The Birth of an Etiquette Story: Tibetan Narratives of U rgyan pa, Qubilai, and the Yuan Government

Abstract

This dissertation traces the birth of a narrative mode about the Tibetan-Mongol relationship during the Yuan period. It does so by interpreting Tibetan narratives about the Tibetan monk U rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (1230–1309) and the Yuan government during the reign of Qubilai (1215–1294. r. 1260–1294). By situating these narratives in their historical and literary contexts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the dissertation recognizes that a key task of the Tibetan literary renditions of the Tibetan-Mongol contacts was to deal with the new dual identity of Tibetan Buddhists in the Yuan government –– they were at once spiritual masters and subjects of the state. The inherent tension of the dual identity often manifested as etiquette conflict and caused representation difficulties in Tibetan Buddhist literature. As a solution, Tibetan authors carefully downplayed the administrative aspect of the Yuan government and to accentuate the personal and spiritual aspect between the master and the monarch. This transformation via etiquette discourse to accommodate the new dual identity would become the basis for traditional memories of the Tibetan-Mongol relationship and deeply influence modern understandings of Tibetan history, resulting in diverging narratives. The identification of this etiquette-focused narrative strategy involves two key tasks: 1) reconstructing the role of the Yuan government in the lives of Tibetan Buddhists and exploring Tibetans’ intimate knowledge of Mongol customs, and 2) detecting the narrative strategies that tempered this role. The textual corpus about U rgyan pa’s life provides the best source so far for accomplishing these tasks because it contains traces of its Tibetan author’s efforts to downplay the role of the Yuan government in a master’s life. Two distinct images of U rgyan pa will emerge from our reading of these texts: 1) a master who shows the spiritual path to the people at large and members of the Yuan government and 2) a subject of the empire who negotiates his benefits within the Yuan institutions.