Part 3 of 3
_______________
Notes:1
This work was supported by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research under Grant PA00P1_145398:
http://p3.snf.ch/project-145398.
2 Alexandra David-Néel, Correspondance avec son mari. Édition intégrale, Paris: Plon, 2000, p. 392.
3 Alexandra David-Néel, Voyage d’une Parisienne à Lhassa, Paris: Plon, 1927; English transl. My Journey to Lhasa, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927.
4 Hélène Duccini, ‘La “gloire médiatique” d’Alexandra David-Néel,’ Le Temps des médias, 8, 2007, pp. 130-141.
5 See for example the typical titles of the numerous biographies dedicated to David-Néel, such as Ruth Middleton, Alexandra David-Neel. Portrait of an Adventurer, Boston: Shambhala, 1989 or Joëlle Désiré- Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel. De Paris à Lhassa, de l’aventure à la sagesse, Paris: Arthaud, 1997.
6 Transl. of Les Enseignements secrets dans les sectes bouddhistes tibétaines, co-authored with Aphur Yongden (1951), San Francisco: City Lights, 1967.
7 Gary Snyder, The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. 1956–1991, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008, p. 54.
8 Quoted in Barbara Foster and Michael Foster, The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel. A Biography of the Explorer of Tibet and Its Forbidden Practices, New York: Overlook, backcover.
9 Expanding the field of the encounter of Buddhism with the Western world (Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, Cambridge UP, 1988; Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake. A Narrative of Buddhism in America, Berkeley: Shambhala, 1992; Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912. Victorian Culture & The Limits of Dissent, Chapel Hill/London: North Carolina UP, 1992; Stephen Batchelor The Awakening of the West. The Encounter of Buddhism and the West, London/Berkeley: Aquarian/Parallax, 1994), recent studies have highlighted the wake of ‘modern Buddhism’ or ‘New Buddhism’ at the end of the nineteenth century. See Donald S. Lopez, ‘Introduction’ to A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essentials Readings from East and West, Boston: Beacon, 2002, pp. i–xlii; David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008; Donald S. Lopez, Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, Chicago: Chicago UP, 2010 and David L. McMahan, ed., Buddhism in the Modern World, New York: Routledge, 2012.
10 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago/London: Chicago UP, 2005, pp. 121–146.
11
At first supported by American Theosophist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), Anagarika Dharmapala intended to revive Buddhism in India and became one of the most prominent Buddhist reformers of his time. In 1891, Dharmapala cofounded with Edwin Arnold (the famous 1879 The Light of Asia epic poem’s author) the Maha Bodhi Society for the restoration and preservation of the ancient Buddhist sites of India. David-Néel corresponds with him starting from 1910 and will represent him at the Congrès de la Libre Pensée in Brussels in 1911. See Joëlle Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel. Vie et voyages, itinéraires géographiques et spirituels, Paris: Arthaud, 2009, pp. 121–123. Invited by influential
Paul Carus (1852–1919), Rinzai Zen master
Sôen Shaku represented Mahayana Buddhism at the Parliament. Shaku wrote a preface to Carus’ acclaimed Gospel of Buddha published the following year; his famous-to-be student
Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki translated it into Japanese under the title Budda no fukuin.
12 Stephen Batchelor, The Awakening of the West, 1994, pp. 40–41 and 307–308. A former member of Aleister
Crowley’s Order of the Golden Dawn,
Charles Henry Allan Bennett (aka Ananda Metteyya) was one of the first Westerners to have ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1901.
Anton Gueth (aka Nyanatiloka) left Frankfurt in 1902 to study Buddhism in India; he then went to Burma to meet Metteyya and became a bhikkhu (Theravada monk) in 1904.
13 The Buddhasasana Samagama was founded in Rangoon; in 1907, Ananda Metteyya led the first Buddhist mission to London where
the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded with
Thomas W. Rhys Davids as president.
14 In addition to the studies already mentioned, see for instance the special issue of Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14/1, 2013 edited by Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox and Brian Bocking, A Buddhist Crossroads: Pioneer Western Buddhists and Globalizing Asian Networks 1860–1960.
15 See note 9 above. Donald Lopez offers some explanation as to why
she belonged to the ‘Great Mystifiers’ of Western Buddhist history, along with, for example, Helena P. Blavatsky and Cyril H. Hoskin, aka Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. This notwithstanding, he does not study David-Néel for herself in his own work. See Donald S. Lopez, ‘The Image of Tibet of the Great Mystifiers,’ in Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, eds., Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, London: Wisdom, 2001, pp. 183–200.
