China under the Mongol Yuan and Ming Dynasties
The Tibetan Buddhist presence in China began quite early. In the mid-seventh century, King Songtsen Gampo (Srong-btsan sgam-po) married a Chinese princess who brought with her to Tibet some Buddhist texts. Four years later, this king built a Buddhist temple at the sacred mountain of Manjushri called Wutaishan in Chinese and Riwo Tsenga (Ri-bo rtse-lnga) in Tibetan. It is located in Shanxi province southwest of Beijing. Subsequently, many Tibetan and later Mongolian temples and monasteries were built there.
During the following two centuries, the Tibetan Empire covered Gansu and other portions of northwestern, western and southwestern China. For instance, the Dunhuang region in western Gansu where the famous Buddhist caves with their manuscript and art treasures are found, was ruled by the Tibetans for almost a century. There was continuing warfare between the Tibetans and the Chinese, with the Tibetans briefly capturing the Chinese capital, Chang’an, in 763. A peace treaty was finally signed between Tibet and China in 821. In the mid-ninth century, there was a severe persecution of Buddhism in China, at about the same time as it was repressed in Tibet.
In the mid-thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved the Mongol capital from Kharakhorum to Beijing and in 1279 founded the Yuan Dynasty that ruled over China until 1368. Over this period, many Tibetan lamas came to the Mongol imperial court in Beijing as tutors of the emperors and established Tibetan monasteries in various parts of northern China. The Mongol emperors rewarded them with lofty titles and lavish gifts. The Sakya master, Chogyal Phagpa, for instance, was the tutor of Kublai Khan. He and his Sakya successors were given political hegemony over Tibet. Prior to that, from the mid-ninth century, Tibet had been divided into many minor kingdoms.
The Second through the Fourth Karmapas from the Karma Kagyu lineage also visited the Mongol court in Beijing and were active in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China as well as in the Tangut area of Kharakhota. Several Nyingma lamas visited as well. Neither the Kagyupas nor the Nyingmapas, however, were given any political appointment.
When the Chinese defeated the Mongols and established the Ming Dynasty, several of its early emperors invited lamas from many different Tibetan Buddhist lineages to their capital, Nanjing, and gave them all titles and gifts. The Chinese claimed that, as the legitimate successors to the Mongols, they were renewing the Mongol titles and offices given to the Tibetans. This was to prove their historical claim over Tibet, which has been and still remains a preoccupation of the Chinese. The Tibetans have always vehemently disputed it and refused to recognize any Chinese rights to their country.
The Chinese claim makes no sense. First of all, in accepting the Tibetan lamas as their spiritual teachers, the Mongol emperors gave them in return the political rule of Tibet, and this was only to the Sakyas. Although nominally the Mongols were in control, in fact they left the Tibetans to rule themselves. When the Pagmodrupa (Phag-mo gru-pa) clan overthrew the Sakya hegemony fourteen years before the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the Mongols did not even bother to give military support to the Sakyas and simply acknowledged the Pagmodrupa rule over Tibet once it was already established. Thus, they did not interfere with Tibetan internal affairs.
The Chinese, on the other hand, were dealing with a far broader spectrum of lamas than did the Mongols, and none of them had a political position as had the Sakya rulers during the previous periods. Furthermore, not only were the Chinese not interested in granting political power to any of these Tibetan lamas, they were also not in a position to confer authority upon them. The Tibetans were already handling their own political affairs before the Ming, totally ignoring the Mongols, and the Chinese military thrusts never got past the Sino-Tibetan border region. The Chinese always had their eyes on annexing Tibet into China and often would pretentiously distort the history and patronize Tibetan lamas for propaganda purposes, a practice that has continued to the present.
Another factor behind the cultivation of Tibetan lamas by the Ming Chinese court was undoubtedly commercial interest. The Chinese desperately needed horses. The Mongols would not trade with them since they were trying to reunite on their northern border and did not wish to supply the Chinese military. The lamas brought horses, which from the Confucian worldview was called “tribute,” and traded them for tea, silk, salt and silver, which the Chinese labeled as “gifts.” Therefore, both commercial and religious needs were fulfilled in the arrangement between the Tibetan lamas and the Ming court.
