Hidden Lands in Himalayan
Myth and History
Transformations of sbas yul through Time
Edited by
Frances Garrett
Elizabeth McDougal
Geoffrey Samuel
LEIDEN | BOSTON
For use by the Author only | © 2021 Koninklijke Brill NV
Contents
Preface ix
Geoffrey Samuel, Frances Garrett and Elizabeth McDougal
Note on the Locations of the sbas yul xiii
Maps xvi
Editors and Contributors xxiii
Part 1
Introducing the sbas yul
Photo Essay: The Terrestrial Buddha Realm of sbas yul Padma bkod:
A Visual Pilgrimage 3
Ian Baker
1
Hidden Lands of Tibet in Myth and History
Geoffrey Samuel
51
Part 2
The sbas yul over Time: Historical Perspectives
2
Healing Mountains and Hidden Lands
Frances Garrett
95
3
Did sbas yul Play a Part in the Development of Tibetan
Book Culture? 108
Hildegard Diemberger
4
Early Echoes of sbas yul Padma bkod in the Lifestory of Thang stong
rgyal po 123
Annie Heckman
5
Padma bkod through the Lens of Two Pilgrimage Guidebooks:
Walking the Body of Rdo rje phag mo 143
Barbara Hazelton
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vi
Contents
6
“A Great and Small Padma bkod”: Guidebooks and
Individual Journeys 162
Franz-Karl Ehrhard
7
Prophecy and Fantastical Reality in Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje’s Journey
to Padma bkod 185
Tom Greensmith
8
The Shapeshifting Goddess: The Consecration of Padma bkod’s Yang
Sang Chu Region by the 20th-Century gter ston, Bdud ’joms drag sngags
gling pa 207
Elizabeth McDougal
Part 3
The sbas yul in the Modern World: Ethnographic Perspectives
9
The Arising of Padma bkod in the Western World
Samuel Thévoz
229
10
Voices from the Mountainside: Vernacular sbas yul in the Western
Himalaya 256
Callum Pearce
11
Pachakshiri: A Little-Known Hidden Land between Tsa ri and Padma
bkod in the Eastern Himalaya 276
Kerstin Grothmann
12
How Is This Sacred Place Arrayed? Pacification, Increase, Magnetism,
and Wrath in the Establishment of an Eastern Himalayan sbas yul 297
Amelia Hall
Photo Essay: Glimpses of a Hidden Land: The sbas yul of Yol mo
Jon Kwan with Khenpo Nyima Dondrup
315
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vii
Contents
Part 4
Two Guidebooks to the Hidden Land of Padma Bkod
’Ja’ tshon snying po’s Guidebook to the Hidden Land of Padma bkod 331
Translated by Barbara Hazelton
Bdud ’joms gling pa’s Hidden Sacred Land of Padma bkod 342
Translated by Barbara Hazelton
Index
347
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Errata and post-proofstage addenda
p. 231, n. 2
A special thanks to Pascale Hugon
for comparing the two texts.
p. 232, n. 4
Vajravārāhī
p. 233, n. 7
grand lieu
p. 237, n. 10
Gnas chen tsa ri
p. 237, n. 10
Vajravārāhī
p. 237, l. 9
37))?
p. 238, l. 17
such early 17th-century
p. 239, l. 32
lives > is
p. 249, l. 22
Vajravārāhī
French titles in the Bibliography
according to Editor’s standard.