16 Although the two notions overlap,
one can distinguish between ‘modern Buddhism’ and ‘global Buddhism’ as two aspects and partly subsequent phases of transnational developments of Buddhism. ‘Modern Buddhism,’ sometimes also called more restrictively ‘Western Buddhism,’ ‘New Buddhism,’ ‘Protestant Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhist Modernism’ by other scholars, is described by Donald S. Lopez as ‘an international Buddhism that transcends cultural and national boundaries, creating […] a cosmopolitan network of intellectuals, writing most often in English.’ (A Modern Buddhist Bible, 2002, p. xxxix) It supports the idea that ancient Buddhism fundamentally shared modern ideals of ‘reason, empiricism, science, universalism, individualism, tolerance, freedom and the rejection of religious orthodoxy.’ (p. x) Detraditionalization, demytholigization, psychologization are socio-historical processes underlying the rise of modern Buddhism (McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, 2008, pp. 27–60). Whereas ‘modern Buddhism’ definitely shows a tendency towards universalism, it is only one facet (one ‘sect,’ Lopez argues, p. xxxix) of ‘global Buddhism,’ as an outcome of the ‘decentring tendencies of postmodern globalization’ that ‘disembed Buddhist discourses from its traditional sites and reembed it in a wide variety of discourses,’ (McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, 2008, p. 256) and tears Buddhism between global standardization and local idiosyncrasies and traditions. 17 Although politically independent from Tibet, Sikkim adopted Tibetan Buddhism as a state religion from the 17th century onward and has been ruled by the Namgyal dynasty – the so-called Chogyal (tib. Chos rgyal), or ‘Dharma kings,’ possessing both temporal and spiritual power. The form of Buddhism practiced in Sikkim belongs to the Nyingma tradition, or the ‘ancient school,’ also known through the travelers’ accounts as the main Red-hat sect (non reformed) of Tibetan Buddhism.
18 Patrick French, Tibet, Tibet. A Personal History of a Lost Land, London: HarperCollins, 2003.
19 Alexandra David-Néel, Mystiques et Magiciens du Tibet, Paris: Plon, 1929; English transl. With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, London: John Lane, 1931 (also transl. Magic and Mystery in Tibet, New York: Kendall, 1932).
20 Analyzing the Néels’ marriage from a sociological standpoint, Heidi Kasevich states that ‘in 1904, the elegant Alexandra David wed the dashing Philippe Néel, a quintessential colonial gentleman; the genteel wife knew that a familial connection with a prominent Norman family would bestow immeasurable status on her as a female intent on pursuing a career.’ Reciprocally, ‘Philippe, who was an infamous ladies’ man, also benefitted from this legal rapport since it fulfilled the French state’s unofficial requirement for every colonial gentleman: marry a European lady.’ Heidi Kasevich, A Civilized Yogi: The Life of French Explorer Alexandra David Néel, 1868– 1969, PhD Dissertation, New York University (unpublished). The quotation refers to a lecture (p. 12) held on January 22, 2013 at the Nightingale-Bamford School, New York, available at http://www.nightingale.org/page.cfm?p=719.
21 Alexandra David-Néel, Journal de voyage. Lettres à son mari, vol. 1 (11 August 1904–27 December 1917) and 2 (14 January 1918–31 December 1940), Paris: Plon, 1975. I shall refer here to the later reprint of her letters: Alexandra David-Néel, Correspondance avec son mari. Édition intégrale, Paris: Plon, 2000.
Since the Correspondance has not been published in English, the translations of all quoted letters are mine. On the editing of the letters, see Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet’s prefaces to the letters (pp. 11–32). David-Néel wrote the letters intending to use them later as an aide-mémoire (hence the title Journal de voyage) and asked Philippe to keep the most important of them (see Correspondance, p. 167). A few days before her death, she handed the three suitcases that contained them to her secretary, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet, trusting that she would make good use of them. Moved by their unexpected frankness and sensing that they gave access to a new dimension of David-Néel public and print persona, Peyronnet decided to publish them with considerable editing: passages about physical hard times, financial difficulties, but also Sanskrit and Tibetan expressions and lengthy descriptions have been reduced. Peyronnet nonetheless points out that philosophical considerations have been strictly respected.
22 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 181.
23 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 84.
24 As one can sense from my introduction, I will not use local sources except for biographical details, since by comparing Alexandra David-Néel’s (once) private letters to the print output of her travels, my inquiry primarily intends to highlight what the Sikkimese world brought (or did) to her and how she herself perceived and transcribed its effects.
