Concept note .uk



Hundred Years of Tagore Reception: 1913-2013

Tibet

Françoise Robin (INALCO, Asies, Paris)

The history of Rabindranath Tagore’s literary reception among Tibetans is a paradoxical and belated one: in spite of Tibet’s relative geographical closeness to India, Tagore’s works remained unknown until the late 1970s among the exile Tibetan community and the early 1980s in Tibet proper, when they wound their way across the high Tibetan plateau and were met by enthusiastic young Tibetan intellectuals, ironically enough, via Chinese translations. Since then, Tagore has been regularly translated into Tibetan, and, as a token of Tagore’s popularity among Tibetan literati, Gitanjali has been translated three times by three different translators, a rare phenomenon as far as modern literature is concerned.

I.India and Tibet

In the early 20th century, Tibetans would cross over the Himalaya range and go to India, mainly for three reasons. First, for educational motives: in the 1920s, the élite of the Central Tibetan[i] society started enrolling their children at English-speaking Christian schools in Darjeeling (St Joseph’s College, North Point, was a favourite) and Kalimpong, after the 13th Dalai Lama (1875-1933) sent a delegation of four Tibetan young teenagers to England to enhance their technical skills, in 1914. Others would go to India for business. Some wealthy Tibetan merchants kept commercial trading agencies in Kalimpong, and Tibetan caravans would regularly cross over the Himalayan passes, loaded with wool, musk, yak tails, etc. Of course, the third and paramount reason for Tibetans to go to India was religious. Pilgrimage to holy Buddhist sites in Nepal and India was considered the apex of a Tibetan Buddhist’s life.

On the diplomatic level, Western historians concur to say that Tibet became independent de facto, if not de jure, after the collapse of the Manchu Qing dynasty in China (1912), which in the last decades of its existence had held little, if any, control over Tibet anyway. Between 1912 and 1947, Great-Britain and Tibet (more precisely, the half of Tibet that was headed by the Dalai Lama since 1642) enjoyed cordial links, eventually leading to the establishment of a British delegation in Lhasa in 1936.

In 1947, when India secured independence, things carried on almost unchanged on the Tibeto-Indian diplomatic front. An Indian Mission took over from the British Mission in Lhasa and India supplied Tibet with weapons without referring to China. But India grew increasingly uneasy about supporting an independent Tibet, especially since the new Mao-led China, a potential Socialist ally, became more and more assertive about Tibet being part of China. Moreover, Nehru did not wish to threaten the solidarity of the socialist countries in the so-called “Third World” which emerged after the Second World War.[ii] In March 1959, Tibet lost its de facto independence. India quickly aligned with the Chinese view that Tibet was part of China, but still offered shelter to the Dalai Lama and his tens of thousands of followers who took to life in exile.[iii] The flow of people and goods between Tibet and India, which had been constant until then, became unthinkable, with the Chinese army strictly guarding the border. The Sino-Indian war in 1962 only heightened the tension between the two countries. Contacts between Tibetans and Indians became extremely scarce, hardly any Tibetans making their way to Nepal and India any longer. The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) perpetuated the status quo. India remained inaccessible to “China” Tibetans until 1980, when some of them were released from prison and allowed to visit their relatives in India, or when exiled Tibetans were allowed to resume contact with their families in Tibet.

Since the early 1980s, Tibetans have resumed their visits to India, by legal and, more often, clandestine means. Sometimes they crossed the Himalayan range on foot if they did not have a passport, to obtain an audience with the Dalai Lama and to go on pilgrimage to holy Buddhist sites of India. Children continue to be sent by their parents to Tibetan schools set up in India, hoping that they will be granted a better and more culturally-suited education there than in China, where Buddhism is not included in the curriculum and where Tibetan language is neglected. In the meantime, with the prospect of winning their hearts, the Chinese authorities have been allowing more and more Tibetans to return from exile to their homeland for short visits and to set up business in the now flourishing Chinese economic environment. But the circulation of Tibetans across the Himalayas has come virtually to a halt since the Tibetan uprising in 2008.

The material used in this article is mostly taken from literary journals in Tibetan language appearing in Tibet, as well as, since 2006, from literary websites. This contribution will try to evaluate the importance of Tagore in today’s literary scene, as well as suggest interpretations for the great reputation enjoyed by the Bengali writer today among young Tibetan literati.

