de/re/mystification of tibet in the mandala of sherlock holmes

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South Asian Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2013

De/Re/Mystification of Tibet in The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

Shelly Bhoil

Independent Scholar

[Abstract: The western discourse of Tibet tends to essentialize Tibet as a utopian ShangriLa. Jamyang Norbu, the exiled Tibetan writer, combats the exoticization of Tibet in his novel The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. He places the ratiocinative English detective in Tibet (to protect the life of the Dalai Lama from Imperial China) and treats him with Asian subjectivities, thus, challenging western notions of identity. In the novel, Norbu also recasts Tibetan mysticism to assert the symbolic significance of Tibetan mystic beliefs. This paper is a study of the politics of mystification, de-mystification, and re-mystification of Tibet as seen in Norbu’s novel.]

I

ibet, the roof of the world, has always fascinated travelers and colonial powers, which has resulted in tendentious representations

of the country in western narratives and the British historical records. Most of the romance of Tibet emerged at the time when religious skepticism and capitalism had ushered the western world into a modern era. As counter-poise to the West’s rational mind, Tibet began to be seen exotic. Besides, the British Indian Government’s disappointment in its colonizing mission in Tibet in the early twentieth century (and eventually its loss of interest in Tibet after Indian independence), lead it to regard its failed territory as a forbidden land. Rinchen Lhamo’s We Tibetans (1926), a narrative that counter-checks western notions of Tibet, is an early testimonial of the misinformed perception of Tibet. It

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surprised Lhamo, perhaps the first Tibetan woman to have settled in Europe in the early twentieth century, to see how the West perceived Tibet:

Some of the statements made about us display total ignorance, and others malice. Some are wrong but harmless; others made me laugh at the absurdity of them; still others made me angry. Why should people write falsehood about us, why should they write at all of things they do not know? (10)

The “falsehood” written about Tibet in the West gave it an image of “Exotica Tibet” (cf. Dibyesh Anand). The textual examples of the Oriental discourse in Edward Said’s Orientalism can, indeed, be extended to include the Anglo-narratives on Tibet. In the second series of the Gothic novel Ayesha: The Return of She, in 1905, Rider Haggard reincarnates the Egyptian divine priestess in the lamasery of Tibet, where her followers Holly and Leo Vincey travel, so that “under the tuition of the Eastern Masters . . . they would build a bridge by which they might pass to the side of their adored Immortal” (Introduction 6). Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) had not only, what Patrick Williams called “the Kipling effect,” on the Great Game between Gt. Britain and Russia but also on the ideas of Tibetan Buddhism, through the depiction of the Tibetan Teshoo Lama, who is Kim’s spiritual companion-teacher.

Obviously, there is a contrast between the secular dominance of the West and the idealistic portrayal of the Lama. One of the most romantic versions of Tibet has come from James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon (1933). The name ShangriLa, popularized by the novel, came to be associated with a utopian place of peace and spirituality in Tibet which is said to have been lost to mankind for ever. The historical records of Christian imperialism may have played their own role in sub sequent narratives of Tibet. Some, like the Jesuit traveler Ippolito Desideri’s account were hostile, even if not disrespectful of Tibet andits people. However the accounts of LA Waddell, the cultural consultant in the Younghusband expedition of 1903-1904, speak derogatorily about Tibet as a backward society of lamas. Charles Bell, who became a friend to the thirteenth Dalai Lama during the latter’s retreat in Sikkim in 1910, did write sympathetically about Tibet.

Even today, representations of Tibet tend to lean towards one of the two extremes: praising it as the land of spirituality, or denouncing it as the land of corrupt theocracy and of a dirty, debased people. According to Slavoj Zizek, “the very inconsistency of this image of Tibet, with its direct coincidences of opposites, seems to bear witness to its fantastic status” (64). Conceived, thus, as a fabulous ShangriLa in 1933, Tibet, in the western imagination was still a utopian place in

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1959, the year of Tibetan exile. Before Tibetans could articulate an identity for themselves upon reaching exile, they had found an identity for themselves in the western imagination. The irony is that the exiled Tibetans somewhat agreed to the clichéd image about themselves, if only because that won the displaced people sympathy and a place in the world, helping them preserve their precious dharma that was endangered inside Tibet under Chinese occupation; it also seemed to give mileage to the Tibetan cause. It was inevitable for the exiled Tibetans to give in to the demands the West placed on them, consisting primarily of the revelation of the mysticism of Tibetan Buddhism. Consequently, the Dalai Lama became the icon of Buddhism while elite Tibetan monks came to be invited in several countries to reveal the mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism, thus began a transmission of the Buddhist doctrines, from Tibetan into English, for the western audience in the 1960s. Many hippies from the West traveled to Dharamsala in search of an alternative religion while researchers, writers, and film-makers began to invest in the Tibetan religious-cultural heritage. Subsequently, a plethora of films and fictions, such as Seven Years in Tibet, The Millionaires, The Razor’s Edge, The Shadow, came out. According to Jamyang Norbu,

