Good evening. Good day, everybody. Around the world. I'm very, very, very happy to see so many of you joining in once again for our first day session.
And today we want to talk about the origins of the Tibetans.
The purpose.
And we want to go into the myths, the origins, stories, and compared with various anthropological theories presented by our guest speaker,
who is currently zooming in from Vienna, Austria,
where he's a researcher at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
His general research focuses on the historic epigraphy of the Tibetan plateau and his future visitation.
Send us one post Imperial Clan genealogies, especially the Lang clan.
If I'm not mistaken, rhinos, start your squinter and take it away.
All right. So, yeah, thanks to everybody for for joining, I'm happy to see so many familiar and some unfamiliar faces as well.
So today I will reflect a little bit on the role that Buddhism played in formulating and sustaining and promoting notions of Tibetan identity.
So every time I take Tibetan, you can imagine square quotes, scare quotes reflect Tibetan poop, our poo, me, et cetera.
The period I will roughly cover. Start from the later spread of the DA motorcycle cheetah.
And runs on until approximately the beginning of the 20th century.
So when modern Tibet nationalism is considered to have taken off.
Various authors have already and rightly pointed out the relevance of Buddhist ethno genetic myths from especially the 12th,
11th, 12th century onward in shaping this notion of the Tibetans.
But it's social Sabin's. So the traction that it actually had underground and its spread and historical dynamics remain under researched.
These issues form the topic of a research project that my colleague at the ICJ was called and I intend to start the following year.
So although this talk obviously builds on prior research, in some ways, it's also a springboard for what is to come.
So I welcome any and all feedback. Now,
I will start out with a summary review of theoretical approaches concerning interregional collective identities before the rise of the modern age,
think ethnicity, nation and so on. I will then sketch the lay of the land concerning this topic within the pathology.
Next, I will outline how state power and religion both played a pivotal role in the genesis of the notion of the Tibetans and argue how
Buddhism was a pivotal force in sustaining and spreading this idea through a well-known myth concerning the origins of the Tibetans.
I will also discuss some of the variations we find in various permutations of this myth.
Touch on it spread. And I think this to broader debates.
All right. So, as I mentioned, there is a broad interdisciplinary debate on the prevalence of premodern, large scale collective identities.
And these debates cover the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, political and regional studies.
So although enquiries into this cluster of themes of ethnicity and race and nationalism and so on cover a panoply of research perspectives,
the historical field is still dominated by the so-called modernist paradigm.
Now, modernists stressed the recent advent of such into regional forms of collective identity,
and these approaches are primarily associated with the works of Benedek Anderson.
Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner.
By and large, modern date, the origins of such identities to the late 18th century and the rise of modern nationalism,
and they locate their insipient in recent historical processes,
such as the impact of the French Revolution, state building industrialisation, print capitalism, mass democracy, colonialism, bureaucracy.
A new communication technologies. Although the most influential works such as these depicted here are concerned with nationalism as such.
They, of course, link up with and have affected scholarship's understanding of ethnicity as well.
So ethnicity, too, is regularly considered a modern phenomenon and certainly in its salient forms tied to European colonialism,
a modern state imposed ethnic classifications and other modern dynamics.
Just Martinus viewpoint, obviously, as much going for it,
informed and still forms and important scholarly counterweight to the power of nationalist mythologies.
Yet the modernist approach has also been criticised for failing to address why such identities could so suddenly take flight.
Appearing almost out of the blue. Therefore, what?
Therefore, what Anthony Smith called Perenyi list approaches.
Argue rather differently.
They say that large collective identities were also a recurring feature of earlier eras as well, although they were by no means standard.
Such scholars argue that these older identity constructs provided antecedents that could be picked up and amplified into modern nationalist age.
The scholarship, therefore, generally tends to highlight the goal of myths, memory,
symbols and religion at large rather than modern states in fostering super regional communities.
