congregants plummeted within a very short span of years as their and the station's economic situation
deteriorated. Despite lengthy periods of instruction before candidates were ever baptized and despite the high
standards both in conduct (which included a refusal to participate in "heathen" festivals) and in personal morality
that were set before the believers as to what was expected of them after conversion, lapses of the sort already
recounted and others yet to be related continually occurred. So that by 1907 Rev. Hermann Marx, after but a year
or so at Poo, was moved to write regretfully about what he felt was rampant hypocrisy in the congregation, it
being full, he said, of only nominal Christians who were motivated chiefly by the desire to fill their stomachs!
As but one example of this, the missionary reported that when the mission station's supply gave out of
purchased corn which was sold in winter at the same price to congregation members but then when members had
to be told to seek for it elsewhere, one of the congregants responded that he would not attend church if the
missionary had no corn available since, said he tartly, there was no purpose in his turning to the Christian religion
if it did not offer any benefits: yet this same issue of apparently mixed motives and beneficial grain sales to the
poor Christians was raised again and again in the missionary correspondence. In 1919, for instance, the next to
last missionary to be stationed at Poo, Henry Burroughs, wrote the following in a letter to Bishop Ward in
London:
All our Christians are poor and in order to keep them from contracting debts with the rich people,
as they surely would do, we try to help them by selling grain [more cheaply] from the mission.
The idea is good but the practical working thereof is not always satisfactory as one cannot tell
whether some of them come to church in order to pass muster as Christians and so earn their grain
or whether it is otherwise.
In spite of these negative developments which marked the rapid grotvth of the Poo congregation over the
years, not all converts lapsed, as Bray was quick to point out in his paper, discussing as he did a few of them
briefly One of them whom he cited by name and devoted some space to was none other than the central character
of the present narrative: Gergan Tharchin himself, whom he described as having been "perhaps the last surviving
member of the Poo congregation." See Bray 1992,373-5.
143. Other than with respect to Paulu's wedding and his wife's baptism, tLe sources for all other information
included in this and the preceding five paragraphs are: Bray 1992, pp. 371, 373-4; "Reports of the Mission
Fields-—West Himalaya," PA (Sept. 1905):172; "Poo," ibid. (Dec. 1907):760-1; "West Himalaya: Extracts from
the Reports for the Last Two Years," ibid. (June 1912):305; MM (Feb. 1906): 39, (May 1906):100, (July
1906): 121-2, and (June 1910): 119.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 6-12; quotes: 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-11, 11, 12.
1 .PA (Sept 1903):330 with (Dec. 1907):755, 760.
2. Ibid. (June 1912):304. The Schnabels would remain in Europe till the spring of 1912, thereafter returning
to the mission field to assume charge of Kyelang. Ibid. But with the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, the
Schnabels—like all German missionaries throughout the world1—were subject to possible internment and
repatriation at the hands of the pertinent Allied power who opposed Germany in the war. Although the
Schnabels were never interned in India (as were other Moravians, in particular, Dr. Francke interned at Ahmednagar
and the Gustav Reichels detained at Oampbellpur), they were repatriated back to Europe in late 1915. Ibid. (Sept.
1915):322~3, (Mar. 1916):438 and (Sept 1916):496. The Schreves themselves never returned to the mission field
due to the continuing ill-health of Mrs. Schreve. It should also be noted that during the period between 1906 and
1910, the Revs. Kunick and Marx served oft and on at Poo mission as either additional support staff or as
replacements for one another among the entire complement of missionaries there when individual missionary
families would be away on either local furlough or else on regular and lengthier furloughs back to Europe. It was
not until the autumn of 1910, as just now noted in the narrative, that these missionaries and their families became,
for the next few years at least, the sole permanent missionary staff at Poo.
3. Urban 1967, p. 15. Missionary Urban had visited in the Kalimpong home of Tharchin for two weeks
during the spring of 1964, and engaged in numerous conversations with both him and his wife on a variety of
subjects.
4. Bruce 1934, pp. 235-6.
5. Recounted by Mrs. Bruce in Ch. 14 ("A Lady's Point of View"), her only chapter in another book authored
by her husband, Kulu and Lahul (London, 1914), 150-1. This book, like the other by Bruce quoted from (see
preceding note), covers the time of the Bruces' summer visit to Kyelang in 1912.
6. All quotations and descriptions in this paragraph are by the editor of the missionary periodical in which
the article, "Missionary Doctoring at Poo," appeared and which was based on material supplied by Br. Schreve
himself The article is found in PA (Dec. 1892): 631.
7. Which it indeed was, for it will be recalled from Ch. 2 that Pagell (as well Rev. Heyde) had taken some
training in practical medicine and surgeiy at the Charité Hospital in Berlin for several months prior to departing
Europe initially for the mission field. And for 18 years, noted one Moravian historian of the period, Pagell,
"though not fully qualified, had much more medical knowledge than the lamas, and rendered excellent service at
Poo, vaccinating, extracting teeth, curing sore eyes, and compounding a popular ointment made of minium and
camphor; and so much was he beloved that the common people called him the Poo Father. His end caused terrible
sorrow." Hutton 1923, pp. 363-4.
8. Directly quoting Schreve himself by the missionary periodical editor in the article already cited two notes
earlier and found on pp. 631-2.
9. This quotation is taken from Year 1904-5 of PDH (1864-1920).
10. In his chapter entitled, "Tibet," jointly authored with David Woodward and printed in Hoke (ed.) 1975,
Tharchin asserted on page 652 that he had been "educated ... in the first school of the Moravian Mission" along
the Indo-Tibetan frontier area (emphasis added). In this assertion he was incorrect, inasmuch as the very first
school ever established in the West Himalaya area was one created at Kyelang in 1861, four years before the Poo
mission was founded. See "Retrospect of the Missionary Work of the Moravian Church during the past 150
Years—-VII. The Mission in Central Asia," PA (Sept. ,1882):302.
11. Tharchin and Woodward 1975, p. 652.
12. "Retrospect of the Missionary Work of the Moravian Church during the past 150 Years—VII. The
Mission in Central Asia" PA (Sept 1882):302.
13. Schnabel, "Our Tibetan Evangelist at Poo," MM (Aug. 1905):130.
420
14. Paulu (and others) to British and Foreign Bible Society, letter Poo, 16 Feb. 1904, translated from the
Tibetan by the Society, and which appeared in The Bible Society Reporter (Sept. 1904):284.
15. Schnabel, "Our Tibetan Evangelist at Poo," MM (Aug. 1905): 131. Apart from the information already
documented in the preceding paragraphs dealing with Sodnam Gyaltsan's early years, the source for the rest of
the data can be found in ibid, 130-1; while the source for the title, date, and place of publication for Jaeschke's
Urdu textbook is Bray 1983, p. 55.
16. "Report of the Poo Station for 1897," PA (Sept. 1898):532.
17. Ibid.
18. It must be understood that in the course of young Tharchin's school years he had a number of different
teachers, several at the same time, in fact, and hence there is no way of knowing for certain to which specific
individual he had reference. It may or may not have been his stepfather Madtha. Conceivably, also, it might have
been Paulu, his Urdu teacher. It is highly doubtful, though not absolutely ruled out, that it would have been one
of the Poo missionaries.
19. In fact, these two Swiss travelers are among "only a handful of Europeans" ever to have glimpsed the
sheer north face of Sacred Mt. Kailas up to this day, and one of these two, Augusto Gansser, secretly photographed
it in July 1936. Per Allen 1983, photo caption facing page 129.
20. Arnold A. Heim and Augusto Gansser, The Throne of the Gods: an Account of the First Swiss Expedition
to the Himalayas, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1939), 52.
21. Hoffmeister 1848, p. 395; Torrens 1862, p. 121; McGovern 1924, pp. 45, 346-7, 384; and Prince Peter
1963, pp. 386-7.
22. The Expedition would learn that between Gartok and the Indo-Tibetan border village of Shipki farther west there
were few villages permanently inhabited, the traveler only finding groups of tents. Gartok itself (whose name quite
appropriately means "the highest camp") was in those days an important center in summer, but in the winter no one could
be found there. Instead, its inhabitants invariably descended to a village lying a thousand feet below. Benjamin LaTrobe,
"Tibetan Missions and the British Advance towards Lhasa," MRW (Apr. 1904):291. This latter case would be the
situation when the Rawling Party arrived there.
23. To paraphrase a member of the Younghusband Expedition, entering Lhasa destroyed the isolation of the
one-mystery that the 19th century had left to the 20th to explore. Yet, as Charles Allen has observed, "before the
mystery could be explored any further," Younghusband "had drawn up the Anglo-Tibetan Convention of 1904,
which effectively put Tibet out of bounds to all the great powers except China." Its purpose, he went on to
observe, "was to ensure that Russia kept her nose out of Tibetan affairs, but its effect was once more to place
Tibet off limits to explorers." Nonetheless, Younghusband was eager to allow a number of his young army
officers, of whom Bailey was one, "as much leeway for exploration as he could" before the pullback of British
forces to the Indian frontier would will-nilly terminate such exploration. The ultimate consequence of this policy
was the Gartok Expedition, after a planned exploration from Lhasa down the Tsangpo to Assam and thence to
Peking had been doomed once news had reached the Tibetan capital that a mail caravan on the road back to
Darjeeling had presumably been attacked by Tibetans (it was later discovered that those in the caravan had been
murdered by a number of Indian soldiers frustrated by having arrived too late to participate in the general looting
consequent upon the British invasion of Tibet). Allen 1983, pp. 160-1.
24. "Obituary: Brigadier-General C/G. Rawling, C.M.G., C.I.E," GJ (Dec. 1917):465.
25. It was but a temporary measure indeed, to be replaced shortly thereafter with a wire-rope "bridge" which,
in a most hazardous way, would serve the needs of travelers crossing the river until it, in turn, was replaced in
1910 by another but far more secure engineering triumph. The so-called wire-rope bridge and how it was operated
has been described most vividly by one of the later resident missionaries at Poo, the Rev. Hermann B. Marx. He
tells of the time in 1907 when he and his wife were compelled by circumstances to traverse the Sutlej twice within
the span of two months' time, the second instance being their return journey to Poo in August from the same left
or south side of the river as had the Rawling Expedition:
The sun had set when we reached the bottom of the valley where the dreaded wire-rope over the
Sutlej takes the place of a bridge. This wire-rope, some 115 yards in length, is suspended at about
the same height over perpendicular rising cliffs forming a steep and rugged precipice. The roaring
river Sutlej rushes below, dashing its waters through the gorge in wild torrents. Four years ago there
was a wooden bridge thrown over this abyss. But\one day, just after a herd of cattle had been driven
across, the whole structure collapsed. Since then this wire-rope has taken its place. It is suspended
between the precipices for the conveyance of human travelers and their loads, as well as all kinds
of domestic animals. The device and method of this conveyance is a very simple one. Along the
wire-rope runs an iron trolley, fastened by a rope tied into two big loops. The passenger, stepping
into those two loops, takes up a sitting posture. Holding tightly to the rope he is pulled across the
river by means of a long rope attached to the trolley.
Animals may be conveyed in numbers if they are not too big. We had four sheep, and all of
them were sent across at once. They were tied to the trolley by their front legs in a fashion which
enabled them to hang freely, so that they could move and kick about. The poor creatures, in their
distress, did this to such an extent that we feared the ropes would be undone and that the animals
would be precipitated into the river below. Our cow submitted more quietly. She had hardly got
across, however, when up she jumped and furiously ran away. It will be easily understood that this
wire-rope is dangerous, especially owing to the tremendous height it is suspended above the
roaring river. If the rope were to break or the trolley get out of working order, there would be
absolutely no chance of saving the traveler who was crossing at the time.
I am glad to say that we and those with us were graciously preserved from all harm and danger.
We arrived at Poo safely, praising and thanking God for His protection.
Marx, "Building a Mission-House under difficulties," PA (Mar. 1908):24-5. This proved to be the same wire-
rope affair which confronted the world famous Swedish explorer Sven Hedin exactly a year later, whose own
harrowing experience in crossing the Sutlej by this means is recounted in the very next chapter.
26. LaTrobe, "British Officers at Poo on Christmas Day," MM (Mar. 1905):40. Other than those already
cited, the sources for the preceding paragraphs dealing with Bailey, Younghusband, Rawling and the other officers
of the Gartok Expedition, the "bridge" and Tharchin and Schnabel at Poo are: Tharchin himself, together with
Swinson 1971, pp. 44-6; Major C.H.D. Ryder, "Exploration and Survey with the Tibet Frontier Commission,
and from Gyantse to Simla via Gartok," (Part II.) GJ (Oct 1905): 378-95; and Captain Cecil G. Rawling, The
Great Plateau; Being an Account of Exploration in Central Tibet, 1903, and ofthe Gartok Expedition, 1904-1905
(London, 1905), 303-5.
27. Richter 1908, p. 351.
28. Andrews 1908, pp. 153-4; McLeish 1931, p. 86; and Rev. M.A. Sherring, The History of Protestant
Missions in India... 1706 to 1881 (London, 1884), 213.
29. Andrews 1934, pp. 4-5. Another observer of the scene in this region, Alexander McLeish, has noted that
CMS workers used to itinerate throughout the lower valley of the river Sutlej regularly and "especially concentrated
on the great annual Tibetan fair at Rampur." In fact, McLeish, himself a missionary and writing in 1931, recalls
having spent a week with Dr. Jukes at this fair back in 1908. McLeish 1931, p. 88.
30. The sources for this kind of personal data regarding young Tharchin are: (a) Entry for Tartschin (Dorje
Zering), in PCRH (3), and (b) Entry Nos. 10-11 of PCRH (1).
31. Translated from the Tibetan by the Society, it appeared in The Bible Society Reporter (Sept. 1904):284.
32. PDH (1864-1920), Year 1910; this particular sentence having been translated for the author not only by
Dr. Marx but also by Ms. Ghimus.
33. This, according to Appasamy 1966, p. 36. This bit of information was obviously obtained by the author
from Tharchin himself
34. Cf. ibid, with PA (Sept. 1854): 178.
35. The pieces of evidence are these: (a) the Schnabels voluntarily forfeited their normal year-long furlough
back to Europe during 1905/06 (i.e., from autumn to autumn) and decided to enjoy a shorter period of rest during
what was called "local furlough"—that is to say, a respite somewhere in the local environs of the mission field but
away from the assigned station of missionary labor [a number of years previously the Moravian Mission Board
had decided that because of the high elevations of the Mission's stations in the Himalayas, the missionaries if
they so wished would be allowed to take, every four years, a short local furlough elsewhere at a lower and more
healthful elevation without having to return ail the way to Europe—MM (Dec. 1906):240]; (b) in a letter Schnabel
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sent to Oskar Pfister dated 13 July 1925, the missionary—writing in report-fashion and couching it in both the
first and third persons—stated the following: "he [Tharchin] came with Schnabel to Kotgarh in 1907 ... At that
time we set out from Poo in October 1906 and journeyed to Kotgarh ...," thus meaning they probably arrived at
Kotgarh late Nov.-early Dec. 1906—Pfister 1926, pp. 219-20; (c) it is known from A.J. Appasamy, whose
source was unquestionably Tharchin, that the Schnabels resided in the Kotgarh area for six months (see two notes
above); (d) the Moravian published records confirm the accuracy of this six-month figure when on the one hand
these records indicate that the Schnabels were scheduled to "go on local furlough [to Kotgarh] this winter [1906-
07]"—MM (Dec. 1906):240 together with ibid. (June 1907): 120 for the bracketed information about Kotgarh—
and on the other hand indicate that "at the end of June [1907] Mr. And Mrs. Schnabel returned from Kotgarh to
join again in our work for the Master," this latter statement being quoted from a letter by Rev. Hermann Marx
written from Poo—ibid. (Oct. 1907): 188; and (e) the fact that Tharchin's own estimation that it was sometime
during the months of May-June in which he encountered Sundar Singh showing the magic lantern in Kotgarh (see
in the paragraphs to follow in the present narrative) fits the foregoing pieces of evidence without any problem
except one, which is discussed in note 44 below.
36. MM (Dec. 1906):240.
37. The name commonly used to refer to an early form of an optical projector of still pictures using a
transparent slide; in other words, what today would be called presenting a slide show.
38. Davey 1963, 120.
39. Andrews was an Englishman who had initially come to India âround 1904) as an Anglican priest-teacher.
But the experience of just a few years among the Indian people influenced his decision shortly afterwards to leave
the Anglican Church formally and become "a lay servant to the Indians." Frequently described as "the best loved
Englishman in India," Andrews and Gandhi were together quite often. Indeed, an American contemporary of
these two men, Dr. John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church of New York, had referred to Andrews as
Gandhi's favorite "crony" See Norman Cousins (ed.), Profiles of Gandhi; America Remembers a World Leader
(1969; 2d ed., Delhi, 1970), 29n. And another American, Mrs. Welthy H. Fisher, wife of Dr. Frederick B. Fisher,
Methodist Bishop of Calcutta and a close personal friend of Andrews, Gandhi and Tagore, wrote that Andrews
was "Indian by adoption and a saint through dedication to saintly ideas." Quoted in ibid., 29.
Tagore himself once called Charlie Andrews "my dearest friend." When the Englishman died on 5 April 1940,
wrote one of Tagore's biographers, the Indian poet "suffered the last greai bereavement of his life in the death of
his devoted friend C.F. Andrews." This was but a year before his own death. At a special memorial service held
in the Mandir of the unique Indian university founded by the great poet at Santiniketan, Tagore unhesitatingly
said this of Andrews: "In no man have I seen such a triumph of Christianity." And on an earlier occasion he had
voiced the thought that he could never harbor any ill-feeling towards the British, if for no other reason than that
Andrews was one of them! In a similar vein, Gandhi viewed Andrews as "one of the greatest and best Englishmen.
And because he was a good son of England, he became also a son of India." Andrews himself, in writing to Tagore
as early as 5 October 1913, had said: "I am, and shall always be, an Englishman, through and through; but I am
sure we must pass these boundary lines of nationality where truth stares us in the face, which is universal and
greater even than country." The famed Poet of India thought so highly of his British confidant and friend that
when visiting Cambridge University in 1930 he broke into adulatory song upon entering Pembroke College where
Andrews had been a student:
Here studied a great Christian, pure and noble,
A great Englishman, a Friend of the poor, Deenabhandu,
Who, through service, proved his love towards India and Humanity.
A lifelong friend of mine, Mahatmaji's right hand too,
Who expiated with his own hands for the British imperialist arrogance and crimes.
His name shall be enshrined in India's heart forever,
Dear Charlie Andrews, a Christ-like man from these British Isles.
Sources: (1) The "dearest friend" quotation and the Pembroke song are quoted on pages 59 and 90, respectively,
of Anthony Elenjimittam, The Poet of Hindustan (Calcutta, 1948); and (2) the rest of the quotations are taken
from Krishna Kripolani, Rabindranath Tagore, a Biography (London, 1962), 388.
40. The source used for the year 1906 is Chaturvedi and Sykes 1949, p. 67. At Kotgarh, incidentally, the
annual rainfall was only 46 inches, considerably less than down on the hot steamy plains.
41. Andrews 1934, pp. 75, 2-3.

42. Ibid., xiii.
43. See as sources for the information and quotations dealing with Stokes and the Sadhu the following:
Appasamy 1966, pp. 25-30, 74; Heiler 1927, pp. 54, 59; Parker 1968, p. 22; Piersonx1920, p. 616; Stokes 1912,
pp. 6-8, 19, 22, 46; Streeter and Appasamy 1921, p. 13; and Sundar Singh 1915?, p. 28. For the "cave home"
story, the source is a composite of quotations from Andrews 1934, p. 76 and his article, Andrews 1931, p. 1422.
Additional sources were: ibid., 1421, 1423; and Stokes 1917, pp. v-vi.
44. When dictating his "memoirs" Tharchin had said that it was "sometime during the months of May-June
1906." GTUM TsMs, 9. Although the man from Poo was normally quite accurate ("Tharchin kept a careful
diary and gives exact dates," Appasamy 1966, p. 36), in this instance his memory did not serve him correctly
One can be absolutely certain that it was a year later, in 1907, based upon the overwhelming evidence presented
in note 35 above; yet the certitude of 1907 is buttressed as well by Tharchin's own published testimony that was
included in an article he and David Woodward jointly authored, entitled, "Tibet," and which appeared in print
several years subsequent to its original preparation when finally published as a chapter in Hoke (ed.) 1975. For
on page 652 of that volume, Tharchin, writing in the third person concerning himself, states: "In 1907 he met
Sadhu Sundar Singh, the fabled Indian saint." This article had been prepared several years before Tharchin
commenced dictating his so-called memoirs,
45. Andrews 1908, pp. 153-5.
46. Appasamy 1966, p. 37.
47. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Macmunn observed, Sikhism was beginning to fade out. But
then the British Indian Army and its perceptive officers came to the rescue. He writes:
You are not born a Sikh, but must be baptized therein at adult age, and the tendency of the young
men was to forsake the strait path, and lapse back to be, if they so wished, among the inferior
Hindus. But the British officers knew that the merits of Sikhism in forming military character was
very great. They insisted that any recruit born of Sikh parents should be baptized, or in the Sikh
metaphor "take the pahul" This was done in full regimental "thing"—to turn to Saxon metaphor—
and with the regimental Sikh chaplain officiating, the young men entered Sikhism with ceremony.
The Sikh center, the Golden Temple and its authorities, were much rejoiced, for they had felt
almost powerless to stem the rot that had set in. The help thus received from the Army saved the
situation. Service in the British Indian Army was very much sought after, and the-certainty that
the son of Sikh parents would not be taken into the "Sikh" regiments unless he too were a Singh
soon had the desired effect on a race that still had the martial tradition. Sheered up by this help,
Sikhism resisted the rot, and when politics and community feeling began to head for the ballot
box, Sikhism became fully re-established."
Much later, with the coming of the division of the Indian subcontinent that began in 1947 following independence
from Great Britain, problems were created for the Sikhs. Many of their temples, for example, happened to be in
Moslem Pakistan, thus causing hostility between the followers of the two conflicting faiths. "Partly under
pressure" from the Pakistani Moslems, many Sikhs felt compelled to emigrate to India. Benson Y. Landis, World
Religions, new rev. ed. (New York, 1965), 98. It should be added that during the 1980s the Sikhs in India,
particularly among the extremists in their home area of the Punjab, had become quite militant once again against
the Government of India, they seeking—by violence, terrorism and force of arms if necessary—to secure an
independent State of their own, to be called Khalisthan, completely severed from the Indian Federation of Twenty-
Two States that back then had comprised the nation of India. Such violence and terrorism has even cost the life of
India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when in Oct. 1984 some of her bodyguards who were Sikhs wreaked
vengeance of the Sikh people upon her by assassinating the Prime Minister as reprisal for her desecration of
Sikhism's most holy site—the Golden Temple at Amritsar—when she ordered Indian troops to put an end to the
siege of the Temple by actually having these troops physically invade by force of arms its precincts. And even
today, though not as vigorously as in previous years, the Sikhs in the Punjab continue to agitate for independence.
The information and quotations in the text of the present narrative concerning Nanak and the founding and
development of the Sikh faith are taken from ibid., 97-8; "The Lions of Punjab," Time (12 Nov. 1984): 14; Graham
1898, p. 101; and Macmunn n.d., pp. 19, 117-22.
48. Riddle 1949, pp. 159-60. By contrast, however, Riddle went on to say that a Hindu could not accept the
Sikh notion of God's forgiving actions. The Hindu, the missionary observed, "believes that man's every action
420
brings its own reward. The balance of good deeds that a man gains in this life decides his reward in his next rebirth,
just as the balance of evil against him decides his punishment, but God cannot become involved in action by
forgiving sin." Ibid,
49. Pierson 1920, p. 613.
50. At that time, she had been for him, more than any other, the way to God. In fact, she was honored by her
people as a bhakta—a woman saint—throughout Sundar's native district. Davey 1963, p. 15. She had died when
Sundar was fourteen. A refined and gifted woman, his mother had been on friendly terms with American
Presbyterian Mission ladies, who even visited in her home. Inspiring her son with the thought of some day
becoming a holy sadhu, she had taught young Sundar "the best things she knew." Pierson 1920, p. 612. In
subsequent years Sundar would say that his mother "had made him a sadhu" but that "the Holy Spirit had made
him a Christian." Appasamy 1966, p. 27.
51. Riddle 1964, pp. 10-11.
52. It needs to be said that the text as presented here of Sundar Singh's conversion experience represents a
composite formulation by the present writer of what Sundar Singh recounted, either in verbal or written form, on
five separate occasions. Other than what has already been documented, the sources for the various quotations in
this and the preceding paragraph (including the Sadhu's conversion testimony) are to be found in Sundar Singh
1969, pp. 55-6; Streeter and Appasamy 1921, p. 117; Appasamy 1966, pp. 172, 204; and Appasamy (ed.)
1956, pp. 9-10.
*
53. A lengthy and quite exhausting journey for this novice servant of the Lord, who performed it, nonetheless,
with distinction. Exactly a month and three days after his baptism, the young Sadhu set out on 6 Oct. 1905 from
the immediate Simla area where he had already missionized the villages round about. First he went down to his
home village and surrounding communities (in obedience, no doubt, to Acts 1:8 of the New Testament), next
through most of India to the south and east, then northward through the Punjabi plains and onward to Afghanistan
(via the Khyber Pass), Baluchistan, and Kashmir, finally returning in 190^to the Kotgarh region of the Simla
Hills. Appasamy 1966, pp. 27-8. For additional details see Riddle 1964, pp. 23-6.
54. Per Entry Nos. 10-11 in PCRH (1).
55. For a brief but excellent discussion of "the dark night of the soul," the reader should consult the chapter
entitled "Brokenness" in Stephen Kaung, The Songs of Degrees (New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers,
1970), pp. 169-81. Available from the Publishers at 11515 Allecingie Parkway, Richmond VA 23235 USA.
56. The sources for the information and quoted material dealing with the Madtha-Sodnama-Gyamo affair are
five in number:
(a) KARH (1854-1897), Year 1895, pp. 3d, 4a thru c; Year 1896, pp. 4d, 5a.
(b) PARH (1865-1900), Year 1895, p. llf.; Year 1896, p. 3ff.
(c)PDH (1864-1920), Years 1897, 1898, 1906, 1906-7, 1910.
(d) PCRH (2), Entry No. 1 (Madtha), which tells also of his Kulu exclusion; PCRH (1) Entry Nos. 10-11
(Sodnama & son Dorje), Entry No. 13 (Sodnama's mother, Abo Tachung), Entry No. 15 (Gyamo Zering); and
PCRH (4), Entry No. 8, p. 27.
(e) Missionsblatt, Issue No. 8 (Aug. 1897):253, translated from the German for the author by Dr. Elizabeth
Marx.
57. Romans 5:20b.
58. No doubt impossible for him—as explained a few pages earlier—due to heavy snows on the paths he
would have to traverse to reach Poo from Kotgarh, including even the better maintained Hindustan-Tibet Road.
The reader should keep in mind that even under the most favorable climatic and trail-maintenance conditions the
travel time between these two points was an average of 14 trekking days.
59. This death date for Tharchin's maternal grandmother, Abo Tachung, is found in Entry No. 13, PCRH (1).
60. 2 Timothy 1:5.
61. PDH (1864-1920), Year 1910 (covers the annual report period of 1909/10).
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 12-25; quotes: 14, 14-15, 16, 17, 17-18, 18, 19, 19-20, 21, 23, 24, 25.
1.Hedin 1912, p. 131.
2. As regards Tibet, this hill town was to become famous as the site for the convening of the Simla
Conference (1913-14) attended by Representatives of China, Tibet and Britain, and for the signing of the
resultant historic Simla Convention of 27 April 1914.
3. Appasamy 1966, p. 36.
4. The suffix "la" in the Tibetan language conveys a honorific sense of courtesy and friendship, not unlike
"ji" in Hindi, which is attached to people's names or titles. For example, Tharchin was always addressed in
public as "Tharchinla," whereas in Hindi he would have been addressed as "Tharchinji" even as Gandhi was
often referred to as "Gandhiji" and as Sundar Singh was frequently referred to as "Sadhuji."
5. The sources for this three-paragraph discussion of Tharchin's coolie garb, his unsuccessful aspiration to
go to Tibet for study, and his working on the Road as a coolie are: (a) Appasamy 1966, p. 36; (b) Tharchin, BB
TwMs, p. 1; (c) author's interview with Sonam T. Kazi (close younger friend of Tharchin's), Oct. 1991; and (d)
the "placed himself' quote is as Tharchin is reported to have told Catholic Jesuit Fr. Henry Hosten in a
conversation held at Darjeeling in 1925 and subsequently related to Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister, who in turn
published it in Pfister 1926, p. 212.
6. According to A.J. Appasamy in his biography of the Sadhu, this meeting occurred in the year 1908, a date
the biographer doubtless had learned from Tharchin himself when gathering information from him about Sundar
Singh for his biography of the Sadhu. Now in the typewritten unpublished "Brief Biography ..." written by
Tharchin Babu about himself and discussed in the Preface to the present narrative, the Babu had at first typed
in the year "1907" as the date for this trip to Simla; but by his own identifiable handwriting he had inked in a
correction, changing the "7" to an "8." See Tharchin, BB TwMs, p. 1. That this corrected date in the "Brief
Biography" has reference to this particular visit at Simla and not to another visit there mentioned in the same
paragraph of this document (and about this other visit of which there are one or two misstatements which could
lead the reader to confuse it with the "corrected-date visit") is confirmed by Tharchin's further statement therein
of how and why he returned to Poo: he "was taken back home by one of the missionaries who had gone on
furlough to Germany" the previous year and was now himself returning to Poo from Simla. All this is thoroughly
explained, discussed and documented subsequently in the present chapter. It needs also to be mentioned that
when dictating his so-called memoirs shortly before his death Tharchin declared that his meeting with the Sadhu
had taken place on the 2d of May 1907; see GTUM TsMs, 14. This does provide the correct day and month, but
with respect to the year, once again it should be said that this discrepancy between what he had said earlier to
Appasamy and what he stated later in his final "memoirs" must be attributed to the Tibetan's brief lapse of
memory in dictating his "memoirs." Accordingly, the narrative Text shows the year corrected to 1908. Finally,
these two sources—Appasamy's biography and Tharchin's final "memoirs"—agree that it was 2 May 1908 and
not 10 May for the encounter between Sundar and Dorje Tharchin, and is therefore the date which appears in the
narrative Text. The 10 May date is what Fr. Henry Hosten reported to Oskar Pfister as having been told Hosten
by Tharchin in 1925 at Darjeeling. But this represents a mistake either by Tharchin in his conversation at that
time, or by Hosten in the latter's report to Pfister, or else an overlooked typesetter error by Pfister's publisher.
See Pfister 1926, p. 212.
7. It was fortunate for the young lad to have met the Redman family, for as Charles Andrews has pointed out,
"no more gentle and tender father in God could have been given Sundar than this aged servant of Christ. His home
was always open, and a 'prophet's chamber' was kept for Sundar himself to occupy whenever he passed
through Simla." Andrews 1934, p. 57.
8. Sir Edward J. Buck, Simla, Past and Present (Calcutta, 1904), 82.
9. See Appasamy 1966, p. 36. It should be added that some of the quoted words of the Sadhu to Tharchin
are per GTUM TsMs, 14; while others are according to Tharchin in the latter's conversation with Jesuit Fr.
Hosten held at Darjeeling in 1925, who reported them to Swiss pastor Pfister; see Pfister 1926, p. 212.
420
10. It so happens that young Tarnyed had been baptized in Leh at Easter time 1895 by Br. Julius Weber who
with his wife had earlier been in charge of the Mission work at Poo at the time when Gergan Tharchin was born
in 1890. The Webers, upon being replaced by the Schreves, had then gone to Leh for the remaining four years of
their service on the Himalayan Mission field before returning to Europe. It was when the Webers did in fact begin
their long return journey to Europe in the later summer of 1895 that they took in tow as far as Srinagar in Kashmir
two young orphan lads aged about 17 or 18 who were immediately enrolled at the famed CMS school of Canon
C.E. Tyndale-Biscoe's for a more thorough schooling and education than these two were able to receive at the
time in the Mission school at Leh. One was of course Tarnyed; and the second was none other than young Yoseb
(Joseph) Gergan who was to become the great and devoted translator of much of the Tibetan Bible (and whose
tireless labors are recounted in detail in Vol. Ill, Ch. 28 of the present narrative). Both lads had had the experience
of accompanying Br. Weber by turns on his evangelistic tours around Leh.
A thumbnail sketch of young Tarnyed is provided in the Sept. 1896 issue of Periodical Accounts at page 147-
"Ali Tarnyed, who is about the same age [as Joseph], seems to be of a more practical turn and will probably be
employed as a cook. As such he will be a help to the missionaries at the station and on itinerating tours
Meanwhile he is making himself useful in one way and another at Leh, at the same time trying to obtain a more
thorough knowledge of the Urdu language [which certainly served him well when later interpreting for the Urdu-
speaking Sundar Singh on several occasions] and to learn a little English. He is a good lad, and willing for any
work." Three years later (1899) a further sketch of Tarnyed was provided by the missionaries at Leh, who noted
on the one hand that the young man would presumably make an acceptable postmaster of the proposed new
branch post office to be established at Khalatse as well as be one of the Leh mission station's schoolmasters, since
"he is well educated, as things go here"; but on the other hand they noted that "the trouble" with Tarnyed was
that "he cannot sit still for any length of time, nor is he stable. He inherits Balti blood ... and Balti blood is very
restless, fostering a desire for wandering." Nevertheless, added the missionaries, "so far as his character is
concerned, Ali has, we believe, developed favorably." As it turned out, Tarnyed Ali never did serve as Khalatse
postmaster nor as a schoolmaster at Leh; but he did later become a fine teacher in all three Mission station schools
at Simla, Kyelang and Poo—at which places he also engaged in evangelistic work. At Poo he even served as
postmaster!
But not only did Tarnyed visit Tibet in company with Sundar Singh, he also at various other times through
the years made a number of trips into the Closed Land on his own, traveling even as far as Lhasa itself, where he
made some interesting contacts with a number of people who showed interest in the Christian faith. This is made
evident in a letter he wrote in 1924 to the National Missionary Intelligencer, the publishi ng arm of the National
Missionary Society of India. This indigeous organization, whose original establishment had been spurred on by
the challenges given by Sundar Singh himself for the Indian Church to take an active role in reaching Tibet for
Christ, had by this time become greatly interested in seeking ways to spread the gospel to the Land of Snows. In
his letter to the Intelligencer, Tarnyed Ali could report positive signs of appreciation for the Christian faith in the
Tibetan capital and elsewhere in the Forbidden Land:
Though Tibet is in a way closed to us, there are Christians there, and the country is not without
Christian witnesses; the Lord is working there in a marvelous way. I am an eyewitness to it, have
visited Lhasa, and every year tour in that country in connection with my business. I will never
forget how once in the streets of Lhasa I came across a shop of a Buddhist merchant whose wife
sang Christian hymns to me to my great joy and wonder (she had learned them in Kalimpong ...).
Again once I had an interview with the Prime Minister of Tibet who said to me, "What beautiful
love is to be found in your Christian religion." Also, once in the city of Shigatse'where dwells the
Tashi [Panchen] Lama, in a shop I saw hung on the walls several pictures of Christ
Sources for this note: PA (Dec. 1891):386-7; (June 1895):513; (Sept 1896):147; (Dec. 1899): 210; (June 1912):309;
and (Sept. 1912) at near page 365 where appears a delightful photograph of Ali and his family. See also H.3
Marx, "Ali, the New Teacher of Poo," MM (Apr. 1912):63-6; for Ali's 1924 letter, see "Christians in Tibet/*
URW( May 1924):400; and for Sundar Singh's involvement in the National Missionary Society of India, see ibid
(Apr. 1924):307.
11 .PA (Sept. 1907):688. Tarnyed had moved up to Kyelang from Simla where he had been a schoolmaster at
the Mission school there.
12. The sources for the Sadhu's first missionary journey to Tibet are: Parker 1968, p. 37; Heiler 1927 pp 68-
9; Streeter and Appasamy 1921, p. 16; and Davey 1963, pp. 61-2. On Uvo more occasions that are definitely
known, the Sadhu again visited Tharchin's village, once almost exactly four years later when in 1912 he again
w e n t on into Tibet proper, and another time in 1917. In the first instance Sundar was once more accompanied by
the faithful and helpful Tarnyed All, for whom, according to Rev. Marx, the Sadhu's visit proved to be "a great
encouragement to Ali and his family in particular," but, Marx added, "we missionaries also learned to love the
earnest young Christian." Sundar had arrived at Poo on Saturday the 9th of March all the way from Kotgarh; and
the following day he preached at the Mission station's Sunday morning service, doing so in Hindustani (Urdu),
with Ali translating into Tibetan. (By this time Tarnyed had become Poo's new Urdu schoolmaster, having
replaced Paulu in 1911.) Marx noted that he and his other missionary colleague, Rev. Kunick, "had given a special
invitation to all the Hindustani-speaking heathen to come to this service, and it was a pleasure to see our church
quite filled with attentive hearers." The Sadhu's text was the familiar passage in Revelation 3:20. "He told them
how that Jesus Christ fills with satisfaction and happiness the souls that open the door to Him." "I believe,"
Marx added, that "this personal testimony made a deep impression on his hearers." Marx, "Visit of an Indian
Evangelist to Poo," MM (Aug. 1912): 152.
Sundar was asked to speak again one week later, which he did. But in between these two successive Sundays,
Tarnyed and Sundar (whom the former termed "a dear friend") teamed up once again to go itinerating with the
gospel into Tibet. According to Ali's account that appeared a month after the event in the Urdu-language
Christian weekly paper called Nur Afshan published in Ludhiana, the two of them had intended to go to Shipki
two stages from Poo. But upon reaching Tharchin's next-door village ofNamgia they learned that the route to this
Tibetan town (which must be reached by first negotiating the Shipki Pass at an elevation of nearly 16,000') was
blocked by snow, impelling the duo evangelists to set their sights once again on Tashigang where they had
experienced a cordial welcome on their previous itineration four years earlier. Crossing the torrential Sutlej by
means of a typical woven grass rope bridge, they then had to traverse some five miles of "precipitous ascent,"
which, wrote Ali, "was really very troublesome." Besides, he added, "the wind was so chilly that our hands and
face became as cold as ice and we were unable to speak even a single word to each other. Poor Sundar Singh's
hands were also swollen on account of the intense cold and he felt pain in them for several days after the journey.
But I admire his courage. It is certainly very dangerous for an Indian to pass through such a cold place." One of
the passes the two companions had to negotiate, in fact, was over 4000 feet higher than the elevation of Shipki
Pass.
Finally reaching their destination one evening, the two learned that their friend the Kushok (Head Lama) was
then spending his days in retreat. Nonetheless next day he sent for them to meet him in his prayer cell. But
because the cell was dark the two Christian evangelists could only talk, unable to see each other's face. "The
Kushok put forth some questions relating to worldly and religious matters which were duly replied to by Sundar
Singh in detail. The Kushok veiy gladly heard all that Sundar Singh said to him and expressed his agreement with
him in his views." Upon conclusion of their long conversation together, the Head Lama invited all the lesser
priests to assemble, at which the Sadhu addressed them on the Christian faith, Ali serving as interpreter. The
lecture lasted three hours. That same day the two companions left Tashigang, returning to Poo in time for the
second Sunday service at which the Sadhu spoke on March 17th. Letter, T. Nasib Ali, "The Meeting of a Dear
Friend," published in Nur Afshan, 19 April 1912, quoted in Appasamy 1966, p. 43, as taken from the English
translation of the Nur Afshan letters that dealt with Sundar Singh and which are available in the Central Library
of Zurich, Switzerland.
Finally, in the late summer of 1917 the Sunday morning service at Poo was graced once more by the presence
of the Sadhu, who, together with his traveling companion, Moravian missionary Wright from Dagshai below
Simla, spoke through interpreters before the assembled congregation. Present once again were Rev. Marx and his
wife as well as the other, newly-arrived, missionary couple from Leh, the Rev. and Mrs. H.F. Burroughs from
Britain. PA (June 1918):209,211. Sundar once more made a deep impression upon his audience, as is evidenced
by a lengthy biographical article on the Sadhu which Burroughs subsequently wrote, entitled "A Christian
Sadhu's visit to Poo," MM (Feb. 1918):13-4.
13. GTUM TsMs, 14.

