Giuseppe Tucci’s Indo-Tibetica

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Chinese Edition of Giuseppe Tucci’s Indo-Tibetica

by GIUSEPPE VIGNATO

A Chinese edition of Giuseppe Tucci’s Indo-Tibetica will be presented to the public conjointly by the School of Archaeology and Museology of Peking University, Shanghai Classics Publishing House and IsIAO, in Beijing in the autumn of 2009, marking the 25th anniversary of Tucci’s death.

A considerable part of Tucci’s research was dedicated to Tibet, where he spent significant periods of his life. Most of the areas he visited and the material he studied were at the time unknown to the scientific world. Extensive fieldwork, ‘direct experiences, which at times are more useful to the understanding of a rite, of the inspiration behind a masterpiece, of the meaning of a doctrine, than simple familiarity with the texts’i(1), and a wealth of collated documentation, especially manuscripts and xylographs, were to form the solid bases of an astounding number of academic publications, of which Indo-Tibetica can be considered the first substantial one. Written in Italian, inadequately translated into Englishi(2), IndoTibetica has not enjoyed the fame of Tibetan Painted Scrolls, of which it can be considered the first part. More than three quarters of a century has passed since Tucci began exploring Western and Central Tibet; many of the important monuments, artefacts, inscriptions and ancient texts recorded and photographed by Tucci have long since disappeared, others are in a very poor state of conservation; the text, notes and photographs of Indo-Tibetica, four volumes, seven books, published by the Reale Accademia d’Italia between 1932 and 1941 can themselves be considered a relic to be studied.

Tucci’s particular approach involved profound immersion in the life, faith, and spirit of the Tibetan people together with an investigation into their culture, especially Buddhism; his fieldwork, methodology and organization of the material can be taken as a guide even for today’s scholars. While translating Indo-Tibetica we have noted a development of the methodology in each successive volume. Starting with the study of pagodas and tsha tsha, effectively creating a solid archaeological frame of reference for the periodization of the material he was to meet in later expeditions, he reconstructed the historical and religious background of Western Tibet around the figure of rin chen bzan po, ‘one of the most important figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism and a man distinctively representative of the period in which he lived’i(3). On this solid basis he described the temples of Western

(1) G. Tucci, Indo-Tibetica, I. ‘mC’od rten’ e ‘ts’a ts’a’ nel Tibet indiano ed occidentale, p. 7.

(2) M. Vesci (transl.), Lokesh Chandra (ed.), English Version of Indo-Tibetica, New Delhi 19881989.

(3) Tucci, Indo-Tibetica, II. rin chen bzan po e la rinascita del Buddhismo nel Tibet intorno al Mille, p. 5. Cf. English version.

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Tibet and deepened his commentary into iconographical studies of the images found in the temples, focusing on the rationale inspiring them. His was not ‘a simple description of the visited temples, but especially an attentive study of the artistic and iconographic documents they contained’i(4), the aim being to progressively form a ‘reasoned manual of Tibetan Buddhist iconography’i(5). Moving to Central Tibet, he applied and expanded this method by investigating religious and historical sources of the area and the development of the schools; from there he could better describe the monuments, especially the Great Stupa of Gyantse. This same methodology emerges from the pages of Tibetan Painted Scrolls, a book which begins with a discussion on the history of Central Tibet (13th-18th century), proceeds to examine the differences among sects, presents relevant religious and historical sources, and then focuses on the art of the temples of Central Tibet. Only the last chapter of the first volume in fact deals with painted scrolls, which are categorized and described in the second volume. Although the object of the research shifted from temples to painted scrolls, discussion on the meaning of Tibetan symbolism, the methodological similarity, the large number of references to Indo-Tibetica makes Tibetan Painted Scrolls the continuation, almost a shoot, of Indo-Tibeticai(6).

Tucci’s description of the temples he visited is captivating. By reading his books we are transferred into the presence of gods and forces, often masked in grotesque forms, with which we become progressively familiar. Tucci’s search for truth brought him to find connections among different aspects of Buddhism currently studied independently by different disciplines: scripture, philosophy, history, architecture, art and ritual. All these disciplines he was able to easily master; at the same time, he associated knowledge of these particular aspects with his personal journey towards the truth, never disregarding the power of nature and its forces around and inside us. Through the description of temples, Tucci presented to us a world of connections which, although at times ostensibly forced – due to the lack of literary or iconographic sources, the difficulty of encountering a learned lama with whom to unravel unclear aspects of the doctrine – show his determination to understand and describe the core truth of Buddhism. The religious atmosphere he breathed in the chapels and described through his books is that of a living liturgy into which everyone who has reached a suitable stage of preparation can enter and glimpse those truths Buddhism wants us to experience.

