Most of the archeological discoveries from Central Asia now in British museums and libraries were brought here by the explorer Marc Aurel Stein in the early 20th century. But not all of them. Others made their way through the hands of collectors like the George Macartney, the British consul stationed in Kashgar during the same period. Some manuscripts were sent to scholars like Rudolf Hoernle (who was based in Calcutta) in the hopes that they might be able to decipher the strange scripts found therein.

Multiple provenance of this sort — found in large manuscript collections all over the world — can be a headache for those who look after these collections, but it can also provide some nice surprises, when one comes across “new” manuscripts that have been in the collection a long time without finding their proper place. Here’s an example that I encountered recently: a bundle of manuscripts with this note attached to them:

On the headed notepaper of the School of Oriental Studies (the ancestor of the current School of Oriental and African Studies) an early to mid 20th century scrawl says “Brought to Sir George Macartney – by natives in Kashgar. Tibetan inventories.” So we’d expect these finds to date from the time when Macartney was stationed in Kashgar, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Macartney was caught up in, and to some extent stoking, the fire of the “manuscript fever” that swept the world at this time, with  explorers from the USA, Europe, Russia and Japan all descending upon the Taklamakan desert.

This manuscript fever had a competitive edge, and Macartney was attempting to outdo his Russian counterpart who was buying up manuscripts from local treasure seekers. So, this particular bundle seems to date back to that time. And the manuscripts? What you see at the top of this post is an envelope of very fragmentary manuscripts written in Central Asian Brahmi. They could be Sanskrit, or perhaps Khotanese, but I’ll leave that aside for now. We also have two wooden documents, written in Tibetan, which looked like this when they were taken out of the bundle:

And on the other side:

So, we now have another person in the story; but who was this R. Corder? By 1967 George Macartney was long gone. Had Corder bought these Tibetan slips from Macartney a long time ago before passing them on to the School of Oriental Studies? I have no idea, but perhaps this is related to the most puzzling thing in the bundle, a couple of photos from a 1960s photobooth:

Is this old fellow, his clothes already old-fashioned in the 1960s, the mysterious R. Corder? Why else would these photographs be in the manuscript bundle? He certainly seems amused by the whole business. Now that we’ve come all the way to a 1960s photobooth, let’s go back to the Tibetan empire and these wooden documents. Such documents (which we often call “woodslips”) were the way the Tibetan military machine communicated across its desert forts and watchtowers. Cheap to produce, and good from quick messages, the woodslip was the telegraph (or reaching for a more contemporary analogy, the SMS) of its day.

Like the telegraph (and SMS) this medium encouraged its users to write in short pithy sentences, leaving out anything that could be easily dispensed with. This fact, along with the military jargon and the foreign words that the soldiers often used, makes the woodslips quite difficult to read. If you know the woodslips that were dug out of the desert by Aurel Stein, this one at least is unusually complete and clearly written. (You can see the others by searching for the prefix “IOL Tib N” on the IDP database.) Judging by the writing style and content, I’m fairly certain it’s genuine.

I can’t claim to have deciphered it though, and I’d love to hear some suggestions. It looks like a message (‘drul) asking for a decision (tag chod) about “provisions for the Tibetans (bod) and provisions for the Khotanese (li).” This makes sense, as the Tibetan army units stationed around Khotan included Khotanese attendants. In fact, each unit stationed in a fort would comprise two or three Tibetan soldiers and one or two Khotanese attendants (see Takeuchi’s article below).

The message seems to be addressed to a place called An tse, which was somewhere in Khotan. That works, for if this woodslip was found in the Khotan region by a treasure seeker, it would not have been far to travel to Kashgar, where Macartney bought it. On the other side of the slip, I see the words “butter” and “wood”, giving us an idea of what the writer of this woodslip was asking for.

The message seems to be incomplete, so it may have continued on another slip; that hole that you can see on the right could be used to string several slips together (in fact it is thought that the earliest Tibetan imperial records may all have come in this form, before they switched to paper — see Uebach’s paper below). On the other hand, it might be incomplete because it was never finished, and never sent to its destination. That would account for its unusually good condition: woodslips were often scraped and reused, or just snapped in two after they had been read (in the watchtowers, some were turned into makeshift knives, spoons and other implements).

