"Improvised Orchestra", an 1884 photo by Édouard Hocquard

 

Charles-Édouard Hocquard (1853-1911) was a French military doctor, photographer and explorer (see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-%C3%89douard_Hocquard).

As an army doctor he worked in Vietnam in the years 1884 - 1885, when the French army was battling the Chinese who had invaded North Vietnam.  In those years the north of  Vietnam was called Tonkin, the middle part was Annam, and the South was called Cochinchine. The Vietnamese were commonly called Annamite, or Annamese.

Hocquard wrote about his stay in Tonkin in "Trente mois au Tonkin" ("Thirty months in Tonkin"), in the biannual periodical Le Tour du Monde in 1889 and 1890, after which a book was published in 1892 with the title "Une Campagne au Tonkin" by Hachette Publishers in Paris. Almost a century later a translation in English was published by White Lotus Press, Bangkok, in 1975, under the title "War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin : a field report of the Franco-Chinese War and on customs and beliefs of the Vietnamese (1884-1885)". I advise to read the English version with caution, as Walter E.J. Tipps' translation is questionable.

I compared several of my translations of paragraphs on Annamite theater and music with Tipps's and there are mistakes and inaccuracies in Tipps' translations.

 

All these publications were richly illustrated by engravings made after the original photographs. Not only does Hocquard write a detailed report on the French military campaign, but he also makes plenty of ethnographical observations. And he made hundreds of photographs; wherever he went he took his camera with him. Actually, he had it carried: "The next morning I cross the river (...) followed by a boy who carried my photograph camera." (Hocquard 1975: 573).

Publisher Henry Cremnitz from Paris published Hocquard's photographs, which could be printed to order, or in an album.

Several of his photographs, namely those that deal with music and theatre, are of particular interest to me.

 

This engraving (by Thiriat) of an ensemble of musicians, captioned "orchestre improvisé", "improvised orchestra", is found on p. 145 of the 1892 edition. Hocquard writes (my translation):

"It was impossible for us to close our eyes during the night: our coolies were too close to us. They cooked, played, sung, without stopping for a single moment to sleep. The day had barely dawned when they came to give us an aubade with bizarre instruments, recruited from the village. We had to get up; it was an infernal noise. While two of them were strumming with a kind of three-stringed guitar; another scraped on a small violin, and a fourth played with all his might on a large bronze gong which gave low and prolonged vibrations (which sounded) like bellowing. Our boys wanted to do their part in the concert, one played the flute; another castanets, while a third blew his lungs out in a kind of conch made from a large shell. Everyone played on their own without worrying about their neighbor; it was a terrible pandemonium."

 

This is a photo of the improvised orchestra, it can be found in the Gallica digital library at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84430552/f19.item

 

From Hocquard's writing we can deduce that this photo was taken on 9 April 1884 in Dong-läu.

 

The postures of the musicians in the photo differ slightly from the postures in the engraving. Hocquard took two photos one after the other and gave one to Thiriat to make an engraving of. Here's the photo, that the engraving was made from. I found it in an album of Hocquard photos on the Flickr page of Manhhai.

 

 

 

In 1889 another French orientalist, Jules Silvestre (1841 - 1918), published "L'Empire d'Annam et le peuple Annamite " (The Annam Empire and the Annamite people), which was based for the most part upon a series of (anonymous) columns in 1875 and 1876 in the daily newspaper Courrier de Saigon titled "L'apercu sur la geographie, les productions, l'industrie, les moeurs, et les coutumes du royaume d'Annam" ("Overview of the geography, productions, industry, morals, and customs of the kingdom of Annam"), which was later to be the subtitle of Silvestre's book. Silvestre spent a total of 25 years in Cochinchine, during the last years of which (1884-1886) he was the French main administrator.

A (condensed) version of Silvestre's book appeared in 1890 in three issues of the magazine Globus, Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde ("Illustrated Magazine for Regional and Ethnographic Studies "), band LVIII, no.'s 17, 18, 19, titled "Sitten und Gebräuche der Annamiten" ("Manners and customs of the Annamites"), with respectively 6, 7, and 8 illustrations.