From the point of view of contemporary academic writing, inconsistencies and imprecision are not entirely absent. But on the whole, while reading Indo-Tibetica one has the feeling of being taken by the hand by master Tucci into Tibet and the Buddhist universe.

The study of his academic publications together with the reading of the diaries of his trips reveals the stunningly large amount of material he was able to produce during brief stops on his expeditions. Most of his days in Tibet were spent in long marches from one site to another, and once he reached an important site only part of his time could be dedicated to

(4) Id., Indo-Tibetica, III. I templi del Tibet Occidentale e il loro simbolismo artistico, p. 20.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Tucci himself suggested that Tibetan Painted Scrolls was the continuation of Indo-Tibetica. Once the Reale Accademia d’Italia was closed after the Second World War, he could not continue the IndoTibetica series; further studies on the material discovered during his expeditions in Tibet were therefore published in Tibetan Painted Scrolls. See A Lhasa e oltre, Roma 1980, p. 8.

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the work he had come to do – much time needed to be given to local political and religious personnel. But he made the most of those moments, immediately individuating the problems with a superbly trained and acute eye. These readings suggest also that his Tibetan lifestyle – moving across vast plateaus, crossing hazardous mountain passes, in charge of a large caravan of men and animals and completely at the mercy of the caprices of extreme weather – was essential in forming his way of perceiving, almost part of a purification process which in the end trained him to see beyond the surface.

With eyes never growing tired we stare at the superb ridge of icy peaks and mountain tops, we stop to see a crag, a gulley, a waterfall. They [the pilgrims] simply look into themselves; it is faith pulling them forwards. […] Only few ascetics dare to face without companions the perils and the bitterness of the trip. We have met some of them, covered with few rags, readying themselves to defy defenceless the bitter cold of the Tibetan nights and the dangers of the deserts. Triumph of the spirit over the flesh; for these ascetics the body is a quiet instrument of the soul.i(7).

Today, in an era in which travelling has become easier scholars rarely embark on serious prolonged fieldwork, let alone walking and acquainting themselves with the environment; the effects of lack of interaction with local people and the natural setting of the monuments studied can be felt in our modern scholarly work. Tucci had already pointed out this danger: […] I am a nomad at heart, and nomads would either walk or ride, thus staying close in contact with the earth. Nowadays we are skimming over the surface of things. Machines have accustomed us to see things from afar and at the surface, thus contributing to that lack of depth lamented by the wise ones in our modern age.i(8).

Through the discipline of trekking across virtually impenetrable territories it was not so much the words of a text or the multicoloured assemblies of divinities painted on the walls of the temples which interested him, but the world they symbolically represented. Tucci succeeded in having us enter into mystical liturgies taking place in abandoned temples; indeed, little of this can be found in recent scholarship.

The result of Tucci’s investigation of the temples of Western Tibet was almost completely ignored by Chinese archaeologists and Tibetologists until the end of the 20th century. The temples of Western Tibet, which suffered much destruction in the last half century, have been studied by Chinese scholars on the basis of scant remains, resulting in approximate or incorrect interpretations. Making Indo-Tibetica available to Chinese scholars will help them in future research; it will be essential for restoration, as well as a valuable methodological tool for both present and future generations of Chinese Tibetologists. Realizing this I decided to undertake the translation of this book into Chinese.

The translation project started in 1999 with the support of the Chinese Art Museum of Parma. The Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei graciously granted copyrights. Not being a Tibetologist and with a foreign accent in written Chinese, I looked for competent Chinese scholars who could help in the endeavour. The aim has been to produce a useful resource for present-day scholars in terms of presentation, notes, appended material and plates while

(7) G. Tucci, Tibet Ignoto, Roma 1996, pp. 27, 29-30. (The translation into English is by the Author).

