by John Avedon
Entering the bedroom, Lhamo Dhondrub was invited forward by Kewtsang Rinpoché, who sat with three officials on either side of the table. In his hand Kewtsang Rinpoché held the black rosary to which the boy had been drawn on the previous visit; beside it, a perfect duplicate. Asked to choose one, the child took the correct rosary without hesitating and placed it around his neck, a feat he repeated with the yellow rosary a few moments later. Next, the walking sticks were presented. At first Lhamo Dhondrub pulled gently at the wrong stick, but then let it go and took the correct one, happily holding it in front of him like a giant stave. This was considered particularly significant since the “wrong” stick had actually been used briefly by the Dalai Lama before he gave it to a friend. The final items, the drum, remained to be chosen. The false drum was beautifully decorated with floral brocade; the genuine one was less inviting. Once more, though, Lhamo Dhondrub took the correct object, twisting the drum quickly back and forth in his right hand so that it beat in the manner of tantric ritual.
A physical inspection was now undertaken. The boy was examined for eight bodily marks traditionally distinguishing the Dalai Lamas from all other men: among them, large ears, long eyes, eyebrows curving up at their ends, streaks like those of a tiger skin on the legs, and a print resembling a conch shell on the palm of one hand. Gently drawing back the child’s clothing, the examiners found three indications resembling those they sought. As one of them, a monk named Sonam Wangdu, later recounted, they were overcome with “deep devotion, joy and gaiety.” “Indeed we were so moved that tears of happiness filled our eyes,” he recalled. “Scarcely able to breathe, we could neither sit properly on the mat nor speak a word.” There was no longer any doubt. Here, halfway through his third year of life, was the Holy One himself, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Despite their success, a serious obstacle confronted the party. Ma Bufeng, the Moslem warlord of northwestern China, had learned of the child in Takster. Fearful of his intervention, the delegation sought to conceal their choice by examining dozens of children at the general’s heavily fortified yamen or headquarters in Xining. When the very best managed to identify only two of four articles correctly, Ma Bufeng, undeceived, summoned Lhamo Dhondrub and his family to a private audience with a few other children. Here he became convinced, by the boy’s precocious demeanor, that he was the most likely candidate for the Dalai Lama. As a result, when the delegation requested permission to take the child to Lhasa, Ma Bufeng refused to grant it. Unabashedly, he demanded 100,000 Chinese silver dollars (approximately $92,000) in ransom. With no other recourse, the officials paid. However, instead of releasing the boy, Ma Bufeng made further demands: 300,000 more dollars, a full set of the past Dalai Lama’s robes and throne ornaments and a valuable gold-lettered edition of all 333 volumes of the Buddhist canon. Outraged but helpless, the Tibetans once more complied. While most of the money was being raised on loan from Moslem traders, Lhamo Dhondrub lived at Kumbum with his eldest brother, Takster Rinpoché, himself already recognized as an incarnate lama.
The delegation’s fear of losing the newly discovered Dalai Lama increased as additional proofs of his true identity were recorded. Besides the house, its odd waterspouts and dog, the letters Ah, Ka and Ma all fit the locale perfectly. Ah stood for Amdo, Ka for Kumbum and Ka and Ma together for the first word of the monastery on the nearby mountainside: Karma Shartsong Hermitage. It was now recalled that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had stayed at the temple in 1909 on his return from five-and-a-half years of exile in Mongolia and China. He had left a pair of his boots as a blessing and in the memory of local people looked long and hard at the very house Lhamo Dhondrub was born in, commenting that it was a beautiful spot. More recently, crops in Takster had failed for an unprecedented four years, causing the villagers to say that a high incarnation would be born among them, a notion grounded in the belief that an auspicious event had to be offset by one equally bad. Lhamo Dhondrub’s family had undergone particularly severe troubles. A number of their livestock had died without apparent cause, and in the few months preceding the infant’s birth, his father had fallen ill, again for no discernible reason. His mother, though, managed to carry out the household duties. On the day of the birth she retired to the cow shed, a small windowless room in the western wing of the house, lined with mangers and illuminated by a single mustard-oil lamp. At the break of dawn on July 6, 1935, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was born, eyes wide open, a fact his mother noted as unusual. On the same day, his father recovered just as mysteriously as he had fallen ill, got out of bed, offered prayers at the family altar and on being informed that a son had been born to him, simply said, “Good. I would like to make him a monk.”
