Prayer of the Dragon (44 page)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The notion that two peoples separated by more than ten thousand miles and easily as many years could share common roots may at first seem but a romantic fancy, but the evidence has given pause to more than a few experts. The common elements between the Tibetans and the Navajo-Dine peoples set forth in these pages are, like all the themes in my books, based upon fact. Long before I considered weaving them into one of my mysteries I had been fascinated not just by the physical similarities between Tibetans and the native peoples of the American Southwest but also by the many common cultural and religious aspects appearing in such disparate geographies. Sandpaintings, thunder gods, and religious swastikas are only some of the more readily apparent indicators of possible links. Whether your particular interests lean toward linguistics, medicine, ice age geology, genetics, cosmology, or earwax, you can find fragments of evidence supporting an ancient connection.

While it seems unlikely that such fragments from conventional science will ever combine for unequivocal proof, I side with my ever-intuitive characters in concluding that the most compelling similarities have not so much to do with the artifacts of everyday existence but the overlapping remnants of the spiritual life of the two peoples. Over fifty years ago anthropologist Frank Waters, in his book
The Masked Gods
, noted the parallels between the death rituals of Tibetans and the Navajo and Pueblo Indians. More recently anthropologist Peter Gold expanded this premise in his fascinating book
Navajo and Tibetan Sacred Wisdom
, which masterfully probes parallels in the inner teachings of both peoples. As the debate over both ethereal and empirical evidence continues, the Tibetans and Southwestern Indians have dealt something of a preemptive strike: with the expansion of the modernday Tibetan diaspora, the traditional homeland of those Indians is becoming a significant relocation site for dispossessed Tibetan families.

Ultimately the real reward of the riddles about Tibetans and the peoples of the American Southwest may lie in the telling, not in the answering. The most important lessons emerging from this exercise perhaps are not about whom they may be but whom the rest of us are. Years ago I hung over my desk Carl Jung's epitaph for contemporary man. Modern humanity, Jung wrote, “has sold its soul for a mass of disconnected facts.” If we want to glimpse the way things might have been before we struck this hollow bargain we have but to look to the traditional Tibetans and Navajo, who, as they have for centuries, live lives of deep purpose, closely connected to the primal world.

However elusive may be the proof of prehistoric links, these people without question share a modern reality: they have both been under siege by outside political and economic forces. The Navajo, Pueblo, and Hopi tribes have long struggled with mineral exploitation on their sacred lands. The degree of environmental damage inflicted by mining on the Tibetan lands is of epic proportions. Entire mountains have been destroyed by mining, including a number that were considered sacred by the Tibetans, leading to destruction of adjoining watersheds and their accompanying ecosystems. While the largest of these projects have been organized by the government of China, outlaw miners, unaccountable to anyone, are rampant in several mineral rich districts of Tibet, particularly the traditional Tibetan province of Kham.

In some areas such miners are as much a part of the modern Tibetan landscape as the defrocked monks represented by Yangke in this novel. For many years the primary “illegal” monks in Tibet were those who had survived the wholesale destruction of temples and monasteries during the early years of the Chinese occupation. Now a new generation of orphaned monks is emerging out of the monasteries that Beijing's Bureau of Religious Affairs has permitted to reopen under its close regulation. Monks deemed politically undesirable, or who decline to submit to loyalty oaths, are ejected, prohibited from wearing robes again. Some make the often dangerous crossing to India to find monasteries outside their homeland. Others retreat to remote villages and do their best as monks without teachers, joining the ranks of the many unsung heroes in Tibet who struggle to maintain their ethnic and spiritual identity in the face of sometimes overwhelming adversity.

ELIOT PATTISON

GLOSSARY OF
FOREIGN LANGUAGE TERMS

Terms that are used only once and defined in adjoining text are not
included in this glossary.

bayal.
Tibetan. Traditionally, a “hidden land,” where deities and other sacred beings reside.

Bon.
Tibetan. An ancient spiritual tradition indigenous to Tibet which far predated the rise of Buddhism. The Bon pantheon of deities and rich array of Bon ritual practices were in many respects assimilated by Tibetan Buddhism.

canque.
Tibetan-Mandarin. A heavy wooden collar, generally extending past the shoulders, clamped onto the necks of criminals as punishment.

druk.
Tibetan. A dragon.

dzong.
Tibetan. Traditionally used to describe a Tibetan fortress or castle. Today the term is also applied to local administrative units in Tibet.

gau.
Tibetan. A “portable shrine,” typically a small hinged metal box, often made of silver, carried around the neck or waist, into which a prayer and/or a relic has been inserted.

genpo.
Tibetan. A village headman.

gompa.
Tibetan. A monastery, literally a “place of meditation.”

ketaan.
Navajo. A small wooden cylinder cut from a branch growing on the east side of a tree, typically crudely carved with head and legs to indicate a human figure, with the head always carved from the growing end of the stick. Used as a ceremonial offering, the ketaan is traditionally painted according to the colors of the four directions and laid in pairs on a bed of cornmeal in a ritual basket.

kora.
Tibetan. A pilgrim's circuit, typically a circumambulation around a sacred site.

lama.
Tibetan. The Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit “guru,” traditionally used for a fully ordained senior monk who has become a master teacher.

lha gyal lo.
Tibetan. A traditional phrase of celebration or rejoicing, literally “victory to the gods.”

mala.
Tibetan. A Buddhist rosary, typically consisting of one hundred eight beads.

mani stone.
Tibetan. A stone inscribed, by painting or carving, with a Buddhist prayer for compassion, invoking the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.

Milarepa.
Tibetan. The great poet saint of Tibet who lived from 1040 to 1123.

mudra.
Tibetan. A symbolic gesture made by arranging the hands and fingers in prescribed patterns to represent a specific prayer or offering.

ni shi sha gua.
Mandarin. Literally “you stupid melon,” more commonly used as a slur, connoting “you retard” or “you damned imbecile.”

peche.
Tibetan. A traditional Tibetan book of scripture, traditionally unbound, in long, narrow loose leafs which are wrapped in cloth, often tied with carved wooden end pieces.

ragyapa.
Tibetan. Corpse cutters, the people who perform the dismemberment of bodies that is part of the Tibetan sky burial tradition.

tamzing.
Mandarin. A “struggle session,” typically a public criticism of an individual in which humiliation and verbal and/or physical abuse is utilized to achieve political education. The practice was widespread during the Cultural Revolution period.

tangka.
Tibetan. A painting on cloth, typically of a religious nature and generally considered sacred, traditionally painted as a portable scroll on fine cotton.

Tara.
Tibetan. A female meditational deity, revered for her compassion and considered a special protectress of the Tibetan people. Tara has many forms, each of which has specific ritual application.
Tara.
She is sometimes referred to as the Mother of Buddhas.

torma.
Tibetan. A ritual offering made primarily of butter and barley flour, shaped and often dyed in many shapes and sizes in homage to Buddhist deities.

tsampa.
Tibetan. Roasted barley flour, a traditional staple food of Tibet.