Course Syllabus

Tibet in Eurasian Circulatory History

Fall 2023

Monday 10:10am-12pm

Classroom: 201 80 Claremont Ave

Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce, Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies (EALAC)

Office Hours: by appointment

gwt2102@columbia.edu

Short description: This class explores how Tibet entered into the circulation of knowledge across Eurasia to assess Tibet’s entanglement in Buddhist studies and Area Studies.

Longer description: Tibetan studies has long been dominated by a study of Tibetan Buddhism, a proxy for the lost nation. This class explores how Tibet entered into the circulation of knowledge across Eurasia to examine what a critical assessment of Tibet being caught up in Buddhist Studies (formed during Europe’s colonial period) and Area Studies (formed during the Cold War) might look like.

Description

What does a critical Buddhist Studies look like? What does a critical Area Studies look like? Tibetan studies has long been dominated by a study of Tibetan Buddhism, a proxy for the lost nation. Harry Hartounian’s History’s Disquiet has argued that “the fixity of the national past has dominated historical practice.” So how does Tibet enter into the circulation of knowledge across Eurasia? Matthew King has developed an experiment in “anti-field history” that frames this course’s effort to ask these questions in the Tibetan case (for more about Matt King, listen to http://teachingbuddhism.net/matt-king/). In the Forest of the Blind is a study of the nineteenth and twentieth-century circulation through Europe and Inner Asia of the Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, the account of Faxian’s fifth-century travels to Buddhist sites in South and Central Asia. Incorporating Chinese, French, Mongolian, and Tibetan sources, King’s book provokes conversations across linguistic, regional, and temporal boundaries. King shows how Inner Asian authors transformed Orientalist renderings of Faxian’s account through such diverse lenses as Qing world historical order, emergent nationalisms, and the Tibetan refugee experience. These lenses were themselves also transformed. This course will attempt to apply King’s example of circulatory history to free Tibet studies from its self-referential trap and connect Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism to larger debates of and issues with area studies, humanities, and Buddhist studies.

Course requirements

Attendance and Postings 20%– Weekly reading responses posted on Courseworks. Your weekly response should be 150-250 words in length and should address particular points in the reading that you found interesting or noteworthy. Please post your response by 5pm the night before class.
In-class participation and presentations 20%– you will be asked to lead at least one class session, offering the class about 5 questions to spark discussion. You will also make a presentation about your final paper topic during the final class meetings.
Mid-term paper proposal: 250 word abstract and 2 page bibliography 20%
Final Paper/Project, 15-20 page paper or equivalent work on website or StoryMaps GIS based project 40% Due

Academic Integrity

This course is taught in the spirit of the guidelines for academic integrity of Columbia College, the School of General Studies, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. All work should be the original work of the individual student by themself. Papers may be discussed with other members of the class but may not be copied in any part from the work of anyone else, including from printed or Internet sources.

Disability Support

Students with disabilities who will be taking this course and may need disability-related classroom accommodations are encouraged to see the instructors as soon as possible. Also, stop by the Office of Disability Services to register for support services.

I have BOLDED the primary sources in the syllabus, including the almost weekly readings from the core primary text this syllabus is built around a (which includes Matt King’s translations of Chinese and Tibetan versions of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms with notes from the French and Mongol translations as well).

Week 1 Introduction to Class

An early example of a Eurasian circulatory text: Gui de Cambrai and Peggy McCracken. 2014. Barlaam and Josaphat: A Christian Tale of the Buddha. Introduction by Donald Lopez. New York: Penguin Books. Vii-xiv, 1-17.

