Central Tibet and the Mongols: The Yan-Sa-skya Period of Tibetan History by Luciano Petech

Review by: Elliot Sperling

Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 115, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1995), pp. 342-343
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/604712 .
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342

Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995)

appeared since the 1949 publication of Giuseppe Tucci's Tibetan Painted Scrolls. In the absence of any single monograph
dedicated to the topic, this last work was often taken by default
as the main secondary source on the subject. In a sense then,
Central Tibet and the Mongols is indicative of how far studies
of Mongol-Tibetan relations have progressed over the last several decades, not simply by virtue of the numberof relevant Tibetological articles that have appeared, but also as a result of
the dissemination of a large numberof Tibetan primarysources,
beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. Prof. Petech has made ample
use of such texts, including the Si-tu bka'-chems, the difficult,
but extremely important,autobiographicalwork by Byang-chub
rgyal-mtshan, the Phag-mo gru-pa leader who overthrew the
GREGORY
C. KOZLOWSKI political authority of the Sa-skya-pa. Indeed, the chapter dealDEPAUL
UNIVERSITY
ing with the rise of Byang-chub rgyal-mtshan and the Phag-mo
gru-pa is the longest in this volume. (Indicative of the continuing significance of both the subject in general and the Si-tu bka'chems as a source, is the appearance, subsequent to the publication of Central Tibet and the Mongols, of the importantstudy
Central Tibet and the Mongols: The Yiian-Sa-skya Period of
by Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, "On the Life and Political CaITALreer of Ta'i-si-tu Byang-chub rgyal-mtshan [1302?-1364]," in
PETECH.
Rome: ISTITUTO
Tibetan History. By LUCIANO
TibetanHistory and Language: Studies Dedicated to Uray Geza
EDESTREMO
IANOPERIL MEDIO
ORIENTE,1990. Pp. viii + 167.
on his Seventieth Birthday,ed. Ernst Steinkellner [Wien, 1991],
LIt 60,000.
277-327.)
The appearance of a new monograph by Prof. Luciano
Nevertheless, it must be reiteratedthat Central Tibet and the
Petech covering any aspect of Sino-Tibetan relations is always
Mongols is a relatively short work and leaves a few subjects
less than fully explored. One example is the position of the
a welcome event; and so it is with this latest contributionto his
a
Karma Bka'-brgyud-pain Yuan-Tibetan relations-an imporand
the
is
Central
Tibet
oeuvre.
relatively
Mongols
important
tant subject, since the Karma-pawere instrumentalin the transshort volume, but it provides a concise and useful overview of
mission of notions about the esoteric empowerment of secular
Yuan-Tibetan relations and an exploration of several signifimonarchsthat ultimately drew Mongol interest to Tibetan Budcant topics relevant to the study of that subject. Much of this
dhism. The emergence of the Karma-paas the most influential
is done through the refinement of work that Prof. Petech had
Tibetan Buddhist group at the early Ming court was not so
originally taken up in various articles since the 1970s; in his
much a reversal of the position enjoyed by the Sa-skya-pa as it
forward he terms the present volume "the final summing-up of
was a reassertion of the prestige and influence that the Karmamy researches and of my views on several particularaspects of
Tibetan history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."
pa had enjoyed before the rise of the latter among the Mongols.
In fact, this recovery can already be seen in Toyan Temiir's paThe main chapters deal with the consolidation of the workinthe
and
the
the
between
Yuan,
tronage of the third and fourth Karma-pa hierarchs, RangSa-skya-pa
ing partnership
stitutional structures of that relationship, its apogee, and the
byung rdo-rje and Rol-pa'i rdo-rje (erroneously enumerated as
the second and third hierarchs on p. 110).
mid-fourteenth-century collapse of broad Sa-skya-pa power.
In this regard the role of the second Karma-pa hierarch,
Those familiar with Prof. Petech's writings over the last two deKarma Pakshi, at the courts of both Mongke and Koden could
cades will easily recognize the subjects of some of his earlier
have been fleshed out in a bit more detail. There is an extant
studies in the subheadings for these chapters; e.g., the sections
volume of autobiographicalverses by Karma Pakshi, not cited
in
the
census
with
stations,
etc.,
Tibet,
postal
Mongol
dealing
in the notes or the bibliography of Central Tibet and the Monin the chapteron institutions. Included in the monographare tables of the Mongol qayan, abbots of Sa-skya, Yuan imperial
gols, in which he makes mention of both figures and their patronage of him. Admittedly this is just prior to the Yuan period,
preceptors (Ch. dishi), and Sa-skya administrators(Tib. dponproperly speaking, but it does help our understanding of the
chen); as well as a chart of the lines of administrativeauthority
hierarch's relations with Qubilai and of Koden's place in the
over Tibet and a genealogical tree of major figures in the 'Khon
in
the
picture. While it has been known for some time that Koden is
period question.
family up through
considered an incarnationof one of the last Tangut rulers in cerIt goes without saying that this work has benefited from the
tain Tibetan sources, Karma Pakshi describes Koden as one of
numerous articles concerning Yuan-Tibetanrelations that have
In India's current political climate, Eaton is bound to run
afoul of Hindu nationalists who never tire of characterizing
Muslims as loutish, temple-breaking foreigners. The Mughal
conquest, he shows, brought on a boom in the construction of
Hindu temples. Also, Bengali Muslims learned their faith in a
pretty distinctly Bengali way, proving that no matter what the
geographical origins of Islam it was quickly accepted on indigenous terms without losing its doctrinal fundamentals. Indologists as well as Islamicists will doubtless find many
particulars to carp at, but Eaton's deployment of his sources
would indicate that he needs no assistance in mounting his
own defense.