25 As can be seen from my introduction, I shall mainly focus here on the ambivalent aspects of Alexandra David-Néel’s position in Buddhist studies, involvement with Buddhism and contribution to global Buddhism. Hence, I do not primarily address postcolonial and gender issues, although I take into account the scope of these studies in my argument. In so doing, my paper is a positive response and further inquiry into what Sara Mills could say of David-Néel’s specific socio-literary position: ‘It is not unusual to find a woman writing about spirituality, and some of the authority of David-Neel’s texts derives from her position within this tradition [of female mysticism]. However, it is unusual to find a woman writing authoritatively about a religion other than Christianity, and claiming mystical and supernatural powers for herself. This is obviously not easily recuperated within the west’s ‘regime of truth’.’ Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference. An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism, London/New York, Routledge, 1993, p. 208.
26 Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel, 2009, p. 15.
27 Alexandra David-Néel, Féministe et libertaire: écrits de jeunesse, Paris: Les nuits rouges, 2003.
28 She also published an essay on feminism in 1898 with a foreword by Élisée Reclus: Alexandra Myrial,Pour la vie, Bruxelles: Les Temps nouveaux, 1901. See Jean Chalon, Le Lumineux Destin d’Alexandra David-Néel, Paris: Perrin, 1985, pp. 85–130. All the biographical data that follow refer to Chalon.
29 Alexandra David, ‘Les Bouddhistes européens,’ Le Soir de Bruxelles, 26 October 1909; Le Modernisme bouddhiste et le Bouddhisme du Bouddha, Paris: Félix Alcan, 1911.
30 In the wake of Edward Said’s celebrated Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978) and more specifically Gayatri Spivak’s influential essay ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ (in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, 1988, pp. 271–313), postcolonial and gender studies have paid a lot of attention to the construction of identity of women through writing and traveling. See, among others, Billie Melman, Women’s orients: Englishwomen and the Middle East, 1718–1918, London: Macmillan, 1992; Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference, 1993; or, more recently, Kristel Siegel, ed., Gender, Genre, & Identity in Women’s Travel Writing, New York: Peter Lang, 2004. For an overview of the question in French studies and a study of one woman traveller at the end of nineteenth century, see Samuel Thévoz, ‘Une “étrange nature:” l’exploration du Baltistan ou l’émergence d’un imaginaire féminin dans le Voyage d’une Parisienne dans l’Himalaya de Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon,’ Travaux de littérature, 26, 2013, pp. 33–48. For a decade, critics have especially focused on the rise of feminism in France during the Third Republic. See for instance Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts. The New Woman in Fin-de-siècle France, Chicago: Chicago UP, 2002, Christopher E. Forth and Elinor Accampo, eds., Confronting Modernity in Fin de Siècle France, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. As regards David-Néel, Heidi Kasevich sums up her situation very clearly: ‘What jobs were open to a woman with a secondary degree from an aristocratic, Catholic boarding school in Belle Époque France? The republicans’ pronatalist agenda and cult of motherhood notwithstanding, there were unprecedented opportunities for enterprising women. Mass consumerism and new forms of entertainment drew women into public life, and the Third Republic’s restoration of the freedom of press and association gave women the chance to openly criticize constrictive and demeaning notions of femininity: there were no fewer than 100 women’s organizations with various political affiliations in fin-de-siècle France.
Alexandra took advantage of the two most viable options for ladies: theater and journalism. […] That Myrial never fully embraced opera singing as a career path is inextricably linked to the fact that she did not experience the kind of success that she yearned for on stage—as did her contemporary, Sarah Bernhardt. [...]’ (Kasevich, A Civilized Yogi, p. 11) She then began to pursue a career in journalism, and notably contributed as a ‘collaboratrice libre’ to the feminist and subversive paper La Fronde.
31 In her letters, she makes overall fun of the numerous ‘bums that revolve around the few scholars that founded the Buddhist Society of England.’ Correspondance, p. 77.
32 She often refers to him in her letters. David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 84, 100, 138 and passim. Appointed a professor in Sanskrit literature and language at the Collège de France in 1894, Sylvain Lévi was the most authoritative French Indologist of the time. He welcomed Alexandra David-Néel on her return to France in 1925 and introduced her to the Parisian intellectual milieus of the time. See Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel, 2009, p. 467.
33 Alexandra David-Néel, L’Inde où j’ai vécu, Paris: Plon, 1969, p. 12.
34 She intended to show the closeness of Advaita vedanta with and its influence on Buddhist metaphysical conceptions. This ranks among the topics she will deal with in the long run; see David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 132, 168–169, 205–206, 298–9, 333, 357.
