In Praise of Kolkata

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Part of what makes Gendün Chöpel’s story so intriguing is that the attitude of openness and curiosity that he exhibited in his travelogues, translations and essays was in such marked contrast to the official policy of insularism then prevailing in his homeland. And it was all the more tragic, therefore, when he was condemned and imprisoned by the Tibetan authorities before his premature death. For it meant that the country lost a liberal, modernising voice, precisely at a time when, it might be argued, it needed one most of all.

Gendün Chöpel’s case might be unique, then, but he was not the only Tibetan to write about the encounter with modernity. As Tibetans fled the Himalayan plateau in the late 1950s and arrived in India and Nepal, they were confronted with a very different world. Among those who recorded their reaction to the new and the unfamiliar was the famed Rimé (ris med) master Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö ('Jam dbyangs mkhyen brtse chos kyi blo gros, 1893–1959). His collection of praises to the sacred sites through which he passed mostly focuses on traditional places of pilgrimage, such as Bodh Gaya and Sarnath in India or Boudhanath and Yangleshö in Nepal, but it also includes a less typical work, In Praise of the Great Indian City of Kolkata (rgya gar ka la ka ta’i grong khyer chen po la bstod pa). This, Jamyang Khyentse says, was “an expression of his sense of wonder” (nyams mtshar brjod), and we can only imagine how the Indian metropolis might have appeared to a Tibetan visitor in the 1950s. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that Khyentse Rinpoche was in any way an ordinary or typical Tibetan visitor! He certainly wasn’t. By the time he first visited India in 1956, he was already established as one of the most senior Tibetan teachers then living. As the inheritor of the Rimé mantle of his predecessor, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (‘Jam dbyangs mkhyen brtse’i dbang po, 1820–1892), he held the transmissions for multiple lineages from various schools and was constantly called upon to teach or grant empowerments and transmissions. He also wrote a great deal.

Returning to the subject of Kolkata, we should recall that in the late 1950s, when Jamyang Khyentse wrote his praise, the city had a population of around 5 million. By contrast, Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, was then home to – according to some estimates – as few as 50,000 to 60,000 people. To get a sense of what a major Indian city looked like in 1958 we can watch the opening scenes of Roberto Rosellini’s India Matri Bhumi, filmed in Bombay, then a slightly smaller city than Kolkata. In fact, it is remarkable how closely Rossellini’s commentary mirrors some of Jamyang Khyentse’s own observations. For a look at Kolkata at the same time (and for an entirely magical cinematic experience) the reader is directed to Satyajit Ray’s The World of Apu (Apur Sansar), which was released in 1959.

Jamyang Khyentse’s feelings of wonder at the sights and sounds of the city are expressed in traditional terms, and here, as in his other writings, there are references to Hindu (or Indic) mythology, with which he was obviously very familiar. He refers, for example, to the traditional etymology of Kolkata as a field – or ‘grove’ as he puts it – of Kālī, the consort of Mahādeva (i.e. Śiva). And the praise also speaks of the treasure vaults of Vaiśravaṇa, as well as Indra with his thousand eyes, and the languages of the kumbhāṇḍa and gandharva. This display of erudition is combined with an equally characteristic playfulness, through his use of metaphor. Thus, the swarms of people are like bees in search of nectar; the vehicles and machines roar like thunder; boats sparkle like stars and seem to have been deposited by the river; electric lights shine like jewels; and all the wares and produce on display appear to have been magically emanated through a bodhisattva’s prayers of aspiration. The whole scene, he feels, is like something from the deva realm mysteriously transported or somehow made visible down here on Earth.

The greatest wonder of all though, Jamyang Khyentse says, was the opportunity to view the Buddha’s relics (ring bsrel). This is presumably a reference to the contents from the stūpa at Birdpur (now Piprahwa) in Uttar Pradesh, discovered in 1898 and then placed in Kolkata’s Indian Museum.

Although the colophon does not specify the year of the text’s composition it was most likely 1958.