Despite not having a place to truly call home for the past sixty two years, Tibetan culture is thriving against all odds. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a symbol of resilience for his people, and is the principal proponent as to why Tibetan culture survives after over six decades in exile. He is their spiritual leader and the living embodiment of their faith and culture. His people draw fortitude from his strength of character and his message of unity and well-being that has made the Nobel Peace Prize winner globally renowned.
The care the Dalai Lama has for his people is reflected by the measures he has taken to secure their livelihoods over time.
His Holiness has devised a cultural support system out of his home away from home in Dharamsala, the town perched in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas that acts as a central hub of all things Tibetan.
The Central Tibetan Administration, the official label of the government in exile, has numerous facets that are specifically in place to support Tibetan cultural practices. The Department of Religion and Culture was established to overlook religious and cultural affairs in the Tibetan exiled community by reviving, preserving, and promoting traditions that have been led to the verge of extinction inside Tibet.
Resilience has grown from the ground up through the department supporting various aspects of Tibetan culture: Tibetan Buddhism is supported through the preservation of monasteries and nunneries; the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts receives direct funding to protect Tibetan artistic practices; and various other institutions are propped up to keep the Tibetan flame burning.
Protecting Tibetan cultural practices in a land where the customs differ is no easy feat. In that respect, regular events such as the annual Tibet Day are vital. Started as a government initiative to revitalize Tibetan culture, Tibet Day has turned into an annual opportunity for communities to get together and enjoy all things Tibetan. From small groups in the remote nomadic areas close to the Tibetan border, to larger communities in the south of India, Tibetan refugees do what Tibetans would be doing in their own land in a world without Chinese occupation.
They dress in traditional Tibetan dress that is vibrant to the eye; they dance beautifully synchronized flowing dances; they sing songs in homage to the land they long for; they debate Buddhist philosophy and its benefits to mankind; they enjoy Tibetan dishes such as Tsampa and drink butter tea.
Therefore educating these potential pioneers is key to maintaining the Tibetan way of life. For the first waves arriving from Tibet, conditions were difficult, with high rates of malnutrition and a lack of educational and working opportunities plighting the Tibetan people. The first arrivers were forced to partake in arduous manual work such as road construction for little to no money. Initially starting with 51 children, the TCV is now a registered nonprofit that currently cares for over 12, children across India, and is arguably the biggest proponent that has allowed Tibetan culture to thrive in exile.
Instilling this message in the children creates an environment in which learning and the transmission of Tibetan culture is successful. There is no culture without language, and as all classes apart from languages are taught in Tibetan, this creates a core identity that is the base for Tibetan culture to thrive. The children learn of their land, customs and traditions in specifically tailored lessons. Through a concerted effort, the citizens of Earth can stand up and say "NO!
The struggles in Tibet are symbolic for every human rights struggle. Please, get involved. There is only a limited time left until there will longer be a Tibet to save. Tibet was one of the mightiest powers of Asia for the three centuries that followed, as a pillar inscription at the foot of the Potala Palace in Lhasa and Chinese Tang histories of the period confirm.
The Tibetan Lama promised political loyalty and religious blessings and teachings in exchange for patronage and protection. The religious relationship became so important that when, decades later, Kublai Khan conquered China and established the Yuan Dynasty , he invited the Sakya Lama to become the Imperial Preceptor and supreme pontiff of his empire.
The relationship that developed and continued to exist into the 20th Century between the Mongols and Tibetans was a reflect of the close racial, cultural, and especially religious affinity between the two Central Asian peoples.
The Mongol Empire was a world empire and, whatever the relationship between its rulers and the Tibetans, the Mongols never integrated the administration of Tibet and China or appended Tibet to China in any manner. Tibet broke political ties with the Yuan emperor in , before China regained its independence from the Mongols. Not until the 18th Century did Tibet again come under a degree of foreign influence.
