A Mountain in Tibet

by Charles Allen

  All this was pretty loose – and inaccurate – talk and did nothing to improve Hedin’s case, but now his blood was up. As he continued to make ill-judged personal remarks much of the support that his carefully composed defence had gained him in the first half of the proceedings began to ebb away. He ended on a note of defiance: whatever they cared to write or say, neither Longstaff nor anybody else would be able to deny him his greatest achievement, as the important work that he was preparing would reveal. And whatever they liked to call his mountain range he would still take the liberty of calling it Trans-Himalaya – ‘and the signification which is the strongest will be accepted by geographers, and will survive long after the golden inscription on your graves and mine has disappeared.’

  Alas for Sven Hedin and his hopes, his great Trans-Himalaya did not stand the test of time either in name or form. Even before his death in 1952 it had become an orographical embarrassment. The definitive Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, last revised in that same year, describes his Trans-Himalaya as an ‘ill-defined mountain area’ with ‘no marked crest line or central alignment and no division by rivers’. Modern maps have split his great range into two; in the west there is the Kailas range (Kang-ti-sé Shan), in the east the Nyenchen Tanglha range.

  ‘It was very unfair that I should have not have had the slightest idea of what Longstaff and the others were going to say,’ Hedin complained to Keltie soon after the debate. But he had very little to complain about: he had dominated the proceedings almost from beginning to end; such criticisms as there had been – even those from Tom Longstaff – had always been tempered with praise; and it was generally acknowledged that apart from his lapse near the end Dr Hedin had given a brave account of himself. But it was not just Hedin’s claims that had been on trial. The argument had also been one about his style, his determination to treat geographical exploration as if it were an out-and-out contest, his sheer bad manners – his pettiness in not making the customary bow to those who had gone before him – his lack of modesty in success, his crowing over others and his stress on triumph gained through suffering. All this had grated on people, especially on those whose wings had been clipped by an inflexible government. For a man who had set out to be like an Englishman, who had had the good sense to acknowledge the unrivalled virtues of English geography and English geog raphers, he had let the side down horribly with his crude reversion to un-British, Con tinental sporting ethics. He may not have cheated, exactly, but he certainly had not played the game. British geography could still applaud his romantic, fighting spirit – but never the man himself.

  So Hedin left England for Germany – and still the complaints came flowing from his pen. On 15 March he was writing to Keltie from Berlin to complain about the April number of the Geographical Journal, loaded though it was with reports of Hedin’s speeches at both the public and private meetings of the Society, arguing that they should allow him yet more space. After all the prizes that Sweden had awarded to Englishmen, surely the RGS could have made this Hedin number somewhat larger: ‘But this is in perfect harmony with all the rest and I cannot and will not do anything to change your dispositions.’

  John Scott Keltie did his best – ‘I hope when you get home and you have cooled down you will see that you have taken a very exaggerated view of the situation’ – but to no avail. Hedin was determined to believe that British geography had put him on trial for no other reason than that of jealousy of his success, because he – a ‘poor Swede’ – had succeeded where they had all failed:

  The whole impression I have brought home from the RGS is a desperate attempt to minimise the value of the journey; they criticise a lot of unimportant things and keep absolutely silent about the great geographical questions which have been solved.

  ‘Altogether it has been a fearful muddle,’ wrote Keltie to Major Ryder in early May after Hedin had returned to Sweden, ‘he has now got home and has been interviewed and has been saying very nasty things about us, and about England generally and his reception here. The real fact, I may say to you confidentally, is that Hedin was disappointed because he did not get a third medal, and, most of all, an honour from the King.’ Hedin had good cause to feel disappointed in this respect. In the annual awards of the RGS made that year was the Founder’s Medal for Aurel Stein for his painstaking mapping in Chinese Turkestan and the Murchison Award for Captain Rawling. A lesser award went to an Indian surveyor who had worked for Stein. For the man who had put enother 65,000 square miles of Tibet on the map and had returned with, in his own estimation, the ‘finest results since Stanley discovered the northern bend of the Congo’, there was nothing. British geography had moved on; it was celebrating Shackleton’s return from the Antarctic and preparing for Scott’s departure. Such interest as could be spared for Tibet and Himalayan exploration would be concentrated on the wholly British endeavour in the Abor hills and the hidden ‘knee-bend’ to the north. Afterwards there would be the Great War and an almost total eclipse of interest in Tibet and Central Asia.