When, in the early to mid-sixteenth century, the Mongol horse market reopened and the interest in Buddhism in the Chinese imperial court fell – in fact, there was a suppression of Buddhism and oppression of lamas at that time – the Chinese court stopped inviting Tibetan teachers, and visits by lamas to China became rare.
This attitude of mixing Buddhism and profit is quite characteristic of the Chinese approach. Even nowadays, when the Communist Chinese allow selected monasteries to be rebuilt in Tibet, it is in order to attract the tourist dollars and is used for propaganda purposes. Overseas Chinese often turn to Buddhist ceremonies to help procure success in their businesses. The Chinese word used to translate “karma” is also used in Chinese compounds dealing with business. The popular understanding is that by performing good deeds, such as offering incense or food, one is making a sound investment and will be able to reap the profit in the future.
The main Chinese imperial patrons of Tibetan Buddhism during this period were the first and second Ming emperors, particularly the second, the Yongle Emperor, who ruled during the early fifteenth century. Aside from other motives just suggested, he undoubtedly also seemed to have had sincere interest in Tibetan Buddhism. He invited high lamas from many different Tibetan traditions and wished to upgrade the level of education of the Chinese Buddhist monks. He invited Tsongkapa (Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang grags-pa), the founder of the Gelug tradition, but he declined and sent one of his disciples instead.
The main Tibetan teacher who went to the Ming court was the Fifth Karmapa, Dezhin Shegpa (Karma-pa De-bzhin gshegs-pa), of the Karma Kagyu line, to whom the Chinese Emperor presented the famous Black Hat used in special ceremonies by subsequent Karmapas. The Yongle Emperor sponsored an edition of the Tibetan Kangyur (bKa’-’gyur), the collection of the Tibetan translations of the enlightening words of the Buddha, and Tengyur (bsTan-’gyur), the collection of the Tibetan translations of the Indian Buddhist treatises. Under his rule, many Tibetan monasteries from several of the lineages were founded in China. He was regarded as a manifestation of the Buddha-figure Manjushri, as was later the Manchu Emperor Qianlong and even Confucius by some Tibetans. The association with Manjushri may be due to Manjushri’s sacred mountain, Riwo Tsenga or Wutaishan, being located in China.
The identification of certain Chinese emperors with Buddha-figures is not unusual. The Tibetans regard their early kings, such as Songtsen Gampo, as manifestations of Avalokiteshvara. They even spoke of Queen Victoria of Great Britain as an incarnation of a Dharma protector Palden Lhamo (dPal-ldan lha-mo). The Buryat Mongols called the Czars and Czarinas of Russia manifestations of White Tara, and modern-day Mongols say that Genghis Khan was an incarnation of Vajrapani. Political diplomacy may well be involved.
Towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, both the Third and Fourth Dalai Lamas were invited to China. Both declined.
Pre-Qing Manchu Developments
The Ming Dynasty was followed in the mid-seventeenth century by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which lasted until 1911. Buddhism first came to the Manchus during the early eighth century at the time of the Bohai Kingdom that covered all of Manchuria and northern Korea. It came undoubtedly from Chinese forms. The early history of Buddhism in this region is not so clear.
It is also difficult to know how widespread Buddhism was among the Manchus during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty which ruled them and whether the second wave of Buddhism to the Mongols reached Manchuria. During the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese did not rule Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet or East Turkistan, and were always terrified lest any of these groups, particularly the Mongols, were to organize themselves. The Manchus continued the Chinese fear of the Mongols.
