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Alexandra David-Neel's Adventures in Tibet: Fact or Fiction?
by Braham Norwick
The Tibet Journal
Vol. 1, No. 3/4, Special Issue : “Tibet: A Living Tradition”: Proceedings of a Symposium held at The Newark Museum (Autumn 1976), pp. 70-74
Published by: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
Autumn, 1976
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
A frequent question mature Tibetan language students and art collectors hear is "What got you started?" Usually, we find the question difficult to answer simply, since the truth is multifaced, like a diamond in the subconscious, hidden by the past. A fairly likely, non-mystical reason for some is that they were, at an impressionable age, exposed to the writings of a remarkable woman, Alexandra David-Neel. In her books, even youngsters, while swept along by the exotic and the unremitting suspense, were able to sense and appreciate this liberated woman's forthright altitude. She was a rational mystic, unprejudiced by received conclusions from any source, trying with difficulty to keep her feet on the ground, careful, cautious, not fearless but brave, not dishonest, but a wonderful actress and liar when need be, and always for a philosophic purpose, with white lies and stellar performances. She was ever curious, evidently a good listener, because she picked up so many good stories. At times, one would wonder why a reasonable person involved herself with such frequent predicaments, but then one could only consider how much we would have liked to have been with her, and shared her adventures.
Surprisingly, though she lived to be over a hundred and only died in 1969, not much has been known about her except through her books. Despite the clarity of her thought, which allowed her books to survive translation into many languages, she managed to be rather reticent about a host of personal details.
And then early in 1972, a short and libellous publication, A. David-Neel au Tibet [Alexandra David-Neel in Tibet: trickery uncovered] appeared, and the thesis was clear. From the point of view of the author, whose pseudonym was Jeanne Denys, Madame Alexandra David-Neel was presumably relegated to the large category of people who pretended to have visited Tibet, but in fact never went there. Not only that, but Mademoiselle Denys claimed the photographs were faked. She began her book with a quotation from America's President Lincoln: "One can fool all the people some of the lime, and some of the people all of the time, but one can't fool all the people all the time." Mademoiselle Denys cited numbers of details she evidently considered pejorative, many of a type carping and inconsequential in balance, though valid information if true. Of course, knowing facts is not the same as understanding what they signify. Among her statements are the following: Alexandra David-Neel was actually christened Alexandrine. Her parents, though Catholic at the time of her birth, were of Jewish families and spoke Yiddish at home. These parents, both of academic family backgrounds, had always been poor, but were not in "reduced circumstances". David-Neel had worked in a store. She had studied music and singing, not philosophy nor languages. She had had a career touring as a singer and actress. She had never learned Tibetan, nor was there any Tibetan material in her home. She beat her servants. She always came running to the missionaries when in trouble, but engaged in back-biting attacks on them. What philosophy she knew was a smattering cadged from other writers. She had had no initiations, never interviewed the Dalai nor the Panchen Lamas, never went to Shi-ga-tze (gShis-ga-rtze), nor met the Pan-chen Lama's (bla-ma) mother, was never in Lhasa, nor Ku-bum (sKu-'bum) and even if she had been to some of the places she claimed, could never have carried on the conversations she reported, since the people in these areas spoke such different tongues as to be mutually incomprehensible. Mademoiselle Denys claims the adopted son Yongden was not only no lama, but had no religious training. When she saw his room, she found no sign a saintly man had lived in it, since, as she puts it, there was not even a bed in the room -- this primitive had slept on the floor. Mademoiselle Denys quotes others to confirm her conclusions; missionaries, diplomats and even some scholars. She is not the only one to ask about exact dales for trips, routes, names, and to find Yongden far from extraordinary.
Fortunately for those of us who prefer to keep some of the happy illusions of our youth, we have been able to refute, one by one, all of the important canards against Alexandra David-Neel, thanks to a series, still incomplete, of publications written or arranged by another most interesting woman, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet, and by a careful comparison of David-Neel's publications in different languages.