Chapter 9
The Arising of Padma bkod in the Western World
Samuel Thévoz
The advent of Tibetan sbas yul in a global context relates to a complex historical moment. James Hilton’s fictitious Shangri-la has become the standard for generations of what a Tibetan hidden land looks like and represents
(Hilton 1995, Capra 1937, Bishop 1989, Lopez 1998). However, if we scratch the
surface of the myth of Tibetan sacred landscape in the West, we stumble on
a fairly forgotten episode in which European and Tibetan voices mingle and
can still be heard today. The first sbas yul to be reported in European literature was Padma bkod. Prior to Shangri-la, emerging narratives about Padma
bkod echoed circulating stories about millenarist myths and earthly paradises
in Central Asia. Whereas the story of Prester John had long been a thread of
European imaginings about the area, a new trope developed in the course of
the 19th century: in the eastward geographical and spiritual quests of a growing number of Europeans, Shambhala then took over the function of Prester
John’s legendary kingdom as a toponym of Indo-Tibetan origin in the scholarly publications of early Buddhologists in the scope the Royal Asiatic Society
of Bengal (Csoma de Kőrös 1986, Thévoz 2010, 360–367) and fin-de-siècle esoteric circles of the Theosophical Society (Blavatski 1882, 1938, Bernbaum 1980,
Thévoz 2020b). This is broadly the context in which the discovery of Padma
bkod took sense as a variation of already active myths in early 20th-century
European culture. Like Shambhala, sbas yul stood from the start at the crossroads of the scholarly and popular imaginary. Nevertheless, as we will see, the
unique case of Padma bkod historically stands out as a remarkable deeply intercultural construction in which French and Tibetan geographical conceptions and narratives intertwine. In studying the emergence of Padma bkod in
the West, my aim is twofold: I would first like to pay attention to how retrospective readings have tended to give a simplified narrative of such a complex
story and turned it into a ‘Tibetological myth’ of sorts. I shall then shed light
on the making of a sbas yul like Padma bkod in a global context as a plurivocal
and bidirectional process and as a modern fashioning of both European and
Tibetan senses of place.
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1
Thévoz
Prisoners of Népémakö: the Travel Narrative and the Guidebook
Jacques Bacot (1877–1965) is renowned for his attempt to gain access to Padma
bkod in November 1909 and reporting the attempt in his 1912 travelogue,
Le Tibet révolté. Bacot has thus generally been considered the first Western traveler to acknowledge the Tibetan tradition of hidden lands and the origin of the
focus on Padma bkod as the most representative instance of sbas yul. Scholars
have since offered several insights on Bacot’s discovery, concisely summarized
by Franz-Karl Ehrhard: “The second expedition undertaken by Jacques Bacot
[…] has without question had an influence on our notion of ‘hidden valleys’ or
‘paradisiacal sites’ in Tibet” (Ehrhard 1994, 3). Ehrhard then explains:
[Bacot] was seized by the yearning for a new destination: Népémakö
(gNas Padma bkod), the place of refuge and hope for thousands of Tibetan
families that wanted to ensure their own safety at the time, in the face of
armed attacks by the Chinese.
It is, above all, the sense of unattainability that lends the territories of
sPo-yul and gNas Padma bkod their particular status in Bacot’s travel report.
Ehrhard 1994, 4
As a piece of evidence for this conclusion, Ehrhard relies on a later and posthumous poetic development of Bacot’s quest by French literary writer Victor
Segalen (Segalen 1979). While studies have already been published on the ties
between these two works (Bai 2017, Thévoz 2011), it is useful here to pay attention to the terminology that these authors adopted. Bacot’s narrative has
popularized Padma bkod under the tag-name ‘Népémakö.’ Nevertheless, Bacot
provides neither a textual evidence nor a traceable oral source accounting for
the choice of this label. In turn, Segalen’s poem relies exclusively on Bacot’s
narrative and re-uses the same tag-name. However, ‘Népémakö’ is not only
transcribed in slightly different spellings (‘Nepemakö’ and ‘Nepemako’), it is
also amplified by a series of pseudo-Tibetan transliterations. An early sketch
delineated ‘Nepemakö of Poyoul’ as the ‘Land Promised to Man.’ A verse further below intriguingly has “Where does its beautiful name of Pemakeu (or: of
Nepemakö) […] come from?” The next line then adds: “of Padma-skod! ‘Padma
Bskor!” as alternative spellings. The latest sketch of the same poem reads:
“Where is the unnamed that one names: Nepemakö in Poyoul and Padma Skod,
Knas-Padma-Bskor.” As we can see, the question of the name of the sbas yul at
stake goes well beyond issues of fluctuating transliterations.1 In the absence of
1 In addition to citing Bacot’s travelogue, Segalen hand-copied in his preparatory notes one
full page of Bonin 1911, 164–165, on “Nepemakeu.” While mostly deriving knowledge from
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231
a full body of positive data on Padma bkod, Segalen’s poem strikingly exemplifies the fact that the designation itself is subject to poetic elaborations and
geographic fantasies. In Segalen’s poem, ‘Népémakö’ thus becomes a symbol
which signals, Ehrhard says, how “the whole of Tibet, in its unattainability, acquired for the latter a heightened inner reality, something on the order of a
spiritual promise” (Ehrhard 1994, 4). Without going into historical and literary
details, Ehrhard’s reading holds both Bacot and Segalen’s works as textual cornerstones that epitomized 20th-century popular representations of Tibet and
prefigured later imaginings of the country as a Shangri-La-esque remote and
lofty territory, or in even more accurate terms as a “lost horizon.”
