John Stewart, a Company official in Bengal, wrote this letter to Sir John Pringle in March 1777, and it was printed in the Philosophical Transactions. Stewart never went to Tibet. He retells what George Bogle reported from his mission to the Panchen (Tashi) Lama, adds what he saw of Tibetan and Bhutanese envoys in Calcutta, and prints a translation of the Lama's letter to Warren Hastings. Tartars appear as the wider Buddhist world around Tibet: Mongols, Kalmyks, the Manchu emperor, and the 'Tartar subjects of Russia' who came as pilgrims. This corpus copy is the 1777 journal printing.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
Mostly the Buddhist peoples of Inner Asia (Mongols, Kalmyks and their kin) who revered the Dalai Lama, plus the Manchu ('Mantchou Tartar') emperor of China and the 'Ehatli' (probably Eluth, that is Dzungar Oirat) Tartars who had once held Tibet. He also uses 'Tartar' as a style label for faces and religious images.
Why read it
It shows how an educated Briton in 1777 pictured a vast 'Tartar' religious world centred on Lhasa, stretching from the Volga to Korea, and it relays Bogle's firsthand picture of a Tibetan lama's stone castle.
Watch out
Stewart is a second-hand reporter working from Bogle's letters, and he says so; only the envoys in Calcutta are his own observation. His remarks on 'superstition' reflect Protestant prejudice. OCR prints the long s as f.
Editorial contextStewart describes Lhasa as populous and flourishing, home to Chinese mandarins, Chinese and Kashmiri merchants and craftsmen, and a daily stream of caravans. Just before this he notes that while Bogle was with the Lama, 'several Mongols and Calmucs arrived from Siberia'. Neither Bogle nor Stewart saw Lhasa: the city is 'represented' to them.
The city of Lahassa, which is the capital, is of no inconsiderable size, and is represented as populous and flourishing. It is the residence of the chief officers of government, and of the Chinese mandarins and their suite. It is also inhabited by Chinese and Cassemirian merchants and artificers, and is the daily resort of numberless traders from all quarters,
A lama's castle of stone or brick, with no stairs or windows
Editorial contextRelaying Bogle, who lived five months with the Panchen Lama, Stewart describes one of the Lama's castles: stone or brick, many courts and halls, rooms finished in Chinese style with gilding and varnish. The surprise is what is missing: upper floors are reached by wooden or iron ladders, and light comes through covered holes in the ceilings. Stewart does not call this a Tartar building; it is the seat of the lama the Tartars revered.
The castle is of stone or brick, with many courts, lofty halls, terraces, and porticos ; and the apartments are in general roomy, and highly finished in the Chinese stile, with gilding, painting, and varnish. There are two conveniencies to which they are utter strangers, stair-cases and windows.
A god-king for the Tartars from the Volga to Korea
Editorial contextStewart explains the Dalai Lama's place in the Tartar world: he is worshipped by the 'heathen Tartars' across the whole breadth of Asia, and the more distant ones treat him as God himself. He adds that even the Manchu emperor of China honours him and keeps a lama envoy at the palace in Peking.
Every body knows that the Delai Lama is the great object of adoration for the various tribes of heathen Tartars, who roam through the vast tract of continent which stretches from the banks of the Volga to Correa on the sea of Japan, the most extensive religious dominion, perhaps, on the face of the globe.
Editorial contextThis is one of the few things Stewart saw himself. The Tibetan envoys in Calcutta struck him as fairer and ruddier than their neighbours, with 'the Tartar face'. He goes on to describe coarse home-woven woollens, Siberian furs for the rich, a Bhutanese envoy in conical hat and silk tunic, and a diet of milk, cheese, butter and barley.
The Thibetians are of a smaller size than their southern neighbours, and of a less robust make. Their complexions are also fairer, and many of them have even a ruddiness in their countenances unknown in the other climates of the east. Those whom I saw at Calcutta appeared to have quite the Tartar face.
Tartar pilgrims from Russia, and letters from the Czar
Editorial contextAccording to Bogle, the Panchen Lama knew of only one European empire, Russia, because many of its Tartar subjects came to Tibet and the Czar had sent him letters and presents. The Lama admired Russia but could not believe it was a match for China ('Cathay').
Many of the Tartar subjects of Russia come to Thibet; and the Czar has even, at various times, sent letters and presents to the Lama.
Editorial contextAfter British troops took a place held by the Bhutanese during the Cooch Behar war, the spoils sent to Calcutta included religious images in clay, gold, silver and enamel. To Stewart they looked exactly like the 'Tartar' art he knew from travellers' drawings. 'Tartar' here is a style label for Tibetan Buddhist art.
Images in clay, in gold, in silver, and in enamel, were sent down to Calcutta; all which appeared perfectly Tartar, as we have them represented in the relations and drawings of travellers; and there were besides several pieces of Chinese paintings and manufactures.
Editorial contextStewart dates Tibet's dependence on China from the 'expulsion' of a Tartar people the OCR prints as 'Ehatli', almost certainly the Eluths (the Dzungar Oirats who seized Lhasa in 1717 and were driven out in 1720). On the same page he calls the Chinese emperor 'a Mantchou Tartar'. Two very different peoples share one label.
ever since the expulsion of the Ehatli Tartars, the kingdom of Thibet is regarded as depending on the empire of China, which they call Cathay; and there actually reside two mandarines, with a garrison of a thousand Chinese, at Lahassa the capital,
Editorial contextStewart describes the mountain wall north of Bengal as a continuation of the Caucasus and calls it a 'stupendous Tartar bulwark' that the Mughals and other Muslim conquerors had always thought impassable. On the same page he says the Jesuit account of Tibet in Du Halde was compiled 'from Tartar relations'. Here 'Tartar' simply means everything beyond the mountains.
This stupendous Tartar bulwark had ever been held impassable by the Mogols, and all other Mussulman conquerors of India:
Editorial contextStewart repeats a rumour, common in European books, that Tartar chiefs were given small portions of the Lama's excrement, kept it in gold boxes and mixed it into their food. On the same page he reports that Bogle 'strenuously insists' the Lama never gave such gifts, only little balls of consecrated flour, which credulous followers might then imagine to be something else.
It is even reported, that many of the Tartar chiefs receive certain presents, consisting of small portions of that, from him, which is ever regarded in all other persons as the most humiliating proof of human nature, and of being subject to its laws, and treasure it up with great reverence in gold boxes, to be mixed occasionally in their ragouts.