35 Eastern studies used to be called ‘Orientalism’ at the time. Since David-Néel herself uses the term in this sense, I shall stick to its historical meaning here without reference to Edward Said’s famous concept.
36 See Roger-Pol Droit, The Cult of Nothingness. The Philosophers and the Buddha, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003.
37 For a discussion of this widespread view of
Schopenhauer’s Buddhism, see Urs App, Schopenhauers Kompass, Rorschach: University Media, 2011.
38 Alexandra David-Néel, La Lampe de Sagesse [posthumous], Monaco: Le Rocher, 1986, p. 24 (translation mine). She testifies her to a fin de siècle neurotic sensibility. In her letters to her husband, she often admits that she is inclined to neurasthenia.
39 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 132.
40 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 206.
41 David, Le Modernisme bouddhiste, p. 10.
42 David, Le Modernisme bouddhiste, p. 11.
43
In his introduction, L. A. Waddell (1864–1938) famously stated for example that ‘Lamaism is only thinly and imperfectly varnished over with Buddhist symbolism, beneath which the sinister growth of poly-demonist superstition darkly appears.’ (
Laurence A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism: With its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology, and in its Relation to Indian Buddhism, London: Allen, 1895, p. ix). For an analysis of the phenomenon, see Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La. Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Chicago: Chicago University, 1998, pp. 15–45.
44 Alexandra David, ‘Quelques écrivains bouddhistes contemporains,’Mercure de France, 16 December 1909, pp. 637-647.
She evokes famous Buddhist scholars such as Thomas Rhys Davids along with Buddhist modernizers such as Ananda Metteyya, Anagarika Dharmapala, the Burmese Maung Nee and the Indian Lakshmi Narasu: they all propose, she writes, ‘a rigorously logical method, a continual appeal to our reason.’45 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 199.
46
Francis Younghusband, India and Tibet, 1903–1904, London: John Murray, 1910.
47 Charles Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland. The Sacred Country of Hindus and Buddhists, with an Account of the Government, Religion and Customs of its Peoples, London: E. Arnold, 1906.
48
Alex McKay, Tibet and the British Raj. The Frontier Cadre, 1904–1947, Richmond: Curzon, 1997.
49
The dates are only indicative, since they refer to the headings of the letters and hence can reveal some interval with the actual time of travel. For commented maps of David-Néel’s itineraries, see Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel, 2009, pp. 155-231.
50 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 329.
51 For a map showing clearly the dynamics of this stay, the probable location of Dewa Thang (a locality not reported on the maps) and her dwellings in Northern Sikkim along the Tibetan border, see Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel, 2009, p. 200 and p. 225 for a map of her illegal trip from Chörten Nyima to Shigatse.
52 For an analysis of the recurring motif of David-Néel’s ever-displaced ‘home’ (she uses the English word) in her letters to Philippe from Sikkim, see Margaret McColley, ‘Alexandra David-Néel’s home in the Himalayas: where the heart lies,’ in Kristel Siegel, ed., Gender, Genre, & Identity, 2004, pp. 279–292.
53 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 153–4 and 165.
54 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 200–1. In English in the original letter.
55 David-Néel, Correspondance, p.201.
56 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 168 and 172. Interestingly enough, she never mentions him in Mystiques et Magiciens du Tibet:
in the narrative of 1929, Owen has been replaced by her Sikkimese servant as her interpreter with Tibetan lamas at Lachen.57 For more details on Charles Bell in Sikkim, see Emma Martin’s paper in this issue.
58 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 165.
59 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 374–5.
60 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 191.
61 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 227–8.
62 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 287.
63 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 148–9.
64 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 202 and 398.
65 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 426.
A gap in her correspondence between July and August 1916 signals her illegal excursion to Shigatse in Tibet.66 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 196.
67 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 84.
She adds that gaining that position would be all the more difficult since she is both a woman and a Buddhist activist (Correspondance, p. 132).
68 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 332. In this passage, she significantly highlights her scholarly ambition, but clearly hides other motivations for studying Tibetan Buddhism on the grounds that ‘they are of a mystical nature that [Philippe] would hardly understand.’
69 Sylvain Lévi believed that ‘French Indology is mainly attracted by Buddhism, which is the only universal outcome of the Indian genius. In Buddhism itself, it has always dealt more favorably with so-called ‘Northern’ Buddhism, which covered the widest area of propagation by far.’ Lévi, ‘Les parts respectives des nations occidentales dans les progrès de l’indianisme’ [1924], in Mémorial Sylvain Lévi, Paris: Hartmann, 1937, pp. 116-–117 (translation mine).