At the time, Bacot’s narrative nevertheless offered to the French-speaking
readership an unprecedented insight into the tradition of sbas yul. As we will
see, Bacot’s detailed account of his own perception of the events that occurred
in the area in 1909 cannot be reduced to later visions of Tibet. Besides, Bacot
also brought back the manuscript of a Tibetan guidebook (gnas yig) to Padma
bkod, the full title of which Ehrhard mentions in a footnote: O rgyan chen po
padma ’byung gnas kyi ma ’ong lung bstan snyig ma’i sems can la sbas yul padma
bkod kyi gnas yig (Ehrhard 1994, 15).2 Although he does not use this text in his
article himself, Ehrhard makes clear that this was the one, if not only, source
on Padma bkod on which French Tibetologists relied until the dawn of the
21st century. Both Bacot’s travel narrative and Tibetan guidebook hence stand
at the heart of French and more largely Western conceptions on sbas yul in
general and Padma bkod in particular, conceptions in which knowledge and
fantasies are strikingly intertwined.
In fact, the guidebook is not mentioned in Le Tibet révolté. No extensive
translation of this text either in English or French had been made available
so far. Only in 1960 did Anne-Marie Blondeau write a pioneering study on
Tibetan pilgrimage that offered unprecedented insights into the sbas yul tradition (Large-Blondeau 1960). Here, Padma bkod holds a central position as “the
best” – and the only one actually mentioned – “example of sBas-yul” (LargeBlondeau 1960, 238). Interestingly enough, even though Blondeau translates
Bacot’s first reports in geographical reviews, Bonin makes parallel reference to maps from
the Royal Geographical Society (cf. Note 17 below) and to the entry word “Padma dkod” in
Sarat Chandra Das’s 1902 Tibetan-English Dictionary. Das vaguely defines it as the “noun of
the south eastern district of Tibet,” obviously referring to Pémaköchen (Padma bkod chen).
Both Bonin and Segalen misspell Das’s “Padma dkod” as “Padm-Skod.” These occurrences add
additional transliterations to an already unstable toponym (see also Note 15 below).
2 Ehrhard relies here on Stein 1988, 43. In addition to the Sbas yul padma bkod kyi gnas yig
(Bacot’s manuscript), Stein’s reading is supported by a parallel version found in Stag sham
Nus ldan rdo rje (1655–1708)’s cycle Rtsa gsum yi dam dgongs ’dus published in nineteen volumes in Dehradun in 1970–72. This versified description of Padma bkod shares a significant
number of elements with Bacot’s gnas yig.