II. Reception in 1913-14

As far as we can tell, there was no response in Tibet to Tagore’s Nobel Prize. Although the 13th Dalai Lama was then initiating a wave of modernisation and had started opening Tibet to non-Asian influences, it was quite unlikely that the Tibetans’ knowledge of the Western world included an awareness of the Nobel Prize. Another reason why Tibetan knowledge of Western current affairs was shallow is that there was no newspaper in Tibet or in Tibetan language at that time. But we know for sure of two instances of Tagore’s name reaching the Tibetan élite some years later. First, Tagore’s name reached the 13th Dalai Lama himself in 1931 via Tan Yunshan, a Chinese follower of Tagore. Tan Yunshan was sent to Tibet in 1930 as a “special emissary” of the Guomintang government, “for a certain official business.”[iv] When Tan met the 13th Dalai Lama in early 1931, he “had to answer many questions put by the late Dalai Lama, the 13th one, and his ministers about India. By the way, I used to tell them what Gurudeva [Tagore] and Gandhiji were doing in India and how their inspiration was going to change India’s destiny.”[v] Although there was an interest, on the part of the Tibetan pontiff about Gandhi, we do not know how the Dalai Lama or his entourage reacted to Tan’s introductory praise of Tagore.

Later in that decade, Tagore’s name appeared in a Tibetan newspaper that had been newly founded in North-east India in 1925, the “Tibet Mirror.”[vi] Located in Kalimpong, it relayed important news from Tibet, India, and the world. Its founder, Reverend Babu Tharchin (1890-1976), dedicated one page to Tagore’s visit to Kalimpong in April 1938. “Tibet Mirror” had readers in the Tibetan élite, so we can surmise that the name of Tagore, again, made its way to a small coterie in Lhasa via this article. But nothing is known of the reaction it evoked. Interestingly, the 1938 article included a large hand-drawn portrait of the poet[vii] and it insisted upon his links with Tibetan literary and Buddhist heritage, mentioning mainly that Tibetan was taught at Śāntiniketan, but did not refer much to his work as an eminent author.[viii]

Tagore knew many foreigners who were engaged with Tibet (the explorers Sven Hedin, Nicholas Roerich, and Ekai Kawaguchi; Reverend Dr. John Anderson Graham, a missionary who lived in Kalimpong and was close to Babu Tharchin). More significantly, Tagore thought that mastery in Tibetan language could enable to “restor[e] some of the forgotten Indian texts, luckily preserved in Tibetan translation.”[ix] He had thus “inspired Pandit Vidhusekhar Śastri to learn Tibetan”[x] in this hope and, quite logically, he introduced Tibetan studies in Śāntiniketan.[xi] Tagore met the most eminent Tibetan scholar of his time, Gendun Chophel (1903-1951), in the 1930s, when the latter paid a visit to Kalimpong.[xii] Tagore offered him a position as a Tibetan teacher at Śāntiniketan, “well-paid and offering some security, but he [Gendun Chophel] declined the offer, as he had come to India to ‘wander, to see and to learn, and not to settle down in a comfortable situation’”.[xiii] Gendun Chophel, himself a translator open to Indian culture, does not seem to have translated any of Tagore’s works into Tibetan.

III. Translations

The first mention of a Tibetan translation of Tagore appears in 1976: a footnote in the Tibet Journal says that the short story Natir Puja was translated by Samten Norboo, a graduate student of St Joseph’s College in Darjeeling. It is not possible to tell whether the translation was made from Bengali or from English.[xiv] The reason for translating this very work, among the tens of short stories that Tagore wrote, may be attributed to the fact that it includes, according to one critic, “magnificent invocations to the Buddha… fine examples of the free handling of Buddhist themes”[xv], undoubtedly an appealing feature for Tibetans.[xvi]

In Tibet proper, Tibetans were engulfed in heavy Maoist politics and then in the Cultural Revolution until the late 1970s, leaving little room for literary translations. The discovery of Tagore’s texts therefore did not happen before the mid-1980s, when Chinese state-run literary magazines were launched. These served as a medium to introduce Tibetans to “modern,” non-religious literature and included poems and prose works, some essays, and short stories. Occasionally they would publish texts from world literature, always translated from Chinese, as the new Tibetan élite had not been offered any training in English.[xvii] The first translation that seems to have appeared in Tibet itself was Mahāmaya, in Tibetan “Bu mo Ma hā ma ya’i sgrung” [The story of the young girl Mahāmaya], published in 1985.[xviii] It was translated from Chinese by Lodro Gyamtso, about whom little is known, and published in a collection of short stories from world literature that included works by Maupassant, Ibsen, Tchekhov, Henry, Twain, and Daudet.