14. See: Pfister 1926, p. 212 (emphasis added); and Appasamy 1966, p. 36 (emphasis added).
15. Rouse, "The Bible in India," MRW(Apr. 1904):285-6.
16. As reported by Fr. Hosten to Pastor Pfister, who in turn summarized and published the .report in Pfister
1926, p. 216. The source for the Tharchin quote found in the preceding paragraph of the narrative is GTUM
TsMs, 14-5.
17. In English his name would be David Singh. His actual name was Samuel David Singh. Per GTUM TsMs, 16.
420
18. As told to Margaret Urban, a missionary visitor to Gergan Tharchin's Kalimpong home for two weeks in
1964 and reported in her book, Urban 1967, p. 5.
19. This latter question is per Tharchin in his BB TwMs, p. 1. Except where already documented, all other
quoted material in this section of the narrative dealing with Dorje's relationship with Daud Singh has been
excerpted from GTUM TsMs, 16-18.
20. For the details of his contacts with the Moravians at Leh at that time (1906), see the early end-notes
for Ch. 2.
21. The luster of his fame would wane, if not be totally eclipsed, however, by his unpopular political views
of subsequent years. As one much later visitor to Tibet would write, after noting that Hedin had celebrated his
85th birthday at Stockholm in February 1950: "He alienated many of his old friends and colleagues by his
vociferous support of Germany in both world wars, but his regrettable political views can hardly detract from his
reputation as one of the great explorers of modern times." Thomas, Jr. 1951, p. 77.
22. Another European traveler, famed Tibetologist and archaeologist-scholar, Moravian A.H. Francke, after
a visit to Poo in the summer of 1909, has provided some historical background to the bridge, so familiar to Gergan
Tharchin as a Tibetan youth growing up in Poo. In his personal narrative of the visit Francke writes:
The place of this bridge [known to travelers as the Namtu Bridge] is called mTho-rang, or "Height
itself." From inscriptions on both banks of the river, it becomes evident that there has been a
bridge in this place from ancient times. The oldest inscription is in Gupta characters, and too
much effaced to allow of reading more than sya, the termination of the genitive case, at the end
of the line. Several of the Tibetan inscriptions seem to be almost a thousand years of age, judging
by the form of their characters. It is interesting to note that two of them, one on each bank of the
river, give the following advice to the person who intends crossing: Ma-ni-grongs-shig\ "Do not
forget the mani (the Om mani padme hum) [when crossing]"! This was very appropriate advice,
for unpleasant as this bridge is nowadays, it was far more unpleasant in the old days when the
traveler had to entrust his life to three rotten ropes plaited of willow twigs at an altitude of about
100 feet above a broad and violent stream. No wonder people called the bridge "Height itself." At
the present day, the bridge consists of a strong steel cable provided by the Public Works
Department; and the usual trolley being broken, a wooden saddle [or yoke] with two rope slings
attached to it, has to do service instead. As Mr. Schnabel informs me, hardly a year passes by
without accidents on this bridge ...
Francke 1914,1:23.
23. One of his other photos of Hedin taken after the explorer had finally reached the mission compound is
world-famous and graces the cover of Charles Allen's extraordinary account of exploration and high adventure,
entitled A Mountain in Tibet, a volume that traces the various travels of explorers to and around the sacred
mountain and lake area of Kailas-Manasarovar in western Tibet, including Hedin himself who is given coverage
in two of the book's chapters. In his volume Allen has described the photo: at Poo Hedin "was met and
photographed by a Moravian missionaiy surrounded by his Tibetan and Ladakhi retainers and his dogs, and
striking a curiously defiant pose for the camera." Allen 1983, p. 214.
24. Per Br. Schnabel, and quoted in Francke 1914,1:23. But so, too, must Francke himself have felt after his
own harrowing experience in crossing the same bridge (and from the same direction) just ten months later, and
vividly described in humorous vein in Francke 1914,1:28-9. It is worth quoting here some of the humorous parts,
inasmuch as it sheds further light on the character of Gergan Tharchin's fellow villagers:
The people of Poo seem to be fond of practical joking and try to get as much fun out of their
bridge as possible. They cannot think of anything more exhilarating than a person who wants to
cross and cannot. I was told that they have kept old women waiting on the other bank for three
days. What a grand idea to keep a European Sahib waiting and not move a finger to aid himL.. We
did not at once understand that it was the obstinacy of the Poo people which kept us on the
opposite bank, and thus we sent a man with a voice like a foghorn on to the top of a rock in the
vicinity, to shout towards Poo, where people were seen working in the fields, and probably
chuckling with delight. After this man had roared himself hoarse with shouting, we sent up
another to continue the process. Whilst this man was thus engaged for the general benefit, we saw
a man of Poo climbing about on the rocks of the Poo bank of the river. We asked him to go up to
Poo for bakhshish [i.e., for hire] and fetch the wooden saddle. "That is the last thing I would think
of doing," was all he said, and with him our last ray of hope disappeared.
The reader will be happy to learn, however, that Francke and his party did at last succeed in traversing the roaring
river Sutlej to safety onto the other side, but not without some extremely difficult, though humorous, maneuvers!
In a way, Francke's and Hedin's experience was probably no better or worse than what most Westerners would
be forced to do even had the bridge, if it had been the usual suspension kind, not been broken. Rosemary Tung has
reported that for such a bridge, its floor would have been fashioned of logs bound together by rope. There would
usually be no handrails, but there would be overhead ropes on either side of the suspension and "rather appropriately
hung with prayer flags"! And once a man or horse would step onto it, the suspension would begin to sway violently.
As she has pointed out, however, Tibetans (and other indigenous peoples in the region) were used to such swinging
bridges and "had developed a sort of dance step" which they used while crossing them, thus counterbalancing the
shifting of the suspension and which therefore enabled them to remain upright. Many uninitiated Westerners, on the
other hand, "were reduced to crawling over on their hands and knees." The pack animals, she added, "were led across
with a guide fore and aft." Tung 1980, pp. 89-90.
25. Allen 1983, p. 214.
26. This incident has an interesting sequel. While Marx was on furlough in Germany during 1909/10, he
received a letter sent by Hedin from Cologne informing him of an upcoming lecture he was to give at Stuttgart and
inviting the missionary to dine with him following the lecture. Marx was most cordially greeted by the explorer
when they met in late 1909 at the crowded lecture. Hedin expressed his pleasure when told the gold watch had
garnered £15 for the Mission. Hedin's sister had accompanied him, and in an English conversation with Marx
offered grateful thanks to the missionaries on behalf of the entire Hedin family for all the assistance and
hospitality rendered her brother at Poo. H.P. Mumford, "Dr. Sven Hedin and Our Tibetan Mission," MM (Mar.
1910):47.
27. Quoted in Allen 1983, p. 214.
28. This is a composite of excerpts taken from two descriptions by Marx, both quoted in MM (Mar. 1911):45
and (June 1911): 103-4.
29. The sources for all the material quoted from Hedin and Marx, as well as any related information not
already generally known or not documented in the other preceding end-notes to the Hedin-Poo-Kotgarh story
are: Hedin 1935, pp. 523-4; Hedin 1909,11:417-8,419; Allen 1983, p. 213; H.B. Marx, "Dr. Sven Hedin at Poo,"
MM (Nov. 1908):202, 207; Marx, "The Building of the New Mission House at Poo," ibid. (Jan. 1909):7;
Andrews 1934, pp. 8-9; and see also Davey 1963, p. 59.
30. Tharchin was to tell this to Rev. Tshering Wangdi sometime during his many years in Kalimpong, and was
related to the present writer in an interview the latter had with Rev. Wangdi, Dec. 1994.
31. H. Lee Shuttleworth, "Border Countries of the Punjab Himalaya," GJ (Oct. 1922):254-5. Much else of
the information about Spiti presented here was also gleaned from this article by Shuttleworth; and the Imperial
Gazateer statement is likewise quoted from Shuttleworth, p. 241.
32. See Deuteronomy 34:1.
33. Per Tharchin himself in his BB TwMs, p. L

34. This is a statement made by Poo missionaries Schnabel and Kunick and quoted from their Poo Diary for
1910 (signed by them Sept. 1910). Year 1910 forms apart ofPDH (1864-1920).
35. The various comings and goings of these three missionary families are documented in the following
sources: PA (Sept. 1907):726; ibid. (Mar. 1910):534, 535; ibid. (Sept. 1910):662; ibid. (Dec. 1911):xxii; ibid.
(June 1912):304; and MM (Mar. 1910):46.
36. This time frame has been placed in brackets due to Tharchin's faulty memory here. When dictating his
"memoirs" before his death, he had actually said, "by the middle of 1909" (GTUM TsMs, 20); indeed, he made
a similar mistake ("I left my own birthplace in 1909 and was in Delhi...") in a letter he wrote in 1949 (a file copy
of which he retained for himself that was found among the Tharchin Papers and which in fact may have served
as the basis for his faulty "memoir" statement some 25 years later); but all this is clearly incorrect when placed
alongside the well-documented published contemporaneous records of the Moravian Church alluded to in the
preceding paragraphs of the narrative and their accompanying end-notes. To his credit, however, on p. 1 of his
420
earlier composed BB TwMs, which was written sometime between 1946 and 1955, Tharchin had declared with
clearer memory that "at the end of 1910,... [he had] ventured [forth from Poo]... and arrived at Simla." In the
light of this, and the fact of the Kunicks' arrival back in Poo on 10 Nov. 1909, together with Thar chin's
"memoirs" statement that he had remained at his home village for about a year thereafter working for the Mission
station, it would obviously mean, taking also into account traveling time on the trails, that he could not have
arrived in Delhi much before the late part of 1910. Hence the correction as it now appears in the narrative. The
source for the brief 1949 quotation is: Tharchin to "My dear Anni Las," Kalimpong, 17 Feb. 1949.
37. This is a quote from Entry Nos. 10-11 of PCRH (1).
38. "West Himalaya: Extracts from the Reports for the Last Two Years," PA (June 1912):305.
39. All quoted material in this paragraph can be found in Tharchin's BB TwMs, p. 1. The fact of his having
worked as a coolie on the Road is confirmed, as noted previously in this chapter's end-notes, by the following
two personal sources, both of whom had received the information from Tharchin himself: (a) Bishop A.J.
Appasamy, in Appasamy 1966, p. 36; and (b) Sonam T. Kazi, who in an interview with the present author, Oct.
1991, related the fact that Tharchin had told him of his having worked when a teen-ager as a coolie on the Road
westward of Poo, such employment being quite readily available at times because of the landslides which kept
recurring.
40. This estimate of a minimal two-year absence is confirmed by Tharchin himself. He told Catholic Jesuit
Fr. Henry Hosten, in a conversation with the latter held on 4 June 1925 in Darjeeling and reported by Hosten to
Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister, that "in 1907 he came as servant (boy) to Kotgarh with missionary Schnabel and ...
returned with his service master to Poo and at the end of the year moved to Simla, where he worked as coolie,
carried stones, etc." Pfister 1926, p. 212 (emphasis added). Further, this extract from the Tharchin-Hosten
conversation would seem to indicate that the absence was probably even longer than two years, the youth having
most likely begun his long trek on the trails from Poo in the autumn of 1907 so as to get to the lower elevations
as quickly as possible before the trails in the upper elevations became impassable due to heavy snowfalls. He
could then have worked here and there at places such as Kotgarh to visit old friends, etc., eventually arriving at
Simla just before the turn of the new year. *
41. This he declared in his BB TwMs, p. 1, written sometime after 1946.
42. Per Entry Nos. 10-11 of PCRH (1).
43. Except for the "readmitted" quote documented in the preceding note, the source for all other quoted
phrases in this paragraph of the narrative are extracted from PDH (1864-1920), Year 1910.
44. The quoted matter in this paragraph has been excerpted from the very first paragraph on page 1 of
Tharchin's BB TwMs. Yet one needs to read with care the entire contents of that paragraph from Tharchin's
unpublished document and compare it with all other documentation thus far presented in the present narrative
that is relevant to the period of Tharchin Babu's early years between 1906/7 and 1910. For in that paragraph
there are factual errors related to one or two dates and events which the Tibetan accidentally made that are
doubtless due to a faulty memory. But having researched the documents and other materials on the Babu's early
life carefully and thoroughly, the present author can say with absolute confidence that what has now been
presented for the reader in this present chapter of the narrative having to do with these specific years of
Tharchin's life under discussion is accurate and reliable because all the source materials used have been compared
and contrasted, checked and rechecked—and checked once again—before they were then used in the creation of
the pertinent part of the narrative covering this particular period in the Tibetan's life.
45. PDH (1864-1920), Year 1910.
46. Webster's 1934, p. 2811.
47. Tharchin even makes a point to mention in the "Brief Biography" he wrote of himself many years later
that his New Testament he had "brought with him from his home" to Delhi when he left Poo for the final time in
1910. So important was it for him to include this fact in the "Biography" that, having failed to include it in the
first, handwritten, draft of the document, the Tibetan made sure it got into the next version by inserting it with
ink at the appropriate place onto the copy of the typewritten draft! See BB TwMs, p. 1.
48. Again, as told to missionary Urban in 1964 at hi ^Kalimpong home and reported in Urban 1967, p. 6.
End-Notes: Chapter 10 All
49. Letter, Tharchin to "My dear Anni Las," Kalimpong, 17 Feb. 1949. That Tharchin did know a little
English by this time is further confirmed in his BB TwMs, where on p. 1 of the document he writes of himself
(in the third person) as follows: "Here [at Delhi in 1910-11] he tried to learn some English, and after some time
he was able to read and write English a little." Nevertheless, as just now indicated in the Text, his vocabulary
knowledge was extremely limited, he not even recognizing the word "printed" or its meaning till explained to him
by his friend. Beyond the pale of his knowledge also were the big foreign words like Scandinavian and Alliance.
Even the words Tibetan and Mission might have given him difficulty.
50. See the next chapter for details concerning the origin and development of the Ghoom Mission by the time
of Tharchin's arrival there in 1912.
51. Torjesen 1983, p. 81.
52. He was one of the greatest Christian gospel evangelists of the 19,h century, and was most likely the
greatest foreign mission society organizer of all time. For more on the life and work of Franson, see the next
chapter.
53. This quotation of Waismaa's is a composite of two sources: (a) Urban 1967, p. 6; and (b) Tharchin's 1949
letter cited a few notes earlier and addressed to "My dear Anni Las." The source for the Tharchin quote of what
he had written in his letter to Ghoom is also from this same letter to the "Anni Las."
54. Again, taken from the "Anni Las" letter
55. Ibid.
56. Quoted in Urban 1967, p. 6.
57. Taken again from the "Anni Las" letter.
58. Located as it was all the way on the other side of the Indian subcontinent, Ghoom was situated in the
extreme northern district of Daijeeling of what is now West Bengal State in northeastern India on the southern
slopes of the Himalayan Mountains some 300 miles north of Calcutta.
59. So he wrote in his BB TwMs, p. 1.
60. From the "Anni Las" letter.
61. BB TwMs, p. 1.
62. From the "Anni Las" letter.
63. GTUM TsMs, 23.
64. Ramesh C. Majumdar, A Brief History of India, 27th ed. (Calcutta: B. Dhar, ?), 241.
65. Rev. P. Ireland Jones, "The Coming of the King to Delhi," CMR (Mar. 1912):142.
66. All these administrative changes are discussed by Rev. Canon W. Hooper, "The Coronation Durbar—and
After," ibid. (Feb. 1912):80.
67. Hedinl912,p. 131.
68. Both quotes found in Jones, "The Coming of the King to Delhi," CMR (Mar, 1912): 142,
69. Both quotations are taken from "The Delhi Durbar," ibid. (Jan. 1912):7.
70. All quotations from Gould and all information associated with his role at the Durbar have been taken from
(a) his autobiographical volume, Gould 1957, pp. 4, 9-12; and (b) the entry under "Gould, Basil J." in Who Was
Who 1951-1960, 439.
71. Both lengthy excerpts and other brief newspaper quotations found in all the pertinent preceding paragraphs
are from the New York Times, 12 Dec. 1911, p. 4 and 13 Dec. 1911, p. 5.
72. Sources for the Tharchin and Bell remarks: GTUM TsMs, 24 and Bell 1946, p. 255. The sweepers, of
course, were those belonging to the artisan and laboring Sudras—the untouchables—or lowest of the four
420
hereditary castes within the Hindu Indian society. Another future friend of Tharchin's, the Rev. Dr. John A.
Graham, was also present at this event, having come down from his Himalayan missionary home at Kalimpong
in Bengal to receive at the hands of the King-Emperor the highest of all the many honors which ever befell him:
he was made a member of the Order of the C.I.E., Companion of the Indian Empire. Eight years earlier, Graham
had already received the much-coveted Kaisar-I-Hind gold medal at another Delhi Coronation Durbar, this one
held in 1903 for King-Emperor Edward VII, father, and predecessor on the British throne, of George V. This
medal, only recently instituted in 1900 by Empress Victoria, was awarded to either men or women for important
and useful services to India. Graham, incidentally, would receive this honor of the C.I.E. as a part of the
Investiture ceremony that was held, wrote Sir Basil Gould, "in a vast square flat-topped pavilion of canvas in the
King's Camp." Sir Basil was himself present, rendering a further service at the Durbar. "My task at the Investiture,"
explained Gould, was "that of No. 2 in a chain of officers handing up decorations of the various Orders on velvet
cushions." Gould 1957, p. 11.
73. The Tharchin reminiscence can be found in GTUM TsMs, 24 and the Bell report on the Bhutan
Maharaja's interview with the King-Emperor is per Bell 1924, p. 119.
74. Bishop Benjamin LaTrobe, "The Kyelang Durbar," MM (Apr. 1913):64-5 (emphasis added).
75. Revelation 11:15.
76. As quoted in R. Maconachie (an Anglo-Indian Christian), "The Camp Sermon at Delhi," CMR (Feb.
1912): 101.
77. The story is recounted in Miss Bradley's An American Girl at the Durbar (New York: John Lane, 1912),
134-5. The authoress, who stayed in Delhi with an intimate friend (the wife of one of the Lieutenant-Governors
of India), talked to many Indians of the State Service for the King and Queen and to troops on the Sunday in
question, of whom the Indian man in the story was one,
78. Quoted in R. Maconachie, "The ceremony of the Darshan at Delhi," CMR (Feb. 1912):100-1.
79. R. Maconachie, "The King;s Visit to India...," ibid (Apr. 1913):24f. See also Rev. Canon W. Hooper,
"The Royal Visit to India," ibid. (Mar. 1912): 183.
80. Reported in the Times (London), 14 Dec. 1911, p. 10 and datelined "Durbar Camp, Delhi, Dec. 13."
81. Hooper, "The Royal Visit to India," CMR (Mar. 1912):183.
82. Spearheaded by the leadership efforts of Mohandas K. Gandhi. The source for the continuing Tharchin
reminiscences about the Delhi Durbar which are found in this and the preceding paragraph is the same as before:
GTUM TsMs, 24.
83. For the description of his ordination see Vol. Ill, Ch. 25 of the present biography.
84. The Greek term used repeatedly in the New Testament to refer to the Church—both local and universal—
and meaning "the called out ones" who have been called out from the world to be the people of God.
85. See Revelation 22:20b.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 26-35; quotes: 29, 30, 31-2, 32, 33, 34, 35-6, 36.
1. (Mrs,) Welthy (Honsinger) Fisher, The Top, of the World (New York, 1926), 61.
2. This celebrated small-gauge railway has its start down on the Siliguri plain and rans from there along the
old Cart Road most of the distance to Darjeeling Town. No tunnels were ever dug because of the desire to afford
the traveler full views of the ever-changing scenery. The British Government of India had constructed the Cart
Road^taxosi of 6OO0l3ritish pounds per mile, but the expense of laying down the "toy train" had only been half
as much per mile. With the gauge of only two feet, the railway rises, surprisingly, within but a distance of 51 miles
to an elevation of more than 8000 feet. By 4 April 1881, the train's roadbed had been completed as far as Ghoom,
and finally reached Darjeeling itself exactly three months later on 4 July. Known at that time as the Darjeeling
Steam Tramway Company of Calcutta, it soon changed its name to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Company,
which remained its name until taken over by the independent Indian Government in October 1948. "The cars are
ridiculously small," one travel writer remarked in 1908, "and we felt like putting the whole train in our pocket."
Frances S. Ladd, "Darjeeling," Travel Magazine (New York), March 1908, p. 265.
In his delightfully readable gazetteer of the Darjeeling District, L.S.S. O'Malley of the Indian Civil Service
has provided additional information about the toy train and its construction. He writes (in O'Malley 1989, pp.
140-1):
In places, the difficulties of the ascent are overcome by a few simple though ingenious engineering
devices, such as loops, where the line mounts on long spirals, and reverses or zig-zags, by which
the train is shunted up gradually ascending inclines. As a rule, however, the line merely follows the
Cart Road, though here and there it leaves it when a shorter and easier alignment has been found
practicable.... The engines are small but powerful, weighing 14 tons and being capable of taking
a train of 50 tons up an incline of 1 in 25 [the steepest is 1 in 23 for a short distance between
Ghoom and Darjeeling], The carriages are trollies open on either side, or miniature closed
carriages, small, narrow, and low-roofed, both being slung very close to the ground with only 19 Vi
inches in diameter.
To the ordinary traveler this railway, winding in and out among the mountains, below great
crags and over deep precipices, appears a wonderful piece of engineering work, and it has frequently
been described as such. This, however, appears to be an exaggerated estimate, as the road on which
it was constructed was ready-made; and for the most part, it was only necessary to lay the rails
along it. It is true that skill was required in seeing that the curves and radii were suitable and not
too sharp, but no tunneling had to be done, and the main difficulties had been already overcome
by the engineering skills of the Public Works Department, which made the Cart Road many years
before. The railway, moreover, cannot compare for speed, comfort and cheapness with mountain
railways in other parts of the world, though it was no doubt a creditable achievement in the days
when it was built.
3. Merrick 1933, p. 87.

4. Few mountains in the world have excited as much awe, wonder and delight in the beholder as has this
particular summit. Variously spelled in its English transliterated corruptions from the original as also Kanchanjanga,
Kanchanjunga, Kanchenjanga, Kangchenjunga, Kinchenjunga and Kinchinjunga, it is situated on the Nepal -
Sikkim border and is pronounced in Tibetan as KANG CHHEN DZONGA—meaning "Five Great (or Sacred)
Repositories (or Treasuries or Storehouses) of the Great Snows" (i.e., Kang snow, chhen great, dzo treasury, nga
five). Another transliteration of the Tibetan and its translation is: GANGS TSCHEN MDZOD NGA, "the Five
Chambers of the Great Snow-Mass," Heinrich Jaeschke, letter from Darjeeling, 12 Mar. 1865, PA (June 1865):418.
See a letter to the editor published in Gergan Tharchin's newspaper The Tibet Mirror, 24 Nov. 1954, pp. 10-11,
for a lively discussion on the correct Tibetan name of this famed mountain and its meaning. Apparently there had
been a difference of opinion about the origin of the mountain's name, for David Macdonald, who spent 20 years
in Tibet and Sikkim and was a personal friend of Tharchin's, wrote in 1932 that "in view of recent controversy
as to the origin of this name,... Kinchenjunga, or more properly Kangchen Dzonga, is purely Tibetan, and not
Indian, as I have seen stated." Macdonald 1932, p. 266. Cf. yet another Tibetan spelling according to yet another
friend of Tharchin's, the Dutch scholar Johan van Manen. The Superintendent of Trigonometrical Surveys had
referred to van Manen in the 1930s as "the chief authority on the Tibetan language in India," and noted that the
Dutchman had claimed that the correct spelling of the mountain's name was GANS-CHHEN MDZOD LNGA
and meant "Five Receptacles of Glacier Ice." See Richardus 1989, p. 48.
420
Dwarfing four other surrounding peaks (Talung, 23,080'; Kabru, 24,002'; Jannu, 25,294'; and Kambachen,
25,782') that together with it form a gigantic mass of snow and ice, Kanchenjunga is the world's third highest
mountain after nearby Everest, and Mt. Godwin Austen or K2 (28,251')—this latter summit located far away to
the west in the far northern Indian Karakoram Himalayas. The monstrous overwhelming mass of Kanchenjunga
can be seen not only from Darjeeling but also quite easily from the hill town of Kalimpong where Tharchin
ultimately settled down. Indeed, the present author has spent many an hour contemplating this awesome scene
from the very precincts of the late Tharchin Babu's Kalimpong compound that has existed since 1948 and is
situated along one of the town's ridges that easily affords a commanding view of this giant peak.
"This mountain," wrote William McGovern, after seeing it in 1922-3 inside Sikkim, "is such an important
part of the western horizon of so many parts of Sikkim that there is little wonder it is regarded as the guardian
spirit of the country." McGovern 1^24, p. 89. Indeed, in the Sikkimese mind the people of their land are
dependent upon the good humor of the deity they believe is enthroned on Kanchenjunga's summit; for, they
credulously ask themselves: "Has he not the power to destroy human habitations with devastating floods and
avalanches—and ruin crops by sending terrible hailstorms?" According to one writer, this god is pictured in the
minds of the Sikkimese as "a fiery-red-countenanced deity with a crown of five skulls, riding the mythical snow
lion, and holding aloft the banner to victory (Gyaltsen)." He must therefore be appeased if they are to secure his
blessings on their lives. See Agarwala (ed.) 1991, pp. 56-7.
Amplifying still further on the importance of this peak in the affairs of the Sikkimese people, James Minto,
for 12 years Headmaster and Principal of the Graham's Homes in Kalimpong, has written in particular about the
significance of the mountain for the original inhabitants of Sikkim—the Lepchas: "They believe that the Lepcha
soul comes from a place up in the dizzy mountain heights and that when they die the soul must be directed back
to be reunited with the souls of their ancestors. They not only worship,this towering mountain but seek its
blessing in marriage and in their daily lives," Minto 1974, p. 21. Their name for the mountain, incidentally, is
Konglo Chu, meaning "the highest curtain of the snows." See O'Malley 1989, p. 216.
"The worship of this mountain-god, which dates back to long before the Buddhist period, is celebrated with
great pomp every year throughout Sikkim. It is of the devil-dancing or Shamanist kind [and "there are dark stories
that in the olden days these ceremonies were accompanied by human sacrifices made to the spirit of the
mountain"—McGovern 1924, p. 75]. The lamas dress themselves in the cosiumes of the pre-Buddhist Tibetan
religipn ... and carry out the ritual of the devil-dancers,... receiving the offerings from the people of money,
jewelry, etc., to defray the cost of these ceremonies." Waddell 1900, p. 387.
5. See Psalm 19:5.
6. Merrick 1933, p. 69; the quote of Verestchagen is from ibid., 68-9.
1. Waddell 1900, pp. 29-33 (pages interspersed with charts and photos). There have been a few other notable
examples from among the many efforts to capture with pen the drama that is Kanchenjunga. One European
scholar-archaeologist-explorer in Tibet, whose name is already familiar to the reader, upon seeing the mighty
massif for the first time, penned a brief but poetically dreamy depiction of "The Five Great Treasuries of Snow"
as follows: "The Kanchenjunga has something chaste and discreet about its beauty, as if it feared that too much
familiarity with the eager looks of its admirers may mar the ever fresh wonder of its shape. But when the icy
gleam of its summit soars free from the wrathful turmoil of clouds below, it looks like an Isle of the Blest floating
in the heavens. It is as unattainable as a dream and as inexorable as divine justice." Tucci 1956, p. 10.
Another distinguished visitor's impression of this "worthy mountain-monarch," as he reverently called it,
should be added here: that of Sir Francis E. Younghusband. In his poetically-conceived and sensitively-written
volume on "the quest for natural beauty," this lover of natural aesthetics devoted an entire, lengthy chapter to
Kanchenjunga and the many moods created by it at dawn, in daylight and at sunset. What follows is but a small
portion of his description from the moods of daylight (as set forth in Younghusband 1921, pp. 90-2):
All [around] is very beautiful, but it is the mountain [the traveler] wants to see; and still the cloud-
waves collect and disperse, throw out tender streamers and feelers, disappear and collect again, but
always keep a veil between him and the mountain.
Then of a sudden there is a rent in the veil. Without an inkling of when it is to happen or what is
to be revealed, those mists of infinite softness part asunder for a space. The traveler is told to look. He
raises his eyes but sees nothing, He throws back his head to look higher. Then indeed he sees, and as he
sees he gasps. For a moment the current of his being comes to a standstill. Then it rushes back in one
thrill of joy. Much he will have heard about Kanchenjunga beforehand. Much he will remember of it if
he has seen it before. But neither the expectation nor the memory ever comes up to the reality. From
that time, henceforth and for ever, his whole life is lifted to a higher plane.
Through the rent in the fleecy veil he sees clear and clean against the intense blue sky the
snowy summit of Kanchenjunga, the culminating peak of lesser heights converging upwards to it
and all ethereal as spirit, white and pure in the sunshine, yet suffused with the delicatest hues of
blue and mauve and pink. It is a vision of color and warmth and light—a heaven of beauty, love,
and truth....
Hardly less striking than its height is its purity and serenity. The subtle tints of color and the
brilliant sunlight dispel any coldness we might feel, while the purity is still maintained. And the
serenity is accentuated by the ceaseless movements of the eddying clouds through which the
vision is seen. There is about Kanchenjunga the calm and repose of stupendous upward effort
successfully achieved.
A sense of solemn elevation comes upon us as we view the mountain. We are uplifted. The
entire scale of being is raised. Our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. And
not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. Meanness, pettiness, paltriness
seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that radiant purity....
For only a few minutes are we granted this heavenly vision. Then the veil is drawn again. But
in those few minutes we have received an impression which has gone right down into the depths
of our soul and will last there for a lifetime.
8. Its Tibetan meaning is: "the Religious Continent of the Joyful Soul." Established in 1850, it is the oldest
in the Darjeeling area, is the largest of the three Ghoom monasteries, has generally 20 monk inmates, and belongs
to the Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhisfti, to which the Dalai Lama himself belongs. It was founded by the famous
astrologer of Tibet, Lama Sherab Gyamtsho (a Mongolian monk), the same Mongol priest who is mentioned later
in the Text of this present chapter as having been engaged by Sarat Chandra Das in teaching Tibetan to two of the
first Ghoom Mission missionaries. (This was the same monk whom Das had also engaged initially to assist the
noted Japanese Buddhist monk, scholar, author and traveler in Tibet, Ekai Kawaguchi, in learning the Tibetan
language—see Kawaguchi 1909, p. 12.)
The Monastery is a square one-story building with yellow painted walls and curved roof in the Chinese
style. Above the entrance writhe two stucco dragons, and long rows of prayer wheels flank the Monastery door
on both sides. The grounds of the Monastery command a breathtaking view of a valley thousands of feet below.
Inside the Monastery itself can be found a large collection of old manuscripts kept in boxes in a slotted bookcase.
Statues of fierce-looking Tantric deities stand in rows behind glass, while bowls of holy water are stationed in
front of the main image of the temple, Maitreya: the Buddha of the Future. For a highly detailed description of
the outside and inside of the Monastery, see Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1955?, pp. 18-24.
9. The coming One in Hindi is Maitreya; in Tibetan, Gye-wa Champa (or Jampa); this Buddha is also referred
to as the Buddha of Mercy or "the King of Love." Bell 1924, p. 169. Whenever, as is the case here at Ghoom, he
is imaged as seated it is represented in the European fashion—not cross-legged like an Oriental in the familiar
lotus position of meditation. "The Tibetans say that the ... Buddha Maitreya will be a white man." Duncan
1906, p. 302n. And in fact, William McGovern, the American scholar-explorer who in 1923 traveled disguised
through much of central Tibet, including a lengthy stay at Lhasa, states that he frequently saw the images of
Maitreya Buddha "portrayed almost as a European." Added McGovern, "I have sometimes seen representations
of him with white skin and blue eyes ..." McGovern 1924, p. 57. Indeed, it is said that the Maitreya will come
from the West to save the world in a time of darkness. A universal tenet of Buddhism holds that Gautama was
but the fourth or fifth (Buddhist belief varies) of a long line of Buddhas (as many as a thousand who have
promised to come to save the world from disaster), each of whom presides over a single Kalpa or epoch (5000
years) of the world's history, only to give place to a successor who manifests himself when conditions revert to
chaos. It is believed by the Buddhists that "during the first half of this [kalpa] period the doctrine spreads and
grows, but during the second half it decays and atrophies until a new Buddha, the Maitreya, even greater than
Gautama, will appear on earth to lead humanity on a new and higher spiritual path. The second part of the cycle,
the period of decadence in which we are now living, can be shortened by prayers; and this is the spiritual task to
which Tibetans everywhere have dedicated themselves." Goodman 1986, p. 47. Now "of Gautama it is said that
he was the Lord of Compassion; of Maitreya, that he will be the Lord of Love: a curious distinction, I used to
think, for a Buddhist to make, implying as it does that in the Maitreya alone will be seen and worshiped
Buddhism's ultimate fulfillment." Lang-Sims 1963, p. 31.
Now in view of the fact that the final phase of world history, according to Buddhism, will be the coming in
manifest form of the Maitreya Buddha, all faithfulBuddhists are watching, praying and waiting for him to bring
an end to suffering, injustice and poverty by his love. It is said that Maitreya Buddha, who at present exists as
a Bodhisattva waiting for his time to come to the earth as the future Buddha, is currently dwelling in the Tushita
Heaven, "where the last historical Buddha—Sakyamuni [i.e., Gautama]—left him in charge of teaching the
Bodhisattva-host, there assembled." John F. Avedon, in "Notes," An Interview with the Dalai Lama (New York,
1980), 79. In many monasteries throughout the Buddhist lands constant prayers are therefore "ascending" for his
eventual arrival; for example, at the Ghoom Yiga Cholling Monastery the author of the present narrative, when
on a visit there in Dec. 1987, saw on a table positioned in front of the huge Maitreya Buddha image a mobile
prayer wheel that by means of heat from a butter lamp placed below it was in constant motion, spinning the great
Tibetan mantra—Om! Mani padme Hum!—continually throughout the incense-filled main hall.
Now at every Tibetan New Year Festival at Lhasa (known as Losar), the most important announcement
Gautama the Buddha allegedly ever made is continuously repeated—"as if it were a magic incantation"—by
thousands of monks and lamas during the 21-day Monlam or "Great Prayer" (which coincides with and constitutes
the paramount event of the New Year Festival and that was originally initiated by Tsong Khapa the Reformer in
1409). It had to do with Maitreya, the Coming One, and in its essence was a prayer to this next Buddha, "the
King of Love," to come quickly. This is what Gautama reputedly declared:
I am not the first Buddha who came upon earth nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha
will arise in the world, a Holy One, a Supremely Enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in
conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and
mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths which I have taught you. He will preach his
religion, glorious at the climax and glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will
proclaim a religious life, wholly perfect and pure, such as I now proclaim. He will be known as
Maitreya.
Quoted in Riencourt 1950, p. 299. Thus, this Great Prayer Festival's fundamental purpose is to shorten the time
which is left in the spiritual reign or kalpa of Gautama Buddha, whose power has passed its zenith, and to hasten
the coming of Maitreya Buddha or Gye-wa Champa (All-Conquering Love). See again Goodman 1986, p. 53.
Now when the Festival would be over, all participants, noted Sir Charles Bell, would disperse to their homes far
—and nearrsinging as they went the following refrain: "Lhasa's Great Prayer is now ended; / And the King of Love
invited." Bell, "A Year irTLhasa," GJ (Feb. 1924):97. The Christian, in reading the "pronouncement" of Gautama
Buddha and pondering the singing response of the Tibetan populace, will not find it too difficult to make a
transfer from the Maitreya, divested of all its Buddhist nomenclature, to th^ Lord Jesus Christ! It should finally
be noted here that during the following month in Tibet's calendar there is another festival, known as the Lesser
Prayer, or Prayer of the Assembly, which is more concerned with the welfare of Tibet than with that of the world
at large (for during the Great Prayer, the welfare of the whole world, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, is in view and
is prayed for).
10. See Appendix D at the end of Vol. Ill of the present biography for this Citation's complete text.
11. Tharchin's BB TwMs, p. 1 gives the 6th of Jan. as his departure date from Delhi to Ghoom; his "dictated
memoirs" states it as the 4ih (GTUM TsMs, 28). Both documents agree he arrived at Ghoom on the 10lh (with the
"memoirs" indicating an unnecessary stopover on the 9th/10th at Darjeeling due to his ignorance about the
geography of the area). Even in those days it would not have taken five or six days by train to reach Darjeeling
and Ghoom as the "memoirs" would have the reader believe, and is therefore an obvious mistake. Hence, the more
realistic date of the 6th appears in the Text of the present narrative.
12. According to Laurence A. Waddell, Medical Officer for District Darjeeling between 1888 and 1895, both
these developments were the results of the exertions of Dr. A. Campbell of the Indian Medical Service. Wrote
Waddell at the turn of the twentieth century: "He had been our political Resident at the Court of Nepal, and when
[in 1839] he was appointed Superintendent of Darjeeling he attracted hither the Nepalese to settle in their
thousands, and he also introduced the tea-plant, the cultivation of which has now become so enormous an
industry." Waddell 1900, p. 39. The inducement to come, not only from Nepal but also from Sikkim and Bhutan,
"in all of which slavery was prevalent," writes L.S.S. O'Malley, was to give these immigrants grants of forest
land in and around the Darjeeling hill station. That Dr. Campbell's efforts proved successful, adds O'Malley, can
be easily gauged by the fact that the Superintendent could later report that between 1839 and 1849 the population
of Darjeeling rose from hardly 100 to nearly 10,000, which increase was due chiefly to such immigration. With
respect to the tea-plant, however, O'Malley notes that according to the Annals of Indian Administration (1862)
the actual establishment of the tea industry as a commercial enterprise dates from the year 1856 when Captain
Samler began the very first tea plantation at Kurseong and one at Darjeeling. Much earlier, of course, the initial
trial of the tea-plant had been made at Darjeeling in 1841 with a few seeds grown in Kumaon (NW India) that were
taken from China stock, and which were then brought to Darjeeling. See O'Malley 1989, pp. 22, 73 and note.
13. This preponderance of Nepalese in the District would eventually spell great trouble, political turmoil and even
violent unrest in the region, beginning in the 1980s and not being relatively peacefully resolved until 1988. It must be
understood, of course, that in time the Nepalis (or Gurkhas, as many have come to call themselves) settled down and
raised families whose offspring over many generations became citizens of India—they numbering by 1989 over
615,000 within the Darjeeling region and accounting for 80 percent of the population. Indeed, throughout all of India
itself the Gurkhas today number about one and a half million, speak the Nepali language and are often called Nepalis,
"fostering the misconception," wrote a New York Times journalist, "that they are not Indian citizens."
Nevertheless, life for the Gurkhas and other hillmen born in towns like Darjeeling or on the tea plantations
had over time become "a nonending trek for survival: a trek to distant springs for water, to remote slopes for
firewood, to faraway towns for work." Hillsides have been stripped of wood, reservoirs have run low, disease has
spread because of raw sewage that has poured past their homes precariously perched along the hill slopes.
Moreover, the Gurkhas believed that their children were growing up without skills and without a proper
knowledge of their history and environment.
This perceived deterioration of mountain life, which they believe largely went unreported, precipitated a
revolt among some of the Gurkhas living in the hill regions of District Darjeeling, led by Subhas Ghising, a former
soldier and fiction writer. As a result, a cry went up for an independent "Gurkhaland." Under Ghising's leadership,
the Gurkha National Liberation Front was established to spearhead a guerrilla war that was waged for three years
from training camps and other clandestine centers which Government officials have since said had been set up by
the militants in advance of the outbreak of hostilities. During the period of conflict 300 people died, property
valued in the millions of dol lars was destroyed, and the tourist business was terminated almost entirely.
Initially demanding a separate nation, Gurkhaland, the revolt finally ended after protracted negotiations
between the Indian national and state governments and the Liberation Front that resulted in an agreement signed
on 25 July 1988. Ghising and his Gurkhas settled for substantial control over their economy, including tourism,
over education, and over the infrastructure of the region such as road construction and transport. This control
was to be administered, said the Agreement, by an autonomous Darjeeling Gurkha Hill Council, for which
membership elections were held the following December. The Front won all but two seats on the Council.
In the years since, not all have been happy with the record of administration by this new Council, and well
into the 1990s and beyond, a residue of dissatisfaction festers among element—both pro- and anti-militant—
within the Nepali community throughout the Darjeeling District. See Barbara Crossett, "For Gurkhas, Little
Time to Stop and Sip the Tea," New York Times, 3 Apr. 1989,1:4; see also Sanjay Hazarika, "India and Gurkha
Militants Reach Accord to End Regional Violence," ibid., 26 July 1988,1:11.
14. O'Malley 1989, pp. 186-7.
15. Mahakala is one of the Hindu names for Lord Siva. In Tibetan he is called Gompo Chakdrug, meaning
"Six-Armed Protector of the Dharma (Religion)," and is a deity endowed with the power of protection against
evil and symbolizes the militant aspect of Chenresi, the patron deity of Tibet whom, according to Tibetans, the
spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet (called the Dalai Lama) incarnates. See Goodman 1986, p. 301.
16. O'Malley 1989, pp. 48-50.
17. Other than what has been documented already, the descriptive information and quoted material on
Darjeeling have been obtained from both encyclopedias and travel guide literature; Tucci 1956, p. 10; Minto
1974, p. 25; Tanka Bahadur Subba, The Quiet Hills; a Study of Agrarian Relations in Hill Darjeeling (Delhi,
1985), 8-10, 12-16; as well as from the present author's own personal observations. For additional information
on Darjeeling see Ch. 7 and its lengthy discussion of Kalimpong located some 30 miles to the east.
18. Waddell 1900, pp. 23, 25-7. The original edition was published just one year earlier. Major (later Colonel)
Waddell, for eight years the Medical Officer for Darjeeling District, would later serve as the Chief Medical Officer with
the Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa, 1903-4. Known for his travels and explorations, Waddell was also noted as a
Buddhist and Tibetan scholar and author of some note, and served as Professor of Tibetan at University College,
London, from 1906 to 1908. He became a C.I.E. in 1901.
19. Issued at Shanghai, May 1890, the document read as follows: "We, the General Conference of Protestant
Missionaries in China, having just made a special appeal to you for a largely increased force of ordained
Missionaries to preach the gospel throughout the length and breadth of this great land—to plant churches, to
educate native ministers and helpers, to create a Christian literature, and in general to engage in and direct the
supreme work of Christian evangelization, and;
420
"Having also just made a special appeal to you for a largely increased force of unordained men, evangelists,
teachers and physicians—to travel far and wide distributing books and preaching to the masses, to lend a strong
helping hand in the great work of Christian education, and to exhibit to China the benevolent side of Christianity
in the work of healing the sick:
"Therefore, we do now appeal to you, the Protestant Churches of Christian lands, to send to China in
response to these calls one thousand men within five years from this time.
"We make this appeal in behalf of three hundred millions of unevangelized heathen; we make it with all the
earnestness of our whole hearts, as men overwhelmed with the magnitude and responsibility of the work before
us; we make it with unwavering faith in the power of a risen Savior to call men into His vineyard, and to open the
hearts of those who are His stewards to send out and support them, and we shall not cease to cry mightily to Him
that He will do this thing, and that our eyes may see it." Quoted in "Notes from the Wide Field," PA (Dec
1890):210.
20. Sources for the sketch up to this point of the SAM's founder are: Chinas Millions (North American
Edition), Jan. 1941, p. 14; Grauer (comp. & ed.) n.d. 1940?, p. 92 & passim; Woodward 1966, pp. 106, 112 &
passim; Torjesen 1983, pp. xi-xii, 76; and Mortenson 1994, pp. 26, 28, 39.
21. Vappu Rautamaki, "The Free Church of Finland Himalayan Mission and the Nepalese," in Peny 1997, p. 423.
22. One of Mrs. Polhill's letters from that period, dated Darjeeling, 2d Mar. 1896, reads: "Last Friday
afternoon Mr. & Mrs. Hudson Taylor suddenly arrived, to our great joy, and will be with us for a week." A week
later she wrote another letter that was dated, significantly, "Evelyn Cottage, Ghoom, Darjeeling, 9 Mar. 1896."
In part it reads: "It has been lovely having Mr. Taylor here, in our own home for ten days [so far]. He is so
wonderfully gentle, and loving, and restful." Marston 1905, p. 171. For further information on Polhill and the
Cambridge Seven, see earlier in Ch. 2 of the present narrative, and especially in Ch. 16 of Vol. II to follow.
23. This is according to Shoberg, "Scandinavian Alliance Mission," Home and Foreign Missionary Record
(Sept. 1893):247, and cited by Perry, 1997, p. 88 with 119 note 7,
24. This description of the Babu's Darjeeling home is found in "A Journey to the Capital of Tibet,"
Contemporary Review (July 1890):66.
25. Ibid.
26. This should not come as a surprise when one is apprised of the explorer's background. Das had hailed
from Chittagong in Lower Bengal (now Bangladesh) and had been a student at the CMS (Anglican) Cathedral
Mission College (later known as the Divinity School) in Calcutta, receiving his education under Dr. Dyson. Later
he was an engineering student at the Calcutta Presidency College, from whence he was graduated and subsequently
appointed (in 1874) Headmaster of the Bhotia Boarding School at Darjeeling (from whose Tibetan or semi-
Tibetan student body, it might be added, would be identified and selected by the British the more outstanding
students for training as pundits at Dehra Dun in Northwest India, thus "assuring a continuing supply of qualified
surveyors ethnically identical to the people of Tibet with whom they must blend unnoticed"—MacGregor,
Tibet, 267). Applying himself diligently to the study of Tibetan, he visited several monasteries in Sikkim where
he met his future traveling companion into Tibet, the Tibetan lama Ugyen Gyatsho of Pemayangtse Monastery,
who furthered Das's study of Tibetan at Darjeeling. It was through this lama's efforts, while the latter was on a
visit in 1878 to Tibet with tribute from his monastery to Shigatse and Lhasa, that an invitation had been obtained
from the Spiritual Prime Minister of Tibet's second ranking Lama for Headmaster Chandra Das to come the
following year to Shigatse as a student enrolled at Trashilhunpo Monastery and be able at the same time to visit
the Minister at his residence outside Shigatse.
Not only did Das teach the Prime Minister on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics and science, but in
response to the Minister's inquiry after the nature of the religion of the great white race beyond the mountains,
the Bengali Indian obliged as best he could. Granted, it "was but an imperfect preaching of Christ," wrote the
Anglican minister Herbert Brown who had later interviewed Das at Darjeeling; nevertheless, because of the
teaching this non-orthodox Hindu had received from Dr. Dyson earlier at the Cathedral Mission College, Das,
according to Brown, had conceived "a great admiration for Christianity, and owned it to be superior to any other
religion." Furthermore, noted Brown of his interview, Das "spoke to me of his difficulties, how he was not able
to grasp the truth of the two natures, divine and human, joined together in one Person, Christ, and of how it was
that Christianity was not revealed to other lands first."
Having studied Buddhism in Tibet firsthand, the explorer brought back to India many manuscripts that had
been given him by the lamas there. In the diary he kept of his first visit to Tibet (for six months in 1879), Das
revealed an interesting conversation he had at the Shigatse monastery of the Panchen Lama with the latter's
Spiritual Prime Minister, the one already mentioned above. The Minister had been urging Das for days "to enter
the holy congregation" of the Buddhist monks there, and "to take the vow of celibacy and priesthood which are
in Tibetan called rab-jung." "I pleaded my small progress in the study of Buddhism," wrote Das in his journal,
"as an excuse for not taking the rab-jung then," and added, in his remarks to the Minister,
that unless I was fully convinced of the excellencies of the doctrine of Buddha, by thorough study
of them, which was the chief object that had brought me to Tibet, I could not conscientiously call
myself a Buddhist or take the rab-jung. I could assure him that I did not hold the doctrine of Yeshu-
mashi (Jesus Christ) of the Phillings [Europeans], nor entertained the Tirthika [Hindu] faith, in
which I was born: that I was still undecided as to my religious persuasions, but believed in the
existence of a Supreme Cause of the universe. To ascertain if that Being was identical with the
Supreme Intelligence of the Buddhists was the principal object of my studying Tibetan Buddhism.
The Minister seemed satisfied with my explanation, and did not talk on the matter anymore.
From Das 1969, p. 73.
Das told Brown that he regarded Northern Buddhism (as distinguished from simply Tibetan Lamaism) to be
far superior to the Southern; but, he declared significantly, "Buddhism has no moral governor." Buddha himself,
he added, had given his followers a law, but the path of rectitude was actually one of self-evolution. Rev. Brown,
"Notes on Tibet," CM/(Apr. 1895):257, 259.
Das made a second and much longer journey to Tibet, again accompanied by Lama Ugyen, they not only
reaching Shigatse in December 1881 but onward later to Lhasa, where Das remained disguised throughout his
fortnight stay there during which he had a lengthy audience with the young Dalai Lama (the Thirteenth). The
Pundit ultimately returned to India in the latter part of 1882, after a nearly six-month journey homeward in which
he collected much valuable information and documents. His days of travel were not over, however; for in 1884
Das accompanied Colman Macaulay on a Government mission to the Lachen Valley in Sikkim, and with
Macaulay once again the next year all the way to Peking, where he conversed many hours and days with William
W. Rockhill, the U.S. envoy to China and scholar of Asian cultures.
Throughout his multi-faceted career Das served in various posts and received numerous awards and honors,
not least of which were the following: (a) appointment as Deputy Inspector of Schools, Darjeeling; (b) was made
a Rai Bahadur and created a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (C.I.E.) for his services to Macaulay
at Peking; (c) won the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava's Silver Medal in 1886, the Siamese King Chulalongkorn's
Tushiti Mala Decoration in 1887; (d) founded the Buddhist Text Book Society in 1892 and became the editor of
that Society's Journal (which published English translations of Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts and other materials);
(e) was made a corresponding member of the Imperial Archaeological Society of St. Petersburg, Russia; (f) was
appointed and served (1881-1904) as Tibetan translator to the Government of Bengal; and (g) elected Associate
Member of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta (1888).
The reports written by Chandra Das of his two Tibetan journeys were eventually published by the British
Indian government, but were kept strictly confidential until 1890 because of highly sensitive political
considerations. Only in 1899 were they edited by the Royal Geographical Society and finally published in 1902,
a full 20 years following the conclusion of his last and longest Tibetan visit. See Sibadas Chaudhuri, Bibliography
of Tibetan Studies (Calcutta, 1971), iii; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (New York, 1911), 26:924; and Das
1969, pp. iii-v (Foreword pages by Dr. Saha), 4, 13, 22. Rockhill said of Das: "The amount of literary work
accomplished by Sarat Chandra ... is enormous in bulk, and its value to students cannot be over-estimated."
Rockhill, "Introduction," in Das 1902, p. viii.
Finally, it may be of further interest to the reader to mention that it was on this last of the great Pundits to
Tibet that Rudyard Kipling, in his famous 1900 novel Kim, based the character of his Babu-spy, Hurree Chundar
Mookerjee, M.A., alias R. 17. Much of the locale of the novel, incidentally, takes pl^ce along the Hindustan-Tibet
Road of Upper Kunawar (the region where Gergan Tharchin's home village is found) and Lower Kunawar down
to Chini, Kotgarh and on to Simla (all familiar terrain to the young Tibetan from Poo). It was also Chandra Das
who at his Darjeeling home had arranged for two lamas—the first for one month at Lhasa Villa, the second for 16
months at this second lama's residence just below Lhasa Villa—to teach Tibetan to Ekai Kawaguchi, the well-
known Japanese Buddhist monk, before the latter had set forth in 1898 on his celebrated pilgrimage to the Sacred
Sites of Kailas-Manasarovar and on, then, to Lhasa. See Allen 1983, p. 183 with 188; and Kawaguchi 1909, pp.
10-14ff where the author makes clear Das was not the one who taught him Tibetan but the two lamas.
27. For additional information on these developments, see 1997, pp. 88-9 with notes on 119-20 and 128-31.
28. The use by the SAM missionaries of the phrase, "the 'inasmuch' of Jesus," has reference to the oft-
quoted words of the Lord Jesus to His disciples and found in a passage of Matthew's Gospel, which in part
reads: "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye
gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; and
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.,..Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my
brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." 25:34-6,40.
29. Quoted in Mortenson 1994, pp. 43-4.
30. This account of David Macdonald's conversion is as missionary A.P. Franklin of the Swedish Alliance
Mission has reported the story, as told to him by Macdonald himself, and quoted in Grauer (comp.& ed.) n.d.
1940?, p. 108. Additional data on his conversion experience is supplied by Woodward 1966, pp. 129-30 and
Princell 1909?, pp.65-6.
31. Ronaldshay 1923, p. 118.
32. Quoted from one of Mrs. Polhill's letters of the period dated Ghoom, 28 Aug. 1896, and appearing in
Marston 1905, pp. 174-5. The bio-data on David Macdonald's great-grandfather was obtained from a Macdonald
family genealogical chart prepared by Dr. R.K. Sprigg of Kalimpong, a copy of which was given the present
author in Dec. 1999 by Timothy Macdonald, a grandson of David Macdonald and currently administrator of the
Macdonald family's celebrated Himalayan Hotel in Kalimpong.
33. This is reported by Rev. Robert R. Kilgour, the baptizer of Macdonald and a missionary member, based
in Darjeeling at the time, of the Church of Scotland Eastern Himalaya Mission, in his article, "On the Border of
Three Closed Lands," BW(Jan. 1924): 10.
34. Interestingly, a Gospel of St. John printed in Tibetan and published by the same Bible Society was found
by one of the Expedition's officers in a wealthy Tibetan home as the British forces made their way up to Lhasa.
An officer of one of the Sikh regiments subsequently stationed at Lahore in the Punjab, in a letter he wrote in late
1906 to the British and Foreign Society, related the following incident (assprinted in ibid., Jan. 1907:4). It
demonstrates again how the printed Word of God can penetrate the darkness of a closed land which Christian
missionaries were not themselves permitted to do. The letter reads:
In 1903-04 I was with the British Mission to Tibet, and was in command of the first troops that
crossed the Brahmaputra [i.e., the Tsangpo] River, 47 miles from Lhasa. On the north bank of
the river 1 had necessity to go into the house of a wealthy Tibetan, -the head man of a village, with
whom 1 afterwards became intimately acquainted and on terms of friendship. A few days after my
first visit I found in his house a copy of St. John's Gospel, printed in Tibetan by the Bible Society.
It was old and worn. This will show that even in Tibet, "the most exclusive of all countries, where
no Englishman or white man of any description had penetrated for over a century, the Bible had
made its way. Doubtless there were many other copies of St. John's Gospel, most probably in
Lhasa itself.
Most likely this Gospel of John was one of those which the Bible Society had had printed either at Calcutta, Leh/
Kyelang or in Germany and which the Moravian missionaries in Lesser Tibet had translated during the latter part
of the 19th century, since this was an old copy As is noted elsewhere, traders, travelers, pilgrims and others
would be given copies, who would then carry them into the Forbidden Land from all frontier points of Tibet.
Quantities of such Gospels and other Christian literature printed on the Moravian mission presses would be
ordered by other missionaries situated at Darjeeling or near Sikkim or Bhutan and along the Sino-Tibetan border,
from where these Gospels and New Testaments would find their way to the remotest corners of the Land of
Snows.
35. The term rimpoche (pronounced rim'-poe-shay) can be translated as, roughly, "precious one" or "precious
like a jewel" and signifies the highest titular honor which can be bestowed on anyone in Tibet. Ijt was conferred
on those who were believed to be reincarnations of renowned Lamaist personalities of former times; for example,
famous religious teachers, scholars and monastery abbots. Such reputed reborn saints are designated as tulkus
(meaning "emanations" or "change-bodies"). "They are often incorrectly described in travel books as Living
Buddhas"—that is to say, as identifiable manifestations of the Buddha himself "In reality very few of these
reborn saints are looked upon as incarnate deities, and none of them as reincarnations of the historical Buddha.
The vast majority of tulkus are held to be reincarnations of famous priests or laymen who acquire spiritual merit
in the service of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, in addition to reincarnations of the demon-exorciser Padma Sambhava
[who also, as the 8th-century Indian Buddhist missionary to Tibet, introduced in earnest not only the later
Mahayana Buddhism but Bengali Tantrism as well] and of the apostle Lhatsun Chempo [the 1 ^-century
Tibetan monk who brought Buddhism to Sikkim and became the land's patron saint], there are also tulkus who
are regarded as rebirths of the [lay] Minister Thonmi Sambhota, the creator of the Tibetan script [which thus
served Lamaism greatly by enabling Tibetan Buddhist scholars to translate the Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit
into Tibetan], and his master King Songtsan Gampo." Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1955?, p. 187; see also Goodman
1986, p. 18n. Quite often the first name of a Rimpoche has reference to the monastery in which he would take up
residence after his believed discovery when a young child of being a reborn saint. For instance, the Regent of Tibet
at the time of the discovery of the current Dalai Lama and called Reting Rimpoche came from the monastery at
Reting located some 60 miles NE of Lhasa. In the exceptional case of the Ti Rimpoche, however, it was different.
The post of Ti Rimpoche of Ganden Monastery (that is to say, the "Holder of the Ganden Throne," or "The
Precious Enthroned"—'Kri, pronounced Ti, Rimpoche) ranked extremely high in the Tibetan Lamaist hierarchy
and was held for seven years by a monk chosen for his preeminent learning and piety from all over Tibet. It was,
in fact, "the highest and most respected rank to which a monk who is not an incarnation could rise," for the Ti
Rimpoche is deemed to be the spiritual successor of Tsong Khapa, the founder of Ganden and the Great Reformer
of Tibetan Buddhism who established the ruling Gelugpa (Yellow) Sect to which all Dalai Lamas must belong.
This ecclesiastical throne at Ganden, therefore, was an appointive or elective post and not a position occupied by
a supposedly reincarnated or reborn saint. Once a Ti Rimpoche had served his seven years, another monk would
be appointed. And on those occasions when there was no Dalai Lama, the Ti Rimpoche would often be selected
to be Regent of Tibet. Now the Ti Rimpoche to whom Macdonald had borne a Christian witness was the one who
acted on behalf of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in dealing with Colonel Younghusband and the British by signing and
sealing the 1904 Treaty between the two Governments. Sources: P.O.S. 1938, p. 73; and Waddell 1972, pp. 400-
1. For an account of a lengthy and extremely fascinating conversation between Waddell and this Regent in 1904,
see ibid., 404-1
36. "The Gospel in Tibet," W(Mar.l905):87.