70 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 134, 197, 307–8. Foucaux’s translation famously served as the main source for Edwin Arnold (1832–1904)’s celebrated epic poem,
The Light of Asia (1879).
While the school of Southern, or Hinayana, Buddhism (from which present-day Theravada Buddhism practiced in Ceylon and Southeast Asia has derived) was supposed to be closer and more faithful to the Buddha’s teachings, Northern Buddhism, or Mahayana Buddhism, was considered a later and corrupted development that spread from Northern India to Tibet, China, Japan and Korea. Significantly Émile Littré’s 1874 Dictionnaire de la langue française (vol. 2, Paris: Hachette, p. 383) only mentions that ‘once chased out of India in the 7th century, Buddhism was disseminated in Tibet, Tartary, China and Japan.’
The geographical divide between North and South in the development of Buddhism as two distinct entities cannot be convincingly sustained and is no longer in use. 71 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 76–77.
Rhys-Davids was the most prominent British scholar of Buddhism at the time. He worked in Ceylon and founded
the Pali Text Society. He viewed Pali Buddhist texts he focused on as the most ancient and authentic testimonies on the Buddha’s life and message. From the standpoint of gender studies, it is significant that David-Néel was mainly in touch with his wife Caroline, who had just been appointed to the position of Lecturer in Indian Philosophy at Manchester University and was also closer to Theosophy than her husband.
72 Quoted in McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, 2008, p. 52.
73 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 155. In the wake of Rhys-Davids’ text discoveries, Oldenberg focused on Pali sources for stressing the historicity of the Buddha. In his acclaimed 1881 Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, he fiercely argued against French Indologist Émile Senart (1847–1928)’s theory that Buddha was but a historical manifestation of a more universal solar myth (Essai sur la figure du Bouddha, Paris: 1875). David-Néel proudly writes to Philippe that Oldenberg ‘praised her’ for being the ‘first in Europe’ to ‘see right through the problem’ of ‘Nirvana as the suppression of the idea of a distinct, separate and permanent personality.’
74 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 84.
75 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 208.
76 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 144, 148.
77 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 146.
78 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 147.
79 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 147.
80 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 229.
81 Chalon, Le Lumineux Destin, p. 196.
82 Alexandra David, ‘Auprès du Dalaï-Lama,’ Mercure de France, October 1912, pp. 466–76.
83 See David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 160 and 165.
84 In this regard, David-Néel dresses like an Indian ascetic so as to ‘dispirit [British] ladies’ and ‘show symbolically that she was welcomed as an outstanding European woman.’ David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 144–5.
85 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 144.
86 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 132.
She had published an article on Tibetan theocracy earlier. Alexandra Myrial, ‘Le pouvoir religieux au Thibet, ses origines,’ Mercure de France, December 1904, pp. 599–618.87 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 154–7.
88 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 146–7.
89 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 185–6, 194–5, 211; see also p. 337.
When David-Néel was lecturing on Buddhism in Adyar, Madras and Calcutta, she took the name of ‘Sunyananda,’ (Désiré-Marchand, 2009, p. 152) or the ‘Bliss of Emptiness.’ She writes that she is now called an incarnation of dakinis (female deities) throughout Tibet (Correspondance, p. 252). She simultaneously wrote a leaflet to be published in Tibetan (Correspondance, p. 165).
90 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 330, 361, 389.
91 Batchelor, The Awakening of the West, pp. 307–8. See also David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 415.
92 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 349–50.
93 David-Néel hardly ever mentions to her husband
Aphur Yongden, her famous Sikkimese ‘adopted son’ who will later co-author significant books like The Secret Oral Teachings. She merely evokes a ‘servant’ at Chöten Nyima in November 1914 (Correspondance, p. 335) and then in Kyoto (p. 450). Likewise, in Magic and Mystery (pp. 27ff), she credits lama Bermiag and Kushog Chösdzed, whom she met in Gangtok, as her first informants on the conception of death and the beyond in Tibetan Buddhism. However, in her letters, she merely mentions having tea with one ‘very learned lama’ and ‘member of the State Council’ at
Sidkeong Tulku’s house (David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 154–5). Moreover, she mentions Laden La (Sonam Wangfel Laden, 1876– 1936) only once, although he appears as a key-figure for the organization of her stay.