Translation of short stories

Two other short stories were translated in 1992: “Bsod nams” [Merits] and “Gsang ba’i nor rgyun” [Secret Treasure].[xix]. I have not been able to identify the former, but the latter is Goupto Don [Hidden Treasure]. In 2001, Nyin gcig [One day], a very short story was also translated and published, but here again I could not identify with certainty its original.[xx] These short stories have probably been translated from Chinese, but there is no information about the translators. “The Parrot’s Tale” (called “The Parrot’s training” in English) was translated from English in 2012. While it is usually hard to figure out what the translators’ motivations are for choosing a particular short story, Dawa Shonu, the translator of “The Parrot’s Tale”, has indicated that he had chosen this short story because it dealt with education. An online reader of the story commented that Tibetan educationists should carefully read it – this is especially true since 2010, when the topic of education for Tibetans has become a major social concern among Tibetans.[xxi]

Tagore’s views about education do seem to be of interest to Tibetans: “My School”, a speech that Tagore gave in the USA and that supports strong freedom in education, was translated in 2011 and published on the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration in exile.[xxii] Tibetan exile government's and, more generally, exile Tibetans’ knowledge of Tagore’s works can be ascribed to the fact that, English-language teaching material used in Tibetan schools in India is borrowed from the Indian curriculum, thus featuring a high number of works by Tagore. The young blogger Dawa Shonu, an exile Tibetan student who is studying in Benares, and introduces himself as a reader of Orwell and Garcia Marquez,[xxiii] has not only translated “The Parrot’s Tale,” but also a number of poetic works by Tagore. Four of them are difficult to identify.[xxiv] The translator indicates that he likes these poems because they remind him of some figures of speech from the classical poetics treaty Kāvyadarśa – translated into Tibetan in the 13th and 14th century; it has become the beacon of elegant poetic writing till now.[xxv] In 2009, Dawa Shonu had already translated “Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,”[xxvi] making him one of the most regular translators of the Bengali poet into Tibetan.

Translation of the novel “Gora”

More remarkably, Tagore’s novel Gora was translated into Tibetan, under the title “Gho ra” (2001). Very few novels share this privilege.[xxvii] The translation was done in India by a monk from Ngawa, in Amdo (North-Eastern Tibet), called Chodrak. It was then distributed for free by the Education Ministry of the Tibetan Government in exile, thanks to the support of the then Tibetan Prime Minister in exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, an admirer of Indian culture and of the Bengali Nobel Prize winner, whom Samdhong Rinpoche often quoted in his works and speeches. The print-run was 2,000 copies, half of which were distributed among Tibetans in the diaspora and the other half sent to Tibet.

Along with this translation in two volumes came a book entitled “Discussing Gora,” “Gho ra gleng ba,” which included about ten essays or reviews about the novel and its significance for Tibetans. This also was a novelty and, to my knowledge, has not been done for any other foreign writer. Among others, Beri Jigme, Dorje Wangchuk, Chabdak Lhamokyab, and Chung Tsering, renowned writers and commentators in the Tibetan exile society, contributed to this collection of comments. Chabdak Lhamokyab chose to express his appreciation of the novel in the shape of versified poetry, where he praised the social and political values explicitly put forward in Gora.[xxviii] Beri Jigme’s essay insisted upon the high standard of the Tibetan translation, due according to him to the translator’s mastery of the art of classical Tibetan poetics (derived from Sanskrit classic poetry), along with his knowledge of Buddhism, Hinduism, Brahmanism, Shivaism, and the Vedas. The translator, he said, was “as skilled as Dandin and Kalidasa” and managed to produce a translation with “a sweet fragrance of genuine traditional culture.”[xxix]

Beri Jigme, in his lengthy praise of Gora’s translation, also underscored several times the similarities of the inner and ethical conflict between tradition and modernity faced by Gora, the novel’s protagonist, and Tibetans today: Gora, although deeply supportive of his own language and culture, has to face the negative aspects of tradition and reassess it critically. Tibetans today are faced with the same dilemma, treading a fine line between the imperative to protect their endangered culture and their will to embrace modernity. Beri Jigme also drew a parallel between the colonial situation of India at the time when the novel takes place in the later part of the 19th century and the current situation of Tibet, thus legitimising the choice of this book for a Tibetan translation.

