The Princess and the Plague: Explaining Epidemics in Imperial Tibet, Khotan, and Central Asia.

• Author: Mcgrath, William A.

Recent bioarchaeological and phylogenetic studies have identified Central Asia as an early reservoir for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the bubonic plague in humans and animals. Lacking documentary evidence, however, historians have heretofore been unable to find a place for South, East, and Central Asia in the premodern history of the plague. This article uses Tibetan-, Chinese-, and Khotanese-language sources to tell a history of the bubonic plague in Central Asia between the seventh and ninth centuries. From official Tibetan histories, we learn of human and animal plagues at the turn of the eighth century. From the prophetic narratives of Khotan, we learn of an unnamed Chinese princess who died in Tibet with a black pox on her chest. Finally, interpreting Tibetan and Khotanese translations of an Ayurvedic medical text in light of bioarchaeological data, we can begin to retrospectively diagnose the plagues of Central Asia. More than just the documentary history of a specific plague outbreak, these sources demonstrate the variegated responses to centuries of plague in Central Asia, including narrative description, scapegoating, ritual protection, humoral diagnosis, and pharmacological and surgical therapies. The end result is an integrated account of the bubonic plague in Central Asia based on Tibetan and Khotanese explanations of epidemics.

To explain an epidemic is to give a name and a story to an otherwise inconceivable web of illness.' Past historians who once lived and died during periods of widespread disease have imputed their epidemic experiences to geographical origins and logical causes, presumably seeking to understand how their previously unimaginable reality came to be. "It started from the Aegyptians who dwell in Pelusium," Procopius (ca. 500-570) wrote of the First Plague Pandemic. "Then it divided and moved in one direction towards Alexandria and the rest of Aegypt, and in the other direction it came to Palestine on the borders of Aegypt; and from there it spread over the whole world ... ." (2) Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) placed the origins of the Second Plague Pandemic "some years before in the Levant, and after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc all the way, [it] had now reached the west." (3) Ibn al-WardT (d. 1349), an Arab historian who died of plague in Syria, that is, in Boccaccio's Levant, pushed the origins of the Black Death even further east, into the "land of darkness." (4) All of these accounts locate the origins of their epidemics in places defined by their alterity: in enemy territories and lands benighted by heretical beliefs. Although recent scholarship has proven that the Black Death did not spread unidirectionally from West Asia to Europe, (5) the vague notion of Oriental origins for Occidental epidemics has persisted into the twenty-first century.

Expanding beyond documentary sources, recent bioarcheological studies have shown that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the bubonic plague in humans and animals, has persisted in Europe and on the Eurasian steppe for at least four thousand years. (6) In a bioarcheological survey of early Central Eurasian peoples, Peter de Barros Damgaard and his colleagues discovered a second- or third-century CE strain of Yersinia pestis in the body of a plague victim (DA101) from the Tianshan [phrase omitted] mountain range of present-day Kyrgyzstan. Comparing this strain with another from sixth-century Germany, they argued that the bubonic plague "was brought to Europe towards the end of the Hunnic period [5 (th) c] through the Silk Road along the southern fringes of the steppes." (7) A subsequent study has refuted this hypothesis, however, arguing that the Tianshan strain is not phylogenetically related to those of sixth-century Europe. (8) Further phylogenetic comparisons will surely reveal more about the relationship between these and other early strains of Yersinia pestis. Regardless of wherever and whatever the true origins of plague in Europe may be, such controversies demonstrate that, as biological evidence for previously undocumented outbreaks of bubonic plague increasingly comes to light, historians also must expand their accounts of the First and Second Plague Pandemics to include the voices of peoples that have long gone unheard. (9)

