The Tibetan Narrative of the Missionary Desideri in the 18th Century

DOI

10.2991/iccese-19.2019.172How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Desideri; Tibet; narration

Abstract

The Jesuit missionary Desideri, who was born in Italy, was one of the first Westerners to enter Tibet. His knowledge of Tibet was more accurate and richer than that of Westerners who had previously entered Tibet, so it is of high historical value. At the same time, his writing on Tibet also marked the prejudice of the preachers. The opening of the new waterway in the 15th and 17th centuries broke the regional division and isolated development of human civilization, and expanded the scope of human activities. After the geographical great discovery, Western Europeans went overseas and began colonial conquest. The legendary East with infinite wealth is bound to be the target of their expansion. Along with the geographical great discovery is the Reformation Movement (1520-1570). Humanists condemned the dark corruption of the Catholic Church and provided arguments for the Reformers to attack Catholicism. Catholics who lost their faith territory and a large number of believers in Europe made overseas development as a compensation for losses in Europe. Therefore, the pursuit of wealth and the expansion of religion have become an important driving force for the east expansion of the west, so colonial expansion and religious expansion almost happened simultaneously. This expansion has also brought the collision and exchange of Eastern and Western cultures. A religious shrine on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Tibet has gradually emerged in the eyes of Westerners. Beginning with the works of ancient Greek and Roman writers, through the medieval world of Europe, the oriental world is full of oriental legendary illusory colors. Tibet is finally presented as an entity in front of Europeans. Western missionaries, with great enthusiasm and overcoming difficulties to spread the Gospel of Christ in the snowy region, also became the first historical witnesses in the Western world to introduce Tibet, especially Tibetan Buddhism, and became the pioneers to uncover Tibetan Buddhism. Missionaries from Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Britain, France, Russia and other countries entered Tibet from south of the Himalayas or from mainland China. In the course of their missionary work, a large number of records, letters, diaries, etc. were left, which opened the history of the true writing of Tibet. Among them, the Italian missionary Desideri lived in Lhasa for five years and his memoirs are of much value for understanding Tibet at that time.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xiaomei Han
PY  - 2019/04
DA  - 2019/04
TI  - The Tibetan Narrative of the Missionary Desideri in the 18th Century
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Culture, Education and Economic Development of Modern Society (ICCESE 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 794
EP  - 798
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/iccese-19.2019.172
DO  - 10.2991/iccese-19.2019.172
ID  - Han2019/04
ER  -