The nationalistic content of the novel did not fall on deaf ears in Tibet: A commentator wrote in a survey of the novel that “Gora, the protagonist, is a very patriotic Hindu, he is a stubborn and determined young man. As soon as he graduates from university, he heads a patriotic organisation and takes upon himself to get rid of the English colonisers so as to free his people.”[xxx] Such an apparently innocuous comment may be interpreted in the Tibetan context as a veiled and critical reference to the current Tibetan situation.

Translation of poetry

But, more than short stories and novels, the genre that has attracted most of Tibetans’ attention and translation skills is poetry and, particularly, Gitanjali. At least three extensive translations exist, with a fourth one being currently published at the time of writing (June 2012), and other extracts published here and there. This is unique in the history of contemporary Tibetan translations of a foreign text. In 1984, Ngodrub Gashawa from the Central Institute of Higher Studies in Sarnath (Varanasi) translated Gitanjali. Samdhong Rinpoche wrote the foreword and the afterword when this translation was republished, in 2000, by the Tibet House in Delhi.[xxxi] It is not clear from what language (English, Hindi or Bengali) this translation was done. The translation was versified (heptasyllabic).

While the Tibetan literary magazine Rlung rta published a translation of an extract of Gitanjali in 2001,[xxxii] another full translation of the text appeared in 2001, when a Tibetan professor, Chapdrak Gonpokyap, translated the text under the aegis of an American foundation that supported the translation into Tibetan of some major world literature texts.[xxxiii] At this point of my research, I do not know whether Chapdrak Gonpokyap chose Gitanjali himself or if, as is more likely, the translation was commissioned to him by the foundation. It was a major breakthrough but, due to distribution problems, few people actually got access to the book. The translator chose to translate the text in prose, not in verse, and the translation was made from an earlier Chinese translation.

The next year (2002), Phunor, a graduate from the Tibetan Department of the Central Institute for Nationalities in Beijing, a poet himself, who works for the Tibet Autonomous Region public radio, also published his own prose translation of Gitanjali from Chinese.[xxxiv] This translation sold rather well, according to Phunor himself, indicating that there was a genuine interest for Tagore among Tibetan readers.[xxxv] After a few years when apparently no new translation was published, the 45th song of Gitanjali went online (“Have you not heard his silent steps?”), as well as the 76th (“Face to face”),[xxxvi] and, more recently, the 6th (“Flower”).[xxxvii]

In 2012, three more extracts were published online: one translated from Hindi by an unspecified translator (song 1),[xxxviii] one by a hitherto unknown translator called Na bun [i.e. Mist, songs 6, 12, 17, 35 46, 54, 57, 83, 87, and 92],[xxxix] and the third by the rather famous young poet Sangdor, from Chinese this time.[xl] The latter only included songs 1 to 9, all translated in versified, enneasyllabic verse. Sangdor explained in this introduction that he had opted for regular verses to emulate the original Bengali Gitanjali, itself versified. The fact that it was published online made it possible for readers to react immediately, which they did, enabling us to fathom the reception of this translation among concerned Tibetan readers. The translation generated an impressive number of comments. They mostly praise the translation, but a number of them are quite spiteful. At some point, Sangdor even erased all comments, as criticism was getting out of control. Those supporting Sangdor’s translation pointed to his mastery and elegance in Tibetan. Himself a skilful young poet, the general appreciation of his translation was that the Tibetan text flowed smoothly, contrary to previous translations which, according to most commentators, were quite obscure or lacked fluidity. One commentator even wrote that he could understand for the first time what Gitanjali was about, and comprehend at last why Tagore was so appreciated.

It is true that, among all translators, Sangdor is the one whose poetic talent is most accomplished, contrasting for instance with Chapdrak Gonpokyab, who is a biology teacher. But other commentators questioned Sangdor’s capacity to translate the poems accurately, due to his deficiency in foreign languages: they argued that he did not know either Bengali or English and his knowledge of Chinese, the source for his translation, was paltry. One blogger dedicated a whole article to Sangdor’s lack of mastery of Chinese and, as a consequence, of proper qualification to translate from Chinese into Tibetan.[xli] Sangdor’s preface to his translation had somehow anticipated this criticism: he wrote that he was aware of a number of extant Tibetan translations, but, he added, they were rather “difficult to understand” and “not very nice to the ear” (a comment that is often made by Tibetan readers). He went on to say that, if the famous name “Tagore” had not been attached to those previous translations, readers would have discarded them as just “not understandable, poorly versified, with little meaning.” He admitted that his translation was very personal and he expected that critics would discard his own translation of Tagore’s Gitanjali merely as “Sangdor’s poetry.” To this he replied that “translating is creating.”