  If there was one man in England who could understand something of Hedin’s nature and his disappointment it was George Nathaniel Curzon. He too knew what it was to have great dreams and revelations and what it felt like to be dragged down by those whom he regarded as lesser men. He had shared Hedin’s sense of quest and romance and could bring his own experience to bear on Hedin’s sense of outrage. In April 1909 he wrote to Hedin in a spirit of encouragement, telling him that he should not allow himself to be disturbed by petty criticisms: ‘Experts always like “having a fling” at rival and greater experts but neither in this country nor in India is there the faintest hesitation in recognising your splendid achievements.’

  It was Lord Curzon, with the support of Lord Morley, who eventually secured for Hedin the prize that the explorer had most coveted and thought he had lost: an honorary title bestowed by the King-Emperor that made him Sir Sven Hedin and a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire. It was Curzon, too, who gave Hedin the recognition that was due to him by recording in the pages of the Geographical Journal the value of Hedin’s work in Tibet, as he saw it, placing Hedin’s discoveries in three categories of merit:

  The highest ambition of a geographer is to add to the sum total of human knowledge by filling a blank space on the map; first accordingly, I should be disposed to place his filling up of that great ‘white patch’ of 65,000 square miles, between the Tsangpo and the Central Tibetan plateau, stretching from Gartok on the west to Shigatse on the east.

  Alongside of this great discovery I would place the tracing for hundreds of miles and the assurance of a definite orographical existence to the mighty mountain palisade or series of palisades to which he has, in my opinion very appropriately, given the title of the Trans-Himalaya. This range has been surmised to exist in its entire length for many years; it has been crossed at its extremities by native surveyors. But it was reserved for Dr Hedin to trace it on the spot and place it upon the map in its long, unbroken, and massive significance.

  Second in order of importance I would place the discovery of the true source of the Indus. There can be no doubt that Dr Hedin is the first European traveller who has traced the main branch of this mighty river to its glacial origin.

  Third, I should be inclined to place what I would call the determination, rather, perhaps, than the discovery, of the true sources of the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej. When a traveller visits or ascertains or sees something which no one has visited, ascertained, or seen or perhaps even suspected before, he discovers. When he pursues earlier investigations a few stages further, on lines already followed and accepted but not carried to their logical or geographical conclusion, he determines.

  It was not enough for Sven Hedin, of course, but it was an acknowledgement of sorts from the British geographical establishment that not all his claims had been rejected out of hand. All the same, Hedin continued to feel that he had been slighted and betrayed by the Royal Geographical Society and when he got back to Stockholm in early May 1909 he
at once set to work on a popular three-volume account of his Tibetan travels. With characteristic defiance, he entitled it Trans-Himalaya, and with equally characteristic energy he had the first two volumes ready for publication within five months. No sooner was Trans-Himalaya out of the way than he began working on a far more ambitious and scientific enterprise, his massive masterwork Southern Tibet, running to eight volumes with two additional books of maps. In it he placed not only all the results of his scientific studies in Tibet but also a comprehensive geographical history of the Kailas-Manasarovar region and the great rivers of India that had their sources there. It had become his obsession, an occupation of necessity that was to occupy him for the next decade.

  Tragically, for Sven Hedin, the same obsessive desire for approbation that had driven him from England drove him into the arms of Germany, where he found a welcome among a people who could appreciate him not only for what he was but also for his unmistakable victory over the British. With the outbreak of war his paranoia over Russia’s political ambitions led him to actively support Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German war effort. Asked by Sir Douglas Freshfield, now President of the Royal Geographical Society, in November 1914 whether he wished to repudiate an article he had written for a German newspaper supporting the Kaiser, Hedin replied that no one but himself was responsible for his political views. Accordingly, in March 1915 he was informed by the President that since he had actively identified himself with the King’s enemies a motion had been proposed and carried that ‘his name be removed from the list of Honorary Corresponding Members of the Society’. Thus Sven Hedin was, in effect, stripped of his Fellowship of the RGS and would never be reinstated.