Mademoiselle Denys, who had just retired, spent a few weeks at Samten Dzong (bSam-gten rDzong) with David-Neel when the latter was approaching ninety. They did not get along, and when Mademoiselle Denys accused David-Neel of never having done what she had claimed in her books, David-Neel ironically replied that she should prove it, as it would be good publicity for David-Neel's books. The next day, Mademoiselle Denys left.
A short time later, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet arrived and spent the next ten years with Madame David-Neel. Mademoiselle Peyronnet's book, Dix Ans Avec Alexandra David-Neel is a warm and exciting insight into the lives of two admirable people. Last spring, the first volume of the letters of Alexandra David-Neel to her husband were published. These cover the years 1904 to 1917 and we can expect the letters of 1918 to 1941 to follow early in 1976. For all of these letters still exist, along with the stamped envelopes, the pictures, the Tibetan artifacts, all preserved at Samten Dzong, the fortress of meditation in Digne, a mountain town of Haute Provence. The house is now a museum, and scholars are welcomed.
In the English version of David-Neel's most famous book, My Journey to Lhasa, on which one can see she was much directly involved, since she comments on her choice of English words, there is nothing said about a camera, but there are four pictures taken in Lhasa. In the French version, Voyage d'Une Parisienne a Lhassa, she explains how she had been stopped in a previous attempt, when the authorities had discovered cameras in the baggage of Yongden, and had then tracked her down. This had been the time when she had left from Kye kun-do (sKye-rku-mdo). Her Lhasa pictures, she explains, had been taken by Tibetan pholographers in Lhasa, and this explains why they are so different, somewhat peculiar, and how they were made without exciting suspicion. Questions of dates are fully answered by the dated letters and postmarks, though occasionally Alexandra David-Neel herself is not exactly sure which day of the month it may be at the time of writing.
Since the letters exist, one may question why dates are so vague in the books. The answers are in the books themselves, but are clearer in the letters. Those who know what happened to Tibetans who had aided two previous travellers to Tibet, Sarat Chandra Das and Ekai Kawaguchi, already have an insight into her caution; but David-Neel specifically explains what happened even to the Sikkimese villagers who had lived near her dwelling when she made her trip to Shi-ga-tze to see the Panchen Lama and his mother. They had been fined Rs. 200/- by the British Resident, and in revenge, had sacked and destroyed her place. Moreover, she had been expelled from Sikkim. This was late July 1916. It is interesting to read her letter of June 20, 1916, asking her husband not to use the word Tibet in his letters, which may be opened by the censor, and her theories later, while still at De-chen (bDe-chen) Ashram, why the Resident had made such an issue of her trip, with fines and punishments; the missionaries especially were upset that she could go in and they were persona non grata. She had first arrived in Gangtok in April 1912, establishing a close relationship with the royal family of Sikkim, and not leaving until she went to Pema Yangtze (Pad-ma dyongs-rtze) in October; she remained in Nepal until March 1913, then going to Benares, and left from there in December to return to Gangtok. On October 6, 1914, she wrote from Tibet, at the time of her first crossing of the border, at Cho-te Nyi-ma Gon-pa (mChod-rten Nyi-ma dGon-pa). She had decided to live and study not far from the border in La-chen, until she moved still closer to the border at Dewa Thang in the spring of 1915. She remained at De-chen Ashram through the end of June 1916; early in July 1916 she was again in Tibet at Cho-ten Nyi-ma, and it was from there that she made her dash to Shi-ga-tze, visiting the Panchen Lama and his mother. With the letters, it is easy to follow her route. In addition, she mentions many more names in her letters than in her books, for example, the Laden-las and the help they gave her.