Heated discussions raged on the internet for two or three weeks, but they focussed more on the personality of Sangdor and his opponents, or on the translation of the text, rather than on Gitanjali itself, or on Tagore. What is certain is that this controversy about Sangdor’s translation has renewed interest in Tagore. On Sangdor’s own website, two weeks after he offered his own and personal translation of Gitanjali, a Tibetan blogger posted online the translation of Tagore’s Nobel Prize acception speech in Stockholm, 1921, a translation that had apparently already appeared in a Tibetan magazine previously.[xlii] One week later, the exiled blogger and monk-poet Lunyon Heruka wrote a versified anaphoric celebration of Tagore, describing at length how, in many different situations and places in India, he hoped and prayed to meet the “great writer” and the “skilled poet”, with his shivering beard, his sparkling eyes, his floating garment, his brazing wisdom and his ever-moving pen.[xliii]

Besides the famous Gitanjali, other poetic works by Tagore have been translated: in 2004, Bashung Khyungthargyal, a poet himself from Amdo, published a translation of the first sixty poetic aphorisms of Stray Birds, under the Tibetan title “’Dab chags gling” (The World of Birds).[xliv] It was published in the main and most official literary magazine of the Tibet Autonomous Region, “Tibet Literature and Art.” The first two poems of “Stray Birds” were translated again and published online in 2009 by a Tibetan in India.[xlv] The collection entitled The Gardener is also a favorite: so far, I have found translations of the introduction in form of a dialogue,[xlvi] “In the morning I cast my net into the sea” (The Gardener 3),[xlvii] the poems 11 to 20,[xlviii] “You are the evening cloud” (The Gardener 30),[xlix] “My Love , Once upon a time” (The Gardener 38),[l] “Paper boats” (The Gardener 70),[li] and “Who are you, reader?” (The Gardener 85). It is very likely that more poems were translated but I have not come across them.[lii]

It may be mentioned that Tibetans have also published some analyses and short essays about Tagore. In 1994, the state-sponsored literary magazine Dranchar offered a portrayal of the Bengali author, as part of a series that included Dumas Father and Son, Hugo, Maupassant, Pushkin, Cervantes, Goethe, Lu Xun, Guo Moro, Mao Dun and Ba Jin.[liii] In 2001-2002, the same magazine introduced significant works of world literature (The Divine Comedy, Faust, Eugénie Grandet, Père Goriot, lliad and Odyssey). Tagore’ Gora (alternately translated as Kar la, or Gho ra) featured among the surveyed works.[liv]

IV. Conclusion

Most introductions to Tagore praise him, not surprisingly, as the first Asian who received a Nobel Prize. This is especially meaningful to Tibetans as, in spite of their small number, they can also boast a Nobel Prize winner – none other than the Dalai Lama (Nobel Peace Prize, 1989). The fact that quoting his name is forbidden in the China public sphere may explain their elation at mentioning Tagore’s prize, a hint at “their” own Nobel Prize. The fact that Tagore was a strong advocate of education in Bengali language and that he supported Indian independence is often quoted. This we can also interpret easily as a tribute to nationalism in the colonial context. He is still also appreciated as a modernist poet. Those Tibetans who value “obscurity” in poetic expression, a trend that has been popular among young Tibetan poets since the 1990s following the “obscure” movement in Chinese poetry in the 1980s, are strong supporters of Tagore, whom they see as a precursor.[lv]

His position is that of a social commentator and reformer, which is also relevant to young Tibetan writers. Taking Tagore as a model, they mostly reflect upon the direction that Tibetan society should take in the future, choosing between tradition and modernity. The topic of religion, central to self-reflection on Tibetan identity, is to be found for instance in Tagore’s poem “Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,”[lvi] which was translated into Tibetan in 2009 by Dawa Shonu (see above). It is most likely that this text has appealed to Tibetans for the non-dogmatic view on religion that emanates from it.