Per emulous, authors would embrace, for instance, the assessment forwarded by Richard Jenkins,
who wrote in the context of Northern Ireland that religion can powerfully bear institutional clout with cultural content,
and that is ritual symbolisation of identity constitutes an effective way to make collective identities matter to individuals.
Now, a recurring matter of contention between these two strains of thought modernists and perennial lists.
And this is particularly pertinent to the Tibetan case is the premodern social
relevance of ethnic origin myths that are only invested in written form,
modernist theory, Bartali, see such a test of narratives as literary or political fictions that we're
confined to written sources that circulated largely amongst literate elites.
These athletes, they argue, were quite firmly cordoned off from local communities in general or.
So they tend to see premodern societies as depicted in this in this figure, as comprised of governor's words, quote, small,
self-contained communities, end of quote, that were marked by high degrees of social stratification and cultural and linguistic diversity.
Botanists accordingly argued that such conditions stopped.
Overarching identity constructs from taking hold at a grass roots level prior to modernity and education and states and TV's and phones and.
The Telegraph and so on allow for more connectivity.
Perennial lists, on the other hand, can, of course, such myths far more weight by stressing the fluid boundaries between written works and a remedy,
clergyman's mediating roles between transregional literature and local communities,
and the influence of widespread cultic networks, epic traditions and pilgrimage.
So in the figure displayed here, and I hope everybody can can see it decently, even though it's not quite full size, the lines that separate.
Here at the upper strata from local communities within four perennials not be drawn so firmly.
So. Related issues that still need to be addressed, but they still need to be addressed within to pathology.
Also remain open debates in numerous academic fields with far longer histories than Tibetan studies.
The history of the Arabs, for instance, has been subject to multiple monograph studies in the past two decades.
And in early mediaeval European studies to historical social traction of origin myths is still being debated, sometimes quite hotly.
Across other disciplines,
an area studies to the question as to the extent to which such myths and associated identities held sway amongst local populations poses a,
quote, seemingly insurmountable empirical obstacle.
As our guest recently summarised the issue. Eric Hobsbawm, too, noted that gauging the traction of such super regional identity constructs is, quote,
enormously difficult since it implies discovering the sentiments of the electorate who
form the overwhelming majority of the world's population before the 20th century.
Now, although we may never settle this issue to our content, the breadth and historical depth of Tibetan literature,
which is still largely invisible in interdisciplinary debates,
does extend a promising helping hand and can be expected to be a theoretical value beyond the bounds of Tibetan studies.
To not only are ethno genetic myths copiously attested in Tibetan sources, but various works also provide some insights,
some insight into underground application and usage of ethnic hymns and occasionally even your insight into the oral dimensions of such myths.
Now, as it has been pointed out by several authors in recent years, scholars of Tibetan history have been,
historically speaking anyway largely unconcerned with Tibetan ethnicity and the processes of its formation.
Persistence and adaptation.
So, for instance, Eric Schneiderman and Jerome Rush and Roitman and Donna Bialik as a forthcoming article where they address this issue.
So the label Tibet has therefore often served as a as an under reflected analytic tool,
which is both rooted in and also fuels presumptions often quote on problematically homogeneous Tibetan realm.
To cite Jovic Rush. Now, although some historical outlines of the appearance of Tibetan identity have been published,
no study to date has forward any substantial analysis of the historical records developing notions of who the Tibetans are.
Where they were believed to come from and how this identity was deployed and adapted over time and space.
Such historical research is still marked by a lack of appreciation for ethnicity as a flexible social cognitive process of classification.
Which accordingly can also undergo dramatic shifts over time.
And this, of course, has been shown for the Arabs, the Germans, the Chinese as well.
Now, amongst typical logical publications that broach ethnicity for any of its perspectives are mostly championed in historical work,
which tends to emphasise Buddhist historiography, religious history and mythology.
