CHÖGYAL NAMKHAI NORBU (1938-2018)

Visionary Historian
www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2018/10/18/visionary-historian/

Namkhai Norbu during the 1988 Zhang-Zhung Expedition.

Namkhai Norbu Rimpoché passed away last month (Sept. 27th). I want to jot down some
memories I have of him and discuss his pivotal contribution to our understanding of ancient
Tibetan history. I had no spiritual relationship with him, so I will skip over that part of his
fundamental resumé, which in any case has received fulsome and devoted attention by his
disciples, Tibetans and injis, in many posts and memorials.

I met Rimpoché in 1993, a year after we had established the Amnye Machen Institute. AMI
founding director Tashi Tsering-la had requested Namkhai Norbu Rimpoché to give some

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lectures on Tibetan history to young Tibetans in Dharamshala. The first talk took place at the
Gangkyi Information Office auditorium on the 27th of October. I recall a strong, even powerful
face, and a voice that was surprisingly gentle and refined, speaking in (what I was later told) the
Dergé dialect.

The central theme of Rimpoché’s lecture was that the history of Tibetan civilization was
considerably older than the mere 1600 odd years that Tibetan Buddhist scholarship had generally
assigned to it.

The origin of the name Bhöd

Regarding the origin of the native name for Tibet – Bhöd, Rimpoché shared the opinion of Gedun
Chophel that the word Bhöd may have originated from Bhön, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet
that was widespread across the plateau. “In ancient Tibetan writing Bhön is sometimes written
with the post-suffix ‘dha’. In the old orthography the affixes ‘dha’ and ‘na’ were frequently
interchanged, as for instance btsad-po and btsan-po, both meaning a king or ruler; and also chun-
po and chud-po (a bundle).” Hence Tibet was then called Bhön-kyi-yul or the Land of Bhön which
may have evolved to become Bhöd-kyi-yul, or Tibet.”

Gedun Chophel at Sakya, 1938. Painting by Kanwal Krishna. Courtesy of Latse Library.

There really is no other plausible theory for the origin of the name Bhöd and Namkhai Norbu
dismissed efforts to spin pious alternatives. An excerpt from Rimpoché Necklace of Dzi: “During
my studies in Tibet … I was often told a story about the origin of the word Bod. It was said that
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since Bod is not a big country like India, and had only a very small population each person lived
within calling distance of the other and hence the whole country derived its name from the word
‘bod (to call) which came to be written as Bod. Such an explanation is due to the Tibetan habit
of exaggerating Indian cultural influence.”

Earliest Tibetan script

Rimpoche also made the case for Tibetan culture having its foundation in the great kingdom of
Zhang-Zhung that had once dominated the entire Tibetan plateau. From this he theorized that
the first Tibetan script had originated in Zhang-Zhung and preceded the Gupta/Brahmi-based
script that Thonmi Sambhota created in the mid-seventh century. Rimpoche believed that the
Zhang-Zhung script known as sMar-Yig was in existence probably before the reign of the first
king of Tibet, Nyatri Tsenpo (who reigned from 127 BCE). This would place a literate Tibetan
civilization around the time of the Mauryan Empire in India and the Han Dynasty in China.

Rimpoché also proposed that Thonmi Sambhota’s script was created not just to translate
Buddhists texts into Tibetan, as is the usual explanation, but for reasons of state – to supplant
the older and competing Zhang-Zhung culture and written language. Hence for Songtsen Gampo
there was a political imperative in marrying the Buddhist princesses from Nepal and China, for
inviting Buddhists masters from India, for building the first two Buddhist temples in Lhasa and,
of course, for creating a new script – so that as Rimpoché explained “… Bod acquired a
(separate) cultural and religious base of its own (and the) the Kingdom of Bod developed
independently of Zhang-Zhung.” After the ambush and assassination of the Zhang-Zhung king,
Lik-mi-gya, Zhang-Zhung was annexed to Tibet, and the Tibetan Empire under Songtsen Gampo
firmly established.

Zhang-Zhung as a language is now considered to be extinct and the various Zhang-Zhung scripts
(Mar-chen, Mar-chung , Pung-chen, Drusha etc) we are told “… appear to have little existence
outside of calligraphy manuals”… and even that in fragmentary forms. One surviving fragment
is a seal of the Zhang-Zhung king Lik-mi-gya, held at Menri monastery at Dolanji, near Simla,
which is written in the Mar-chen script.