  Hedin’s answer to this sorry act contained all that was best in his nature; it was a brave, proud, generous and ironical reply that gave him the last word – and perhaps the last, strained laugh:

  I congratulate you on this noble and chivalrous deed and I congratulate myself thus to have obtained the political liberty which I believed could be claimed even by a member of the RGS. I beg you to present to the Council my hearty thanks for the 17 years during which I had the honour of belonging to the most renowned and the greatest of all the Geographical Societies in the world. My name has been removed but [with] the deep and warm regard I have always felt for British geographers and British geographical work [I] will always remain an invisible member of the RGS.

  Hedin’s exit speech finally brought to an end the controversy that he himself had provoked. It also marked the conclusion, as far as the West was concerned, of that ancient geographical puzzle, the happy enigma built round a mountain, a lake and the sources of four great rivers. Kailas-Manasarovar and its attendant streams was allowed to revert to its former obscurity, its mysteries – to all intents – resolved. It became once more an essentially oriental concern.

  Shunned by his own countrymen for his enthusiastic support for Adolf Hitler and his cause in the Second World War, Hedin died all but forgotten in November 1952. Only with his death and his obituaries did a hint of the old controversy and the geographical mysteries that had provoked it flare briefly into life again. By a sad irony the year of Hedin’s death also saw the return of Chinese rule to Tibet and with it the old Manchu xenophobia, resulting in the building of an ice-curtain along its frontiers that even Hedin would have found impossible to surmount. But after three decades that ice-curtain seems at last to be melting and there is even talk of pilgrims from India and Bhotia traders from Milam and elsewhere once more being allowed to cross the high passes into South-West Tibet. With luck and the passing of years we may yet witness the entry of other foreigners, peling from the West, with a chance to follow – at least part of the way – the footsteps of other, earlier Pilgrims.

  Postscript. In September 1981 the first Indian pilgrims to be allowed to visit Kailas-Manasarovar for over two decades crossed the Lipu Lekh pass into Tibet. Leading the first party of twenty pilgrims was S. C. Rawat, a grandson of ‘A-K’, the Pundit explorer Kishen Singh.

  GLOSSARY

  To attempt a rational or scholarly approach to the spelling of Asian words, particularly with regard to Tibetan, is to enter a linguistic minefield. For obvious historical reasons I have avoided pinyin, and have kept to basic contemporary usage.

  (A) = Assamese

  (N) = Nepali

  (B) = Bhotia

  (S) = Sanskrit

  (H) = Hindustani or Urdu

  (T) = Tibetan

  basha (H) – thatch hut

  Bashahr – former hill-state on Tibetan border, now part of Himachal Pradesh; thus Bashahri – inhabitant of Bashahr

  bashi (Arab) – caravan leader

  Bhagirathi – traditional source-river of the Ganga, named after the sage Bhagirath

  Bhot (H) – Indian borderland of northern Garhwal and Kumaon, inhabited principally by Bhotias, semi-nomadic peoples of mixed Indo-Tibetan stock

  bibi (H) – orig. high-class lady but later used to signify kept woman

  BNI – Bengal Native Infantry

  Bodhisattva (S) – one qualified to attain Buddhahood but who delays it to preach the Law

  Bon-Po (T) – animistic religion of Tibet, predating Buddhism

  Bot (T) – Tibet, also Bod, Bod-yul

  Brahma (S) – the Creator, father of gods and men, first of the Hindu Trinity; thus Brahmaputra – son of Brahma. See also Tsangpo

  burrhel – Blue Wild Sheep, a species of mountain goat

  bursat (H) – monsoon; thus chota bursat – little monsoon, that precedes the buna bursat – great monsoon