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the title of Bacot’s manuscript as ‘guide de pèlerinage du pays caché Pémakö’
[pilgrimage guidebook to the hidden land Padma bkod] (Large-Blondeau 1960,
242), she – like Stein and Ehrhard after her3 – retains Bacot’s label of “Népémakö”
which she translates in a footnote: “gNas padma bkod: lieu saint (semblable) à un
lotus étalé [holy place (similar to) a fully-spread lotus]” (Large-Blondeau 1960,
238). Moreover, while Blondeau relies on Bacot’s manuscript as her main source
as far as the symbolic and sacred geography of the hidden land is concerned,
she alternately explicitly and implicitly quotes from Bacot’s narrative – as we
will read below – in order to give a sense of such a mythical landscape that
conceals both lethal dangers and paradisiacal marvels.4 Blondeau thus adopts
a similar rhetorical gesture to previous authors who freely elaborated on the
features of Padma bkod delineated in Bacot’s narrative (Bailey 1957, 35–37 and
73–74, Ward 1926, 205, passim). As if underlining Padma bkod’s unstable status,
Blondeau’s use of maps is ambiguous: while she takes care to sketch a map of
the area of Népémakö (Large-Blondeau 1960, 239),5 she fails to report the location on the general map of Tibet featured in her article (Large-Blondeau 1960,
200–201). In Blondeau’s preface to the 1988 re-edition of Le Tibet révolté, not
only does the label ‘Népémakö’ reappear, but the designation is given a further explanation: “Pémakö (Padma-bkod) is an area which one can find on the
map, whereas Népémakö, the holy place (Gnas Padma-bkod), has remained
closed for many” (Bacot 1988, vi). While these considerations may at first seem
insignificant, it now seems clear that the selected nomenclature has implications for my inquiry: the word ‘Népémakö’ is the transcription of ‘Gnas padma
bkod,’ unambiguously re-using Bacot’s own terminology, implicitly overlaying
the toponym Padma bkod with sacred value, and favouring a specific focus on
symbolic geography. Moreover, the origin of such a wording – which Bacot
does not himself clarify – is blurred: does ‘Népémakö’ reflect an oral form
transmitted to him during his travel and overall refer to the fact that Padma
bkod is perceived by Tibetans as a sbas yul?6 Does it more specifically refer to
3 Stein indistinctly uses the spellings ‘gnas Padma bkod,’ ‘Népémakö,’ ‘Padma bkod,’ ‘Pemakhö’
and ‘Padma bkod’ (Stein 1988, 37–39 and 43). Throughout his study, Ehrhard favors the Wylie
transliteration ‘gNas Padma bkod.’
4 Blondeau’s depiction of the “sainted” lamas opening the way to Padma bkod, of the geographical features of the path leading there, and of Népémakö as an “earthly paradise” owes
as much to Bacot’s wording as to the guidebook itself. Blondeau’s crucial input resides in
the description of the geosymbolic association of Padma bkod with Phag mo klu ‘dul ma
(Vajravāhāri), the pilgrimage patterns and the soteriological qualities of the place as described in the guidebook.
5 The map is actually drawn after Dunbar 1916, plate XLI.
6 On the use and semantic implications of the word gnas, see Huber 1999. ’Ja’ tson snying po’s
Guidebook to the Hidden Land of Padma bkod (Sbas yul padma bkod kyi lam yig) uses phrases
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the search for the ‘innermost secret site’ of Padma bkod (yang gsang gnas) as
revealed a few years before Bacot’s travels by Ri bo che rje drung ’Jam pa ’byung
gnas (Sardar-Afkhami 2001, 161, Baker 2004, 55)? By contrast, this form of the
toponym does not occur in the guidebook held in Bacot’s collection (Sbas yul
padma bkod kyi gnas yig) and used by Blondeau and Stein.7 In short, this persistent reference to the compound ‘Népémakö’ in European scholarly works
is a sign of Bacot’s enduring impact on the imaginaire of Tibetan studies, as
Ehrhard argues, while he and other scholars (Buffetrille 2007) – unlike, as we
will see, more recent studies on Padma bkod – continue using this name.
Subsequent significant studies on Padma bkod have continued to perpetuate this ‘Tibetological myth’ of Bacot as the pioneering figure of sbas yul studies in a significantly different and more distant way. In 2001, Sardar-Afkhami
mentions Bacot in the first page of his PhD dissertation:
Reports of Tibetans escaping into the forests first reached the West
through the accounts of the French explorer Jacques Bacot, who was traveling across the Tibetan province of Kham from May 1909 to March 1910.
Bacot encountered thousands of Tibetans fleeing from a Chinese warlord
towards a hidden-land called “Pemako” (Padma bkod). Bacot was unable
to keep up with the fleeing pilgrims, but he managed to obtain a guidebook which caused quite a stir among French Tibetologists.
