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Tibet

15 paragraphs · about 6 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under Tibet, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

61:1.13Con­sid­er­able foraminiferal lime­stone was de­posited in Eu­ro­pean wa­ters. To­day this same stone is el­e­vated to a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, 16,000 feet in the Hi­malayas, and 20,000 feet in Ti­bet. The chalk de­posits of this pe­riod are found along the coasts of Africa and Aus­tralia, on the west coast of South Amer­ica, and about the West In­dies.

64:1.1Prim­i­tive man made his evo­lu­tion­ary ap­pear­ance on earth a lit­tle less than one mil­lion years ago, and he had a vig­or­ous ex­pe­ri­ence. He in­stinc­tively sought to es­cape the dan­ger of min­gling with the in­fe­rior simian tribes. But he could not mi­grate east­ward be­cause of the arid Ti­betan land el­e­va­tions, 30,000 feet above sea level; nei­ther could he go south nor west be­cause of the ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea, which then ex­tended east­ward to the In­dian Ocean; and as he went north, he en­coun­tered the ad­vanc­ing ice. But even when fur­ther mi­gra­tion was blocked by the ice, and though the dis­pers­ing tribes be­came in­creas­ingly hos­tile, the more in­tel­li­gent groups never en­ter­tained the idea of go­ing south­ward to live among their hairy tree-dwell­ing cousins of in­fe­rior in­tel­lect.

64:3.2These high­land Ba­don­ites oc­cu­pied an ex­ten­sive pla­teau sur­rounded by forests, tra­versed by streams, and abound­ing in game. Like some of their cousins in Ti­bet, they lived in crude stone huts, hill­side grot­toes, and semi­un­der­ground pas­sages.

78:1.75. The yel­low race. The Chi­nese peo­ples were well es­tab­lished in con­trol of east­ern Asia. Their most ad­vanced set­tle­ments were sit­u­ated to the north­west of mod­ern China in re­gions bor­der­ing on Ti­bet.

78:5.6These And­ites were the so-called Dra­vid­ian and later Aryan con­querors of In­dia; and their pres­ence in cen­tral Asia greatly up­stepped the an­ces­tors of the Tu­ra­ni­ans. Many of this race jour­neyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Ti­bet and added de­sir­able qual­i­ties to the later Chi­nese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, For­mosa, the East In­dies, and south­ern China, though very few en­tered south­ern China by the coastal route.

79:1.1For over twenty-five thou­sand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eura­sia was pre­dom­i­nantly, though di­min­ish­ingly, And­ite. In the low­lands of Tur­kes­tan the And­ites made the west­ward turn­ing around the in­land lakes into Eu­rope, while from the high­lands of this re­gion they in­fil­trated east­ward. East­ern Tur­kes­tan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser ex­tent, Ti­bet were the an­cient gate­ways through which these peo­ples of Mes­o­po­ta­mia pen­e­trated the moun­tains to the north­ern lands of the yel­low men. The And­ite in­fil­tra­tion of In­dia pro­ceeded from the Tur­kes­tan high­lands into the Pun­jab and from the Ira­nian graz­ing lands through Baluchis­tan. These ear­lier mi­gra­tions were in no sense con­quests; they were, rather, the con­tin­ual drift­ing of the And­ite tribes into west­ern In­dia and China.

79:1.2For al­most fif­teen thou­sand years cen­ters of mixed And­ite cul­ture per­sisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the high­land re­gions of Ti­bet, where the And­ites and An­don­ites had ex­ten­sively min­gled. The Tarim val­ley was the east­ern­most out­post of the true And­ite cul­ture. Here they built their set­tle­ments and en­tered into trade re­la­tions with the pro­gres­sive Chi­nese to the east and with the An­don­ites to the north. In those days the Tarim re­gion was a fer­tile land; the rain­fall was plen­ti­ful. To the east the Gobi was an open grass­land where the herders were grad­u­ally turn­ing to agri­cul­ture. This civ­i­liza­tion per­ished when the rain winds shifted to the south­east, but in its day it ri­valed Mes­o­po­ta­mia it­self.

79:1.3–7 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

79:1.3By 8000 B.C. the slowly in­creas­ing arid­ity of the high­land re­gions of cen­tral Asia be­gan to drive the And­ites to the river bot­toms and the seashores. This in­creas­ing drought not only drove them to the val­leys of the Nile, Eu­phrates, In­dus, and Yel­low rivers, but it pro­duced a new de­vel­op­ment in And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. A new class of men, the traders, be­gan to ap­pear in large num­bers.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

79:1.5But ever-in­creas­ing drought grad­u­ally brought about the great And­ite ex­o­dus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of mi­gra­tion be­gan to veer from north­ward to south­ward, and the Baby­lo­nian cav­al­ry­men be­gan to push into Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

79:1.6In­creas­ing arid­ity in cen­tral Asia fur­ther op­er­ated to re­duce pop­u­la­tion and to ren­der these peo­ple less war­like; and when the di­min­ish­ing rain­fall to the north forced the no­madic An­don­ites south­ward, there was a tremen­dous ex­o­dus of And­ites from Tur­kes­tan. This is the ter­mi­nal move­ment of the so-called Aryans into the Lev­ant and In­dia. It cul­mi­nated that long dis­per­sal of the mixed de­scen­dants of Adam dur­ing which ev­ery Asi­atic and most of the is­land peo­ples of the Pa­cific were to some ex­tent im­proved by these su­pe­rior races.