This was curious, as Silvestre's book didn't contain any illustrations. Where did the Globus illustrations come from?

It appeared that Globus was using the engravings from Hocquard's travel episodes published in Le Tour du Monde in 1889 and 1890, without Globus mentioning the source.

Bernard Kleikamp © 20240220

The Protector of the North

Namtöse at Jonang Gompa, Aba, Sichuan Province,
China, 20160222, photo by BK.

Four protector deities, lokapalas (Wylie: 'jig rten skyong) protect the four cardinal directions of the compass around Mount Meru, the axis of the world in the Buddhist world view. Mount Meru is not located in our universe, it exists outside reality and time.

The protector deities have fiery haloes and are shown against a background of clouds on murals and thangkas in Tibetan-Buddhist iconography. In Chinese Buddhism they are shown as three-dimensional larger-than-life statues.

The Protector of the North has an orange- or yellow-colored face and carries an umbrella as a symbol of his sovereignty. His Tibetan name is

Namtöse at Kopan Gompa, Kathmandu.
20130722, photo by BK.

Namtöse (Wylie: rnam thos sras). His Sanskrit name is Vaishravana, but this name is used in Tibetan-Buddhism as well. His Chinese (pinyin) name is Duōwén Tiānwáng. He is the leader of the four protectors of the cardinal directions,

Confusing iconography

Namtöse's iconography is somewhat confusing. As Namtöse he is depicted on murals in temple's entrance halls as one of the four protector deities, orange-faced and holding an umbrella in his right hand. Namtöse is also thought of as the god of wealth and in that aspect/capacity he is sometimes

Yellow Jambhala, with at the bottom the four
protectors of the cardinal directions. Source: Kwai.

called Yellow Jambhala (dzam bha la ser po) and as such is portrayed holding a citron, the fruit of the jambhara tree, in his right hand. Namtöse is also known as Vaishravana and in that manifestation he is seen riding a snow lion, sengay (Wylie: seng ge) but is again holding an umbrella in his right hand like Namtöse. Namtöse on temple murals is never seen riding a snow lion. The snow lion always has its head turned sideways so that it appears to be facing back to Vaishravana. It obeys iconographic rules: the snow lion is white with dark green manes and various tufts of dark green hair on its body, notable on the ankles. The snow lion is a mythic celestial animal and is a symbol for Tibet's snowy mountains.

One face, two eyes, and two arms

In all three manifestations he has one face, two eyes, and two arms, while holding a mongoose (ne'u le, a kind of rat) in the crook of his left arm, which spits precious jewels from its mouth, symbolising wealth. The shape and colour of his face are similar in all three aspects, usually yellow, sometimes orange or a shade in between yellow and orange.

So in Tibetan Buddhism, he is known by the three names: Namtöse,

Vaishravana. Source: Kwai.

Vaishravana, and Yellow Jambhala. But is each name referring to the same character? I would say not. He is one persona with three forms, aspects, shapes, appearances, manifestations, and these three aspects differ in small details from each other.

Yellow Jambhala sits on a lotus. Vaishravana sits on a snow lion. Namtöse is sometimes shown standing, sometimes seated. When Namtöse is seated, it can be on a throne, on a tiger skin, on clouds, on a moon disc, sometimes in lotus position, sometimes with knees dangling. When Namtöse is shown standing, it can be on a moon disc, on a smooth grassy surface, or sometimes on a spot that suggests height which can be interpreted as on top of (an indistinct) Mount Meru. Apparently Namtöse's lower torso does not obey strict iconographic rules, and depends on local style or artist idiosyncrasy.

Sometimes two of his aspects are seen on the same mural or thangka, which proves that Namtöse, Vaishravana and Yellow Jambhala are not the same character.

 

The five Jambhalas. Source: Kwai

The real iconographic confusion begins here. Both Vaishravana riding a lion and Jambhala have five different aspects/manifestations in the colours white, blue/black, green, red, and yellow/orange.

Only the yellow/orange manifestations of both are appearances of Namtöse.

 

White three-eyed Jambhala riding a dragon.
Source: Kwai.