Sardar-Afkhami 2001, 2–3
In this retelling of Bacot’s pioneering discovery, the gnas of Padma bkod disappears and the focus switches from the adventure tale to the guidebook, although the latter is not identified. An ambiguous, if not polemical, addition
pops up and incidentally broadens the ‘myth,’ as Sardar-Afkhami mentions a
notable “stir” caused by the guidebook encountering European philology: does
Sardar-Afkhami simply hint at the fact that the manuscript has remained the
main and only reference on the topic in France for years? Does he refer to the
conditions in which the manuscript was acquired (which are not explained
by Bacot)? Does he have in mind other issues pertaining to the geostrategic
such as Gnas chen padma bkod. In turn, Stein underlines that Padma bkod belongs to the
“‘lieux-cachés’ [hiddenlands] (sbas-gnas), refuges futurs [future shelters]” (Stein 1988, 43),
and Ehrhard cites the Spo bo lo rgyus where one finds the designation “Sbas gnas chen po
Padma bkod” (Ehrhard 1994, 9 and 19).
7 However, one finds the expressions Sbas yul padma bkod gnas and Gnas chen padma bkod
which Bacot translates “lieu secret Padma bkod [hiddenland Padma bkod]” and “grand lieux
saint nommé Padma bkod [major holy site called Padma bkod],” while he alternatively translates sbas yul as “lieux cachés [hiddenlands]” and “lieux secrets [secret places]” elsewhere.
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or geo-symbolic fantasies to which such a text may have been conflated into?
Ultimately, Sardar-Afkhami does not clarify what issues have been stirred up.
Ian Baker gives a similar account but has a different story about this
‘Tibetological myth.’ Baker tells how in Dharamsala, Tashi Tsering informed
him about Bacot’s unachieved goal:
Bacot was not able to follow the Khampa pilgrims, but he hand-copied
the thirty-six folios of their guidebook, which likened Pemako to the terrestrial body of the goddess Dorje Pagmo – the same deity that, in the
guise of a vulture, had guided Namkha Jikme into the depths of Sikkim.
Baker 2004, 39
I have not had the opportunity so far to discuss this with Tashi Tsering, but
there is no evidence that Bacot returned from his 1909 journey with the guidebook. Of course, he may have copied a guidebook to Padma bkod or had it
copied at the end of his sojourn in Spa btang, in Northern Yunnan, together
with other Tibetan Buddhist texts, or simply have found it, or even have been
given it at some point of his travel. While Bacot’s original Tibetan manuscript
or xylograph of the text has not yet been retrieved, I have discovered in his
personal papers a notebook with a hand-copy of the thirty-six folios, including
a rough, patchy, interlinear translation. The last page of the notebook makes
clear that Bacot owes his copy of the Sbas yul padma bkod kyi gnas yig to Babu
Tharchin with whom he worked during his sojourn in Kalimpong in 1931–2.
This encounter would launch Tharchin’s career as an expert on Tibetan ancient literature (Fader 2002, 351–353). It is probably with the help of Tharchin
that Bacot read through this arduous text. Whereas this finding suggests that
Bacot did not come back from his travel to Kham with a gnas yig, it reciprocally
testifies to Bacot’s deep and lasting interest in Padma bkod. Simultaneously,
while we do not know why Bacot did not publish his translation and preferred
to pass on his manuscript to his peers, the extant notebook also probably resolves the variating bibliophilic apologues attached to the ‘Tibetological myth’
of Népémakö in sketching clearly separate timelines for Bacot’s pioneering
travel toward Padma bkod and the much fantasized-about manuscript he
turns out to have acquired afterwards.
Interestingly, Sardar-Afkhami and Baker’s ground-breaking studies on sbas
yul do not use or even refer to the tag-name ‘Népémakö.’ Actually, they do
not directly rely either on Bacot’s travelogue or on the guidebook of his collection, but rather derive knowledge from material available in English and,
as have other more recent studies, a wide array of Tibetan texts on the topic
which have surfaced lately in Tibetan studies. We can thus advocate here for
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235
a different genealogy of Tibetan studies. As far as British Empire-related authors such as Waddell, Bailey, Kingdon Ward and the phalanx of officers of
the Survey of India are concerned, one could boldly say that in their effort to
resolve the ‘geographic riddle’ of the Brahmaputra source they focused on a
quite different aspect of Padma bkod and somewhat downplayed the mythical
aspect inherent to the very idea of ‘Népémakö.’8 Briefly, their own ‘myth’ did
not connect to the ‘Tibetan myth’ in the same manner as ‘Bacot’s myth’ did.
