Summary[1]
In Part I of this blog post, Peter Richardus presents a survey of Johan van Manen’s contributions to a published debate on the etymology of the term ‘Kangchenjunga’, designating the third highest mountain in the world. In Part II, Nils Martin describes the iconography related to this sacred mountain range as depicted on a painting once privately owned by Van Manen. This serves as an example of his written word being strongly connected to his profound interest in Tibetan material culture.
Photo: courtesy of Tenzin Tsepak.
Part I
In 1916, Johan van Manen (1877-1943) settled in the Darjeeling district (West Bengal) to dedicate himself to the study of Tibetan language and culture. Between 1923 and 1939, he served as General Secretary of the (Royal) Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, earning recognition among scholars across the globe.
Unsurprisingly, we read about his capacity to present solutions for issues related to Himalayan geography, and in particular here concerning the origin of the name ‘Kangchenjunga’: “The chief authority on the Tibetan language in India is Mr. Van Manen.”[2] Pieter Pott, the first biographer of Van Manen, summarizes this as follows:
When a controversy flares up about the etymological explanation of a mountain, the Kangchenjunga, it is to van Manen, that an appeal is made for a decisive explanation. From the way he does so, we can gather how deeply versed he was in the literature on Tibet and Nepal and it fills one with awe to see how many works he quotes.[3]
Reading Johan van Manen’s published correspondence on the topic,[4] it becomes apparent how he emphasizes the relevance of studying early geographical publications to understand the history of name usage. His modus operandi here includes examining at great lengths the term ‘Kangchenjunga’, as well as recording its various interpretations and explanations.
Van Manen refers to Waddell’s remark that a deity named Kang chhen dsö nga is considered “the chief country god of Sikhim”.[5] To date, this snow-capped abode (h. 8586 m) has proven to be of significant cultural and spiritual importance to the people of Sikkim.[6] Indeed, the Kangchenjunga mountain range continues to trigger numerous multi-faceted interests.[7]
While he was not the very first scholar to correctly establish the etymology of the term ‘Kangchenjunga’, Van Manen presented his readers with an impressive number of publications by both Western and Indian scholars, and he further consulted linguist Dr. S.K. Chatterji to present his views, which several eminent Indian scholars then shared. Thus, his comprehensive conclusion was: “the Sanskrit derivation of the name Kangchen-dzonga has to be given up”.[8]
Interestingly, Johan van Manen also presents the following remarkable snippet of personal communication:
In Darjeeling, I myself heard, amongst soldiers, the name Kitchenjungle, not meant as a joke or nickname, but seriously understood as a place where the vegetables for Darjeeling are grown. I am informed that a more common, but obscene, transformation of the name is also current.[9]
Thanks to references discovered in Darjeeling by his former Tibetan instructor and informant Karma Sumdhon Paul,[10] Van Manen could cite when discussing the spelling of “Kangchen-dzonga” [gangs chen mdzod lnga], two ritual texts titled (a) rdo gling yul lha’i gsol mchod [offering prayers to the sacred tutelary deity of Darjeeling] and (b) dkon mchog spyi ’dus [the embodiment of all the precious jewels], the latter said to contain a prayer (fol. 61, verso) to be addressed to the deity of this mountain.
Surprisingly, however, Van Manen did not fully use some other pieces of information that were collected for him around that time by Karma Sumdhon Paul. These are still to be found in an archive of the Van Manen collection.[11] Dated Saturday, the 11th July 1931, it is the second of two notes on toponyms from Sikkim and elsewhere in the Tibetan cultural area. It offers two different Tibetan spellings for the name of the Kangchenjunga (gangs chen mdzod lnga, ‘the five great (precious) stores’, and gangs chen rtse lnga, ‘the five peaks’) and elaborates on the first one, listing each of the precious materials the “five stores” of the mountain contain.
Leiden University Library, Van Manen archive, box 104, file 042.
This note, which consists of 47 entries, ends with an explanation added by Karma Sumdhon Paul four days later, written while he was working at the Asiatic Society of Bengal (A.S.B). There, he stated: “I have worked out the above names as far as I could with the help of some friends and Sikkimite lamas, during my last summer vacation in Darjiling. So I hope this will be of some use to your purposes.” Van Manen likely reviewed this note, as editorial corrections using red and blue pencils elsewhere on the pages suggest. The reasons why he did not fully use it in the correspondence published in The Himalayan Journal remain unknown to us.
Leiden University Library, Van Manen archive, box 104, file 042.
In sum, Johan van Manen’s knowledgeable linguistic analysis – in combination with the described historical context and local traditions – clearly established that the term ‘Kangchenjunga’ stems from Tibetan, a version of which is spoken by Bhutia Sikkimese (i.e., lho skad), but also that it should be translated as the “Five Treasures of Great Snow”.
