The van Manen
Collection
In IIAS Newsletter 19, Professor Yang Enhong wrote about the life and work of Johan van Manen (1877-1943). For the Kern Institute Library, where his books, Tibetan blockprints and manuscripts are kept, her stimulating article gave a new impulse to the ongoing classification work of his unpublished papers.
By HANNA 'T HART
Johan (M.A.J.) van Manen was born in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. As a young theosophist and a keen reader of religious texts he went to Adyar (Theosophical Headquarters near Madras) and worked there as an assistant librarian from 1914 to 1916. In order to study Tibetan culture at its source, he stayed at Ghoom (Darjeeling District, 1916-1918), learning Tibetan under the guidance of the monks of Ghoom Monastery. Settling in Calcutta from 1919 onwards, he worked mainly as the general secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal until his early retirement in 1939.His extensive collections met a good fate. After his death, they were carefully handled and sent to Europe where they were acquired and catalogued by Leiden University. The books found an appropriate place in the Kern Institute, as did the blockprints and manuscripts (Tibetan and Lepcha), while his Tibetan objects are kept in the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden. His papers, unfortunately, were less well off; having been handled over and over again, they lost their coherent order. Not very logically divided between the two institutions, they were numbered in one, the museum, and left to lie in the other. A preliminary description of the Kern Institute portion was made only in 1994, whereupon it appeared that the collection contained numerous handwritten Tibetan texts, both transcripts from classical texts and original modern writings.
Johan van Manen and his helpers used to keep the unpublished documents in 'flat files' (e.g. The Rapid File, from Higginbotham's, Madras and Bangalore), chapters being held together by paperclips. The texts were written with black ink on foolscap-sized paper with watermark, e.g. Reichsadlerpapier. On the back of the file, a rough indication of the contents was written. On the documents themselves an often extensive title was noted, a description of the original, the date of transcribing and correction, and by whom the work had been done. As a protection against damage by insects, neem leaves were scattered between the pages.
By 2000, the collection had become rather dusty and rusty. The black ink has eaten away the paper in places and a number of pages have become quite brittle. The Van Manen material has been presented for conservation in the 'Metamorfoze' project, an effort of the Netherlands Royal Library to conserve internationally valuable collections being kept in Dutch libraries. It is hoped that this work may start in 2001. While waiting for the thorough phase to begin, a half-year subsidy from the IIAS to describe the collection enabled me to proceed with simple conservation work, such as removing the rusty objects and putting each document in a separate folder. The documents are restored as well as possible to their original sequences and numbered. A simple description is being made so that, with a search list, the collection can be rendered reasonably accessible.
Book copying
Collecting was an important aim in van Manen's life, and his possessions included Tibetan art and ethnographic objects, blockprints, and Tibetan and Lepcha manuscripts. Transcription of texts in other collections was also an important means by which he collected. When in Ghoom, van Manen successfully sought the collaboration of Tibetan informants to teach him spoken and written Tibetan. Presumably the collecting and transcribing work had already started at that stage. Phun-tshogs Lung-rtogs, affectionately called dGe-rgan ('tutor'), contributed his traditional Tibetan book copying skills. He had been educated as a scribe at the Dalai Lama's book copying office at Lhasa. In accordance with this tradition, copies in van Manen's collection received a date of copying, date and initials of checking, and information on the original from which the work had been done.
Apart from the regular manuscripts and the more extensive works, which were bound in 37 volumes, the unbound papers contain roughly 125 Tibetan documents of varying lengths. What are the texts about? Apart from transcripts from several other collections and indexes to the blockprints, there are a few copies from longhand (dbu-med) manuscripts into the better readible dbu-can; there are traditional translations from the Sanskrit into Tibetan, and philosophical and grammatical treatises. Some rarities are the seven illustrated folios on the iconography of a Tibetan protective deity, which deserve publication.
In addition to his interest in classical texts, van Manen collected contemporary Tibetan folklore, only part of which was published. A special category consists of the autobiographies written by his Tibetan friends-cum-teachers, which have now been published by Peter Richardus. Around 1918, when still in Ghoom, van Manen received an interesting example of Tibetan literary folklore. K.S. Paul, now well known for his autobiography, wrote a poem on the first World War in the traditional style (ka-bshad), each line starting with a subsequent syllable from the Tibetan alphabet (see illustration). Compositions of this genre are full of allusions, hints, and satire.
Through his position at the Asiatic Society, and his active role in Calcutta's cultural life, van Manen acted as a source of information and support for travellers and scholars working on Tibetan subjects. Numerous first editions of travel books on Tibet in his library remind us of that aspect of his personality. Another such testimony was found with regard to an early manuscript version of W.Y. Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Dead, in which there was a long letter from the author, dated 17 June, 1925, asking Van Manen for his comments and corrections.
Johan van Manen belonged to a generation which believed in the spiritual fraternity of all 'nations'. It was his personal conviction that only through an academic knowledge of cultures might this 'brotherhood of mankind' be realized. For Tibetologists, who may benefit from the wealth of material that van Manen collected, this is a fortunate thing. *
References
Peter Richardus, The Dutch Orientalist Johan van Manen: His life and work. Leiden: Kern Institute, 1989 (Kern Institute miscellanea. 3).
Tibetan Lives: Three Himalayan Autobiographies, ed. by Peter Richardus; with a historical foreword by Alex McKay. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998.
Hanna 't Hart is a staff member of the Kern Institute Library, Leiden University
E-mail: kernlib@let.leidenuniv.nl
A-B-C OF THE GREAT WAR IN THE WEST
KA* It is four years since the terrible great war began.
KHA Those sweet-mouth, black-heart Germans, who are living devils,
GA When shall we hear the words 'They are defeated?'
NGA May our British Government obtain speedy victory.
CA May this great iron-wall-like British Government
CHA Spread like the watery ocean.
JA May this robber-filled German Empire
NYA Dry up like a fish dying for want of water.
TA The palm tree is, indeed, very high.
THA Yet in the end it has to pass under the axe.
DA Now, o ye evil race, called Germans,
NA Do not rejoice, boasting of riches and power.
PA You will be bent like a crooked cane tree.
PHA The fruit of having caused others senseless hurt
BA You will be obliged to eat like depending hoar frost.
MA When the righteous mind of God, with a mother's love,
TSA Shall probe you to the core
TSHA You shall fall into hot fire and have to weep.
DZA When the German Empire will split up in parts
WA Then the time will come that you will have to fly like foxes.
ZHA You Ka-hi-zer, who are like a blind man,
ZA 'Though the food be sweet, one should not be a glutton',
HA Slowly ponder over this.
YA You shall have to wander, leaving all, alone.
RA If you shake your horns often at others
LA Your life will set like the sun over the mountain pass.
SHA O butcher-born Ka-hi-zer,
SA May we hear you have fallen down.
HA May this British Government, free from deceit,
A May it gain victory, o God.
O God, may Emperor Jor-ji
Speedily obtain victory!
Hurray, blessings on the Royal banner!
Written by the humble inhabitant
of Ghum-pahar, Karma Santan Paul
*These syllables form the Tibetan alphabet