37. Printed in a short article, "Christ Preached in Lhasa," MRW(Mar. 1905):233-4.
38. Otto C. Grauer (comp. & ed.) 1940, p. 154; see also Woodward 1966, pp. 130-1 and Franson 1897, p. 47.
39. Shown as BuksaDuar on some maps, and also known as BaksaDuar, it is located along the southwestern
frontier of Bhutan just five to six miles inside India at the western extremity of an extensive east-west expanse of
thickly jungled land called the Duars, or Duar Plain, that was in those days mostly uninhabited. Duar is an English
word that is borrowed directly from the Hindi term duar meaning "door" which in English thus signifies a sub-
montane tract of land that leads to a mountain pass. There are some 18 such Duar mountain passes along the
border area between the two countries, and they were the scene of many fierce battles between the British forces
of India and Bhutan's semi-religious "god-kings." The latter were finally defeated in the 19th century at the Duars,
with Bhutan forced to sign the Sinchula Treaty with the United Kingdom in 1865. Now of these 18 duars, 11 of
them lie on the Bengal frontier, where, interestingly enough, the chief ones are the Duar of Buxa and that of
Daling—Dalingkote having been a former name long ago for today's Kalimpong, the hill station site which would
become the home of Gergan Tharchin for the last half-century and more of his life. The other 7 of the 18 can be
found along the corresponding frontier of Assam. See Waddell 1900, p. 436n.
40. Miss Fredrickson's labors for the Lord at Buxa Duar had their beginnings in her home, where she won to
Christ her servant and the latter's friend, both being baptized in 1900. Traveling by horse-drawn cart, she would
visit villages and mingle with the people in their bazaars and marketplaces sharing the gospel of salvation with
them. They hearkened to her messages, with some of the gospel seed falling on good soil and bearing fruit. Years
later missionary and Mrs. Claude Dover (the latter the former Miss Nilsina Signe Rasmusson and widow of John
Fredrickson) joined the work at Buxa, with Mrs. Dover by 1925 carrying on the extensive school work there
among the girls. "The results of the education given to these girls," wrote Claude Dover later, "were so much
superior to that given by a lama priest carrying on a school for boys in the same village that he wanted to give up
and have Mrs. Dover take over the boys school also." He went on to note that the Bhutanese were "a fine people
with grit and enterprise," and that because they speak Tibetan, when they become Christians, "they make good
evangelists for Tibet" Grauer (comp. 8c ed.) 1940, p. 160. Upon the retirement of the Dovers, the station was
turned over to the Free Church of Finland Mission (Rev. Waismaa's mission society, it will be recalled), it
thereafter being well cared for by, the Finnish missionaries. Ibid. For example, they added a health clinic to the
already expanding facilities at the mission station.
420
Some additional information of interest to the reader ought to be noted here concerning Buxa as well. First, a
small expatriate congregation was eventually created in the Buxa Duar area, with a Pentecostal Bhutanese pastor
not only shepherding the flock but also working on the translation of the Bible into the Bhutanese Jhonka (Lho-
Ka) dialect. Then, too, even Margaret Vitants, before she married Gergan Tharchin after the death of his first wife,
had labored for a while in Buxa as a missionary under the Finnish Mission. Moreover, the wife of Tharchin's son
Sherab is herself a Bhutanese and hails from Buxa. And finally of interest is the fact that the late Maharaja of Buxa
had been a great friend of Tibet and of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. A much fuller historical account, highly
researched, of the SAM/FCFM efforts at Buxa Duar can be found in Perry 1997, pp. 138-41 with relevant notes
on 160-2.
41. PA (Dec. 1887): 180. See also ibid. (June 1887):61 ; Redslob and Heyde, "Report of the Mission in Central
Asia for the Year 1875," ibid. (Mar. 1876):489; and Redslob letter from Kyelang, Mar. 1876, ibid. (Sept.
1876):40.
42. See Perry 1997, p. 424 with 129 note 147.
43. Polhill, "Tibet: the Land ofthe Lamas," in Broomhall (ed.) 1907, p. 332. Polhill's visit to Darjeeling and
Kalimpong where he met Tharchin are told of in Vol, II, Ch. 16 of the present biography.
44. Young, "The Bible in the Eastern Himalayas," The Bible Society Reporter (Feb. 1902):38.
45. Mortenson 1994, p. 68.
46. The way these two mission stations got their start is most interesting. With respect to Lachung (meaning
"Little Pass"), it will be recalled that A.E. Shoberg, at the urging of Sarat Chandra Das, had made a scouting
journey up to Lachung in June 1893 to investigate the possibility of establishing a closer frontier station from
which later to make an advance on Tibet itself with the gospel. Aiding him in this venture were some Scotch
missionaries and Claude Dover, at the time the secretary to a prominent Englishman and later to become the
husband of the widowed Mrs. John Fredrickson (the former Nilsina Signe Rasmusson). One chronicler of
Shoberg's trip commented that he was "kindly treated even by a French Roman Catholic missionary" (doubtless
the well-known Father Desgodins). Furthermore, at the then Sikkimese capital of Tumlong, "even the reigning
queen, who had heard ofthe foreigner who was trying to speak Tibetan, invited him to her palace where he was
entertained." He having made such an excellent impression on the Maharani, she commanded that Shoberg "be
given free passage through her domain and given such supplies as he might need." Upon completing his journey
up along the river Teestato Lachung, Shoberg was provided a house to live in by thé top community official and
shown generous hospitality. And had an English official not intervened at this point, Shoberg might well have
gone immediately into Tibet in response to a local chiefs offer to take the missionary along on a trading trip. He
returned to Ghoom hoping nonetheless for later development of a mission station at Lachung,
The two SAM lady missionaries mentioned in the Text who came a few years later to Lachung did not fare
as well with the local populatiôn as had Shoberg. "The people were not only indifferent but wanted to drown the
missionaries, but were prevented by British officials." Nevertheless, two young native men offered to assist
them. Chodrug, a convert who had accepted Christ and was baptized in 1896, was one of them. Working with the
ladies for four years there, he proved to be a great help and comfort.
One of the ways the missionaries attempted to counteract the erroneous notion the people held that the
explanation for their barren ground was because evil spirits had infested it was to place a fruit and vegetable
garden in their midst for all to see. By obtaining the cooperation of Government officials who helped in planting
many apple trees in the village, a fine apple orchard developed which assisted greatly in winning the peopled
confidence. Another way the British government officials aided the missionaries was to establish a school of
weaving in which the ladies could instruct the local girls in a useful craft. Though at first reluctant to attend the
classes, they soon began to enjoy the work and received most gladly not only this kind of instruction at the hands
of the missionaries but also instruction in the Christian Scriptures. By thus learning to weave, the girls could now
earn a living and therefore exist more independently of their "neglectful and ignorant parents."
An added facility the missionaries eventually created was a school built immediately adjacent to the mission
station, which was located in the middle of the village. Thus did the work of enlightening and evangelizing the
local popukcB move steadily forward, to the point where by 1900 or shortly thereafter a local body of believers
in Christ had been established, which must have pleased Fredrik Franson a great deal when visiting here in 1905.
Later, the missionaries of the Finnish Free Church took over the mission here (and at Lachen, too) and continued
the work. Woodward 1966, p. 127; and Grauer (comp. & ed.) 1940, pp. 152, 159.
Yet what had developed at Lachung was much the same as developed almost simultaneously at the sister
station of Lachen (meaning "Big Pass"). Whereas Lachung was located some 40 to 50 trekking miles NNE from
Sikkim's present capital of Gangtok, Lachen was the same distance NNW of the capital. And hence the two
communities were in fairly close proximity to each other. Consequently, the missionaries for the one were
generally the same missionaries for the other. So that it was not surprising that similar developments occurred at
both, including, as was already noted, the rise of a local church. Although Lachung had been the first settlement
approached with the gospel by the SAM, Lachen was ultimately chosen by the Finnish Mission as its headquarters
for northern Sikkim—this according to David Macdonald who, writing in the early 1940s, also said the following
with regard to Lachen and its Finnish Mission work here: "the missionaries ... have done much in the way of
teaching the local people home industries, in the form of weaving cloth and carpets, and apple culture. Apples
from Lachen are very fine, and find a ready market in Kalimpong and Darjeeling." But besides the Finnish
Christian Mission, Macdonald in addition noted that there was also a local monastery close by near to which was
housed the largest prayer wheel in all of Sikkim containing "millions of repetitions of the sacred 'Om Mani'
formula." Lachung, too, he observed, had a prayer wheel, in fact, a series of them—all water driven! Macdonald
1943, pp. 96-7, 99.
It should be mentioned in passing that Gergan Tharchin's second wife, Margaret Vitants, was a missionary
worker at both these mission stations before her marriage to Tharchin. In fact, he himself visited the church
congregation at Lachen in late 1912.
Finally, notice should be taken of the fact that the fruit of the work at Lachung had an impact for good at still
another Sikkimese community. In addition to her labors for the Lord at Lachung, Signe Rasmusson (soon to be
Mrs. John Fredrickson), together with another sister missionary of the original band of ten, Amanda Larson,
were used of God to establish a third mission station at the village of Ringim, some 15 miles south of Lachen along
the Teesta Valley. Working there for four years, they experienced the joy of seeing a youiig national, Pasang by
name, become a Christian. And off to Ghoom he went for preparation in Christian work, after which he returned
to his home village where he married a Christian girl from Lachung who had been one of the fruits of the
missionary ladies' efforts there. It must have brought extreme happiness to the hearts of the missionaries to
behold a new generation of workers raised up in their midst and to see this couple now begin to live and labor as
Christian workers at Ringim. Grauer (comp. & ed.) 1940, p. 159. According to Cecil Polhill, by 1906 or so, there
were two other stations—unnamed by him—established by the SAM besides these three, making a total of five
mission stations in Sikkim. See Polhill, "TiJ>&: the Land of the Lamas," in Broomhall (ed.) 1907, pp. 331-2.
47.Quoted in Mortenson 1997, p. 69.

48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 70.
50. To round out the story, by 1925 the Alliance Mission missionaries in India were still laboring in two main
areas where most of the missionaries were posted: the original field in the Northeast and in West India. Though
by this time the great preponderance of the work in Northeast India continued to be the responsibility of those
FAM missionaries who had been sent out by Franson, several North American missionaries continued their
efforts to reach Tibetans and even labored inside Bhutan. The last to carry on this latter ministry were the Claude
Dovers (Mrs. Dover being the widow of John Fredrickson). But upon their departure from Buxa Duar in 1928,
they recommended that the work be turned over to a Swedish mission. SAM's North American Board in January
of 1929 followed this recommendation at least in part by transferring the work centered in Buxa Duar to a
Scandinavian-based mission, but decided in favor of FAM, rather than one based in Sweden.
Rounding out the story still further, in 1985 the Finnish Free Church could report that there were at that very
moment 35 functioning churches scattered throughout the rugged Himalayan mountain area of Northeast India,
"even though no missionaries," writes Mortenson, "had been assigned there for over thirty years." See Mortenson
1997, pp. 104-5.
51. Except for those specific citations already footnoted, the sources for all the other material and quotations
pertaining to the growth and development of the Ghoom Mission where Tharchin spent five years of his life are
as follows: G.H. Bondfield, "Introduction," in Edward Amundsen, In the Land of the Lamas (London, 1910), vii;
Grauer (comp. &ed.) 1940, pp. 151-2,154-8,160,162; Grauer (comp. & ed.) n.d. 1940?, pp.92,107, 111, 172,
174; Mortenson 1997, pp. 68-71, 105; Princell 1909?, p. 64; Torjesen 1983, pp. 76, 81; Woodward 1966, pp.
126-8, 130-1; Brown, "Notes on Tibet," CMI (Apr. 1895):256, 258; "Notes from the Wide Field," PA (Dec.
1892):647-8; and Polhill, "Tibet...," in Broomhall (ed.) 1907, pp. 331-2.
420
52. Tharchin and Woodward 1975, p. 652; see also Tharchin's Preface (dated 7 Aug. 1917) in Tharchin 1917,
53.This latter date is known from Tharchin himself. For in a report prepared by Jesuit Fr. Henry Hosten of
a lengthy conversation he had with the Tibetan at Darjeeling in June 1925 there is the following passage: "At the
beginning of January 1912 Tharchin entered into the service of the Finnish Mission in Ghoom and stayed there
until the end of 1916 as the kindergarten teacher." Hosten conveyed the report to Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister,
who in turn included its contents in a work the pastor later published; see Pfister 1926, p. 212.
54. So writes Alex McKay, speaking of K.S. Paul and the two others of this triumvirate, Phuntsog Lungtok
and Drin Chen, in the "Historical Foreword" he contributed to Richardus (ed.) 1998. In the opening page of his
excellent foreword, together with bracketed material extracted from two other pages of it, McKay explains the
role these three, and others like them, played in the imperial scheme of things (viii, xviii-xix, xxi):
In the early years of the twentieth century, control over Tibet was contested by three major
empires, those of China, Russia, and Britain. The imperial powers and those who came in their
wake—missionaries, scholars, traders and soldiers—employed local staff to assist in their dealings
with the Tibetans. These employees ["who were familiar with the language and customs of the
Tibetans"] had a crucial role in Tibet's encounter with the outside world. ["The British had begun
to train candidates for those posts as early as the 1870s. They opened a school in Darjeeling
which produced a steady supply of pupils familiar with both English and local languages and
cultures. Others, such as Karma Sumdhon Paul, were recruited from among local scribes in the
frontier regions, who had previously worked for the Tibetan government or monasteries."] Yet
they have been largely forgotten by history and most of the knowledge and understandings which
they gained has been lost.
It was left to a Dutchman, and hence an outside observed of the British imperial system, to
preserve the impressions of three of those who served on the periphery of the imperial process.
The three vignettes that make up this work offer a unique insight into tile world of the intermediary
class. In addition to their entertainment value, they are an important contribution to our
understanding of the history of Tibet and its encounter with the outside world.... They also
indicate that the idealized view of traditional Tibetan society presented by many outsiders was,
and still is, an incomplete picture of a society which, like any other, did |iot always live up to its
ideal.
The Dutchman to whom McKay refers was—as intimated already in the Text—Johan van Manen, a noteworthy
scholar and linguist whose life and career would interersect with that of Gergan Tharchin's in several respects, as
will be indicated later in the chapter and elsewhere in the present work.
Richardus, too, in his equally informative editor's "Introduction" to the same work, has provided a further
overview of what can be found in the writings of K.S. Paul and the other two men, who also happened to be of
Tibetan extraction (xxiv-xxv):
The three autobiographies provide us with an extraordinary insight into the ^perspectives of the
lower ranks of frontier intermediaries (albeit above the average in possessing the skill of reading
and writing) in the Himalayan region at a time when authority and identity there were contended
between Tibet, China and the British Imperial Court of India. Most accounts of the period and the
region handed down to us were either composed by official observers or learned scholars writing
for a specific audience, their works censored by the governments they served. Here we are shown
a different perspective: fresh insights and understandings or misunderstandings, providing us with
an informative change from the usual hierarchical views. Phuntsog Lungtok, Karma Sumdhon
Paul and Drin Chen traveled widely, regularly setting off on a journey which Europeans would
have considered to require a fully-fledged expedition. They also crossed cultures, and in recording
their stories for van Manen they have left us fresh and stimulating insights into both our own and
Asian societies.
55. Alex McKay, author of McKay 1997, and who contributed the aforementioned excellent Foreword to
Tibetan Lives, explains in the Foreword about Johnson as follows (xvii): "Sergeant Johnson, who accused Karma
Sumdhon Paul of dishonesty, was one of the Head Clerks at the Gyantse Agency, an ex-military telegraphist who
transferred to the civil staff after all of the previous incumbents of the clerical position had proved either
dishonest or incompetent. But according to Paul, Johnson proved as dishonest as his predecessors, although
there is no record of the cause of his suicide in the British archives." For further background regarding the Trade
Agency's clerical situation and additional information about Johnson and his ultimate end, consult McKay's own
book, cited above, pp. 96-7.
56. Peter Richardus, "Introduction," in Richardus (ed.) 1998, p. xxvi.
57. Pott, "Appendix: In Memoriam Johan van Manen," in Pott 1951, pp. 142-3.
58. See ibid, 140 and Richardus 1989, p. 30.
59. At the time of van Manen's death in 1943, an intimate friend of his, Colonel Noel Barwell, like the
Dutchman a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, contributed an Obituary Note that sheds some light
on van Manen's religious bent both before and after leaving Adyar. In the Note Barwell was wont to make the
following observations: "Before he reached middle life his appreciation of the mysterious forces which seem at
once to surround and permeate mankind led him towards one of the most recent forms in which the religious sense
has manifested itself—Theosophy.... Amongst them [Mrs. Besant and her followers] van Manen lived for
several years and may be said ... to have borne some part in the gradual evolution of the present offshoot from
that School, associated with the name of Krishnamurti. Had he been minded, at the point of death, to make some
confession of Faith he might have been heard to say, I think, that he regarded Krishnamurti as probably nearer
than is any other living person to the ability for setting forth a system—not perhaps a philosophy—capable of
guiding the ordinary man and woman nearer than such persons have yet come to by other means towards ultimate
spiritual truth. Yearbook of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1943 (vol. X, 1944): 188.
Van Manen, incidentally, shortly after his arrival at Adyar, happened to be present at the beach site along the
nearby Adyar River when his Theosophist employer, Charles W. Leadbeater, "discovered" the future "World
Teacher" of Theosophy, the world-renowned religious and social philosopher of a later day, Jiddu Krishnamurti
[born c. 1896]. After Leadbeater, van Manen and others had returned to their Theosophy headquarters bungalow
from their bathings together, Leadbeater was heard to declare that this 14-year-old boy "had the most wonderful
aura he had ever seen, without a particle of selfishness in it," predicting that eventually the lad would become a
spiritual teacher and great orator, "much greater" than even Theosophy's then current International President
Annie Besant. He further revealed that this boy would be the vehicle for the Lord Maitreya, Theosophy's
greatest Hierarch, "unless," he carefully added, "something went wrong"; and that he, Leadbeater, had been
directed by his personal guru master to assist in training the boy for that purpose. This was 1909. By 1930,
something did "go wrong" with "the Coming" of this supposed great World Teacher, to the great surprise and
disappointment of Leadbeater and Besant. For within just a few short years after being presented to the world
as "the Coming One," Krishnamurti felt compelled to resign from the Theosophical Society to pursue his own
individual spiritual path. See Mary Lutyens, Krishnamurti: the Years of Awakening (New York, 1975), 20-1 and
passim.
In his volume of speeches for 1924-5 delivered in America while on furlough from India, the Rev. Dr. E.
Stanley Jones, famed missionary friend to so many religious and cultural leaders on the Subcontinent (e.g., Sadhu
Sundar Singh, C. F. Andrews, Gandhi and Tagore), has provided his own assessment of Krishnamurti, given at the
height of the latter's rise to prominence within Theosophy. It was an assessment that would obviously not have
been pleasing to van Manen. "Sweep the horizon," began Dr. Jones in one of his speeches; "is there anyone else
who, as one earnest Hindu had said to me, is seriously bidding for the heart of the world except Jesus Christ? Yes,
Mrs. Besant announces a coming World Teacher. She puts forth Krishnamurti, a Brahman youth who is to be the
incarnation of Christ. (Even here she na¿vely acknowledges the supremacy of Jesus, for it is to be an incarnation
of Christ.) He has given forth his first installment of world teaching and has received divine honors in India and
in the West. I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable disposition, of
mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we,
as a race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God pity us." The Christ of the Indian
Road (New York/Cincinnati, 1925), 46 (emphasis Jones's).
60. Richardus 1989, p. 32.

61. But Karma Sumdhon would serve in yet another way: making contributions to a number of articles which
the Dutch scholar would publish years later. By K. S. Paul's own citation in his personal narrative, these were:
Khacche Phalu, A Tibetan Moralist; The Song of the Eastern Snow Mountain; and On Making Earthen Images,
Repairing old images and Drawing Scroll-Paintings in Tibet. Even his wife Yang-dzom, before her death, had
contributed to van Manen's scholarly endeavors. This once noteworthy skilled singer of Tibetan songs, who was
born and reared in Gyantse, had dictated, at the Dutchman's request, three love songs that were translated and
published in English in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1921):287-318, under the title, Three Tibetan
Rkpartee Songs. As a consequence of this collaboration, wrote Karma Paul, "to my knowledge this is the first
soun^d contribution bv a Tibetan lady to Western science."—-and presumably he was correct! See K. S. Paul's life
story, in Ric/hardus fed.) 1098, p. 157;êe also Pott 1951, p. 146.
420
62. Peter Riehardus is to be highly commended for his work in editing and bringing out in more understandable
English the full text of all three biographies, in his previously referenced Tibetan Lives, the primary source for
nearly all of what has been recounted in the last few pages of the present chapter. "At that moment in time,"
observes Riehardus, "it was rather unusual, indeed, for Europeans to work together with informants, as
anthropologists would nowadays choose to call them." Phuntsog Lungtok's autobiography, written in Tibetan,
is a 765-page manuscript completed in December 1924, just two years before his death. It was shortly afterwards
rendered anonymously into a verbatim English translation that Riehardus used as the basis for his version of it
published in 1998. K.S. Paul's final draft of his Tibetan manuscript was completed in 1928 and ran to 617 pages,
though his own translation into English has only 414 pages. And finally, Drin Chen's account—illustrated by
some 90 pen-drawings executed by the author himself and added to the life story in 1925—consists of over a
thousand pages of manuscript, having been written in both Tibetan and Chinese before its translation "into an
English of sorts" by the Sino-Tibetan informant himself.
It should be added here as well that the Dutch scholar-linguist would later make the same request of another
would-be informant of his, Twan Yang, van Manen's very last houseboy employed before the Dutchman's death,
and close younger friend of Gergan Tharchin's. It too was published in English, under the title, Houseboy in India
(New York, 1947), and figures to some extent in the ongoing narrative of Tharchin's life that is recounted in Vol.
Ill, Ch. 24a of the present work.
63. In Mythos Tibet (Koln: Dumont, 1997), pp. 90 and 91, there are pictured two stills from Noel's movie
showing K.S. Paul: one of them depicting him handing over a message to the Rongbuk abbot, the other showing
him in the process of verbally translating to the seated General the abbot's message of response. Appropriate
captions in German are shown beneath each still. ^ 4
64. "Which Society, under his Secretaryship, received the Epithet Royal from the King of England after her
150 years' existence," having been founded in 1784 by Sir William Jones. C.E. van Aken, "The Late Mari Albert
Johan van Manen," Yearbook of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1943 (vol. X, 1944): 186. Indeed, writes
van Manen's most recent biographer, "through his devotion, enthusiasm and zeal van Manen not only breathed
new life into the post of General Secretary but he also began to rebuild the^Society as a renowned temple of
science." Riehardus, "Introduction," in Riehardus (ed.) 1998, p. xxiii. He even acquired a celebrity status, adds
Riehardus, noting his quite favorable appearance in one of the Two Tales of the Occult (New York, 1970) by the
world-renowned Romanian historian of religions and man of letters Mircea Eliade, and in A Writer s Notebook
(London, 1949), 261-2 by the Dutchman's friend, the celebrated British author W Somerset Maugham. A
thorough discussion of Eliade's first of two novelettes, Nopti la Serampore (Nights at Serampore), as it related
to van Manen, can be found in Riehardus 1989, pp. 45-7.
65. This brief profile of Pastor Tinlay is according to Perry 1997, pp. 108, 109, 130 note 152, 441.
66. Except for Tinlay's profile, all information presented up to this point in this paragraph was related to the
present writer by a friend and relative (by marriage) of the Tharchin family, Rev. Tshering Wangdi, in an interview
he gave to the writer, Dec. 1994. Rev. Wangdi, aged 71 at the time of the interview, doubtless received much of this
information directly from Tharchin himself, while the remaining items of information he most likely had learned
during the time he himself spent at the Ghoom Mission in the early 1950s.
67. All information in the rest of this paragraph is per B.C. Simick Jr. in an interview he gave to the present
writer, Dec. 1992. Simick Jr. was a much younger friend of Tharchin's, who got to know and observe the latter
while growing up in Kalimpong. Simick himself is still a Lecturer in Tibetan today at Kalimpong College.
68. Anilas: plural of ani, the latter a shortened form of the Tibetan word anni that literally means aunt and is
used as a term of respect for single women as well as being the name given to Buddhist nuns and by extension to
unmarried Christian lady missionaries and other single female Christian workers. But it has even been used as a
term of respect for the wife of a Christian priest or minister; this according to Rev. Wrangdi who is mentioned two
notes earlier.
69. See Romans 7:24 in the Christian New Testament.
70. Interview with Tashi Pempa Hishey, Nov. 1992.
71. S.G. Tharchin to the author, Kalimpong, 10 Aug. 1990. The Darjeeling hospital mentioned had been
established by the Tea Planters' Association of the Darjeeling region many decades before. The date, place and
other details about his operation and recovery were gleaned from two letters written by G. Tharchin afterwards
(and part of the ThPaK): (a) GT to Miss Chie Nakane (a Japanese professor in Japan), Kalimpong, 20 July 1965:
"Lately, I was not keeping so well and last year in the month of May I had to undergo a major operation"; and (b)
GT to His Excellency the Sawang Gyalo Dhondup (second eldest brother of Dalai Lama XIV), Kalimpong, 16
Feb. 1965: "Since long time I have wanted to write and thank you for your kind helps in the past. But owing to
ill-health I failed to do so. Since Nov. 1963 my health went wrong. In May 19641 had to go to the Planters' Club
Hospital at Darjeeling for an operation; at the same time my wife also had to go under surgery, and we both were
in the same hospital. By the doctors' help and God's grace we both were able to come back to Kalimpong and had
to be in the local hospital for about a month, as it was too expensive at Darjeeling."
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 37-48; quotes: 41-2, 44, 45.

