This is an ambitious book that re-imagines the culture of the Tibetan Empire (620–842) by examining historical/cultural, terminological and ritual categories. It sets itself apart from previous such works by the author's refusal to compartmentalize or separate the religious and the political, his resistance to any notion that there was a coherent pre-Buddhist religion in Tibet and his comparativist perspective that looks not to India or China, but to Central Eurasia for inspiration.
Throughout the work, Walter calls into question many of our basic assumptions about the Tibetan Empire. His two recurring themes are that Buddhism played a major role from the beginning, and that the empire was heavily influenced by Indo-European culture and by what Christopher Beckwith has termed the “Central Eurasian Culture Complex”, (abbreviated “CECC”; see Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009 [reviewed above]). The latter point leads Walter to an imaginative reconstruction of a Tibetan Empire infused with the CECC, particularly the dynamic between the ruler and his comitatus – sworn companions in life and death whom he rewards handsomely with gifts. In this reconstruction Walter draws various analogies, often taking Scythian, Germanic and Mongolian traditions as comparative models. Indian and South-East Asian traditions also receive brief consideration in the context of Buddhist kingship and the role of Avalokiteśvara, while Chinese models are seldom employed.
These models inform Walter's approach to key Old Tibetan terms and to Tibetan imperial structures, allowing him to play the role of historicist, effectively putting himself inside the empire and painting a vivid, lively picture of it. In doing so, Walter has the advantage of asking, and attempting to answer, some of the fundamental questions from which other researchers have tended to shy. In the conclusions to two of the book's four chapters, Walter points out that his reconstructions are in some cases based on “argument by analogy” (p. 37), and “to a certain extent hypothetical” (p. 130). In the course of his arguments and in his notes, however, Walter's assertions are less qualified, and he is unfairly dismissive of those whose work he is attempting to revise or overturn, particularly Ariane Macdonald, Rolf Stein (pp. 155–6, n. 58) and Samten Karmay (pp. 150, n. 47; 153, n. 51).
In a work that calls into question or purports to refute many of our fundamental assumptions about this period, and replace them with new models based on a more “objective” (p. 257) analysis that attends to key terminology, one expects a rigorous treatment of terms such as lha, bla, sku bla and gtsug lag – to which Walter devotes sub-chapters – and an appreciation of the context in which they appear. Sadly, this is frequently lacking. Walter's analyses are often coloured by unfounded assumptions and somewhat quirky biases, such as his contention that bla always means “government” in early documents (pp. 97; 153, n. 51) or his puzzling aversion to gods, which leads him to an idiosyncratic definition that intends (but fails) to show that a lha is not a god (p. 154, n. 38). Walter's approach to his sources is also frustrating. Besides an inconsistent application of his stated methodology of privileging only the demonstrably early Old Tibetan sources to the near exclusion of anything else, Walter dismisses various Dunhuang manuscripts, and even inscriptions, as “late” or “hardly Old Tibetan” without offering any palaeographical or codicological evidence (pp. xxvi, n. 5; 41, n. 5; 118; 125; 145, n. 44; 159, n. 67; 192). Also problematic are those instances where it is evident that Walter's understanding or translation of passages relevant to his arguments is questionable (e.g. p. 72, n. 84 on sku lha) or mistaken (p. 118, in the refrain of Myang and Dba's), or where he has an imperfect understanding of their contexts (e.g. claiming at p. 102 that the verb bshos is absent in mythical narratives by citing its appearance in PT 1285, a text made up of mythical narratives). Mistakes are inevitable when working in Old Tibetan, but these are more easily forgiven when accompanied by doubt or qualification.
Elsewhere Walter offers real insights. His contention that the Tibetan Empire need not necessarily have had any coherent religion is a corrective – though sometimes an over-corrective – to the insidious tendency to assert the existence of a pre-Buddhist, non-Buddhist or “shamanic” religion of the Tibetan Empire as a matter of course, or as a foil to Buddhism. Walter's discussion of the centrality of oaths in binding clans to the king is also insightful. Similarly, Walter's argument that the foundation of Bsam yas Monastery also served to coronate Khri Srong lde btsan as a cakravartin is well made, based though it may be largely on comparative material and on later sources such as the Sba bzhed.
One of Walter's most striking claims is that Buddhism was key to the functioning of the Tibetan Empire from the start, and that this included the belief in the king as an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara. Here Walter finds himself a strange bedfellow with the same “late” Tibetan historical tradition that he dismisses on most other points, e.g. Bon. Walter imagines monks as capable administrators taken exclusively from the nobility, and never occupying a position superior to that of the king. While the latter point is probably fair, the former is little more than an assumption based on Walter's contention that the empire would otherwise have lacked a bureaucracy. In this he shows a remarkable ignorance of imperial Tibet's administrative structures, for which he might have turned to PT 1089 and to Bogoslovskij's work, among many others. On Avalokiteśvara's early association with the Tibetan kings, Walter makes a stronger case. Unfortunately, although he rightly points to the iconography of the Jo khang Temple as crucial to this claim, he does not make adequate use of architectural and art historical material to bolster his claim. In the end, he makes some important points, but fails to convince.
For venturing such an imaginative treatment of the imperial period, Walter is to be applauded, and one hopes that his work will spur on other researchers to confirm or deny his hypotheses.