One of the most remarkable events, and the key to her later adventures, dates back to April 1912, when she was able, thanks to her reputation as a Buddhist, to have an unprecedented interview with the Dalai Lama, who was then in temporary exile. Through the letters to her husband, we discover that she wrote under many pseudonyms, even, in at least one case, with a Hindu name. One of her pen names was Alexandra Myrial, and in the Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie Populaire of 1901, there is one of her articles, "Les Mantras aux Indes" referred to in the Buddhist Bibliography of Shinsho Hanayama. There too, are other references to her publications under the name Alexandra David, beginning in 1907. By the time she arrived in India, she had already established herself internationally as a Buddhist and something of an authority. The Dalai Lama wanted to know who had been her guru, and was at first astonished to learn that she had none. When she explained that when she had determined to hold to the principles of Buddhism, she did not know another Buddhist, and was perhaps then the only one in Paris, the Dalai Lama laughed and said indeed that was a good reason. He told her to learn Tibetan. In her letters, we can follow her progress, slow initially, then faster and better; her Calligraphy in both styles of writing becomes almost elegant, and three years after her interview, by July, 1976, she was writing and speaking with ease. In 1916, she was so fluent in Tibetan that she could engage in philosophic discussions with an erudite lama, and it was shortly after this that she visited the Panchen Lama. Later at Ku-bum, she again had a language problem, but with her command of Tibetan, which all high-ranking prelates had to know, and her established acquaintance with the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, she managed well.
After leaving Tibet and Sikkim, late in 1916 she went to Japan and found herself homesick for Tibet. In a letter to her husband, she interjects the English expression, "too tame". She was distressed to be surrounded by cultivated fields and thought that there was nothing uglier. She compared it to living in a kitchen, for which, though recognising its value, she seemed to have had some antipathy. Although she appeared to have had a pleasant time with Ekai Kawaguchi, who had preceded her to Tibet, she commented that the Japanese are the Germans of the Far East, permeated with the same spirit that had composed Deutschland Uber Alles.
After only a few months in Japan, she returned to China. Her plans to go to Tibet were uppermost in her mind by the end of October 1917. Aphur Yongden suggested how they might do it together economically, with him earning their keep by teaching and other activities. The fact is that six years later when they finally made their trip to Lhasa, they did support themselves largely on his earnings as a red hat fortune teller, since they did not dare to show that they were reasonably well supplied with silver and gold. They made that trip safely only by dint of looking too poor to rob. It was only in the Po-yul (sPo-yul) country where even such people, poor as they appeared, were seriously threatened with robbery. Even then, her major concern was that the thieves might discover their Western items, such as spoons, compasses and revolvers, which would unmask them. It is as the thieves were trying not only to take Rs. 2. from Yongden, but also to look into his pack, that Alexandra David-Neel felt forced to frighten them off with her revolver ... which she did most effectively but with no intent to kill. It should be noted that she discovered for herself the Lange-James theory, that emotions follow actions. For example, after she decided quite coolly that to protect herself from being exploited by her coolie servants, she must make a show of force, she noted that she only became angry when she was obliged to administer punishment. Also, after posing for a period as a beggar, it amused her to note that she was acquiring a beggar mentality with regard to potential donors on whom she pretended to depend upon.
She made many striking observations. During her stay in China, she was struck by the harmful influence of Confucianism, but in Tibet notes that the country lost materially, more than it gained by its rupture with China. She commented that there were no Buddhist Saints, only those who had been awakened. She noted one European was scandalised by the story of the Buddha, an unworthy man who deserted his wife and child. She was not averse to black humour: hearing that a man characterised as dying for his ideas is accused of dying for the ideas of others, she noted that certain ideas corresponded to the fibre of our being and made it vibrate in resonance. Ideas like these were truly ours, no matter what the source.
The revelation of her theatrical career helped clear up some doubts in her stories, how she had been able to disguise herself and act so well. In her books she tells of using dye on her hair and hands, cocoa and charcoal on her face. The picture in Lhasa shows it well. But the books never told us that she had been a singer and had toured for many years. In her books, she does remark on her playing a part, copying the typical actions, pretending to scratch lice, learning how to lick out her bowl. She tells of Yongden's distress when she planned to take a bath in a hot spring for fear she would wash her face. When she was ordered to take off her hat in a sacred area in Lhasa, she was afraid that her hair would give her away, but people merely thought she was from Ladakh.
Her most difficult problem in leaving for Tibet on her successful trip to Lhasa was that she had, for convention's sake, to start out with coolies. She had to prepare for what looked like just a short trip to collect plants. For a Western woman in that period to have gone without servants, or wearing a back-pack would have caused too much talk. But the coolies could not be taken into her confidence, and so she had to send them off with plausible tasks to perform, in opposite directions, letting them think that the other would still be with her and that she would return soon.