1. As far as is known he never returned to Lachen again. It should perhaps be mentioned again, however, that
the missionary lady, Margaret Vitants, who was later to marry Tharchin after his first wife's death, carried on
Christian work at the request of the Finnish Mission at both Lachen and Lachung in the 1940s and '50s, prior to
her marriage to Tharchin.
2. This was an outgrowth of the work, first, of the missionaries of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission, whose
labors were then assumed by the Finnish Mission of the Free Church of Finland (see the previous chapter for
details). It was this Church's Mission, coincidentally, that was one of the constituent groups which served in the
Ghoom Mission (and eventually took over management of it), and to which Church the three close friends of
Tharchin's, the Anilas Kempe, Treshbech and Juriva, belonged. See in the present volume, Ch. 5, and in Vol. Ill,
Ch. 26.
3. Prem Singh would later serve in the army and rise to the rank of Major. Many years ago he passed away
in Kalimpong and was buried in the local church cemetery. He was popularly known as Major Winifred, See
GTUM TsMs, 39n.
4. Quoted in Urban 1967, p. 6. Missionary Urban had heard these words about this period at Ghoom from
the Tibetan himself. The Biblical principle alluded to, of course, stems from Jesus' method, recorded in Mark 6:7,
of sending forth on their own His twelve disciples "by two and two" on their first apostolic experience of
evangelism and healing without the physical presence of the Lord being with them.
5. Shown as Tista on some maps, the name is an abbreviation of Trisrota, that is, the three currents. For until
1787, when it abruptly abandoned its old bed and opened a new channel for itself, the Teesta, on emerging from
the hills, had divided into three streams, each of which having followed independent courses down to the larger
rivers below. See O'Malley 1989, p. 219. The Teesta is formed in the Himalayas by the confluence of the Lachen
Chu and Lachung Chu at the village of Chung Thang, Sikkim (2Q miles north of Gangtok). One visitor to the site
of the confluence has described it as follows:"... a giant-looking chorten [rests on] a tongue of level land thrust
out at the foot of a mountain wedge at the apex of which the waters of the Lachung and Lachen rivers mingle, to
be known thenceforward as the Teesta: for which reason the people have given it [this level spot] the name of
Chung Thang, or the 'marriage of the rivers'." Ronaldshay 1923, pp. 142-3. A few hundred feet above the
confluence sits a small gompa or monastery. The river then flows south past Rangpo and Kalimpong and SSE
past Jalpaiguri and Mekhliganj into Bangladesh, then past Kaunia, and eventually to the mighty Brahamaputra
River. Its length is about 250 miles and in its upper course divides the Nepal Himalayas (to the west) from the
Assam Himalayas (to the east).
6. Younghusband 1921, p. 16
7. A case in point was the unusually severe cyclonic disaster of June 1950 which had inaugurated the customary
monsoon seaso^fbr Kalimpong with a vengeance. An eyewitness who lived through it, George N. Patterson, has provided
a description of its awesome lethal power: (in Tragic Destiny, London, 1959, p. 35):
On Saturday, June 10th, the rains started, and continued in a steadily increasing downpour throughout
the night and into Sunday. By Sunday night and through Monday it was falling in such sheets that
it was almost impossible to breathe when one attempted to go out into it. The rainfall gauge
showed that 43 inches had fallen in 48 hours. On Tuesday the cyclone eased and gradually settled
down to the normal showers and drizzle, but the damage had been done. In Kalimpong alone there
were 23 dead, and over 400 casualties. Darjeeling had 163 dead and over 1000 casualties. Houses,
roads, cattle, power stations, bridges, railway lines, reservoirs, had been swept away in the landslides
throughout the mountains, and we were cut off from the plains by sheer slopes of quivering mud
which every few minutes roared down thousands of feet into the raging River Teesta to cause
another blockage and then another murderous breakthrough. The Kalimpong-Siliguri road was
down in thirty-one places; at one point ten miles of it had completely disappeared.
8. This construction project eventually created the railroad lines mentioned in the preceding note as having
been swept away by the 1950 monsoons. These railway lines—which were an extension of the "toy-train" line to
Darjeeling Town and which went from Siliguri to Gielkhola on the Kalimpong and Sikkim route and known as the
420
Teesta Valley section—are no longer extant inasmuch as they could not be restored after the heavy landslides of
1950. The annual repairs on the railroad construction cost more than the income it realized, and hence there was no
other alternative but to dismantle the lines.
9. A demon-possessed man who is believed to have wielding power to exorcise illnesses. GTUM TsMs, 39n.
10. See Matthew 9:35.
11. See Hebrews 13:8.
12. Isaiah 55:8.
13. The sources for the information and quoted material found in this narration of the incident with the
Tibetan "backslidden" Christian lady who died after Tharchin's prayer are two (a) Tharchin's recounting of the
story in 1964 to Margaret Urban and reported in Urban 1967, pp. 6-7; and (b) another and fuller account given
by Tharchin when dictating his "memoirs" some ten years later (see GTUM TsMs, 39-42.) Both accounts were
shared in Kalimpong.
14. "'Siligoori,' I find means in the patois of the native Koch [Cooch?] tribe, 'The Stony Site,' for it is the
outermost point at which pebbles from the Himalayas appear upon the surface of the muddy Delta of Bengal."
Waddell 1900, p. 432. Just thirteen years before the two evangelists' visit, Siliguri was only 748 souls, in sharp
contrast to its population of today that numbers in the millions!
15. The violin helped Tharchin a great deal in enabling him to learn organ music. For the want of a proper organist,
several times after 1925, while conducting the Sunday morning local Tibetan church services at Kalimpong, he managed
both the pulpit and the organ—playing the latter with two fingers one from each hand. In spite of wrong timings and
incorrect notes sometimes, he never gave up sitting at the church organ since it was a very essential contribution to the
congregational singing. GTUM TsMs, 43n.
16. Again, the sources for the information and quoted material found in the narration of the incident at the
Tibetan camp are two: (a) Tharchin's brief comments about it in 1964 to Miss Urban and reported in Urban 1967,
p 7; and (b) another and much fuller account given by Tharchin when dictating his "memoirs" some ten years later
(see GTUM TsMs, 43-4). And as indicated before, both accounts were shared in Kalimpong.
17. Which would have had to be either Sunday June 7th or Sunday the 14th, just before Tharchin and Sadhu
Sundar Singh departed for an intended evangelistic tour to Tibet on 17 June, not returning to Ghoom till July. See
the next chapter. Conceivably Sundar Singh was even present at the above event, but only if it had occurred on
the 14th, since though he had arrived in Ghoom on May 10th and had lodged with Tharchin as the latter's guest and
was in the upper Bengal region for a month thereafter, Sundar did decide subsequently to trek over to Nepal,
being absent from Ghoom between June 5th or 6th and June 10th. See Ch. 7's end-notes and Ch.10 for details.
18. Once again, the sources for the information and quoted material found in the narration of the incident with
the Tibetan couple under the pipal tree are two: (a) Tharchin's retelling of the incident in 1964 to Margaret Urban
and reported in Urban 1967, pp. 7-8; and (b) another and fuller account given by Tharchin when dictating his
"memoirs" some years later see GTUM TsMs, 45-7). Again, both accounts were shared at Kalimpong.
19. Dawa Norbu, "G. Tharchin: Pioneer and Patriot," TR (Dec. 1975): 18.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 49-56; quotes: 51, 51-2, 53, 53-4.

1. Graham 1898, p. 2.
2. Ibid2-4.
3. The source for all quoted material and information relative to Livingstone and his successors, and to
Brainerd, as well as for John Graham's quoted observations, is ibid., 185-8, 197-8, 45-6.
4. Quoted in Heiler 1927, p. 54.
5. Pierson 1920, pp. 611, 615. The explanation by the Sadhu set in quotes is a paraphrase by Pierson;
whereas the Sadhu's "Western cup" quotation is taken from John M. Lindner, "India—Celebrating 200 years of
Making Christ known." Christian Mission (40th Anniversary Issue, Apr.-July 1993): 13-14.
6. Both quotations are from Riddle 1964, pp. 59, 60.
7. Davey 1963, pp. 49-50.
8. Revelation 1: 5-6; Titus 3: 5-6.
9. Ephesians 2: 8-10.
10. The several sources consulted and quoted from for this discussion of the "sadhu" and Sundar Singh's
relationship to it were the following: Andrews 1934, p. xii; Davey 1963, pp. 50-1,115; the 1920 Indian journalist
is quoted in "News from many lands." MRW (June 1920):562; Kent, "The Religious Experience of Sadhu Sundar
Singh." Hibbert Journal (Oct. 1933): 35; the Sadhu's "Sannyasi statement" is quoted in ibid., 36; the "misuse of
God's gifts" statement is quoted in Appasamy 1966, p. 233; the Indra god statement is quoted from SanthaRama
Rau, "Benares: City of Light," NG (Feb. 1986):233; and the "advantage- difficulty" quotations are from Streeter
and Appasamy 1921, p. 12.
11. Andrews 1934, pp. 113-4.
12. Jones, Victory through Surrender (1960; Festival Ed., Nashville, 1980), 70.
13. Three of the more recent examples of this have been: (i) an interesting biographical study authored by
Janet Lynch-Watson, The Saffron Robe: a Life of Sadhu Sundar Singh (London, 1975); (ii) a biographical-
theological work in German, originally a doctoral dissertation, that emphasizes the Sadhu's mystical and evangelistic
sides of his character and ministry, authored by Michael Biehl, Der Fall Sadhu Sundar Singh: Theologie
zwischen den Kulteren [The case of Sadhu Sundar Singh: Theology between Cultures] (Frankfurt/New York/
Berne/Paris: P. Lang, 1990); and (iii) a collection of anecdotes, sayings, parables and meditations culled from the
Sadhu's own writings and from other obscure sources, compiled and edited by Kim Comer, Wisdom of the Sadhu:
Teachings of Sundar Singh (Farmington PA USA: Plough Publishing House of the Bruderhof Foundation, 2000).
14. These seven, with complete biographical data are: (i) Friedrich Heiler, The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh,
trans. Olive Wyon, original German ed. published under the title Sadhu Sundar Singh: Ein Apostel des Ostens und
Westens (Munich: Reinhardt, 1924; English ed., London: G. Alien and Unwin, 1927); (ii) Oskar Pfister's
psychoanalytical study (in collaboration with Catholic Jesuit Father Henry Hosten of Darjeeling), Die Legende
Sundar Singhs (Berne/Leipzig: P. Haupt, 1926; (iii) Heiler's response to (ii), Die Wahrheit Sundar Singhs [The
Truthfulness of Sundar Singh] (Munich: Reinhardt, 1927); (iv) Paul Gabler, Sadhu Sundar Singh (Leipzig, 1937):
(v) Cyril J. Davey, The Story of Sadhu Sundar Singh (1950; reprint ed., Chicago: Moody Press, 1963); (vi) A.J.
Appasamy, Sundar Singh, a biography (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958; 1st Indian ed., Madras: Christian
Literature Society, 1966); and (vii) Thomas E. Riddle, The Vision and the Call: a Life of Sadhu Sundar Singh (1947;
rev. & 1st Indian ed., Kharar: Robertson B. Singh for the Literature Committee ofthe Punjab Synod, 1964).
15. Streeter and Appasamy 1921, p. 16.

16. See MRW (Apr. 1924):307.s
17. Streeter and Appasamy 1921, pp. 16-17; the "dark, closed land" phrase is quoted in Heiler 1927, p. 66.
420
18. See Streeter and Appasamy 1921, p. 17.

19. Quoted in Rowlands & Ghose (comps.) 1924, p. 11.
20. It is almost certain that it was no later than on Saturday the 6th that the Sadhu departed Ghoom on his trek
to Elam, for the following reasons:
(i) The topography between Elam and the Darjeeling District of Bengal is more or less a descent, the trek of
which, as is known for certain, took Sundar Singh two days to negotiate back to Ghoom. On the other hand, the
trek in the reverse direction involves a more or less continual ascent, and one that is not without difficulty. In fact,
the Sadhu describes what happened inside Nepal on the 7th of June in the following terms:
The 7th of June will always be in my memory—the fatigue of the journey, the extreme hunger and
thirst, the heavy showers of rain and the ascent of seven miles. A terrible blast of wind threw me
into a cave. O! praised be the Lord; though I fell from such a height, I did not get any hurt at all....
The blast of wind turned into a wave of love, and the shower of rain into a shower of grace ...
After this I went to another village. Many people gathered round me. First I thought they
were planning to turn me out, but after a short time they all sat by me. Then I read out some
passages to them from the Nepali Gospel and made their meaning clear in Hindi ...
The next day starting from here I reached one of the largest towns of Nepal, named Ilam....
The day I reached Ilam was a special day in which the bazaars were full, like a market day. I began
preaching, standing in the bazaar before the post office....
(It should be observed, incidentally, that one of Sundar Singh's severest critics, Swiss pastor Oskar Pflster, who
accused the Sadhu, among other things, of "gross lies" in the latter's accounts of some of his travel experiences on
behalf of the gospel, had no justification in questioning why Sundar "did not indicate the city" when recording in
his New Testament: "Nepal, the 7th of June, 1914," the critic adding that "Nêpal is, after all, a big country" In
response, it should be pointed out that there was certainly no city—and no village, for that matter—at the cave
spot into which the evangelist had been thrust by the strong wind, which w&s the place he had reached inside
Nepal at the top of an exhausting seven-mile ascent. And if Pfister had in mind the town of Elam, the latter was
not reached by the Sadhu till the following day. Moreover, as explained elsewhere, Sundar never kept a diary on
his various travels and could not therefore be expected to recall the names of every last village through which he
passed. See Pfister 1926, p. 178.) In the light of these events just described, hadiSundar commenced his journey
to Elam any later than on the 6th, there would not have been sufficient time for him to have reached the town by
the forenoon or so of the 8th in time to start preaching in the bazaar (the 8th of June is another date in this
experience which is known for certain). For he would have been too much delayed by the three attempts to cross
the border (see next point), by the arduous seven-mile ascent, by the storm and cave incident, and by his subsequent
evangelizing in the next village (where he ultimately stayed overnight) for him to have reached Elam all the way from
Ghoom in less than two days minimum. Indeed, it was more likely three to three-and-a-half days.
(ii) In addition, Sundar Singh relates the fact that after having made his way to the Nepal border from Ghoom,
he had "tried to enter Nepal from two placcs," but he "was checked by the officers of the state, because they do
not allow any man to enter without a passport; and for a Christian to obtain a passport was impossible, and
especially for a preacher." These probing attempts by this Christian sadhu to penetrate the border at two previous
places before he thereafter plunged successfully forward into the forbidden territory certainly must have delayed
him even further, requiring an earlier start to his trek than the 7th to be able to reach Elam by midday of the 8th.
(iii) It is known from Tharchin that the Sadhu "spent at least one night" at Sukhiapokhri, located 7 miles west
of Ghoom and a lesser distance than that further west to the Nepalese border of District Darjeeling, India. See
Pfister 1926, p. 212, wherein the author provides a summary extract of a lengthy conversation Tharchin had at
Darjeeling with Sadhu-critic Fr. Henry Hosten in June 1925 in which Sundar's friend informed Hosten of this fact.
Now in the light of (i), (ii) and (iii), one can fairly well chart out the following phronology and movements of
the Sadhu's evangelistic trek to Elam:
5th June: Departs Ghoom, heading west, arrives Sukhiapokhri, probably preaches in the bazaar, stays
overnight here.
6th June: If but one overnight at Sukhiapokhri, then he journeys onward 4 or 5 miles to the Nepalese border,
is delayed crossing until on third attempt he is successful in eluding border police; arid if daylight still remains, he
travels into Nepal, otherwise, he camps just inside the frontier.
7th June: Continues his ascent further into Nepal, and probably by early to mid-afternoon encounters horrific
wind-rain storm that thrust him into a cave, where he lingers in the grace and love of God till storm passes. Then,
as he himself related, he goes to the neighboring village, shares the gospel, and there stays overnight, not far from
Elam.
8th June: He arrives at Elam, probably in the afternoon.
And finally (iv)? had this devoted and faithful servant of the Lord waited until the morning of Sunday the 7lh
to commence his trek, it is seriously doubtful he would have left his Christian host at Ghoom without having
attended the Christian meeting of that morning with saints and sinners who would unquestionably have gathered
there. And had he indeed gathered with them, then there just could not have been sufficient time (a mere 24-hour
period) to have arrived at Elam by the 8th of June.
Hence, for all these reasons, one can safely assume that Sadhu Sundar Singh began his journey to Nepal from
Ghoom on 5 or 6 June 1914. (The testimony of the Sadhu is taken from a letter of his posted from Ghoom after the 10th
of June 1914 and which appeared in the 3 July 1914 issue of Nur Afshan, quoted in Appasamy 1966, pp. 62-3.)
21. A sizable congregation still meets here today, but is compose of a more diversified group of ethnic
peoples from the same region, and until recently had included many of the children who had been housed and
cared for at Evelyn Cottage in what had for some few years served as the Douglas Memorial Children's Home but
which has now been terminated. The shepherd of this interesting flock is none other than Ishmael Tshering, a
Bhutanese and the uncle ofNini Tshering Tharchin, the wife of Gergan Tharchin's son Sherab Gyamtsho. It may
be recalled from the present work's Preface, in fact, that it was this very couple at Ghoom who had hosted the
present author during a 1985 overnight visit and had then directed the latter to S.G. Tharchin in Kalimpong,
which action ultimately led to the creation of this very biography of Gergan Tharchin. Rev. Tshering, who
together with his Tibetan wife and family have been serving the saints here at Ghoom for quite a number of years,
occupy living quarters provided at the rear of the church structure that is reserved for the church's pastor and his
family. The present author had the privilege of enjoying the warm and gracious hospitality of the Tsherings on
three separate occasions: the aforementioned overnight in April of 1985, a lovely noontime meal in November
1987 and a third but much longer stay of several days a few weeks later in December. One memento the author
returned home with from this latter visit, and one which he will always treasure, was a photo taken of him in the
little church building standing behind the very pulpit where on the 7th of May 1914 Sadhu Sundar Singh had stood
to preach to those who had assembled to hear the word of God from the lips of this choice servant of the Lord.
22. Taken from the Sadhu's Nur Afshan article of 3 July 1914 and quoted in Appasamy 1966, p. 63.
23. Interview with Rev. Biswas, Nov. 1992, with Gergan Tharchin's son, Rev. S.G. Tharchin, present.
24. In Sundar's very early years, the Bhagavad Gita and the other Hindu scriptures occupied a central place
in his religious upbringing. By his own testimony given years later Sundar had revealed that though he and his
family were followers of the Sikh faith, nevertheless, "the teaching of Hindism was considered most essential,
and my mother ... used to rise daily before daylight, and ... used to read the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu
scriptures.... She early impressed on me the rule that my first duty on rising in the morning was that I should
pray to God for spiritual food and blessing, and that only after so doing should 1 breakfast.... My mother for
some years instructed me from the holy books of the Hindu scriptures, and then handed me over to a Hindu
pundit, and to an old Sikh Sadhu. They used to come to our house for two or three hours daily to teach me." And,
of course, for young Sundar the Bhagavad Gita was one of the most important of the Hindu scriptures to be read
and taught and even memorized; indeed, "by the age pf seven he know the whole of it by heart" in Sanskrit!
Appasamy (ed.) 1956, p. 8; see also Pierson 1920, p. 612. Moreover, Sundar continued, "I often used to read the
Hindu scriptures till midnight that I might in some way quench the thirst of my soul for peace. My father often
objected, saying: Tt is bad for your health to read so late—I suppose you must have got this madness from your
mother and the Sadhu.'" Yet with all his searching and effort, it is quite significant that in his testimony Sundar
added these words: "I could not find anywhere that spiritual food for which I hungered, and in this state of unrest
I remained till I found the Living Christ." Sundar Singh 1969, pp. 50-1, 53. It should also be mentioned that the
reading of the Koran had likewise brought no peace of soul to Sundar.
25. In a literal, though most likely incomplete sense, however, the Sadhu has already provided in published
form some of the results of his study of the Bhagavad Gita alluded to here. For in a small volume he had
published in 1925, Sundar Singh has set down some of his more fundamental insights into the comparative
thought patterns between these two faiths, as well as between Christianity and several other faiths. The reader
is therefore referred to his little work of 58 pages entitled The Search After Reality (London, 1925; first published
in India, Madras, 1968). An excerpt from the author's Preface sets the tone for the entire work:
Living in close contact with Hinduism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism and Christianity, I have
studied their sacred books and the writings of their leading thinkers; while, from personal
conversation with many of their learned followers, I have been able to extract much information
420
regarding their faiths. The results of my thinking on these four great religions I have set down in
this book.
It is not my intention to undertake a systematic and historical review of these religions, but
I have sought to set before my readers in thoughts, clothed in simple words, a few of their
fundamental principles in the hope that those who are seekers after the Truth may be helped to
know the Reality.
It should nevertheless be acknowledged, finally, that were the Sadhu's personal copy of the Gita which he left
at Tharchin's home in Ghoom ever discovered, it would constitute a find of great importance to biographers and
scholars on the life and work of Sundar Singh.
26. All these comments by Tharchin were shared at Kalimpong while dictating his "memoirs" shortly before
his death.
27. Rowlands & Ghose (comps.) 1924, p. 56.
28. See Appasamy 1966, p. 106.
29. Koch 1981, p. 105. The author added: "Because Brother Daniel was a sober man of God, I just leave this
story as it is, without criticizing it. Brother Daniel, who died a few years ago, experienced many miracles in his
service. I wrote his biography in the often mentioned book 4 Jesus auf alien Kontinenten'." Ibid.
30. Appasamy 1966, p. 106.
•31. Ibid., 19.
32. Ibid., 107.
33. This request for leave is per ibid., 66.
34. Ibid.
35. So said Tharchin to Margaret Urban in 1964 at Kalimpong and reported in Urban 1967, p. 5.
36. There is a fascinating mythological story that explains how these two rivers met, and how the Teesta got
its name. In a folktale found among the legends of the Lepchas (the original inhabitants of Sikkim), it is said that
"Rangit," a boy, loved "Teesta," a girl, but were driven away by parents who disapproved of this union. Their
friends, Partridge and Snake, counseled them to depart the place and allow them to guide them to a new meeting
place for their tryst. Partridge guided "Rangit" while Snake led fprth "Teesta" out from the land of Sikkim. The
two finally met and were married at Peshok in what is now Darjeeling District. But "Teesta" had arrived at
Peshok early and "Rangit" had been late. In response to her complaint, the boy had reasoned with "Teesta" that
Partridge, being restless, had guided him in a zigzag manner, thus causing him to be delayed. But the girl would not
hear of this explanation and repeated her complaint. Nevertheless, when "Rangit" was in the process of leaving
her, "Teesta" began to woo him and promised that the/surrounding people would forget his late arrival if he would
only flow over her. And that is the explanation fopfrow the two met and how Rangit flows to this day over Teesta
at Peshok. For during the rainy season it canêfearly be seen that the mud-colored waters of the Rangit flow over
the Teesta at this confluence of the two waterways. Now previously "Teesta's" name had been "Rong-Nya," but
when the boy "Rangit" had first found that his beloved had arrived before him, he exclaimed "Thista!" (or,
"Teesta!") which in Lepcha meant "Already Arrived!"—and hence, "Rong-Nya" (meaning, "the pure river") is
nowadays known as "Teesta." This folktale, incidentally, has been rendered into an equally fascinating Lepcha
dance that was dramatized annually among the Lepchas. For a description of the dance, see Amal K. Das and S.K.
Banerjee, The Lepchas of Darjeeling District (Calcutta, 1962), 124-5; see also pp. 123-4, 132 as the sources of
the folktale itself and the meaning and origin of Peshok and Teesta.
37. Quoted in Manuel 1914, pp. 54-5; see also Minto 1974, p. 165.
38. So stated Tashi Tshering, in Tshering 1987, p. 9.
39. The sources for the information and quoted material found in the description of Kalimpong on this and
the preceding pages are the following: the personal observations of the present author; Bell 1946, p. 24; Bell
1924, p. 19; Macdonald 1943, pp. 3, 68, 72, 74; Macdonald 1949, p. 49; Jain (ed. & comp.) 1991, pp. 3, 9,15;
Minto 1974, pp. 32-3, 37-8; O'Malley 1989, p. 192; Temple, Journals Kept in Hyderabad, Kashmir, Sikkim and
Nepal 2 vols (London, 1887), 11:195-6; Tucci 1956, pp. 10-12; McGovern 1924, p. 21; Chaudhuri, "Gateway
to China: Kalimpong and the Silk Route Option," Frontline, India s National Magazine (17 Dec. 1993}*t0l-2,
104; Dozey 1922, p. 174; Elie Abel in his article appearing in the New York Times, 4 Apr. 1959, p. 2; and from
encyclopedias and travel guide literature.
40. See "SUM Institution Staff Record—Locally Appointed Staffs," in Subba(ed.) 1986, p. unnumbered.
41. For an explanation, history and brief description of this educational and training facility see Vol. II, Ch.
12 of the present work. Additional information on its activities in the Kalimpong area is also given in Ch. 16.
42. Due to his friendship with Desraj, Tharchin was likewise inclined to seek employment within the Dr.
Graham's Homes Establishment. Desraj drafted the application and advised Tharchin to mail it to the proper
authorities of the Homes. Since Tharchin was working with the Ghoom Mission, the Homes authorities counseled
him that he could only obtain employment provided he could secure release from the Ghoom Mission. The latter
was reluctant to release Tharchin since from their perspective he was indispensable to them. In order to please
him, however, they later sent him for the teacher training program at Kalimpong on condition that he return to
Ghoom. Tharchin wisely took advantage of the "bargain." GTUM TsMs, 55n. For more on this arrangement see
Vol. II, Ch. 12.
43. Aath means eight and dhura means roof (singular), with dhuray signifying roofs (plural). Hence, the
(Mission) line takes its name from the fact of there being eight roofs or houses or living units in a particular line
or row of dwelling places.
44. These reminiscences were received on 14 September 1967 in Kalimpong by a close acquaintance of
Tharchin's from Mr. Prabhudas in spoken testimony and then set down on paper. It was shared with the present
author by the close acquaintance,
45. The then administrative head of the Scots Mission, John A. Graham, had worked mainly among the
Lepchas in the Kalimpong area. And "the undisputed head of the Lepcha Christians," wrote Graham's biographer
(James Minto), "was Namthak." At one point in the after-development of the district churches which Graham
had been responsible for starting (see the end-notes for Ch. 16 of Vol. II for more on this), the Lepchas had formed
80 percent of the Christian community in all the districts, and had also provided the active Christian leaders in the
Church, men such as Namthak Lepcha, C.T. Sitling (who later broke away from the Macfarlane Church; see Vol.
II, Ch. 19), Tsering Simick Lepcha (who had been a student at SUMI and had taught there, 1890-92), and PS.
Targain (for more on the latter, see Vol. Ill, Ch. 25). Furthermore, "it is interesting," Minto observed, "that in 1970
out of 27 pastors in the Eastern Himalayan Church, 21 were Lepchas and only six were Nepalese. The leadership
of the Church is still very much a Lepcha responsibility as it was in Graham's day." Minto 1974, p. 44.
46. Sources for the quotations and information on the Macfarlane Church building are: Macdonald 1943, p.
72; Graham 1897, pp. 65-6; and Minto 1974, p. 26. For a brief though interesting history and description of this
house of worship, consult Ch. V, "The Memorial Church," in Graham 1897, pp. 64-73.
47. Again, a part of the personal reminiscence of the Sadhu's visit to Kalimpong by brother Prabhudas, as
told to, and set down on paper by, a close acquaintance of Tharchin's on 14 Sept. 1967, who shared it with the
present author.
48. Later the Sunday school was held in the auditorium of the Mission Girl's High School, which with the
Boys' High School, was located within the Scots Mission compound at the foot ofDeolo Hill, below the Tibetan
Monastery. Macdonald 1943, p. 71.
49. Robert E. Hume, "Sadhu Sundar Singh—the Christian 'Holy Man' of India," Homiletic Review (Aug.
1920):92. Not only in America but in other parts of the world there was the same reaction. A young teen-aged
boy in Bombay, upon meeting him there, wrote to his mother, saying: "His face is divine." "Again and again,"
wrote a Christian Sister in West India, "one hears the people say, 'He looks like Christ.'" In Japan it was said that
as he was walking through a girl's high school campus at Osaka one of the girls ran hurriedly into the principal's
office and shouted: "Teacher, teacher, here comes Jesus, here comes Jesus!" A theological student who attended
Sundar Singh's preaching service in Fujimi Church in Tokyo later recalled that when the Sadhu approached the
pulpit, "people thought that Christ was standing there."
At England's Oxford University both students and faculty were equally awed by the Sadhu's presence. This
was remarkable, given the fact that the average Oxford don or student did not hesitate to be critical or speak
frankly what was on his mind. Yet one student was moved to remark that as Sundar Singh entered the room where
420
he was to speak, "my first impulse was to stand up." Another student confessed this: "I don't want to seem
irreverent, but as I heard him, I thought I was hearing Christ speak." A tutor observed: "He reminds us of
Apostolic days." One of the Oxford clergy, present at a meeting held specifically for them and at which the Sadhu
spoke, was deeply moved upon hearing him, so much so that he declared: "I could have kissed his feet." And
finally, a student at Australia's Sydney University, who would later become Principal of Auckland New Zealand's
Bible Training Institute, reminisced about having conducted the Sadhu round the University and hearing him
speak before the assembled Christians on the secular campus. "He was a unique figure, dressed in his saffron robe
and wearing sandals, with an unwrinkled, radiant face, full bearded, with a certain calm and majesty of countenance.
He seemed to me, as a young Christian, the nearest that I could imagine our Lord looked like. He spoke quietly
but with obvious spiritual power; and spoke simply, with constant reference to the common things to be found
in nature to illustrate the profoundest spiritual truths." See Appasamy 1966, pp. 93, 118, 119; 133-4, 155.
50. Much of the information about Pedong and the quote relative to the fair held there have been derived, first
of all, from Agarwala (ed.) 1991, p. 50; secondarily from O'Malley 1989, pp. 205, 217; and, thirdly, from Jain
(ed. & comp.) 1991, p. 29.
51. Graham 1897, p. 81; Minto 1974, p. 43.
52. Other than John Bray's monograph already cited in the text, the sources for much of the rest of the
information on Fr. Desgodins and for all quoted material are five in number; by far the most informative and
helpful: Dewan 1983, pp. 1-12 of the 24-page English section therein; Dozey 1922, p. 288; Louis 1894, pp. 52-
3; O'Malley 1989, pp. 52, 205, and Waddell 1900, p. 244.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 57-64; quotes: 58-9, 59-60, 60, 62, 63-4.

1. Because Independent Sikkim had at one time bordered all the Himalayan kingdoms and India, for centuries
she lay astride the narrow "silk route" that linked India and China, of which the Text-mentioned route was a part.
But since the early 1970s there has been readier contact with the outside world because of a highway that was
completed then which has been built over this ancient Kalimpong-to-Lhasa mule track.
2. The quotations from Tharchin's two future Western Mends, both Americans, were: (i) Mrs. Henrietta
(Sands) Merick, in Merrick 1933, p. 87; and (ii) Theos Bernard, in Bernard 1939, p. 31. In 1931 Tharchin would
accompany Mrs. Merrick through Sikkim and on into Tibet as far as Gyantse; in 1937 he would also accompany
Bernard through Sikkim and into Tibet, but all the way to Lhasa. Both journeys are detailed for the reader in later
chapters of the present narrative.
3. With the end of Britain's colonial rule over the Subcontinent in 1947, Sikkim, like India, was ceded her own
sovereignty as well. Subsequent internal unrest, however, compelled the Maharaja to seek Indian aid in 1949, and
the next year Sikkim became a protectorate of Independent India. It was some 25 years later (in 1975) before
India annexed Sikkim as one of her then 22 States. Sources for this note and the rest of the discussion of Sikkim's
geography, climate, culture and history have been the following: an adaptation of Billy Bray, "Sikkim," in Hoke
(ed.) 1975, pp. 558-9,560; P.P. Karan, "Sikkim," Collier's Encyclopedia (1987 ed.), 21:23; McGovern 1924, pp.
30-1; and Waddell 1972, p. 72.
4. "Owing to the severity of its climate, the only crop which true Tibet can grow is barley. In Sikkim, on the
other hand, the staple crop is rice; hence its Tibetan name of Drenjong, or the rice country. In the Chumbi Valley
[of southeastern Tibet] the main crop is wheat, hence its Tibetan name of Tromo, or wheat country." McGovern
1924, p. 34. The original inhabitants of Sikkim, the Lepchas, call the land "Rong" (i.e., the land of the ravine folk
or of those who dwell in steep country). The name Sikkim, however, "is an appellation of Nepali origin meaning
New Palace." Louis 1894, p. 78.
5. Tucci 1956, p. 14.
6. "The Highway to Tibet," Calcutta Review (July 1900):15.
6a. It should be noted that the two traveling evangelists were being instructed here to follow exactly what
Alex McKay has described as "the basic mechanism for the British to control access to Tibet." In his very helpful
study on "Tibet: the myth of Isolation," McKay explains how these mechanisms, which had been in place for
some time, were routinely put into operation in any given instance: "Existing regulations (dating from 1873)
required persons traveling in the Indian frontier districts to obtain an official pass. To visit Sikkim, for example,
travelers required a permit from the District Commissioner in Darjeeling" (which doubtless Tharchin and the
Sadhu had obtained prior to leaving Ghoom on their intended journey). "This system was extended to control
access to Tibet. Travelers wishing to enter Tibet from Sikkim (the most common route) were required to obtain
a further pass issued by the Political Officer in the Sikkimese capital of Gangtok. These permits [if issued]
allowed travelers to proceed on the usual direct route to the Trade Agencies [at Yatung and Gyantse inside Tibet],
with a maximum stay of six weeks.... This system meant that if the Government of India wished to prevent, an
individual from visiting Tibet, he could be refused permission to enter Sikkim or other border areas, thus
preventing his even approaching the frontier. [Nevertheless] the Government of India did not wish to be seen as
preventing travelers' access to areas under its control and permits were generally given freely for entry to areas
such as Sikkim." It thus was the case with these two Christian travelers that they were indeed allowed to enter
Sikkim at Rhenock but, as will shortly be learned, they were ultimately refused permission to travel beyond
Gangtok northward in the direction of the approaches to the highly-sensitive Tibeto-Sikkimese frontier. See
McKay's article in van der Velde and McKay (eds.) 1998, pp. 308-9.
7. See Sir Philip Neame, Playing with Strife, the Autobiography of a Soldier (London, 1947), 172n. Its
derivation is: (a) rai—an English synonym for the Hindi term raja that in India originally referred to a prince or
king but that later also referred to a minor chief or dignitary; and (b) bahadur—a Hindi term (borrowed from
Persian meaning hero or champion) used in India as a title of respect or honor given to European officers when
referred to in East Indian state papers and, colloquially and among indigenous people of India, given to distinguished
officials and other important personages. See Webster's 1934, pp. 204 and 2054 with 2056.
420
8. Macdonald 1943, p. 79.