79:1.7Thus, while they dis­persed over the East­ern Hemi­sphere, the And­ites were dis­pos­sessed of their home­lands in Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan, for it was this ex­ten­sive south­ward move­ment of An­don­ites that di­luted the And­ites in cen­tral Asia nearly to the van­ish­ing point.

79:1.8But even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ there are traces of And­ite blood among the Tu­ra­nian and Ti­betan peo­ples, as is wit­nessed by the blond types oc­ca­sion­ally found in these re­gions. The early Chi­nese an­nals re­cord the pres­ence of the red-haired no­mads to the north of the peace­ful set­tle­ments of the Yel­low River, and there still re­main paint­ings which faith­fully re­cord the pres­ence of both the blond-And­ite and the brunet-Mon­go­lian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.

79:5.3More than three hun­dred thou­sand years ago the main body of the yel­low race en­tered China from the south as coast­wise mi­grants. Each mil­len­nium they pen­e­trated far­ther and far­ther in­land, but they did not make con­tact with their mi­grat­ing Ti­betan breth­ren un­til com­par­a­tively re­cent times.

79:6.5Twenty thou­sand years ago the an­ces­tors of the Chi­nese had built up a dozen strong cen­ters of prim­i­tive cul­ture and learn­ing, es­pe­cially along the Yel­low River and the Yangtze. And now these cen­ters be­gan to be re­in­forced by the ar­rival of a steady stream of su­pe­rior blended peo­ples from Sinkiang and Ti­bet. The mi­gra­tion from Ti­bet to the Yangtze val­ley was not so ex­ten­sive as in the north, nei­ther were the Ti­betan cen­ters so ad­vanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both move­ments car­ried a cer­tain amount of And­ite blood east­ward to the river set­tle­ments.

90:2.11The shamanic priests and med­i­cine men of­ten be­came very wealthy through the ac­cre­tion of their var­i­ous fees which were os­ten­si­bly of­fer­ings to the spir­its. Not in­fre­quently a shaman would ac­cu­mu­late prac­ti­cally all the ma­te­rial wealth of his tribe. Upon the death of a wealthy man it was cus­tom­ary to di­vide his prop­erty equally with the shaman and some pub­lic en­ter­prise or char­ity. This prac­tice still ob­tains in some parts of Ti­bet, where one half the male pop­u­la­tion be­longs to this class of non­pro­duc­ers.

94:9.1Bud­dhism pros­pered be­cause it of­fered sal­va­tion through be­lief in the Bud­dha, the en­light­ened one. It was more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mel­chiz­e­dek truths than any other re­li­gious sys­tem to be found through­out east­ern Asia. But Bud­dhism did not be­come wide­spread as a re­li­gion un­til it was es­poused in self-pro­tec­tion by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikh­na­ton in Egypt, was one of the most re­mark­able civil rulers be­tween Mel­chiz­e­dek and Mi­chael. Asoka built a great In­dian em­pire through the pro­pa­ganda of his Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies. Dur­ing a pe­riod of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than sev­en­teen thou­sand mis­sion­ar­ies to the far­thest fron­tiers of all the known world. In one gen­er­a­tion he made Bud­dhism the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of one half the world. It soon be­came es­tab­lished in Ti­bet, Kash­mir, Cey­lon, Burma, Java, Siam, Ko­rea, China, and Japan. And gen­er­ally speak­ing, it was a re­li­gion vastly su­pe­rior to those which it sup­planted or up­stepped.

94:10.1In Ti­bet may be found the strangest as­so­ci­a­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings com­bined with Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Tao­ism, and Chris­tian­ity. When the Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies en­tered Ti­bet, they en­coun­tered a state of prim­i­tive sav­agery very sim­i­lar to that which the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies found among the north­ern tribes of Eu­rope.

94:10.2These sim­ple-minded Ti­betans would not wholly give up their an­cient magic and charms. Ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als of pres­ent-day Ti­betan rit­u­als re­veals an over­grown broth­er­hood of priests with shaven heads who prac­tice an elab­o­rate rit­ual em­brac­ing bells, chants, in­cense, pro­ces­sion­als, rosaries, im­ages, charms, pic­tures, holy wa­ter, gor­geous vest­ments, and elab­o­rate choirs. They have rigid dog­mas and crys­tal­lized creeds, mys­tic rites and spe­cial fasts. Their hi­er­ar­chy em­braces monks, nuns, ab­bots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to an­gels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They prac­tice con­fes­sions and be­lieve in pur­ga­tory. Their monas­ter­ies are ex­ten­sive and their cathe­drals mag­nif­i­cent. They keep up an end­less rep­e­ti­tion of sa­cred rit­u­als and be­lieve that such cer­e­mo­ni­als be­stow sal­va­tion. Prayers are fas­tened to a wheel, and with its turn­ing they be­lieve the pe­ti­tions be­come ef­fi­ca­cious. Among no other peo­ple of mod­ern times can be found the ob­ser­vance of so much from so many re­li­gions; and it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that such a cu­mu­la­tive liturgy would be­come in­or­di­nately cum­ber­some and in­tol­er­a­bly bur­den­some.

94:10.3The Ti­betans have some­thing of all the lead­ing world re­li­gions ex­cept the sim­ple teach­ings of the Je­su­so­nian gospel: son­ship with God, broth­er­hood with man, and ever-as­cend­ing cit­i­zen­ship in the eter­nal uni­verse.

Onward

Cited alongside: China, Sinkiang, yellow race, Tarim basin, Turanians, Yellow River, Andites, Asia