Your little joke about medieval deodorants is so bad it just stinks. Somebody had to tell you! And who better to tell you than an old friend?

Thank gods it’s raining today. Less water could have meant fewer baths?

Yours,
Dan

Thanks for thinking about this, and prompting me to think about it again. A little bit of googling turned up this paper, another quite appealing fusion of scientific and social history:-

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/climate/seminars/pdfs/mccormick_07.pdf

The main culprits this side of the Eurasian continent seem to have been “volcanic aerosols” — apparently a natural phenomenon and not a piece of technology found in medieval deodorants. I haven’t had time to read it thoroughly, but here is a bit of the conclusion:

Perhaps the single most important methodological conclusion of this study concerns the detecting of intelligible patterns of cause and effect in what has hitherto been viewed as unintelligible, or at least patternless: the occurrence of a climate anomaly with serious economic and human consequences.

This also sounds interesting:

Some years ago the distinguished American historian Bernard Bailyn anticipated the growing integration of what he called “latent” and “manifest” history. “Latent” events are deep developments whose effects contemporaries felt but of which they were unconscious. “Manifest” events, like our extreme winters and famines, are those that contemporaries perceived.

I like the idea of “latent history” though I’ll have to think about it a bit more before deciding if it makes sense.

S

Yes, I definitely think it’s worth thinking about. Nothing upsets farmers more than bad crops, and droughts are the most likely of the usual culprits (blight, hail, early frost, insects, soil erosion, bad gov’t policies, loss of seed grain, social unrest, fires, etc. etc.).

Droughts produce changes in the general economic picture. So even if we were to blame the fall of the Tibetan Empire on economic factors — like the collapse of the Eurasian silver standard used for trade in luxury goods primarily in those days — those big economic problems might largely be laid at the feet of droughts. I wonder what the drought situation was on the Euro side of the continent in those days?

A lot was happening all across Eurasia in 840 & 842 CE (see C. Beckwith’s old article in CAJ [1977], pp. 94-5 for a list of incidents that led to a breakdown in ‘internationalism’ on many levels).

I think we’ll have to think more, and more, and more.

Going to go do some right now if I can. Hope the weather is fine where you are these days.

Yours,
D

The sources do seem to suggest a combination of conflicts at the top level of Tibetan society as the primary cause of fragmentation, and unrest at the lower levels as a secondary problem. This is a terrible generalization, but it seems that popular unrest has usually occurred under weak and ineffectual regimes rather than a strong and oppressive ones. Then there is also the issue of climate. The Chinese annals report crop failure and famine around this time, and an interesting recent study of a giant stalagmite in Gansu province seems to back this up:

Click here, and have a look at their timeline…

Worth thinking about?

As to the kheng, I think we are dealing both with the aristocracy and with a spectrum of society. The Tangshu says that Khozher declared himself tsenpo. It seems he opposed the ‘Bro and other segments of the maternal aristocracy because they effectively crowned one of their own when Langdarma left no heir (again from the Xin Tangshu). This fragmentation and devaluation of the kingship is part of what I see behind the desecration of the tombs not only of the kings, but of the aristocracy as well. We see this sort of anger against misrule also in the narrative of the kheng log in g.yo ru, where the ruler abides in the shadow (grib) of the mt. and asks that his subjects cut its top off. Instead they cut his head off–a popular motif in tales of nasty kings. So there’s pretenders fighting amongst themselves in the aristocracy, and normal people getting fed up with it.

That doesn’t really answer the etymology question, but overturning a cup that’s full is surely a waste.

“As for the three non-deeds, they are: [1] do not teach the divine [Buddhist] religion (lha-chos), the condition (rkyen) of nobility, to servants; [2] as the secret mantra is the cause of Buddhahood, cherish it in your heart and do not sell it for wealth; [3] do not set up a servant as a ruler.”

mi dzad pa gsum ni/ lha chos ya rabs kyi rkyen kheng po la mi bstan/ gsang sngags sangs rgyas kyi rgyu yin nor du mi btsong snying la bcangs/ kheng po rje ru mi dbyung/

I wonder whether lha-chos really refers to the Buddhist religion here, or if an older meaning is intended, that is, the ancestral gods and funerary rites of the Tibetan kings and nobility — that might make more sense. Or perhaps I am just making excuses.

This also brought to mind the Skar cung pillar inscription, which seems much more egalitarian in approach: “And when for the Tibetan subjects from the nobles downwards, the gate leading to liberation is never obstructed and the faithful have been led towards liberation, from those among them who are capable there shall always be appointed abbots to carry on the teachings of the Buddha.”

I was referring to B. Dotson’s 2006 dissertation or D.Phil. thesis if you prefer, “Administration and Law in the Tibetan Empire.” I’m thinking B. Dotson ought to be visiting us about now! Hello?

The very word ‘provisional’ implies that eventually a more perfect rendering will pop up to solve all the problems. I don’t really see that happening here, do you?

I think if there is a Tibetan etymology for the word (and if it isn’t a borrowing, which I think it could be… any ideas?), then it simply must be associated with a verb meaning ‘to fill,’ or more exactly the ‘intransitive’ form of it, ‘to get full/be full\be filled.’ Not the ‘up’ in uprising.

I can’t see a reference or clue to the specific ritual cycle that this prayer might be derived from. Unfortunately we only have one folio of this manuscript, and it’s in a pretty sorry state. Perhaps somebody knocked over a butter lamp…

S.

Of course ‘uprising’ is a provisional translation (isn’t everything?).

Which is the article with Dotson’s translation of the legal code referring to the kheng po? It seems that most dictionaries prefer ‘servant’ as a definition (e.g. the Brda rnying tshig mdzod has bran g.yog). And what about that analogous term gyen log? Doesn’t gyen mean ‘upwards’ and if so, is this an even more literal ‘uprising’?

S.