Now that the house, Sam-ten Dzong, has been opened to the public and the accumulation of Alexandra David-Neel's 100 years of exciting living can be studied more intimately, it seems certain that there will be a revival of interest in her career. The psychological details of her life are as fully interesting as her adventures in Tibet, and the two are remarkably intertwined. Some day we must work on answering the question: "What got her started?" It should be fascinating to find the answers.
by Braham Norwick
The Tibet Journal
Vol. 1, No. 3/4, Special Issue : “Tibet: A Living Tradition”: Proceedings of a Symposium held at The Newark Museum (Autumn 1976), pp. 70-74
Published by: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
Autumn, 1976
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
-- Alexandra David-Neel, by Wikipedia
-- Alexandra David-Néel, by David Guy
-- Alexandra David-Neel's Adventures in Tibet: Fact or Fiction?, by Braham Norwick
-- Forbidden travels of an opera singer:The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel by Barbara Foster and Michael Foster Overlook Press pounds 20, by Isabel Hilton
-- From the Guimet Museum to De-Chen Ashram: Alexandra David-Neel, Buddhism and Fiction, by Samuel Thévoz
Braham Norwick was born on July 6, 1916 in New York City, New York, United States; the son of Mark and Rose (Ungar) Norwick.
Norwick received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1938.
Norwick began his career as a technical director at Beaunit Mills, Inc. in 1938 and had held it for forty years. He served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. In 1973, he was appointed a vice president of Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company, where he worked until 1978. In 1980 Braham became an expert witness of Technical Architecture Group. In 1983 he was appointed a columnist at Maschen Industrie. Norwick was a visiting professor at Cornell University....
Works: Locating Tibet: The maps 1988Locating Tibet: The Maps: This article looks at the different possibilities and implications of the maps that could have been housed at the legendary libraries of Shangri la. (Mark Premo-Hopkins 2004-05-06)
-- Search Results for Author/Creator Braham Norwick, by The Tibetan & Himalayan LibraryThe lamasery, however, had more to offer than a display of Chinoiserie. One of its features, for instance, was a very delightful library, lofty and spacious, and containing a multitude of books so retiringly housed in bays and alcoves that the whole atmosphere was more of wisdom than of learning, of good manners rather than seriousness. Conway, during a rapid glance at some of the shelves, found much to astonish him; the world's best literature was there, it seemed, as well as a great deal of abstruse and curious stuff that he could not appraise. Volumes in English, French, German, and Russian abounded, and there were vast quantities of Chinese and other Eastern scripts. A section which interested him particularly was devoted to Tibetiana, if it might be so called; he noticed several rarities, among them the Novo Descubrimento de grao catayo ou dos Regos de Tibet, by Antonio de Andrada (Lisbon, 1626); Athanasius Kircher's China (Antwerp, 1667); Thevenot's Voyage à la Chine des Pères Grueber et d'Orville; and Beligatti's Relazione Inedita di un Viaggio al Tibet.
-- Lost Horizon, by James Hilton
Norwick was a member of American Society for Testing and Material, American Society for Quality Control, American Chemical Society, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, New York Academy of Sciences and Chemists Club.
-- Braham Norwick, by Prabook
A frequent question mature Tibetan language students and art collectors hear is "What got you started?" Usually, we find the question difficult to answer simply, since the truth is multifaced, like a diamond in the subconscious, hidden by the past. A fairly likely, non-mystical reason for some is that they were, at an impressionable age, exposed to the writings of a remarkable woman, Alexandra David-Neel. In her books, even youngsters, while swept along by the exotic and the unremitting suspense, were able to sense and appreciate this liberated woman's forthright altitude. She was a rational mystic, unprejudiced by received conclusions from any source, trying with difficulty to keep her feet on the ground, careful, cautious, not fearless but brave, not dishonest, but a wonderful actress and liar when need be, and always for a philosophic purpose, with white lies and stellar performances. She was ever curious, evidently a good listener, because she picked up so many good stories. At times, one would wonder why a reasonable person involved herself with such frequent predicaments, but then one could only consider how much we would have liked to have been with her, and shared her adventures.