Jambhala

Jambhala's five differents aspects are all mostly similar in posture and appearance, with a mongoose in the left arm and an object in the right hand, but the white and the blue/black Jambhala have three eyes. Green and Red Jambala are sometimes depicted with three eyes too. Red often has three faces and four arms. White Jambhala is often seen riding a dragon. Green holds a skullcup in its right hand, White a golden sword, Yellow a lemon fruit, Blue/Black a gem box, Red a norbu jewel. These are no strict descriptions, variations exist.....

All five Jambhala's are gods of wealth, but each has its own practice and mantra.

Vaishravana

Vaishravana has many different aspects, not all of which are riding a lion. But for clarity's sake I will only pay attention to those who are riding a lion. As such he is the leader of the Yaksha's (nature spirits) and also the leader of the four protectors of the cardinal directions.

The lion of Vaishravana's other colored aspects is not always green with white tufts of hair: it can be white with red tufts of hair, white with grey/black tufts of hair, blue with grey/black tufts of hair,

Vaishravana riding a blue lion with White, Yellow,
and Blue Jambhalas at the bottom. Source: Kwai.

light grey with brown/golden tufts of hair, white with blue tufts of hair, golden with greyish tufts of hair. It seems that there is much liberty among painters about the snow lion's colours, and no uniformly prescribed iconography

Generally all Vaishravana's are seated on their mount with two feet dangling to the left, facing the spectator, all having an umbrella in the right hand and a mongoose in the left arm. Blue/Black Vaishravana is also seen riding a blue horse (cf. HAR).

"There are three divisions in the study of Vaishravana iconography" (HAR www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=5383, consulted 20200324). Each category apparently is based on interpretations of different kinds of Buddhist (tantric) scriptures. I am only paying attention here to the first category, Vaishravana as part of the four protectors, which is based on narrative descriptions in the early Sutras.

 

Vaishravana, riding a red-haired snow lion. Source: Kwai.

Sources

HAR Himalayan Art Resources (www.himalayanart.org)

Iconographic image collection of the author.


Bernard Kleikamp, Leiden, Netherlands, 20200324

Vaishravana, riding a red lion. Source: Kwai.

David Teniers

David Teniers (Antwerp 1610 - Brussels 1690), was a Flemish baroque painter who worked at the Brussels court. He is known as David Teniers the Younger, to distinguish him from his father and his son both called David and both painters.

He was married to Anna Brueghel, a daughter of Jan Brueghel sr. One of the wedding witnesses was Rubens.

He painted landscapes, portraits, genre paintings and still lifes. Like his more or less contemporaries
the Brueghel dynasty and Avercamp, he specialized in one type of painting, which he, with minor variations, painted repeatedly over the years. That painting is a village fair in front of an inn on the countryside with a bagpipe player standing on a barrel providing the music.

Flemish Village Fair ("Vlaamse Kermis") (1652). Brussels, Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

Of course I didn't know this when I first saw one of Teniers' Village Fairs with bagpipe player in
the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium in November 2009. I only found out later.
I remember spending some time admiring the painting. I'm a sucker for musical instruments on
paintings.

In December 2016 I visited the Pushkin Museum in Moscow to see the Raphael exhibition.
Whenever I visit a museum I also always check out the galleries with Netherlands' 17th c. genre
paintings, hoping for some Rembrandt or Jan Steen, and I wasn't disappointed.
But there was also a Teniers, a Village Fair with bagpipe player. I liked that one enough to make a
photo of it. Back home, I checked it against Teniers' Brussels painting, and indeed, they were
thematically quite alike. I didn't think much else of it then yet.

Village Fair ("Kermessa") (1650). Moscow, Pushkin Museum.

That changed when I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in September 2018. In the niches
with masterpieces surrounding the Nachtwacht (The "Night Watch") was another, slightly
different version, of Teniers' Village Fair with bagpipe player exhibited. Yay. I was excited.
I had an Aha Erlebnis.