Here, especially the work by Dreifus, Hot Sauce and Kapstream,
maybe highlight it will stress the historical content contingency of Tibetan identity and the role of Buddhism and early treasured
literature such as such as the Kachin Kakuma and the money come boom in moving it during the first centuries of the second millennium.
No, notably, these authors and many other historians have suggested that Premodern Koopa identity was quite salient by describing
the Tibetans so ways in the historical perspective of problematic singular with terms such as nation or a people.
Political, political, cultural community in the singular or Proteau nationalism, the term originally coined by Hobsbawm.
This is a bit too simplistic. As ethnographers and sociologists have shown in talking to pathologists have also argued.
You know, historians have really sought to address the gap that set separated literary myth
from sociological realities or these myths developments over the centuries.
Oftentimes to theological studies of ethnic origin narratives have presumed the extent sources to preserve some ancient
historical facts and have accordingly mined them for their documentation of older Proteau Tibetan population dynamics.
And this is something that Stein, for instance, did. And I would instead suggest reading such sources as proactive contributors to the construction,
upkeep or transformation of a plastic Tibetan identity, which was subject to quite widely different interpretations by different people.
Recent ethnographic and sociological research on the Tibetan Plateau on the Tibetan Plateau has actually
reigned attention on the topic of ethnicity and is generally far more cognisant of its dynamic nature.
He studies, however, even when including diachronic approaches are largely focussed on the 20th and
21st centuries and tend to stress the influence of institutions and processes.
Typical of the period of the People's Republic of China. Arguably, most extensive review of Tibetan identity was also written by a sociologist, Ben.
And similarly takes a rather modernist, state focussed stance.
He stresses pre-existing local variety on the Tibetan plateau and the, quote, profound impact of Chinese state building.
End of quote, in overcoming these differences. Into 20th and 21st century.
Of course, partly due to Hillman's methodology and also partly due likely to the modern focus of the volume in which we published.
It's notable that this article repeatedly mentions, for instance, the role of social media.
Yet never once mentions the existence of long pedigree, ethnic origin narratives.
So this kind of goes to show the disconnect between some of the historical work and ethnographic work.
That has been done.
And now, historically, both the content and spread of Tibetan ethnic origin narratives were largely tied to the sociological agenda of Buddhism,
as well as to a lesser degree, that if the religion. Seminal renditions of a pivotal origin myth or that the Tibetans were engendered as part
of a sociological scheme devised by the transcendental bodies offer of a taste for the.
In a bid to turn the unsettled Tibetan plateau into a Buddhist haven, UCSF dispatched a biased monkey there.
Who subsequently became the forefather of the region's Juman.
Such narrations, which are preserved in numerous Buddhist works, most composed from the 12th century onward,
detail the subsequent rise of a people held together not just by descent but also by a shared ethnonym history,
religion, territory, livelihood, mental and even dietary predispositions.
Their descent from Bodies Up for Monkey, for instance, supposedly explains the natural inclination for Buddhism.
While his partner, the bloodthirsty rock demon, as the truck's animal explains, in some instances, Tibetans love for meat.
Such descriptions, of course,
subsumed various populations into a single and coherent imagined community and may uncontroversially be called ethnic origin narratives.
Therefore, it early tested notions of the Tibetans were girded to this narrative spread and to the fortunes of Buddhism itself.
Judging by the strong foothold, this narrative and the religion attained over time doesn't seem to have been a key facilitator of Tibetan ethno Gen.
Buddhism was also particularly important to this identity's maintenance and adaptation throughout extended periods of political fragmentation.
Now, state formation and other political developments, of course, also played a pivotal role in this process of ethno genesis,
the rise of the Tibetans, so to say, of the idea of the Tibetans.
The Tibetan Empire much like to contain contemporaneous Arabs on.
Provided the initial impulse for ethanol, Janis's by spreading the old Tibetan language,
boosting transregional ties and contacts and providing large parts of the Tibetan plateau with the shared political legacy,
its rulers engagement with South Asian Buddhists also precipitated one of the first extend origin narratives of the Tibetans.