A lack of reliable sources has generally frustrated past efforts to narrate the history of plague in South, East, and Central Eurasia. In 1976, for example, William McNeill used secondary sources to offer a hypothesis that the bubonic plague was responsible for population losses in China during the Tang (618-907) and Yuan dynasties (1271-1368). (10) More recently, however, Paul Buell refuted this hypothesis by highlighting the sparsity of plague descriptions in Chinese medical texts, the unreliable nature of population and epidemic data from official Chinese sources, and the absence of a clear explanation for how plague would have spread into China. (11) A few years later Robert Hymes used Chinese medical and historical sources to propose that the Black Death originated among the Tangut people of Xixia [phrase omitted]. (1038-1227), and that the ascending Mongol empire (ca. 1200-1350) ultimately spread the plague to Europe. (I2) Yinchuan [phrase omitted], the former capital of the Tangut empire, (l3) is nearly two thousand miles east of the early plague victims found in present-day Kyrgyzstan, however. How might we connect the history of plague on these opposite sides of the Tarim basin? It turns out that the literate peoples of Central Asia have long written of plague, (14) but we will need to carefully translate and interpret their medical texts, prophetic narratives, and spell collections in order to finally integrate Central Asian voices into the global history of plague pandemics.

Our analysis of Central Asian explanations of epidemics primarily follows an unnamed Chinese princess and an unidentified pox in imperial Tibet. By tracing this black pox and other epidemic diseases in Tibetan and Khotanese translations of an Ayurvedic medical treatise, as well as the epidemiological details afforded by different editions of the princess and the plague narrative, we find that the bubonic plague outbreak of the Tibetan empire took place in the early ninth century, and not the early eighth, as previously thought. That being said, the simultaneous expansion of Tibetan and Chinese empires also led to the spread of other epidemic diseases throughout eighth-century Central and East Asia. The Khotanese cult of Princess Vimalaprabha and her apotropaic spells spread along with these epidemics, and ultimately inspired official translations at the Chinese court, unprecedented printing projects in Korea and Japan, and the very narrative of the princess and the plague in Tibet. Taken together, these medical instructions, prophetic tales, and Buddhist spells represent collective responses to the epidemics of seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-century Central Asia. More than just a documentary history of specific plague outbreaks, these explanations of epidemics encode the pains and hopes of countless Tibetan and Khotanese people who lived during an age of violence, disease, and death.

THE CHINESE PRINCESS AND THE BLACK POX

The clearest account of the princess and the plague is found in the Religious History of Khotan (ninth c), perhaps the first history (lo rgyus) ever written in the Tibetan language. (15 ) As the name of this work indicates, it is a history of the transmission of Buddhism (chos = Skt. dharma) in the Central Asian Kingdom of Khotan, as well as its disappearance from this world. Khotan was once a Buddhist kingdom at the southern end of the Tarim basin, an oasis in the Taklamakan desert at the head of an eponymous river flowing northward from the Kunlun [phrase omitted] mountains. Just south of Khotan, across the Kunlun mountain range, is the Tibetan plateau. (16) "Enthusiasm for Buddhist doctrine pervaded it," recounts Ronald Emmerick (1937-2001), a late, great scion of Khotanese Studies. "People came from China to learn about Buddhism. Local scholars were actively engaged in making translations from Sanskrit into their own Iranian language, Khotanese." (17) Because of its geographical proximity and its long history as a center of Buddhist institutions and teachings, Khotan served as a center for Buddhist institutions and an entrepot of Buddhist teachings for Tang China (618-907) and the Tibetan empire (ca. 600-850). These roles are highlighted in the Religions History of Khotan, wherein refugee monks and nuns from all over Central Asia gather in Khotan before finally making their way to Tibet.

Like many Buddhist narratives, the Religious History of Khotan begins with the extensive activities of enlightened beings in Khotan. The Buddha predicts that bodhisattvas will take rebirth as members of the Khotanese royal family and Buddhist teachings and institutions will flourish throughout the Tarim basin. Conflict in the neighboring kingdoms of Central Asia ultimately ensues, however, and the monks of Kashgar and Transoxiana (an se) (18) must seek refuge in the few remaining Buddhist kingdoms in this world. The wandering monks and nuns find no permanent home in Khotan, however, for the Khotanese people had already lost their faith and refuse to materially support them. Hearing about the Tibetan emperor's devotion to Buddhism, however, they decide to proceed south, over the passes of the Kunlun mountains, and onto the Tibetan plateau.

At that time, the Divine Emperor of Tibet had married a Chinese princess, so he and the Lord of China were nephew and uncle. The Chinese princess founded a great temple in Tibet and offered provisions [for the refugee monks and nuns of Central Asia]. When the entire monastic assembly arrived, she supported them. The Greater Vehicle of Buddhism began to flourish in Tibet and, after twelve years, the monastic and lay...