Part II
Van Manen’s interest in this topic further appears to be reflected in his collection of objects of Himalayan material culture, most of which were acquired by the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (the present Wereldmuseum Leiden) in 1948. To be sure, the identification by Pieter Pott, the curator who arranged that acquisition, of a small sculpture in the collection (RV-2739-66) as a representation of “the god of Mount Kangchenjunga […] possibly made of stone from this mountain, of such notoriety to mountaineering expeditions”[12] must be discarded as an obvious mistake.[13] Still, the Van Manen collection does include a representation of that, or rather these gods, in the form of an unusual wooden-framed painting (RV-2740-141), hitherto not correctly identified.[14]
Photo: courtesy of the Wereldmuseum.
This painting depicts five mounted warrior-like wealth deities at the centre and four corners of a landscape of symmetrically-arranged hills and lakes dominated by white peaks. All five deities similarly brandish spears with flags attached to their poles with their right hands and hold vessels filled with blazing gems with their left hands. They wear coats of mail with large mirrors in front of their chests and helmets adorned with flags, typical of Tibetan warrior deities. Only the colors of their skin, armors, and banners, and the species of their mounts differ.
The red deity mounted astride a snow lion at the centre of the painting appears to be the main form of the Gangs chen mdzod lnga, believed by some to be a manifestation of the red spear-holding form of the wealth deity Vaiśravaṇa (rnam thos sras mdung dmar can).[15] The four deities around him represent secondary aspects of his, associated with different riches thought to be held by the mountain. This group is not mentioned in the rdo gling yul lha’i gsol mchod quoted by Van Manen, nor could we find it in the texts of the dkon mchog spyi ’dus in the Van Manen collection so far.[16] However, we find it described in some detail in two copies of the gnas gsol bsdus pa (Abridged prayer to the sacred places) in the Van Manen collection.
As suggested by its name, this text is an abridged version of the famous ’bras ljongs gnas gsol (Prayer to the sacred places of Sikkim), part of the rig ’dzin srog grub (Attainment of the Life of the Awareness-Holders), a liturgical cycle attributed to the Tibetan Rnying ma master and cultural hero of Sikkim Lha btsun Nam mkha’ ’jigs med (1597-1650). The earliest of the two copies is a three-folio traditional Tibetan manuscript of oblong format (dpe cha) in headless script (dbu med).[17] As for the other, it is a 6-page copy of the former in headed script (dbu can) on Western ruled paper dated 1918 and dubbed ‘Ritual for the spirit of Kanchenjunga and other gods’.[18]
As in many other similar cases, this copy was probably made at the request of Van Manen, who was more familiar with the headed script than the headless script. To judge from the writing style, it is likely the Tibetan scribe Phun tshogs lung rtogs, Van Manen’s other Tibetan instructor and informant, who created it. That this happened in 1918 is noteworthy, as Van Manen was still intensively dedicating himself to the study of Tibetan language and culture with Karma Sumdhon Paul and Phun tshogs lung rtogs in the Darjeeling district at that time. His interest in the Kangchenjunga thus appears to have dated back to this seminal period of his life, more than a dozen years before his contribution to the Himalayan Journal on the topic.
In terms of its iconography, the painting of the Van Manen collection corresponds well to the description of the ‘lords of the highlands, the five brothers of the five treasures’ in the abridged prayer. The representation of white peaks, blue lakes, trees, and especially two caves may further allude to the abodes of the local gods in the retinue of the Gangs chen mdzod lnga listed in the abridged prayer.[19] Its composition cannot have been based on that textual source alone, however, since the latter does not go into the detail of the respective positions of the five gods.
This painting is one of two highly unusual ones of the collection, set in wooden frames, that appear not to have been among the thangkas lent by Van Manen to Dutch institutions in 1936 but to have remained with him until he died in 1943.[20] We like to think that it was hung on a wall of his office. Of an almost square format (55 x 45 cm), it was painted on cotton cloth using both natural and artificial pigments such as ultramarine blue and bronzine, a cheap alternative to gold indicative of a modern dating. Judging from its yellowish and highly reflective surface, it was then probably varnished. The painting style is clumsy and surprisingly innovative compared to traditional thangkas. One may note, for instance, the awkward position of the yellow deity perched on the shoulders of a large standing garuda (khyung) rather than gliding through the sky on its back and the unusually naturalistic mountainscape, which evokes certain sights of the Kangchenjunga, Talung, and Pandim massif from Darjeeling and its vicinity. In contrast to most other paintings in the collection, it is thus unlikely that it was painted by a traditionally trained thangka painter.
Photo: courtesy of the Wereldmuseum.
The wooden frames of this and one other highly unusual painting in the collection also set them apart from the thangkas. To judge from the labels on their backs, the wooden frames were set by Ghose & Dutt, picture-framers and photo-enlargers located on 37/1, Free School Street, Calcutta, established in 1922. A reference to their setting, we believe, can be found among the correspondence of Van Manen kept in the archives of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In a letter dated 28/01/1925 to his friend Percy Brown, then the principal of the nearby Government School of Art, Van Manen wrote: “Thanks for your help in framing my two monstrosities. I am sending Rs. 11/4/0 by your man in payment of the bill, and I add grateful salams.”[21]
What Van Manen, whose correspondence we know to be enlivened by witty, yet self-deprecating, remarks, meant by ‘my two monstrosities’ is of course unclear. Are we to believe that these were his own clumsy creations, or simply that he considered them not up to par with the standards of Tibetan painting, with which he was by then already quite familiar? What do you think?