Finally, it must be recalled here that Tagore represents a literary bridge to Bengal and, more generally, India, the sacred country (Tib.: ’phags yul) as it is called in Tibetan. India is the source of their writing system, the source of their dominant religion, the source of their literary art, India has always featured as an ideal, godly place for Tibetans.[lvii] It is thus no coincidence that Phunor gave as a reason for translating Gitanjali the wish to “draw India and Tibet closer,” an argument that can apply to most translations, explaining the “Tagore fever” in Tibet until now.

V. Bibliography

Arpi, Claude. “India Tibet relations 1947-1949. India begins to vacillate.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Exploring Tibet’s History and Culture, Delhi, Delhi University, December 19-21, 2009, downloadable on

Bhattacharya, Vidhushekhava. Bhota-Prakāsa. A Tibetan Chrestomacy. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1939.

Gru char. “The kor.” Sbrang char 4 (1994): 43, 54-56.

Gru gzings. “’Dzam gling brtsams chos grags chen gyi mtshams sbyor.” Sbrang char 3 (2001): 146-154.

Hartley, Lauran R. “Contextually Speaking: Tibetan Literary Discourse and Social Change in the People’s Republic of China (1980–2000).” PhD diss., Indiana University, 2003.

Kapstein Matthew. “The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet,” In Literary Cultures in History, edited by Sheldon Pollock, 747-802. Los Angeles: California University Press, 2003.

Maconi, Lara. “La longue marche translinguistique,” In France-Asie : un siècle d’échanges littéraires, edited by in Muriel Détrie, 205-236. Paris: You-feng, 2001.

McKay, Alex. Tibet and the British Raj. Richmond: Curzon, 1997.

Menon, K.P.S. “My Tribute to Tan Yun-shan,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India, edited by Chung Tan, 71-73. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999.

Nag, Kalidas. “Tagore: Pioneer in Asian Relations,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India, edited by Chung Tan, 117-119. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999.

Pachow, W. “Tan Yun-shan and the Renewal of Sino-Indian Cultural Interaction,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India, edited by Chung Tan, 41-52. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999.

Stoddard, Heather. Le Mendiant de l’Amdo. Paris: Société d’ethnographie, Recherches sur la Haute-Asie 9, 1985.

Stoddard, Heather. “Tibetan Publications and National Identity” in Reform and Resistance in Tibet, edited by R. Barnett and Akiner, Shirin. 121-156. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996 [1994].

Tagore, Rabindranath. Bu mo Ma hā ma ya’i sgrung, translated by Blo gros rgya mtsho, In Phyi gling ba’i sgrung thung phyogs bsgrigs, edited by Sangs rgyas. Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1985, 147-157.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali. Translated by Dngos grub Ga sha ba. Varanasi: Bibliotheca Indo-Tibetica, Series 45, 2000 [1984].

Tagore, Rabindranath, translated by Skal bzang rin chen. “Nyin gcig.” Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 3 (2001), 25.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Snyan ngag gi mchod pa (Ke thān kyā li). Translated by Chab brag Mgon po skyabs. Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2001.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Gi tan ca li. Translated by Phun nor. Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrung khang, 2002.

Tagore, Rabindranath. “Bsod nams.” Sbrang char 4 (2002).

Tagore, Rabindranath, translated by Tshe ring don grub. “Gsang ba’i nor rgyun.” Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 4 (2002).

Tagore, Rabindranath, translated by ’Ba’ gzhung Khyung thar rgyal. “’Dab chags gling.” Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 3 (2004), 42-46.

Tan, Chung. “Tan Yun-shan - A Historical Role,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India, edited by Chung Tan, 13-35. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999.

Tan, Yun-shan. “My First Visit to Gandhiji,”», In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India, edited by Chung Tan, 193-197. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999.

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[i]

Central Tibet refers to a Tibetan division of the Tibet: Central Tibet actually includes Southern and Western Tibet, and is called “Central” due to its historical and political centrality, with Lhasa at its heart.

[ii] For an overview on Indo-Tibetan diplomatic relations between 1947 and 1949, see Claude Arpi, “India-Tibet relations 1947-1949. India begins to vacillate” (paper presented at the International Conference on Exploring Tibet’s History and Culture, Delhi, Delhi University, December 19-21, 2009).

[iii] The Tibetan population in India was estimated in 2009 by the Central Tibetan Administration in exile at 94,000, but this is obviously underestimated.