It is clear that the reunifier of the Manchus, Nurhaci, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, was already a Buddhist and had relations with both the Central Mongols and Tibetans. He adopted a writing system for Manchu based on the Mongolian script. In a new year’s greeting sent to him by the Fourth Dalai Lama in 1615, he was addressed honorifically as a Manjushri, from which the name “Manchu” derived. From this time onwards, Tibetan Buddhism, again primarily Gelug, spread to the Manchus. It was also around this time that the Manchus divided the northern and southern areas of the Central Mongols, later calling them Outer and Inner Mongolia respectively, and used Inner Mongolia as a base for conquering China.
Meanwhile, as a further move towards unification linking the church and the state, the Khalkha Central Mongols, in the mid-seventeenth century, at about the time of the establishment of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China, recognized a child in their royal family, Zanabazar, as the reincarnation of the Tibetan lama Taranatha. He was made the First Khalkha Jebtsundamba Khutugtu, more commonly known in Mongolia as the First Bogdo Gegen, the head of Mongolian Buddhism. This was also at about the same time that the Fifth Dalai Lama was made the temporal, in addition to religious, head of Tibet by a subgroup of the Western Mongols, the Qoshots.
Manchu Policies towards Mongolia and Tibet during the Qing Dynasty
After Zanabazar and the Khalkhas submitted to the Manchus about forty years later, one of the first Manchu moves was to forbid any tulkus or incarnate lamas to be found among the descendants of Genghis Khan. Later they forbid the future incarnations of the Bogdo Gegen to be recognized among the Mongols at all. After Zanabazar died in Beijing, the second Bogdo Gegen was born a Mongol, but all subsequent incarnations have been found among the Tibetans. The Manchus also supported the usage of the Tibetan language, rather than Mongolian, in the Mongol liturgy and monasteries. This was a further step to weaken Mongolian nationalism that might threaten the Manchu rule.
Unlike the Dalai Lamas, who ruled with their own government, the Bogdo Gegens, then, were merely administrative heads, working under the Manchus. Only the Eighth Bogdo Gegen ever had actual political rule over Mongolia with his own government, which was during the period between the end of the Manchu annexation in 1911 and the Mongolian Communist Revolution in 1921. Until his death in 1924, he held only a titular position, and then afterwards the Communist government did not allow the finding or installment in Mongolia of his reincarnation. The Ninth Bogdo Gegen (1932–2012), however, was born in Tibet and lived with the exiled Tibetan community in India.
The Manchu policy, then, was to reinforce Tibetan Buddhism with their own state-controlled version of it in order to minimize the chances of the Buddhist peoples they conquered from revolting. They established the Manchu Council for the Religious Affairs of the Buddhists for this purpose. Continuing the custom of the Mongols and Chinese of bestowing lofty titles on the great lamas, the Manchus gave the title “Khutugtu” to those who would accept it and used them to administer and control the Buddhists primarily in the regions of Outer and Inner Mongolia, and Amdo. The greatest of these were the Bogdo Gegens themselves. There were seven Khutugtus in Beijing itself. Khutugtu is the Mongolian translation of the Sanskrit word “arya,” meaning a highly realized being. Note that the Tibetan name Phagpa (’Phags-pa) borne by Kublai Khan’s tutor Chogyal Phagpa, also corresponds to the Sanskrit word “arya.”
The Manchus apparently, then, patronized and adopted the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in order to win the loyalty of the Mongols, Tibetans and later the Oirats and Buddhist Uighurs to the Chinese Manchu Empire centered in Beijing. Also, by putting more emphasis on the Tibetan side, the Manchus hoped to prevent the Mongols from combining church and state in a Mongol nationalist revival. Thus, although many of the Manchus may have been sincerely interested in Tibetan Buddhism, they also interfered in its institutions for the purpose of political manipulation of foreign groups in the process of building and maintaining an empire.
This approach has been continued by both the Nationalist and Communist Chinese regimes that followed, for instance in their attempts to foster political rivalry between the Panchen Lamas and Dalai Lamas. The Manchus were completely assimilated by the Chinese as they had always been very sympathetic to Chinese culture, more so than the Mongols, Tibetans or Uighurs. Their values and policies became very mixed. In fact, Chinese had been settled in southern Manchuria since the third century BCE.