An examination of the many new travel books on Tibet and the numerous New Age-type works on Tibetan religion and “culture” (invariably with an introduction by the Dalai Lama himself), leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling that nothing substantial has changed in the West’s perception of Tibet since the days when books such as The Third Eye and Lost Horizon constituted the bulk of available literature on Tibet. (Shadow Tibet 168)

The continued exoticization of Tibet after 1959, has made Tibetans, in Donald Lopez’s opinion, “the prisoners of Shangri-La” in his 1988 book by the same title. The large mystical aura about Tibet has reduced the immediacy of Tibet’s national cause in exile, bringing Tibet-in-exile to an impasse. On the one hand, Tibetans’ acceptance of their representation by the West is, to borrow Spivak’s term, “strategically essential” for them. On the other, this acceptance of western epistemology on Tibet makes them passive agents in the discourse of their own identity legitimizing the western representation. The western emphasis on the larger humanistic concerns of Tibetan Buddhism, such as environmental preservation, human-rights, peace and non-violence tends to overshadow the political issue of the Tibetans. Therefore, even when the outside world regards the Tibetans sympathetically, the equation of Tibetan values with airy spirituality means that their political grievance of the loss of the nation does not get aptly addressed. At this impasse, the politically charged second generation of

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exiled Tibetans looks for passages of existence and aspirations through the medium of art and literature.

II

Jamyang Norbu is a prolific Tibetan English essayist, novelist and blogger who won the Hutch Crossword Book award for his novel The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes in 2000. He is also a political activist labeled as a “radical Tibetan separatist” in People’s Daily. He was born in 1949 to a wealthy merchant in Tibet. In the face of the fragility of Tibet in the 1950s, his father sent him for modern education to a Jesuit school at the hill station of Darjeeling in British India where he was to discover English literature and develop a great fascination for books. Later he founded the Amnye Machen Institute (the Tibetan Institute of Advanced Studies) together with a group of intellectuals in Dharamsala in India and held the position of its Director for some years. Norbu advocates the complete independence of Tibet from China and is critical of the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way approach. This has led him into confrontation with the Tibetan Parliament in exile. He continues to fight for Tibet’s rangzen (freedom) through his writings on his popular blog and political talks on Tibet.

Norbu acknowledges that he got the idea of rewriting the so far miswritten Tibet in western narratives when John Ball, the president of Los Angeles Scion Society, met him in Dharamsala (the Tibetan exile-capital in India) in 1970 and after examining his expertise in the Sherlockiana canon, welcomed Norbu to the ranks of the aficionado club–the Baker Street Irregulars (The Mandala 274). Norbu found a reference to Tibet in one of the Doyle’s stories as the site for primary investigation and the framing device for the plot of The Mandala. In the preface of the book he writes:

Of all the Sherlock Holmes stories the one that fascinated me the most was the adventure of The Empty House. In this remarkable tale Sherlock Holmes reveals to Dr. Watson that for two years, while the world thought that the great detective had perished in the Reichenbach falls, he had actually been travelling in my own country Tibet! (x)

In Doyle’s detective tale, there is an offhand reference to Tibet when Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson about his disappearance, “I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa [sic] and spending days with the head Lama” (600). Excited at this revelation, Norbu began to explore the Sherlock Holmes series and its secondary material, which seemed to him in the nature of the scriptural Kagyur (the word of the Buddha) and Tengyur (commentaries on Kagyur) in Tibetan literary tradition. He explored other accounts, too,


written on Tibet during British India, such as Kipling’s Kim and the great Sarat Chandra Das’s Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.

Based on his reflective and extensive research of the non-Tibetan works on Tibet, Norbu set out on a rewriting task. For the skill in borrowing, he could even look back at his predecessor,Tsering Wangyal, who adopted the plot of the Indian epic The Ramayana and adapted it to the Buddhist experience in the one and only novel in traditional Tibet, The Tale of the Incomparable Prince written in 1727. Norbu borrowed the English keyboard and the cross-cultural characters (from the English Sherlock Holmes of Doyle to the Indian Huree of Kipling’s Kim) and placed them in the Tibetan world. He used for his pastiche novel the picaresque motif, which is also a tool to narrate the experiences of the journey to Tibet by travelers and explorers. Norbu thus prepared his audience to read for the first time the Tibetan fiction in a genre, language and style that is not only familiar but also popular.

The Mandala was first published in India in 1999 by Harper Collins and subsequently in the West in 2001. In the story, Holmes reaches the docks at Bombay in India in the disguise of a Norwegian named Sigerson. Huree, the Bengali babu, greets the foreigner. Not long after his arrival, he encounters a series of misadventures and attempts on his life. Accompanied by Huree, Holmes reaches British India’s summer capital Simla and then voyages to Lhassa in Thibet.1 In Lhassa, he is involved in a conspiracy to kill the Dalai Lama by Chinese Imperials, but realizes that he has on him the onus of protecting the young leader of Thibet and of wiping out Professor Moriarty. The latter is hired to accomplish the evil designs on Thibet by the imperial China.