(8) To Lhasa and Beyond, New York 1956. Reprint New Delhi, 1987, pp. 212-13.

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keeping as faithfully as possible to the Italian text. To foster consistency I decided to work on all the books together and to publish them at one time. A team of Chinese scholars was gradually formed, with expertise in the different disciplines relevant to Tucci’s work: from history and archaeology to iconography and Buddhist studies. A first draft was produced by two Chinese scholars on the basis of the English version of Indo-Tibetica; in the subsequent stages many revisions have been carried out with the help of other experts, always on the basis of the Italian text.

Much thought has been given to the best way to render the text into Chinese. Tucci had almost to create a language to speak of Tibetan Buddhism to contemporary Italians; his task was not simply to translate words and concepts from one language to another, but to render Buddhist ideas accessible to people used to Western philosophical and religious systems: most of the terminology and the philosophy he used was therefore cloaked in a GreekRoman and Christian outlook. In translating Tucci’s book into Chinese we faced a more complex problem: first of all we needed to strip the text of its Western outlook and reconstruct the concepts Tucci was illustrating by individuating the corresponding Tibetan term. After that we needed to select the most appropriate terms to render Tibetan concepts into the Chinese language, not a straightforward process, since Tibetan studies in China are at their initial stage and a system of consistent technical terminology is lacking. We have aimed at creating a set of proper names (persons, places, gods) and well defined concepts, and translated a large number of sutra titles, a work which has grown into the compilation of tables of comparative terms used in translation, comprising the Chinese translation of all Sanskrit and Tibetan terms Tucci utilized in Indo-Tibetica. The tables, containing several thousand entries, will together with the analytic index form a supplementary volume, which we hope will be a helpful reference tool for Chinese scholars.

While translating Tibetan and Sanskrit texts into Chinese, inconsistencies and errors were found; we felt it necessary to double-check the original documents and reconstruct the complete texts. Tucci largely utilized texts and manuscripts he himself collected: some are now difficult to find, others are particular editions different from those commonly used in China. With a Tibetan scholar from China, Saerji, I travelled to Rome, where we were kindly received in the IsIAO library by Dr D’Arelli who allowed us to consult Tucci’s collection of Tibetan documents, which are part of the Tucci Tibetan Fund: the Tibetan and Sanskrit documents contained in Indo-Tibetica have been checked against the originals and amended as necessary, except for a small number we were unable to tracei(9).

Similar philological work needed to be done for the inscriptions of the Great Stupa of Gyantse, a large amount of text which, with its translation, comprises a whole volume of Indo-Tibetica. The physical transcribing of the inscriptions required an amount of time which Tucci could not afford, so he had some lamas make copies which he could not verify in situ; in fact these copies contain a number of inaccuracies and omissions. Since Tucci’s time many studies have been carried out on this monument, but a complete examination of the inscriptions had not been carried out. Saerji and I went to Gyantse, to find that a large part of the inscriptions had not been transcribedi(10). The unrecorded texts as well as amendments

(9) Sincere thanks to Prof. De Rossi Filibeck and doctoral candidate Clemente for their help in this phase of the work.

(10) On this and related problems see Saerji’s article in this same volume.

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to transcriptions have been included in the Chinese version: we are confident we are in line with Tucci’s intention of recording completely and correctly all the inscriptions.

The texts of the temple of Tabo have been checked on the basis of field work and comparison with published materiali(11). In cases of unclear or difficult passages, different editions of the same text were consulted where available, and mistakes or misreading were corrected and covered in footnotes: all philological work has been carried out by Saerji.

Having gathered the revised documentation, translation into Chinese was carried out directly from the original Tibetan and Sanskrit, with notes and interpretations by Tucci kept in the footnotes. Besides offering a more reliable and authentic version we could thus foster technical consistency. At the same time, Tibetan and Sanskrit texts became the basis for understanding Tucci’s Italian rendering of technical terms and concepts, creating a solid base from which to translate them into Chinese. To facilitate the work of scholars with different degrees of language knowledge, the appended documents in Tibetan and Sanskrit are given in the original script and in Romanized form. Photographs of some documents Tucci used but which are difficult to access in China are appended.