Written by the missionary Pratts Navarro amongst around the turn of the second millennium.
Of course, Buddhist monasteries and lineages also became political powerhouses in their own right.
And in keeping with Buddha's premise that ethnicity fundamentally revolves around the political and symbolical struggle over how society is divided,
divvied up into different categories. The influence of powerbrokers and political events and social agendas is, of course,
of high relevance when analysing origin myths and developments and changes.
So. Despite political influences.
It was primarily religious remembrance that provided the surface onto which the Tibetans would come to be inscribed over the centuries.
Cultural memory of the imperial state period.
The golden age of later historiography grew to be dominated by Buddhist historians after the empire collapsed in the mid 9th century.
So in the important post, Imperial Buddhist treasure texts as well as in copious later works.
The Tibetans would regularly function as a foil to idealised emperors were now reframed as Buddhist kings of a transcendental nature.
The populace here provided a hierarchical correlate to these different eyes rulers.
They the Tibetans were the field of action of divine rule.
If this is clear from the fact that imperial pedigree's in sources were often prefaced by the genesis of their subjects,
it just happens in the dungeons and in the kitchen cocoa's mine and numerous other histories.
So you get the people and then you get the king's.
Moreover, the status of these emperors as emanations of celestial bodies outfits ensured that their perceived authority,
aspirations and continued engagement with the plateau remained a guiding force.
What quantum hotspot has called a virtual empire.
And it was this empire, his memory of empire, the memory of the state around which Tibetan identity was written.
And this process also has parallels in other cultures and religions, so, for instance,
Adrian Hastings has written about how early Christian nations is the term he uses, develop their identities around a succession of canonised kings.
So religious remembrance of the state and its rulers form the cornerstone of such early identity constructs.
Now, to appraise the role Buddhism played in bolstering the notion of the Tibetans.
Several questions arise. So to what extent did individual forces presenting this myth, such as the Kachin Kakuma, attain canonical status?
How flexible and innovative was this narrative in the hands of various narrators?
How and in which context was it used and to what end?
To capture these dynamics in recognition of the narrative nature of much of the available evidence,
we want to talk about ethnicity and the historical context. I will not turn to.
I will not address the variety of these narrations, a variety that has sometimes gone unrecognised.
Now, although this ethno genetic myths myth was already known about in the 18th century.
And quite widely published on in the 19th century. No, Thorold diachronic study of it has ever been undertaken.
In a piece for a general audience packed Fana as very helpfully illustrated the variety of myths, permutations, which he reports to be numerous.
And Pat Stevenson has compared the myth is preserved in certain seminal sources with the rendition in the 14th century.
It got upset when Mannitol. That, of course, this myth was not it was understandably not his primary concern in this translation of that work,
and he concluded that all covert operations are more or less congruous with one retention of the catch him Kakuma being slightly more detailed.
This conclusion, when we look at more sources, this conclusion glosses over substantial differences between individual works and even between
individual receptions of work sites such as the catchin Kakuma actually differ quite considerably.
As might be expected from the white social and geographic divisions of the Tibetan plateau and from the imagined nature of identities in general,
just origin myth was not stable in for. Nor was it the only narrative about the origin of the Tibetans and also other myths.
So there are numerous permutations with stories of the Tibetans migrating from ancient India or sharing ancestry with the Chinese and Mongols.
Likewise, behind the singular renown of what is often simply referred to as the monkey myth.
There, in fact, hides a plethora of variations.
So there is a broad and elastic array of strands and motives that enabled local authors and agents and communities
to project a particular self understanding or concern onto the cognitive template of the population at large.
In the process, the championing or challenging various notions.
So first and foremost, the influential bottom Kakuma,
which was composed in the 11th or 12th century, is a famous source that already contains this myth.
And it is in at least three different ascensions.
