Taktser
Encyclopedia
Taktser or Tengster is a village in the Western Chinese province of Qinghai
(or the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo
).
Taktser was originally an area of pasture land for the larger village of Balangtsa, about two hours walk away in the valley. Cattle were brought to feed on the fertile grazing lands in summer, which caused them to give very rich milk. Later, when people realized that this was also a good place to farm, permanent houses were built, and the village comprised about thirty cottages by the time Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was born.
The village is on the route from Xining
, which was the seat of local Chinese government administration, to Labrang Tashi Khyi, the largest monastery in the area after the famous Kumbum Monastery
.
Taktser is the Tibetan name of the village of Hongya (红崖村 Hóngyá Cūn, Hongaizi in the local dialect), together with 13 other villages forming the Shihuiyao Township
(石灰窑乡), of Ping'an County
, in Haidong Prefecture
. Despite it being under centuries of Chinese-speaking environment, it still belongs to the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo. Taktser is not, as it is usually taken to be, in the proximity of the Kumbum Monastery, rather it is approximately 27 kilometres (16.8 mi) east of the monastery, and around 26 kilometres (16.2 mi) southwest of the town of Ping'an (平安镇, Tibetan: Bayan khar), which is also the seat of the government for the county of the same name.
In 1935, the village, then under the control of Muslim warlord Ma Bufeng, consisted of 17 households, 15 of which were Tibetan. In 1985, there were 40 families and in 2002 the figure rose to 50.
In 2009, the village numbered 256 inhabitants. Over 70% of the 50 families have a television set and a land-line telephone. The village also features 10 mobile phones, 16 motorbikes, and one automobile, but is still isolated from the Internet.
The village of Taktser gained fame as the birthplace of the 14th Dalai Lama in 1935. It also saw the birth of his elder brother, Thupten Jigme Norbu, who was acknowledged by the 13th Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the great lama Taktser Rinpoche.
gave of her household after seeing it in a vision: "there was a tree in the back yard and a stupa (...) at the doorway and (...) we had a small black-and-white dog and a large mastiff on the terrace (...), there were many nationalities in our home.".
In 1954, the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer
, who had the opportunity of speaking to Dzasa Kunsangtse, one of the monk investigators sent to look for the 13th Dalai Lama's reincarnation, describes the house as "a little Chinese peasant house with carved gables.".
The same house is portrayed as "typically Tibetan" by Michael Goodman in 1986 (The way that was taken by the team went through a clearing from which the house, typically Tibetan, was clearly visible, a clearing where the 13th Dalai Lama had rested 30 years beforehand, noticing the beauty of the house.).
To find a more substantial description of the house, one has to turn the biography, published in 1959, of the Dalai Lama's elder brother, Thubten Jigme Norbu. In it the exterior appearance and interior arrangement of the house are depicted in minute detail.
The house was a rectangular, ground-level building, with its various parts arranged around a wide central courtyard. It had a rectangular flat roof. There were no openings in the outside walls, except for the doorway. In the roof there were three chimneys stacks and two air-holes. Around the roof were small gutters with spouts giving out into the courtyard. Over the entrance there was a socket fixed in the roof to take a 10-foot-high flagpole. The flag itself was inscribed with innumerable prayers.
The house was entered from the east side as this was the only side that afforded protection from the weather. A wide corridor led into the yard. To the right was the kitchen, which took up almost the whole eastern wing. In the northern wing was the best room, the altar room and the bedroom of the dalai Lama's parents, all connected with each other. The byre, the guest room and the store room were in the western wing, while the stable, the kennel and the sheep-pen were in the southern wing. The yard, the covered in-way and the stalls were paved with stone slabs. The rooms had wooden floors.
A more recent account of the home comes from Rudy Kong in Dragons, Donkeys, and Dust: Memoirs from a decade in China, published in 2010. Kong visited the home in 2001 and described "a living room of bare concrete that contained nothing more than simple wooden furniture. On the tables and walls were old black and white family photos. In the photos we could see the young child Tenzin Gyatso, who would be pronounced an incarnation of Buddha himself and become the God-King of the Tibetans: the Dalai Lama."
Kong continues: "The next room, we were told, was the room where His Holiness was actually born, and in the room a large prayer wheel, the size that one finds around the perimeter of large Tibetan monasteries, perhaps one metre in diameter, stood directly in the centre. The prayer wheel was draped in alternating yellow and white kata scarves. Several thankas, Buddhist paintings, hung on the filthy walls. The room contained nothing else."