In the course of the story, the novelist takes the opportunity to introduce his “lost country” to the readers from an insider’s perspective. He then de-mystifies the myth of the Exotica Tibet as held in western mind, and then re-mystifies Tibet’s faith and beliefs, but this time in Tibet’s own terms. He brings out each of these aspects of Tibet through the plot of China’s political intrigue in the country and links it, in the epilogue, to the current plight of Tibet in exile. This paper is a contrapuntal study of each of these aspects in The Mandala.

III

The novelist takes readers to the old Hindustan-Thibet road after evoking memories of British India from the docks of Bombay when Holmes lands there to journey to Simla, the summer capital of British India. Once the readers are back in time in the Victorian age, Norbu begins to familiarize them with the culture, customs, life, religion, geography and political status of old Thibet. He strategically chooses Huree Chunder Mookerjee, an erudite Tibetologist as a traveling

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companion to the white-man in Tibet, and as narrator of the story. Huree is a character from Kipling’s Kim, who in turn is based on real-life person Sarat Chander Das of Darjeeling in India. Das was a Tibetologist and also a British spy agent in Tibet during the Great Game (for control over central Asia between the Russian Czars and British India), and as such is the apt narrator of the story. Huree’s presence in the novel also works to bring cross-cultural connections between India and Tibet. Norbu himself appears in the novel in the role of the editor of Huree’s account. He adds footnotes to give additional information about the sources of the facts in the novel and makes desirable corrections wherever Huree’s account is ill-informed on the political or social aspects of Tibet. Norbu’s presence as the editor of the novel foregrounds the importance of authority on any representation of Tibet. In fact, Norbu’s dual roles–the real narrator of the novel and the posing editor–is symbolically the role that the exiled Tibetans must play in order to take not only the task of Tibetan textual representation in their hands but also to correct the misperceptions on Tibetan identity in non-Tibetan narratives.

The reader begins to learn about Tibet from the time of Huree’s bundobust (arrangement) for their journey from India. Before they embark on their journey, Holmes requests Huree to give him lessons on Tibetan language for that would be beneficial to understand the Tibetan culture. Huree’s real life persona, Das, had compiled one of the early Tibetan English dictionaries in 1902. He elucidates that Tibetan letters need

a sensitive ear for the subtle tonal inflections in the language, which generally drove most Europeans to despair. For instance, the Thibetans ‘la’ could mean a mountain pass, an honorific suffix tagged to a person’s name, a god, a musk deer, wages, to lose something, or even one’s soul, all departing on the exact tonal inflection when pronouncing it. (93-94)

Huree further discourses on the distinction between the three divisions of Tibetan language: the ordinary for the common people, honorific used towards gentlemen and high-honorific used towards the Dalai Lama (94). Tibetan language, as such, reflects the ideology and cultural aspects of the Tibetan society.

When Huree and Holmes are about to enter Tibet from the last Indian village, they receive an official passport from the Grand Lama in the form of a document wrapped around an arrow. The cursive umay script in the Tibetan passport, penned with the angular-nibbed bamboo pen used by the Tibetan calligraphers, is one of the two Tibetan scripts. The other Tibetan script is uchen, which is printed with wood block and is used for general information. The Tibetan script is modeled on Sanskrit and has its complex honorific rules. It was considered the


language of the learned in Tibet much as were Latin in Europe and Sanskrit in India.

The novelist has interspersed in The Mandala functional Tibetan words and expressions such as Lya Gyalo (Victory to the Gods), chilingpa (foreigner), wang-kur (Bestowing of initiation), tsampa (barley meal), kusho (venerable sir), etc. alongside some Hindi, Sanskrit and Chinese expressions adding to its pastiche character. The Tibetan habit of using language figuratively comes from the traditional naming of the rivers, which are described in a fabulous rather than the scientific language, such as “Flowing from the Lion’s mouth” for the Indus, “Flowing from the Elephant’s mouth” for the Brahamputra, and “Flowing from the Horse’s mouth” for the Karnali (118). There are elaborate meanings of the personal nouns as well such as Tsering which means “the one with long life,” and Phurbu Thondup which means “a Thursday Wish Fulfilled” (140). The naming after the days of the week was typical in Central Tibet while the general practice was to have the family priests bestow the first names to the newborns.

One begins to witness the difficult geography of Tibet once Holmes and Huree reach Shipki la, the mountain pass 15, 4000 feet above sea level. The climate on the roof of the world is suitable Tibetans who genetically belong to the snow land. Only the mountaineers and those who had trained themselves for the high altitude conditions could travel in Tibet. Huree has already begun to feel a tightening in his lungs and occasional headaches.

Tibet by virtue of its natural isolation is reiterated as the abode of the Gods. Lhasa is the land that preserves “the knowledge of the hidden forces of the human soul and the highest achievements and esoteric teachings of Indian saints and sages” (91). Right at the beginning of the journey Kintup, the sturdy mountaineer of Sikkhimese extraction shouts, “Lha Gyalo! Victory to the Gods!,” the Lamaist invocation customary at the start of the journey or the top of a pass or mountain (138). The divine aura of the snow-land is only one of the core aspects and not the only aspect of Tibet.