The Central Mongols, on the other hand, used the institutions of Tibetan Buddhism to organize and help bring further civilization to their own people. Although the Western Mongols certainly did interfere with Tibetan politics with the pretext of protecting the holy land of Buddhism in Tibet and particularly of being loyal to the Dalai Lamas, nevertheless they did not do this with the overt aim of incorporating Tibet into their Dzungar Empire. If anything, they were sectarian zealots. Even earlier, when the Mongols ruled China during the Yuan Dynasty, they did not try to control Tibetan politics through Buddhism the way the Manchus and Chinese later did. Let us look at the history.
Mongol and Manchu Involvement in Tibetan Politics and the Dalai Lamas
From before the time of the Third and Fourth Dalai Lamas, there had been bitter fighting in Central Tibet between the rulers of Tsang and U regions, who took religious sides, Karma Kagyu and Gelug respectively. The spiritual heads of these traditions always worked for peace and harmony, but the political leaders fanned the sectarian trouble. The Qoshot Mongols, one branch of the Oirat Western Mongols, under Gushi Khan, were invited to stop the persecution against the Gelug. Not only did they do this, but in their religious zeal, they put down all opposition and gave the rule of Tibet to the Fifth Dalai Lama in Lhasa. This was in 1643, one year before the Manchus completed their conquest of China.
The Fifth Dalai Lama was a noted master of not only the Gelug, but also the Sakya and Nyingma traditions. He put a great deal of effort in supporting the spread and growth of Tibetan Buddhism in Central Mongolia. Gushi Khan sponsored the printing of an edition of the Kangyur and Tengyur.
Ten years after he had been given the rule of Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama visited China at the request of the first Manchu emperor. The Manchus, terrified of both the Khalkha Central Mongols, who were at this time uniting around the First Bogdo Gegen, and also the Western Mongol tribes, hoped to persuade the Dalai Lama to use his kind offices to convince the Mongols not to invade the Chinese territory conquered by the Manchus. They also asked him, as did the Mongols, for written regulations for organizing their Tibetan monasteries.
The Sixth Dalai Lama, having given back his monks vows, was a controversial figure. The Qoshots, in collaboration with the Manchus, deposed him and set up their own pretender Sixth Dalai Lama. The Dzungar Mongols, another branch of the Oirats, incensed at this, came down to Tibet from East Turkistan and deposed the puppet Sixth and killed the Qoshot Khan. They also wrecked havoc on anyone else they thought might be opposed. In going to extremes, the Dzungars became extremely unpopular among the Tibetans.
Meanwhile, the Seventh Dalai Lama had been found and was being kept by the Manchus for the right moment so that they could use him for their political gain. At the point of this Dzungar violence, the Manchus then brought the Seventh Dalai Lama to Lhasa with a large Manchu-Chinese army. The Tibetans had already expelled the Dzungars, but the Manchus then stationed a military garrison in Lhasa. Later they placed two amban representatives of the Manchu court in Lhasa, and through them tried to exercise control over Tibet until the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Their power and influence were minimal, but they did try to impose, rather unsuccessfully, Manchu control over the selection of the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Manchus decimated the Dzungars and other groups of Oirat Western Mongols of Dzungaria and annexed East Turkistan into their empire.
The Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors
Two Manchu emperors of China were especially great patrons of Tibetan Buddhism, in addition to exploiting it for their political advantage. These were the Kangxi Emperor at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, and the Qianlong Emperor from the early middle until the end of the eighteenth century. Both of them sponsored the printing in Beijing of Tibetan editions of the Kangyur and Tengyur.
The Kangxi Emperor was the one who set the restrictions on the Khalkha Bogdo Gegens of Urga yet sponsored the revision and printing of the Mongolian Kangyur. He also installed the Seventh Dalai Lama and began to interfere with Tibetan politics. During his reign, the great Tibetan monastery of Labrang Tashikyil (Bla-brang bKra-shis ’khyil) was founded in the northeastern Tibetan province of Amdo. Many Tibetan and Mongolian lamas from there and the other monasteries of Amdo were invited to the Manchu court in Beijing. A number were given the title Khutugtu and, as mentioned before, were used by the Manchus for administrative purposes over the Buddhists.