Peasant Kermis (Boerenkermis") (1665). Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

In October 2018 I was on holiday in France. Elma and I visited the Musée des Beaux Arts in Reims.
Their collection of Netherlands' genre paintings wasn't really impressive, but there was a real nice collection of late 19th c. Oriental scenes by French painters. And hidden in a corner, positioned there almost as an afterthought, was a Village Fair with bagpipe player by Teniers. It was as if the sky opened and a ray of sunlight lit up the painting. I had an epiphany. I couldn't see anything else but the painting.
I must have stood there for 15 minutes or more, watching from various angles near and far, left and
right. The room guard eyed me suspiciously. No matter, I was hooked.

Parish Fair ("Fete de Village") (n.d.). Reims, Musée des Beaux Arts.

In October the Venduehuis der Notarissen ("Auction Room of the Notaries") in The Hague,
Netherlands, sent me a link to its November autumn auction: European Fine Art. Sometimes,
like I did this time, I check out the catalogue for no apparent reason. Lot no. 5 was a painting
"Follower of David Teniers (17th Century) Feasting Peasants". It was estimated at €1000 - €1500.

Was this a sign or mere coincidence. Was a power from above telling me to bid on it? Eventually I
decided not to, mainly because I wasn't convinced it was a real Teniers. The inn was too small, the
crowd too thin, the painting too coarse, the bagpipe player didn't stand on an a barrel, and the
bagpipe sounded offkey.
It eventually was sold for €1000.

Feasting Peasants (17th. c). The Hague, Autumn Auction of the Notaries.

I am curious when I'll run into my next Village Fair.

addendum 20211203.

I came across my next Village Fair by David Teniers on 20210910 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Kassel, Germany and it was titled Bauerntanz vor dem Wirtshaus (Peasants Dancing outside an Inn).

This "Village Fair" is considerably larger than the other ones. The scene with inn, dancers, and bagpipe player on a barrel is augmented to the right with a country scene and to above with clouds. It kind makes me suspicious that the other Village Fairs originally may have been larger as well, but for some reason were cropped.

Later that day Elma and I had a nice meeting at lunch in the museum restaurant with art collectors  Eyk van Otterloo and his wife Rose-Marie, who had specially come to the Gemäldegalerie to view Rembrandt's Saskia, after having attended the opening of the Vermeer exhibition in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden the day before.

The Protector of the East

The most important room in a Tibetan-Buddhist monastery is the lha khang (lit. house of god), which is the main hall or shrine room. This is where puja celebration takes place. The main hall is closed with imposing doors and the lha khang is usually only open for celebrations, which can be as often as three or four times daily.

New Dabzang Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, 2018

The entrance hall is situated before the main hall. This is where people take their shoes off before entering the main hall. The front and sometimes the sides of the entrance hall are open to the outside, so the entrance hall is always open to the public. The walls are for the most part covered with murals depicting scenes and symbols from Buddhist mythology.

In Buddhist religion Mount Meru is the axis of the world. Meru is located  beyond the physical plane of reality, in a place of perfection and transcendence.
Sometimes one can see a representation of Mount Meru among the murals in the entrance hall.

Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet, 1996.

Four guardian deities protect the four cardinal points of the compass around Mount Meru. They have fiery haloes and are shown against a background of clouds. The North has an orange colored face and carries an umbrella, the East has a white or pale face and holds a musical instrument, the South has a blue face and carries a sword, while the West has a red face and carries either a stupa or a snake. Their Tibetan names are Chenmizang, Yulkhorsung, Namtöse and Phagyepo. They have different names in other languages.

The Four Protectors of the Cardinal Directions are always present in an entrance hall of a Tibetan-Buddhist monastery. They protect the monastery from harm. The protector of the East and the protector of the South are on the left of the entrance doors, and the protector of the West and the protector of the North are on the right.  Often a huge prayer wheel is also found in or adjacent to the entrance hall.

If a monastery is small and an entrance hall is lacking, the protectors are found on the walls of the main hall.

Kopan Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, at corner of stupa, 2018.