Other signs of circulatory knowledge: https://www.buddhistdoor.net/news/archaeologists-unearth-ancient-buddha-statue-in-egypt/?fbclid=IwAR2Ers5YQ8g647nMcgtPyDTWtGdoHxZj4BVFl8pYUWev5b7JRQGfDBMhovs

Week 2 Anti-Field History (Taking on Buddhist and Area Studies)

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Introduction, pp. 1-16. https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/16768478

Harootunian Harry. 2010. Ch2: “Tracking the Dinosaur: Area Studies in a Time of ‘Globalism,’” History's Disquiet: Modernity Cultural Practice and the Question of Everyday Life. Columbia University Press. 25-57. https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14096303

Tuttle, Gray. “A Short History of Tibetan Studies,” unpublished, 2012 (updated 2023). A Short History of Tibetan Studies.pdf

Week 3 Traveling West for (Buddhist) Knowledge

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapter 1: 17-33; 145-170. https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/16768478

Tuttle Gray. 2005. Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press. Portions of Chapters 3-4, pp. 79-84, 97-113.

Kung, Ling-Wei, Ch3 “A Rebellious Buddha: Qing Espionage in Tibet,” in “The Great Convergence: Information Circulation, International Trade, and Knowledge Transmission Between Early Modern China, Inner Asia, and Eurasia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. 2021.

Week 4 Discovering/Inventing/Deploying Buddhism

Droit Roger-Pol; David Streight and Pamela Vohnson, trans. 2003. The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Chapter 3: 45-58.

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapter 2, 34-59, 170-181. https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/16768478

Tuttle Gray. 2005. Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press. Pan-Asian Buddhism 68-75.

Week 5 Looking Back: Jesuit Missionaries as Intermediaries

Johann Grueber entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Grueber

Albert d’Orville entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_d%27Orville

China Illustrata entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Illustrata

Kircher Athanasius; Charles D Van Tuyl, trans. [1667] 1987. China Illustrata: With Sacred and Secular Monuments Various Spectacles of Nature and Art and Other Memorabilia. Bloomington Ind: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. 60-70.

Pomplun, Trent. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. Intro chapter, Chs 2, 3: 1-15, 45-102.

Ippolito Desideri. Mission to Tibet. The Extraordinary Eighteenth Century Account of Father Ippolitio Desideri, S.J. Translated by Michael J. Sweet. Edited by Leonard Zwilling. Boston: Wisdom, 2010. Selections.

Optional reading:

Wessels, C. Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia (1603–1721), The Hague, 1924, pp. 164–202.

Tuttle, Gray. "A Tibetan Buddhist Mission to the East: The Fifth Dalai Lama's Journey to Beijing, 1652-1653." In Tibetan Society and Religion: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Bryan Cuevas and Kurtis Schaeffer, eds. Leiden: Brill, 2006; 65-87. Includes note on how the Dalai Lama perceived Adam Schall, whom Grueber and d’Orville were sent to defend.

Week 6 A Jesuit Debates with Tibetan Buddhists

Pomplun, Trent. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. Chapter 6: 161-198.

Lopez Donald S Jinpa Thupten and Ippolito Desideri. 2017. Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit's Quest for the Soul of Tibet. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1-149. Translated excerpts from Desideri’s “Inquiry Concerning the Doctrines of Previous Lives and Emptiness,” scattered throughout Dispelling the Darkness.

Week 7 Public Culture

King, Matthew W. 2019. “‘Unbiased Scholars’ and ‘Superficial Intellectuals’: Was there a Public Culture between Europe and Inner Asia in the Long 19th Century?” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities. 11. Leipzig University. 44 pages.

Lan Wu. 2022. Common Ground: Tibetan Buddhist Expansion and Qing China’s Inner Asia. U Columbia Press. https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/16767172 Ch 4 p118-149.

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapter 3, 60-76.

Week 8 Mapping Other Places

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapter 4, 77-108, 181-197.

Schaeffer, Kurtis, Matthew Kapstein, and Gray Tuttle. [Primary sources dating to: 1777, 1802, 1827, 1830, 1889] 2013. Sources of Tibetan Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press. Ch 19 “Sumpa Khenpo’s Annals of Kokonor,” “Intersections with Mongolia and China,” & “Intimations of the West,” pp 594-596, 633-635, 650-658.

Lobsang Yongdan. Tibet charts the world: Btsan po No mon han's The Detailed Description of the World, an early major scientific work in Tibet. .” In Mapping the Modern in Tibet. Gray Tuttle, ed. Beiträge zur Zentralasienforschung, International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies—Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH: Sankt Augustin. 2012. 77-138.1830 Primary source.