[1] This is a revised version of a previous blog post of the same name. In addition to the topics already discussed in that previous version, it deals with three archives from the Van Manen collection, kept at Leiden University Library, that shed some more light on Van Manen’s interest in the Kangchenjunga. Our thanks go to our colleagues Berthe, Samten, and Tsepak for having kindly brought these archives to our attention.
[2] S.C. Burrard, A Sketch of the Geography and Geology of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet, vol. 1, Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1933, p. 30.
[3] P.H. Pott, Introduction to the Tibetan Collection of the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, Leiden: Brill, 1951, p. 158.
[4] The Himalayan Journal, 4, 1931-1932, pp. 198-214. https://www.himalayanclub.org/hj/4/20/correspondence/
[5] L.A. Waddell, “Lamaism in Sikhim”, in Gazetteer of Sikhim, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1894, pp. 263, 355.
[6] A. Balikci-Denjongpa, “Kangchendzönga: Secular and Buddhist Perceptions of the Mountain Deity of Sikkim among the Lhopos”, Bulletin of Tibetology, 38.2, 2002, pp. 5-37.
[7] S. Pierce, Kangchenjunga: Imaging a Himalayan Mountain, Aberystwyth: University of Wales, School of Art Press, 2005, pp. 11-25.
[8] The Himalayan Journal, 1931-1932, p. 206.
[9] The Himalayan Journal, 1931-1932, p. 213.
[10] For more information on K.S. Paul, see: P. Richardus, Tibetan Lives. Three Himalayan Biographies, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998, pp. 73-159; H. Louis Fader, Called from Obscurity. The Life and Times of a True Son of Tibet Gergan Dorje Tharchin […]. Kalimpong: Tibet Mirror Press, pp. 119n, 208-218, 219-222, 486, 548; T. Tsepak, “Modern Encounters: Lhasa Tibetan, Christian Mission Schools, and Religious Conversion in Modern Tibetan Autobiographies”, forthcoming.
[11] Leiden University Library, Van Manen archive, box 104, file 042.
[12] P.H. Pott, 1951, p. 41.
[13] According to the stone carver Pawan Thapa from Patan (personal communication, 28/03/2026), this small sculpture, probably made of stone from the quarries of Dakshinkali as part of a series of the Seven Mothers, represents Narasiṃhī. Similar ones are still being carved.
[14] P.H. Pott, 1951, pp. 98-99, where it is identified as a form of Begtse, while Pott notes that “he seems to be the tutelary divinity of a certain region, and as such he can take the place of the war-like mountain god Gaṅ-c’en mc’od-lṅa (Kangchenjunga).”
[15] R. de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities, Gravenhage: Mouton, 1956, p. 217.
[16] According to the Catalogue of Tibetan Texts in Van Manen Collection, 34 texts of the collection relate to the cycle of the dkon mchog spyi ‘dus, among which the rdzogs pa chen po yang zab bla sgrub dkon mchog spyi ‘dus kyi khrid yig gu ru’i dgongs rgyan nyin byed snying po las rdzogs rim khrid yig khams gsum yongs grol is by far the longest, consisting of 320 folios organized in 29 chapters. See https://catalogue.leidenuniv.nl/.
[17] Leiden University Library, Van Manen archive, box 117, Ms [319].
[18] Leiden University Library, Van Manen archive, box 107, file 149.
[19] For a description of these deities, see also R. de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1996, p. 218. Another, more popular group of protectors in Sikkim features, arranged vertically, the same lord of the highlands Gangs chen mdzod lnga, on top, the lord of the midlands Dpa’ bo huṃ ri associated with the Sikkimese mountain of the same name in the middle, and the lord of the southern gate Lcaṃ dral yab bdud, a manifestation of Mahākāla associated with a mountain near Siliguri, south of Sikkim and Darjeeling, at the bottom. For a description of these deities, see R. de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1996, p. 219. For an example of their representation, see J. Ardussi et al., The Royal History of Sikkim: A Chronicle of the House of Namgyal, Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2021, figure opposite p. 53.
[20] For more information about this loan, see N. Martin, “On Some of the Finest Thangkas in the Netherlands”, Aziatische Kunst, 55.2, 2025. The other is RV-2740-142.
[21] Archives of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, bundle 401, file 1053, year 1925, accession 1. In the British Indian coinage system, “Rs. 11/4/0” must have corresponded to 11 rupees, 4 annas (16 annas equalling 1 rupee), and 0 pice (4 pices equalling 1 anna), i.e. 11,25 rupees.