[iv] W. Pachow, “Tan Yun-shan and the Renewal of Sino-Indian Cultural Interaction,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang, ed. C. Tan (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999), 48.

[v] Y.-S. Tan, “My First Visit to Gandhiji,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang, ed. C. Tan (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999), 193.

[vi] A brief mention should be made here about the rendering of Tagore’s name into Tibetan: I have so far found nine different spellings for the seemingly non problematic transcription of “Tagore.” These are, in Wylie transliteration (in this system, capital consonants indicate a reversed stem letter, or retroflex; capital vowels indicate an elongated vowel): the kor; The kor; the gor; The gor; ThA kur; ThA kUr; krwa ghor; khre sgor. The “Tibet Mirror”, which is the oldest transcription that I know of, gives TA gor. The name itself has also been translated semantically into Tibetan as Nyiwang Gonpo, meaning “Lord of the Sun”. This type of translation, called don ’gyur in Tibetan (meaning “translating the meaning”), is rather common for proper names of Indian luminaries. Starting in the 8th century, Tibetan Buddhists and grammarians have translated Sanskrit religious and philosophical treatises extremely faithfully, and they included persons’ and places’ names in their translation endeavours, pondering over their original meaning and etymology and striving to find a strict semantic equivalent in Tibetan: to give a few examples, Kalidasa became “Nag mo khol,” Dandin “Dbyug pa can,” Shantideva “Zhi ba’i lha,” Nagarjuna “Klu grub,” Bodhgaya “Rdo rje gdan,” and these are only a very limited numbers of examples.

[vii] I thank Paul Hackett (Columbia University) who made a digitalized version of this issue available to me.

[viii] The 1941 issues not being available to the public, I cannot tell whether Tagore’s death was commented upon, although it is likely that it was.

[ix] K. Nag, “Tagore: Pioneer in Asian Relations,” In In the Footsteps of Xuanzang, ed. C. Tan (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1999), 117.

[x] Nag, “Tagore: Pionner in Asian Relations,” 117.

[xi] It was not the only place in India where Tibetan was taught: a Bhutanese monk, Padma Chandra, was the instructor in Tibetan language in Calcutta since 1922-23 – see Alex McKay, Tibet and the British Raj (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), 113. For a confirmation of Tagore s id: Curzon, 1997), 113. For a confirmation of Tagore’s interest in Tibetan language, see also Vidhushekhava Bhattacharya, Bhota-Prakāsa. A Tibetan Chrestomacy (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1939), ix.

[xii] H. Stoddard, Le Mendiant de l’Amdo (Nanterre: Société d’ethnographie, 1985), 190.

[xiii] “… bien rémunéré et lui assurant une certaine sécurité, mais il déclina l’offre, car il était venu en Inde ‘pour errer, pour voir et apprendre, non pour s’établir dans une situation confortable’” (Stoddard, Mendiant, 208). Stoddard adds that, in 1939, a Tibetan called Wangdu taught Tibetan in Viśwa- Bhārāti (Stoddard, Mendiant, 377-387).

[xiv] Tibet Journal 1976, n.p. Another translation was announced in the early 1990s by H. Stoddard as being under process, but I was not able to get any confirmation. See Heather Stoddard, “Tibetan Publications and Nationalism,” In Resistance and Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett et al. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996), 154.

[xv] Bhikku Sangharakshita, in english/sociology/004-modernworld.htm. All websites were checked and accessed in June 2012.

[xvi] This motivation was mentioned in passing in the footnote in the Tibet Journal 1976.

[xvii] Literary magazines in Chinese language aimed at a Tibetan readership educated in Chinese were launched too in the early 1980s. They included a substantial number of works by Tagore in Chinese, and other Indian authors (V. S. Naipaul, R. K. Narayan, etc.). I thank L. Maconi (INALCO) for this information.

[xviii] Rabindranath Tagore, “Bu mo Ma hâ ma ya’i sgrung”, In Phyi gling ba’i sgrung thung phyogs bsgrigs, Sangs rgyas ed. (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1985), 147-157.

[xix] See Rabindranath Tagore, “Bsod nams,” Sbrang char 4 (2002); and Rabindranath Tagore, “Gsang ba’i nor rgyun,” transl. Tshe ring don grub, Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 4 (2002).

[xx] Rabindranath Tagore, “Nyin gcig,” transl. Skal bzang rin chen, Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 3 (2001).