94 See Dasho P.W. Samdup, ‘A Brief Biography of
Kazi Dawa Samdup (1868–1922),’ Bulletin of Tibetology, 2008, 44/1–2, pp. 155–158. Before translating Buddhist texts into English, Dawa Samdup served as interpreter for the Maharaja of Sikkim and for
Charles Bell, notably so during the Dalai Lama’s stay and
the Simla Convention.
His biographer strikingly states that ‘Kazi Dawa Samdup wanted to propagate Tibetan Buddhism to the world, and especially to the English-speaking world. This required extensive translation of difficult Buddhist and tantric texts into English and heavy publication expenses, which he could not afford. His opportunity came when the famed orientalist Dr W.Y. Evans-Wentz came to see him in Gangtok.’ Besides the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1927), Evans-Wentz posthumously published Dawa Samdup’s other important translations: Tibet’s Great Yogi: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1928), Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1935), Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1954). For a survey of the reception of the Bardo thödol in the West, see Donald S. Lopez, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. A Biography, Princeton: Princeton University, 2011.
95 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 148–50, 160, 167.
96 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 412.
97 A collection of sayings of the Buddha translated from Pali, most famously featured in
Max Müller’s
Sacred Books of the East, vol. X, Oxford: Clarendon, 1881, pp. 1–95.
98 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 172.
99 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.
100 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 169.
101 J. Jeffery Franklin, The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008, pp. 74–87.
102 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 186. This passage was omitted in Journal de voyage, pp. 165.
103 She only mentions the term ‘Gompchen’ in January 1915, Correspondance, p. 352.
104 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 381.
105
After the death of the Maharaja of Sikkim in December 1915, and in the absence of Dawa Samdup, the Gomchen remains her only informant on Tibetan Buddhism. It is also the time when Philippe is no longer able to support Alexandra financially. She receives funds from the Maharaja of Nepal to carry on her Orientalist research. David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 364 and 368.
106 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 333.
107 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 333.
108 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 334. This is precisely what she holds for the ‘modernity’ of Buddhism as compared to the outdated Christian tradition.
109 ‘All of a sudden, while he is speaking, his eyes become similar to those of a Mephisto, with sparks of fire deep inside… and what he says is fantastic, his profoundness and boldness are frightening.’ David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 337–8.
110
Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche both were emblems of fin de siècle nihilism and anarchism that unsettled and disrupted bourgeois conventions and agendas on a global scale. See Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags, London: Verso, 2005. Before publishing her essay Les Théories individualistes dans la philosophie chinoise: Yang-Tchou (Paris: Giard et Brière, 1909), Alexandra David had entitled an article on the Chinese philosopher ‘Un “Stirner” chinois’, Mercure de France, 76/275, 1 December 1908.
David-Néel binds here European subversive theories and violent activism to Tantric fearsome iconography such as the famous wrathful deities, awe-inspiring ritual practices and mind-striking formulas and conceptions symbolizing the destruction of the self. See also David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 203. Kasevich condenses this idea in her subtitle ‘Beyond the adventure heroine: Anarcho-Buddhism and the search for freedom’ (A Civilized Yogi, 2013, p. 9). This blend of anarchist ideas and Mahayana Buddhism certainly left its mark on Gary Snyder’s socially engaged Buddhism. See Snyder, ‘Anarchist Buddhism,’ Journal for the Protection of All Beings, 1, 1961, pp. 10–12. For a study on David-Néel’s conception of Vajrayana Buddhism and especially her understanding of Mahayana Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) as the core text collection of Tibetan Buddhism, see Geneviève James, ‘La quête mystique d’Alexandra David-Néel,’ 2005, pp. 97–126.
111 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 334.
112 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 352.
113 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 226, 300–1, 342, 354, 392.
114 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 354.
115 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 362.
116 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 297–8.
117 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 252; see also p. 130.
118 Technique of meditation and set of rituals through which adepts seek to ‘cut’ (gcod) through the ego by generating visions in which the body is sacrificed and which ultimately leads to the realization of the nonexistence of the self.
119 Alexandra David-Néel, Mystiques et Magiciens, p. 165. I literally translate from the French, since the English version is less precise: ‘to
blot out the mirage of the imaginary world’ (With Mystics and Magicians, p. 152).
120 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 235.
121 Transl. of Initiations lamaïques (1930), London: Rider, 1931.
122 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 322–3, 333–4, 337, 339, 342, 389, 397, 413.
123 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 357.
124 On the paradoxical ties between the rise of nationalism and internationalization, and the modern ideas of peace, happiness and progress, see Anne-Marie Thiesse, La Création des identités nationales, Paris: Le Seuil, 1999 and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.