  Chang Tang – northern plain, northern region of Tibetan plateau with an average elevation of 16,000 ft, sometimes Jang Tang

  chapri (A) – sand bank with vegetation

  chela (H) – disciple

  chema (T) – sand, as in Chemayungdung

  chho (T) – lake; also tso

  chhu (T) – water, river

  Chief Pundit – code-name for Pundit Nain Singh Rawat, also ‘The Pundit’

  chir (H) – long-needled pine, pinus longifolia, growing between 4000 and 9000 ft

  chit (H) – letter or note

  choga (T) – thick homespun coat worn by Tibetan nomads

  chorten (T) – small temple containing religious images

  chowhur (B) – see yak

  chumi (T) – spring, thus Chumik Ganga

  CSI – Companion of the Order of the Star of India

  Dalai Lama (Mongolian) – former sovereign and spiritual leader of Tibet, known to Tibetans as Gyalpo Rinpoche, leader of the Gelugpa sect

  damaru (H) – small double-headed shamanistic drum

  dandi (H) – open sedan chair

  dao (A) – sword used by Assamese hill tribes

  Deba (T) – senior monk, more correctly Drapo

  Demchog (T) – four-faced Tibetan deity representing Supreme Bliss, identified with Shiva and residing on Kang Rinpoche; also Demchhok, Shamvara, Dhampala

  deo (S) – god, deva; thus Mahadeo – great god (Shiva)

  deodar (S) – tree of god, species of large Himalayan pine, cedrus deodara, found between 600 and 11,000 ft

  Devi (S) – Goddess, specifically Shiva’s consort, also Gauri, Parvati, Durga, Kali

  dhura (B) – long; thus Unta Dhura, the long pass north of Milam

  dim-dam (A) – stinging fly found in E. Assam and Burma, formerly known as dam-dim or dam-doom

  dopka (T) – dweller of black tent, Tibetan nomad

  Dorje Phangmo (T) – consort of Demchog, red in colour, identified with Durga (see Devi); also Tseringma, Vajra-Varahi

  dwar (H) – gate, thus Hardwar – gate of Hari

  dzong (T) – fort or residence of Dzongpon, district governor; also jong

  feringhi – European, derived from Frank

  Ganga Mai (H) – Mother Ganga or Ganges, daughter of the Himalayas

  Garhwal – former Himalayan district bordering on Tibet, divided in 1816 into British and Tehri-Garhwal, inhabited mostly by Garhwalis

/>   Gartok (T) – high fort, capital of Ngari province of Western Tibet, administered by Garpon or Viceroy. Gardzong, the winter seat, is forty miles downstream from Gartok, the summer seat

  Gaumukh (H) – Cow’s Mouth, traditional source of Ganga at the base of the Gangotri Glacier

  ghat (H) – river of mountain crossing, steps leading down to water’s edge; also ghati

  gompa (T) – monastery or lamasery, also gonpa

  goral (H) – Himalayan chamois, nemorhalus goral

  Gugé – ancient kingdom centred on upper Sutlej, its capital at Tsaparang, its royal temple and monastery at Totling, destroyed in seventeenth century and abandoned

  Gurkha (N) – Nepalese soldier, originally from hill-fort of Gorkha

  guru (S) – teacher of philosophy

  Har – Shiva; thus Hardwar, gate of Shiva

  Hari – Vishnu; thus Hardwar, gate of Vishnu

  havildar (H) – sergeant

  Himalaya (S) – abode of snow (him); also Himavant

  Hundes (B) – Tibet; also Undes, thus Hunyia – Tibetan

  Indus – originally Sindhu, the Lion River, 1800 miles long with its source north of Mount Kailas, traditionally at the Senge-Khambab, Lion-Mouth

  Indra (S) – king of gods, Vedic god of rain and storm

  jagir (H) – grant of land from government from which the owner draws rent

  jampan (H) – large covered litter of palanquin, formerly jampuan

  Jemadar (H) – senior sergeant

  Jerko La – pass between Indus and Sutlej basins, elevation 16,300 ft

  John Company – East India Company, also known as the Honourable Company