Lhamo Dhondrub’s parents had no inkling of their fifth child’s remarkable identity. Within days of his birth, however, a pair of crows, believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be sacred to the protective deity Mahakala, came to the house in Takster and perched on its roof. Each morning they arrived at the same time, roosted for a while and then departed. It was now remembered that similar visitations had occurred at the birth of the First, Seventh, Eighth and Twelfth Dalai Lamas. As far back as 1391, Gendun Drub, the First Dalai Lama, had been protected by a crow on the day of his birth, when, during an attack by bandits, his nomad parents fled their tent, leaving their child behind. Returning that evening, they found the baby in a corner on the ground, a large black crow standing guard before him.
Prior to the search party’s appearance in Takster, Lhamo Dhondrub’s favorite game was to straddle a windowsill and pretend he was riding a horse to Lhasa. Following his arrival in Kumbum, the urge became so strong that the then three-year-old boy continually played alone at packing bags and setting off on a journey to the Holy City.
After eight months of waiting, on the first day of the sixth Tibetan month, mid-August 1939, the delegation, the prospective Dalai Lama and his family finally departed Kumbum. Joining the caravan of Moslem merchants who had put up the second part of the ransom (and were now en route to Mecca on pilgrimage), they left the monastery under a bright sun and light rain on the first stage of an arduous three-and-a-half-month trek over Tibet’s barren northern plains. Lhamo Dhondrub rode with his six-year-old brother, Lobsang Samten, in a small palanquin suspended on poles between two mules. Though as yet not officially confirmed, he was already being treated with the respect accorded to a Dalai Lama. In the towns and nomad camps they passed through, he sat on a high throne receiving offerings and bestowing personal blessings to thousands of the faithful. Though he was outwardly at ease during the ceremonies, the sudden attention took its toll at first, those adults closest to the boy noticing, as one put it, that he was “fretful” and “occasionally wept.” His spirits improved, though, as the caravan approached Central Tibet. When a cavalry detachment of the Tibetan army greeted the caravan north of Nagchuka, Lhamo Dhondrub was delighted by a display of trick riding put on for his benefit. Crossing the Thutoppchu River, he was equally pleased by a ride in a coracle, or yak-skin boat. On the far shore he was met by a delegation from the National Assembly in Lhasa, followed, a few days later, by a second group of emissaries bringing with them the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s yellow traveling tent and, with it, news of the government’s decision to formally designate the child from Amdo as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. A proclamation to this effect, issued jointly by the Regent, the Cabinet and the National Assembly, was delivered by a third party of officials, who rode ten days out from the capital to greet their new ruler by torchlight one morning before dawn. As the first rays of the sun illuminated a large group of reception tents, the Dalai Lama was taken inside, dressed in the maroon and yellow robes of a monk and presented with the offering of the Mendel Tensum—an image of the Buddha, a reliquary and a scripture—the traditional homage paid to a high lama by his followers. Thereafter he rode in a golden palanquin, soon joined by the Regent and the Lord Chamberlain, through villages filled by exultant crowds. And as the entourage, now numbering in the hundreds, neare
d Lhasa, the Dalai Lama himself experienced a moment of profound joy when, in the midst of an audience for high government officials, an unfamiliar lama approached bearing in his hands a three-foot-long tube enclosed in heavy brocade. Sealed within lay one of the most sacred objects in Tibet, a thanka or scroll painting of Palden Lhamo, chief Protector of the Dalai Lamas. Believed to be a receptacle through which the Protector could communicate, it had been carried next to the person of every Dalai Lama since the 15th century. On seeing it, Lhamo Dhondrub was so ecstatic that many of those around him burst into tears.
On the morning of October 6, 1939, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama arrived in sight of Lhasa. Two miles east of the city on Doguthang Plain, a great tent encampment had been pitched in four concentric squares. In the center was a voluminous tent surmounted by a white and blue canopy known as the “Great Peacock.” Fashioned of bright yellow satin with a silk lining and crown, it had been used over the centuries solely to greet the infant Dalai Lamas on their discovery and return to the capital. Flanked by leopard- and tiger-skin Mongolian yurts, the inner and smallest square was surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall, outside of which stood the hundreds of tents of Tibetan government and monastic officials gathered for the ceremonies.
