A TravelogueRomila Thapar ZANSKAR THE HIDDEN KINGDOM By M. Peissel Collins & Harvill Press, 1979, pp. 205, £7.95 VOLUME IV NUMBER 4 January-February 1980 Zanskar
was opened to foreigners in the late 1970's and this is among the first of the
travel books which can be expected to follow from the opening of the area.
Peissel is well known to those familiar with the travel literature on the
Himalayas and his account of a visit to the kingdom of Mustang, remains
interesting reading for those concerned with western Nepal and its vicinity.
The same however cannot be said for this book on Zanskar which is quite
evidently the account of a rushed summer vacation with the clear intention of
being among the first in the field with a travel book. The route taken into
Zanskar was via Srinagar and Kargil, coming out through the Zanskar Valley
through the southern pass to Kulu via Lahul and Rohtang.
The Zanskar Valley, located in a trough between the folds
of the Great Himalayan range and the Zanskar range comes into historical
perspective at the start of the second millennium A.D. with the establishing of
a series of monasteries in the occasional patches of cultivable land on the
edges of the river such as at Zangla and Padum, patches which are scattered
across an otherwise inaccessible, bleak terrain of bare rock. Earlier links
with Kashmir are suggested in the Zanskar
Chronicles but these have yet to be established. The engravings of ibexes
near Karsha recalls the many similar engravings in the vicinity of Khalatse in
Ladakh, which have been linked with possible survivals of the early Bon-po
religion widespread in these areas prior to the arrival of Buddhism.
The founding of the Buddhist monasteries is often
associated with the name of Rin Chen Tsang po, the famous translator of Tibetan
Buddhist texts and these monasteries were the initial centres of Tibetan
Buddhism in Zanskar, Ladakh and Spiti. That these were areas of Indian and
Tibetan cultural overlaps gives them a special significance and style, such as
is evident in the frescoes at Karsha and Phugtal in Zanskar and at Alchi in
Ladakh. Longstanding links with Bhutan are also indicated in the monasteries
which follow the Karyugpa sect. These links were weakened with the thrust of
the Yellow Hat or Gelugpa sect which came on the strength of being the major
sect of Tibetan Buddhism and providing not only many of the institutions with
which Tibetan Buddhism is known, but also achieving the status ... Table of Contents >> |