Surprisingly, though she lived to be over a hundred and only died in 1969, not much has been known about her except through her books. Despite the clarity of her thought, which allowed her books to survive translation into many languages, she managed to be rather reticent about a host of personal details.
And then early in 1972, a short and libellous publication, A. David-Neel au Tibet [Alexandra David-Neel in Tibet: trickery uncovered] appeared, and the thesis was clear. From the point of view of the author, whose pseudonym was Jeanne Denys, Madame Alexandra David-Neel was presumably relegated to the large category of people who pretended to have visited Tibet, but in fact never went there. Not only that, but Mademoiselle Denys claimed the photographs were faked. She began her book with a quotation from America's President Lincoln: "One can fool all the people some of the lime, and some of the people all of the time, but one can't fool all the people all the time." Mademoiselle Denys cited numbers of details she evidently considered pejorative, many of a type carping and inconsequential in balance, though valid information if true. Of course, knowing facts is not the same as understanding what they signify. Among her statements are the following: Alexandra David-Neel was actually christened Alexandrine. Her parents, though Catholic at the time of her birth, were of Jewish families and spoke Yiddish at home. These parents, both of academic family backgrounds, had always been poor, but were not in "reduced circumstances". David-Neel had worked in a store. She had studied music and singing, not philosophy nor languages. She had had a career touring as a singer and actress. She had never learned Tibetan, nor was there any Tibetan material in her home. She beat her servants. She always came running to the missionaries when in trouble, but engaged in back-biting attacks on them. What philosophy she knew was a smattering cadged from other writers. She had had no initiations, never interviewed the Dalai nor the Panchen Lamas, never went to Shi-ga-tze (gShis-ga-rtze), nor met the Pan-chen Lama's (bla-ma) mother, was never in Lhasa, nor Ku-bum (sKu-'bum) and even if she had been to some of the places she claimed, could never have carried on the conversations she reported, since the people in these areas spoke such different tongues as to be mutually incomprehensible. Mademoiselle Denys claims the adopted son Yongden was not only no lama, but had no religious training. When she saw his room, she found no sign a saintly man had lived in it, since, as she puts it, there was not even a bed in the room -- this primitive had slept on the floor. Mademoiselle Denys quotes others to confirm her conclusions; missionaries, diplomats and even some scholars. She is not the only one to ask about exact dales for trips, routes, names, and to find Yongden far from extraordinary.
Fortunately for those of us who prefer to keep some of the happy illusions of our youth, we have been able to refute, one by one, all of the important canards against Alexandra David-Neel, thanks to a series, still incomplete, of publications written or arranged by another most interesting woman, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet, and by a careful comparison of David-Neel's publications in different languages.
Mademoiselle Denys, who had just retired, spent a few weeks at Samten Dzong (bSam-gten rDzong) with David-Neel when the latter was approaching ninety. They did not get along, and when Mademoiselle Denys accused David-Neel of never having done what she had claimed in her books, David-Neel ironically replied that she should prove it, as it would be good publicity for David-Neel's books. The next day, Mademoiselle Denys left.
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.... I argue here that David-Néel certainly played with the readers’ expectancies.... she sets new literary standards for the question of reality/fiction that she was trying out.
-- From the Guimet Museum to De-Chen Ashram: Alexandra David-Neel, Buddhism and Fiction, by Samuel Thévoz
A short time later, Marie-Madeleine Peyronnet arrived and spent the next ten years with Madame David-Neel. Mademoiselle Peyronnet's book, Dix Ans Avec Alexandra David-Neel is a warm and exciting insight into the lives of two admirable people. Last spring, the first volume of the letters of Alexandra David-Neel to her husband were published. These cover the years 1904 to 1917 and we can expect the letters of 1918 to 1941 to follow early in 1976. For all of these letters still exist, along with the stamped envelopes, the pictures, the Tibetan artifacts, all preserved at Samten Dzong, the fortress of meditation in Digne, a mountain town of Haute Provence. The house is now a museum, and scholars are welcomed.