The literature has mostly opted for what is in the literary school catchin Kakuma two is the oldest or preferable edition.
But preliminary research suggests that the oldest version of this myth is in fact preserved in Kachin Kakuma three.
For instance, it's unassuming monkey buddies up far in the third.
Catch him cloakroom a three becomes a full blown emanation of overlooking days fire and the other sanctions.
There are also other elements are embellished, an elaborate.
Here, then, even within the textual history of one work, we see the ancestor being identified closer and closer with Divine Buddhists agency.
Though many renderings such as these identify the ancestral monkey as a disciple
or even an emanation of the region's patron DEEDI of look at this fire.
A relatively early, perhaps 12th century reference in the Busha.
This is the subject of Bashir Paines, this ancestor, as a plain monkey and nothing more.
As Capstan already pointed out. This straightforward rendition, of course, leaves little room for Buddhist theology.
And yet it appears to have retained some currency in Buddhist writings.
It appears, for instance, in the book Genealogy and in the Putin Chintu.
In the latter work from 13, 20 to little stock seems to be placed in the narrative.
And there is a brief passage, but there is no mention whatsoever of anybody's US involvement.
Some narrations, as trainers also already pointed out, identify the monkey by name as Hanuman.
So I'm forgetting to click through the slides because I can click through them more that easily.
Yes. Hullermann, of course, is the famous character from the Indian Ramayana epic.
And there are also hybrid myths.
Such as? Into Hemming's manuscript, which combined the monkey with elements from different traditions.
So in just permutation, the emanation of a poet is up far.
And the rock demoness copulate it. And then miraculously, six eggs appear rather than six.
Proteau beings, Proteau Doolan's or Proteau Tibetans? There from these six eggs come the six classes of beings or animals, hungry ghosts and so on,
with one egg giving rise to superhuman gobal, who's best known as the ancestor of man from human to boot rather than Buddhist traditions.
So in this. Work credit is given to duties from separate pantheons.
This permutation, therefore, already illustrates the sometimes porous boundaries between Buddhist and non Buddhist narratives.
Ancestors from separate myths could also be mentioned and even ritually invoked.
Side by side in an inclusive spirit, including by devoted Buddhists.
So, for instance, and knocked him Battuta. This happens, but also an ancestor called Manual's from come into passage displayed here.
I hope you can you can read it. In this passage here, which is drawn from the 17th century manual, we first find a reference to, quote,
all the paternal or patrilineal ancestors pattern of poor, such as the monkey and the rocks, the emulous.
Now, this is an obvious reference to the myth. We are focussing on.
On the following Foleo, however, we find mention of, quote,
the patrilineal ancestors of the six original tribes of Tibet militant group Putzing and DePrince Tinga.
And don't logon to Slushing and send Lipin as well as the ancestor three to our temple.
That is Prince Tinga, and I've written on this elsewhere,
as well as part of a completely different narrative tradition of Tibetan ethnic origins in the three figures mentioned directly after him.
Are the direct ancestors in this tradition of the Tibetans, the Chinese and the Mongols?
Well, the last one she Chen should be ready to shoot with a.
Was the father of the six original plans of the Tibetan Plateau. Then there are also works at MIT, the saintly monkey altogether.
Yet still include his spouse, a red faced rock diminish, and pair her with different figures to create alternative ancestral couples.
This happens, for instance, in the land people settle where she appears as the ancestors of only two of the six original clans.
In other renditions, the couple remains unchanged. Now their offspring suddenly includes various animals or even other ethnic groups.
Get further variety can be found in the topographical setting.
Sign has already pointed out the identity of the ancestress and your significance of some.
Sometimes she's identified explicitly as emanation of the beauty of theta.
And we find differences also in the nature and number of initial offspring, the names, a number of descending lineages,
the presence of elements from the Ramayana and other plot twists and emphases that touch on various other topics,
such as the history of mining the highlands, the geographic divisions and so on.
