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 remainedunknown 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 rarephenomenon 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[1] 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 ManchuQing 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.[2] 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 inexile.[3] 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 exileto 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 in2008.
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.”[4] 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.”[5] 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.”[6] 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[7] and it insisted upon his links with Tibetan literary and Buddhist heritage, mentioning mainly that Tibetan was taught atŚāntiniketan, but did not refer much to his work as an eminent author.[8]
Tagore knew many foreignerswho were engaged with Tibet (the explorers Sven Hedin, Nicholas Roerich, and Ekai Kawaguchi; Reverend Dr. John AndersonGraham, 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.”[9] He had thus “inspired Pandit Vidhusekhar Śastri to learn Tibetan”[10] in this hope and, quite logically, he introduced Tibetan studies in Śāntiniketan.[11] 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.[12] 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’”.[13] 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.[14] 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”[15], undoubtedly an appealing feature for Tibetans.[16]
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.[17]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.[18] 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].[19].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.[20] 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.[21]
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.[22] Tibetan exile government'sand, 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. Theyoung blogger Dawa Shonu, an exile Tibetan student who is studying in Benares, and introduces himself as a reader of Orwell and Garcia Marquez,[23] has not only translated “The Parrot’s Tale,” but also a number of poetic works by Tagore. Four of them are difficult to identify.[24] 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.[25]In 2009, Dawa Shonu had already translated “Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,”[26] 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.[27] 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 ofthe Bengali Nobel Prize winner, whom Samdhong Rinpoche often quotedin 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.[28] 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.”[29]
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 traditionand 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.”[30] 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.[31] 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,[32] 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.[33] At this point of my research, I do not know whether Chapdrak Gonpokyap chose Gitanjalihimself 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 anearlierChinese 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 translationof Gitanjali from Chinese.[34] This translation sold rather well, according to Phunor himself, indicating that there was a genuine interest for Tagore among Tibetan readers.[35] 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”),[36] and, more recently, the 6th (“Flower”).[37]