Old Thibet had its village as well as city life. When the small caravan of Holmes enters the city, the busy city life of old Lhassa begins to swell. Huree narrates:

Our guide, Tsering, led us through streets crowded with pilgrims, monks, beggars, swaggering bravos and silk-clad gentlemen. Ladies wearing fantastic head-dresses rode by, accompanied by their servants, while their less fortunate sisters walked, some carrying small wooden barrels of water on their backs. Nomads, clad from head to foot in sheepskin, held each other’s hands for safety. Women from Khams, or Eastern Tibet, with hair braided into a hundred and eight separate plaits, spun large prayer wheels in pious, if mechanical

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ritual. Merchants from Turkestan, Bhootan, Nepaul, China and Mongolia displayed in their stalls a rich array of goods: tea, silk, fur, brocades, turquoise, amber, coral, wines, and dried fruits and even humble needles, thread, soap, calico, spices and trinkets from the distant bazaars of India. (149)

Lhasa figures out as a cosmopolitan town visited by traders from neighboring countries. It is a typical city with a spectacle of poverty and opulence, fashionable ladies and humble servants.

The political status of old Thibet as a self-governing community is suggestive when the foreigners, Holmes and Huree, receive the Tibetan passport just before they enter the Tibetan frontiers, on their way from Chini to the last Indian village Poo. The passport is in the form of da-yig or “arrow missive” indicating that the document was an official one. It bears the seal of the Dalai Lama’s office. The passport in the novel is modeled on the real Tibetan passport issued to the first Everest Expedition in 1921. It is also in tune with the passports issued before World War II, which were travel documents to facilitate those who would go to distant lands and to inform the government of the land of their clear purpose of travel. The script on the passport in the novel clearly states Tibetan rights and ownership of the passages.

After giving the passports to Holmes and Huree, the Tibetan representatives welcome them with the ceremonial khatags, white silken scarves, also known as the robes of the Gods. The khatags denote the purity of the giver’s motives and are used “to welcome guests, to bid goodbyes, to petition lords, to worship the Buddha, to propitiate the gods, to celebrate weddings, and to mourn at funerals” (128). The Tibetan officials who meet the protagonists are dressed up as per their rank in the office. There were seven classes headed by the Dalai Lama among the nobles in Tibet. Tsering, the young official who was in-charge of the guests of the Dalai Lama is wearing “his hair long in a top-knot and disported the long turquoise earring that denoted his status as an official and a gentleman” (137). Phurbu Thondup, the governor to whom Holmes and Huree go to pay their respects, is “dressed in yellow silk robes and wore the long turquoise earring and top-knot, like Tsering. But to indicate his superior rank- he wore a fourth ranker to Tsering’s sixth- he had a small gold amulet in his piled up hair” (140).

The time in the novel is set according to the Tibetan Calendar, which has twelve lunar months and a thirteenth month added every two or three years, so that an average Tibetan year is equal to the solar year. Each year on the calendar corresponds to an animal and to one of the elements of the universe. The months go by the seasons, and days have their counterparts in the solar planets. The time of Holmes’ and Huree’s entry into Thibet is 1892, which in Tibetan calendar is “the first day of


the second moon of the Water Dragon Year” (127) as signed in their passport.

The author takes Holmes and his readers deeper into the psychological and cultural dimensions of Tibetan religion. Holmes learns the nuances of Tibetan religious customs, such as prayer flags, greeting with the tongue sticking out, funeral rituals, and religious attitudes to the sanctity of both the animal and the natural world of mountains and rivers.

IV

The novelist, while introducing Tibet to Holmes and the readers, takes the opportunity of demystifying the Tibetan customs and beliefs that have been wrongly understood in the western world. He juxtaposes Victorian science with the Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, thus evoking the binaries of the Occident and the Orient played throughout the novel. Huree can be seen reading from Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Biology while witnessing the life and culture on the rigid landscape of Tibet. Holmes declares at the beginning of their journey to Tibet, “From here on, science, logic and Mr. Herbert Spencer simply cease to exist. Lha Gyalo!” (138), and later tells Huree, “Science alone cannot answer all the questions of life. Man’s higher destiny can be discovered only through religion” (144).

Across the frontiers of the Himalayas, life and customs must be understood in the light of the native traditions rather than the western sensibilities. For instance, the Tibetan custom of bowing down and sticking out the tongue for salutation is a sign of bad manners in a foreign sensibility. Huree tips it off as “an excellent example of the ‘self surrender of the person to the individual he salutes,’ which Mr Herbert Spencer has shown to lie at the bottom of many of our modern practices of salutation” (140). In the Tibetan belief-system, the demons would have a black tongue and would restrain from sticking them out in fear of revealing their identity. Therefore, when a Tibetan sticks out the tongue to the guest, s/he is being modest, respectful and welcoming. Herbert Spenser in his Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects talks, among other subjects, about individual cultures as the basis of the manners and fashions in the world. The Tibetan greeting style must be understood in its cultural context, much as one understands the gesture of handshake in the western culture or the folding of hands or bowing down in some eastern cultures.

