The Tsaparang Mission

Abstract

Andrade made good his promise to return, and Ritter was mistaken when he concluded his able discussion of the first journey with the assertion that “it was long before another missionary followed Andrade through this new gateway into Tibet” ¹). For not only did Andrade himself return to Tsaparang the following year, but with him and after him several missionaries laboured in thebasin of the upper Sutlej ²). This ignorance, however, on the part of Ritter and most other authors should not surprise. The details preserved in the missionary records of the time are few and the records themselves difficult of access. Moreover, many letters from India and Tibet never saw the light, but lay, and in part are still lying, hidden away in the archives of Europe. One part of these documents, that is to say such as are in the possession of the Society of Jesus, have now been drawn upon for the writing of this and the subsequent chapters. They have been used chiefly in so far as they contribute to the history of exploration or topography, the object of the present work being to throw light on the merits of Jesuit missionaries for the enlargement of geographical knowledge. A complete history, therefore, of the Tsaparang mission is outside our scope, though glimpses of the inner life of the mission will occasionally have to be given for the sake of clearness or completeness. As regards the several missionaries who actually entered Tibet or were despatched to that country, of many it is extremely difficult to obtain anything like full information. Such biographical details, however, as are known from the publications of Franco, Hosten, Sommervogel and others, or have been gathered by the writer from unpublished documents, will be briefly related in the footnotes.