9. Davey 1963, p. 111; and Appasamy (ed.) 1956, p. 27; cf. Riddle 1949, p. 178 and Riddle 1964, pp. 48-9.
10. Davey. 1963, p. 52.
11. Pares 1940, p. 79. See also Allan Maberly, God Spoke Tibetan (Mt View CA, 1971), 30. Still another
traveler in the Sikkim Himalaya has given a most interesting profile of these hardy Tibetan or Bhutia ponies:
It is wonderful what these brave little animals will do and endure. They are so diminutive in size,
but there must be steel springs within their little limbs; they carry merrily a 13 stone rider like
myself, over 12 to 18 miles a day, negotiate the most difficult and narrowest of rugged paths, the
stiffest ascents; they revel, even if the road is broad, in treading on the very brink of precipices,
pick their way over slippery boulders like performing goats, and when, at the end of the day's
work, the styces [stable boys] are still far behind, and you off saddle, they just select a cozy spot
for a good roll and browse away contentedly on the hillsides, impervious apparently to rain or
cold, keep together and never attempt to run away.
Louis 1894, p. 60. This practice by the ponies of treading the very edge of precipices, incidentally, "is said to be
acquired when they are young pack-ponies in Tibet, where the bulky loads which they carry force them to keep
out from the inner rocky borders of the narrow mountain tracks." Waddell 1900, p. 40. These ponies were then
brought down to such trading places as Kalimpong and Darjeeling for sale or exchange, and then used more locally
in the Himalayan foothills or for treks back to Tibet, Sikkim or Bhutan.
12. Dak bunglow: a borrowed Hindi phrase meaning a post station or traveler's resthouse located on post
trails or roads. According to Tharchin's American friend and Tibetan scholar Theos Bernard, who, accompanied
part-way by Tharchin, made a pilgrimage to Lhasa in 1937 along this same route via Gangtok, has noted in his
tyook about the pilgrimage that bungalows like these "were first established when the Younghusband Expedition
of 1904 forged its way into Tibet with a large army under the command of General Sir Ronald Macdonald. They
have been constantly improved, and today the British maintain an excellent chain of rock-constructed bungalows."
Bernard 1939, p. 36. David Macdonald, himself a member of that Expedition and a later friend of Tharchin's, has
also remarked about the excellent quality of these rest places: "All along the xoute between India and Gyantse
first class staging houses, roughly a day's march apart, have been erected by the [British] Government of India,
for the convenience of officers and others traveling in Sikkim and Tibet." Macdonald 1932, p. 57.
With respect to the caretaker or chowkidar (a borrowed Hindi term meaning maintenance man or caretaker)
of these dak bungalows, each one is looked after by such a person, who, "as a rule, is a veiy obliging individual,
ready to help in any way he can. He must not, however, be looked upon as an extra private servant, as he is
appointed solely to care for the property left in his charge in the bungolow, and to see that no unauthorized
person occupies it, and that rules are observed. Chowkidars usually provide firewood, and milk, while they are
sometimes willing to sell eggs, fowls, and so forth to travelers." Macdonald 1943, pp. 24-5.
13. Appasamy 1966, p. 66.
14. Among the various sources consulted for some of the description given of Gangtok, one in particular was
especially helpful: Pares 1940, pp 193-4.
15. See Billy Bray, "Sikkim," in Hoke (ed.) 1975, pp. 558, 560-1.
16. See Allen 1983, p. 145 and McGovern 1924, pp. 29, 37.
17. Gould 1957, p. 168; and Williamson 1987, p. 52.
17a. Bell 1992, p. 206.
18. Sources for Bell's profile are: Allen 1983, p. 145; McKay 1997, pp. 43-4; C.J. Christie, "Sir Charles Bell;
a Memoir," Asian Affairs (Feb. 1977):48; Takla, "Honorable Minister Bell" (review of two Bell books), TR (Oct.-
Dec. 1969): 14 (Takla was at this time the Editor of the Review); see also Spence 1991, p. 40 as source for his Chumbi
post; see also Bell, "The Dalai Lama; Lhasa, 1921," JRCAS (1924):38 for the quote relating the private talks with
the Dalai Lama at Darjeeling and Kalimpong; see also "Sir Charles Bell and Tibet," Asiatic Review (July 1945):294
for information re: his revenue settlement in Kalimpong, the article having been written by an unnamed former
colleague of Bell's. Bell wrote and had published a variety of works concerning Tibet, its histoiy, social life, customs
and religion, in fact, "nothing on Tibetan life," wrote George Woodcock in 1971, "has yet replaced the three great
works by this extraordinary man (who has long needed a biographer).., [than his] Tibet Past and Present; 1924, The
People of Tibet, 1928 and The Religion of Tibet, 1931." Into Tibet; the Early British Explorers (London, 1971X272.
In these same three works, together with his culminating opus, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (London, 1946), Bell
sought, wrote Basil Gould,4 to make Tibet intelligible to the world and to vindicate the right of Tibet to independence."
This final work, Portrait, was finished mere days before his death. "It was with this book in view," explained Gould,
"that Bell revisited Tibet and traveled to Mongolia, Siberia, Manchuria and China (1933-5), and it was in order that
he might complete his task that, with war in Europe imminent, he uprooted himselfin 1939 from his home in
Berkshire,, where he lived surrounded by treasures from Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan, and went to British Columbia
He died there at Oak Bay, Victoria, 8 March 1945." Gould, "Sir Charles Alfred Bell," Dictionary of National
Biography (1941-1950% 69. In 1937 the Royal Central Asian Society conferred upon Sir Charles its "Lawrence of
Arabia" memorial medal. The citation read in part:"... He has acquired a greater knowledge of the Tibetan language,
manners and customs than any other Englishman." Quoted in Mehra 1968, p. 126n. Among linguists Bell is best
known for his Manual of Colloquial Tibetan (1905), "a later edition of which," published at Calcutta inl919, "still
holds the field as the most practical English-Tibetan Dictionary and Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan." So said Sir
Basil Gould writing in the early 1940s in his preface to Gould and Hugh E. Richardson, Tibetan Word Book (London,
1943), xii. Bell, incidentally, received his knighthood (K.C.I.E.) in 1922, theC.M.G. in 1915 and the CLE. in 1919.
19. Today (the 1970s) the Christian congregation there has a properly constructed church building. A picture
of it can be found on page 554 of Hoke (ed.) 1975, at the beginning of the chapter on the Sikkim Church written
by Billy Bray In addition to this particular congregation, there are other independent church groups all performing
evangelistic work in the area. Writing in the early 1970s Bray states in part: "Today there are fifteen hundred
Christians in Sikkim (in a total population of two hundred thousand) and most of these are Lepchas by race.
(There are also reasonable estimates of up to a thousand Nepalese Christians in Sikkim, some of whom may have
been assimilated into the Sikkim churches.) Since evangelism in Sikkim was pioneered by the India Mission of the
Church of Scotland, this Lepcha church went with her sister Indian Presbyterian church into the United Church
of North India in 1970" (p. 555). For more on the beginnings of the Sikkim Church see the end-notes for Ch. 12
of Vol. II of the present narrative.
20. Sundar Singh "preferred milk to tea or coffee. Between tea and coffee he chose tea." Moreover, as to food,
"he liked peas best, then dhal (Indian pulse) of all kinds. He ate very little rice. He was fond of fruits, both fresH
and dried, and munched nuts Appasamy 1966, p. 106.
21. Anna: a coin of India, equal to 1/16th rupee. A four-anna coin would therefore equal 1/4 A rupee.
22. Ibid, 105.
23. Quoted in John S.M. Hooper 1963, p. 151. Indeed, it was this sweet-tempered and submissive character
of these people which gained for them the name Lepcha, derived from the Nepali word lapcha that refers to a
type of fish in Nepal which is very submissive in nature just like the original inhabitants of Sikkim; and as such,
the Nepalis termed them Lapcha after the fish (not, as Lepchas generally came to believe, after the same word in
Nepali which can also be translated as "vile speaker" and thus a word of contempt, but after the other meaning
of this Nepali word as a way for the Nepalis to give these people credit for their highly submissive temperament).
Yet, even though the term "lapcha" was further modified in English pronunciation to "lepcha," the Nepalis
themselves still refer to Sikkim's original tribespeople, and wherever else they are found in the northeastern
Himalayas, as Lapchas. See Amal K. Das and S.K. Banerjee, The Lepchas of Darjeeling District (Calcutta, 1962),
3. It should be noted, though, that one Western scholar on the Lepchas has accepted the interpretation of the
Nepali term Lapcha as derogatory in character rather than commendatory. See P. Klafkowski's symposium1
paper, "...a Few Words on the Rong (Lepcha) Heritage," in Steinkellner & Tauscher (eds.) 1983, 1:163-73.
Klafkowski, however, is one of the few scholars today attempting to resurrect the study of this long-neglected
and fast-dying-out ethnic group among the Himalayan peoples.
Rev Graham was not alone in appreciating the simple, gentle and lovable character of the Lepcha peoples.
One of the earliest of the several British agents sent to Sikkim to reconnoiter the land and its people has left a
quite eloquent record of his impressions of the Lepchas in a letter he wrote (presumably in the early 1830s) to
a friend. The letter's author, whose identity is unknown, wrote of the Lepchas in part as follows:
They appeared in the most simple, primitive state, living in the midst of the vast, wild, magnificent
forests, old as the hills themselves, and each family residing by itself, having no villages or
communities, and but little intercourse with each other; thus they dwelt in pretty cottages, around
which they cultivated their plot of ground, which afforded them rice—their staple food;—grain
of different sorts; cotton, from which they spun their cloth; seeds from which they pressed their
420
oil, etc. From the forest they obtained fruits of numerous descriptions, edible and otherwise
useful; thus all their wants were supplied. They knew no care, and but little sorrow, cheerful as the
birds, and sturdy as the trees around them, they roamed through the forests inhaling health. They
understood little about medicines and had not much use for them, sickness being almost unknown
among them, but they possess some very efficacious roots, etc., with which I believe Europeans
are unacquainted.
He also later wrote that "Sikkim, after the Nepalese [Gurkhas} had been driven out, ought to have been restored
to its original and rightful owners, the Lepchas. Their sway and natural innocence and purity ought to have been
beneficently upheld." All quoted in Lindell 1979, pp. 52-3.
24. Macdonald 1932, pp. 258-9.

Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 65-73; quotes: 65-7, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73.
1. See Job 5:7.
2. Actually, Sir Isaac Newton's great "discovery" of the 1680s "was In reality the completion and full
mathematical demonstration of concepts slowly developing and widely held." Nevertheless, the story about him
and the apple is apparently true, since it is definitely known that Newton had told his contemporaries that "the
idea of attraction between two bodies being proportional to their mass first suggested itself to him when he saw
an apple fall to the ground in the family orchard at Woolsthorpe" in England. Ernest J. Knapton, Europe 1450-
1815 (New York, 1958), 472,472n.
3. Heiler 1927, p. 111.
4. Appasamy 1966, p. 67.
5. For the testimony of the Sadhu, see his letter posted from Ghoom that appeared in the 3 July 1914 issue
of NurAfshan and quoted in ibid., 62-3.
6. American Catholic Jesuit, Fr. John Locke, in his lecture at the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal, on
29 Dec. 1992, on the topic "Christian Mysticism and Eastern Traditions" as reported in the newspaper article,
"Lecture on Christian Mysticism," The Rising Nepal, 1 Jan. 1993, p.3.
7. Lachen, it will be recalled, was in those days some 40 to 50 trekking miles NNW of Gangtok, whereas its sister
community was almost due east, comparably distant from the Sikkimese capital to the NNE. For how the missionary
work had evolved at both these mission centers, see the end-notes for Ch. 5.
8. Davey 1963, p. 131.
9. Ibid.
10. Maund and seer: both are borrowed Hindi terms each signifying any of various Indian units of weight;
with the first term, maund, especially signifying a unit equal to 82.28 pounds, and the second term, seer,
especially signifying a unit equal to 2.057 pounds. Hence Tharchin was burdened down with about a 40-pound
load, whereas the Sadhu was carrying a much lighter load of only 10 to 11 pounds!
11. It should be noted in passing that both the late Rev. RS. Targain, who was for many years the minister in
Kalimpong's Macfarlane Memorial Church, and Rev. C.T. Pazo, the late minister of the local CNI church in
Gangtok, hailed from this very learned place. GTUM TsMs, 70n. More shall be learned about these two
outstanding ordained indigenous (Lepcha) pastors as the narrative of Gergan Tharchin's life further unfolds.
12. One traveler in Sikkim has poetically described this meeting of the waters thus: ".. .through the trees in
the valley below we gaze on the green crystal stream of the Rangit and the stronger murky current of the Teesta,
meeting and then floating down side by side as two lovers might, for a long, long way, until their waters shall
finally mingle and be one, the mighty Teesta of the plains, to be lost in its turn in the mightier Brahmaputra."
Louis 1894, p. 15.
L.S.S. O'Malley, in his highly descriptive gazetteer on the Darjeeling District, tells of the old Lepcha legend
about the time the Teesta rose high above its bed. "According to the legend," he writes, "the Rangit quarreled with
his spouse, the Teesta, and, parting from her, carried his waters high up the hillside to Rangarun and Rangli
Rangliot. Then, fearing that the world might be inundated, he returned and rejoined the Teesta, and the two rivers
have flowed on in peaceful union ever since. The two places Rangarun and Rangli Rangliot, which mean "the
turning of the great river" and "the brimful great river," are said to mark the spot up to which the water rose and
then receded. The legend probably preserves the memory of some great landslip, which dammed up the river and
forced it to rise high up the valley." O'Malley 1989, p. 206.
13. Quoted in Appasamy 1966, p. 106.
14. O'Malley 1989, p. 206.
15. Ibid., 201.
420
16. Once dog and new owner were at Ghoom, however the dog twice ran back to Lebong and twice Tharchin
had to go back and fetch it. Remarked the Tibetan: "This only shows dog's intimate love for its old master and
old place." Interestingly, in 1921 Tharchin was traveling on a train near to about the city of Allahabad in the state
of Uttar Pradesh in North India. He was sleeping in the upper bunk. Suddenly he was awakened by a mysterious
disturbance. He sensed uneasiness in his chest all the time that his thoughts were rushing in the direction of the
Dr. Graham's Homes Establishment in Kalimpong where, by the way, Tharchin's friend Desraj was at that time
residing (see earlier in Ch. 7).
It so happened that exactly at the moment Tharchin was disturbed, his pet dog was accidentally killed by the
paddy-threshing instrument. Desraj's children were panic-stricken and began to cry out: "What will Uncle
Tharchin do when he hears this news?" GTUM TsMs, 71-72, 7In.
In parapsychology this would of course be deemed a case of ESP (extrasensory perception). Where the bond
of love is strong, the occurrence of such a case is highly possible.
17. Per Appasamy 1966, p. 67, citing as his source Rev. Paul Gabler, former German Lutheran missionary to
South India, who most likely had obtained this information from Tharchin himself.
18. Prior to this decision to enter marriage Stokes had gone to his and the Sadhu's mutual friend Charles
Andrews for advice on the matter. It may be recalled from Ch. 3 that Stokes and Sundar Singh had co-labored as
sadhus in the gospel to the poor and sick for well over a year back in 1906-7, and that they, together with
Andrews and Rev. Western, had planned to form a new Brotherhood of the Imitation of Jesus after the Franciscan
ideal. Although the Sadhu had opted out of the plan and Andrews was forced to withdraw out of health
considerations, the other two had gone forward with this desire in early 1910. But in the summer of 1911 the
American had felt it necessary to go to Andrews for advice about a^probfem which had arisen in his thinking
regarding the newly-established Brotherhood. Said he to his English friend, People had begun to view this Order
not as a way to share the burden of humanity but as an avenue of escape from the problems which beset the
common man. Yet, if that be true, he reasoned, might it not be a better and higher discipleship to exhibit the
highest standards of Christ amid the daily perplexities and problems of the householder? India's greater need, felt
Stokes, was not the Christian friar but the Christian family. Receiving suppoi\to this idea, Stokes Went forward
with his marriage and property plans. See Chaturvedi and Sykes 1949, p. 73. See also "Appendix," in Stokes
1912, xxvi, xxxvi; Stokes, Satyakama or "True Desires" (Being Thoughts on the Meaning of Life) (Madras,
1931), viii; and for additional insight on the rationale for Stokes's decision to marry and become a hillside
householder, which in consequence caused the breakup of the Brotherhood, see Andrews 1931, p. 1423. It must
be added, however, that though Andrews may have given his support to Stokes personally, privately he
expressed himself otherwise. For in a letter to Bishop H.H. Montgomery in Oct. 1911 he wrote, "I am more sad
than I can say" over the "hasty withdrawal" by the American from the Brotherhood. Quoted in Hugh Tinker, The
Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (Delhi/New York, 1979), 47.
19. Rev. G.Y. Martyn, in letter of reminiscence on Sundar Singh, 26 Apr. 1951, quoted in Appasamy 1966,
p. 67.
20. See ibid., 68.
21. Ibid., 3 6-7, with a reference made by Appasamy in a footnote sourcing page 6 of Rev. Paul Gabler's 1937
dissertation written in German for the Theological Faculty of Leipzig, Germany, and published under the title,
Sadhu Sundar Singh; but ironically this note of Tharchin's great appreciation of the Sadhu appears in a study of
Sundar Singh whose conclusions are highly critical of the Tibetan's noble friend (see Ch. 11).
22. Woodward, "Examining a Significant Minority: Tibetan Christians," 77 (Winter 1991 ):69. Woodward, it
may be recalled from earlier chapter end-notes in the present biography, had coauthored an article on the Tibetan
Christian Church; namely, Tharchin and Woodward 1975, pp. 643-57.
23. The missionary visitor was Margaret Urban, who reported this in Urban 1967, p. 5.
24. See Parker 1968, p. 106; cf. Riddle 1964, p. 67.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 74-83; quotes: 75, 75-6, 76, 77n., 78, 80-1, 82, 83.
1. Sharpe 1976, p. 50.
2. Koch 1981, p. 105.
3. Biehl 1990, pp. 247-8.
4. Sharpe 1976, p. 49.
5. See also Heiler 1927, pp. 66, 108; and Appasamy 1966, p. 63ff.
6. Davey 1963, p. 103.
;,
7. Sources foV all the preceding details and quotations can be found in: Rowlands & Ghose (comps.) 1924, pp.
ii, 25; Appasamy (ed.) 1956, p. 22; Appasamy 1966, pp. 62-6; and Parker 1968, pp. 32-3,106-8; cf. also Riddle
1964, pp. 46-8.
8. The American Buddhist scholar and disguised traveler to Tibet in 1922-3, William McGovern, afterwards
recounted, in McGovern 1924, pp. 23-4, an unusual experience he had had with these vile creatures of the
Himalayan forests in Sikkim (which is not far from Elam in easternmost Nepal). His encounter with them was
during the late summer 1922:
On the way we stopped to rest for a few minutes, and on these occasions we began to be troubled
with leeches. These horrible blood-sucking little creatures were hidden in the undergrowth, but
they must have smelled our presence, for as soon as we stopped they began coming towards us
with great rapidity in their curious form of locomotion, Although they look like black earthworms,
instead of gliding along the ground in snake-like fashion, they rise on their tails until they are
absolutely perpendicular, then, arching their heads down to the ground, bring their tails up to their
heads. They thus measure their distance along the ground. It is really comical to see these tiny
creatures without legs walking along a path, the head and tail taking the place of legs.
In spite of my vigilance, two or three attached themselves to my body and began thirstily
sucking blood. I wanted to tear them off, but my bearer Lhaten would not allow me to do this, as
the flesh comes off with them and leaves a nasty wound which refuses to heal for many days
thereafter. In accordance with his instructions, therefore, I had to allow the creatures to continue
their ghastly work until he prepared a little bag filled with salt and, dipping this in water, let the
brine trickle down on them. This had a magical effect. The leeches shriveled away into seeming
nothingness, leaving only a little clot of blood, which we easily wiped away.
9. O'Malley 1989, p. 210; and Dozey 1922, p. 74.