Kong, an agnostic, described the experience of being in the home as "powerful and overwhelming" and was brought to tears.
Standing on a mountain peak 7 km from Taktser, the monastery of Shadzong Ritro was founded by the 4th Karmapa
(1340-1383) at the beginning of the 14th century. It is in this monastery that the 4th Karmapa conferred the first vows to Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). At the time of this ceremony, the Karmapa cut a wick of hair of the child, then sent it on a close boulder of the cave where he lived, creating a crack in the rock. A Juniper
exhaling an odor of human hair and still visible these days would have grown from it. At the time of his return from China, the 13th Dalai Lama, stayed for a while in this monastery, finding the place magnificent, and gazing at the house of his next reincarnation, a detail the monks remembered.
According to Thubten Jigme Norbu, in 1949, by the end of the Chinese Civil War
, plundering hordes controlled by the Communists, robbed and destroyed what they could not take, burning the buildings of Shadzong Ritro.
Qinghai
Qinghai ; Oirat Mongolian: ; ; Salar:) is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake...
(or the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo
Amdo
Amdo is one of the three traditional regions of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River to the Drichu river . While culturally and ethnically a Tibetan area, Amdo has been administered by a...
).
Taktser was originally an area of pasture land for the larger village of Balangtsa, about two hours walk away in the valley. Cattle were brought to feed on the fertile grazing lands in summer, which caused them to give very rich milk. Later, when people realized that this was also a good place to farm, permanent houses were built, and the village comprised about thirty cottages by the time Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was born.
The village is on the route from Xining
Xining
Xining is the capital of Qinghai province, People's Republic of China, and the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. It has 2,208,708 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 1,198,304 live in the built up area made of 4 urban districts.-History:...
, which was the seat of local Chinese government administration, to Labrang Tashi Khyi, the largest monastery in the area after the famous Kumbum Monastery
Kumbum Monastery
Kumbum Monastery is a Buddhist monastery in Qinghai province, China. Kumbum was founded in 1583 in a narrow valley close to the village of Lusar in the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo. Its superior monastery is Drepung, immediately to the west of Lhasa...
.
Taktser is the Tibetan name of the village of Hongya (红崖村 Hóngyá Cūn, Hongaizi in the local dialect), together with 13 other villages forming the Shihuiyao Township
Shihuiyao Township
Shihuiyao Township is a township-level division situated in Chengde, Hebei, China....
(石灰窑乡), of Ping'an County
Ping'an County
Ping'an County is an administrative district in Qinghai, the People's Republic of China. It is one of 43 counties of Qinghai. It is part of the Haidong Prefecture, with the city of the same name being the prefecture seat...
, in Haidong Prefecture
Haidong Prefecture
Haidong Prefecture is a prefecture of Qinghai province in Western China. Its name literally means "east of the Lake."-Geography:...
. Despite it being under centuries of Chinese-speaking environment, it still belongs to the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo. Taktser is not, as it is usually taken to be, in the proximity of the Kumbum Monastery, rather it is approximately 27 kilometres (16.8 mi) east of the monastery, and around 26 kilometres (16.2 mi) southwest of the town of Ping'an (平安镇, Tibetan: Bayan khar), which is also the seat of the government for the county of the same name.
Population
Although the name of Taktser is a reminder of the times when the earliest inhabitants were Tibetan tribes, the Huis have been the main ethnic group in the area since the Qing Dynasty (1644).In 1935, the village, then under the control of Muslim warlord Ma Bufeng, consisted of 17 households, 15 of which were Tibetan. In 1985, there were 40 families and in 2002 the figure rose to 50.
In 2009, the village numbered 256 inhabitants. Over 70% of the 50 families have a television set and a land-line telephone. The village also features 10 mobile phones, 16 motorbikes, and one automobile, but is still isolated from the Internet.
The birthplace of the 14th Dalai Lama
"The former residence of Hongya"
In her book "Dalai Lama, My Son. A Mother's Story", published in 2000, the 14th Dalai Lama's mother, Diki Tsering, reports on the cursory description that the 5th Reting RinpocheReting Rinpoche
Reting Rinpoche is the title held by abbots of Reting Monastery, a Buddhist monastery in central Tibet. The identity of the present Reting Rinpoche is contested.-History of the lineage:...
gave of her household after seeing it in a vision: "there was a tree in the back yard and a stupa (...) at the doorway and (...) we had a small black-and-white dog and a large mastiff on the terrace (...), there were many nationalities in our home.".