125 Although bde chen literally means ‘the Great Bliss’ in Tibetan, she translates it as ‘the Great Peace.’ David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 377.
126 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 392.
127 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 342. She had already explained to Philippe that ‘Nivritti marga is the way that leads to the dissolution of the self [...], the road that leads to peace and serenity’ (David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 305). She later recalls: ‘Sadly, almost with terror, I often looked at the threadlike path which I saw, lower down, winding in the valleys and disappearing between the mountains. The day would come when it would lead me back to the sorrowful world [géhenne, in the French original] that existed beyond the distant hill ranges, and so thinking, an indescribable suffering lay hold of me’ (With Mystics and Magicians, p. 78). One can only think here of the way she will later recall the Guimet Museum in L’Inde où j’ai vécu, p. 11: ‘It was a temple […] where enthusiastic Orientalists used to lose themselves in studious research works, forgetting the noises of Paris that hit the walls without succeeding in troubling the quiet and dream-like atmosphere of the inside’ (translation mine).
128
Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape, Los Angeles: University of California, 1989, esp. pp. 97–135 and Samuel Thévoz, ‘Le sacre du paysage tibétain,’ Géographie et cultures, 80/2011, pp. 169–191 (
http://gc.revues.org/442).
129 See for example Fernand Grenard, Tibet: The Country and its Inhabitants. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1904, pp. 91-149.
130 See especially Jacques Bacot, Le Tibet révolté. Vers Népémakö, la Terre promise des Tibétains. Paris: Hachette, 1912. For an overview of Bacot’s contribution to the preception of Tibetan landscape, see Samuel Thévoz, ‘Paysage et nomadismes dans Le Tibet révolté de Jacques Bacot,’ A Contrario, 1/5, May 2007, pp. 8–23, http://www.cairn.info/revue-a-contrario-2007-1-page-8.htm.
131 Peter Hopkirk, Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet, London: John Murray, 1982, pp. 5–19 and 220–236.
132 Alex McKay, ‘Truth, Perception, and Politics. The British Construction of an Image of Tibet,’ in Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, eds., Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies, London: Wisdom, 2001, pp. 67–89.
133 Samuel Thévoz, ‘The French for Shangri-La. Tibetan landscape and French explorers,’ French Cultural Studies, 25/2, May 2014, pp. 103–120.
134 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 180–1 (emphasis mine).
135 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 220–1.
136 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 420.
137 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 261.
138 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 343 and 412–3.
139 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 376.
140 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 343.
141 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 365.
142 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 365–6.
143 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 285. The original French expression ‘pays des prestiges’ is ambiguous and refers both to the meaning of ‘prestige’ in a sociological sense and ‘marvel’ in a supernatural sense. The ambiguity appears to be strikingly fruitful here.
144 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 335–6.
145 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 394.
146 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 159.
147 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 341.
148 David-Néel, Correspondance, pp. 424–5.
149 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 394.
150 Frédéric Lenoir, La Rencontre du bouddhisme et de l’Occident, Paris: Albin Michel, 1999, pp. 211–39.
151 On this period of intense publishing and lecturing, see Désiré-Marchand, Alexandra David-Néel, 2009, pp. 387–404.
152 David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians, p. 9.
153 David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians, p. 27.
154 David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians, p. 80.
155 David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians, p. 151.
156 The overall rather literal English translation gives more strength to this intertextual reference when the translator chooses to write ‘this new episode is of the stuff that dreams are made of’ instead of the rather plain French ‘ce nouvel épisode est bien dans la note du rêve.’
157 David-Neel, With Mystics and Magicians, p. 25.
158 David-Néel, Mystiques et Magiciens, p. 53. Translated plainly as ‘strange person’ in the English version (p. 45).
159 David-Néel, Mystiques et Magiciens, p. 83. The English translation ‘I became, in that way, closely acquainted with Tibet’ (p. 77) does not render the strong idea of ‘learning Tibet itself.’ Whereas David-Néel credits Bermiag Kushog and Kushog Chösdzed for enabling her ‘to lift the veil that hides the real Tibet and its religious world’ (With Mystics and Magicians, p. 27), she does not go into details about the Gomchen’s teachings. It so appears that in The Secret Oral Teachings, she clearly refers from the first lines of the first chapter to the Gomchen’s teaching at Dewa-Thang but the master is not named and the event is located neither in time or space.
160 See for instance how the author sums up in two lines the death of Sidkeong Tulku and the departure of Dawa Samdup to Simla at the beginning of the second chapter.