The Tibetan prayer flags called Dar Cho meaning increase in the life, fortune, health and wealth of all sentient beings, have also been “much misunderstood by European travelers to the Himalayan frontiers, some of whom have observed that the natives were wont to worship mountains and stones” (138). Huree explains to his readers,

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In truth, the Thibetans consider such inanimate objects sacred only by virtue of their residence of a god or lha who is present as animus assistentis and not as animus animantis. Some of these lha have their counterparts in the Roman numina. (138)

They worship the geography, not as God in itself, but for what it houses, i.e., the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space, which constitute the life-force of the phenomenal and psycho-cosmic world. This is a fairly a universal archetype. Particularly in the Roman religious system, one comes across numina, the power-forces that oversaw the daily life activities such as Janus, the god of doorway, Terminus, the God of boundaries, etc. The Tibetan prayer flags in different colors (that symbolize each of the elements) and with mantras written on them, purify the surrounding space when blown by the winds.

The Tibetans have reverence for the animate and the inanimate. There has been a misinterpretation that the animals in the garden of the Dalai Lama’s mansion had been his private entertainment zoo. Holmes and Huree are appalled to see animals from spiral-horned argali to musk deer to parrots to monkeys to leopards in the Dalai Lama’s mansion. The novelist who pretends to be the authoritarian editor of Huree’s account, rushes to the footnote: “Being a Buddhist, the Dalai Lamas would, never have animals captured for their amusement. The animals in the menagerie were wounded or lost creatures rescued by pious travelers and presented to the Dalai Lama for safe-keeping” (154). Tibet is one of the earliest countries to have enacted laws to protect wildlife and environment. Its record goes back to Mountian Valley Edict in 1642. The then government in Thibet issued the edict every year and it was read aloud to the people.

Another Tibetan tradition that in particular appears gruesome to non-Tibetans is the funeral practice of sky-burial in which the dead-body is cut into pieces and fed to vultures. When Holmes and Huree pass a funeral party on their journey to Tibet, the latter suggests, “‘They eat no birds, but, on the contrary, let birds eat them’” (149). Buddhist compassion extends even beyond to the adversaries. The Amban (Chinese representative in Tibet) plots against the life of the Dalai Lama, and is known as “the Father of Deception” among Tibetans. When a large Tibetan mob gathers outside the legation to protest against Chinese interference in Tibet, Lama Yoten prevents them from killing the Amban. He explains “I, as a Buddhist monk, have vowed never to harm any sentient being, it was not an easy decision for me to protect the evil men who were planning to harm my master” (158). Holmes, who begins to understand the Buddhist religious compassion of the Tibetan culture, wonders:


It is all very well to talk or write about “the survival of the fittest” in a warm comfortable drawing room in London; but actually encountering this aspect of nature even in the insignificant death of a poor gazelle, is a humbling experience. (145)

It can be understood why the humbling experience of Buddhism, so complete in itself, failed the Christian missionaries in Tibet, each time. When Holmes and Huree reach the town of Tsaparang (the ancient capital of the Tibetan kingdom of Guge), Huree remembers from his reading of the archives of the Asiatic Society that the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade had stationed the first Catholic mission in Tsaparang in 1624. Huree and Holmes exchange dialogues:

“Thibetans are notorious in missionary circles for their obstinacy in clinging to their idols and superstitions.”

“They revel in their original sin, do they?” chuckled Mr Holmes. “Anyhow, there is a surfeit of religion in this country already. Why should the missionaries want to bring in another?” (139)

Norbu thus makes the point that Tibet has its rich cultural and religious heritage. Therefore, it did not need any saviors, like the Christian missionaries in the past or the Communist comrades in the present, to civilize or liberate the Tibetans from an alleged theocracy.

The play of the occident/orient binary in the novel, as seen in the dialogues between Huree and Holmes, and in their experiences through the territory of Tibet, very clearly bring out the chasm between the epistemological definition of Tibet in the West and the ontological existence of Tibet. While epistemologically Tibet had been rendered as a fantasy-world of the mystic monks, Tibet in Norbu’s novel is a real world with its own valuable customs, traditions and a well-defined social order. What helps the author bring out the difference between the Tibetan and western world-views, is the placement of the rational English character Holmes within the social and cultural history of Tibet. The subsequent transformation in Holmes’ understanding of the Tibetan-world, rooted in Buddhist philosophical science, is indeed the desired result from a Tibetan novel that is written as a counter-narrative to the western textual discourse of Exotica Tibet. Thus, The Mandala, by engaging the European ratiocinative protagonist with the Tibetan tradition, offers an alternative view of Tibet and warns the readers of the romantic discourses on Tibet by the western writers that had hitherto stereotyped Tibet.