On the other hand, the Dalai Lama, who established his sovereign rule over Tibet with the help of a Mongol patron in , did develop close religious ties with the Manchu emperors, who conquered China and established the Qing Dynasty The Dalai Lama agreed to become the spiritual guide of the Manchu emperor, and accepted patronage and protection in exchange.
This "priest-patron" relationship known in Tibetan as Choe-Yoen , which the Dalai Lama also maintained with some Mongol princes and Tibetan nobles, was the only formal tie that existed between the Tibetans and Manchus during the Qing Dynasty. It did not, in itself, affect Tibet's independence. On the political level, some powerful Manchu emperors succeeded in exerting a degree of influence over Tibet. Thus, between and , Emperors Kangxi, Yong Zhen, and Qianlong sent imperial troops to Tibet four times to protect the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people from foreign invasions by Mongols, and Gorkhas or from internal unrest.
These expeditions provided the emperor with the means for establishing influence in Tibet. He sent representatives to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, some of whom successfully exercised their influence, in his name, over the Tibetan government, particularly with respect to the conduct of foreign relations. At the height of Manchu power, which lasted a few decades, the situation was not unlike that which can exist between a superpower and a satellite or protectorate, and therefore one which, though politically significant, does not extinguish the independent existence of the weaker state.
Tibet was never incorporated into the Manchu Empire, much less China, and it continued to conduct its relations with neighboring states largely on its own. Manchu influence did not last very long. It was entirely ineffective by the time the British briefly invaded Lhasa and concluded a bilateral treaty with Tibet, the Lhasa Convention, in Despite this loss of influence, the imperial government in Peking continued to claim some authority over Tibet, particularly with respect to its international relations, an authority which the British imperial government termed "suzerainty" in its dealings with Peking and St.
Petersburg, Russia. Chinese imperial armies tried to reassert actual influence in by invading the country and occupying Lhasa. Following the revolution in China and the overthrow of the Manchu Empire, the troops surrendered to the Tibetan army and were repatriated under a sino-Tibetan peace accord.
The Dalai Lama reasserted Tibet's full independence internally, by issuing a proclamation, and externally, in communications to foreign rulers and in a treaty with Mongolia. Tibet in the 20th Century Tibet's status following the expulsion of Manchu troops is not subject to serious dispute. What ever ties existed between the Dalai Lama and the Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty were extinguished with the fall of that empire and dynasty.
From to , Tibet successfully avoided undue foreign influence and behaved, in every respect, as a fully independent state. Instead, visitors project their own ideas, concepts and fantasies onto objects, interpreting and consuming them according to their own preconceived agenda. These critiques raise several interesting ethical questions, which this paper has addressed in part by discussing Tibetan perspectives on religious material culture.
These displays not only include more secular material, but also emphasise alternative narratives of Tibetan culture. For example, the secular galleries created at the Newark Museum by curator Katherine Paul, which opened in , display several items from the Newark Tibetan jewellery collection in connection with a narrative focussing on Central Asian trade.
The Rubin Museum of Art continues to host a variety of temporary exhibitions, some of which examine more diverse aspects of Tibetan and Himalayan culture and history. Martin pers. Likewise, do Tibetans living in exile really have a choice but to accept our representations of them, given that Western support is essential to their cause cf. Magnusson, ; Lopez, ? In this sense Tibetanness and representations of it, both by Tibetans and by Others for Others, are always, and necessarily, political cf.
Magnusson, ; Anand, ; Lopez, ; Kaplan, The Tibetan case is salutary: it reminds us of the salience of representation, especially for living peoples, and that the decisions we make and representations we construct have ramifications beyond museum walls and even national borders.
Representing Tibetan culture predominantly through the lens of Buddhism, or failing to challenge prevailing Western stereotypes of Tibetanness have real-life consequences for contemporary Tibetans living both inside Tibet and in the wider diaspora. Karp and S. Jackson eds , Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre. B uchloh , Benjamin H. Steeds et al. Coote and A. D avis , Richard H. Klieger ed. H ess , Julia. J onathan , Victoria n. Kaplan ed. K lieger , P. Christiaan ed.
