Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937: The Conflict between the 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen; ACase Study by Parshotam MehraReview by: Elliot SperlingJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Jul. - Oct., 1980), pp. 395-396Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601851 .

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Reviews of Books 395

'above' (p. 88) = Mo. ogede 'upward', etc. However, there are cases which disagree with the Mongolian data. Thus, *6ni- 'to smell' (p. 89) = MMo. hunir 'smell',7 *poril 'children' (p. 90) = MMo. hare 'child, descendant', etc. In some cases the vowel reconstructed as *o is actually *e, e.g., *orka 'door' (p. 85) = Mo. eruke 'opening in the roof, through which smoke escapes' from Mo. era- 'to dig'. As for *nolgi- 'to nomadize' (p. 88) and Ma. neo-, they go back to MMo. ne'u-, Mo. nega-, Kh. ni- 'to nomadize', Kh. nuiga- 'to make nomadized'. Consequently, Ev. u corresponds to Mo. o, e, MMo. e'u (= Mo. egu, Kh. it), and must have originated from several different vowels.

Doerfer's article is followed-and supplemented-by that of Wolfram Hesche, "Urtungusisch *0 in erster Silbe (=*o,) im Lamutischen" (pp. 11 7ff.) The vowel in question has yielded, in different positions, o, u, e.

Next to this is Hiu Lie's valuable article, "Solonisches Material aus Huin-Gol" (pp. 125ff.) which contains a Solon glossary of approximately 1000 words and a brief grammar. It has been written on the basis of Kamimaki's material published, in Japanese, in 1940, and deals with a dialect slightly different from the Hailar dialect investigated by the author of these lines,8 Huin-Gol being located about 120 km to the southwest of Hailar.

The last article in the volume under discussion is Hiu Lie's "Uber die Benennung Udihe" (pp. 179ff.). The author discusses the previous etymologies of the ethnonym in question and mentions, i.a., the Wu-je "Forest People" of the Liao as a possible etymon (p. 198). In general, convincing etymologies of ethnonyms are few, and in this particular instance no evidence corroborating this or that identification can be produced.

The overall impression of the volume reviewed is favorable. It contains valuable material for future studies

pi-shi), Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen, Wiesbaden, 1962, p. 126, cf. also M. Lewicki, La langue mongole des transcriptions chinoises du XIVe siecle, Le Houa-yi yi-yu de 1389, II, Vocabulaire-index, Wroc4aw, 1959, p. 69. Likewise, Turkic oz 'the best part of something, inside, marrow, self', which corresponds regularly to Mo. oro < 'ori has also a vowel at the onset in all Turkic languages, see M. Rasanen, Versuch eines etymologischen Worterbuchs der Turksprachen, Helsinki, 1969, p. 376, cf. also B. V. Sevortjan, Etimologiceskij slovar' tjurkskix jazykov, Moskva, 1974, pp. 506-508.

7 Comparison to MMo. hunur 'smell' raises some doubts because of lack of h- in Evenki, which is found, however, in hungukte- 'to smell, to perceive a smell', cf. Sravnitel'nyj slovar' tunguso-man 'c.urskix jazykov, p. 349.

8 N. N. Poppe, Materialy po solonskomu jazyku, Leningrad, 1931.

and convincing solutions of some problems of Tungus linguistics.

NICHOLAS POPPE

SEATTLE

Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937. The Conflict Between the 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen; A Case Study. By PARSHOTAM MEHRA. Pp. XII + 94. Asiatische For- schungen, XLIX. Wiesbaden: OTTO HARRASSOWITZ. 1976. DM 30.

Parshotam Mehra is well known for his works dealing with Tibet's foreign contacts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His researches into British and British Indian records have been thorough and enlightening, and in this regard the present volume is no exception. Within its pages he traces the vicissitudes of the relationship between the 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen Lama as reflected in British archival materials and other English language works. This relationship developed into a harsh conflict and led to the flight of the Panchen Lama from Tibet to China in late 1923 and early 1924. Mehra's treatment of this topic is largely based on previously unexamined documents stored in London and New Delhi and as a consequence, the student of modern Tibetan history will find much in this book that is not in print elsewhere.

Mehra focuses on the significant events and changes in policy at the courts of Lhasa and Shigatse to show the shifts in relations between them and the two concerned foreign powers, British India and Republican China, as well as the growth of suspicions between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The narrative that Mehra reconstructs encompasses the Dalai Lama's flights to and residences in China (1904-1910) and India (1910-1912); the Chinese attempts to bolster the Panchen Lama in his stead; the development of mistrust between Lhasa and Bkra-shis-lhun- po; the numerous attempts at obtaining mediation of the dispute; the Panchen Lama's flight into exile; and the abortive efforts aimed at resolving the differences between the two hierarchs and bringing the Panchen Lama back to Tibet.

Mehra's account is nicely constructed, especially since he provides extensive documentation at most turns of the story. He provides facsimiles, in whole or in part, for nine of the documents that he cites. Even so, the documents upon which he has based his book largely reflect the perspective of officials within the British Foreign Office, and this in turn reveals itself in Mehra's narrative. Thus, for instance, although it is known from Chinese accounts that the

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396 Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.3 (1980)

Panchen Lama was rather active in asserting his position among powerful co-religionists beyond the political sway of the Dalai Lama's government, such as the officials at the Te Wang court and in other parts of Inner Mongolia, such activities are barely alluded to at all by Mehra, significant though they might have been. In addition, his assessment of Tibet as a "lama-ridden, tradition-bound land which for centuries had been a cesspool of political, if also religious stagnation" (p. 42) would be hard to sustain if one were to refer to any of the relevant Tibetan and Chinese accounts of Tibet during the last few centuries.

Nevertheless, Mehra's book is the first work to explore this well-known conflict. As such it provides the only reasonably reliable account of it and it will certainly be useful to students of modern Tibetan history. The utility of the book would have been increased, however, by the improvement of two items, the index and the method of romanization used for Tibetan names. The index is quite incomplete and omits many of the persons referred to in the

narrative. It seems to be composed of only the most important personal and place names, taken from the book's text, and cannot really be considered an adequate tool. As for the romanization of Tibetan names, Mehra provides phonetic renderings that are arbitrary and inconsistent, both in quotations from documents (in which case they might be acceptable) and in the narrative and commentary, The failure to provide scientific transliterations of Tibetan names, and the rendering of some syllables in more than one way make it sometimes difficult to determine the true Tibetan form of a name, and thus to use other sources alongside of Mehra's work.

All in all, however, Mehra has done a creditable job of examining what British'archival materials have to say on this topic, and Tibetan Polity, 1904-1937 may still be regarded as a contribution to the study of modern Tibet.

ELLIOT SPERLING

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

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