In 1954, the Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author.He is best known for his books Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider .-Athletics:...
, who had the opportunity of speaking to Dzasa Kunsangtse, one of the monk investigators sent to look for the 13th Dalai Lama's reincarnation, describes the house as "a little Chinese peasant house with carved gables.".
The same house is portrayed as "typically Tibetan" by Michael Goodman in 1986 (The way that was taken by the team went through a clearing from which the house, typically Tibetan, was clearly visible, a clearing where the 13th Dalai Lama had rested 30 years beforehand, noticing the beauty of the house.).
To find a more substantial description of the house, one has to turn the biography, published in 1959, of the Dalai Lama's elder brother, Thubten Jigme Norbu. In it the exterior appearance and interior arrangement of the house are depicted in minute detail.
The house was a rectangular, ground-level building, with its various parts arranged around a wide central courtyard. It had a rectangular flat roof. There were no openings in the outside walls, except for the doorway. In the roof there were three chimneys stacks and two air-holes. Around the roof were small gutters with spouts giving out into the courtyard. Over the entrance there was a socket fixed in the roof to take a 10-foot-high flagpole. The flag itself was inscribed with innumerable prayers.
The house was entered from the east side as this was the only side that afforded protection from the weather. A wide corridor led into the yard. To the right was the kitchen, which took up almost the whole eastern wing. In the northern wing was the best room, the altar room and the bedroom of the dalai Lama's parents, all connected with each other. The byre, the guest room and the store room were in the western wing, while the stable, the kennel and the sheep-pen were in the southern wing. The yard, the covered in-way and the stalls were paved with stone slabs. The rooms had wooden floors.
A more recent account of the home comes from Rudy Kong in Dragons, Donkeys, and Dust: Memoirs from a decade in China, published in 2010. Kong visited the home in 2001 and described "a living room of bare concrete that contained nothing more than simple wooden furniture. On the tables and walls were old black and white family photos. In the photos we could see the young child Tenzin Gyatso, who would be pronounced an incarnation of Buddha himself and become the God-King of the Tibetans: the Dalai Lama."
Kong continues: "The next room, we were told, was the room where His Holiness was actually born, and in the room a large prayer wheel, the size that one finds around the perimeter of large Tibetan monasteries, perhaps one metre in diameter, stood directly in the centre. The prayer wheel was draped in alternating yellow and white kata scarves. Several thankas, Buddhist paintings, hung on the filthy walls. The room contained nothing else."
Kong, an agnostic, described the experience of being in the home as "powerful and overwhelming" and was brought to tears.
A Monastery of the 4th Karmapa
Rolpe Dorje
Rolpe Dorje was the fourth Gyalwa Karmapa. According to legend the fourth Karmapa's mother, while pregnant, could hear the sound of the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum while the child was in her womb and the baby said the mantra as soon as he was born...
(1340-1383) at the beginning of the 14th century. It is in this monastery that the 4th Karmapa conferred the first vows to Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). At the time of this ceremony, the Karmapa cut a wick of hair of the child, then sent it on a close boulder of the cave where he lived, creating a crack in the rock. A Juniper
Juniper
Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...
exhaling an odor of human hair and still visible these days would have grown from it. At the time of his return from China, the 13th Dalai Lama, stayed for a while in this monastery, finding the place magnificent, and gazing at the house of his next reincarnation, a detail the monks remembered.
According to Thubten Jigme Norbu, in 1949, by the end of the Chinese Civil War
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...
, plundering hordes controlled by the Communists, robbed and destroyed what they could not take, burning the buildings of Shadzong Ritro.
Literature
- Matthias Hermanns, Mythologie der Tibeter. Magie. Religion. Mysterien, 1955, Neuausgabe Mythen und Mysterien, Magie und Religion der Tibeter, Essen o. J., S. 202. ISBN 3884001124
- Andreas Gruschke: The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Amdo, Band 1, Bangkok 2001, ISBN 9-7475-3459-2 - http://www.tibetinfopage.de/Amdo.htm
- Andreas Gruschke: Diederichs kompakt - Dalai Lama. Kreuzlingen - München 2003, ISBN 3720524612