If the message itself is mundane, I find the clear and fresh quality of the object itself quite engaging. It makes you realize that this really is something that was written when Tibet was an imperial power in Central Asia, by a soldier who probably had no idea that this power would crumble within a few decades. And because of the circuitous route that the object took to get to the British Library, this is the first time it this message has been read since that era. The bundling of the woodslips with official notes from another time and place (“Finsbury Circus, E.C.2″) also highlights this contrast. With such disjunctions of time and place, even reading requests for butter and wood can be quite exciting, don’t you think?

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References

Tsuguhito Takeuchi. 2004. “The Tibetan Military System and its Activities from Khotan to Lop Nor.” In The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, edited by Susan Whitfield. Chicago: Serindia. 50-56. (Note that the whole thing can be read on Google Books.)

Helga Uebach. 2008. “From Red Tally to Yellow Paper — The official introduction of paper in Tibetan administration in 744/745.” Revue d’Etudes tibétaines 14: 57-70. (Here’s the link to download the PDF)

* All photographs by Rachel Roberts.

Astrology was, and surely still is, an important part of life in Tibet. As in most other Asian countries, astrology played the vital role of deciding whether to carry out an important activity – a journey, a marriage, a funeral, a battle – and which days were best for embarking on such activities. Tibetan astrology is often said to be a combination of Chinese and Indian astrologies. According to one history, it was the tsenpo Tridé Tsugtsen who introduced Chinese astrology to Tibet in the 8th century. The influence of Indian astrology comes mainly through the Kālacakra tantra I believe, from the 11th century onwards.

There is an old saying, going back to the time of the Tibetan empire, that characterises Tibet’s neighbours according to their special talents (at least in Tibetan eyes):

• To the south is India, the land of religion
• To the north is Turkestan, the land of horses, weapons and war
• To the west is Persia, the land of wealth, jewels and trade
• To the east is China, the land of divination and astrology

Tibet already had a divination method that had little to do with Chinese astrology, in which dice were used to consult oracle deities – the ancestor of the mo divination still practised today. But the study of the stars and their portents was something the Tibetans encountered, and apparently were impressed with, in their early contact with China.

Now I wouldn’t be venturing into an area of which I know so very little, were it not for an amazing and totally unexplored manuscript from the Dunhuang cave that looks like the earliest Tibetan text on Chinese-style astrology – Or.8210/S.6878. It’s been written on the back of a Chinese sutra, and since it was filed along with the Chinese scrolls, the Tibetan side was ignored. How, I don’t know. It’s full of diagrams and ends with the rather strange tortoise that graces the top of this post. So I will say a little about this manuscript, and hope to learn something from anyone who knows more about the subject and is kind enough to comment.

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The first diagram comes under the heading “divining the good and bad dates for beginning a journey.” The first result is this:

When the day falls in the “gate of the sky”, if you go on a long journey, it will be good and auspicious.

If you look in the diagram, the “gate of the sky” (gnam gyi sgo) is one of the eight divisions of the diagram, under which is written “the 1st day, the 9th day, the 10th day, the 17th day and the 25th day.” So the sky is divided into eight parts.

I guess it’s not so difficult to do this astrology after all – just check the day of the month against the diagram, and read the result. There are bad days too:

When the day falls in the “junction of the sky”, wherever you go a great loss will occur – very bad.

The word I translated as “loss” is god ka, which usually means a financial deficit, so I have the feeling that the main purpose for making this astrological calculation is to check on the possible success of a journey for the purpose of trade. That is, travelling merchants (not scarce on the Silk Route) would ask an astrologer (probably a Buddhist monk) to check the best days for embarking on a journey. I say “probably a Buddhist monk” because these astrological diagrams have been written on the back of a Chinese Perfection of Wisdom sutra.

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Other diagrams on the scroll contain the twelve animals of the Chinese and Tibetan zodiacs, and underneath is the phrase “If the male and female are joined in this way…” The animal years in the Tibetan calendar always come in male or female form (usually the even-numbered years are the male ones, and the odd-numbered years the female). Note that in the diagram here the animals are divided into pairs. This could be a combination of the animal of the current year with the animal of the day, or of one’s birth year, but I haven’t been able to work this one out yet.

And what of the star animal of this manuscripts – the golden turtle? Well, in early China (I mean the Han dynasty if not earlier) the main methods for divination were to use bones, yarrow sticks and turtle shells. It was the ability of the turtle to live to a great old age that attracted people to it. Turtles from the Yangtse River were thought to have divine powers, and those over a foot long were believed to be a thousand years old. In their age they represented wisdom and – unfortunately for the turtles – longevity, with the inevitable result that they were eaten as a remedy for the problems of old age. Pictured below is the Chinese Pond Turtle, also known as the Golden Turtle.