Furthermore, authors used the myth and recorded and transmitted and perceive them in quite different ways.
So they made the vote. Very long passages to the myth, for instance, in the young tingeing or the cuts in trachoma,
they may ignore it entirely or swiftly gloss over it without personal commitment, as we saw Hootin do.
Explicitly attack, it happens in a 15th century boom, port history doomed to bring history,
genealogies can use it to shore up political hierarchy hierarchies, to contrast the Tibetans at large and to set them apart from the rulers.
And they may also authors may also seek to academically sift historical truth from comparative readings.
So the buxom Genzyme, for instance, dedicates a modern book edition,
five full pages to listing the various theories current about the origins of the Tibetans.
Some forces actively share a narrative of the monk in a humanist with a community.
In a speech. Or they may subordinate to ethno genetic episode two bodies up for some clarification.
They may ritually employ it for a patrol baic purposes, as we saw in the ancestor code manual just now.
And in one instance, it may even elusively be used to snub Eastern Tibetan language speakers.
Passage by Long Tempah associates, the compound with demonic beings,
simple violence and the lust for flesh traits that are often explained in origin myths by reason of their descent from the rock demoness symbol.
For the more 20th and 21st century, sources often line the narrative descend from a monkey with Darwin's theory of evolution.
So just a variety, both in usage and narrative form, already illustrates the plastic nature of this origin narrative.
And the picture of who the Tibetans were and how this was made relevant to the author's time.
A particular community, an agenda. Now, despite the fact that there are numerous recorded ethnic origin narratives in the historical literature,
this is, of course, not to say that the group identity was necessarily very sabien in everyday life.
It was not so first of all.
Many sources detail inter ethnic encounters amongst what we might note is called Tibetans that confirm the Imake separation of, say, Compa from Cuba.
Suzanne Bensinger, for instance, in her translation of So No Agent's biography records.
How come by were looked down upon by the protagonist family?
In other sources, figures from the east are regularly addressed as child of come come to.
Stressing the difference from Koopa. The aforementioned poem By Going Jinpa is another example.
He seems to have seemed comprise uncultured people, something that has actually continued.
Into recent times, in many in some circles, other inhabitance of people, too, are regularly separated from the Bhupinder forces and a Glock of Amdo,
for instance, also a proud, independent self perception genealogies from the predominantly Quintal unit from brimful region of Coupal intention.
Some go forward, completely different origin narratives.
Then there are also passages that separate pulled apart from. Some of them are passed through this Nomad's.
So then suddenly tying her back to a specific livelihood.
So these instances make very clear that modernist theoretical approaches make a strong point.
The notion of Tibetans regularly excluded many populations that we may now where that may now be considered to be Tibetan Luketic or some, too.
And to a degree, these regional differences continue to persist to this day.
So here's for instance. This is one point where Dreyfus's article Proteau Nationalism in Tibet likely saw too much homogeneity.
Judging just by the literature that he had read historical literature.
It's still the modern tendency towards a broader geographic geographic inclusion of other Tibetan language speaking populations in contemporary Tibet,
nationalism, for instance, did not come out of the.
First of all, to the best of my knowledge, genealogical traditions never included combat or underwear as separate populations from the Pooka.
Literate folk, therefore, seemed to have considered them part of one.
The same population, at least amongst lines of descent. Many community origin stories from the east.
Moreover, also trace back vocals to send to Central Tibet.
One biographical introduction from the 17th century, written by a company Buddhist,
implies that populations along the river income where the author himself is from where Tibetan or kooky music.
The genealogy contained in the autobiography of modern Turkey from Amdo written in 1742,
ties in the village groups or his village groups pedigree to the monkey centred myth.
Notably, just work starts out with invocations of the divine protectors of the six Tibetan Kyoto plants and many more such
Eastern narrative's claim and ancestry from imperial imperial armed forces or from central Tibetan religious figures.