Throughout the two days spent at Doguthang, Lhamo Dhondrub sat on a tall throne at the rear wall of the Great Peacock, holding a small yellow tassel in his right hand, individually blessing each of the 70,000 monks and lay people gathered. Pastries, dried fruit and yak meat were distributed to the crowd from giant troughs. Those not waiting in the endless line danced, sang and offered prayers, many weeping with joy. Years later, the Dalai Lama recalled that, while the people’s celebrations had been on an unprecedented scale, some had wished to ascertain for themselves that he was the correct choice. One venerable Geshé or Master of Metaphysics from Drepung Monastery went so far as to subject him to a brief but pointed questioning. As the Dalai Lama reflected, laughing, “So you see, though there were certain very proper old people who wanted to be sure, I apparently put on a good performance and convinced them.”
As the sun rose on the morning of October 8, a crystal-clear day, a brilliant procession formed to escort the child into the city proper. Sixteen noblemen dressed in green satin robes and round red-tasseled hats carried the gilded palanquin in which the Dalai Lama sat. Before him marched the State Astrologer, musicians, monks and ministers of the Cabinet; behind, the Regent, the Prime Minister, the Dalai Lama’s family and a long line of abbots and lay officials costumed according to rank. Clerics heralded the column’s approach with ten-foot long horns blown from the roof of the Potala, rising on Red Hill in the middle of the Lhasan plain. Tens of thousands lined its route, which was demarcated with yellow and white chalk, incense braziers burning every thirty yards between a forest of rainbow-hued “victory banners” held aloft on tall poles. While Lhasans rang small hand bells, the regimental marching bands of the Tibetan army played “God Save the King,” learned from their British instructors. Entering Lhasa, the procession circled the 1,300-year-old Central Cathedral, halting in the large square before it, where the ambassadors of India, China, Nepal and Bhutan waited to offer their respects. Also present was the medium of the chief State Oracle, surrounded by his attendants. As the Dalai Lama’s palanquin arrived, the protective deity abruptly took possession. Dressed in thick silk robes, a polished silver mirror across his chest and a massive flag-festooned helmet weighing almost a hundred pounds on his head, the Protector rushed forward, hissing, cheeks puffed, eyes bulging, rhythmically kicking his legs in the air and bending them at the knees in the deity’s honorific dance. In his hands he held a long white scarf or kata to offer the child. Bowing abruptly from the waist, he snapped his neck down with no difficulty, despite the helmet’s weight, touched his forehead to the boy’s and presented the scarf, which, calmly accepting, Lhamo Dhondrub then draped around the oracle’s neck in blessing. The procession quickly moved on, entering the Central Cathedral, Tibet’s most hallowed sanctum, where the Dalai Lama prayed. From there Lhamo Dhondrub was led past the foot of the Potala, through the city’s western gate and two miles beyond, to the Norbulingka. Ushered into his predecessor’s quarters at the end of the long parade, he pointed to a small box and nonchalantly declared, “My teeth are in there.” Opening the case, attendants were astonished to find a set of the old ruler’s dentures. But the amazement was not theirs alone. The Dalai Lama himself felt transported by all that had occurred. Years later he wrote of his entry to Lhasa: “As the people watched me passing, I could hear them crying, ‘The day of our happiness has come.’ I felt as though I were in a dream … as if I were in a great park covered with beautiful flowers while soft breezes blew across it and peacocks elegantly danced before me. There was an unforgettable scent of wildflowers, and a song of freedom and happiness in the air.”
Within seven weeks, Lhamo Dhondrub was tonsured by the Regent in the Central Cathedral, given his novice vows and renamed Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshi Tenzin Gyatso—Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Eloquent, Compassionate, Learned Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom. Shortly thereafter, on February 22, 1940, Tenzin Gyatso—as he was now called—not yet five years old, was installed on the Lion Throne in an elaborate ceremony in the Potala’s great eastern hall as, pending the attainment of his majority, supreme temporal and spiritual ruler of Tibet.