Although Bacot’s report does not fuel these studies as strongly as Blondeau’s
or Stein’s, the explorer still stands as a pioneering figure of the discovery of
sbas yul: the ‘Tibetological myth’ remains untouched.
The broad picture on Padma bkod can therefore be delineated as an ambiguous one. Probably not a stranger to the different attitudes which I have
just very briefly mentioned, the representation of Padma bkod in the West still
appears twofold today:
Although Padma bkod is often imagined and presented as an isolated region, accounts by British explorers and officers of the Indian administration show that it was rather a dynamic hub for peoples both from the
Tibetan plateau and the lower hill regions to the south.
Grothmann 2012, 23
In other words, while Padma bkod stands out as a “hub” in the British reports,
‘Népémakö’ can be construed as a horizon, loosely deriving from the Tibetan
Buddhist concept of hidden lands (as Grothman argues) and more or less consciously activated in the ‘myth’ of Bacot that ambivalently accompanied the
advent of sbas yul in Western discourse up to this day. As a conclusion to this
reviewing of some of the principal contributions that directly or indirectly derived from Bacot’s legacy, one should reconsider the issues at stake in Ehrhard’s
analysis, since the genesis of ‘Népémakö’/Padma bkod in Western scholarly
and popular traditions appears much more complex than it first seemed.
While Bacot’s 1912 travelogue has remained a major source for Tibetan studies
throughout 20th century, it has also conferred its authority to literary writers,
such as Segalen, who forged enduring and mystifying fantasies of Tibet. Where
the boundary between reality and imagination lies is not clear, since scholars
8 This does not imply that they were not deeply indebted to Bacot’s report. For example, Baker
could well be quoting from Bacot’s narrative when he quotes Kingdon Ward describing
Padma bkod as “the Promised Land of Tibetan prophecy […] a land flowing with milk and
honey … hidden behind misty barriers where ordinary men do not go” (Kingdon Ward, cited
in Baker 2004, 120).
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themselves rely on and somehow perpetuate the cultural values attached to
‘Népémakö’ in Bacot’s narrative when they deal with Tibetan sbas yul. To my
eyes this forms the crux of the problem: Bacot’s presentation of the tradition
of sbas yul raises questions pertaining to the distinctions and similarities between Western and Tibetan imaginaires of ‘earthly paradises.’ It is true that the
subtitle of Bacot’s published narrative – “Vers Népémakö, la terre promise des
Tibétains [Toward Népémakö, the promised land of the Tibetans]” – precisely
suggests that: a remote horizon and a Biblical reference. Contrary to some interpretations (Bai 2017, 187–192), we can argue that the main title read together
with the subtitle suggests a meaningful tension: Bacot’s travelogue does not
entail a mere cultural assimilation of sbas yul to Western concepts, but undertakes a terminological accommodation that still primarily refers to a specifically Tibetan cultural phenomenon. This irreducible ambiguity actually
reveals the very dynamic of Bacot’s quest for Padma bkod, which he never reduces to the vision of an unattainable utopia and a cultural projection onto the
Tibetan world (Thévoz 2013). Whereas Bacot’s narrative ultimately leaves this
set of questions to the appreciation of his readers, one must simultaneously
acknowledge that the author’s historical contribution to Tibetan studies has
precisely consisted in opening a new field of investigation on Tibetan sacred
geography and on the beliefs and practices attached to it.