V

The Mandala, with its demystifying agenda, dwells on the mystical practices of the land in the third part of the novel, called “Beyond Life.” Norbu’s use of the mystical elements in the story of his novel is

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not a further mystification of Exotica Tibet, but a “re-mystification” from “within the Tibetan traditions” in ways that validate Tibetan religion and philosophy as scientific social practices, and the magical as merely symbolic of the powers of the meditative mind. He draws the material of the mystical from the principles of the Tibetan Buddhist science such as reincarnation, the powers of the primordial mind earned by high meditation, the molecular energy of power-stones, and the symbol of mandala, in addition to occult science, and the reference to the mythical Shambhala.

After the narrow escape of Holmes and Huree from the assault by someone hiding among idols in the Jewel Park (the summer residence of the Dalai Lama), there is a play of magic in the novel:

Just then the thick black curtains covering the sides of the palanquin parted slightly, and a sickly white hand emerged. . . . the scroll rose from the ground, hovered in mid-air for a brief moment, and then flew over to the palanquin, straight into the waiting hand. (170)

A while later the same hand commands the swords on the ground to fly up in the air, point and then shoot in the direction of Holmes and the Tibetan monk. Holmes realizes that the white cylinder stolen from the chapel is the particular scroll with the print of the mandala of the Great Tantra of the Wheel of Time (Indian Kalchakra) that used to belong to the first Grand Lama. There is also a revelation that the mysterious hand that had commanded the tricks was of the Dark One, one of the two greatest adepts of the occult sciences at the College of Occult Sciences in Lhassa. It is notable that the magic in the novel is not rendered as a supernatural activity, but it is claimed as a discipline of learning (the other disciplines of occult science in the East being astrology, palmistry, numerology, vatsu, reiki, and tarot cards) mastered academically by its practitioners.

The novelist creates a fictitious story about the Dark One who is called so because he murdered the twelfth Dalai Lama. The ministers of the Emperor in Peking had lured him into demonic ways. He was thereafter nearly destroyed; his memory and powers were taken away through a surge of mental energy by the Grand Master of the College of Occult Science himself, and then he was imprisoned in the dungeons in Potala. The Ambans had him released and smuggled out of Thibet to China. Now that, the Dark One has returned to Thibet with his powers restored, Holmes chalks out a plan in order to enter the place of Chinese legation to restore the stolen object from the Chapel. In the place of Chinese legation, Holmes finds out that the Dark One is his very own bloodthirsty enemy Professor Moriarty. He has had his memory and occult powers restored after the fall at Reichenbach Falls during his struggle with Sherlock Holmes. His Chinese friends had


planted him in Europe “to avenge themselves against the nations that had humiliated China” (197). The story of the Dark One as the evil-doer placed in the West by China foregrounds China’s anti-western sentiment and ill-intensions in the world-politics today because of its historic “century of humiliation” dating back to the First Opium War of 1839. The Dark One’s theft of the sacred scroll of the Dalai Lama is symbolic of China’s meddling in the political affairs of Tibet and China’s theft of Tibet from Tibetans who are either exiled or live under oppressive Chinese government inside Tibet. Finally, Professor Moriarty, the archenemy of Holmes, stands for China that demonizes the Dalai Lama’s image and is the ultimate threat to the latter’s life.

Holmes and Huree escape the clutches of the Professor at the Chinese legation by virtue of the latter being caught in a mystical fire, after which the novelist throws light on the significance of the symbols on the mandala printed scroll that Holmes manages to get back from the Professor. Mandala is the geometrically drawn square with various concentric circles and squares representing the cosmos symbolically or metaphysically. It is regarded as the microcosm of the universe in Hinduism and Buddhism. In Tibetan customs, it is also used as an object for meditation and is seen as the union of the religious, philosophical and social world orders, and which is the key to understanding the traditional Tibetan world. Mandala is aptly used in the title of the pastiche Tibetan novel, which is the site of interaction of various cross-cultural texts, contexts, characters, traditions, facts, fiction, past and present into one whole representation of Tibet.

Holmes and Huree decode the mandala with the help of Lama Yonten. This mandala print stolen by the Dark One holds the key to the real mandala in the Ice temple of the mythical Shambhala, where the Dalai Lama must retreat before his enthronement. The mythical Shambhala is the Tibetan equivalent of Thomas Moore’s Utopia, the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon, the City of the Sun of Campanella, or one may even say, the ShangriLa of Hilton. According to Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala has its own basis in human wisdom that does not belong to the East or West, or to any one culture or religion (Shambhala, the Sacred Path of the Warrior 1988). The Tibetans look up to the fabulous kingdom of Shambhala for their deliverance, and as such, the paradise like ShangriLa, is a “hope” rather than the reality of the Tibetans, who are oppressed either under Chinese occupation within Tibet or in an eroticized exile outside of Tibet.