As a musicologist I am naturally drawn to music, musicians, and musical instruments. So from the day in 1996 I entered the Jokhang Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, and first met Yulkhorsung (Wylie: Yul-‘khor-srung), the Protector of the East, I was hooked. I've been photographing Yulkhorsung ever since and I now know that Yulkhorsung and his fellow protectors are not only found on murals in the entrance halls to monasteries. They are also found on the four square corners of stupas as three-dimensional figurines. When an imaginary line is drawn from the center of the stupa to a protector at its corner, it should coincide with that protector's cardinal direction. The four protectors are also found in Chinese Buddhist temples and monasteries as larger-than-life statues. They are found as small statues in artisan's workshops in copper or clay for later acquisition by worshippers to give a place in their own house altars. And they are found

Giant rock painting beside road S203 Xining to Repkong, Qinghai, China, 2016.

in and on numerous other Hindu and Buddhist places: temples, fortresses, royal palaces, monasteries, rock paintings, thangkas.

Yulkhorsung holds a stringed plucked lute. In Tibetan-Buddhist monasteries the lute is sometimes a dranyen. In India it is often a vina. In China it can be a pipa.

Bod brgyud nang bstan brnyan ris kun btus, loosely translated as "Compendium of Buddhist patterns and images of the Tibetan people" is an image book with black-and-white drawings with examples for thangka and mural painters. It was published by Gansu Province Nationalities Languages Press, 2008.

For a Westerner like me, this book is handy to use as an iconographic aid. It has thousands of example images, from clouds and dragons to the six symbols of long life and the protectors of the cardinal directions. Each page is subtitled in Tibetan and English. Here I find an archetypal Yulkhorsung, that oddly is named Dhritashtra (which is the Indian name for the protector of the East, actually the correct spelling is Dhṛtarāṣṭra), although in the Tibetan spelling the name is written correctly. I'm showing here also the page with lute variations. Compare these lutes with the photos, you will see remarkable similarities.

The Yulkhorsung from the drawing book is facing to his right. There are variations in posture, where he is facing to his left, or straight forward.

East and South Protectors (with red face!), Aidao Nunnery, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, a Chinese Buddhist Monastery, 2016.

 

East and South Protectors, Tharlam Gompa, Boudhanath, Nepal, 2018.

All photos taken by me © 1996, 2016, 2018 Pan Records.
 

Lama Wangdu

Gelung Wangdu Monastery in Boudanath was located in a side street of Boudha Main Road, opposite the wall surrounding the garden of the Hyatt Hotel. Its official name was Pal Gyi Langkor Jangsem Kunga Ling, but it was generally known as Lama Wangdu Gompa. Gompa is Tibetan for monastery. It was founded in 2000 and abandoned in about 2016.

During my 2012 summer school course in colloquial Tibetan I used to go there regularly. My landlord Sonam Dorjee Choepa was a regular and he introduced me.

Sonam is an adherent of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Nyingma is the oldest school and dates from the eighth or ninth century. Nying is Tibetan for "old". Lama Wangdu Gompa, a nyingma monastery, was a few hundred meters down the road from where he lived, and Sonam used to attend the 6:30 pm chod (pronounced "chö") meditation.

I went to chod with him regularly. I could follow the order of the meditation quite easily, as it was noted down in a handy booklet with Tibetan text and English translations, that I was allowed to copy in the nearby copyshop. But mostly I didn't meditate. I would bring a list of Tibetan words to memorise for next day's class at summer school. Nobody cared from which paper I'd recite. Besides, the younger monks apparently considered the evening chod as routine and an occasion for tomfoolery. Allright, they would recite the words from their books, but they would also throw doughballs at each other.

Young monks playing damaru in the main hall -- 2012

During particular parts of chod recitation, bells and a damaru drum are used. A damaru is a double-sided hourglass-shaped drum with two balls on ropes that are tied to the center. When the drum is turned back and forth, centrifugal force makes the balls move horizontally from one drumside to the other, causing drum beats. The young monks thought it a sport to push each other into their neighbour's centrifugal balls' orbit. Auch.

Chod is a form of tantric meditation, in which the practitioner visualises his body to be stripped layer by layer and devoured by spirits, after which the body is built up in layers again. When the cycle is complete, peace has been made with the spirits. The visualizations are accompanied by recitation, prayer, and ritual percussion instruments.