Besides the amendments arising from critical evaluation of the sources, printing mistakes were amended and the corrected form given without note; mistakes or amendments Tucci himself pointed out in subsequent publications as well as minor inaccuracies noted by serious scholars have been included in the text, with the original text included for comparison in a footnote. In the case of large sections or views which do not correspond to modern scholarship or understanding of the subject, we have kept to the original text, no notes were added.

References have been completed as necessary and given in a conventional form in the footnotes.

Tucci himself remarked: It is not necessary for me to insist on the importance of this photographic material… I do not have the slightest doubt that within a few years, of many of the temples and chapels of Western Tibet and of the frescoes that adorn them, there will be only the photographic documentation brought back by us.i(12).

His prophesy has in some cases already come true, so that I felt compelled to ensure that Tucci’s photographs were published in the best possible way. The collaboration with IsIAO, in particular with Dr Nalesini, has been valuable in this regard. Fosco Maraini offered for this Chinese edition printouts of all the photographs of the last volume from the original film. In this way we were able to obtain excellent prints of all but a few photographs.

Tucci often intertwines far-reaching speculation on issues he considered worth noting with the description of a temple; at times he does not describe consecutive images, but jumps from one side of a temple to another, without clues to orientation: in some instances it is hard to follow him. Where material was available, we complemented the text with a plan of the temple studied; in the case of the Great Stupa of Gyantse maps for each chapel described have been made, indicating the position of the photographs published by Tucci.

Tibetan places names are difficult to identify: apart from the possibility of changes over the centuries, different spellings of the same place name are found in Tibetan documents, (11) L. Petech & C. Luczantis, eds., Inscriptions from the Tabo Main Temple, Roma, IsIAO, SOR LXXXIII, 1999.

(12) Tucci, Indo-Tibetica, III.I. Templi del Tibet Occidentale e il loro Simbolismo Artistico, Parte I, Spiti e Kunavar, p. 17; see English version.

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while Chinese equivalents have not been systematically worked out. After much consultation, we opted for keeping the maps as published by Tucci, adding the Chinese characters for the place names mentioned in the text.

The project has thus become more than a translation. We are publishing a Chinese text which includes a critical verification of all sources, correction of mistakes, completion of references; the photographs are of superior quality compared with the original publication, and a large number of maps of the studied monuments have been added. We are planning to make these improvements accessible to Italian readers by compiling a companion volume to the original Italian edition.

To date little of Tucci is known to Chinese scholars: a few bibliographical data are available, but no thorough presentation and analysis of the man and his work. For this reason a book complementing the translation into Chinese is under way, Tucci and His Tibetan Travels: Seeking the Soul of Tibet, a provisional title indicating the perspective from which Tucci is analyzed. This book will be comprised of a series of articles written by Italian scholars, some of which have already been published by IsIAOi(13), others commissioned to provide background material for the study of Tucci and Indo-Tibetica.

The Shanghai Classics Publishing House and IsIAO will be co-publishers of the Chinese translation of Indo-Tibetica. Shanghai Classics is a publishing house with an excellent tradition of scientific publications which in the last decade has gathered experience in publishing Tibetan source and research material. It is intended that Tucci and His Tibetan Travels: Seeking the Soul of Tibet together with Indo-Tibetica be published at the same time.

Much work begun by Tucci has not been completed: our brief period of field work in the Great Stupa of Gyantse showed how much work still needs to be carried out to research the history and significance of this astounding monument. Research focused on the monastery of Tabo has already produced a substantial body of literature, complementing and affirming the work of Tuccii(14). The temple where Tucci wanted to invest his best energies, Tholing, was not, in the end, studied by him; some archaeological and iconological work has been done in the last half century, but it remains largely an unfinished task which we hope to take up in the future; the translation of Indo-Tibetica into Chinese being a step in that direction.

With the translation being prepared for print, we are approaching the end of a long and at times arduous work; this is more like arriving at a mountain pass than reaching the top of a mountain; in front of us opens up a wide plateau which still needs to be crossed, the way ahead is still long. As we pause to catch breath and gaze to the horizon, there is a deep sense of gratitude towards the master who has been leading us through the mountainous routes of Tibetan religion and thought.

(13) R. Gnoli, Ricordo di Giuseppe Tucci, Roma, IsMEO, SOR, LV, 1985.

(14) Especially the collaboration between IsIAO and Prof. Klimburg-Salter’s team of the Institute of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna.

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