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....
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.
-- From the Guimet Museum to De-Chen Ashram: Alexandra David-Neel, Buddhism and Fiction, by Samuel Thévoz
In the English version of David-Neel's most famous book, My Journey to Lhasa, on which one can see she was much directly involved, since she comments on her choice of English words, there is nothing said about a camera, but there are four pictures taken in Lhasa. In the French version, Voyage d'Une Parisienne a Lhassa, she explains how she had been stopped in a previous attempt, when the authorities had discovered cameras in the baggage of Yongden, and had then tracked her down. This had been the time when she had left from Kye kun-do (sKye-rku-mdo). Her Lhasa pictures, she explains, had been taken by Tibetan pholographers in Lhasa, and this explains why they are so different, somewhat peculiar, and how they were made without exciting suspicion. Questions of dates are fully answered by the dated letters and postmarks, though occasionally Alexandra David-Neel herself is not exactly sure which day of the month it may be at the time of writing.
Since the letters exist, one may question why dates are so vague in the books. The answers are in the books themselves, but are clearer in the letters. Those who know what happened to Tibetans who had aided two previous travellers to Tibet, Sarat Chandra Das and Ekai Kawaguchi, already have an insight into her caution; but David-Neel specifically explains what happened even to the Sikkimese villagers who had lived near her dwelling when she made her trip to Shi-ga-tze to see the Panchen Lama and his mother. They had been fined Rs. 200/- by the British Resident, and in revenge, had sacked and destroyed her place. Moreover, she had been expelled from Sikkim. This was late July 1916. It is interesting to read her letter of June 20, 1916, asking her husband not to use the word Tibet in his letters, which may be opened by the censor, and her theories later, while still at De-chen (bDe-chen) Ashram, why the Resident had made such an issue of her trip, with fines and punishments; the missionaries especially were upset that she could go in and they were persona non grata. She had first arrived in Gangtok in April 1912, establishing a close relationship with the royal family of Sikkim, and not leaving until she went to Pema Yangtze (Pad-ma dyongs-rtze) in October; she remained in Nepal until March 1913, then going to Benares, and left from there in December to return to Gangtok. On October 6, 1914, she wrote from Tibet, at the time of her first crossing of the border, at Cho-te Nyi-ma Gon-pa (mChod-rten Nyi-ma dGon-pa). She had decided to live and study not far from the border in La-chen, until she moved still closer to the border at Dewa Thang in the spring of 1915. She remained at De-chen Ashram through the end of June 1916; early in July 1916 she was again in Tibet at Cho-ten Nyi-ma, and it was from there that she made her dash to Shi-ga-tze, visiting the Panchen Lama and his mother. With the letters, it is easy to follow her route. In addition, she mentions many more names in her letters than in her books, for example, the Laden-las and the help they gave her.
One of the most remarkable events, and the key to her later adventures, dates back to April 1912, when she was able, thanks to her reputation as a Buddhist, to have an unprecedented interview with the Dalai Lama, who was then in temporary exile. Through the letters to her husband, we discover that she wrote under many pseudonyms, even, in at least one case, with a Hindu name. One of her pen names was Alexandra Myrial, and in the Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie Populaire of 1901, there is one of her articles, "Les Mantras aux Indes" referred to in the Buddhist Bibliography of Shinsho Hanayama. There too, are other references to her publications under the name Alexandra David, beginning in 1907. By the time she arrived in India, she had already established herself internationally as a Buddhist and something of an authority. The Dalai Lama wanted to know who had been her guru, and was at first astonished to learn that she had none. When she explained that when she had determined to hold to the principles of Buddhism, she did not know another Buddhist, and was perhaps then the only one in Paris, the Dalai Lama laughed and said indeed that was a good reason. He told her to learn Tibetan. In her letters, we can follow her progress, slow initially, then faster and better; her Calligraphy in both styles of writing becomes almost elegant, and three years after her interview, by July, 1976, she was writing and speaking with ease. In 1916, she was so fluent in Tibetan that she could engage in philosophic discussions with an erudite lama, and it was shortly after this that she visited the Panchen Lama. Later at Ku-bum, she again had a language problem, but with her command of Tibetan, which all high-ranking prelates had to know, and her established acquaintance with the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, she managed well.