The ambivalent status of ‘Népémakö’ in Western culture entices us to contrast this ‘Tibetological myth’ from other analogous myths such as Shambhala
and Shangri-La. It may well be that we can find a way out of the prison of
‘Népémakö’ in looking more carefully into Bacot’s report. While several aspects
of Bacot’s understanding of sbas yul have been studied elsewhere,9 the main
issue here will consist in a reflection on Bacot’s sources and the relation between the name and the place. In previous studies on Bacot and ‘Népémakö,’
I have overlooked how data and pieces of knowledge on Padma bkod are themselves displayed in Le Tibet révolté, and how these suggest inconsistencies or at
least oddities compared to the coherent interpretation I had finalized. In short,
I had assumed that ‘Népémakö,’ which Bacot never translates in his travelogue,
referred to an established site, an unattained destination for Bacot rather than
an unattainable one. In focusing on the symbolic value of this toponym, I did
not pay attention to the discrepancies between the (unstable) designation and
9 For a study of epistemological issues pertaining to ‘Népémakö’ as a pre-Malinowskian participative observation instance in travel literature and as a cognitive process, see Thévoz 2010,
367–397; for an evaluation of how Tibetan Bacot’s vision of ‘Népémakö’ is, see Thévoz 2010,
435–442; for a discussion of the concepts of ‘mythe vécu’ and ‘fiction’ at stake in Bacot’s narrative, see Thévoz 2012a; for a broader picture of the role played by the discovery of ‘Népémakö’
in Bacot’s involvement with Tibetan studies, see Thévoz 2012b.
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the (uncertain) location. What is the referent of the signifier ‘Népémakö’? Bacot
actually only mentions three geographical sites akin to ‘Népémakö,’ which all
seem rather vague themselves in the mental cartography delineated by the
traveler: Poyul [Spo yul], Pomi [Spo smad] (which is defined as a synonym for
the former), and – in an endnote – Kong po [Rkong po]. In turn, what is the
signified of the signifier ‘Népémakö’? Multiple options pop up in this regard:
Pemakö/Padma bkod, Padma bkod chung, Padma bkod chen, Pemakaun? What
does the ‘gnas’ refer to? Does it merely indicate, like in Blondeau’s rendition,
that Padma bkod is in itself a secret sacred place (gsang gnas, (Stein 1988, 37)?
Or does it refer more precisely to the extreme secret place (yang gsang gnas)
mentioned in some texts and searched for by Tibetan discoverers (gter ston)
at the same period (McDougal 2016)? Or else is it the secret place looking like
the ‘sex of a ḍākinī’ (gsang ba’i gnas) mentioned in other sources (Stein 1988,
40)?10 Bacot does not give many clues here, and, as we will see, the reference
process remains quite ambiguous in the text, and is even diffracted by Bacot
himself as narrator and by the multitude of voices and sources taken over by
the author in the narratologically multi-layered work that is Le Tibet révolté. My
paper would thus like to make some adjustments to Bacot’s knowledge at the
time he wrote Le Tibet révolté (there is no mention of ‘Népémakö’ in his previous travel account (Bacot 1909)) and bring to light some aspects of the ‘making
of’ Népémakö in the published narrative. What are his textual or oral sources?
Did he first gather knowledge on Padma bkod during his first or second trip in
Eastern Tibet, or while in France in between? Did he add new information in
the process of writing his account for both scholars and a wider readership?
2
The Making of ‘Népémakö:’ the Question of Sources on Padma
bkod in Bacot’s Tibet Révolté
In order to understand both how the ‘myth’ started and how the narrative
itself defeats a simple reading, we should pay attention to how Bacot’s narrative comprises three clearly distinguishable strata. In his foreword, the narrator begins by giving a retrospective summary of his travel (Bacot 1912, 1–12).
In the last three pages of the foreword, Bacot highlights specific features of
the sbas yul tradition and of Padma bkod in particular: prophecies ascribed to
10
Stein refers here to the ‘Guide of Ca-ri’ (Kun mkhyen Padma dkar po’s Gnas chen ca ri tra’i
ngo mchar snang ba pad dkar legs bshad). After Blondeau, Stein focuses on the assimilation of the sbas yul to the body of the sow-goddess Vajravāhāri. As the title of his study
makes it clear (‘grottes-matrices’ or cave-wombs), this is the nexus of his argument.
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Padmasambhava and mostly kept in “sacred books,” the circumstances of the
discovery of such hidden lands, the millenarist dimension of sbas yul, as well
as the recent exile of lamas followed by monks and lay people (Bacot 1912, 10–
11). It is striking in these pages that he even seems to quote from unreferenced
sources. The first quote sounds like it is based on hearsay:
Where is Népémakö located, by the way? I couldn’t find out. Beyond
Tsarong [Tshwa rong], one says, between Poyul [Spo yul] and the
Himalaya. […] This land has a very warm climate, “as warm as India,” it is
covered with flowers and so fertile that one does not need to work there.