10. See Pfister 1926, pp. 212-3; Heiler 1927, p. 74; Riddle 1964, pp. 47-8; and Appasamy 1966, p. 66.
11. This would have been Fred. Desraj, the one mentioned in Ch. 7 of the present narrative as the Punjabi
Christian convert in whose Kalimpong home the Sadhu and Tharchin had stayed as guests for four nights when
the two were on their way back to Sikkim just a week after the Elam experience now under discussion. The
identity of this friend as Desraj is per Tharchin himself, who related this fact to Hosten in a lengthy conversation
held between these two in June 1925 at Rev. Kelly's Darjeeling home, the substance of which is recounted in
Pfister 1926, p. 213.
12. For the source of all the quotations from the Hosten-Kelly correspondence, see Hosten 1925 (15 Apr.),
pp. 231-2.
13. For the two testimonies, see Appasamy 1966, p. 66; and for the American eyewitness account, see ibid., 150.
14. Interview with B.C. Simick Jr., Dec. 1992.
15. Pfister 1926, pp. 236, 185, 236.
16. For more on this servant of God, consult: Bakht Singh, The Skill of His Loving Hands (Beamsville,
Ontario*/ Worldwide Evangelization Crusade Bookroom, 1959, formerly published in two parts, 1936 and 1952);
Dan Smith, Bakht Singh of India (Washington DC: International Students, Inc., 1959); Patterson 1998, pp. 272-
420
6; and T.E. Koshy, "Bakht Singh's Movement Still Full of Grassroots Vitality," Christianity Today (22 Feb
1950):51.
17. Appasamy 1966, p. 63.
18. The sources for the information presented in this and the preceding paragraph regarding the Nepali
language and the Serampore translators are: Lindell 1979, pp. 48,51; and Hooper 1963, pp. 148ff. As Lindell has
so well explained, at the time of the Serampore translators "nothing had yet been printed in Nepali except J. A.
Ayton's 'A Nepali Grammar' which was published in India in 1820. This was probably the first time that Nepali
words had been put into print by a press." Moreover, hardly any real literature in this language had appeared by
this time. Poets and other literary writers in the Nepalese kingdom, he noted, had viewed Sanskrit as the more
suitable vehicle for writing. Furthermore, during this period of Nepalese history, material written in the dialects
of the country, including Nepali, "appeared in the form of letters, government documents, land deeds, vouchers,
court records, monuments, and the like." Those who created these materials—the scribes of the day—possessed
"their own kind of penmanship and had a peculiar kind of'document language' which they used." Even into the
present day in Nepal, Lindell has observed, examples of "this old-fashioned way of writing" can still be found
and is yet "in fairly common use by scribes in local offices." Nevertheless, he added, "most modern college
graduates are unable to reliably read or understand this kind of old Nepali writing." Lindell 1979, p. 48. It should
therefore come as no surprise to learn that the saints of Prem Pradhan's day at Elam in 1953 found this particular
Nepali rendering of Mark's Gospel difficult, if not totally impossible, to decipher.
19. Kilgour, "The Bible in the Himalayas," Appendix XVI, in McLeish 1931, p. 182. Kilgour for many years
had served as the Editorial Superintendent of the British and Foreign Bibles Society.
20. Lindell 1979, p. 51.
21. Kilgour, in McLeish 1931, p. 182.
221. The fact that this Gospel of Mark distributed by the Sadhu at Elam had been printed in an older almost
undecipherable Nepali dialect rules out any possibility that it may have beema Gospel portion from the more
modern Nepali translation of the New Testament accomplished much later at Darjeeling and published by the
Bible Society at Calcutta. This subsequent translation work had extended over the period between 1869 and
1905, and had been undertaken by a number of individuals associated with the Church of Scotland Mission;
namely, the Rev. William Macfarlane (the Mission's founder at Darjeeling), the Rev. Archibald Turnbull (who
joined in the translation labors in 1878 and who then replaced Macfarlane in translation at the latter's death in
1887), and the celebrated Nepali convert, Ganga Prashad Pradhan, who had come from his home at Kathmandu
to Darjeeling when but a boy. Lindell 1979, p. 55 and Kilgour, in McLeish 1931, p. 182. See Vol. II, Ch. 12 for
additional details concerning G.P. Pradhan.
23. Maha in Sanskrit means "great" and rishi means "a sage." For additional information on the Maharishi of
Kailash, consult Heiler 1927, p. 63 f f ; and Appasamy 1966, p. 48ff., and the very detailed treatment of the
subject presented in Ch. 6 by Appasamy entitled "The Maharishi," 71-91.
24. This (or the variant spellings of Kailas, Kailasa, etc.) is the Indian name for the holiest of all mountains
and revered as the home of the gods of several of the world's religions. This sacred snow peak (22,000' high) is
located on a plateau in the extreme southwest corner of Tibet and called by Indians in its earthly manifestation
as Kailas, spire, and by Tibetans as Kang Rimpoche, jewel or chief of snows, and in its metaphysical form called
by Indians Meru (Sumeru or mythical world-pillar on which is sited S warga—heaven) and by Tibetans Use (peak
or world-pillar).
For several millennia there had been an ancient and powerful belief in Asia and "shared by a large slice of
humanity," that "somewhere between China and India there stood a sacred mountain, an Asian Olympus of
cosmic proportions. This mountain was said to be the navel of the earth and the axis of the universe, and from its
summit flowed a mighty river that fell into a lake and then divided to form four of the great rivers of Asia." The
location of this sacred area, long known to Asians, did not become known to the West till its 19th-centuiy
explorers discovered this holiest of all mountains which Hindus, for example, look upon as Lord Siva's "legendary
inaccessible abode" and which Tibetan Buddhists regard as the domicile of "the higher gods, placed star-like
beyond the realms of space." It is no wonder that Tibetans considered Kang Rimpoche a holy sanctuary,
remarked the world-famous explorer of Tibet, Sven Hedin (who for many days explored this holy area); for in its
very shape, he wrote, "the mountain bears a striking likeness to a chorten, one of those monuments round the
temples which have been erected to the memory of deceased Great Lamas of Tibet, and it also recalls the Panchen
Lama's tomb in Trashilhunpo, covered with silver, gold, and jewels." Isolated as it is from the rest of the Kailash
Range by deep clefts on either side, the Holy Peak is "especially well-suited to the act of devotional
circumambulation [of 28 miles], known as theparikarama, practiced by Hindus and Buddhists." Most pilgrims
go barefooted, taking between two and two-and-a-half days to make a single circuit. Others, however, perform
the circumambulation by measuring the length throughout with their bodies, lying prostrate—an exceedingly
difficult task indeed. Explorer Hedin, when circumambulating the mountain himself by foot (which took him and
his party three days), once passed on the pilgrim path there two young lamas from far-off Kham Province in
eastern Tibet who were performing their own pilgrimage around Kailash by this very prostration method. Done
in this manner, the journey would take them 20 days, and they were intending to do it twice. One such journey,
Hedin noted, was worth in merit 30 times the worth of an ordinary journey on foot. When asked what they
expected to gain by their double set of prostration journeys, the two lamas replied "that after death they would
sit in the seats of the gods of Kang Rimpoche and in their presence for eternity."
Southeast of Kailash "like a huge turquoise set in a circlet of peaks," sparkles Mapham Yum-tso (Tibetan,
unconquerable lake), the Lake the Indians call Manasarowar (Sanskrit, formed in the mind, or, Lake of Thought),
and which, being about 15 miles across and at an elevation of over 15,500 feet, may easily be the highest body of
fresh water anywhere in the world. Only occasionally, believe Hindus, do the gods descend from Kailash to the
banks of this holy lake to adopt the form of a white swan and to swim across its silvery depths. Upon these two
most holy sites converge pilgrims belonging to four different religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and the
shamanism of pre-Buddhist Tibet. Many Tibetan pilgrims will come from thousands of miles away, perhaps
even spending a lifetime on the way to these holy places and covering the route not only by the length, but in
some cases even by the breadth, of their bodies. This was reported by Heinrich Harrer, who had trekked here
himself in the mid-1940s after his escape from internment camp in NW India. He also uncovered the fact that
sometimes wealthy men will pay "a professional prostrator" to accomplish the journey for them, with the
member of this "Club of Queer Trades" wearing wooden iron-lined gloves and a huge leather apron by which to
protect himself from potential wounding or serious injury. "My Seven Years in Tibet," GJ(June 1954): 148.
The latter of these four faiths just mentioned, often mistakenly called Bon, is Tibet's ancient shamanistic
religion; it was eventually replaced by the now dominant religious system known as Lamaism or Tibetan
Buddhism which after centuries of struggle between the two ultimately became supreme in the 13th century. This
struggle, incidentally, has been "nicely symbolized in a famous duel over the possession of the holy mountain [of
Kailash] that is said to have been fought out between the yogi Milarepa, the champion of Tantric Buddhism, and
Naro-Bonchang, the champion of shamanism. It took the form of a contest in magic—very much in the manner
of two wizards hurling spells at one another—with the contestants finally agreeing that whoever reached the
summit of Kang Rimpoche first at dawn the next day should win the mountain," and by extension, therefore,
assume the dominant religious position in the land. Needless to say, Milarepa, at the last possible moment,
"soared up into the air, overtook [Naro-Bonchang] and won the mountain for Buddhism." Interestingly enough,
the legend has it that the highly visible vertical gash down the south face of Kailash was gouged out by Naro-
Bonchang's damaru or shamanistic drum that he had dropped when alarmed at seeing Milarepa overtake him.
[This gash, together with the south face's horizontal striations, form the celebrated swastika (derived from the
Sanskrit words sv, well; and asti, it is) of Tibetan lore that as a talisman or mark of spiritual strength is carved
everywhere, it appearing in the form of a Greek Cross with the arms bent at right angles all in the same rotary
direction (clockwise) although it can also be found with bent arms in reversal. It is an emblem, symbol or
ornament which has been used for many centuries in Tibet as a sign of the Buddha, and Kailash itself is sometimes
referred to by Buddhists as the Mountain of the Swastika. Lamayuru in Ladakh is still sometimes called Yung-
drung-gompa, the Monastery of the Mystic Cross, perhaps because that was the name it bore before the coming
of Buddhism and was doubtless a sacred place of the shamanistic religion. The reversed swastika had been one of
the signs or emblems of that faith—still prevalent even today in old corners of the Tibetan Himalayas and
elsewhere; and because the rotary direction of its bent arms is counter-clockwise and therefore symbolizes a
reversal of time, this swastika, according to Peter Matthiessen, is thought to be destructive to the universe, and
is thus often associated with black magic. The swastika adopted by Hitler's Nazi Party in Germany is a variant
form of this and other swastikas to be found in remains of ancient Europe, the Orient and even among the Indians
of North, Central and South America where it was treated as a religious symbol. The swastika has never been
identified, however, with Christianity.] Yet, even though "the old black gods of shamanism" had thus been
extirpated from the Holy Mountain and substituted with lamaistic Bodhisattvas, Naro-Bonchang was nonetheless
permitted to maintain a dwelling place for himself in the form of a nearby hill situated "in the shadow of Kailas,"
thus "symbolizing the eventual accommodation between the two rivals that was finally arrived at" historically in
420
Tibet. For it must be reiterated that ancient shamanism still exerts a pervasive influence upon Tibetans in many
areas of the land even to this day.
It can be well understood from what has thus far been said that what adds greatly to the meritorious value of
these two sites for pilgrims is the fact that these holiest of all holy places "are buried so deep in the Himalayas
as to be virtually inaccessible, so that to make a pilgrimage to ... these ... shrines is to place oneself almost
literally in the lap of the gods." And hence, because of the difficulties involved, pilgrimages to such mountainous
places have long been a significant part of the religious life of Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths. One
Buddhist pilgrim from Japan, traveling in Tibet shortly before Sundar Singh had made his own journey to this
very region, has left a dramatic record of his impressions here. Some aspects of this well-known pilgrim's
experience might easily have described the exertions the Sadhu him self later had to make in reaching Mt. Kailash
where he eventually encountered the legendary Maharishi. Writes Ekai Kawaguchi:
... a view opened before us which I shall never forget, so exquisitely grand was the scenery. In
short, we were in the presence of the sacred Lake ... A huge octagon in shape, with marvelously
symmetrical indentations, the Lake, with its clear placid waters, and the mighty Mount Kailasa
guarding its northwestern corner, fonn a picture which is at once unique and sublime, and well
worthy of its dignified surroundings—calm, dustless and rugged. Mount Kailasa itself towers so
majestically above the peaks around, that I fancied I saw in it the image of our mighty Lord
Buddha, calmly addressing His five hundred disciples.... The hunger and thirst, the perils of
dashing stream and freezing blizzard, the pain of writhing under heavy burdens, the anxiety of
wandering over trackless wilds, the exhaustion and the lacerations, all the troubles and sufferings
I had just come through, seemed like dust, which was washed away and purified by the spiritual
waters of the Lake ...
Even closer in time to Sundar's journey to this sacred region of West Tibet was the visit there by the world-
renowned explorer, Sven Hedin, who waxed most passionately and poetically about these Holy Places, describing
the Lake and the Holy Mount beyond it as one of the most beautifully harmonious pieces of scenery in all the
world:
I was often near weeping for joy at the sight of this wonderful landscape of surpassing grandeur,
and I cherished a secret hope to be able one day to describe it in words for others, to be able in my
insignificance to utter a feeble and faltering word of praise of the Almighty. Mow came Manasarowar
and Kailas to become objects of divine worship in two so different religions as Hinduism and
Lamaism, if each in its own special way did not appeal to and impress the human mind by its
marvelous beauty, and did not seem to be rather a part of heaven than of earth? A bath in the lake
ensures Hindus immunity from sin; a pilgrimage round the mountain or the lake in the same
direction as the hands of a clock frees the Tibetan from the tortures of purgatory, and permits
him after death to sit for all eternity at the feet of the gods and eat tsamba out of golden dishes....
... I learned to know this priceless pearl among the lakes of the earth in the morning light as
well as at sunset; in storm, in raging hurricane, when the waves were as high as houses; when the
water lay in the sunshine like a looking-glass; by moonlight, when the mountains stood up like
fantastic ghosts as the red and golden light of evening had faded in the west. Oh, what a wonderful
lake it was! I have no words to describe it—till my dying day I shall never forget it, and even now
it is in my mind as a legend, a poem, and a song.
It is of interest to note that this very area (though not the Lake itself) does indeed serve as the source for at
least four great river systems that flow from here in the four directions of the compass: the Indus (which in
Tibetan is called "Seng^-Khambab," i.e., the river "flowing out of a lion's mouth"), which winds northwestward
and then descends to water present-day Pakistan; the Sutlej (in Tibetan called "Langchen-Khambab," i.e., the
river "flowing out of an elephant's mouth"), which pushes its way westward through narrow valleys onward to
India; the Ganges (in Tibetan called "Magcha-Khambab," i.e., the river "flowing out of a peacock's mouth"), that
issues towards the south into India; and the Brahmaputra ("son of Brahma" and which in Tibetan is called
"Tamchog-Khambab," i.e., the river "flowing out of a horse's mouth"), that in Tibet is known as the Tsangpo
("Great River") and which traverses the "Land of Snows" west to east, turns southward beyond the Koiigpo
district in eastern Tibet, then courses its way southwestward until reaching Assam where it finally takes the name
of Brahmaputra and flows onward to present-day Bangladesh. Of further interest with respect to the Sacred Lake
is the fact that some of the last mortal remains (ashes) of the Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, were
scattered upon "the sacred deep blues of the Celestial Lake Manasarowar." Of final interest, it should be mentioned
that the eight large monasteries which had ringed the slopes around the Sacred Lake and which had housed thousands
of monks were all destroyed as a result of China's fanatically devastating Cultural Revolution in Tibet during the
decade 1966-76, the eight "having been systematically blown up." One of the monasteries, "measuring nearly a half-
mile in length, had been reduced to rubble." According to a group of Indian pilgrims to the Lake in 1981, the first
permitted by the occupying Chinese to visit it in 22 years, they had been told by their Chinese and Tibetan guides
"that the Chinese government was preparing to rebuild the religious buildings."
Sources for this end-note: Hedin, "My Discoveries in Tibet (Part II)," Harper s Monthly Magazine (Sept.
1908):545-6; Allen 1983, pp. 12-32; (Lama) Anagarika B. Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds; a Buddhist
Pilgrim in Tibet (London, 1968), 199-200; Michael T. Kaufman, "In Tibet, a Trail of Smashed Temples," New
York Times, 1 Nov. 1981, p. 3; Tucci 1973, p. 19; Kawaguchi 1909, pp. 140-1, 144; Hedin, "My Discoveries in
Tibet (Part I)," Harper s Monthly Magazine (Aug. 1908):343,345; Finegan 1981, p. 126; Swami Pranavananda,
Exploration in Tibet, 2d ed. (Calcutta, 1950), 163-4; and for the Swastika: (a) Duncan 1906, pp. 248-9; (b)
Govinda, Way of the White Clouds, 209; (c) R. Maconachie, "The Swastika," CMR (Dec. 1916):612-3; and (d)
Matthiessen 1979, p. 142.
25. Both these incidents relating to the ancient Christian hermits are described in Una M. Saunders, Mary
Dobson: Musician, Writer and Missionary (London, 1926), 166-7. On the latter page author Saunders records in
part a letter she received from Miss Dobson that portrays the Bengali poet in most unusual terms: "You speak
of Tagore; you exactly describe him as I saw him when we met—strained on some points. He is a pilgrim, to my
mind, who has halted at a halfway house and taken up his abode there; and when a pilgrim ceases to be a pilgrim,
he loses much of his hopeful joy!"
26. Brunton, A Hermit in the Himalayas [the Journal of a Lonely Exile] (Madras, 1936), 115-7. Reference has
already been made to Jeffrey Masson's autobiography, My Father s Guru; a Journey through Spirituality and
Disillusion (published by Addison-Wesley, early 1993). In it the author has given an account of his childhood and
adolescence. He tells of growing up in his father's home where also for some little while Paul Brunton (1898-
1981), revered by/the father of Jeffrey and proud to be one of this guru's few close disciples, had been invited to
live. (Accordingio psychiatrist and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Anthony Storr, who reviewed the
book, it had been characteristic of Brunton to live off his disciples, "who were pleased to support him financially
and to offer him accommodation.") Having been influenced by Brunton to choose to study Sanskrit at Harvard
University—a subject which he later taught in Toronto, Canada—Jeffrey Masson in time became "skeptical and
critical;*' with Harvard's experience of inquiry in all directions contributing to "his final disillusion with Brunton,"
in whom during his adolescence young Masson, like his father, had firmly believed.
In his review of Masson's autobiographical account, Storr enumerates at some length for his readers what
Brunton claimed about himself and what constituted the nature of some of his teachings as a guru of the mystical.
Believing unequivocally in reincarnation, Brunton "convinced his followers that many previous lives had endowed
him with special wisdom. He also claimed that, like Jesus Christ, he had descended to Earth from a realm
inhabited by superior beings. At night, he could travel anywhere in his astral body. Meditation, he said, could lead
to higher wisdom and spiritual knowledge, but physical desires had to be overcome if the spirit was to flourish.
'Vegetarianism, long periods of fasting and abstention from sex would help the disciple's progress along 'the Path'
to enlightenment." But like many gurus, declares Storr, Brunton did not always follow his own teaching, for he
was married four times and had fathered a son. Brunton also claimed, adds Storr, "that unseen malignant forces
surrounded him and daily attacked him. Sometimes these evil spirits manifested themselves in communists who
would have destroyed him if he had not been protected by a higher power who was using him to write the books
he wrote." He also "predicted a Third .World War on the grounds that civilization was 'sex-ridden.' As a result of
this prediction, a number of Brunton's disciples, including the Massons, moved to South America, often incurring
considerable financial loss by so doing. Before transferring to Harvard, Jeffrey Masson attended the University
of Montevideo in Uruguay."
Psychiatrist Storr ends his review with an analysis of Brunton from the psychiatric viewpoint, labeling the latter's
beliefs about himself and the world as constituting a paranoid delusional system because such beliefs "are impervious
to reason and obviously fantastic." Yet Brunton, Storr makes clear, survived in the human community since he was able
to share his beliefs with others through his books and teachings and impose those beliefs upon a number of^disciples;
whereas the ordinary paranoid psychotic with a similar belief system finds himself in trouble when, because of an
inability to share his delusions with others, thus isolating himself socially, he will usually engage in some kind of bizarre
or antisocial behavior that results in his being viewed as mentally ill and committed to a mental institution. Storr, "The
Shaman Is a Sham" (book review), Washington Post, 19 Feb. 1993. p. C4.
Now given these less than complimentaiy details about Brunton, how is one to square them with the excerpt
taken from his book, A Hermit in the Himalayas, a passage which appears so candid, balanced, rational and sane?
First of all, it must be observed that this volume was published in 1936 at about the halfway point in Brunton's
rather long life of 83 years. Conceivably, therefore, most of what Masson and his book reviewer relate of this
guru's negatives more than likely developed in his personality during the latter half of his life when he was
420
perhaps more susceptible than earlier to such "delusions of grandeur" and other aberrations as have been
described.
Secondly, most if not all of what Brunton is quoted as saying in the passage excerpted from his journal
compares quite well with what othep and very respected authors have written on the subject of supernormal
powers and which are included in the Text pages to follow—especially does the passage compare well with the
views presented by the Chinese Christian evangelical Nee To-sheng.
And finally, as intimated already, the Brunton excerpt itself—with its traits of frankness, balance and
saneness—has about it the ring of truth and honesty. One must take the whole of a man's life in order to judge
fairly his life and work. Human history is replete with individuals who began well but finished in abject failure
and even degradation. And yet their contribution to the world's knowledge and culture is nonetheless recognized
and applauded. The Irish poet, playwright and novelist, Oscar Wilde, comes quickly to mind here. Though he
was imprisoned for his "crimes against nature" and ended up a penniless and very lonely man, who today would
think of disparaging or discarding as totally worthless his contributions to the world's literary heritage?
For these reasons, and despite the extremely negative analysis of Brunton's life (which most likely is all true),
it was the conclusion of the present author to retain in the Text the Brunton passage in question.
27. That the Swami was recognized for his scientific approach to religious matters is attested to by the
testimony of Dr. Salirn Ali, a well-known ornithologist of Bombay, who himself made an "ornithological pilgrimage"
to the Kailash area in 1945. A self-confessed materialist skeptical of all religion, Dr. Ali wrote of the Swami in a
letter of retrospection he sent to author John Snelling in March 1981: "I met Swami Pranavananda for the first
time since 1945 at an official ceremony in New Delhi in 1976, where both he and I were receiving civil awards
from the President of India....In all my travels in western Tibet, he was theônly rational and science-oriented
man I came across!" Quoted in Snelling, The Sacred Mountain (London/The Hague, 1983), 184. All data and
quoted material appearing in the discussion of Swami Pranavananda are derived from ibid., 172-3,179-80.
28. Swami Pranavananda, F.R.G.S., Kailas-Manasarovar (1949; reprinted., New Delhi: the Swami, 1983), 25-6.
29. Schary's book was published London, 1937. The source for the "second moon" incident is found on page
208; today investigators of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and other knowledgeable persons might term
Schary's sighting of this unusual phenomenon as a "close encounter of the first kind." But so would they term what
Nicholas Roerich and others of his Expedition party into Central Asia witnessed firsthand some ten years later in
Northeast Tibet. More precisely, it occurred north of the Tsaidam Marshes in the extreme northern area of Tibet's
Amdo Province some 20 to 30 miles west of Koko Nor Lake. What follows is a composite rendering of two
published accounts of the incident by the Expedition leader (Roerich 1929, pp. 361-2 with Roerich 1930, p. 152):
On August fifth [1927]—something remarkable! A sunny, unclouded morning—the blue sky is
brilliant. We were in our camp in the Koko Nor district not far from the Humboldt [mountain]
chain. About half-past nine there flies over our camp a huge, dark vulture. Seven of us began to
watch this unusual bird. At this same moment, suddenly, another of our caravaneers, one of the
Buriat Mongol lamas, points into the blue sky and remarks: "There is something far above the
bird." And he shouted in his astonishment: "What is that? A white balloon? An aeroplane?" We
all saw, flying very high in a direction from northeast to south, something big and shiny reflecting
• the sun, like a huge oval and moving at great speed. We had time to bring three powerful field
glasses from the tents and saw quite distinctly against the blue sky an oval form with shiny surface,
one side of which was brilliant from the sun. Crossing our camp this spheroid body sharply
changed its direction from south to southwest and disappeared in the intense blue sky behind the
snow-peaked Humboldt chain. The whole camp follows the unusual apparition and the Mongolian
lamas whisper: "The sign of Shambhala!"
30. Ibid.. 152, 150-1. The Kailas quote is from p. 123. See also his other work, Roerich 1929, p. 384ff.—
wherein can be found some provocative passages taken from Roerich's diary entries, as for example this one:
The average scientist talks about Mahatmas as pure illusion. These are the scientists who have
never seen Mahatmas. But Sir William Crooks or Sir Oliver Lodge would not speak so. Vivekananda,
who was always upholding the rationalism of observation, knew Mahatmas. Many Hindus know
Them. But they safeguard Their Names to such an extent that they are even ready to deny Their
existence in order not to betray, not to reveal.
31. Wrote the Sadhu three years later: "I feared [initially] to tell about him [to others], because he did not tell
me his name. For when I repeatedly inquired of him he replied: 'Name pertains now to "I" and now not "I" but
"Christ" lives in me [the Maharishi having quoted here St. Paul's passage in his New Testament letter of Galatians,
chapter 2 verse 20], therefore my name is Christian.' Then 1 received guidance [from God] that people would be
profited by my talking about him and from that time I began to relate his story." Sundar Singh, 1915?, p. 50.
32. In another, much later account of his initial visit with the Kailash sage in 1912, the Sadhu quoted from the
Maharishi's lips the latter's own description of his quite simple diet, a diet which may in part have accounted for
his longevity in such a highly-elevated and bleak, cold place of abode: "Through experience I found that there are
plants of various kinds here which can be used as food and which are very invigorating.... Assuredly there are
plants here which can increase or decrease the strength of the body. When there are poisonous plants which can
end the life of man in fifteen minutes, why should there not be plants which preserve the heat of the body and its
strength for a long time in such a cold place? Doubt arises from the fact that people have so far not tried out these
plants and are not aware of their peculiarity and effect." Quoted in ibid., 79. And on a related note, the Sadhu had
this to say: "The ways of God are very inscrutable. Although [the Kailash area] is so very cold, there are several
springs of hot water close by. Some people would think it impossible that there could exist springs of hot water
in such a cold place. In the same way some people would think it impossible that the Maharishi could remain in
such a cold place in winter. But the fact is, the springs of hot water and the Maharishi are there ..." Ibid., 85.
33. See Sundar Singh 1915?, pp. 49, 50.
34. Ibid., 50-1.
35. Ibid., 51.
36. Ibid., 72.
37. See GTUM TsMs, 78.
38. Roerich 1930, pp. 109-10.
39. A yogin or yogi (English terms which have been borrowed entirely from the Sanskrit wordyogin that is
itself derived from another Sanskrit term, yoga) is a person who practices yoga, especially a Hindu or Buddhist
ascetic who seeks self-liberation by means of bodily or mental disciplines (like posture, breathing, or concentration)
and who is sometimes credited with supernormal powers.
40. Knight, Intimate Glimpses of Mysterious Tibet and Neighboring Countries (London, 1930), 36-8.
41. Norbu and Turnbull 1968, p. 270,.
42. See Forman 1935, pp. 254-5.
43. Excerpted from David-Neel, My Journey to Lhasa (New York, 1927), in Hopkirk 1982, p. 223.
44. Mrs. Lily (Moresby) Adams Beck (who died the very year of Mrs. Merrick's trek to Tibet with
Tharchin) was a prolific English writer of some note. She happened to have been the daughter of famed British
Admiral John Moresby, for whom had been named the harbor-city of Port Moresby in New Guinea, the battle
for control of which was made famous during World War Two between the Japanese and the Allies. Mrs. Beck
lived for many years in the East, and had even traveled through Lesser Tibet at one time. She wrote under two
pseudonyms: most often under E. Barrington and once or twice under Louis Moresby. Her writings ranged in
subject matter from Buddha and Buddhism to short stories, from other Asian philosophies and religions to
biographies of famous men and women, from Yoga to the occult. With respect to the latter, to which Mrs.
Merrick made specific reference, two works ought to be cited: The Openers of the Gate; Stories of the Occult
(New York, 1930) and The Way of Power; Studies in the Occult (New York, 1928).
45. Merrick 1933, pp. 146-7.
46. Excerpted from her book on the paranormal, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (London, 1931), in Hopkirk
1982, pp. 224-5. "Why, one may ask," Hopkirk writes, "did she not attempt to speak to, or at least photograph, this
apparition?" Her explanation wasjhat she had been prevailed upon not to by her Tibetan companions of this particular
journey since, they had insisted, tills would have resulted in the holy man's death. Ibid.
47. See Eliade, Two Tales of the Occult (New York, 1970); and his Autobiography, trans. M.L. Ricketts, 2 vols
(San Francisco, 1981), 1:190.
48. Bernard 1939, pp. 328-9. .
420
49. Bernard, "I Was a Lama," London Daily Mail, 12 Nov. 1937, p. 13.
50. Forman 1935, pp. 247-52.
51. Excerpted from her book My Journey to Lhasa in Hopkirk 1982, pp. 223-4. This thumo phenomenon,
incidentally, "has ... more than once been attested to," adds Hopkirk, "by independent and skeptical European
witnesses." Ibid, In this regard, even the eminent Tibetologist and Buddhologist, David Snellgrove, though
skeptical of some ofDavid-NeePs stories she related in another book, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, was
nonetheless moved to acknowledge the validity of the claims surrounding this Tantric art. He was quick to point
out, however, that "the sensation of heat is only one of the many factors involved, and that this is not primarily
a warmth-producing exercise." To which would readily agree Harvard Medical School (USA) researcher Dr.
Benson, the leader in India of a team of scientists who performed an extraordinary experiment on three Tibetan
lamas that confirmed the claims of thumo-practitioners. After conducting the experiment which revealed that the
temperature deep within these lamas' bodies had remained normal during just their one hour of meditation
whereas their skin temperature had risen all over by 1 to 1.5° C, Dr. Benson had noted that "the meditation is part
of a ritual in which the lamas produce heat in the body to burn away the emotional defilements that interfere with
a proper outlook on life." See Snellgrove 1987,1:292-3, where the author cites a Times of India article of 8 Feb.
1982 which had reported on Benson's experiment.
52. Hicks 1988, p. 51.
53. "It would be necessary to adopt a disguise," wrote Forman, in his account of the event published as part
of the narrative of his lengthy stay in Tibet that appeared in book form three years later. "I must make up to look
like a Nukhwa—which would not be so hard, since the principal feature that distinguished a Nukhwa from a
layman was the long coil of hair piled atop the head. Lengths of yak hair could fix that easily enough. I am
naturally dark-skinned, and the sun and wind of many months in the outdoors had burnt me so that I looked
almost as deeply bronzed as any tribesman.... We timed our arrival at Radja to coincide with the date of the
'Sorcerers' Convention' so that I might not be subjected to too close a scrutiny while in my disguise. We talked
late that last night before we came to Radja. Old Sherap coached me very carefully on just how to act and what
to say if accosted. And I learned much from him, in those firelight hours, of Nukhwas, Bonism and the whys and
wherefores of demon- and devil-materialization." Forman 1935, p. 224.
54. See Forman, "I See the King of Hell," Harper's Magazine (Dec. 1934): 14-25, and for additional bio-data
on Forman, see the Editor's column, "Personal and Otherwise," ibid, unnumbered back page.
55. See David Plymire, High Adventure in Tibet (Springfield MO USA: Gospel Publishing House, 1959), 2.
The abridged account used in the Plymire work (pp. 2-9) appeared in the Dec. 1937 issue of Reader's Digest that
was condensed from Forman's original account which as referenced in the preceding note had first appeared in the
. Dec. 1934 issue of Harper's Magazine. A year following the Harper's publication Forman would detail much
more of the story that was published as part of his book cited earlier in this chapter's end-notes: Forman 1935.
The lengthy trek across Tibet by missionary Plymire alluded to in the Text earned for itself, for some
unknown reason, the belief held among ruling circles in Tibet as having been Bolshevist in character! Rev. Plymire
would have laughed uproariously had he been privy to an entry on page 36 of Hugh Richardson's Tibetan Precis
(Calcutta, 1945), an official Government of India publication summarizing Anglo-Tibetan relations over many
years. In discussing disturbing events for the year 1927, Richardson reported the following: "There was also
another expedition from China led by an American, Mr. Plymire, which was suspected of being Bolshevist, and
was made to travel from Nagchuka to Ladakh instead of being allowed to come through Lhasa and Sikkim."
56. Patterson 1998, pp. 146-7.
57. For a fuller account of this phenomenal occurrence, see "Soldiers of Mercy: Freeing the Prisoners,"
ADNAMIS Magazine (Charlottesville VA US A), (Summer 1997):5,10-11.
58. The reader is referred back to the footnote at this point in the chapter's Text where the name of the
Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, was mentioned and reference made to his friendship with the current leader of
the Tibetan people, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Merton had visited the Tibetan spiritual ruler at the latter's
Dharmasala exile residence in Northwest India during November 1968, just a few weeks before the American died
tragically in his room at the Imperial Hotel in Bangkok (most observers believing Merton died accidentally, but
some believing he did so under suspicious circumstances). Over a period of "three consecutive days, for two
hours at a time," writes His Holiness in one of his more recent volumes of memoirs, the two of them met and
talked about "intellectual and spiritual matters that were of mutual interest ..." After describing Meijon's
outward appearance, the Dalai Lama observed that more striking than that, "which was memorable in itself, was
the inner life which he manifested. I could see he was a truly humble and deeply spiritual man. This was the first
time that I had been struck by such a feeling of spirituality in anyone who professed Christianity. Since then, I
have come across others with similar qualities, but it was Merton who introduced me to the real meaning of the
word 'Christian.'... Merton acted as a strong bridge between our two very different traditions." Dalai Lama XIV
1990, p. 189.
59. Any Westerner visiting India, Nepal and other Hindu-oriented countries in Asia and the nearby Pacific
region will soon become aware that this kind of teaching and practice is quite commonplace among the peoples
indigenous to these lands. But it is also something to which Westerners are increasingly being drawn as well. As
a means of attracting the latter to attend what could be called mind-body control sessions held at centers
established in towns and cities where Westerners tend to frequent in greater numbers, posters in English announcing
the availability of such instruction and training can often be found pasted against walls and poles along the main
streets and roadways. A typical example of this was a poster the present author came upon one day in November
1996 while taking his early morning walk at the lakeside resort town of Pokhara in Nepal. In words which
strikingly echoed many of Nee's observations, it read:
YOGA
at
Yogi's Yoga Center
Near Hotel Sagarmatha and Hotel Mt. Everest
OFFERS
Hatha Yoga: Controls Mind through Body
Raja Yoga: Controls Body through Mind
Kundalini Yoga: Awakening of Cosmic Energy, the Natural Energy
Kriya Yoga: Yogic Process for Perfect Health
Yogi/Yogin Psychic Breathing: (Relaxing and Stimulating Exercises)
Refining Exercises: To Be in Tune with Nature
Class Hours: 0600 - 1200 1500 - 2000
Sunil Kumar Yoga Bhusan, B.A. (Hons.)
Yoga Teacher from Varanasi (Benares)
Moreover, as the author continued his morning walk that day but now veering off into a small lane dotted with
small huts and other homes, he came across a sign which said that yoga instruction was available at nearby
Krishna Lodge, beginning at 0600 hours daily. And sure enough, upon peering through the gate of this quite
unassuming lodging place for both Nepalis and non-Nepalis alike, he could see what he presumed was a yoga
teacher and two Nepalis. The latter were seated at the yoga's feet apparently imbibing his wisdom and experience.
60? Watchman Nee is actually not alone in making the kind of analysis he has presented of what he has termed
the latent power of the soul and its release. One secular student of Western occultism, Gregoiy Tillett of
Australia, writing much later than Nee, has even employed some of the same terminology which this Eastern
Christian himself had used. In summarizing certain theories of sexual magic practiced among some traditions of
Western occultism, Tillett, in his biography of the prominent Theosophist leader and expositor Charles Leadbeater
(1854-1934), quotes from a study on occultic practices which a few years earlier Tillett had jointly co-authored
with Nevill Drury. Strikingly similar in language to what Nee—though excluding the sexual element—had
described some forty years before, their provocative summary reads as follows:
(1) Man possesses hidden powers (often identified with the subconscious mind) which give him
greater perception, raise him to states of ecstasy, expand his consciousness, stimulate increased
physical, emotional and mental powers;
(2) These powers lie "buried" beneath some "barrier" whieh conscious control cannot penetrate,
but which can be overcome by a variety of techniques ...;
(3) This "barrier" can be penetrated through heightening the physical, emotional and intellectual
focus of the body by sexual stimulation, leading to a "breakthrough" at the point of orgasm, at
which energy is released.
Tillett then expanded on the sexual element in these theories in view of the belief held by some observers that the
Theosophist teacher Leadbeater had clandestinely utilized among his closest young male disciples various sexual
techniques which the Theosophist apparently believed could lead to the desired release of man's powerful hidden
powers.
In particular, Tillett identified the magical or occulticUse of sexual self-stimulation. The techniques employed
among certain traditions of Western occultism, he notes, have been heterosexual, homosexual and autosexual in
nature. Specifically "in the case of autosexual techniques," the purpose, explains Tillett, was usually
to heighten the consciousness of the magician and focus and stimulate his magical power, culminating
in the release of energy at the point of orgasm. The English artist and magician Austin Spare
employed a technique of "magical masturbation" as a means of concentrating, releasing and
directing magical energy. [Theosophist] Aleister Crowley also employed magical sexual
techniques—of every imaginable variety—in his occult work; and in the Ordo Templi Orientis, of
which he was a member, "magical masturbation" was taught as the technique of one of the higher
degrees.
The Elder^ Brother: a Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater (London, 1982), 283-4; see also Drury and
Tillett, The Occult Sourcebook (London, 1978), 79. Regardless the nature of the technique—whether sexual or
non-sexual—it becomes obvious that the goal of all these practitioners, in the words of both Nee and Tillett/
Drury, is the penetration and overcoming of the said "barrier" and the "release" of the "latent," "hidden,"
"buried" supernormal "energies" or "powers" of man's soul.
61. This presentation of Watchman Nee's thought has been derived from English translations of the following
two works by him which had originally appeared in China: (a) The Spiritual Man, 3 vols (1928; 1st English-
language ed. in 3 separate vols, 1968; reprinted as a Combined (3 vols-in-1) Edition, New York: Christian
Fellowship Publishers, 1977), 1:21-3,27-8; and (b) The Latent Power of the Soul (New York: Christian Fellowship
Publishers, 1972), 29-30, 33,35-41,44. Both works are available from the Publishers at Richmond VA 23235.
62. These various quotations are from Appasamy 1966, pp. 50, 73, 86 v
63. Mentioned in the New Testament at 1 Corinthians 12:4-11: "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the
same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings,
but the same God, who worketh all things in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit
withal. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge,
according to the same Spirit; to another faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gjfts of healings, in the one Spirit;
and to another workings of miracles [Gr. powers]; and to another prophecy;, and to another discernings of spirits;
to another diverse kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh the one
and the Same Spirit, dividing to each one severally as he will."
64. Heiler 1927, pp. 9, 11; see 71 -3 for the reasons which led Heiler to modify his skepticism with regard to
the Sadhu's claim of the Rishi's existence.
65. Appasamy 1966, pp. 82,90-1, citing Heiler'sD/e WahrheitSundar Singhs; Neue Dokumente zum Sadhustreit
(The Truthfulness of Sundar Singh; New Documents Relating to the Sadhu Dispute) (Munich, 1927), 76.
66. Appasamy 1966, p. 91 and Heiler 1927, p. 72.
67. For fuller information on Kartar Singh, consult ibid., 50 and Appasamy 1966, pp. 45-7.
68. The reason the Dalai Lama took no hand in these matters was because he had been deported from Lhasa
to the Koko-Nor region of NE Tibet on orders of the Chinese Emperor and incarcerated in a monastery there. This
thus meant that the ruling nobleman Pho-lha exercised the temporal power in the place of Dalai Lama VII. According
to Graham Sandberg (who based his narration of the Catholic Capuchin experience at Lhasa on the friars' own
diaries), Pho-lha "appears to have become well impressed by the friars after his position of authority had been
confirmed by the Emperor of China." Later, at the time of the floods (August 1725), and with an increase in personal
hostility and even molestation being heaped upon the Capuchins when walking on the Lhasan streets, Pho-lha,
explained Sandberg, "issued a proclamation making it a penal offense to injure the missionaries or their property,
and, seeking to appease the mob of low monks and others, stated that, having consulted the head of Samye
Monastery, he [Pho-lha] had decided that the cause of the late floods was not the residence of the Capuchin fathers
in the city but the sins and misdeeds of the Tibetans themselves. After this the open persecution of the missionaries
ceased." Sandberg, The Exploration of Tibet: Its History and Particularsfrom 1623 to 1904 (Calcutta, 1904), 39,40,
45. Additional details of these and other incidents surrounding the Catholic Mission at Lhasa may be found in Vol.
II, Ch. 15 of the present narrative.
69. The victim of this heinous act was the American medical missionary for the Disciples of Christ Church,
Dr. Albert L. Shelton (1875-1922, born Indiana USA), sent out to China in 1903 by the Foreign Christian
Missionary Society, a group connected with that Church in America. Arriving in Kham in 1904, he and his
wife Flora would proceed to establish a base of operations at Batang, where they would eventually found a
hospital, an orphanage, a Christian congregation, and a school. In 1919 the Sheltons, now the parents of two
daughters (both of whom were born in Dartsedo on the Sino-Tibetan border), upon departing Batang by
caravan bound on furlough back to the United States, were attacked by Chinese robbers. Taken hostage, Dr.
Shelton was held for 71 days. Finally released upon payment of a ransom paid by the American legation to
Peking, Shelton and his family returned to America. Yet Shelton's experience of being set upon by bandits in
1919 "was but a presentiment of the future." For in 1922 he would encounter foul play once again, but this
time it would prove to be fatal.
That year Dr. Shelton attempted to journey to the Tibetan capital in hopes of establishing a mission hospital
there in fulfillment of a longheld dream. Having returned to Batang alone, Shelton soon departed the mission
station for Lhasa. "It is a testament to the doctor's high regard among Tibetans throughout Kham," explains
Valrae Reynolds, "that plans for such a bold move were progressing at the highest level in Lhasa." For still extant
is a copy of the original letter which the Dalai Lama XIII had sent Shelton granting the permission to visit Lhasa,
a gesture which had been arranged by both the Governor of Markham in Kham and the Tibetan Governor General
of East Tibet in appreciation for the doctor's assistance in the Sino-Tibetan border peace negotiations of 1918.
However, shortly afterwards he received word from Markham's governor requesting him to return to Batang
temporarily since the situation was unfavorable for foreign visits into Tibet's interior. It was while on his return
journey to the mission station the following day (16 February) that Dr. Shelton encountered a band of robbers
who killed him for plunder before he could reach his Batang home. Mrs. Shelton subsequently published the
story of his life, Shelton of Tibet, as well as other books about their life in Tibet. Moreover, Shelton himself,
before his death, had authored Pioneering in Tibet (1921).
The surviving Sheltons would later become very close friends of Gergan Tharchin and great supporters of his
Christian work among Tibetans in Kalimpong and elsewhere. Indeed, a considerable number of letters between
the Babu and one of the Shelton daughters, Dorris Shelton Still, confirm this. Mrs. Still would even make a visit
to the Tharchins in Kalimpong in 1964, spending a week in their home. In 1922 Flora Shelton would author two
more books in addition to those already cited above, these two published in Tibetan and aimed at Tibetan
children. These would be a World Geography and a Story Book entitled Lhamo Namthar (that included a few
stories from the Christian Bible). But several decades after they had fallen out of print, Tharchin was moved to
approach Mrs. Still while she was in Kalimpong about having them reprinted by his Tibet Mirror Press.This the
Sheltons agreed to, and eventually the Babu's press would accomplish this task in the mid-1960s, thousands of
copies of which would ultimately be presented gratis to the students of a number of Tibetan refugee schools in
India, including Kalimpong's own Central School for Tibetans. Moreover, Tharchin's press would be the first to
print and publish a third volume by Mrs. Shelton, a Tibetan Bible Concordance, which occurred in the late 1960s.
Flora Shelton, aged 94, would pass away in the state of Texas USA in 1966; and long after Tharchin's own
death in 1976 Mrs. Still would pass away in 1997 at the age of 93 in Arizona State USA, eight years following
the publication of her own work on Tibet, Beyond the Devils in the Wind. See Unauthored 1983, pp. 152-3; Lillian
Carlson, "The Story of Christian Missions to Tibet," in L. Carlson et al., If the Vision Tarry (Minneapolis:
WMPL, 1988), 16; JamyangNorbu, "Editorial," in Lungta (Winter 1998's special issue, "Christian Missionaries
and Tibet"):2; Reynolds, "The Journey to Tibet of Dr. Albert L. Shelton 1904-1922," in ibid., 20, 22-4; and for
additional information on the Babu's printing/reprinting of the Shelton books, see among the Tharchin papers,
Kalimpong, one of his many letters to Prof. T.V. Wylie at the University of Washington, Seattle USA, dated 10 June
1967, and various letters of his to Mrs. Still dated 14-18 July 1964,9 Dec. 1964,17 June 1965, and 26 Aug. 1966.
70, As officers in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the U.S. Army intelligence unit which served as a
prototype for today's American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—Tolstoy and Dolan were asked to undertake
a physically difficult and highly dangerous diplomatic mission to Tibet on behalf of the U.S. President, Franklin
D. Roosevelt. The mission's purpose was twofold: to negotiate permission from the Tibetans to transport
military supplies through Tibet into China rather than doing so by cargo planes flown at high altitudes over the
largely uncharted Himalayas, and to evaluate a prospective route from Darjeeling in India to Lanchow in China
to replace the Burma Road which by this time the Japanese had cut off from Allied use. As it turned out, though,
Tibet was not willing to participate in an agreement requiring any commitments to China, with which neighbor
the Lhasa government was at that time having strained relations. On the way to Lanchow, which they did indeed
reach after a grueling four or five month trek through Tibet and western China, the two officers were received at
Lhasa on 20 Dec. 1942 by the then seven-year-old Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his aging Regent Taktra, to whom the
travelers presented a photograph of Roosevelt. They also spent several months at the Tibetan capital as guests of
420
the British Mission head there, Frank Ludlow, whom Gergan Tharchin would himself come to know at Gyantse in
the early 1920s when Ludlow, like Tharchin, would serve as a school headmaster in Tibet's third largest city.
Over the years, incidentally, Tolstoy would continue to maintain a correspondence with Dalai Lama XIV; and
through the Tolstoy Foundation that has aided Russian emigrants since the Revolution of 1917, he was helpful
in assisting Tibetan refugees who fled their country after the Chinese Communist invasion and occupation of
their land which began in 1950. Tolstoy also helped to establish a similar Tibetan Foundation in the U.S. He
would die in 1970. Dolan, on the other hand, died prematurely when in 1945, undertaking a second mission for
the OSS, he was killed while trying to rescue Allied bomber crews that had been downed behind enemy lines in
Chungking, China. For more on these two friends of Tibet, see Martha Chahroudi, "The Photographers," in
Unauthored 1983, pp. 148-9, 154.
71. Though a scholar and writer of no mean ability who—as a result of his connection with the Younghusband
Expedition to Lhasa in 1904—had amassed a great deal of artifacts, documents and information on Tibetan
Buddhism, Waddell's outspoken observations and conclusions against much of it would eventually make him a
target of controversy among later Mahay ana Buddhist scholars, writers and others sympathetic to that faith.
Still, writes Adrian Moon, Waddell did make an effort "to learn the language of the culture he was studying"—
something certain modern-day authors on Tibet have failed to do—and "was a pioneer who contributed a great
deal to Tibetan studies." See p. 17 of Moon's article, "The Making of a Modern Propaganda," TR (July 1989): 13-
17. A British writer, Moon has been studying the Tibetan language and culture for quite some time now.
72. The sources for the response given to Tharchin's observations regarding the demise of Kartar Singh are
the following: (a) Richardson was quoted in International Commission of Jurists Legal Inquiry Committee on
Tibet, Tibet and the Chinese People's Republic: a Report to the ... Commission by Its Legal Inquiry Committee
(Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1966; originally published by the Commission at Geneva, July 1960), 77, and see also
p. 80 where Marco Pallis is quoted as saying essentially the same thing about punishment since 1898; (b)
Goodman 1986, p. 203n.; (c)Francke 1914,1:25; (d) Waddell 1972, pp. 251-2; (e) Pemba 1957, pp. 85-7; (f)the
Martin photographs of capital punishment are told about in Schary, In Search ofthe Mahatmas of Tibet, 250; (g)
Tung 1980, pp. 102-3 (wherein the author, not only here but throughout her book, leaned heavily on Tolstoy's
and Dolan's diary accounts of their 1942/3 expedition through Tibet into China inwriting her book); (h) the "little
biased" phrase is from Lois Lang-Sims 1963, p. I l l ; and (i) Templeman 1998, pp. 27, 32 note 9. Lang-Sims,
incidentally, had had her own misgivings on how some later historians and lovers of Tibet—themselves friends,
ironically, of Tharchin himself—have tended to gloss over some of the unpleasant aspects of Tibetan life which
had been reported by travelers and cultural historians of an earlier day.
73. Details and quotations have been extracted from the Sadhu's account in Sundar Singh 1915?, pp. 45-7; and
for the identity of Rev. Rabarsanki, see Appasamy (ed.) 1956, pp. 57-8.
74. For a more complete account of this event, see ibid., 18; "A Hindu Convert Here to Christianize
America," Literary Digest (3 July 1920):44; Heiler 1927, pp. 63, 108; Appasamy 1966, pp. 51-3; and Parker
1968, pp. 35-6.
75. Riddle 1964, pp. 33-4.
76. Parker 1968, p. 36 (emphasis added).
77. Appasamy 1966, p. 53.
78. "A Hindu Convert Here to Christianize America," Literary Digest (3 July 1920):44.
79. Except for the "ten marches" quote and that of the "600 or 700," the quotations in this and the preceding
paragraph are from Appasamy 1966, pp. 224, 241; the sources for the two exceptions are, respectively: Riddle
1964, p. 33, and letter, Sundar Singh to Heiler, 12 Jan. 1925, taken from Heiler, Apostel oder Betruger? (Basel,
1925), 15 and quoted in Pfister 1926, p. 96.
81. Sundar Singh 1915?, p. 48.
82. See/¿>/¿,48-9.
83. Originally discovered by Roman Catholic missionaries and made known to the world by them in 1625,
the Monument was rediscovered towards the end of the 19th century and its Chinese inscription subsequently
translated by Alexander Wylie of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It provides a summary of Nestorian
teaching and reveals the fact that Christianity had made considerable progress in China by 625 a.d., some of the
emperors having themselves been converted to the faith. But the persecutions of the Ming Dynasty (1360-1628)
would appear to have destroyed this ancient segment of Christianity. Graham 1898, p. 144.
84. Rohit Vohra, "Sogdian Inscriptions from Tangtse in Ladakh," in Kvaerne (ed.) 1994,11:920-9, accompanied
by photographs of both carvings and inscriptions.
85. Uray, "Tibet's Connections withNestorianism and Manicheism in the 8 th -! 0th Centuries," in Steinkellner
& Tauscher (eds.) 1983,1:399.
86. In his published symposium paper already cited, Uray (see 1:404-5) details several of these examples.
87. Uray, ibid, 1:399; and Vohra, "Sogdian Inscriptions...," in Kvaerne (ed.) 1994,11:920.
88. About this very matter of the location of these trade routes and their significance, Professor Uray, in the
conclusions he came to as a result of his review of all the extant archaeological, epigraphic and philological finds
on the subject of Tibetan-Nestorian connections, made the following cogent remarks in the final words of his
symposium paper (1:421):
In order to properly judge the contact Tibet has had with Manicheism and Nestorianism, we must
consider its situation at the end of the eighth century, Tibet, at that time, had been a great power
taking part in transcontinental trade and controlling some of the most important trade routes.
On these routes there were settlements of Sogdian merchants of Nestorian and Manichean faith
who here and there could spread their doctrines even among the indigenous population.... Sogdian
merchants found their way into the interior of Tibet and presumably also established trade
colonies there. Even if the Nestorian communities living in these colonies were small, the
geographical position of the roads demanded the establishment of several [Nestorian Church]
episcopates which then made the setting up of a Metropolity essential.
One must also take into consideration that in the second half of the eighth century, society
in Tibet had reached a stage in development where it was necessary to adopt a world religion as
state religion. This, as we know, became the role of Buddhism, but it can be assumed that
Nestorianism and Manicheism tried their luck, too.
89. Other than what has already been documented, the sources for all information and quoted material dealing
with the Drangtse discovery are: (a) Bishop B. LaTrobe, "Traces of Nestorian Christianity in Western Tibet,"
MM (Apr. 1912):68; (b) F.E. Peter, "The First Christian Missionary in Ladakh," ibid. (Oct. 1934):76; and (c) cf.
Pallis 1949, pp. 268-9. Both Moravian articles are accompanied by photographs of the carvings and inscription.
90. "The use of the fish as a Buddhist symbol has been the subject of a good deal of speculation, and it seems
not unreasonable to suppose that it is borrowed from Christianity, since it was certainly a Nestorian sign. The
spread of Christianity over Asia was at one time very considerable. We know that 250 years ago a great part of
Japan (namely, the island of Kyushu) was entirely Christian. Certain figures of the Virgin Mary are found in
Japan, which were purposely made to closely resemble the Bodhisattva Kwanon, so that Christians might use
them without attracting attention during the days of persecution under the Shogunate. Marco Polo makes
mention of Christian communities at many of the places he visited in India and China; and since then the
celebrated Nestorian tablets of China have been discovered and translated. It is therefore easy to believe that the
secret sign of the fish (.Ichthys), whose letters form the initials of the words Iesus, Christos, Theu (of God), Yios
(the Son), Soster (Savior), which is found scratched on the walls of the Catacombs of Rome, may also have been
carried by Christian sects to the . uttermost parts of Asia. There are in Buddhism other features also, which so
celebrated a scientist as Max Muller supposes to have a Christian origin. For example, the Buddhist Church of
Tibet uses bells, rosaries and relics, just like the Church of Rome. It is startling in some remote valley of the
Himalayas to find intercessions, processions, litanies, celibacy and tonsure of monks; and to watch the villagers
kneel to the priests for the laying on of hands. Holy water is used, and the Buddhists of remote Tibet have a
complete system of monasteries for monks and nuns. If all Buddhists of the Mahayana looked to the Dalai Lama
of Lhasa as their head, he would have a greater following than the Pope." Enriquez 1941, pp. 198-9. Enriquez
noted that the symbols of Tibetan Buddhism were six in number: the umbrella of royalty, the fish, the vase, the
conch shell, the wheel, and the Gordian knot. The latter, he observed, was said to represent the entrails of
Buddha, thus indicating the unending succession of rebirths, that can only be avoided by the attainment of
Nirvana. Ibid, 198.
420
91. The source for the question raised by Rev. Peter is his article, "The First Christian Missionary in
Ladakh," MM (Oct. 1934):7|6.
92. Duncan 1906, p. 32, and its footnote (which cites the article, "Buddhism," in Encyclopaedia Britannica
as the source for the statement about Tibetan Buddhism being the "imitation by the devil" etc.). A later
exclamatory reaction to this resemblance, given by Abbé Hue (1813-60), the French Roman Catholic missionary
to China and Tibet, was that "the devil in his hostility to Christianity had anticipated his coming"! Waddell 1972,
p. 227. For another and much longer litany of similarities between these two religions in their outward expression,
see Merrick 1931, pp. 216-8.
A similarity in Lamaist liturgy to the Christian Eucharist had been noted by some, including Abbé Hue. But
in the 1890s a thorough study and investigation into the so-called Eucharist of the Tibetan lamas was made by
Waddell who would later serve as the Chief Medical Officer with the Younghusband Expedition to Tibet in 1904.
In an article on the subject he wrote in 1894, Waddell put the lie to any but the most superficial similarities
between this Tibetan religious practice and its supposed Christian counterpart, although he did acknowledge an
earlier possible derivation fromNestorian influence a millennium or more before. "The Lamaist liturgy," Waddell
wrote, "on account of its pompous ritual and the dispensation of consecrated wine and bread, has been compared
by Hue and others to the Christian Eucharist; but it is, in reality, as here shown, a ceremony for gratifying the
rather un-Buddhistic craving after long life in this world. It is entitled The Obtaining of (long) Life' (Tibetan: Tse-
grub) and is a very good sample of the Lamaist blending of Buddhist ideas with demon-worship. It incorporates
a good deal of... Pre-Lamaist ritual, and its benedictions and sprinkling of holy water are suggestive of Nestorian
or later Christian influence. It is done at stated periods, on a lucky day, about once a week in the larger temples,
to which numerous seekers after long life come specially to participate in,this rite; and its benefits are more
particularly sought in cases of actual illness, and when death seems imminent. Every village must have it
performed at least once a year for the general life of the community. If after its performance life is prolonged, then
all the credit is ascribed to this service; while should death happen it is attributed to the excessive misdeeds of the
individual in his last life or in former births." Waddell, "The So-Called 'Eucharist' of the Lamas," The Imperial
and Asiatic Quarterly Review (Apr. 1894):379. Waddell set down the entire lengthy ritual in the rest of the article,
which occupied nearly four additional printed pages of text. *
93. As one Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Member of the Buddhist Text Society of India has
perceptively observed, in a book describing a journey he made through the Tibetan Buddhist areas of Sikkim and
Bhutan in 1894 (see Louis 1894, pp. 95-6):
It has been a fashionable cry, for some years past, to say that Christianity has probably derived
some of its doctrines, some of its traditions, ceremonies and vestments, from Buddhism, because
of the one fact that Buddha lived and preached some 600 years before the Advent of Christ. This
would be all very well if Buddhism, as practiced today in Tibet, Sikkim, and I might add, in Tibet
and Sikkim only, was the Buddhism of the time of Gautama Buddha; but if is a far cry to the
Tibetan Gompas of our time from the days of...those ancient times [of Buddha] ...There are
differences and a distance not to be bridged over, between primitive Buddhism and the present
religion of Tibet and Sikkim. Buddha, as a reformer, rose and preached against the idolatries of a
degenerate Hinduism, and the corruption of the day; he substituted to metempsychosis, pure and
simple, the theory of the circle of existences; he seems, in the fervor of his reformation, to have
eliminated not only idolatry and idolatrous practices, but all idea even, of a Supreme being; but he
practiced asceticism; he taught self-abnegation; and his moral doctrines, his system of philosophy
and morality, as to the duties of man to man, was comparatively pure, and might have been taken,
as far as his main moral precepts are concerned, as well from a purified Hinduism, as from Judaism
and the law of Moses. He was an ascetic, but not a monk; monastic institutions, censers, vestments
and a ritual, such as are at present in use in Tibet and Sikkim, were unknown and undreamt of, in
his time.
We know, on the other hand, that in the early days of Christianity, preachers went forth into
the Far East; that there were Christians in India and Ceylon in the sixth century; that a bishop sat
at the council of Nicea in 325 a.d., who styled himself the Metropolitan of Persia and the Great
India; while Pantoenus od Alexandria, during his Mission to India, in the second century, found
there a Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew.
It has also been ascertained that the earlier Pali manuscripts contain nothing as to miracles
having occurred at the time of Buddha's birth, as to his having descended from Heaven to be
conceived in the W9rld of men, or as to other fables, by means of which it has been attempted to
establish an analogy between the events of his life, and of Christ's. The original texts, in fact, say
but little about the personal history of Buddha; and the stories as to the beautiful palaces built for
him by Buddha's father (a petty Raja of Upper India), are subsequent in date, and savor too much
of imaginary romance and exaggeration to be worthy of a moment's consideration.
It is shown also, by ancient writings in the monasteries of Tibet, that Buddhism was introduced
into the country only in the second century after Christ, and monastic institutions in the seventh
century, during the reign of Song-tsen-gampo, the thirty-second King of Tibet and the fortieth
incarnation of Buddha.
The forms of the vestments used by the lamas resemble more those of the Greek than of the
Roman rite, and it is highly probable that vestments and ritual, and monastic institutions, were
imported into Tibet by Nestorian Monks, who are known to have introduced themselves and
flourished in Tibet in very early times.
The first introduction of Christianity and of Buddhism in Tibet would seem, therefore, to
have been almost coeval; but of Christianity what is there left? Its faith, its inspiration, its
doctrines have disappeared. From its precepts the most important commandments, those relating
to the duties and adoration of Man to the Most High, have been eliminated, and we have the
strange spectacle of a ceremonial bereft of all meaning, of all the grandeur of its symbolism,
engrafted upon a system of atheistic philosophy [Buddhism], not untinged with a revival of more
ancient forms of fetishism and demonolatry, with a belief in evil spirits, and in the practices in full
prevalence for their propitiation of exorcism.
Such seems to be Tibetan Buddhism of the present day, if Buddhism it can still be called....
94. Some Western scholars of Buddhism and ancient Buddhist texts have claimed that the narratives of the
Buddha's life had not begun to be recorded in written form till some 500 years after Buddha's death; that is to say,
not until the time of Jesus and His Apostles. Moreover, some of these scholars have also asserted that the oft-
noted Christian characteristics appearing in Buddhism as Buddhist legends had not even been in circulation prior
to the fifth century after Christ. Berlin University Professor Hermann Oldenberg, for example, has written that
"it must be premised as a cardinal statement: a biography of Buddha has not come down to us from ancient times,
from the age of the Pali texts, and, we can safely say, no such biography was in existence then. This is, moreover,
very easily understood. The idea of biography was foreign to the mind of that age. To take the life of a man as a
whole, its development from beginning to end, as a unified subject for literary treatment, this thought, though it
appears to us natural and obvious, had not occurred to anyone yet in that age.... Thus there were biographical
fragments, but a biography [of Buddha] was compiled from them for the first time at a much later period."
Buddha (London: Williams & Norgate, 1882), 78-9,81.
Again, Dr. Ernest J. Eitel of Hong Kong has written thus: "... It can be proved that almost every single tint
of this Christian coloring which Buddhist tradition gives to the life of Buddha, is of comparatively modern origin.
There is not a single Buddhist manuscript in existence which could vie, in antiquity and undoubted authenticity,
with the oldest codices of the Gospels. Besides, the most ancient Buddhist classics contain scarcely any details
of Buddha's life, and none whatever of those above-mentioned peculiarly Christian characteristics. Hardly any
of the above-given legends, which claim to refer to events that happened many centuries before the beginning of
our Christian era, can be proved to have been in circulation earlier than the fifth century after Christ." Eitel 1884,
p. 16; see also pp. 10-30.
If all this be true, then this could quite easily allow, say some of these scholars, for the presumption that
certain Buddhist scribes, now aware of Jesus, His life and His teachings, could have ascribed to Buddha in their
chronicles whatever they liked, especially if such teachings had appeared to them to be superior to those of the
Buddhists and the Brahmans. Indeed, these much later efforts at recording the Buddha's life and teachings—if
they did occur as just now outlined—could very well explain how very much of the canonical Gospels can be
found in these later Buddhist texts regarding the founder of this non-Christian religion.
For a far different perspective, however, the reader should consult the much more recent study by Holger
Kersten and Elmer Gruber, The Original Jesus: the Buddhist Sources of Christianity (Shaftesbury, 1995). In their
work these two authors posit a different notion. Thanks to the Indian Buddhist Emperor Asoka's missionary
emphasis, they explain, Theravada Buddhists had continued, long after his death, to migrate to Egypt and where
clearly by the first century a.d. they had been able to create a monastic community in the cosmopolitan and
intellectual center of Alexandria. This is known from the writings of the famous Hellenistic Jew, Philo. Kersten
and Gruber then claim that Jesus, when down in Egypt during His childhood and youth, had become a disciple
of these Therapeutae Buddhists and, after many years with them, had returned to Israel to preach to His
countrymen not a Christian but a Buddhist gospel of ethics, morality, love and compassion—a gospel that was
subsequently distorted and re-shaped by Paul and other authors of the New Testament into the belief system
which the world has come to recognize ever since as Christianity. And hence, the import of their book's title: the
original Jesus.
420
95. For the several accounts used to present this composite re-telling of the Sadhu's encounter with the
murderous robber and his three fellow-thieves, see the following: Sundar Singh 1965,1965, x-xi; Appasamy (ed.)
1956, pp. 51-2; Parker 1968, pp. 33-4; and Joyce Reason, The Man Who Disappeared (Sundar Singh of India)
(London, 1937; reprint ed., New York, 1942), 10-11. See Parker's book again, p. 78, for the account of another
similar experience of Sundar Singh having encountered enemies who likewise hesitated perpetrating foul play
upon him when they perceived—what was unknown to him—that he was surrounded by a host of these beings
whom they assumed were other mortals, with one of these beings in particular having been singled out by his
enemies as being dressed in "bright garments."
96. See the Hibbert Journal (Jan. 1921):308-18.
97. Koch 1981, pp. 268-71.
98. Source: a postscript enclosure to a Newsletter sent the present author on a regular basis—this one
received in 1997—by Robert and Mariel Ward, missionaries serving in the Philippines. Their daughter Sharon
had mailed the story to them earlier that year and the Wards subsequently communicated this extraordinary
narrative to regular recipients of their Newsletter as an example of how important prayer is to the Christian and
of how the Holy Spirit of God moves in mysterious and wonderful ways.
99. Quoted in Appasammy 1966, p. 137; see also p. 8.
100. Ibid., 137. Speaking in quite another vein with regard to his mother, the Sadhu was often heard to
comment about her and about what he in his own life owed to her. For example, while speaking before crowds in
the Khasi Hills area of Assam he would say this: "My mother's lap was' the best university in the world for me."
Rowlands & Ghose (comps.) 1924, p. 49.
101. G. Francis S. Gray, "Sadhu Sundar Singh and the Non-Christian Religions," International Review of
Missions (Oct.l959):422.
102. Soderblom (1866-1931) revealed this private statement of the Sadhu Is when the Archbishop gave the
famed Gifford Lectures for 1931 at the University of Edinburgh in the particular lecture of the series that dealt
with religion as devotion (bhakti). See Soderblom, The Living God: Basal Forms of Personal Religion (London,
1933), 104.
103. G.F.S. Gray, "Sadhu Sundar Singh and the Non-Christian Religions," International Review of Missions
(Oct: 1959):422. Gray was at the time Rector of Fakenham, Norfolk, England, and lately Fellow of St. Augustine's
College, Canterbury. In his article, Rev. Gray noted that he could not "claim to belong to the select and rapidly
diminishing number of people who personally knew the Sadhu." He had, however, "tried to consult some of them
and to add their testimony to that of the written sources." Ibid., 421.
104. GTUM TsMs, 83. In this connection, the reader should be apprised of two statements which appeared
in Friedrich Heiler's work on the converted Sikh much quoted from or cited already as a source in the present
work: (a) "God's love is active everywhere, even in hell—so the Sadhu was told [while] in ecstasy"; and (b)
"Sundar Singh's teaching about hell is not consistent." Heiler 1927, pp. 134,185.
105. Quoted in Appasamy 1966, pp. 44-5.
Chapter 10
GTUM TsMs, 84-9; quotes: 86, 87, 88, 89, 89n.