After leaving Tibet and Sikkim, late in 1916 she went to Japan and found herself homesick for Tibet. In a letter to her husband, she interjects the English expression, "too tame". She was distressed to be surrounded by cultivated fields and thought that there was nothing uglier. She compared it to living in a kitchen, for which, though recognising its value, she seemed to have had some antipathy. Although she appeared to have had a pleasant time with Ekai Kawaguchi, who had preceded her to Tibet, she commented that the Japanese are the Germans of the Far East, permeated with the same spirit that had composed Deutschland Uber Alles.
After only a few months in Japan, she returned to China. Her plans to go to Tibet were uppermost in her mind by the end of October 1917. Aphur Yongden suggested how they might do it together economically, with him earning their keep by teaching and other activities. The fact is that six years later when they finally made their trip to Lhasa, they did support themselves largely on his earnings as a red hat fortune teller, since they did not dare to show that they were reasonably well supplied with silver and gold. They made that trip safely only by dint of looking too poor to rob. It was only in the Po-yul (sPo-yul) country where even such people, poor as they appeared, were seriously threatened with robbery. Even then, her major concern was that the thieves might discover their Western items, such as spoons, compasses and revolvers, which would unmask them. It is as the thieves were trying not only to take Rs. 2. from Yongden, but also to look into his pack, that Alexandra David-Neel felt forced to frighten them off with her revolver ... which she did most effectively but with no intent to kill. It should be noted that she discovered for herself the Lange-James theory, that emotions follow actions. For example, after she decided quite coolly that to protect herself from being exploited by her coolie servants, she must make a show of force, she noted that she only became angry when she was obliged to administer punishment. Also, after posing for a period as a beggar, it amused her to note that she was acquiring a beggar mentality with regard to potential donors on whom she pretended to depend upon.
She made many striking observations. During her stay in China, she was struck by the harmful influence of Confucianism, but in Tibet notes that the country lost materially, more than it gained by its rupture with China. She commented that there were no Buddhist Saints, only those who had been awakened. She noted one European was scandalised by the story of the Buddha, an unworthy man who deserted his wife and child. She was not averse to black humour: hearing that a man characterised as dying for his ideas is accused of dying for the ideas of others, she noted that certain ideas corresponded to the fibre of our being and made it vibrate in resonance. Ideas like these were truly ours, no matter what the source.
The revelation of her theatrical career helped clear up some doubts in her stories, how she had been able to disguise herself and act so well. In her books she tells of using dye on her hair and hands, cocoa and charcoal on her face. The picture in Lhasa shows it well. But the books never told us that she had been a singer and had toured for many years. In her books, she does remark on her playing a part, copying the typical actions, pretending to scratch lice, learning how to lick out her bowl. She tells of Yongden's distress when she planned to take a bath in a hot spring for fear she would wash her face. When she was ordered to take off her hat in a sacred area in Lhasa, she was afraid that her hair would give her away, but people merely thought she was from Ladakh.
Her most difficult problem in leaving for Tibet on her successful trip to Lhasa was that she had, for convention's sake, to start out with coolies. She had to prepare for what looked like just a short trip to collect plants. For a Western woman in that period to have gone without servants, or wearing a back-pack would have caused too much talk. But the coolies could not be taken into her confidence, and so she had to send them off with plausible tasks to perform, in opposite directions, letting them think that the other would still be with her and that she would return soon.
Now that the house, Sam-ten Dzong, has been opened to the public and the accumulation of Alexandra David-Neel's 100 years of exciting living can be studied more intimately, it seems certain that there will be a revival of interest in her career. The psychological details of her life are as fully interesting as her adventures in Tibet, and the two are remarkably intertwined. Some day we must work on answering the question: "What got her started?" It should be fascinating to find the answers.