Sonam Dorjee Choepa meditates not only in the monastery, but also in his prayer room at home or at a burial site. He does so preferably in the evening or at night, because then there's no distraction and the spirits are stronger. "Spirits are present at the sites where bodies are buried. There the  force is strongest." Sonam tells that often mosquitoes are present at burial sites. I ask him if that doesn't bother his meditation. "No", he says, "that helps with the visualisations."

Lama Wangdu giving audience -- 2012

I returned to Boudanath in the summer of 2018. High on my to do list was visiting the Lama Wangdu Gompa again to see if the monks that I befriended were still living there. And I was curious to attend another of Lama Wangdu's audiences and be blessed. At a 2012 audience oil was sprinkled on my head and I received a good luck charm that I was supposed to keep in my wallet, so as to always have money in it. It's still in my wallet and the charm apparently is working. Lama Wangdu also had the reputation of being a strong spiritual healer and teacher.

Closed doors to Lama Wangdu Gompa -- 2018

But when I went there in early July 2018 the monastery doors were closed, and peeking through the slit between the doors, I could not see any activity. I wondered what was going on. Later that day I met Sonam Dorjee Choepa, and he told me what had happened. Lama Wangdu had the habit of spending part of each year in Portland, Oregon, USA, teaching and leading retreats, as can be read on his website (https://lamawangdu.org). But in 2016 he left for good on very short notice. Apparently a note was posted on the monastery door that Lama Wangdu was moving to Canada for permanent meditation. He sold the monastery and took the money with him. The regular chod practitioners of the monastery considered it a shame, they thought he should have donated the money to the poor or to charity.

Lama Wangdu's website looks like no new additions have been made since 2016.

Sonam Dorjee Choepa found a new guru, who lives in a cave in the mountains and who has no possessions. He still goes to graveyards to do his chod and I accompanied him one evening, as of old. He recited, chanted, danced, and I got stung by mosquitoes. The crows sang accompaniment.

Tingri song and dance -- 2018

The Lama Wangdu Gompa opened one day late July 2018 while I was still in Boudanath. Tibetans originating from Tingri area in Tibet had rented it for their yearly reunion and celebration with puja inside the main hall of the monastery in the morning, and Tingri dance and song in the yard the afternoon. I was happy to see that the main hall was unchanged from my memory of 2012. I hope some other school of Tibetan-Buddhism will eventually acquire the monastery.

The Pigeons of the Stupa

The great stupa of Boudanath is the largest stupa in the world. Boudanath lies to the east of Kathmandu. It is a sacred site for Buddhists, and circling it in a clockwise direction—kora—is good for one's karma. It is optional to bring in motion the circa 300 prayer wheels that are found in the outer wall of the stupa, hidden by curtains. In Boudanath lives a large community of exile Tibetans.

The immediate environment of the stupa houses a large colony of pigeons, they number in the tens of thousands. All day long people will come and feed the pigeons. Some entrepreneurs have chosen position immediately next to the feeding place with large stocks of grain, that they sell by the cup. Sometimes the pigeons are startled by something and then half of them exit the feeding frenzy and fly up as on command, to be replaced at once by the same number of fresh pigeons.

Pigeons sit on the roofs and windows of adjacent houses, they sit on anything that gives a foothold, they sit on the stupa, but they don't sit on the nearby Tibetan-Buddhist Ghyanghuti monastery.

Why do people feed the pigeons. Aside from the few tourist with selfiesticks who picture themselves with the pigeons in the background and who by the way don't feed, the feeding population mainly consists of young and middle-aged Tibetan women.

No pigeons on Ghyanghuti monastery

For Buddhists life is sacred, they ordinarily don't kill animals and they leave it to the Newari butchers to provide them with meat for their dinners, as not all Tibetans are vegetarians.

So feeding the pigeons must have something to with the reverence Tibetans feel for life. And since Tibetans as Buddhists also believe in reincarnation, they could very well be thinking to feed a relative, or their parents, or maybe themselves in a next or previous incarnation.