1. Appasamy 1966, pp. 68-9.
2. Tharchin once said that he still had the said diary in his personal records somewhere. GTUM TsMs, 85n.
Unfortunately, it could not be found among his Papers. If ever the diary should turn up, it would constitute a very
valuable document on the life of Sundar Singh as well as on that of Gergan Tharchin himself.
3. Heiler 1927, pp. 10-11.
4. Yet these whom Eelen cited were not the only ones supportive of Sundar Singh's narration of the
miraculous in his life. A. J. Appasamy reports the following additional example of another Catholic source that
broke ranks with the Sadhu's Roman critics: "...a French Roman Catholic paper called L'Ordre Chrétien
published in May 1925 an enthusiastic article about him and his work. The writer contended that Sundar Singh
was a member of the true Catholic Church, for 'where there is Christ there is the Catholic Church' and that God
had called Sundar Singh to bring back the Protestants to the true unity of Christ. This Roman Catholic author was
convinced that Sundar Singh had really experienced miracles." Appasamy 1966, p. 210.
5. For all the biographical data on Fr. Hosten and the quoted material used, see Fr. F. Eelen, S.J. (of St. Mary's
Indian Academy, Kurseong, 20 May 1936), "Life and Works of Fr. H. Hosten," in the posthumously published
work of Rev. Henry Hosten, S. J., Antiquitiesfrom San Thomé and My lap ore, the Traditional Site of the Martyrdom
and Tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle (Calcutta: The Diocese of Mylapore, 1936, and printed at the Baptist
Mission Press, Calcutta), xvii-xxvi.
I. Quoted in ibid., 224.
8. Written 10 June 1926 and quoted in ibid., 223.
9. Typical of his lack of bitterness tinged even with a sense of humor is the following example: "During his last
years the Roman Catholics were down on the Sadhu, suspecting his sincerity. In one of his letters to me (now lost)
he wrote that the Roman Catholics would like to have burnt him, if they could, and added 'God bless them. "' Sundar
Singh to Annie Marie Petersen (Danish missionary in India), reported by îer in 1928 and quoted in ibid, 237.
10. Ibid., 236.
II. In May of 1930 Tagore had given the famed Hibbert Lectures at Oxford University for that year on the
subject of "The Religion of Man." And one evening thereafter, he attended a tea party held in the summer garden
of his month-long hosts, the prominent English Unitarian minister, Dr. William H. Drummond, and his wife.
After taking tea, they all continued sitting together in the garden conversing on a variety of subjects and in the
presence of a few close friends of the Indian poet and of the Drummonds. These included both students and
professors. At one point Dr. Drummond, for the sake of the other guests, asked Tagore if he would express his
views "on Christ and Christianity, and on the Churches of the West." The Poet agreed, but began his response
with a brief yet dramatic introduction: "Saraswati, the goddess of Poetry and Learning in Indian mythology, is
now by my side. She is whispering to my heart to speak aloud all that I think about Christianity and
Churchianity.... As once Socrates went with Phaedrus near the Ilissus, sat by the shade and breeze of a palm tree
and discoursed about Love, so here in Oxford, under the refreshing beams of the setting sun, in this flower garden,
I am going to make a speech on Christ and Christianity. Here it goes. Take it, if you can. All at one stretch ... The
curtain goes up, and here we are."
And with that, Tagore immediately—and quite significantly, it should be added—launched into his views on the
subject by offering to his listeners at the very outset two priceless quotations for them to ponder as a backdrop
against which he would proceed to show what in his view Christianity was, and what it was not, at its core. The first
of these quotations was from the Sadhu, the other was a "wonderful doxology" from the noted French Christian
savant, Ernest Renan. As to the quotation from the Sadhu, the Poet prefaced it quite simply by saying:
An eminent Indian Christian, a friend of mine and of my dearest friend, Charlie Andrews, Sadhu
Sundar Singh, said Now I have no desire for wealth, position and honor. Nor do I desire even
Heaven. But I need Him who has made my heart Heaven. His infinite love has expelled the love
420
of all other things. Many Christians cannot realize His precious, life-giving presence because for
them Christ lives in their heads, or in Bibles, not in their hearts. Only when a man gives his heart
shall he find Him. The heart is the throne for the King of Kings. The Capital of Heaven is the
heart where the King reigns.
All information and quoted material have been taken from Anthony Elenjimittam (close friend of the Drummonds),
The Poet of Hindustan: The Poet at Oxford... (Calcutta: Orient Book Co., 1948), see pp. 57-60.
12. Yale University Sterling Professor of Missions and Oriental History, Kenneth S. Latourette, has provided
a thumbnail sketch of Buchman *s Christian organization: "Soon after World War I a movement grew up around
Frank N.D. Buchman (b. 1878) which was said to have spread to more than sixty countries. By novel means
under fresh terminology it sought to win individuals, especially among students, intellectuals, the wealthy, and
those influential in political life and labor. Long called 'the groups' or the 'Oxford groups,' a name given it at
Christ Church, Oxford, in 1921, in 1938 it was renamed Moral Rearmament, usually 'M.R.A.'—as 'a race in time
to remake men and nations' and sought to effect 'personal, social, racial, national and supernational change'."
Latourette 1953, p. 1419.
Dr. Buchman was the one who had organized the Sadhu's American tour that lasted from late May to mid-
July 1920, and had himself accompanied the Indian evangelist during the initial part of his itinerary. Buchman, at
the time a lecturer at Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut, was profoundly affected by the Iiidian
saint's presence and preaching. To one of his friends he had written in June 1920 about the Sadhu thus: "A
number of men, just worldly men, have said this last week that he was nearer the Christ than any man they have
ever met He spoke at the Hill School [in Boston], and Mrs. John said every boy that left the building had a veil
of light across his face. It is Peter and Paul. I have traveled with him for two weeks, and he spells reality. He has
a message for material America" And to the Sadhu's biographer Rebecca Parker he wrote three months later the
following account:
He brings the message of the supernatural which is needed by this age. His accounts of miraculous
deliverances enlighten the pages of the Bible. Certain leading religious personalities in the States
were afraid of him and his tour. They represented the modernistic "new theology" and tried to
explain every "miracle." These people were surprised when they saw how receptive the students of
the exclusive Eastern universities were to his message. They remarked: "We; could not imagine that
a message like this would go through the world." The people simply streamed to him, so that he had
hardly time for his meals. In Boston he was introduced by an outstanding clergyman as "the second
best known Christian after the Holy Father himself [a reference to the pope].... It is true when he
said America would in fifty years' time have no spiritual leaders if it went on at the present pace....
I personally feel that we need such messengers from the East to visit us in the West and I would be
glad if I could be helpful in bringing the Sadhu back to the States for a longer tour.
Both Buchman letters quoted in Appasamy 1966, pp. 149, 153.
13. At the height of the Sadhu controversy Rev. Dr. Jones wrote to Sundar on 20 July 1926: "I hope some
time during the year I may have the privilege of being with you. We shall then be able to talk over many of these
things together. In the meantime let me assure you of my utmost confidence in you as a man of God and as a
servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. My advice in this troublesome hour to you would be that you siay as little as
possible about those who are doubting your sincerity. You can pray much for them but say as little as possible.
I feel that you are doing this and perhaps the advice is superfluous." Quoted in ibid., 266. Needless to say, the
Sadhu had unquestionably been adhering to such advice all along.
13a. In his article on "Hindu and Christian Sadhuism" that appeared in the October 1921 issue of the
(Edinburgh) International Review of Missions, Rev. Western had remarked quite favorably about the Sadhu as
follows (p. 536): "In these beginnings of a Christian sadhuism [in India] one name cannot escape mention—I
mean, of course, that of Sundar Singh.... Of his message to the Church in India and elsewhere, Canon Streeter and
Mr. Appasamy have now given us a most valuable exposition and study. It does not seem that it is his work to
be the leader of a [sadhu] movement, but it is very clear that his life and example will be of the greatest value to
the Indian Church of the future, as it is already to the Church of today."
14. Both letters found in Appasamy 1966, pp. 208-9. As to Soderblom's interest in Christian mysticism and
the mystics themselves, including the mystic impulse to be found in the Sadhu, one biographer of the Swedish
Archbishop has written the following observations:
In conscious opposition to the somewhat dry moralistic and rationalistic tendency of the school
of Ritschl ..., Soderblom insisted on 'something irrational in existence.'... He pointed to a secret,
an enigma, the heart-beat of prayer, in religion. This concern always lay at the root of Soderblom's
insistence on what he called mysticism, albeit that he traced important phenomenological dividing
lines between different types of mysticism. He was aware of the fact that his usage of the term
'mysticism of personal life,' as applied to Luther in particular, was not uncontested; yet he persevered
in using the expression. He showed a special interest in some of the great Christian personalities, the
Swede W. Rudin; the Indian Sadhu Sundar Singh; the Spaniard St. John of the Cross..,.
At yet another place in the biography, the author noted that Söderblom, "like Heiler in Germany and Canon
Streeter in England," both of whom, incidentally, were biographers of Sundar Singh, "showed a particular interest
in, and became a determined advocate of, the Indian Christian mystic Sadhu Sundar Singh," Bengt Sundkler,
Nathan Söderblom: His life and Work (London, 1968), 67, 385.
16. Quoted in ibid,, 48 and 208.
17. The sources for these thirteen eyewitness testimonials related to Sundar Singh's life and ministry are as
follows: for numbers 1. through 9., ll.a. and ll.c., all can be found in Bishop Appasamy's biography of the
Indian saint, Appasamy 1966 with the particular pages in that volume for each testimonial being, respectively,
as follows: 99-100, 111-12,174,112, 107-9, 129 and 195, 160, 177, 175, 191, and 191-2; for number 10., the
source is twofold: ibid., 158 and Riddle 1964, pp. 64-5; and for ll.b., it is ibid, 63.
18. Quoted in Appasamy 1966, pp. 181-4.
19. Quoted in ibid., 44.
20. Andrews, 1934, p. 179. Although Tharchin was indeed not included as a beneficiary in his friend's will,
he would nonetheless not be disappointed in the clear and precise purposes to which Sundar Singh had instructed
that his estate be applied:
1. The training and salary of young men who would take up evangelistic work in the hill states
of the Himalayas and in Tibet.
2. Scripture prizes to boys not over sixteen years of age for proficiency in general knowledge
of parts of the New Testament.
3. Prizes to mission workers for proficiency in general knowledge of the whole Bible.
4. Scholarships for study for five years or more to boys of about twelve years of age.
5. Scholarships to evangelistic workers for theological study at a recognized seminary.
6. Scholarships to other promising persons for the study and teaching of the New Testament.
See Appasamy 1966, p. 211; cf. Riddle 1964, p. 89.
At the time the will had been drawn up (30 Nov. 1925), the thrust Fund then established was worth Rs. 12,000/^.
It should finally be observed that the Sadhu's letters written following the execution of his will "show how careful
and diligent he was in adding to the Trust every sum of money which came into his hands from his books."
Appasamy 1966, p. 211. As to assistance towards Tharchin in earlier years, it must not go unmentioned that Sundar
Singh had aided his Tibetan friend with periodic donations which he forwarded, to Tharchin while the latter was
teaching at Gyantse in Tibet during the early 1920s. See Vol. II, Ch. 14 of the present biography for the details.
21. As alluded to in a footnote at this point in the Text of the present chapter, the author had discovered a
series of extraordinary letters among the Tharchin Papers that in part made the claim that the Sadhu, having
disappeared in 1929 and thought to be dead, was still very much present in this world. The story behind this and
other claims about the Sadhu had all had its beginning in early 1970 at Kalimpong with the receipt by Rev.
Tharchin of a copy of a bizarre letter from a fellow Christian pastor, B.S. Cargay of the Himalayan Free Church,
located in nearby Pedong.
In his covering note Pastor Cargay reported to Tharchin that a strange letter addressed to a former missionary
to Pedong, Miss Signe Bäck, had come into his hands on 27 Jan. 1970 and—because of its contents which dealt
with Sadhu Sundar Singh and the claim that he was alive—had "disturbed" him greatly. Enclosing a typed copy
of the handwritten letter to Miss Bäck, Pastor Cargay, knowing of Tharchin's association with the Sadhu "in the
years gone by," now asked the Tibetan to "form an opinion" about it and inquired, "Do you think it is true?" The
letter in question, sent to Miss Bäck from the Chest Hospital, Bani Park, Jaipur, Rajasthan, and signed by a Mrs.
Salomi John Singh (Sister), read as follows:
Dear Sister in the Lord,
Loving greetings to you in Jesus' Holy name! This is to inform you that Sadhu Sunder Singhji
who according to some disappeared in 1929 is alive today. He frequently comes and talks to us in
a clear loud audible voice. He says he will be with us physically in [the] very near future. He is
420
helping and preparing Christians everywhere to meet Jesus for His Second Coming like John the
Baptist did when Jesus came the first time. Anyone want[ingl to prove it is welcome to come [at
the] address given above and talk, on giving previous notice, as he is very busy and does not come
every day. This news may be given to all Christians on our responsibility.
May God help you to believe the truth and keep you ready every moment to meet Jesus. With
best wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Salomi John Singh
(Sister)
Reviewing this unusual letter "very carefully," Tharchin on 26 Feb. wrote a brief letter to Pastor Cargay
stating: "I don't think it is true" but added, "I am writing to the lady anyhow and asking some questions." He
enclosed a copy of his letter to Mrs. Singh of the same date, in which he requested her to convey his greetings to
the Sadhu "when he visits next time," adding that "if you don't mind, please ask him the following on my behalf:
Did he ever know me or ... meet me? If so, when & where and in which year?" On the 9th of March 1970 Rev.
Tharchin received a speedy Inland Letter reply from Mrs. Singh dated 3 days earlier. In it she wrote:
Dear brother Tharchin,
Greetings to you in the holy name of our Lord. Today Sadhu Sunder Singh-ji visited us and
before we told him anything about you he told us to give you his salaam and said he will soon visit
you himself. He cannot forget you. Our Lord Jesus is coming soon. Tell all Christians to have their
forgiveness of sins through Jesus and be ready to meet Him,
May God bless you and all yours.
v ; Sincerely yours,
Mrs. S.J. Singh
j
th
On the 12 of March Tharchin sent a copy of this hasty reply to Pastor Cargay with a covering note that gave
his considered judgment on the matter: "I am doubtful [about]... this strange news and I cannot believe that it is,
a true fact." That was his unchanging assessment for the ensuing six months, during which he continued to receive
a further number of Inland Letters from Mrs. Singh, all handwritten in ink as before, and whose contents were all
similar in nature; although now she began relating the fact that the Sadhu was n o ^ having tea, or breakfast, lunch
or dinner with her and the others at the Hospital, as the case might be. So reported Gergan Tharchin's daughter-
in-law Nini to the present writer in an interview he had with her and Tharchin's son, S.G. Tharchin, on 28 Feb.
1992 at the Tharchin compound.
Nini Tharchin went on to say to the author that her father-in-law often instructed her not to discard any of
his letters, documents, scraps of paper or whatnot; for, he remarked to her, they might be of value someday. So
periodically she would gather such items together from room to room at the Tharchin residence and put them in
a rather large round basket and place the latter in a small structure like a miniature house that until 1992 had
always existed atop the main house roof of the Tharchin compound. And in this "little house" Rev Tharchin
would himself often spend time; for there he maintained a type-casting machine which he operated from time to
time making type for the work of the Tibetan press which he had initially established decades before.
One day, reported Nini to the writer, which was some six months after the receipt of the first Inland Letter from
Mrs. Singh, Rev. Tharchin's daughter-in-law happened to be in the "little house" with the elderly Tharchin, and
noticed that atop© the pile of letters, etc. in the basket was yet another of Mrs. Singh's handwritten Inland Letters
addressed to the Sadhu's former associate. So she remarked to her father-in-law: "Oh, I see that another one of those
fimny letters has come." For Rev. Tharchin had himself heretofore referred to such letters as odd, funny or strange,
and that he had often derided and ridiculed them, declaring with respect to Mrs. Singh: "She is mad!"
On this particular day, though, there emerged from Tharchin a far different tone; for upon re-reading this
latest Inland Letter, he now remarked: "Today I realize and understand that Mrs. Singh and her friends were
meeting with Sadhu Sundar Singh in the spirit and not that they were meeting with him physically." And thus,
reported Nini Tharchin and her husband to the author, Rev. Tharchin's entire attitude had changed from disbelief,
ridicule and derision to one of sober reflection and the accepting as credible what Mrs. Singh had continually
written about to him.
Besides the personal interview cited already, the documentary sources from the Tharchin Papers for this
note—all of them letters—are; Mrs. S.J. Singh to Miss S. Back, Jaipur, mid-Jan. 1970; Cargay to Tharchin,
Pedong, 31 Jan. 1970; Tharchin to Cargay, Kalimpong, 26 Feb. 1970; Tharchin to Mrs. Singh, Kalimpong, 26
Feb. 1970; Mrs. Singh to Tharchin, Jaipur, 6 Mar. 1970; and Tharchin to Cargay, Kalimpong, 12 Mar. 1970.
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1969. With and Without Christ; Being-Incidents Taken from the Lives of Christians and
Non-Christians Which Illustrate the Difference in Lives Lived with Christ and without Christ (trans. Rev.
T.E. Riddle), Madras (London. 1929).
Swinson, Arthur. 1971. Beyond the Frontiers; the Biography of Colonel F. M. Bailey; Explorer and Special
Agent, London.
Taring, Rinchen Dolma ("Mary La"). 1970. Daughter of Tibet, London.

Templeman, David. 1998. "J. H. Edgar, an Australian Missionary in the Tibetan Marches," Lungta (Winter;
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Thakur, L.S. 1997. "Tibetan Historical Inscriptions from Kinnaur and Lahaul Spiti," in Krasser, Helmut et al.
(eds.), (1997).
Tharchin, Gergan. 1917. Tibetan Second Book (1st ed.), Ghoom/ Scandinavian Alliance Mission.
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Thomas Jr., Lowell. 1951. Out of This World: Across the Himalayas to Tibet, London.
Torjeson, EdvardP. 1983. Fredrik Franson; a Model for Worldwide Evangelism, Pasadena.
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Tshering, Tashi. 1987. Short Biographical Notes on Some Prominent Kinnauris at the Turn of This [Twentieth]
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420
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Urban, Margaret. 1967. Jesus unter Tibetern [Jesus to the Tibetans] (trans. Robert Huffman for the present
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Van der Velde, Paul & McKay, Alex (eds.) 1998. New Developments in Asian Studies, London/New York.
Van Spengen, Wim. 1995. "Geographical History: Long Distance Trade in Tibet," TJ (Summer).
Vittoz, Pierre. 1954. "The Church of Ladakh," MQ (Oct.).
Waddell, Laurence A. 1900. Among the Himalayas (2d. ed.), Westminster (1899).
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ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR FREQUENTLY CITED PERIODICALS
The Bible in the World; a Record ofthe Work of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London
The Catholic Herald of India, Calcutta
Church Missionary Intelligencer
Church Missionary Review
Geographical Journal, London
International Studies, Bombay
Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, London
Missionary Review of the World
Moravian Missions
Moravian Quarterly
National Geographic, Washington DC
Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren (or
Moravians), Established Among the Heathen, London
Tibet Journal
Tibetan Review
PERSONAL INTERVIEWS—VOLUME I
Formal interviews were conducted with the following individuals, listed in alphabetical order.
At Kalimpong:
Rev. B.K. Biswas, 24 November 1992.
Dr. Andrew Pradhan, 30 November 1992.
Mr. B.C. Simick Jr., 28 November 1992 & 15 December 1992.
Rev. S.G. Tharchin, 30 November 1992, and various dates in both February and December 1992.
Rev & Mrs. S.G. Tharchin, various dates in February 1992.
Mr. Achu Namgyal Tshering, 14 January 1998.
Rev. Tshering Wangdi, 30-31 December 1994.
In India Outside Kalimpong:

Mr. Gyamtso Shempa, New Tibetan Camp, Majnuka Tilla, Civil Lines, Delhi, 26 January 1992.
In America:
Sonam T. Kazi, Montclair NJ, 22-3 October 1991.
APPENDIX
The Demise of Poo Station and Church
The fortunes of the Poo congregation would continue to decline over the next years, following its zenith of
success in 1908. In fact, it would exist under the care and nurture of the missionaries for only another ten to
fifteen years more; for in the mid-1920s the very last Moravian missionary was withdrawn from Poo. But not
before Moravian Bishop Arthur Ward from London, upon visiting the mission station himself in 1920, decided
to grant it a temporary reprieve even though he was well aware that it was particularly costly to maintain the Poo
station due to difficulties inherent in transporting supplies to such a remote location. Three years later, however,
would find the Mission Board having to make the hard decision to withdraw when faced with a severe shortage
of resources to carry on the work at Poo any longer.
Still, the history of this small mission station, although admittedly desultory in its growth and progress,
hardly deserved the particular negative epitaph which one of its former resident missionaries was wont to
pronounce over its demise. Rev. Kunick, in his Mission Superintendent's "Report of West Himalaya for 1923-
24," issued from Leh and appearing in the June 1925 number of Periodical Accounts, wrote in part as follows (p.
396): "Owing to increased difficulties in maintaining it any longer, our work at Poo ... had to be closed towards
the end of the year [1923]. Separated from the rest of our stations by distance and results, it was always the child
of sorrow in the field. Poor and weak and blind to progress, it had become a hindrance rather than a success. So
the dry branch was cut off and the district vacated." Far from having "always" been "the child of sorrow in the
field," the Mission could take pride in the fact that Poo, described by John Bray as having "once been one of the
more encouraging stations" of the Moravian West Himalaya missionary endeavor, had experienced a lustrous
shining golden period of nearly two decades, as was delineated in Chapter 2 of the present narrative. This was
something that the other stations, even at their very best, had never been able to equal.
Nevertheless, Bray has put his finger on the main reasons for the failure of the Moravian Poo venture to
continue as a viable ongoing influence on the surrounding community and adjacent areas. In his paper on the Poo
mission alluded to previously in Chapter 2, he identifies three of the causes for its demise: (1) the Moravians'
lack of financial resources; (2) the philosophical divide between Buddhism and Christianity wherein few of the
Poopa Tibetans were able to take to heart the missionaries' claim that the Christian faith was the sole hope of
salvation, even if some aspects of that faith appeared both attractive and even familiar; but (3) and probably the
most decisive cause for the end of missionary activity at Poo, this lay in the social pressures on potential
converts: the constant fear they had of losing their social status in the community: for even though they saw
there were economic benefits to be derived from changing their religion, many of the poor Pepas (who constituted
nearly all of the congregants in the Poo church) came to feel that the social separation from their non-Christian
relatives and the wider community was too severe a price to pay in the longterm. For because "religion was as
much a sign of communal identity as a matter for individual choice," therefore, explains Bray, "to renounce that
identity could be seen as an act of betrayal." In sum, writes Bray, the combination of these three factors "proved
fatal." Despite the obvious fact that the Moravians made important contributions in the fields of education,
medical service and the local economy, the mission "had no lasting impact on the [Poo] villagers' religious
outlook."
Yet granted that the Poo congregation would indeed decline to a state and condition completely unrecognizable
to those who had known her former glory, she nonetheless had at least produced a Dorje Tharchin, who would
leave his distinctive mark on both the Christian and non-Christian world of Tibet in a most unusual way, as the
remaining chapters of this biography will have abundantly demonstrated. She had also produced a Paulu, and
likewise a few other precious converts such as Tharchin's own devout grandmother.
Be that as it may, the last missionaries were withdrawn from Poo at the end of 1923 with the understanding
that the church building and graveyard would be handed over in trust to the remaining Christians for them to
"safeguard their interests and the building." PA (June 1925):396. Meanwhile, by late 1923 Rev. Fred E. Peter had
been sent to Poo from the north to assist in settling all affairs relating to mission station and church, with the
intention of his finally departing in early September of the following year before the snows might entrap him
there for the winter. See letter, Peter to G. Tharchin , Poo, 25 March 1924, MCHA. Some of the problems
surrounding the sale of the Moravian property which confronted Br. Peter at this time are reflected in another
letter he wrote two months later to a Br. Klesel (in London?). In it he also gives a rather dismal picture of the
spiritual condition of the remaining Poo Christians:
As regards the sale of our property here I am in a somewhat difficult position at present. I have
learnt that the [Roman Catholic] Archbishop of Simla is after it. Probably the Raja, with whom I
am still negotiating, will buy from us only to resell to the Romans. Anyhow, if I could sell to them
direct, I would get a better price, but probably our Church would get a bad name. I am more for
selling to the Raja, if I can get him to buy at all. But if he refuses? What then? In case he does not
know of the Roman offer, I have therefore told him something about it; perhaps that will even
induce him to give a better price. And if afterwards he resells, that is not my concern. Most of our
present Christians will fall an easy prey to the temptation to become Roman Catholics. But these
same people would probably become Buddhists or Mohammedans just as easy. The few that have
some real life in them will either have to get strength to withstand the temptations from Rome or
will have to leave their homes for the sake of Christ, which, if difficult, has also a great promise of
Christ.
But I shall be glad, when my task here is finished. Responsibility without timely advice and
help from outside are weighing heavily sometimes. I shall be glad for a few years of quiet work at
Kyelang.
Whatever arrangements Rev. Peter was finally able to negotiate with the Raja were soon overturned by the
Native State ruler himself. For in a news column written by Bishop Ward which appeared in an October 1925
issue of Moravian Missions, there was communicated the following information: "Against Rev. Fred Peter's
orders, and in the face of his own promise not to do so, the Raja of Bashahr has now sold church and graveyard
to a villager, so that our people there have nothing left. It looks as if the Raja was working for the extinction of
Christianity in his country.... Poo will be visited from time to time in the course of evangelistic tours."
On a visit to Poo in the spring of 1930, Rev. Dewazung from Leh (whom Bishop Ward had ordained there in
1920 along with Yoseb Gergan) learned that prior to the confiscation in 1925 of the church building "the
Christians had continued to attend the Church every Sunday"; but that once they lost their meeting place "they
had neither had public services nor Christian festivals." Dewazung continued with his report of his visit at Poo
as follows:
They did not know the dates of Christmas and Passion Week as they had no calendar; but Br. Moti
and his sisters had services at home. Denga and Champhel and their wives went down to Rampur
for several months; Gyaltsan used to go to Rampur every winter with his family, and return eveiy
summer. The Raja of Rampur urged them to drink the sacred water of the Ganges, but these men
and women refused definitely. It is sad to say that other women did not remain faithful in this way.
[Drinking the sacred Ganges water was the ritual which any Poo Christian convert would have to
observe if he wished to have his social status restored in the eyes of the surrounding Buddhist
community. By so doing he formally and publicly declared he was renouncing his formerly-held
Christian faith. Interestingly, these sacred waters could only be procured from the Raja himself at
the distant Bashahr capital of Rampur, and costing in 1911 two rupees four annas per bottle!]
I questioned the Christians, whether they feel their spirits stronger or weaker since they have
been without a missionary. They answered that they feel very weak, as they have no chance of
spiritual food.
I thought myself that I must do something on behalf of these Poo Christians. After consideration,
I asked them to leave their homes and return into Ladakh with me, as I did not think there was any
hope of sending them a missionary to Poo. We were too far off to help them. If they came back to
Ladakh the Church would help them willingly.
The young men and women rejoiced very much at my request. Ail agreed to remove to Ladakh....
While Dewazung was still there Munshi Ali came by Poo. (This Tarnyed Ali, as mentioned later in the present
larrative, had by this time served as Sadhu Sundar Singh's interpreter and companion on the latter's evangelistic
:ours in Tibet proper, and became the Urdu language teacher at the Poo mission school right after Dorje Tharchin
Appendix 541
had left Poo for good in 1910.) Ali was very glad upon hearing that the Poo Christians had determined to go to
Ladakh. Ali noted to Dewazung that the Hindus had been trying to make them Hindu and that the Christians were
growing weaker and weaker and "might one day deny their Master," but that if they removed to Ladakh "the
missionary there could manage for them in their spiritual and physical needs."
Br. Dewazung then explained in his report that since two of the Christian brothers at Poo were not there at the
time of his departure back to Leh, and because, further, they would have had to sell their properties first, the Leh
minister could not bring the Christians with him from Poo after all. "They promised," Rev. Dewazung reported,
"to come in the autumn."
Br. Dewazung's report appeared in the July 1930 issue of Moravian Missions, a monthly published in
London which Gergan Tharchin, now ensconced in the far-off Northeast Indian hill station of Kalimpong, was by
that time receiving as a means of keeping abreast of what was happening in his former church home of Poo. In a
letter he wrote to London in early 1931, he expresses lament over what he read in Rev. Dewazung's most recent
account of the situation at Poo:
I am rather very sorry to read the report of Poo [inasmuch] as most of the Christians turned [back]
and drank the sacred water, but [am] glad some of them stood fast. I did not hear much from them.
Some time back, last year I received a letter from Sherap Gyatso, the son of Dewa Lambadar, and he
mentioned in his letter that the Christians drank the water, and I was really veiy sony to hear it.
As it turned out, only two Christian sisters, Rigdzin and Tadjung by name, out of all the Christians of that day
at Poo, came up to Leh, in response to Br. Dewazung's invitation to resettle there. Yet this only occurred a full
two years later when Rev. Peter again made a trip to Poo, arriving on 2 August 1932. Of his time there he wrote
the following: "I began to look about me, and collect what evidence I could of Christians still living in Poo. I found
two women, and they were anxious to leave Poo in order to live among the Christians at Leh. I accordingly
acquired another pony to carry their belongings, and on August 11th, we started on our way back to Leh." One of
these two, Rigdzin, became, in fact, a helper at the Leh hospital.
It would not be until another 23 years went by that the very last two Christians at Poo, again sisters in the
Lord, would leave there and come up to Leh in the caring custody of Rev. Yonatan Paljor, who stopped by the
village in 1955 on his return to Leh from a trip elsewhere. Indeed, two years earlier when Ladakhi Christians had
visited Poo in 1953, they had found these same two sisters "strong and faithful, still reading their Bible and
singing old Moravian hymns"! But because all the other Poo Christians had either died or relocated to other
places, they themselves, now very lonely, asked Br. Paljor in 1955 to allow them to join the Christian community
at Leh, which they did.
For all intents and purposes, then, this constituted the final end to any further Christian contact with Dorje
Tharchin's home village. He had indeed been the fortunate benefactor of the "golden period" of Poo's Christian
history.
Other than those already cited, the sources for this Appendix account of Poo's last years are: Bray 1992, pp.
373-5; Bray, "Christianity in Ladakh; the Moravian Church from 1920 to 1956," in Claude Dendaletche, ed.,
Ladakh Himalaya Occidental (Pau, France, 1985), 213; letters, Peter to Klesel, Poo, 20 May 1924 and Tharchin
to ? , Kalimpong, 21 Jan. 1931-both housed at MCHA; Ward, "News from Everywhere,"MM (Oct. 1925):75;
Dewazung, "A Report of Poo," ibid (July 1930):52; Editor's note, in ibid. (Nov. 1932):82; "Monthly Notes,"
ibid. (Jan. 1933):2; Pierre Vittoz, "Annual Report of the West Himalaya Mission for 1952-53," PA (1954):21; and
Vittoz, "Report of West Himalaya for Jan. 1955-Mar. 1956," ibid. (1956):4.
INDEX
CMS - Church Missionary Society (Anglican)

fird friend
GT Gergan Tharchin
La mountain pass (Tibetan term)
mbr - member
Mor - Moravian
msn - mission
msny - missionary
nr - near
SSS - Sadhu Sundar Singh
sta station
Tn(s) - Tibetan(s)
w/ - with
Abo Tachung (Abi Teschung), GT's maternal Bell, Sir Charles A: departures of Later Buddhism from
grandmother see Tharchin, Gergan Founder's original teaching 82, 83; on Delhi Durbar
Act for Better Government of India (1858): impact on 178-9, 179; unwarrantedly held to be unpopular w/
msny activity in India 67-9 Tns 212, 212n.; gives recognition to Desgodins' Tn
Agra Fort 266 Grammar 270n.; his life & career 282-4
Ali, Tarnyed Nasib: family background, Christian Benares (Varanasi) 76
conversion, and evangelizing w/SSS in Tibet 156-7; Bergson, Henri and SSS see Sadhu Sundar Singh
on SSS's final whereabouts 382n. Bernard, Theos 22,227,3234
Ambans, Chinese 55, 59, 211 Berthelsdorf, Count von Zinzendorf's ancestral
Amo Chu 276 Saxony estate at 47
"Amtschi" (priest-doctor) 120-1 Beutel, CMS msny Rev. H. F. T. 130, 137, 163
Amundsen, Edward 204-5 Bheelera robber(s), Encounter by SSS w/ see Sadhu
Andrews, Charles F. (SSS defender): on Kotgrah 130, Sundar Singh
132; pen-portraits of SSS 133-4; on the Bhotias (Tibetans), Four classes ofj in Dt Daqeeling260n.
humanitarian works of the East-West team of Biehl, Michael: on SSS 299-300,357,357n.
Christian sadhus 135,136; 163; on the sadhu ideal Bodhisattva see Tibetan religion
242; the impact of SSS on others 245-6; 370,370n., Bogle, George 55n., 56
383n.; describes SSS's unflagging devotion to Christ Bon and gShen 88, 88n.
during his last known days before his disappearance Bonvalot, Gabriel 55
383-4 Brainerd, David 23940
Animism among Tibetans see Tibetan religion Breutel, Mor Bishop J. G. 52
Appasamy, Rev. (later Bishop) A. J. (SSS defender) Bristish and Foreign Bible Society, London: and Poo
154,248,297,300n., 306,308,338,345,354,359- Christians (incl. young GT) 130-1; 204, 311
62, 360n., 362n., 363, 363n., 364n., 366n., 370, British Bhutan 257, 258n.
370n., 372n., 377,382m, 383 British East India Company 67-9
Aquinas, Thomas 290, 33In. Brotherhood of the Imitation of Jesus 135n., 135-6
Asoka, Emperor 73, 79 Bruce, Brigadier General Charles G.: commands 1st
effort to climb Everest 119m, 222; pen-portrait of
Bactria 349 Mor msny Schnabel & wife 119-20
Badamtan 296 Brunton, Paul: supernormal powers evident in Kailash
Bailey, Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Colonel) Frederick region of SW Tibet 313, 313n.
(Eric) M-: mbr of Rawling Expedition to Gartok Bruske, Mor msny Julius 33, 42, 148
(Tibet) 127, 129; and K. S. Paul 211, 212, 212n., Buchman, Dr. Frank (SSS defender) 370
221, 222; on Bell as frontier officer 282 Buddha Gaya 75, 76
Bakht Singh 310 Buddha Sakyamuni see Gautama Siddhartha, the
Basgo 7, 8 Buddha
Bashahr 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 Buddhism see Tibetan religion
Batasia hilltop 187
420
Buddhism and Hindu castc system in Lesser/Greater Edgar, James 341