Now, the mother's argument could, of course,
be made that these are all necessarily literary resources written by literate elites, literati with Buddhist agendas to push.
But, of course, on the Tibetan plateau, literacy was comparatively widespread and monasteries famously numerous,
what is more, both in primary sources and into the secondary literature,
we can actually find interesting references on matters of morality to the ties between
genealogical literature and oral performance have also been illustrated by Jackson.
So one 17th century autobiography from Crum, for example,
a test that a work centred on ethnic genealogies was actively memorised and recited to interested audiences.
This is in the autobiography of my segment. The passage in question details the arrival of two leading figures from Perry and Martin in come
along with a servant who request of the young protagonist that he explained to them the meal gacek.
Now, this is a reference to the chemical treacher, which is still still extant and contains detailed genealogical accounts of the Tibetans Popa.
The author, the notes, he knew this material by heart. Lola.
And he continued to expound it for the guests throughout the night.
Now, the following morning, he was rewarded with meat, gifts of meat by his by the satisfied visitors.
Similarly, a mid 19th,
a mid 19th century report to buy from a window near Sheening documents how an unlettered nomad related origin myths of an origin myth of the Tibetans,
which he had heard from Allama. A written attestation of a speech from Quoddy and under which Matyas Hammon's believed to be.
Although, unfortunately, we don't know where the original document is.
But he also notes it has archaic spellings, he suggests.
And that also contains an origin myth of the Tibetans and is as explicitly formulated.
Britain is a speech.
Now, the new truck truck, which we already encountered just now, which perhaps dates to the late 14th or 15th century, claims to be composed of songs.
Luke. And also contains Sixsmith.
Ancestor called Manual's says,
as we have seen also regularly include Tibetan ethnic ancestors providing such traditions with a degree of ritual affirmation, too.
And these appear in Buddhist ancestor called Manual's, as well as a neutral bone and testicle manual.
So Tibetans. So such references illustrate that genealogical literature had an important aural dimension in this relativise is the
modernist contention that a cultural chasm separated local communities from the notions pushed in literary works.
Pilgrimage networks would have further contributed to the circulation of such narratives,
so notably the cave where the monkey ancestor is supposed to have lived is a pilgrimage site in its own right.
In the cave in question contains war paintings of the ethno genetic episode.
I don't know how old these are. So such exposure would have given would have even given electric folk visual exposure to the story.
And here, maybe it's also interesting to note that the current Dalai Lama told Thomas Laird that
he himself had first come across the narrative through exactly such a wall painting.
So in just your art, historical research will shortly have more to say on this.
And I intend to follow up on that in the future. All in all, then,
the material that I've shared with you just now provides an important counterweight to existing reports
that firmly separate premodern Compa and Unda identities from that of the central plateau's Cooper.
Recently, for instance, has been argued that, quote,
income and under there is little evidence from the PRC period that peoples had a sense of belonging to a wider Tibetan community.
End of quote. This impression, which surely has its justifications, is also a little too simplistic.
I certainly do not wish to say that these populations necessarily always felt very close or had huge
levels of affinity or let alone that these conceptions would have risen to the level of nationalisms.
It certainly was not the case.
But the modern, more regionally inclusive notion of Tibetan ethnicity and nationalism certainly did have antecedents in genealogical traditions.
So if my current knowledge of the Tibetan historical literature is any indication,
then the modernist approach may oversell the innovative nature of a geographically more wide ranging ethnic category of the Tibetans.
On the other hand, published historical work on the topic tends to underestimate.
Although most research, although much research must still be done and I plan to do that, it is clear, as Dreyfuss already argued,
that modern Tibetan nationalism and ethnic notions do not solely rely on inventive tradition in the sense of Hobsbawm.
Cultural memory of common descent and shared political history was widespread and certainly
spilt beyond the bounds of central Tibet and beyond the bounds of just written literature.
That's it. Thanks for your attention.