In the fictionalized story, it is imperative that the thirteenth Dalai Lama reaches the Ice Temple in Shambhala, for the Chinese had prevented the last three Dalai Lamas from this mythical retreat, which, in turn, became the cause of their short lives and of the evil times in the country. This Ice Temple is as an unusual place, buried under the

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glacier. The Temple opens in an unusual phenomenon—once in about half a century—at the time when the Gods of Thibet consider it propitious for a Grand Lama to be enthroned. Huree makes a modest attempt to theorize the phenomenon with his empirical observations, but does not insist on its probability. When Holmes, Huree, Lama Yonten, the Dalai Lama and others reach there, they have to fight the Chinese soldiers who were anticipated being at the entrance of the cave. The Ice Cave with colossal statues at its entry appears to the narrator “a lost civilization that had existed thousands of years before the present-day Thibetans had inhabited the land.” He even decides to call his discovery “the Tethyian civilization, after the prehistoric sea of Tethys from under which the plateau of Thibet and the Himalayan mountains had emerged many millions of years ago” (234).

The protagonist finds the real mandala that was used at the time of the initiation of the first Grand Lama in the pre-historic Ice Cave. It looked more utilitarian than ornamental with some diagrammatic mathematical formulas on it. It had to be a key to something valuable to human powers that Moriarty and the Chinese want to conquer. Upon examination, Holmes finds out that the mandala is movable, and a verse at the back of the scroll instructs the way to open it. The opening of this mandala shows them the passage-way along which, after escaping the assaults of the Chinese implanted by Moriarty, they discover a large coconut sized crystal, blazing with an inner fire, placed in a bright ice-dome. Lama Yonten recognizes this crystal as one of “The Great Power Stones of Shambala” (233). According to the Tibetan legends, the Messenger of Shambala had planted these power stones at the psychic poles of the planet. Now that the true Temple and the Power Stone that would ensure the well being of the Dalai Lama and the nation have been discovered, Moriarty appears to steal the power stone through his magical powers. True to his professorial degree, he throws light on the scientific value of the power-stones:

The crystal derives its unique quality from the symmetrical lattice structure of its molecules. The tighter the atoms of the lattice are packed together, the more pronounced the qualities of the crystal become and the more enhanced its . . . aah . . . [sic] special powers. (239)

While the Professor is busy in his rhetoric, Huree throws a lamp at him but misses the mark. The Professor throws Huree backwards with the strike of a ball of fire from the Stone, so that he dies painfully and slowly. In the face of this unlikely situation, Yonten reminds Holmes of his former powers:

You are not Sherlock Holmes! You are the renowned Gangsar tulku, former abbot of the White Garuda Monastery, one of the greatest


adepts of the occult sciences. The Dark One slew you eighteen years ago, but just before your life force left your body we were able to transfer it—by the yoga of Pho-wa—to another body far away. (242)

Perhaps this revelation is necessary for the so far Ladhaki-guised European detective Sherlock Holmes in Tibet, so that he could feel from within the Tibetan experience. This is also important because the hero has to be as powerful as the villain, if not more. At this juncture, both Holmes and Moriarty are both the East and West. They are in full understanding of the world about them and have chosen to negotiate their identity and roles. While Holmes, in deep reverence to the spiritual world of Tibet, fights for the protection of the Dalai Lama, Moriarty has struck a Faustian deal with Imperil China. It would not be wrong to say that the Tibetan Holmes is the role model for the western sympathetic friends of exiled Tibetans in his understanding of Tibet through the lens of traditional modes of Tibetan subjectivity (rather than western essentializing perspective), and in his dedication to the cause of the Dalai Lama.

What follows is a battle between the occult powers of the two, a kind that reminds one of the battle scenes of mystical weapons and powers in the Indian epic stories of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. Holmes is only partially able to protect himself and others in front of the Dark One’s powers coupled with those of the Power Stone in his possession. Huree, who is burning to death on the ice-floor and whose body feels lifeless, manages to drag himself with one hand and pull at the leg of the Dark One with his umbrella. It breaks down latter’s meditation with which he was about to hurt Holmes. He falls down while the stone flies over to Holmes after which Moriarty burns down to ashes. Norbu, in the given exoticization of Tibet in the West, and his use of the exotic in the novel, gives a word of caution at the end of the novel:

Visionary experiences, however powerful or profound, are probably best interpreted in symbolic rather than literal terms. It is my sincere hope that Huree Chunder Mookerjee’s experiences in the Ice Temple of Shambala will be understood in this light and not become another source of indulgence for those, all too many, cultists and crackpots drawn to Tibetan and Indian esoterica. (267)

The combat between Holmes (aka abbot of White Garuda Monastery) and Moriarty (the Dark One hired by China) in the Ice Temple is symbolically the conflict between Tibet and China. By extension, it is the conflict between two forms of nationalism: Tibetan religious nationalism, symbolized by Holmes’ allegiance to the Dalai Lama even in the face of difficulty, and the Chinese Communist nationalism symbolized by Moriarty’s betrayal of his own humanity out of greed

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for power and wealth. Huree’s role in this combat is the significant role of India in the Tibetan freedom struggle in exile. He comes to protect Holmes even when he is burning to death on the floor. Similarly, India has housed Tibetan refugees and has been instrumental in preserving the Tibetan civilization in exile despite its various problems especially the boundary disputes with its northern neighbor. Tibetans have a historical obligation to India as it had served as the cultural center for the import of Buddhism into Tibet from the seventh century A.D. The plot of the novel is highly relevant to China’s current occupation of Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s exile in India. In an interview, Norbu mentions the supernatural events in his novel:

These [mystical] things do happen. Anyway, reality is what's in a person's head. It's something we create, like a dream, and dreams are important to hold onto, especially in a tyranny. The only thing the tyrant cannot control is what's in your head.

