[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Chris Fynn]

Gray Tuttle, "Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China" has quite 
a bit to say about the use of the term "Lamaism" in China:

Introduction p. 4
<quote> What is now called “Tibetan Buddhism” was called Lamaism (Lama 
jiao) by Chinese well into the 1930’s Similarly, some Tibetans in 
twentieth-century China merely transliterated the Chinese Buddhist term 
for their religion (Ch. Fo jiao became Tib. Buja’o). Although we now 
translate this as “Chinese Buddhism,” the Tibetans did not. In essence, 
in the early twentieth century Tibetans did not typically express a 
shared concept of “Buddhism” that could be understood as a common base 
for ethnic “variants.” Starting in the 1920’s  and progressing into the 
1940’s , many Chinese and some Tibetans came to view these separate 
traditions as part of the larger entity, Buddhism. The Communists in 
China have taken this idea even further, by making Tibetan and Chinese 
(Han) Buddhist traditions merely ethnic varieties of “China’s Buddhism” 
(Zhongguo Fojiao). Over this half-century Tibetan Buddhism went from 
being an alien religion to merely a shared part of a national tradition 
in the eyes of some Chinese. </quote>




p. 70-71
<quote>
Religious Differences in Republican China

The distinction between these traditions is best reflected in the names 
they gave each other, even well into the twentieth century. These 
terminological differences do not mean that the two traditions did not 
recognize some shared origins but rather that they wanted to emphasize 
their differences. For example, Tibetan Buddhism was still disparaged in 
China as the “teachings of the lamas” (lama jiao), often translated as 
“Lamaism.” In the Tibetan tradition, lama (bla ma) is a term used to 
refer to respected teachers, whether prominent religious laymen, monks, 
or reincarnation series, such as those of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. 
However, the term is also applied to any teacher whom a disciple accepts 
as his personal master. The prominence of such figures in the Tibetan 
tradition led the Chinese, and also some Westerners, to call all Tibetan 
monks “lamas”; by extension, the tradition was called Lamaism. Taking a 
distinct religious practice to (mis)represent the entire tradition is 
similar to calling Catholics “Papists.” In both cases the common origins 
of the traditions may be recognized as tracing back to the Buddha or 
Christ, but the variant traditions within each of these “world 
religions” are sufficiently different that adherents often viewed one 
another with great disdain, or at least as differing in critical beliefs 
and practices.

For their part, some twentieth-century Tibetans such as the ninth 
Panchen Lama adopted the Chinese term for Buddhism (Ch. Fo jiao,Tib. Bu 
ja’o) directly into Tibetan to refer to Chinese Buddhism. This term at 
least reflected what the Chinese called their religion, but it failed to 
draw any link between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. For example, the 
Tibetans could have literally translated the term as the “Buddha’s 
teaching” (Sangs rgyas kyi bstan pa), a standard term in Tibetan, but 
they did not, preserving instead its foreignness. Similarly, the 
Tibetans adopted phonetic versions of Chinese Buddhist terms to describe 
Chinese monks (Ch. heshang, Tib. hwa shang) and their monasteries (Ch. 
si,Tib. hwa shang dgon). Again, the Tibetans did not translate the terms 
into their Tibetan equivalents (grwa pa and dgon pa, respectively.

This terminological divide would eventually be bridged, at least by the 
Chinese who respected Tibetan Buddhism. They took to using the phrase 
Tibetan Buddhism (Xizang Fojiao), putting it on an equal footing with 
Chinese Buddhism (Zhongguo Fojiao). Under the Communists these terms 
would be altered to accord with minority nationality theory. Just as all 
citizens were considered “Chinese,” whatever their ethnicity, all 
variants of Buddhism had to be included in Chinese Buddhism (Zhongguo 
Fojiao). Thus, the various traditions were named after their ethnicity, 
for example, the Chinese tradition of Buddhism (Hanchuan Fojiao) and the 
Tibetan tradition of Buddhism (Zangchuan Fojiao). Of course, these 
terminological sleights of hand cannot erase the real differences that 
still exist, but they do indicate the dramatic mental shift that was 
necessary to see these different traditions as part of a single world 
religion. </quote>


- C