Turtles – which have the lovely name rubel (rus sbal) in Tibetan – also had a cultural significance in Tibet. Have a look at the metaphors and riddles of Padampa Sangyé attached to the redoubtable Tibeto-Logic site here. One asks “who drew the design on the turtle’s back; who was the artist?” Which brings us to the fact that the turtle depicted here appears to be without its shell. In fact it looks suspiciously like the artist had never seen a real turtle.

So, how to do the turtle divination? The instructions are quite straightforward, although you need to know what a lunar day is. You need to count the number of lunar days since the day you lost the thing, going around the points of the turtle, and then take the result from where you end up on the turtle’s body. If you lost the thing within thirty days, start at the head and go round clockwise. If it’s over thirty days, start at the bottom and go round anticlockwise. And if you don’t read Tibetan, here’s a translation of the body parts

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The divination practice (mo) of the golden turtle: for finding things that have escaped or been mislaid.

Whichever lunar day it happens to be, calculate from the first day it was lost to the current lunar day, and the result is found in connection with where this falls on the body part of the turtle. If it was lost within the last thirty days, then count to the right from the head. If it is not within thirty days, then count going round to the left from the tail. Write the good or bad result at the turtle’s tail.

• If it was lost on the lunar day of the head, it will be found if you look in the vicinity of a laundry washer.
• If it was lost on the lunar day of the ears, then even if you come across it on the road while searching for it, it will not be beneficial to get your hands on it.
• If it was lost on the lunar day of the arms, you will find it if you look for it on a high mountain, in a ravine, or in the middle of a graveyard.
• If it was lost on the lunar day of the armpits, you will find it if you look for it at the goldsmiths, at the watermill, or in the town centre.
• If it was lost on the lunar day of the feet, you will find it if you look at the the royal gates, the minister’s place, or the conference site.
• If it was lost on the lunar day of the tail, you will find it if you look in the direction of your girlfriend.

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Tibetan text
@//gser gyI ru bal mo ste//bros pa dang/rlag btsal pa’/zla ba gang la bab kyang rung ste//tshes zhag gcig nas bgrangs la stor pa’I/nyi ma ru sbal kyi tshigs gar bab pa dang/sbyar te gdab bo/zla ba sum/cu thub na nI/mgo nas g.yas logsu bgrang/zla ba sum cu myi thub na ni/mjug bas g.yon logsu bskor te bgrango//bzang ngan gyi tsigs ni/ru sbal kyi mjug du bris so//
@//mgo ‘i nyi ma la/stor na btso blag mkhan gyI/ ‘khor du btsal na rnyed//rna ba’I nyi ma la stor na/btsal te lam du phrad kyang /bdag gI lag tu thob la myI phan no//lag pa’I pa’I nyi ma la stor na/rI mthon po dang/grog mo dang/mchad khrod du/btsan (=btsal) na rnyed//mchan khung gI nyi ma la stor na/gser mgar dang/rang tag (=’thag) dang/grong ‘khor du btsal na rnyed//rkang pa’I nyi ma la stor na/rdze (=rje?) sgo dang/zhang lon dang/ tshong dus su btsal na rnyed//mjug ma’I nyi ma la stor na/grog (=grogs?) mo pyogsu btsal na rnyed//

Translator’s notes

• Two words I am uncertain about here are grong ‘khor, which I have tentatively translated as “town centre”, and rdze sgo, which I have even more tentatively translated as “royal gates” (assuming rdze = rje).
• The word tshong dus, which I’ve translated as “conference site” is found in the Dunhuang manuscripts referring to several places where royal/governmental conferences were held during the Tibetan empire. Later, it usually means a marketplace.
• I’ve chosen to read grog mo in the final sentence to grogs mo, changing a ravine to a girlfriend. Since we already had a ravine in an earlier result, it seems redundant here. I like this reading, but it might not be right.

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References
1.Baumann, Brian. 2008. Buddhist Mathematics According to the Anonymous Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination. Leiden: Brill.
2. Cornu, Phillipe. 2002. Tibetan Astrology. Boston: Shambhala.
3. Loewe, Michael. 1994. Divination, mythology and monarchy in Han China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Ho Peng Yoke. 2003. Chinese Mathematical Astrology. London: Routledge Curzon.