Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné (2025)

Jabb, Lama: Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature. The Inescapable Nation. Lanham/Boulder/New York/London: Lexington Books 2015. X, 276 S.8° = Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture. Hartbd. £ 65,00. ISBN 978-1-4985-0333-4

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung

Modernizing the Tibetan Literary Tradition (2).pdf

The 6th International Conference “Issues of far eastern literatures” June 25–29, 2014 Abstracts and papers of the panel Modernizing the Tibetan Literary Tradition

Chasing the Colours of the Rainbow: Tibetan Ethnogenealogies in Flux

The Medieval History Journal 21(2), 2018

This article charts various permutations of a little known ethnogenealogical tradition found in Classical Tibetan literature, which plots the shared ancestry of Tibetan, Chinese, Mongol, and, in some cases, other Asian populations. A contextualisation of the ethnonym ‘Tibetan’ (Bod-pa) is offered first, followed by a brief overview of other extant origin narratives of this ethnic group. The article then turns to discussions of the selected myth’s renditions, which began being written in the 14th c. at the very latest, and seem to have been particularly current on the eastern stretches of the Tibetan Plateau. This survey illustrates that depending on the historical period, geographic location, authorial strategy, and religious affiliation, the narrative was adapted to fit specific social and literary contexts and goals. Accordingly, the list of incorporated ethnic groups varies from source to source, as do their internal hierarchical ranking and specific interpretive twists. All in all, the article paints a picture of a fluid and malleable account in which different narrators and communities actively enlisted, adapted, and instrumentalised specific visions of the ethnic group’s deep past.

Review of Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature: The Inescapable Nation. By Lama Jabb.

International Journal of Asian Studies, 2016

[Review of] Jabb, Lama: Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature. The Inescapable Nation. Lanham/Boulder/New York/London: Lexington Books 2015.

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 2019

It is a great pleasure to see yet another monograph published on the understudied field of modern Tibetan literature. Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature. The Inescapable Nation, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, is a well-informed venture into the uncharted territory of contemporary Tibetan literature. Moreover, Lama Jabb, who was born in the grasslands of north-eastern Tibet, from where he set out over the Himalayas for the exiled Tibetan communities in India and further for university education in the UK, has a unique background for studying contemporary Tibetan literature. Not only is he acquainted with the foremost contemporary Tibetan intellectuals both in exile and in Tibet, but he is also very much at home in the language and literature he explores. When describing Tibet and her territory most Tibetologists remain evasive or retreat to complicated circumscriptions indicating “‘Tibet’ means many things.”1 In fact, it seems to be rather difficult to speak of a unified Tibetan territory or one Tibetan society, which consequently makes it even more difficult to speak of a Tibetan nation ...

Tibetan Textual Culture between Tradition and Modernity

2016

Dorji Wangchuk (together with Orna Almogi), “Prologue: Tibetan Textual Culture between Tradition and Modernity.” In Tibetan Manuscript and Xylograph Traditions: The Written Word and Its Media within the Tibetan Culture Sphere, edited by Orna Almogi. Indian and Tibetan Studies 4. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2016, pp. 5–30.

Mapping recently recovered early Tibetan epistemological works. In: V. Caumanns, J. Heimbel, K. Kano, and A. Schiller (eds.), Gateways to Tibetan Studies, Hamburg, 2021: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg (Indian and Tibetan Studies 12.1–2), pp. 415–460

Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, Volker Caumanns, Jörg Heimbel, Kazuo Kano, and Alexander Schiller (eds.), 2021

“Prologue: Tibetan Textual Culture between Tradition and Modernity”

An Overview of Tibetan History

2025

Transcending simplistic narratives, this book offers a nuanced perspective on Tibetan history. It delves beyond the confines of Central Tibet, providing a brief overview of the entire Tibetan cultural sphere across two millennia. Driven by a commitment to scholarly accuracy and fair representation, the author invites critical engagement and welcomes diverse viewpoints. Readers are encouraged to challenge established misconceptions and embark on a thought-provoking exploration of this rich and complex historical landscape.

2005 Performing Tibet : (...) performing arts in the making of contemporary Tibetan identities

'Performing Tibet' : on the role of traditional and modern performing arts in the making of contemporary Tibetan identities. The secular performing arts practiced in Tibetan-speaking regions have not received much attention in academic research. Yet, they have played, and continue to play – though in a much different way – a crucial social, cultural and political role in the lives of all Tibetans. Those that can be called 'traditional' performing arts comprise narratives (folk tales, the famed Gesar epic, the edifying stories of the bla-ma ma-nis), songs (gzhas, glu, shon), dances (bro, gar, zhab-bro), dramas (a-[l]ce lha-mo), and the hybrid ral-pa genre, to name the most well-known. They are considered 'secular' because they are performed chiefly by the lay people (religious practitioners may sometimes be involved as a leisurely activity). They also convey mostly worldly concerns such as love and personal or social criticism, but devotion for the lamas and yearning to engage in Buddhist practice are recurring themes found throughout all the genres. Moreover, their performance techniques, whether instrumental, vocal or choreographic, are distinct from religious liturgy. They were, and still largely are in rural areas, part and parcel of any major social gathering, whether formal or informal : private celebrations, weddings, community festivals, or secular counterpart to religious ceremonies. This singing and dancing is intimately tied to partying or, rather, to 'celebrating', and therefore to drinking as well. Given the overall emphasis on Buddhist ideals in the Tibetan civilization, these cultural expressions have not been valued as worthwhile objects of study. Neither have they been looked down upon, except for the monks and nuns, who are still officially barred from indulging in these distractive and vow-breaking activities. Being deeply rooted in small-scale community history and customs, they constitute an important part of the oral patrimony of Tibet, but they also often comprise literary elements. Before the 1950s, they have not gone through a reflective process of compilation nor standardization and they are extremely diverse across all the Tibetan regions. New cultural productions have appeared since the 1950s : the political songs, dramas, films and song-and-dance shows crafted by state institutions within the People's Republic of China, as well as some patriotic plays by the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) of Dharamsala ; and more recently, the television dramas, films and pop music known throughout 'global modernity'. Their omnipresence in public life (mainly that of urban Tibetans, young and old, but also gradually in the countryside) attests to their wide-ranging impact: they are played loud in marketplaces, buses, restaurants, streets and even in homes. The core argument of this paper is the following: it is nowadays widely acknowledged that a concern for 'Tibetan identity' – one should nowadays rather use the plural – is fairly recent among Tibetans and that it has come about mainly, but not solely, as a response to the overwhelming effects of the PRC annexation. While the religious, political and historical factors shaping Tibetan civilization have received the attention they duly deserve among scholars, the secular cultural productions have been largely overlooked, despite the fact that they have provided, and continue to provide, powerful icons to feed these community imaginings.