K orom , Frank ed. The Buddhist Review , 3 3 : Acquisitions and Encounters during a Himalayan Journey, in S. Dudley, A. Barnes, J. Binnie, J. Petro and J.
Pearce London, Routledge : — Korom ed. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin eds , Media Worlds. O rtner , Sherry B. P hillips , Ruth B. Phillips and C. Ihara and Z. Yamaguchi eds , Tibetans Studies. I: Introduction Newark nj , Newark Museum.
R hie , Marilyn and T hurman , Robert A. S nellgrove , David L. Phonetic rendering used in text. Correct Tibetan spellings in Wylie transliteration. Where possible, I have included comments on subsequent developments in footnotes; I have also included material from ethnographic fieldwork which I conducted in the Tibetan exile communities of Dharamshala Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh Jammu and Kashmir in India between August and September Please refer to the glossary at the end of this paper for correct Tibetan spellings in Wylie transliteration.
This case contains items of Tibetan metalwork and jewellery J. Clarke pers. In particular, the religions of Bon and Islam have played and continue to play important roles in Tibetan communities worldwide. In this paper I use the term primarily to refer to Western notions of beauty and connoisseurship with regard to fine art.
M artin , , and for a discussion of the collecting practices surrounding Tibetan museum objects. Shelton, who worked in Eastern Tibet between and The shrine contains Tibetan objects collected over a c. In April , a new exhibition of Tibetan objects opened at the Horniman Museum.
A lpers , It should be noted, however, that the contemporary art world has also engaged with Tibetan material culture in a similar way. M artin , and , 42; B uchloh , , In the exhibition, he included three Tibetan Buddhist monks producing a sand particle mandala see footnote 21 on the production of sand mandalas in museums.
Beyond contemporary art exhibitions featuring Tibetan objects, there is also Tibetan contemporary art itself. Tibetan artists have also drawn on religious themes extensively in their work; the Buddha image, for example, has become a prominent signifier of Tibetan contemporary art e. H arris , , All three sets were acquired by Dr Albert L. Shelton R eynolds , 30; R eynolds and H eller , Kandell shrine, staff at the Rubin Museum have installed another shrine in its place.
A number of items were also gifted to the museum by Shelley and Donald Rubin. Whilst unwilling to take advantage of the refugee who had offered her the gau , she decided to purchase the object since she felt that if not her, he would likely succeed in selling it to another; moreover, the money from her purchase would enable him to buy the basic necessities he required.
A smaller version of the shrine was displayed at the Rubin Museum in New York in July when research for this paper was conducted. The report quoted focuses on the Alice S. In recent years, maroon-robed monks producing particle mandalas more commonly known as sand mandalas have become a relatively common sight in museums in Europe and America. The phenomenon raises similar questions to the shrines under discussion about the place of ritual and religion in the museum.
See M c L agan , , and S chrempf for further discussion and comparative material. Paul believes this may be due more to financial or practical constraints than to lack of interest; the Newark Museum is relatively difficult and expensive to reach for Tibetans living in the more far-flung boroughs of New York, especially those east of Manhattan. I interviewed the monks whilst they were constructing a particle mandala at the Horniman Museum London in December O rtner , ; S hakya , ; S amuel , ; F rench , ; D reyfus , ; P irie , and others concerning the extent to which Tibetan Buddhism colours and shapes different aspects of Tibetan and Himalayan culture and society.
At the time of our discussion, Geshe Lhakdor himself a senior monk hoped to commission and include more secular items in the new displays than were present in the old.
However the majority of the objects he intended to re-display and the narratives he planned to develop through the exhibitions continued to emphasise Tibetan Buddhism. Not all Tibetans are satisfied with museum representations of their culture in the West. These exhibitions, unlike those discussed in this paper, were more heavily influenced by Chinese curators, however.
The latter in particular was explicitly propagandic. DPhil, University of Oxford imogen.
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