[xxi]

[xxii] See . Reprinted in .

[xxiii] See his own presentation in Tibetan and English on

[xxiv] and

[xxv]

[xxvi]

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[xxvii] Less than ten were published: La Dame aux Camélias by Dumas Fils, River Margins, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, The Old man and the Sea by Hemingway, and 2 plays by Shakespeare (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet). Animal Farm by G. Orwell as well as The Little Prince by A. de Saint-Exupéry have been translated once or twice, but have not been published yet.

[xxviii] See

[xxix] While acknowledging the great amount of effort and care the translator put into his work, some readers I interviewed resented the fact that the translation was not smooth in Tibetan and required constant effort on the part of the reader.

[xxx] Gru gzings, “’Dzam gling brtsams chos grags chen gyi mtshams sbyor,” Sbrang char 3 (2001): 152.

[xxxi] See Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, transl. Dngos grub Ga sha ba (Varanasi: Bibliotheca Indo-Tibetica, 2000). I thank T. Tsering (Amnye Machen Institute, Dharamsala) for this information (email, 26 January 2004). The name of the translator sometimes appears as K. Angrup Lahuli, a remote rendering of the original Tibetan name of this translator. It is also mentioned on a Tibetan website in 2009 . Lara Maconi, “La longue marche translinguistique,” In France-Asie : un siècle d’échanges littéraires, ed. Muriel Détrie (Paris: You-feng, 2001), 212 footnote 27, mentions a translation published in Dharamsala in 1983, but I was not able to spot it. It may be the very same text as the one referred to here.

[xxxii] According to Hartley, Lauran, “Contextually Speaking: Tibetan Literary Discourse and Social Change in the People’s Republic of China (1980–2000)” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2003) 400.

[xxxiii] Rabindranath Tagore, Snyan ngag gi mchod pa (Ke thān kyā li), transl. Chab brag Mgon po skyabs (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2001). The translation is followed by three appendixes: the original introduction to the text by W. B. Yeats; the speech delivered by Harald Hjärne, of the Nobel Academy, when the Nobel prize was awarded to the Bengali poet on 10 December 1913; and, finally, some reflections about Tagore’s work.

[xxxiv] Rabindranath Tagore, Gi tan ca li, transl. Phun nor (Lhasa: Bod ljongs mi dmangs dpe skrung khang, 2002).

[xxxv] When I met him in July 2002, he was considering translating (form the Chinese) War and Peace by Tolstoi, some short stories by Gogol, and some plays by Molière.

[xxxvi] Translated from the Chinese by a blogger whose penname is Xicangren (. xicangren/archives/41463. aspx)

[xxxvii] . sonamdargye/archives/30270. aspx

[xxxviii]

[xxxix] . The other 7 translated poems could not be identified with certainty.

[xl] He writes in the introduction that he based his work on the Chinese translation by the woman poet Bing Xin.

[xli] .

[xlii] See . The Tibetan magazine is said to be ’Od dus deb (literally “Light Magazine”), a magazine about which I have no detail; the issue is number six and the translator is called Tenpa Tsering. The blogger begs Tenpa Tsering and the magazine editors’ forgiveness for having reposted the translation online, without their permission.

[xliii] blog_c.asp?id=7512&a=1000

[xliv] Rabindranath Tagore, “’Dab chags gling,” transl.’Ba’ gzhung Khyung thar rgyal, Bod kyi rtsom rig sgyu rtsal 3 (2004), 42-46.

[xlv]

[xlvi]

[xlvii]

[xlviii]

[xlix] dawashonu.blogspot.fr/2011_06_01_archive.html

[l]

[li]

[lii] One more poem I have found is “Empoverished mind” (2011), but I could not identify its source with certainty.

[liii] Gru char, “The kor,” Sbrang char 4 (1994): 43, 54-56.

[liv] Gru gzings, “’Dzam gling,” 152 gives 1910 as the first date of publication, but other sources give 1907 for the Bengali version and 1924 for its English translation.

[lv] “Skya-bha [a Tibetan literary critic] also quotes the French poet Mallarmé and the Indian poet Tagore regarding the value of obscure poetry” (Hartley, “Contextually Speaking,” 387).

[lvi]

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[lvii] For more details on this literary Tibetan fascination for India, see Matthew Kapstein, “The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet,” in Literary Cultures in History, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Los Angeles: California University Press, 2003).

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