Moriarty’s final failure in his attempts to steal the power-stone from Shambhala is symbolically the failure of China to steal the spirit of the Tibetans. China may have taken control over Tibetan snow-land, but the spirit of Tibet lies in the hearts of its people and their representative Dalai Lama, who continues to fight in exile, for Tibet’s autonomy. The Tibetan Government in Exile is established to counter-claim China’s right over Tibet and to preserve the Tibetan civilization from becoming extinct. Norbu’s The Mandala is a form of textual resistance to China’s attempt at de-historicizing Tibet. Even when the exiled Tibetan’s effectiveness in writing back to its colonial center China is limited by the latter’s full control over media and information access inside Tibet through its censor board, the voices of protest from exile do buzz in the ears of the Chinese colonizers and provoke their reactions. Norbu’s writings are denounced by the Chinese Communist Party as the wings of a fly beating against a boulder. China might be a “boulder” in its economic and military might, but the spiritually and philosophically empowered Tibetans are not ready to give up their struggle for national identity so that the prophecy of Tibet’s salvation from evil China is fulfilled. Lama Yonten reiterates the prophecy in the novel:

The sacred scriptures of Thibet prophesy that when Mankind is fully enslaved by the forces of evil, the Lords of Shambala will, in the Water-Sheep Year of the Twenty-fourth cycle (2425), send forth their great army and destroy the evil forces. After that Buddhism will flourish anew and a new Perfect Age will begin. (177)

Huree asks Holmes if his western logic can collude in Tibetan prophecy. The latter befittingly replies, following a pristine logic of the Victorian age,


It is not necessary to subscribe to such a belief to see where man’s blind worship for money and power must eventually lead him. When the green and fertile land is destroyed to build dark satanic mills wherein underfed children and consumptive women are made to slave; when artless primitives armed with bows and spears are converted to our ideas of commerce and civilization through the hot barrels of battling guns; and when even that sport is now too poor and all nations of Europe are fast becoming armed camps, waiting to fall on each other- then what can a discerning person really do, save tremble for the future of humanity. (256)

The scientific progression and the resultant moral digression in the Victorian Europe had far reaching effects corrupting the indigenous identities, modes of existence and traditional social order even in communities outside of Europe. The end of Europe’s colonization led to the formation of nation-states out of the indigenous communities that were made colonies. But, unfortunately, Tibet missed the opportunity of becoming a nation-state despite being largely self-governed throughout its history and China seized the opportunity to extend its political control over it. Norbu summarizes the trajectory of Tibetan exile in the epilogue of the novel, bringing the relevance of the novel’s plot in the nineteenth century to the present circumstances. Then he coalesces the facts of Tibetan exile with the preceding fiction of Holmes by tracing the reincarnation of Holmes at a monastery in exile, suggesting the need for the continuity of the urgent role of the non-canonical Holmes in the tragedy of Tibet’s colonization. The reincarnation of Tibetan Holmes as a monk, who guards some items of Holmes from his previous life and is not ready to exchange them for any treasures of the world, also reflects the relevance of Buddhist tradition of reincarnation in exile and the primacy of tradition over material valuables for Tibetans even though the “cultural contact” with the host country and the West tends to modernize some of their indigenous modes of existence.

Norbu is as unapologetic about Tibet’s re-mystification in his novel as an Indian writer would be indulging in the magical tricks of the legendary Lord Krishna, or an English author in narrating tales of Merlin’s magical feats, or a Jewish writer retelling the supernatural deeds of Moses. As J. Edward Chamberlin would remind us—these are stories of the land that people belong to, these stories are the ceremonies of their beliefs, and it is this ceremonial and the deep-rooted belief that gives one an identity of belonging to a land, such as Tibet does to Tibetan people and validates their stories.

In summary, Norbu demystifies Tibet in The Mandala from within the grand narratives of the West that have been partly responsible for Tibet’s mystic image. He appropriates the key Victorian texts and

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creates a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes by situating him in Tibetan traditional subjectivities. The post-colonial treatment of Holmes in Norbu’s hands unsettles the western ideas on Tibetan identity, while his approach to the past from a Tibetan perspective brings out the “ongoing” colonial plight of Tibet, thus reminding us of the incomplete project of decolonization. The inter-textual multi-layered pastiche novel itself becomes a mandala, a key text that helps the insiders as well as the outsiders understand the trajectory of Tibet, finally restoring confidence in Tibetan history, religion, and philosophy.

Notes

1. The Mandala uses the old spellings—Simla, Lhassa and Thibet—for these places. These are used in the paper wherever necessary in the context of the novel.

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