Bacot 1912, 1011
While the reference to earthly paradises is almost a universal feature, the allusion to the flowers is probably an indirect reference to the “stream of flowers”
one finds in gter ston ’Ja’ tshon snying po’s Guidebook to the Hidden Land of
Padma bkod (Sbas yul padma bkod kyi lam yig).12 The second quote more certainly echoes such 16th-century guidebooks:
Tibet will be invaded by Toro-napo, “men will then wear clothes which
will be short on front and long behind, the son will not listen to his father,
and men will be in the shade when they will stand behind a horse dung.”
Bacot 1912, 11
The reference to ‘Toro-napo’ is rather unclear: it may well be an oral distortion or a clumsy transcription of the durusha armies alluded to in ’Ja’ tshon’s
guidebook or of the Dor nag po, the general of Kye mthing (Gengis Khan?13)’s
Mongol (hor) armies, an “incarnation of the demons” mentioned in the Sbas
yul padma bkod kyi gnas yig. As for the references to inverted clothing, to the
loss of respect for the past, to the smallness of people, they clearly and precisely echo lines of ’Ja’ tshon’s text and sum up the apocalyptic picture of a world
turned upside-down found in such a text.14 Significantly, Bacot later elaborates
on the prophecy pertaining to clothing as a visionary prediction referring to
Europeans’ tailcoats (Bacot 1912, 237). Other sources testify that it was a common and wide-spread assumption in the Tibetan world in the aftermath of the
11
12
13
14
Bacot’s text has not been translated into English so far. My translation throughout.
See Folio 8 (441). I thank Barbara Hazelton and Tom Greensmith for their working translations to which I am indebted here.
The hypothesis is Bacot’s in his draft translation of the text.
Folio 4 (437) especially has several lines that may be the source of Bacot’s quotation.
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the world and literate culture and provided the West with an alternative and
insider horizon of Bacot’s rebel Tibet.
Acknowledgements
The research for this publication was made possible by a research fellowship
from The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies administered by the American Council of Learned Societies. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Société asiatique de Paris for granting me access to
Jacques Bacot’s personal archive collections. My warmest thanks go to Cristina
Scherrer-Schaub, Olivier de Bernon, Jean-Pierre Mahé, Jeanne-Marie Allier,
Chantal Duhuy, Amina Abdureheman, and Françoise Wang. I also want to
heartfully thank Anne-Marie Blondeau, Katia Buffetrille, Isrun Engelhardt,
Anna Sawerthal, and Hamid Sardar-Afkhami for their valuable personal communications and help.
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Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and
History
Transformations of sbas yul through Time
In an era of environmental crisis, narratives of ‘hidden lands’ are
resonant. Understood as sanctuaries in times of calamity,
Himalayan hidden lands or sbas yul have shaped the lives of many
peoples of the region. Sbas yul are described by visionary lamas
called ‘treasure nders’ who located hidden lands and wrote
guidebooks to them. Scholarly understandings of sbas yul as places
for spiritual cultivation and refuge from war have been
complicated recently. Research now explores such themes as the
political and economic role of ‘treasure nders’, the impact of sbas
yul on indigenous populations, and the use of sbas yul for
environmental protection and tourism. This book showcases
recent scholarship on sbas yul from historical and contemporary
perspectives.
Readership
Scholars and students in Tibetan and Himalayan studies, Buddhist
studies, religious studies and anthropology.
For more information see brill.com
Extent: xxiii, 354 pp.
Language: anglais
Thèmes: Tibet, Asian Studies,
South Asia, Asian Studies,
Religion, Asian Studies, Religion
in Asia, Religious Studies,
History, Asian Studies
Publisher: Brill
Series:
Brill's Tibetan Studies Library,
Volume: 46
E-Book (PDF)
Publication Date: 30 Nov 2020
Publisher ISBN: 978-90-0443768-5
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Publication Date: 03 Dec 2020
Publisher ISBN: 978-90-0443749-4
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