161
According to Jeanne Denys’ Alexandra David-Néel au Tibet. Une supercherie dévoilée, Paris: La Pensée universelle, 1972, the editor explicitly asked David-Néel to stuff her adventure narratives and novels with such anecdotes; Denys, who was her former librarian in Digne, accused her of fraud and claimed that her accounts amounted to falsification and pure deception. See Mills, Discourses of Difference, pp. 125–53 for a discussion of Denys’ arguments and a Foucaldian analysis of the question in terms of ‘discursive constraints’ beyond the question of telling fact from fiction.
I argue here that David-Néel certainly played with the readers’ expectancies, taking the risk as a Western Buddhist woman writer of being both rejected (as did Denys) or praised (as is asserted by her wide readership). In so doing,
she sets new literary standards for the question of reality/fiction that she was trying out and improving in her letters to Philippe. Ultimately, my point is that the success of this literary process and effect is best understood as shedding light on the rise of global Buddhism from early- to late-twentieth century.
162 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 252.
163
Theosophists — now a large part of her readership and her main publisher-to-be (éditions Adyar) in France beside Plon — are significantly portrayed in a more merciful light in With Mystics and Magicians (p. 49) than they were in her letters to Philippe.
164 It actually appears that her books were used and read by scholars such as the French Tibetologist Jacques Bacot in France, who reviewed a number of them positively.
165 Jacques Brosse, Alexandra David-Néel. Aventure et spiritualité, Paris: Albin Michel, 1978.
166 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 261.
167 Dibyesh Anand, ‘Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet’s Geopolitical Identity,’ The Journal of Asian Studies, 68/1, 2009, pp. 227–252.
168 Lama Anagarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds [1966], New York: Overlook, 2006, p. 154.
169 For a study of David-Néel’s writings as an ‘exploration of voice’ moving toward a ‘transcendent self,’ see Robert William II Jones, ‘Of offal, corpses, and others: An examination of self, subjectivity, and authenticity in two works by Alexandra David-Neel,’ PhD Thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 2010.
170 Ngawang Rinchen, like Kazi Dawa Samdup, was aware of the geopolitical situation of Sikkim and of the framework modern Buddhism was likely to offer to Tibetan Buddhism. He obviously had some agency in broadcasting his teachings: David-Néel makes repeatedly clear in her letters that he carefully chose the texts they would read together, interpreted for her the rituals she would witness or perform, gave her permission or on the contrary forbid her to publish Tantric texts. Had he wished to do so, his coming to Europe would have attracted an enthusiastic audience (David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 414). The Secret Oral Teachings (pp. 2–3) begins with an uncredited quote obviously pronounced by the Gomchen and gives a sense of the global issues he addressed while teaching to David-Néel: ‘The great majority of readers and hearers are the same all over the world. […] It is not on the Master that the ‘secret’ depends but on the hearer. A Master can only be he who opens the door: it is for the disciple to be capable of seeing what lies behind.’
171 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996, pp. 27–47. In inscribing Alexandra David-Néel in the global public sphere of Buddhist modern literature, I am also indebted here to global literature studies such as Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature,’ New Left Review, 1, January-February 2000, pp. 55–67. As far as Western Buddhist literature is concerned, some scholars have recently begun to pay attention to the ties between literature and Buddhism: Jeff Humphries, Reading Emptiness: Buddhism and Literature, Albany: SUNY, 1999; Jeffrey Franklin, The Lotus and the Lion, 2008; John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff, eds., Writing as Enlightenment: Buddhist American Literature into the Twenty-First Century, Albany: SUNY, 2001; Lawrence Normand and Alison Winch, Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature, London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2013; Heinrich Detering, ed., Der Buddha in der deutschen Dichtung: zur Rezeption des Buddhismus in der frühen Moderne, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014.
172 Tenzin Gyatso, Foreword to Alexandra David-Neel, My Journey to Lhasa, New York: Perennial Currents, 2005, i.
173 She is thus a pivotal figure in the history of global Buddhism such as analyzed by Martin Baumann in ‘Modernist interpretations of Buddhism in Europe,’ in McMahan, ed., Buddhism in the Modern World, pp. 119- 135. Baumann locates a shift in modern Buddhism during the interwar period: mainly an intellectual and aesthetic phenomenon before the First World War, pertaining to a rationalist approach, modern Buddhism was by then a “thin” transnational network, implying disseminated and distant written transactions.
In the post-war period, modern Buddhism became a “thick” global establishment, implying practical, existential, day-to-day commitment and focused on meditation both as self-cultivation and physical training.
174 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 392 (see epigraph).
175 David-Néel, Correspondance, p. 342.