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 Royal seal of Lig-myi-rgya reading “Srid pa’i rje” or “Lord of Life”

Nonetheless it is a pleasant surprise to learn that there is a growing movement within Tibetan
Studies, even among some young Tibetan scholars (no doubt inspired by the pioneering efforts
of Namkhai Norbu) to tackle this ancient cryptological/historical mystery of the Tibetan plateau.
I have come across a number of related publications including Zhang-Zhung dictionaries and
grammars by Tibetan, French, Japanese and American and other scholars. However elusive this
pursuit, it is for an amateur history-sleuth like myself just exciting to speculate on the possibilty
that like the Mayan Glyphs, the Minoan Linear B or the Chinese Oracle Bone Script, the Zhang-
Zhung script will eventually be deciphered and Tibetan history will be established a few thousand
years back in its rightful place in time.

Expedition to Zhang-Zhung

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 So called “Gateway to Zhang-Zhung”

I should also mention here that Namkhai Norbu was not a mere armchair theorist when it came
to pushing back the time-boundary of Tibetan history. In his talk he mentioned that in 1988 he
personally led an expedition to the Mount Kailash area to search for Khyung Lung Ngul-Khar (the
Silver Castle of the Garuda Valley) the last capital of the kingdom of the Zhang-Zhung. The black
and white photograph at the top of the page of Rimpoché sitting on a rugged mountainside, is
from that expedition. It does not appear to have been an easy trip, by any means. Rimpoché
jokingly mentioned in his lecture how difficult it had been for his companions, and I do not doubt
that at all. I read about a Chinese archeological expedition to that area, well equipped with
Toyota Landcruisers and ample oxygen cylinders, but whose members were crippled by the
altitude and cold.

There is video https://vimeo.com/276617838 (unfortunately low quality) of Rimpoche’s

expedition where we get some images of the cave cities of Khyung Lung. Rimpoche in his lecture
said that these amazing edifices were the dwellings of the Zhang-Zhung people in winter, but
that in summer they lived in yak-hair tents and led a pastoral lifestyle. I recall Rimpoché
remarking on the resemblance of the Khyung Lung caves to the Anazazi cliff palaces at Mesa
Verde in Colorado.

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 Silver Castle of the Garuda Valley

Namkhai Norbu also gave this talk to the students of the upper TCV on the 27th of October and
to the students of the Lower TCV on the 28th. On the 31st of October Rimpoche gave this talk to
the Tibetans of McLeod Ganj. AMI also arranged for Rimpoche to speak at the Tibetan Youth
Hostel in Delhi on the 18th of November and also at the Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on
Nov 31. Five years later, in 1997, Rimpoché gave another lecture at AMI on “The Performing Arts
of Tibet: With Reference to Zhang-Zhung.”

It might be mentioned that Rimpoche first spoke on the “The Cultural History of Tibet” at a
gathering of Tibetan youth in Switzerland in 1975. On the basis of that talk he wrote his short
work Bod rigs gzhon nu rnams la gros su ‘debs pa gzi yi bhreng ba, which was translated into
English by K. Thondup as The Necklace of Dzi in 1981. Rimpoché developed his thesis in a later
publication Light of Kailash: History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet (2009). Besides many other
important books and publications Rimpoché has organized and hosted a number of important
conferences on Tibetan language, medicine and culture at his base the Zhang-Zhung Research
Institute at Arcidosso in Italy.

I do not want to conclude this post with a dry-as-dust list of publications, lectures and
conferences. So I will leave the reader with an amusing anecdote having nothing to do with
history or scholarship, but which hints at another minor aspect of Namkhai Norbu’s genius.

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Sometime in the mid-eighties Namkhai Norbu visited my uncle Rakra Trulku at the Pestalozzi
Children’s Village in Switzerland. During their after-dinner conversation Namkhai Norbu asked
my uncle if he would like to experience a “mirror divination” (tib. tra-pab). My uncle was curious
and so Namkhai Norbu pulled out a brass melong mirror and set it up on the dining table.

He began chanting and tossing grains of rice on the mirror surface. My uncle told me that soon
the mirror surface began to cloud over and a vision appeared. Rakra Rimpoche did not tell me
what he saw and I did not press him. But some of the Tibetan children at Pestalozzi who were
crowding around the two lamas and looking to be entertained, later told me of their experiences
that evening. They all saw different things – fleeting landscapes, people and so on. Nothing of
consequence. One girl told me that she saw Tibetan letters appearing and disappearing on the
mirror surface. She took up Tibetan Studies later in life.

Rimpoche’s first talk at Dharamshala was recorded by the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives. I
hope that the Library will release this recording soon.

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In the meantime readers might check out the following video-interview of Rimpoche by Voice of
America in 2014 https://youtu.be/tw7qrhmAO64