A summary of “Minor Tibetan Texts: the Song of the Eastern Snow Mountain”
A Lexicographical Treatment of a Tibetan Language Text by Johan Van Manen
van Manen, Johan. Minor Tibetan Texts: The Song of the Eastern Snow-Mountain. Bibliotheca Indica, New Series 1426. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1919.
This is the first in a series of blog entries in which we discuss Johan Van Manen’s writings.
This one was written by Samten Yeshi, with additions by Berthe Jansen
Johan van Manen’s (1877-1943) Minor Tibetan Texts: The Song of the Eastern Snow Mountain provides a lexicographical treatment of the Tibetan language in Gsung mgur shar gangs ri ma, a poetic religious verse by Dge ’dun grub (1391-1474), a prominent Dge lugs pa scholar and the first Dalai Lama. It was published in a small booklet form by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in their Bibliotheca Indica: A Collection of Oriental Works in 1919.
In this 86-page work, Van Manen advocates for a precise philological and lexicographical analysis of the Tibetan language – the “inglorious and humdrum drudging away at small texts with scrupulous attention to the smallest detail” (p. iv) – which he considers more crucial for the future of Tibetan scholarship than simply producing a generic translation. This work clearly shows his lexicographical approach to the Tibetan language in the text, highlighting and contrasting alternative glosses to those found in extant dictionaries.
Although not always accurate, he presents all the words and phrases he encounters, while investigating particular terms that occur in the original Tibetan texts and providing significant contextual information. An example of this is his treatment of the term mkha’ ’gro ma (ḍākinī) which he translates as “sky goer” (p. 77). He presents various other terms such as mi ma yin (not human); chos rje, which according to him is a term used in Lhasa and other urban areas to indicate “oracle” and “shaman” (in today’s Tibetan this term is mostly obsolete); dpa’ bo as a term used in Darjeeling for male and rnyal ’byor ma for female shamans and oracles, besides other terms and narratives he stumbled upon while examining the word mkha’ ’gro ma.
Van Manen makes use of his Tibetan assistants to gloss certain terms but he also notes the contextual information they provide, such as the fact that Tashi Lhunpo monks were supposed to learn this work by heart (p. 3). He even asserts that most of the lexicographical work “can only be suitably undertaken on the spot in consultation with educated, intelligent Tibetans, and not in European closets.” (p. 6) He subsequently names his assistants, Skarma Bsam Gtan Paul (also spelled Karma Sumdhon Paul) and P’un Tsh’ogs Lung Rtogs (phun tshogs lung rtogs), hailing from Ghoom and Lhasa respectively. He describes them as intelligent, helpful, and names them his “teachers” (p. 13) and elsewhere his “informants” (p. 73).
The integration of historical, cultural, and ethnographic backgrounds next to the literary details given to clarify the glosses of Tibetan terms in this work is fascinating. It displays his scrupulous – and unusual – approach to the lexicographical treatment of the Tibetan language.
Van Manen’s attempt at a thorough lexicographical treatment of this “Song of the Eastern Mountains”, thus includes a number of Tibetan colloquial idioms, accounts, and proverbs that he collected orally, and that he finds lacking in the dictionaries available to him. While this makes the work seem to go off on a tangeant at times, the work remains quite a valuable contribution due to his, for the time, divergent notions regarding the study of Tibetan textual materials. The work can be downloaded and read here.