Popular belief learns that reincarnation is linear in time, but I'm not so sure of that. I haven't gotten very deep into the Buddhist concept of time, but I've read sources which suggest that reincarnation can be circular, so that a next reincarnation may happen backwards in time. To me this sounds very plausible, because bardo, the intermediate stage between two lives, is timeless.

So what would these Tibetans ladies be thinking when they feed the pigeons. I guess they won't have very deep philosophical thoughts about afterlife and reincarantion.  They may be just doing it out of habit, with a hidden thought of gaining some karma.

Dagelijkse dingen

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Voor ik in Boudanath aankwam dacht ik elke dag een blogje te maken. Vergeet het maar, er is gewoon te weining tijd. Het programma aan de Summer School is behoorlijk intensief en de vrije tijd die overblijft steek ik in het volgen van de Nepal Tibetan Lhamo Asoociation en zo nu en dan een kloosterritueel. Zo'n blogje als dit kost me ook al gauw twee uur: één uur om het te schrijven en één uur om de foto's erbij te zoeken en het geheel op blogspot te krijgen

...mijn Tibetaanse huisbaas Sonam tijdens meditatie...

Maar ik zal jullie een idee geven hoe een gemiddelde weekdag eruit ziet. Meestal sta ik om zes uur op. Ik zou graag wat langer in bed blijven liggen, maar het straatlawaai is vanaf vijf uur al behoorlijk en als ik een beetje pech heb, dan is mijn huisbaas al vanaf die tijd ook al aan het mediteren, wat gepaard gaat met trompetstoten, getrommel, zang en geluid van belletjes.

Tussen 6 en 8 doe ik een uurtje Tibetaans (grammatica of woordjes). Er is ontbijt en ik was me. Dat wassen is middels een zg. "bucket shower". Er is geen warm water. En soms, zoals de afgelopen dagen, is er helemaal geen water. In dit speciale geval schijnt het dat er een paar dode buffels waren gevonden in het water-reservoir voor deze wijk, zodat dat gereinigd moest worden. In zo'n geval kan ik met een kopje drinkwater en een washandje mijn gezicht en oksels bevochtigen. Tandenpoetsen gaat ook nog net. Gelukkig heb ik vrienden in het Shechen Guesthouse en kan ik daar douchen. Daar werkt de douche zonder mankeren en er is zelfs warm water. Pure luxe.

Van 8 tot 9 is er Tibetaanse grammatica.

Van 9:15 tot 10:15 is er "drill". In de drill zit je met vijven of zessen bij een Tibetaanse instructeur, die korte zinnetjes voorzegt, die met de eerder behandelde grammatica te maken hebben. Die zinnetjes moeten de studenten dan herhalen, eerst gezamenlijk, dan individueel. En dan komen er permutaties in de zinnetjes, een werkwoord of zelfstandig naamwoord wordt vervangen door een ander. Je mag geen aantekeningen raadplegen en er mag geen Engels worden gesproken.

Van 10:15 tot 13 is er pauze, waarbij de mogelijkheid bestaat om tussen 12 en 13 te lunchen in het restaurant van de Shedra.

...alle zomerschool studenten op de eerste dag--zoek mij...

Shedra betekent letterlijk "kloosterschool". En dat klopt aardig, want de school is gevestigd in het klooster van Ka-Nying Shedrup Ling Gompa, dat onder leiding staat van de abt Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche. Hier worden praktijken van zowel de Nyingma als de Kagyu scholen van het Tibetaans Boeddhisme beoefend.

De pauze wordt door de meeste studenten gebruikt om te studeren of om dagelijkse dingen te doen zoals inkopen in de supermarkt of je vuile was weg te brengen of op te halen.

In de grammaticaklas volgen we de opzet van het boek "Manual of Standard Tibetan". We zijn nu zes weken in de cursus en inmiddels bij hoofdstuk 15 aangekomen. We krijgen ook gemiddeld twee keer per week een lijst met ca. 30 Tibetaanse woorden, die je—samen met de behandelde grammatica—moet leren voor de quiz. De quiz is een soort schriftelijke overhoring. Er zijn er twaalf in totaal en het resultaat van de quizzes telt voor 25% mee in je eindbeoordeling.