Tibet 16-20 Eelen, Jesuit Fr. F.: unwarranted support of Fr.
BuxaDuar 201-2 Hosten's negative critique of SSS 364-7
Elam (Nepal) imprisonment/persecution see Sadhu
Calmucks, Mor Msn to 51, 52 Sundar Singh
" Cambridge Seven" 106,195 Eliade, Professor Mircea: experience of the paranormal
Canterbury, Archbishop of 354 in Himalayan NW India 322
Changchi Kenchung 341-2 Elias, Ney 70
Changthang, The 341 Empress Dowager of Russia (Romanov) and SSS 1922
Chao Ehr-feng ("Butcher Chao") 341 see Sadhu Sundar Singh
Charité Hospital, Berlin 52 Evelyn (Enfield) Cottage, Ghoom Mission 195, 197
Chini 7,10,11 Everest, Mount 186, 222
Chot (nr Kyelang) 32, 103
Chumbi Valley (Tibet) 276 Fife, Dr. E. E.: sends SSS to Subathu for baptism 134;
Chu-mi, Mt. 320 testimonial in support of SSS 372-3
Church Missionary Society (CMS-Anglican) 53, 69, Finnish Alliance Mission (FAM) at Ghoom 172, 207;
129 see also Free Church of Finland Himalayan Mission
Classical Buddhism see Tibetan religion Forman, Harrison: witnesses & experiences the
Crewe, Lord, Secretary of State for India 64 paranormal in Tibet 318n., 320-1,324-5,326-8
Curzon, George, Nathaniel, Lord, Viceroy of India 64 Francke, Mor msny August H. 1, 14, 15,45, 340, 348
Franson, Fredrik 172,1934,197-9,201-3,205-7
Dalai Lama, III 60 Fredericksori, Rev. John F. (founding leader of Ghoom
Dalai Lama, V 60 Msn to Tns) 194, 195, 196, 197, 201-2, 203, 204,
Dalai Lama, XIII: friendship w/GT, vii, ix-x, xi; 205
relationship w/Sir Charles Bell 2834; issues decree Free Church of Finland Himalayan Mission (at Ghoom)
outlawing capital punishment 339, 342, 342n. 208, 213, 214,216, 223, 224,224n., 254
Dalai Lama, XIV: friendship w/GT vii, ix-x; friendship Freud, Sigmund 360n;; negative view of SSS 366n.
w/Thomas Merton 33 In. "Fringies" 56
Dalhousie, Lord, Governor-General of India 10
Darjeeling 188-91,258-9,296,310,311 Ga Phuntsok: Christian convert from Leh 32; at
Daijeeling Railway ("toy-train") 60, 233 Kyelang's filial staof Chot 32,34,103; "calling" as
Das, Sarat Chandra 57,61,196-7,210n. evangelist/teacher at Kyelang 32-3; "role of
Daud (David) Singh (GT's benefactor) 159-60 peacemaker" at Chot 33; marriage to GT's
David, Vincent S.: eyewitness accounts of SSS's stepfather's sister 334; suicide of his wife's mother
sanctity 375-6, 377, 378 34
David-Neel, Madame Alexandra: her experience of the Gabler, Rev. Paul (SSS critic) 304,361,363n., 372n.
paranormal in Tibet 321,322,325-6 Ganden Monastery 324
Davidson, Dr. Randall see Canterbury, Archbishop of Gandhi, Mohandas K., Mahatma 133, 314, 358n.
Delhi 175 Gandhi and SSS see Sadhu Sundar Singh
Delhi Durbar 153, 170, 174-83; see also Tharchin, Gangtok 275,276,277,278,279-80,281-2,284-6,294
Gergan Gartok 5, 8, 10-13, 127, 161
Desgodins, Jesuit msny Fr. Auguste: Msn to Tns 266-71 Gartok Expedition see Rawling Expedition
Desh (Dash) Raj, F. 263, 351n. Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha; birth, life & death
Dobson, Miss Mary (frd of SSS): aged Christian hermits 72-5; enlightenment 75-6; his teaching 77-8; Great
in Kailash Himalaya 312,338 Departure 74; Great Renunciation 74; on suffering
DograWars 70-1 289
Dolan, Captain Brooke: on cruel punishment in Tibet Genghis Khan 60
341-2 George V, King-Emperor of India, and his consort
DongkyaLa277 Queen-Empress Mary 174-83, 211
Dorje Tashi, the Blacksmith (GT's father) 20,24,24-5, Gerard, Alexander 13
28, 108, 112 Gergan, Joseph, Tn Mor Minister & Bible translator
Drangtse (Tangtse, Tankse): Nestorian Cross carvings 127
hereE. ofLeh348 Gergan, Title of, bestowed on GT 45-6
Ghoom 185-8, 193, 247, 248-30, 252, 253, 296, 300,
Early Buddhism see Tibetan religion 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 311, 347
Eden, Sir Ashley 256,257 Ghoom Mission to the Tibetans 193-7, 224, 233
Index 545
Gianama338 Kalimpong 256-63,276

Goodwin, Miss (typist who accompanied SSS on his Kalimpong subdivision of Dt. Darjeeling 256-7,269
entire Swiss tour): eyewitness testimonial on SSS's Kalimpong-to-Lhasamule trail 273
integrity 376, 378 Kalka 10
Gould, Sir Basil J.: on Delhi Durbar 176, 177; on the Kamba Dzong 277
Residency at Gangtok 281; Acting P. O. S. 285n. Kanchenjunga 186-7,197,258,274,279
Graham, Rev. Dr. John A. 46-7,49,93,237,238,239, Kanum 5, 267
240, 262-3, 263, 264, 266, 286 Kapilavastu 73
Graham's Homes Establishment 257, 263,265 Karma Sumdhon Paul (Ghoom Msn School
Guge7 Headmaster) 119n., 208-18,219-22
Gulab Singh, Maharaja 70,71 Kartar Singh martyrdom in Tibet see Sadhu Sundar
Gustafson, Fred 196, 197 Singh
Gutzlaff, Dr. Charles F. A. 50, 5In., 52, 238 Kashmir & Ladakh, History of see Ladakh & Kashmir,
Gyantse 64, 126, 128, 129, 210, 211, 212, 221, 258, History of
297,298, 340, 341,342 Kawaguchi, Ekai 57
Kelly, Rev. J. (frd of GT) 220n., 249, 255n., 275n.,
Harrer, Fleinrich 59 30 In., 306,306n„ 307,308,361n., 362n., 363,368n.,
Hastings, British India's Governor-General Warren 56 374n.
Hedin, Dr. Sven: on Simla 153; at Poo 160-3; at Kempe, Ani Anna (close frd of GT) 213, 214, 214n.,
Kotgarh 163; at Simla 163; on Delhi 175 224n., 224-6
Heiler, Professor Friedrich (SSS defender) 304n., 306, Kham Province 341
337-8, 338, 346, 347, 360n„ 360-1, 362n., 362-3, Kilgour, Rev. Robert 311
363-4, 369, 372, 372n., 380 Kimura, Hisao (aka: Dawa Sangpo) 8,276n.
Herrnhut ("watch of the Lord") 47, 48, 50, 52 Kitchener, Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl, Cmdr-in-Chief,
Hettasch, Мог msny 34 India 163
Heyde, Мог msny Augustus William (patriarch of Tibet Knight, George 319
West Himalaya Mission) 37,52, 53, 54,65, 66,67, Koch, Dr. Kurt (frd of GT) 253, 299, 352
68, 69, 70, 71, 100, 122, 129, 145,202, 204 Kohl, Rev. J. (SSS defender) 379-80
Hicks, Roger 326 Kotgarh 11, 53,66,129ff. ,163; see also Sadhu Sundar
Hinayana Buddhism see Tibetan religion Singh
Hindustan-Tibet Road 8-9, 10-12, 13, 66, 128, 129, Kulendran (Anglican) Bishop in India S. (SSS defender)
155, 155n., 161, 168 3734
Hishey, Rev. Stephen (eyewitness to the paranormal Kulu 38
in Lesser Tibet) 329-30 Kumbum Monastery 320
Hodges, Mr. (Secretary to P. O. S., Ganktok) 284,284n. Kunawar 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 27, 86-7
Hoffmeister, Dr. Werner 1, 15, 125 Kunick, Mor msny Hermann (SSS defender) 42,117,
Hosten, Jesuit Fr. Henry (SSS arch critic) 255n., 275n.,. 156, 165,166, 167, 168, 169, 355, 380
285n., 286n., 301n., 304n„ 305n., 306,306n., 307, Kurseong 193,197,342
308,309,351n., 359, 361n., 362n., 364,365,365n., Kyelang, Mor msn staat 20,26,32,34,37,38,43,44,
366, 366n., 367, 368, 368n., 369,374n., 380n. 70,202
Hue, Abbé 56 Kyelang's lithographic mission press 44, 122, 171,
Hügel, Baron Friedrich von (SSS supporter) 370 202
Ilam (Nepal) see Elarn (Nepal) Lachen 206,229,285,292
Irvine, Andrew 119n. Lachung 197,206,292
Ladakh & Kashmir, History of 70-1
Jaeschke, Мог msny Heinrich 43, 45, 122,196, 203 Laden La, Sonam Wangfel 212,212n., 222
Jelep La 195, 196,276 Lahul 20,87n.
Jo-khang Cathedral, Lhasa 200 Lake, Major 70
Jones, Rev. Dr. E. Stanley (SSS defender) 143n., 246, Lake George NY USA 308
246n., 370 Lamoshar Lobsang Gyaltsen, Ganden Tripa
Juriva, Ani Hannah (frd of GT) 225-6, 226n. (Throneholder or Abbot of Ganden Monastery, nr
Lhasa) see Ti Rimpoche
Kailash 312 Lange, Rev. P. 379
Kailash, Mount 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, Later Buddhism see Tibetan religion
346,347,348
420
LaTrobe, Mor Bishop Benjamin 11, 18, 43, 106, 112, Mission (incl. at Poo, Kyelang & Leh) 46-54,66-7,
129 70-2,98-104; formation of Tibet Prayer Union 104-
Lebong 296 7; Poo revival 104,107-16; "missionary-doctoring"
Lefroy, Anglican Bishop (Lahore) Dr. J. J. 137 120-1; Mission to the Mongols see Calmucks,
Leh 7,8, 32, 70-1,348 Moravian mission to
Leh: Mor regional msny conference held here July 1890 Müller, Professor F. W. K. (Berlin) 348
31,54 Nagchu (Nagchuka) 341,343
Leo-Purgyal mountain range (nr Poo) 12 Namchi 295
Lepcha, Rev. Namthak 263 Namgia 12,13
Lepchas 274, 286 Namtu Bridge 10, 163
Lhasa 55,59,60,199-200,213,277,321,323,339,342 Nangpas vs. Pep as in Poo 18-20
Lightfoot, Anglican Bishop Joseph B. 175 Natu La 276-7
Lithographic press at Kyelang see Kyelang's Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Baron René de 329n.
lithographic press Nechung State Oracle 94
Little, Archibald J. 64 Nee To-sheng 330-7
Littledale, St. George R. 64 Nepal Medical Mission, Sukhiapokhri 315
Livingstone, Dr. David 238-9 Nepala New Testament 311
"Lonchen" Shatra see ShatraPaljorDorje Nepalese in Sikkim 274,286
Ludhiana 140,141 Nestorian-erected stone-Cross discovery by SSS see
Lumbini 73 Sadhu Sundar Singh
"Nestorian Monument" 348
New Testament Revision, Ghoom Tibetan 200, 203,
Macdonald, David: Christian conversion 198-9; family
background 199; spiritual development 199; mbr 204-5
Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa 199-200; Norbu, Dawa l7, 83
evangelizes in Tibet & Lhasa 199-200; Christian Norbu, Thubten Jigme 320
works 200-1,204; teaching Tn at Ghoom Msn School Northern Buddhism, see Tibetan religion
\
210; on Kalimpong 257,258,261,264; on Lepchas
O'Connor, Captain (later Lieutenant Colonel Sir)
& their Animism/Shamanism in Sikkim 286-7
Macfarlane, William 263 William F. 210,211,282
Macfarlane Memorial Church, Kalimpong 263-4 Old Sherap, Bonpo sorcerer 326-7
McGovern, William 126,259 Ollila, Rev. Eli 223,229
Ma-chu (name of upper reaches of Hwang Ho or Yellow Olmec people of Mesoamerica 333n.
River) 326 Orléans, Prince Henri d' 55
Mackenzie, Rev. Evan 21 On., 264n. Padma Sambhava 85,89-90,92
Madtha (GT's stepfather) see Zering, Madtha Pagell, Mor msny J. Edward 23,25,26,28, 29,30,52,
Maharishi of Kailash see Sadhu Sundar Singh 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 100, 102, 121, 122, 129
Mahatmas 312, 314, 315, 317, 318 Pakyong 278-9,281,285, 309
Mahayana Buddhism see Tibetan religion Pamir, The 349
Maitreya, the Coming Buddha 187 Panchen Lama 55n., 56, 210-11
Mallory, George Leigh 119n., 222 Parker, (Mrs.) Rebecca J. 142n. 345, 362n.
Manasarowar (Tibet's Sacred Lake) 313,314, 315,346, Patiala 140,339,344
347 Patterson, George N. 318, 328-9, 329n., 335n.
Mantrayana see Tibetan religion Paul, Karma Sumdhon see Karma Sumdhon Paul
Marx, Mor msny Hermann B. 25, 34, 117, 132,148, Paulu see Sodnam Gyaltsan
149, 156, 161, 162, 163, 166 Pedong 265-6,273
Marx, Mor medical msny Dr. Karl R. 71 PeemingLa 12,13
Maya Devi 73 Pemba, Dr. Tsewang Y. 228n. 342-3
Merrick, (Mrs.) Henrietta (Sands): witnesses the Pemba Tsering, Rai Sahib 228n.
paranormal in Tibet 322 Peshok 255
Merton, Thomas (Trappist monk) 33 In. Peter, Mor msny Rev. (later Bishop) Fred E. 348
Minto, Gilbert Elliot, 4th Earl, Viceroy of India 163 Peter, Prince of Greece & Denmark 21, 127, 329n.
Minto, James: on Kalimpong 257, 258, 261-2, 264 Pfister, Rev. Dr. Oskar R. (SSS arch critic) 292n.,
Mongolia, Chinese 52, 53, 66 304n., 306, 306n., 35In., 360, 360n., 364n., 366n.,
Moravians: at Poo 25-8, 31, 70, 102; at Kyelang 26, 380n.,384n.
102, 103; at Leh 70-2; West Tibet Himalaya Phari319
Index 547
Pho-lha Sodnam Tobgay 339n. Rongbuk Gompa 222

Phy lings 61 Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal 222
Plymire, Victor 328-9,329n. Royal Botanical Society 319
Polhill-Turner, Cecil H. 106-7,195,204 Royal Geographical Society 64,95, 319
Political Office(r) Sikkim (P. O. S.) 279, 280-2, 293, Rudok 70
294,368 Rumbeer Singh, Maharaja 70,71
Polyandry, Polygamy, Polygyny among Tibetans see Rungpoo(Rangpo)276n.
Socio-sexual customs in Lessar/Greater Tibet Ryder, Captain (later Surveyor-General of India) C. H.
Ponies, Tibetan 278 D. 128, 129
Poo and its environs, Description & history of 1 -8, Sadhu Sundar Singh: relations w/GT see Tharchin,
12-14 Gergan; family background 132, 1377l39n., 140;
Poo and the Moravians see Moravians birthplace 140; his given name at birth 139n.;
Poo's caste system see Buddhism and Hindu caste religious upbringing in Sikhism 137; devotion to his
system in Lesser/Greater Tibet mother 140, 140n., 354-5; education 140n.; burns
Poo's indigenous non-Buddhist religion 86-8 Christian New Testament 140, 142n.; conversion
Popley, Rev. H. A. 376 to Christ 139n., 140-2; his baptism 240-1; his
Potala 342 "calling" as Christian sadhu evangelist 142,240-2;
Prabhudas, Mr. 263,264-5 spirituality & spiritual development 290-2; on
Pradhan, Dr. Andrew 224n., 225n. suffering 248,248n., 290,291-2,297n., 303; Hindu
Pradhan, Prem310 sadhuism & the Christian Sadhu 242-5; impact on
Pradhan, Rai Bahadur 276-9 others 245-6; pen-portraits of SSS by C. F. Andrews
Pranavananda, Swami 314 132-4; at Kotgarh 53, 132, 137, 142-3; and C. F.
Prem Singh 229-34 Andrews 133; and S. E. Stokes 134-6, 137, 296,
Primitive Buddhism see Tibetan religion 370, 370n.; the "cave home" in Kotgarh hills 136;
Prochnow, CMS msny Dr. J. D. 53, 129-30 and Tibet 143, 156-7, 247-8, 298; and Poo 143,
Pundits 56-7 143n.; and Tagore 142n., and Gandhi 142n., and
Henri Bergson 142n.; and Russia's Empress Dowger
Radja Gompa 324, 326-7 1922 142n., 379; his first msny journey into Tibet
Rahula, Prince 74 w/Tarnyed Ali as interpreter 156-7; experiences,
"Rai Bahadur" 276 persecution there 157; attitude to persecution &
Rajput race 15 his persecutors 357; on obeying Higher Mandate in
Rakas Tal 315 re: crossing Closed Land frontiers for Gospel's sake
Ralpachen, King 57n., 89 291, 29In., 292, 292n.; persona non grata 292;
Rampur 5, 10, 11, 66 desire for martyrdom in Tibet or elsewhere 248,
Rampur (Punjab) 140 297n., 384; eruption of "the Sadhu dispute" in 1920s
Rangit River 225,295 over his person & work 299-300; putting "the
Raj it Singh, Maharaja 70 dispute" in perspective 357-63; particular events
Rasar (Risar), Dry-well incarceration of SSS at see Sadhu in Christian service called into question by critics:
Sundar Singh (a) Elam (East Nepal) imprisonment & persecution
Rawling, Captain (later Brigadier General) Cecil G. 127, 300-12; (b) the Maharishi of Kailash claim 312-38;
128-9 (c) cruel martyrdom in Tibet of Kartar Singh claimed
Rawling Expedition to Gartok 127-9 by SSS 339-44; (d) dry-well incarceration of SSS at
Redman, CMS msny Rev. Joseph 156, 240, 250n. Rasar (Risar) east of Tibet's Sacred Lakes 344-7;
Redslob, Mor msny Frederick 29-30, 32, 37, 70, 71, (e) his claimed 40-day fast & the infamous telegrams
100,202 372, 372n.; (f) his extraordinary encounter w/the
"Religion without name" see Animism under heading: Bheelera (Bhulera) forest robber(s) 350-4; (g) the,
Tibetan religion claimed Nestorian-erected stone-Cross discovery by
Residency, The 279,281-2 SSS 347-50; and (h) the Sadhu's apparently
Rhenock 273,275-8,280,309 unothodox statement re: his mother 354-5;
Riddle, Rev. Thomas E. (SSS defender) 140,306,346, clarification on these issues in "the Sadhu dispute"
360n., 369, 370n., 374, 383n., 384,384n. 363-82; his reaction towards his critics 357, 369;
Ringim (aka: Mangan) 173,206 eyewitness testimonials to the Sadhu's integrity &
Ripon, Marquis of, Vicerory of India 70, 71, 268 sanctity 375-9; his last will 381; final days 383-5;
Rishikesh 323 mystery, surrounding his final end 383n.
Roerich, Nicholas 95-7,315,341n. Sakya 17
420
Santarakshita 85, 89 Songtsan Gampo, King-Emperor 88

Sarahan 10,14 Southern Buddhism see Tibetan religion
Sarepta 50, 52 Spiti Province 87n., 163-4
Sarnath 76 Spiti River 12
Scandinavian Alliance Mission (SAM) 172,194-8,201- Stanley, Henry M. 239
2,206,207,213,224,229; see also Ghoom Mission Steen, Lieutenant Dr. Robert 210, 211
to the Tibetans Stokes, Samuel E. see Sadhu Sundar Singh
Scandinavian Alliance Tibetan Mission Press 171,172, Suddhodana, King 73
173,202-3,204-5, Sukhiapokhri 300,305
Schary, Edwin G. 315 Sundar Singh see Sadhu Sundar Singh
Schnabel, Mor msny Reinhold 42, 113-15, 117, 119- Sutlej River 2,9-10,11, 12, 128, 161
20, 121-2, 123, 124, 129, 130, 131, 145, 148, 149, Svarga Ashram 323
150, 151, 152, 161,162, 166, 167, 168, 169
Schnabel and GT at Kotgarh 130ff. Tagore, Rabindranath 133, 312, 338, 358n., 370; see
Schomerus, Dr. H. W. 347 also Sadhu Sundar Singh
Schreve, Mor msny Theodore 20, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37, Tantrism see Tibetan religion
38,42-3,46,110-14,117-18,120-1,122,123,124, Tarim Basin 349
146, 147, 150 Taring, Rinchen Dolma (Mary La) 22
Schwab, Rev. E. (SSS defender) 369,377-8 Taschi the Blacksmith see Dorje Taschi
Scottish Universities' Mission Institution (SUMI) 263 Tashigang (West Tibet) 156, 157, 343
Sepoys, Mutiny of 1857 67, 266 Taylor, Annie R. 63
Shah, CMS medical msny Rev. E. Ahmad 55-7, 59 Taylor, J. Hudson 51, 194, 195
Shamanism among Tibetans see Tibetan religion Taylor, Dr. John 383
Shamser (or Padam) Singh, Raja 14-15,26 Teesta River 229-30, 255, 256, 258, 295
Sharpe, Religious Studies Lecturer Eric J. 299, 300, Temi 294-5
357-8,358n.,360n. Temple, Sir Richard 258
Shatra Paljor Dorje, "Lonchen" (Great Minister) 283-4 Tharchin, Gergan tjjorje (Taschi) Tserima (Zering):
Shawe, Mor medical msny Dr. F. Ernest 71, 348, 349 family background 17, 20-1, 24-5, 26-8; f a t h e r s
gShen see Bon and gShen Dorje Taschi, the Blacksmith; mother see
Sher Singh (SSS's father) 377 SodnamaTserima; birth 20, 21, 24; child-baptism
Sherab Gyamtsho, Lama 196, 209 20; personal names viii, xxii,
Shigatse 56, 210, 211, 277 108,109,110,116; education at Poo 43-4,45,121-
Shipki (village) 13, 54,340, 343 2,123-4; classical Tn studies 44; stepfather Madtha
Shipki La 8, 12, 13, 128, 161 Zering's role in GT's classical Tn studies 44-5;
Shivananda, Tantric yogi Swami 323 education at Kyelang.45; Christian faith vii, xi-xii,
Shoberg, A. E. 195-7 24-5, 47, 122, 124, 130, 171, 191, 224, 229;
Sian 348 Christian spiritual development and training 122,
Siddhas 312,314 124, 130-1, 151-2, 171, 208, 224, 229; Christian
Sikhism 137-40, 141 Confirmation (age 15) 130; Christian devotional life
Sikkim 273-5,276-7,279-80,281,286-7 15In., 170, 229; importance of the Christian
Siliguri 60,232,233,235 Scriptures 151n., 152, 170, 171, 229; Biblical
SimiekSr., B. C. 263n. instruction & discipleship training for Christian
Simla 9,10,11,12,53,128,132,153-6,157,161,165, 267 service as a "native helper" 152, 166, 167, 168,
Singh, Sundar see Sadhu Sundar Singh 229; Christian character ix, x, xiii, xxi-xxii, 169-70,
Singtam 294 191, 192, 229; desires to study Tn lang./literature
Sining 60 in Tibet 154,168,169; works for this goal as coolie
Société des Missions Étrangères' Catholic Mission to on Hindustan-Tibet Road 155; is inspired by his
Tibet (SME) 266-70 mother having worked as coolie on the Road 155n.;
Socio-sexual customs in Lesser/Greater Tibet 21-4 friendship w/SSS xvii, xviii, xx, 20,132; appreciation
Soderlom, Rev. Dr. Nathan (SSS defender) 354, 370, of, and reverence towards, SSS 159-60, 297-8;
371-2, 385n. addiction to smoking 124-7, 192, 224-8; Rawling
Sodnam Gyaltsan (Paulu) 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, Expedition to Gartok arrives at Poo 129; at Kotgarh
122-4,131 13Off.; maternal grandmother AboTachung's
SodnamaTserima (GT's mother) 20, 21, 24, 24-5,26, conversion to Christ 110-11, 116; a lover of dogs
27,28,40,42,108,109, 110,117,144-5,146,147, 162,296; learns Urdu, and well, from Paulu in Poo's
148, 150, 151
Index 549
msn school 122, 158, 192; 1st encounter w/SSS (at Tibet Prayer Union see Moravians
Kotgarh) 136; reaction to his mother's death 144, Tibetan religion: Buddhism & Tibetan Buddhism 72-
148; inability to attend his mother's funeral 144, 97, see also Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha; pre-
151; negative attitude towards his stepfather 150- Buddhist Animism/Shamanism 85ff., 93-4; Tantrism
1, 151 n.; positive attitude towards his mother 151; 89-93; resistance to Moravians in Indo-Tibet 72,
aman of prayer 151,170,174,2^1-2,233; at Simla 97n., 98-102, 115; yoga doctrine 83, 84.
153ff.; serving, and learning skills from, Daud Singh Tinlay (Thrinlay), Lopen 223
at Simla, Delhi 159-60; 2d encounter w/SSS (at Tista River see Teesta River
Simla) 154, 155-6, 157, 158, 159; serves SSS as Tolstoy, Colonel Uya 341-2
interpreter in Simla Hills region 157,158; is taught "Toy-train" see Darjeeling Railway
Hindustani by SSS 157; put in charge of Daud Singh's Trashilhunpo Gompa 210
household affairs & furniture-making shop 160; Treshbech, Ani Edla (frd of GT) 225n., 225-6
works as dishwasher in Delhi 164; serves hunter as Tri-song Detsen, King 88-9
interpreter on trek from Simla to Spiti & back 164- Tsarong, Sa-dbang (Tsarong 1)213
5; returns to Poo for year but departs from there for Tsarong Shape (Tsarong II) 22, 62, 126, 213n.
good in late 1910 165-7; displays apparent, though Tsuglag Khang see Jo-khang Cathedral, Lhasa
not actual, vagabond spirit 169-70; applies for Tucci, Giuseppe 2, 13, 86, 258, 260, 262, 275
apprenticeship in printing press at Ghoom Tn Msn Tumlong 279
Press 171-2, 173; the celebrated-because oddly-
addressed-letter sent to Ghoom Msn Press 172, Ugyen Gyatso 57
203; receives teaching post at Ghoom Msn instead Ugyen Wangchuk, Maharaja of Bhutan 179
of work in Press 173; impressions of Delhi Durbar
178, 179, 181, 182, 183; leaves Delhi for Ghoom Vajrayana see Tibetan religion
187-8; resists temptation to drink spirits 191; is Van Boetzelaer, Baron 379
motivated to learn Hindi 192; teaches Tn & Hindi Van Manen, Marie Albert Johan 209, 216n., 219-23
at Ghoom 208,214; commences learning English & Vath, Jesuit Fr. Alfons 302n., 359
Nepali 223; embarrassed to speak in Nepali 223; Victoria, Queen 67
sharp contrast noted between his Christian faith Vok 295
experience & that of his Ghoom Headmaster 208-
18; becomes a master of Lhasan Tn dialect 223; Waddell, Major Laurence A. 259., 340, 343
proclaims Christian gospel along Teesta Valley 229- Waismaa, Rev. Kaarlo 172,172n., 173,174, 188,192,
33; hosts SSS at Ghoom 247,24&50,252; trek w/ 203, 204, 207,223, 226, 226n., 229
SSS to Sikkim from Ghoom 247,254-6,263-5,270, Wangtu Bridge 7,8, 10,11
273,275-6,277-9,280,281,282,284-6,287,290, Watchman Nee see Nee To-sheng
292,293,294-6; serves SSS as interpreter on entire Weber, Mor msny Julius 31, 37, 54, 65, 104-10, 117
trek 285-6, 295; on SSS's character, personality, Western. Anglican Bishop Rev. F. J. (SSS supporter)
preaching style, & habits 250-2,252-4,277-8,285- 135n.,243n.,370
6,295,295-6,36In.; on SSS's spirituality 290,294, Wherry, Dr. E. M. 301
294n., 347; inspired by SSS to evangelize 287; White, John Claude 196,274, 281,282
expresses concern over inaccuracies in publications Williamson, Margaret (Mrs.) Frederick: on the
about the Sadhu 362n.; attempts to have corrected Residency at Gangtok 281-2
those inaccuracies 362n.; expresses profound pain Wilson, K. R. 376-7
& regret over having been tricked into giving SSS's
Urdu volume to SSS's enemies 368-9, 381-2; Woodward, David B.: on GT & SSS 297
opinion on final end of SSS 382,382n.
Yatung 276,283,342
Tharchin, S. G. (GT's son) xiii-xiv, 227
Theravada Buddhism see Tibetan religion YigaCholling Monastery, Ghoom 187,209, 212n.
Thutob Namgyal, Maharaja of Sikkim 179 Yin-tang, Amban Chang 211
Ti Rimpoche 200, 324 Yoga Doctrine see Tibetan religion
Tibet: exclusion policy 54-66; lamas' pervasive presence Yongden, Lama 321
& influence 57-9; and China-"Priest-Patron" Yosodhara, Princess 74
relationship 59ff.; fear of Christianity & Christian Young, Rev. A. W. 204-5
missionaries 60-2; and British India-restrictive Younghusband, Colonel Sir Francis E. 64,95,230,282
policy by both Governments towards Christian Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa 1903/4 55,64,95,
missionaries in Tibet 68-9 199,282
Yunas Singh, Rev. 338
420
Zahir, Alfred 307, 35In., 362n.

Zatul Rimpoche, Lama 222
Zering, Madtha (Gt's stepfather): family background
28, 29-32; education 37,43; youth at Kyelang 37-
9; young manhood at Poo msn sta 39-40; life at
both stations 40-42; Tn schoolmaster & msn school
supervisor at Poo 42, 43; parents' backslidden
spiritual condition 31-2, 33, 34, 37-8; sister
Thakurma's sordid attitude & behavior 33;
Thakurma's marriage to Ga Phuntsok see Ga
Phuntsok; father's death 34; mother's suicide 34;
character flaws 38-40; positive character traits 40-
2,115, 131; works at Kyelang msn sta's print shop
40, 44; his "dark night of the soul" 149; apparent
spiritual restoration 149-50; affair with Kyelang
prostitute Gyamo 145-6; "the shady triumvirate"
affair: Madtha, Gyamo & GT's Mother Sodnama
146-8; marriage to Sodnama 28, 40, 42, 148;
desertion of his wife Sodnama 42,148,149; nothing
more is heard about Madtha 150
Zinzendorf, Nicolaus Ludwig, Graf (Count) von 46-8,
50, 149
Zorawar Singh 70
Zwick, Mor msny to the Calmucks, Br. 52
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Source: Lord Ronaldshay, Lands of the Thunderbolt: Sikkim, Chumbi and Bhutan (London: Constable, 1923).
H. Louis Fader
studied Western and Asian history at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, receiving
his M.A. in history there in 1958; and also received an M.L.S. degree in Library Science
(with particular emphasis on the social sciences) from Columbia University, New York,
1960; and he engaged in further postgraduate study in American and European history
for three years at Columbia during the mid-1960s. From 1960 to 1976 Mr. Fader was a full-
time tenured Instructor on the faculty of Queens College, City University of New York,
where he served in that institution's Library Department Social Science Division. In addi-
tion, from 1965 to the present the author has likewise served as Editor for Christian
Fellowship Publishers, New York, having edited and prepared for publication in English
some 55 titles of Asian Christian authors.
Since 1982 Mr. Fader has made numerous trips to Intiia, Nepal, China (only once)
and other parts of Asia, where he has often remained for four or five months at a time.
Currently the author divides his time each year between his home in Washington DC and
"BabakuT—his recently-established residence at Pokhara, Nepal, where he is engaged in
ongoing research and writing.
Mr. Fader's first book, Up from the Ash Heap (Guntur, 1987), is a biography of a well-
known Christian evangelist of South India. He has completed another work, "The Issa
Tale That Will Not Die." It is a fresh investigative study concerning the infamous nine-
teenth-century Russian journalist Nicholas Notovitch and a supposedly ancient Gospel
of Issa/Jesus manuscript he claimed he had discovered in 1887 at a Tibetan Buddhist
monastery in Ladakh, NW India but which has been proven to have been a literary
creation of the Russian hoaxer himself. This latest work of the author's is expected to be
published in 2002.
It is no exaggeration to say that if the ruling classes in Lhasa and New Delhi had heeded what
T h a r c h i n Babu was saying, Tibet's m o d e r n fate might have been different.
So declares D a w a T. N o r b u , the distinguished P r o f e s s o r of International Studies at Jawaharlal N e h r u

University, N e w Delhi, in his " I n t r o d u c t i o n " to this, the first full-length b i o g r a p h i c a l study ever to be
published on the life and career of one of the most r e m a r k a b l e personalities in m o d e r n Tibetan history. Too
o f t e n only briefly m e n t i o n e d in passing or else totally ignored today by writers and scholars on relevant
Tibetan t h e m e s , the Rev. G e r g a n T h a r c h i n , o b s e r v e s P r o f e s s o r N o r b u , w a s n o n e t h e l e s s a p i o n e e r in
several i m p o r t a n t fields of e n d e a v o r : " t h e first Tibetan j o u r n a l i s t in the entire T i b e t a n - s p e a k i n g world, a
towering modern man of letters in a field traditionally dominated by lamas, a lone modernizer in a tradition-
b o u n d society, and a b o v e all the most articulate s p o k e s m a n f o r T i b e t ' s f r e e d o m through his p i o n e e r i n g
n e w s p a p e r , the Tibet Mirror" that t h r o u g h o u t its history ( 1 9 2 5 - 6 2 ) he h a d published in the Northeast
Indian hill station of K a l i m p o n g . Indeed, Tharchin B a b u " r e m a i n e d right up to 1950 the sole Tibetan
w i n d o w to the outside w o r l d f o r the isolationist T i b e t a n s . "
But a c c o r d i n g to Dr. N o r b u , the B a b u w a s also, in the long c o u r s e of his m u l t i - f a c e t e d career, "to
e x p l o d e several Tibetological m y t h s . " O n e of these m y t h s which T h a r c h i n f o r e v e r laid to rest w a s the
notion "that in order to be a m a n of Tibetan letters and a f i g h t e r f o r T i b e t ' s f r e e d o m , one had to be a
Buddhist. He w a s neither a l a m a n o r a lay B u d d h i s t . He r e m a i n e d a p r o f o u n d l y sophisticated Christian
t h r o u g h o u t his life, despite his love f o r Tibetan literature and c u l t u r e . " M o r e o v e r , adds N o r b u , w h o had
initially c o m e to k n o w Rev. Tharchin w h e n a student in K a l i m p o n g , " h e w a s p e r h a p s the m o s t e m i n e n t
Christian in the T i b e t a n - s p e a k i n g w o r l d . " I n d e e d , B a b u T h a r c h i n "had truly integrated into the Tibetan
cultural fabric into w h i c h he w a s born those Christian values he had adopted. T h e r e w a s neither any sign
of identity crisis n o r c o n f u s i o n of values. He w a s at p e a c e , and shared p e a c e and w i s d o m with w h o m e v e r
he c a m e in close contact."
T h o u g h born in Indo-Tibet and early c o n v e r t e d to the Christian faith f r o m his f a m i l y religion of Tibetan
B u d d h i s m , even so, Gergan D o i j e Tsering Tharchin ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 7 6 ) w a s a Tibetan through and through, as the
p a g e s of this projected t h r e e - v o l u m e biography will a m p l y attest (the c o n c l u d i n g t w o v o l u m e s are ex-
pected to f o l l o w in due course). B a b u T h a r c h i n loved the Land of S n o w s , b e c a m e an enthusiastic student
of her language, history and culture, sought at all t i m e s the highest and best f o r her people, and s t o o d -
in the h o u r of greatest peril to her f r e e d o m and i n d e p e n d e n c e - a s o n e of T i b e t ' s strongest a d v o c a t e s in his
near-legendary journalistic d e f e n s e against the m a c h i n a t i o n s of the frightful I n v a d e r f r o m the E a s t : C o m -
munist C h i n a . A n d f o r these and other n o t e w o r t h y c o n t r i b u t i o n s to the w e l f a r e of Tibet this h u m b l e - b o r n
Tibetan f r o m the Northwest Indian mountain hamlet of P o o eventually c a m e to be respected, loved and
a d m i r e d by all and sundry a m o n g his f e l l o w ethnic c o u n t r y m e n - w h e t h e r ruler or ruled, rich or poor,
e d u c a t e d or ignorant, Buddhist or n o n - B u d d h i s t . He w a s even a personal friend of the t w o most recent
ruling P o n t i f f s of the Tibetan B u d d h i s t C h u r c h : the G r e a t Thirteenth and the currently reigning Four-
teenth Dalai L a m a . As o n e of his m a n y Tibetan a d m i r e r s w a s wont to say about Rev. T h a r c h i n , his
Christian a f f i r m a t i o n never s e e m e d "to get in the w a y of his relations with all sections of the Tibetan
c o m m u n i t y , " w h o "held h i m in such high e s t e e m . "
R e c o g n i z i n g , h o w e v e r , "the d a n g e r o f p o p u l a r f o r g e t f u l n e s s " which " e v e n G e r g a n T h a r c h i n ' s r e m a r k -
able a c h i e v e m e n t f a c e s " in this current age of i n f o r m a t i o n e x p l o s i o n , P r o f e s s o r Norbu w a s m o v e d to
e x p r e s s his p r o f o u n d appreciation to the a u t h o r of Called from Obscurity in the f o l l o w i n g laudatory
terms:
We-all the Tibeian-speaking peoples in the Himalayas and Inner Asia-are deeply grateful to H. Louis
Fader. For he has resurrected the saga and legend of Tharchin Babu for our own generation and posterity
.... I am glad to say that this important task has gracefully fallen into the able and careful hands of Mr.
Fader... [whose] initial interest had been centered around the life of a famous Christian convert from
Sikhism, Sadhu Sundar Singh of India, which opened the door to (he author to the world of Tharchin
Babu.... The author had free access to the entire Tharchin family records and the pertinent Christian
missionary documents on Tibet that had scarcely been researched before. He has also spared no pains
to engage in extensive research on Tibetan history, culture and politics, within whose broad context he
has empathetically placed the life and times of Tharchin Babu. The result is not only a highly re-
searched biography ...; it is also a significant contribution to Tibetan Church History, woven around
the spirit and activity of a great Tibetan Christian....
As a Tibetan. I personally thank the present author for resurrecting the life and times of this eminent
Tibetan Christian. As a fellow writer, I congratulate Mr. Fader for his wonderful book.

CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TRUE SON OF TIBET GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN Vol.1

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CALLED FROM OBSCURITY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TRUE SON OF TIBET GERGAN DORJE THARCHIN Vol.1

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CALLED FROM OBSCURITY:

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TRUE SON OF TIBET

Tharchin Babu-la was a man of many [commendable]

I met Tharchin Babu-la a few times. What I admired

Another of Tharchin Babu-la's qualities that I

After 1959 and the establishment of the Tibetan

[The Babu] made an important contribution to

Available from the Press at:

SADHU SUNDAR SINGH, 1920 '

In due course, with my own recognition as Dalai Lama, I inherited my

Columbia University, New York City, Butler Library

Abbreviation Used in Documenting Gergan Tharchin's

Abbreviation Used in Documenting the

Abbreviation Used in Documenting various GT-Related Materials

PCRH (1) Poo Church Register, now housed at Herrnhut and

Abbreviations Used in Documenting Materials Quoted

Frontispiece—Gergan Tharchin, c.1937 {opp. p. //)

Scripture passages, whether quoted in

Early Childhood and Preparation: Humble Beginnings at Poo*

A city on a hill cannot be hid.

Early Childhood and Preparation (Concl'd):

The well-known Russian scholar on Buddhism, Theodor I. Stcherbatsky, has pinpointed

quite successful, at obtaining superhuman powers and by esoteric psycho-sexual disciplines,

This greatly adulterated form of orthodox Buddhism—i.e., the Tantric-Mahayana system

Kvaerne, "Introduction," in Ncbesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet, iv.

of lamas do not give very good evidence of their uprightness....

Little Hedwig's own letter of 5 March is most precious:

(2) Summer 1889—Tharchin's stepfather's parents are excommunicated by Br. Weber.

Now a brief pen-portrait of the Schreves' successors at Poo—the Schnabels—has been

Avoid the lustful eye.

it might have been too painfol an experience.*

Young Manhood at Simla and Delhi:

At Ghoom: New Dimensions

patron-friends of yesteryear—Political Officer Bailey, Darjeeling's Tibetan Sub-Deputy

These words I offer as a prayer to God, "May you live long

Tharchin has described the scene in quite colorful terms:

Along the Teesta Valley: Proclamation of the Gospel 272

Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet

* Information per "Tharchin's Replies ..."

Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Cont'd)—Preaching

* Date per "Tharchin's Replies . . . "

* The arrival date into Rhenock is per "Tharchin's Replies ..."

Which, roughly translated, would read:

If you do not carry him up the hill, you are no horse;

Sadhu Sundar Singh: Proposed Visit to Tibet (Concl'd)—Disappointment:

Sadhu Sundar Singh (Cont'd): Critical Study

In Chapter 8 reference was made to the Hosten-Kelly correspondence which figured in

This same balance between scientific inquiry and an acknowledgment of psychic

As but one example of the "magnetic atmosphere of intense spiritual vibration" of a

This critical evaluation of some extraordinary experiences and unusual statements of

Sadhu Sunday Singh (ConeI'd): Controversy and Clarification 397

When the semblance of an autobiography of Sadhu Sundar %

PI. 2 "Missionary entrepreneur par

PI. 6 Moravian missionary J.

PI. 8 Moravian missionary and renowned scholar August Hermann Franeke,

PI. 10 H.A. laeschke (1817-83). the great

PI. 12 View of Gartok village in far western Tibet.

PI. 16a,b New wire-rope suspension bndge erected 1910 over

PI. 18 Tarnyed Nasib Ali. the new Urdu teacher

PI 20a.b Birthplace of Gautama, the Buddha (7563 b.c.-?483 b.c.);

PI. 26a,b An example of the ubiquitous Tibetan Buddhist

28 The Dorje and Drilbu. basic emblems of Tibetan Buddhism.

PI 34 St Stephen's College, Delhi