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Reviews of Books

his patrons in an earlier life, thus presenting Koden's relations

with him as the continuation of a situation that had existed between the Karma Bka'-brgyud-pa and the Tangut court. Although Prof. Petech describes Koden as departing from the
scene sometime after 1253, other sources make it clear that
Koden was one of the principal backers of Qubilai when he
claimed the throne as qayan in 1260; see, specifically, Dpa'-bo
Gtsug-lag phreng-ba, Dam-pa'i chos-kyi 'khor-lo bsgyur-barnams-kyi byung-ba gsal-byed-pa mkhas-pa'i dga'-ston [Beijing, 1986], 894; and Si-tu pan-chen Chos-kyi 'byung-gnas
and 'Be-lo Tshe-dbang kun-khyab, Bsgrub-rgyud karma karmtshang brgyud-pa rin-po-che'i rnam-par thar-pa rab-'byams
nor-bu zla-ba chu-shel-gyiphreng-ba, vol. I [New Delhi, 1972],
f. 57r-both used by Prof. Petech.
A different point that some readers may take issue with concerns the overly restrictive definitions employed for the Chinese
term "Tufan"and the Tibetan term "Stod-Hor."Continuing the
delineation he made in a 1988 article on Yuan organization of
the Tibetan border areas, Prof. Petech, on p. 12 of the present
volume, gives the following breakdownof terms used for Tibet
and Tibetans during the Yuan: Tufan indicates the Amdo region
(i.e., the northeastern portion of the Tibetan Plateau); Wusizang, Central Tibet; and Xifan, Tibetan populations to the west
of China and Tibetan-speaking regions in general. While
Wusizang surely does denote CentralTibet (i.e., Dbus-Gtsang),
Tufan, like Xifan, has been used in a much broaderand general
sense over a long period of time, even during the Yuan. Thus
the Yuan clearly subsumed areas in Khams (outside Amdo)
within the realm of jurisdiction of the "Chief Military Commandery of the Pacification Commission for Tibet and Other
Regions" (Ch. Tufan dengqu xuanweisi duyuan shuaifu; see
Song Lian, Yuanshi [Beijing, 1976], 60:1432-33). Other evidence from the Yuanshialso indicates the broadernature of the
name Tufan; it is used to describe the jurisdiction of the Xuanzhengyuan, which Prof. Petech renders (p. 35) as the "Department of Tibetan and Buddhist Affairs." While this gloss does
not reflect the literal meaning of "Xuanzhengyuan"(which took
its appellation from the name of the pavilion where Tibetans
were received in state audiences during the Tang), it does
reflect the mandate of the department as described in the
Yuanshi(87:2193). The wording there uses the term Tufan to
refer to Tibet, and the history of the departmentmakes it clear
that "Tufan"in this instance does not mean Amdo, but Tibet in
the broad sense, including Central Tibet. Elsewhere, this impression is further reinforced: the Yuanshi (202:4517) places
Sa-skya within Tufan in its notice on the important cleric
'Phags-pa. The unavoidable conclusion is that while "Tufan"
was assuredly used to denote places within the area of Amdo,
its meaning cannot be viewed as uniformly limited to that portion of the Tibetan Plateau in Yuan-era references.
"Stod-Hor"is similarly a broaderterm than Prof. Petech implies. He sees it (p. 30) firmly identifying the Il-khanid realms

343

at the beginning of the Mongol period, but denoting the Cayatai

realms during the fourteenthcentury. The fact is, it takes in both
areas in a somewhat general way; "Stod-Hor"should be understood in contrast to "Smad-Hor" (a term found, e.g., in Dpal'byor bzang-po, Rgya-Bod yig-tshang chen-mo [Chengdu,
1985], 545). These two terms split the Mongol domains along
an east-west divide; the Smad-Hor are the Mongols of China,
the Stod-Hor those to the west of them. To insist that "StodHor" can only denote one specific royal domain at any given
time excessively limits the actual sense in which it was used.
The points mentioned above do not detract from the utility
and significance of this work. As already stated, Central Tibet
and the Mongols is a work of great value. Prof. Petech is a
pioneering scholar who has rightly remained, over a period of
more than five decades, a preeminent figure in the study of Tibetan history, in general, and Tibet's relations with China, in
particular. This latest monograph of his is now the basic secondary source to which students of Yuan-Tibetan relations
must turn.
ELLIOT SPERLING
INDIANA UNIVERSITY

A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, vol. 1:

Transmission of the Canonical Literature. By PIETER
C. VERHAGEN.
Handbuch der Orientalistik, zweite Abteilung: Indien, 8. Bd. Leiden: E. J. BRILL,1994. Pp. xiv + 353, 2 maps.
$114.50.
With the publication of this impressive and meticulously
documented dissertation (Leiden, 1991), the study of Tibet's
acquisition of Indic grammatical science is finally placed upon
a firm philological foundation. Until now, those few of us who
have interested ourselves in these topics have mostly had to be
content with random observations of what we all feared was
only the tip of the iceberg, the obvious traces of familiarity with
Indic linguistic thought and practice on the part of the Tibetan
authors of traditionalTibetan grammarsand linguistic speculation. We knew that they knew more than we knew about Indic
systems of describing and analyzing language. This showed its
hand at every turn. But what we have not known is just what
they knew and, above all, how they knew it.
Our young Dutch colleague has here begun the good work
of approachingthe entire problem from exactly the other direction, beginning with this truly comprehensive survey of the corpus of Indic literatureon Sanskritgrammarextant in translation
in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. His book is the result of a prodigious amount of reading in the texts. He describes forty-seven

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