The Manchus had adopted Guan Yu, a general from the third century CE Chinese historical novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, as their war god Guandi and patron of their Qing Dynasty. Under the Kangxi Emperor, Guandi was identified with Gesar of Ling, hero of the Gesar epic of the Tibetans, Mongols and Yellow Uighurs, especially in the Amdo area. The Manchus constructed temples to him throughout Tibet and Mongolia as yet another means to convince these peoples that they all shared a common culture with the Manchu-Chinese “motherland.” Also, through these Gesar or Chinese temples, the Manchus promoted a Chinese form of divination in these regions.
The Qianlong Emperor was the one who massacred the Oirat Western Mongols in Dzungaria, East Turkistan, and tried to exercise control in Tibet through his amban representatives. But also, under him was founded, in 1744, a Tibetan Gelug monastery in Beijing, Yonghe Gong (“Palace of Harmony and Peace”), with colleges for debate, Kalachakra and Tibetan medicine and astrology.
At Rehe, the summer capital of the Manchus in southwestern Manchuria, founded by the Kangxi Emperor as a summer residence as well for the Bogdo Gegens so as to weaken their presence and influence in Mongolia itself, there were numerous Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries. The Qianlong Emperor commissioned the building at Rehe of replicas of the Potala Palace of the Dalai Lamas, Tashilhunpo monastery (bKra-shis lhun-po) – seat of the Panchen Lamas, Samye (bSam-yas) – the first monastery in Tibet, and Kulja – the main Dzungar temple in East Turkistan that his troops had destroyed. They were not built by Tibetan architects, however, and were more a Chinese version of them designed to impress the Tibetans, Mongolians, Oirats and Uighurs of the Manchu devotion. The main purpose, as was already mentioned, seems to have been to draw these peoples closer to the Chinese and Manchurian heartland, and thus unify the empire.
The Qianlong Emperor invited Tibetan lamas from traditions other than the Gelug as well, for instance the Eighth Situ Rinpoche (Si-tu Chos-kyi ’byung-gnas) of the Karma Kagyu line. Under the previous emperor, the Twelfth Karmapa (Karma-pa Byang-chub rdo-rje) and Ninth Zhamar Rinpoche (Zhwa-dmar dKon-mchog dge-ba’i ’byung-gnas), also of the Karma Kagyu, had visited China as well. But the main influence in China remained Gelug. The Sixth Panchen Lama (Pan-chen bla-ma Blo-bzang dPal-ldan ye-shes) visited China during his reign, as did many lamas from the Gelug monasteries in Amdo.
Under the Qianlong Emperor’s patronage and the supervision of his Tibetanized Mongolian tutor from Amdo, Changkya Rolpe Dorje (lCang-kya Rol-pa’i rdo-rje), the Mongolian translation of the Tengyur was completed, as well as a mammoth Tibetan-Mongolian dictionary. The entire Kangyur was also translated from Tibetan into the Manchu language. A monastery was built next to the Imperial Palace in Beijing at which the rituals were initially chanted in Manchu but, as was the case in Mongolia, the original Tibetan liturgy replaced this. Tibetan became the primary language used in both the Manchu and Chinese monasteries of the Tibetan tradition.
As was mentioned, the Manchus always had a much closer cultural relation with the Chinese than did the Mongols or the Tibetans. In the Manchu Buddhist language, in addition to Sanskrit loan words, there are also some from the Chinese language used in transliteration. This was never the case in Mongolian or Tibetan except for certain astrological terms such as the names of the eight trigrams from the I Ching. Even in the Manchu Kangyur, transliterated Chinese titles of the texts, when available, were added after the Sanskrit, Tibetan and Manchu. This was never found in the original Tibetan or Mongolian versions.
