This book is the work of a scholar who combines a profound knowledge of Tibetan history and culture with a practical experience in Tibetan affairs, gained in his years of work in Sikkim and Tibet.
Mr. Nirmal Chandra Sinha has been, since its establishment, the Director of the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology at Gangtok in Sikkim, which has had as its task the promotion of the study of Tibetan religion and history and which, under his guidance, has become a true center for Tibetan cultural tradition. When this culture was threatened in its homeland, it was the idea of His Highness, the Chogyal of Sikkim, to establish this Institute for the very purpose of keeping a record of that culture and to provide resources for its study. As a result, there has been established a unique collection of religious and historical documents in which, as nowhere else, yellow and red sect records are combined under one roof, demonstrating the unity of traditional Tibetan culture. This library and the work carried on at the Institute is largely the result of the able guidance of its Director, Mr. Sinha, who has also continued his own studies.
Mr. Sinha has produced a number of academic essays which, on the basis of careful scrutiny of political and cultural records, deal with the problems of the Tibetan political and social order. Mr. Sinha's familiarity with and access to Tibetan texts and Indian documents, has enabled him to provide a record which rectifies many of the misinterpretations caused by political attack as well as by scholarly limitations of those whose work has been based too one-sidedly on Chinese sources of Tibetan history. The political purpose of Chinese control has unwittingly been served by scholars either unfamiliar with the Tibetan side of the story or applying modern Western legal concepts to a world of the past to which modern legal terminology is as little suited as it would be to the medieval world of the West.
The Leitmotiv of the essays assembled in this book is the study of Tibet's culture and political identity; and, though different in their topics and in time and aspects treated, all these essays are closely interrelated by the thread of their thought.
"The theme is introduced in the first essay: Historical Status of Tibet." The relationship between Tibet and Imperial China is sketched through its history. The story begins with the Mongol Tibetan relations under Genghis Khan and his successors, at the time when Tibet submitted to Mongol rule and when its Sakya priests converted the Mongols to Buddhism and became the rulers of Central Tibet. It was under the Manchus, however, that the special relationship of Tibet's priest-rulers and the Imperial Court was established, which was to become the crux of the problem of Tibetan relation-ship to China.
The "patron-priest" relationship between the Manchu emperor and the Dalai Lama was first based on mutual interests. The emperor's support to the Dalai Lama as ruler of Tibet was given in exchange for the Dalai Lama's help in influencing the Mongol princes whose allegiance was of major importance to the Manchu throne.
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