Huc, Evariste Régis and Joseph Gabet. 1987. Travels in Tartary Thibet and China 1844-1846. New York: Dover Publications. Chapter V, sections from “Religion” through “Buddhism.”

Kung, Ling-Wei, “Mapping the Ganges: Buddhist Monks, Imperial Cartography, and Global Knowledge,” in “The Great Convergence: Information Circulation, International Trade, and Knowledge Transmission Between Early Modern China, Inner Asia, and Eurasia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. 2021.

Week 9 Describing Others’ Religions

Martin, Dan. “Anthropology on the Boundary and the Boundary in Anthropology.” Human Studies (Boston), vol. 13, no. 2 (April 1990), pp. 119-145.

Droit Roger-Pol; David Streight and Pamela Vohnson, trans. 2003. The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Chs 5-6, 73-103.

Jackson, Roger. “Triumphalism and Ecumenism in Thu’u bkwan’s Crystal Mirror” JIATS, no. 2 (August 2006), THL #T2720.

Thu’u bkwan, Blo-bzang-chos-kyi-nyi-ma; Roger R Jackson, trans. [1802] 2009. The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems: A Tibetan Study of Asian Religious Thought. Boston Montreal: Wisdom Publications; in association with the Institute of Tibetan Classics. 331-370, 380-385.

Huc Evariste Régis. 1855. The Chinese Empire Forming a Sequel to "Recollections of a Journey through Tartary and Thibet." 2d ed. Selections on the three Chinese religions: Daoism, Buddhism, pp. 174-194 in the original. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/80360838.htmlLinks to an external site.. (pages #186-206 in the digital pagination)

Said Reza Huseini, “Mirza Haidar’s Tarikh-i Rashidi (d. 1561) and his observation of sixteenth-century Tibet.” University of Cambridge.

Week 10 Circulating Letters & Ideas: Learning from Others in the Qing Empire

King. Matthew. 2022: “Nomads and Vagabond Monks: From the Text to the Reader in 18th Century Inner Asia,” in “Buddhist Literature,” ed. Vesna Wallace. Religions 13 (85). 13pp.

Shakya, Riga, “Epistolary Friendships.” in “Mirrors of History: The Poetics of the Tibetan Kingdom in the Time of Empire (1728-1750).” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2023. Includes letters in translation.

Stilerman, Tracy, Chapter 4: “The Buddhist Gardens of Tukwan Lozang Chökyi Nyima,” in “Writing Tibet as a Buddhist Land in the Seventeenth to Twentieth Centuries.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. 2023. 23 pages. Includes passages in translation. Stilerman_The Buddhist Gardens FROM Contextualizing Place Writing in Tibet.pdf

Week 11 Finding What You Want to Find: Circling around Shambhala

King, Matthew W. 2022. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapter 5. 109-144; 197-210.

Wylie, Turrell. “Was Christopher Columbus from Shambhala,” Bulletin of the Institute of China Border Area Studies(Taipei). No. 1, July 1970. 24-33.

Roerich Nicholas. 1930. Shambhala. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. Ch 1, pp 1-33.

Tuttle, Gray. “Shambhala: The Politics of Messianic Tibetan Buddhism in Modern China.” In L’image du Tibet aux XIXeme-XXeme siecles/ The Image of Tibet in the 19th and 20th centuries. Monica Esposito, ed. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient. 2008, 303327.

Hilton, James. 1933. Lost Horizons. NY: Pocket Books. pp 66-69, 128-149. (Optional: 1937 Movie link, from clio: http://fod.infobase.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=57129).

Kolas, Ashild. 2008. Chs 1, 7. Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition: A Place Called Shangrila. New York NY: Routledge.

Link to Ouyang Feiying's 1940s song Shangri-la: https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/wl2530/2018/05/10/china/

Optional: Roerich, George and Philip Hamilton McMillan Memorial Publication Fund. 1931. Trails to Inmost Asia; Five Years of Exploration with the Roerich Central Asian Expedition. New Haven London: Yale University Press. Selections.