The Manchus, always trying to unify their empire, were very fond of making compendiums of Buddhist technical terms in five languages: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchu and Chinese, even occasionally adding Uighur. The Tibetans and Mongolians did not have this type of interest in Chinese. Even nowadays, the Tibetans, Mongols and Uighurs, with their common intense hatred of the Chinese occupation of their lands, view the Manchus with suspicion and still regard them as Chinese collaborators.
The Republican Period in China
After the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911, the Chinese continued the Manchu policy of trying to convince the Tibetans that they were one of the five races of China and part of the Chinese “motherland” by stressing their common religion of Buddhism.
Conflict between the two had already begun before the collapse of the Qing. In 1910, the Chinese attacked Lhasa, having already devastated large parts of the Tibetan southeastern province of Kham, slaughtering monks, burning Buddhist texts and so on, following the same type of procedure and route as they did later in the early 1950’s. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Da-la’i bla-ma Thub-bstan rgya-mtsho) fled to India to seek British help, while the Ninth Panchen Lama (Pan-chen bla-ma Thub-bstan Chos-kyi Nyi-ma) stayed and cooperated with the Chinese, being used by them to gain political advantage. Again, the pattern is reminiscent of what happened after 1959 with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Da-la’i bla-ma bsTan-’dzin rgya-mtsho) and Tenth Panchen Lama (Pan-chen bla-ma Chos-kyi rgyal-mtshan). The fighting continued after the Nationalist Chinese revolution in 1911. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama declared full independence in 1913 and finished routing the Chinese from Tibet in 1918.
To pay the expenses for all this fighting with the Chinese, the Dalai Lama taxed the Tibetan estates. The underlings of the Panchen Lama, who had cooperated with the Chinese, did not wish to pay. The Panchen Lama and his group therefore fled to China in 1923. Jiang Jieshi offered to return the Panchen Lama to Tibet if Tibet agreed to become part of China, but the Dalai Lama declined. After the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933, the Panchen Lama prepared to return to Tibet with a contingent of five hundred Chinese soldiers as the Special Cultural Commissioner for Western Regions but passed away along the journey. Thus, the Chinese usage of the Panchen Lama to try to divide and rule Tibet, as was done by the Communist regime with the Tenth Panchen Lama, had its precedent. The Panchen Lamas, however, never held a political position in the Tibetan government itself.
Throughout the Republican period, the Chinese continued to proclaim a common basis of Tibetan Buddhism as a way of gaining influence in Tibet. They used this tactic for trying to win over the people of Inner Mongolia as well. A similar policy was pursued by the Japanese when they established Japanese-Chinese Buddhist associations during their occupation of Manchuria and northern China before and during the Second World War.
In 1924, a School of Tibetan Studies was started in Beijing, and in 1931, a Sino-Tibetan Institute outside Chongqing. On the surface, the purpose was to train Chinese students to study at the main Tibetan monasteries in Lhasa. Although a handful of Chinese actually did go to the monastic universities around Lhasa, and some did become quite learned, they were expected to serve the Chinese government in their aims on Tibet. The ultimate aim was to incorporate Tibet into China. This was also the function of the Republican government’s Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. This commission still exists as part of the Taiwanese government.
A Bodhi Society was established in Shanghai in 1935, with the Ninth Panchen Lama as its president. Lectures were given there by the Panchen Lama, other Tibetan lamas who would cooperate with the Chinese and by Lhasa-educated Chinese monks. The Panchen Lama even gave the Kalachakra empowerment both in Beijing and Inner Mongolia. A Chinese monastery in Chengdu, Jinci Si, incorporated Tibetan elements and rituals in 1938 and started a program of preparing and publishing modern Chinese translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts.
Thus, as with the Manchus, there seems to have been both sincere interest in Tibetan Buddhism as well as a policy of making a show of supporting it as a means for gaining political advantage with imperialistic designs. All these overt Buddhist activities in China, however, came to an end after the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949 and their immediately subsequent invasion of Tibet, starting with Kham as in 1910.