Het kost mij gemiddeld één uur om 5 woordjes te leren. We zijn nu aangeland bij vocabulaire lijst 12 en op het moment vergeet ik bijna evenveel oude woorden als ik nieuwe aanleer. Hoe heet dat ook weer: de wet van de verminderde meeropbrengst?

...mijn drumleraar Tenzin Namgyal Lama...

Tibetaanse woorden worden niet in Westerse letters geschreven, maar in een uniek karakterschrift, dat in de zevende eeuw is ontwikkeld en sindsdien ongewijzigd is gebleven. Er is een transcriptiemethode, de zg. Wylie-transcriptie, die aan elk onderdeel van een Tibetaanse syllabe een Westerse letter toekent. Je zou dit een letterlijke transcriptie kunnen noemen. Maar die letterlijke transcriptie is niet de manier waarop de woorden worden uitgesproken. Om een voorbeeld te geven: het Tibetaanse woord voor gelukkig is in de Wylie transcriptie skyid-po, maar wordt uitgesproken als kipo. Dat valt nog wel mee. maar wat te denken van bsdad, uitgesproken dè, betekenis: blijven.  Ik leer dus per woord vier dingen: het Tibetaanse karakter, de Wylie transcriptie, de fonetische transcriptie, en de engelse vertaling.

Van 13 tot 14 uur is er weer grammaticaklas. Vrijwel elke dag is er huiswerk.

Van 14:15 tot 15:15 is er individuele les door een Tibetaanse taal-partner. Je krijgt een A4'tje met Tibetaanse zinnetjes, die je moet (proberen te) vertalen. Er moet zo min mogelijk Engels worden gesproken. Soms gaat er wat Tibetaanse conversatie vooraf aan het vertaalwerk.

De meeste studenten blijven daarna nog wat hangen in het Shedra restaurant, om wat te studeren of huiswerk te maken, e-mails te bekijken of een brownie met koffie te nemen.

Op maandag, woensdag en vrijdag van 17 tot 18 uur ga ik naar het gebouw van de Nepal Tibetan Lhamo Association, voor les in de drum-patronen van de Tibetaanse Opera.

Tussen 18:30 en 19:15  ga ik vaak naar naar de cham chod in het naburige Nyingma klooster van Lama Wangdu. Chod is een meditatieritueel in het klooster en het is er heerlijk ontspannend, ik neem altijd een lijstje Tibetaanse woordjes mee om te repeteren. Cham is een dansritueel dat op de binnenplaats van het klooster wordt opgevoerd. In principe is het de ene dag chod en de andere dag cham, maar als het regent, en het regent vaak want het is moesson, dan wordt de cham overgeslagen en is het weer gewoon chod in de grote zaal van het klooster.

...met een sigaartje en een pot olijven in de avondschemering...

Tijdens een mooie avondschemering ben ik een paar keer naar het (platte) dak van het appartementencomplex —waar ik woon— gegaan, om naar de zonsondergang te kijken en daarbij een Italiaanse Toscane Antico te roken en olijven te eten. Het ritueel van sigaren roken en olijven eten maakt me buitengewoon gelukkig en voer ik veel te weinig uit. Thuis in Leiden wordt direkt over de sigarengeur gemopperd, zelfs als ik buiten op het balkon rook.

Om 20 uur krijg ik het avondeten van mijn Tibetaanse amala (lett. "moedertje"), waar ik gehuisvest ben. Het wordt hier donker rond 7 uur 's avonds en de winkels gaan om 9 uur 's avonds dicht. Het wordt niet aangeraden om na negenen nog op straat te zijn, vanwege de wilde honden.

Na het avondeten blijf ik dus thuis, lees nog wat, kijk een aflevering van Star Trek Voyager (die ik op een meegebrachte externe harde schijf heb staan) en ga rond tienen slapen.

Maar in het weekend

ga ik los als een tijger

van changkang* naar kroeg.

• changkang is het Tibetaanse woord voor bierhuis.