The Holy Land Reborn. Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India by Toni Huber

Author:Toni Huber [Toni Huber]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Tags: AvE4EvA
ISBN: 0226356485
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2008-04-02T20:00:00+00:00

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reliquary, Indian Museum, Calcutta, 1910.

heads deeply bowed. It was a solemn ceremony, and all were both awed

and pleased to have made so close a contact with the Founder of their

religion through the medium of these precious relics.104

The great power associated with Buddha relics was already clearly apparent to the Dalai Lama, and to that he required no introduction. But what the Tibetan leader had now newly discovered was that the science of modern archaeology, and especially its application to excavations of the ancient Indian sites of the Buddha, was a crucial new source of the most important sacra of his religion. It was with this new realization that he visited Sa¯rna¯th one year later on pilgrimage, in the company of his most trusted officer, Dasang Drandul Tsarong (1888–1959), and there sought to acquire his own source of the Buddha’s power. Tsarong related the exact details of his and the Dalai Lama’s visit at Sa¯rna¯th to his son, Dundul Namgyal Tsarong, who recounted them as follows:

One morning, His Holiness was going around the stupas at Benares, when he stopped at a certain place where a very old pile of earth resembling an ancient damaged stupa was being pulled down by some workmen. He saw that the work was being supervised by a British officer and that he was taking out some bits and pieces from a pot which lay on a table nearby. When His Holiness saw this, he told my father that according to religious books many relics of the Lord Buddha were distributed to various sacred places, and he was quite sure that this was one of them; my father was to obtain some if possible. So Father went over to the guard standing near a table on which the small relics had been placed with great care. He did not know how much money he had in his pocket; but he showed a handful to the man, who then exchanged it for a handful of bone-like objects, without being seen by the British officer. He then gave these to His Holiness, who was immensely pleased with them and took them to his residence. Later a small quantity was given to my father, who treasured the precious relics and took them back to Tibet. Many years later, when my father built his new house on the outskirts of Lhasa, he placed the relics inside images of the three great religious kings which were housed in the main family lhakhang (chapel).105

There is of course no way during this incident that the Dalai Lama could have actually obtained something that had been traditionally considered a relic of the Buddha in ancient times and been ritually interred in a reliquary. There were no excavations at Sa¯rna¯th during the years of the Dalai Lama’s stay in India. In fact, between 1910 and 1912, a museum was being erected on the site to house the sculpture collection, and what the Dalai Lama undoubtedly took to be fresh archaeological excavations was probably just tidying of the grounds in preparation for the forthcoming opening ceremony and impending viceregal visit.

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