THE LAND over which young Tenzin Gyatso had been chosen to rule was, in its geography and people alike, a world apart. A plateau the size of western Europe at the heart of the Asian continent, Tibet was encircled by the earth’s highest mountains—the Himalayas to the south, Karakorum, Kunlun, Min Shan, and Ta-hsueh Shan to the west, north and east. Only in the northeast, beside the shores of the great Blue Lake, Kokonor, did an unimpeded avenue, rising up like a long ramp through a portal in the mountains, give open access to the Tibetan Plateau. Once there, the world fell far below. Tibet’s average altitude was 15,000 feet—three miles above sea level; more than half the density of the planet’s atmosphere and three quarters of its moisture remained beneath. The country encompassed landscape of awesome beauty. At its center ranged the illimitable changthang or northern plains—an arid wasteland of salt and borax flats, pierced by glacial rivers and crystalline lakes rimmed with glaring white soda deposits. To the south, following the course of the Tsangpo or Brahmaputra River, lay the first of its three provinces—U-Tsang or Central Tibet. Like its geological extension, western Tibet, U-Tsang was dry and dusty, sheltered by the lee of the Himalayas and turning verdant only with the brief summer rains. A burning sun shone through an iridescent cobalt sky onto wide valleys sculpted from sweeping, 20,000-foot peaks, an occasional grove of willow, poplar or walnut trees gracing the riverbanks. Eastward, the plateau sliced into lower, less expansive valleys, compressed by the oblique, heavily forested slopes of Tibet’s second province, Kham. Through Kham’s dramatic mountain gorges ran the headwaters of Asia’s great rivers: the Salween (Ngulchu), Mekong (Dzachu), and Yangtze (Drichu). Its vast forests of juniper, spruce and cypress inhabited by bear, wolf, monkey, leopard, panda, cuckoo, pheasant and eagle, Kham was the most rugged, inaccessible region of Tibet. To the north, Tibet’s third province, Amdo, began. Running as far as the Kunlun Mountains and the Kokonor, it contained the country’s most spectacular terrain. In Amdo, mountain and plain, forest and river, combined to produce a landscape similar to the American Northwest—expansive views over endless prairie, terminating in snow-capped mountains, along whose slopes grazed herds of antelope, yak, bhurrel and wild ass or kiang.
Tibet’s seven million people were descended from nomadic tribes racially akin to the Mongols. According to their own legends, their land had once lain beneath a shallow sea, which indeed it had—the Sea of Tethys. With the water’s disappearance, a monkey and an ogress had come to dwell in its immensity. The monkey, an emanation of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, Chenrezi, was peaceful and contemplative. He lived, absorbed in meditation, alone in a cave. The ogress, on the
other hand, was wrathful and stubborn—a cannibal with an insatiable sexual appetite. Her lonely cries carried across the countryside, summoning a mate. Hearing them, the monkey was filled with pity and rushed to her side, where he remained long enough to father six children: the first Tibetans.
Born without tails and with few other simian traits, the offspring intermixed and multiplied. Those who took after their father were gentle and wise. Those who inherited their mother’s disposition were cruel and given to excess. Abiding in the caves of the ogress, located on Gonpori Mountain in U-Tsang, they gradually disseminated to populate the land. By 127 B.C., the inhabitants of the Yarlung Valley, south of the caves, elevated the country’s first king, Nyatri Tsenpo. From him descended a dynasty of forty-one monarchs spanning the first thousand years of Tibet’s history.
A loose amalgam of competing chieftains and their respective clans, the early Tibetans were in continual conflict with one another. By the time of the thirty-third king, Songtsen Gampo (609–649), however, they had banded together to forge an empire which, brought to its zenith a century later, was the greatest in Asia, extending over two thousand miles from the captured Chinese capital of Chang’ an in the east to the Pamirs and Samarkand in the west.
It was Tibet’s thirty-seventh monarch, Trisong Detsen (741–798), who brought his nation’s conquests to their height; paradoxically, he also ensured the empire’s collapse. While previously the royal family had merely toyed with the alien faith of Buddhism, the new king firmly established its nonviolent tenets over Tibet’s indigenous shamanism, known as Bon. Therein he laid the seeds for a political and cultural upheaval which, by the middle of the ninth century, had destroyed the monarchy itself. For more than four hundred years thereafter, Tibet was divided into feuding princely and monastic states. When centralized rule was finally achieved in the thirteenth century, it was at the price of Tibet’s submission to Mongol dominion. Yet a unique understanding governed the bond, guaranteeing that it was purely nominal.
