The Golden Chronicle: Translation of a 20th Century Tibetan Text

FAIN: RZ-50686-07

Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382)
Donald S. Lopez (Project Director: November 2006 to August 2009)

Translation of The Golden Chronicle, the Story of a Cosmopolitan's Pilgrimage, by the Tibetan monk, philosopher, and artist, Gendün Chöpel (1905-1951). The Chronicle is considered the most significant work of Tibetan scholarship of the 20th century. (24 months)

Gendün Chöpel (1903-1951) is widely regarded as the most important Tibetan intellectual of the 20th century. Almost half of his collected writings comprise a single work, entitled "The Golden Chronicle, the Story of a Cosmopolitan's Pilgrimage." Composed and illustrated between 1936 and 1941, this work is often described as his "travel journals." It is much more than that, representing his encounter, and conversation, with classical Indian culture, as well as with modernity, as they appeared to him in colonial south Asia. It is also Gendün Chöpel's urgent call to his compatriots to recognize and engage that modernity. Written in a mixture of conversational prose and elegant poetry, it is the most significant work of Tibetan scholarship of the 20th century. The purpose of this project is to make this work available to a broad audience in the humanities by producing the first English translation of "The Golden Chronicle."

Associated Products

Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler (Book)
Title: Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler
Author: Gendun Chopel
Editor: Thupten Jinpa
Editor: Donald S. Lopez, Jr
Abstract: n 1941, philosopher and poet Gendun Chopel (1903–51) sent a large manuscript by ship, train, and yak across mountains and deserts to his homeland in the northeastern corner of Tibet. He would follow it four years later, returning to his native land after twelve years in India and Sri Lanka. But he did not receive the welcome he imagined: he was arrested by the government of the regent of the young Dalai Lama on trumped-up charges of treason. He emerged from prison three years later a broken man and died soon after. Gendun Chopel was a prolific writer during his short life. Yet he considered that manuscript, which he titled Grains of Gold, to be his life’s work, one to delight his compatriots with tales of an ancient Indian and Tibetan past, while alerting them to the wonders and dangers of the strikingly modern land abutting Tibet’s southern border, the British colony of India. Now available for the first time in English, Grains of Gold is a unique compendium of South Asian and Tibetan culture that combines travelogue, drawings, history, and ethnography. Gendun Chopel describes the world he discovered in South Asia, from the ruins of the sacred sites of Buddhism to the Sanskrit classics he learned to read in the original. He is also sharply, often humorously critical of the Tibetan love of the fantastic, bursting one myth after another and finding fault with the accounts of earlier Tibetan pilgrims. Exploring a wide range of cultures and religions central to the history of the region, Gendun Chopel is eager to describe all the new knowledge he gathered in his travels to his Buddhist audience in Tibet. At once the account of the experiences of a tragic figure in Tibetan history and the work of an extraordinary scholar, Grains of Gold is an accessible, compelling work animated by a sense of discovery of both a distant past and a strange present.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/grains-of-gold-tales-of-a-cosmopolitan-traveler/oclc/874146901&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo17041383.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780226091976
Translator: Thupten Jinpa
Translator: Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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