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D. Seyfort Ruegg

THE TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL ORDERS IN THE GOVERNANCE OF TIBET

AND THE SO-CALLED ‘PATRON-PRIEST RELATION’ IN INNER ASIA

Tibet and adjacent Inner Asian and Himalayan areas present remarkable and very telling examples of
what is commonly called patronage. The same areas also provide examples of a relationship between
the spiritual and temporal, and between the religious and lay, where the spiritual order represented
by a religious preceptor-officiant is paramount and cannot be adequately described as ‘patronized’
by a ruler or a lay person. Whether he can appropriately be called a ‘priest’ has also to be examined.
This paper summarizes some of the complex and many-faceted Indian and Tibetan materials relating
to these themes and illustrates them with some comparative observations. 1
In Tibet, the spiritual and temporal orders have been represented respectively by a donee (Tib.
mchod gnas/yon gnas, sometimes very loosely referred to as a ‘priest’), and a donor (Tib. sbyin
bdag/yon bdag, often referred to as a ‘patron’). And the highly important idea of the dyarchy (lugs
gñis, tshul gñis, khrims gñis) exercised by the two in the structure of Buddhist society has been
expressed in the Tibetan language by the copulative compounds mchod yon or yon mchod. In a
frequently occurring metaphor, the two – the (lay) ruler donor and the (religious) preceptor donee –
are said to be conjoined, and as it were twinned, like sun and moon, the two heavenly bodies

1
The preceptor donee (mchod gnas) and ruler donor (yon bdag) relationship thought of as linking the spiritual
and temporal orders and discussed in this paper is documented in greater detail in D. Seyfort Ruegg, Ordre
spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée bouddhique de l’Inde et du Tibet (Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation
Indienne, Collège de France, Paris, 1995); source references for key Indian and Tibetan terms and concepts can
be located through the indices in that book. The meanings of the main terms used in the present paper can also
be found in the glossary at the end of the article ‘The preceptor-donor relation in thirteenth-century Tibetan
society and polity’, in: H. Krasser, M. T. Much and E. Steinkellner (ed.), Tibetan studies – Proceedings of the 7th
Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (Vienna, 1997), Volume II, pp. 857-872. (N.B. An article
called ‘The temporal and the spiritual, and the so-called patron-client relation in the governance of Inner Asia
and Tibet’, published in the collective volume Patronage as politics in South Asia edited by Anastasia Piliavsky
(Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 67-79, is attributed there to D. Seyfort Ruegg. The published article has,
however, been inaccurately derived, with numerous additions, excisions, errors and misprints, from a
conference paper prepared by him for a colloquium held at Kings’s College in Cambridge in 2011. As published,
it was neither actually written nor seen in proof before publication by the person to whom it has been
attributed; this textual artefact is, therefore, unauthorized and its attribution incorrect.)

1
illuminating the two halves of the nychthemeron. This metaphor illustrates the fundamental
Tibetan Buddhist concept of the conjoining, or synergy, of Dharma and Rule (chos srid zung ’brel).
These two concepts are attested from an early period in Tibet, and they can be traced back in part
to India, the historical source of so much in Tibetan civilization. The Tibetan words mchod gnas and
yon gnas in fact correspond to and translate Sanskrit dakṣiṇīya/dakṣiṇeya (and Pali dakkhiṇeyya)
‘worthy of the ritual gift/fee’. And Tib. yon bdag is an honorific form of sbyin bdag (= Skt. dānapati)
‘donor’ in the traditional structure of South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist society. There the
mendicant monk, the bhikṣu, and the Community of these monks, the saṃgha, are the recipients of
donations/alms from householders (gṛhapati, gṛhin; Tib. khyim bdag, khyim pa) acting as donors
(dānapati, Tib. sbyin bdag). From the outset it needs, however, to be specified that this relationship of
the two orders was not understood automatically to imply a subordinate status for the religious
preceptor and donee to his lay donor, as the word ‘patron’ might seem to suggest. Sometimes the
two were held to be equal but with distinct domains; but sometimes, according to the particular
circumstances prevailing, one or the other might be regarded as paramount. At times concentrated
in a single person, but sometimes divided between more than one, the two orders of governance and
the two functions they define in governmental practice were normally regarded as complementary,
with the spiritual being regarded as paramount.
In Inner Asia, a version of the religio-political relationship between the donee religious and the
princely lay donor was formalized (if not theorized in all details) at the time when Sa-skya paṇḍi-ta
(Sa-paṇ) Kun-dga’ rgyal-mtshan (1182-1251) – the great abbot-hierarch of the Tibetan state of Sa-
skya – and his nephew and successor ’Phags-pa Blo-gros rgyal-mtshan dpal-bzang- po, 1235-1280)
established an understanding – a kind of religio-political concordat – first with the Mongol prince
Göden (Go-dan) and thereafter with the Sino-Mongol emperor Qubilai Qan (rg. 1260-1294). These
princes were Chinggisids, that is, descendants of the great Mongol conqueror and emperor Chinggis
Qan. As such, they were at the time the dominant power in Inner Asia. It is important to notice that
the Sa-skya hierarch – who in the persons of Sa-skya paṇḍi-ta and his nephew ’Phags-pa entered into
the mchod yon relationship of preceptor donee monk and ruler donor with Göden and later with
Qubilai – was at the same time the ruler of a large and very important territory in Tibet. In other
words, the spiritual order was not always and necessarily totally dissociated from the temporal and
political.
The situation that prevailed has led to this and other socio-political relationships in Tibet being
described as ‘feudal’, a category that is, however, problematic for the time and place; and, once
restored to its historical and cultural context in Tibet, it possesses little meaning.
Examples of the mchod yon relationship can be traced earlier in Inner Asia, notably in the relation-
ship between a hierarch and the ruler of the Tangut state.
Through historical time and geographical space, variations on the theme of the two orders in
governance and of the two functions they define in government have arisen in the practical imple-
mentation of their interrelationship. Problems arose owing to the fact that, in Tibet, this

2
relationship does not seem to have been clearly defined as it were constitutionally. Some thinking
on the subject did, however, take place under the Mongols. This is understandable in view of the
great military and political power of the Mongols and of their centrality in the formation of the
relation between the preceptor monk as donee and the ruler as donor. For, as already noted, the
mchod gnas/yon bdag relation appears to have been developed and implemented in particular
between hierarchs of Sa-skya and a Mongol ruler at the time of the Mongol domination in Inner Asia
and the Sa-skya hegemony in Tibet, even if it had significant precedents and precursors. It was,
then, the historical relation between the Sino-Mongol emperor Quibilai and the hierarch (or prince-
abbot) of Sa-skya that came to serve as one paradigm for the relationship between the temporal and
the spiritual orders in Inner Asia and Tibet.
Notwithstanding almost kaleidoscopic variation, it is legitimate to speak of the spiritual order as
being in theory paramount in the governance and of Tibet. But, needless to say, things did not
always work out just this way in practice.

II

An obstacle to the full understanding of this matter may arise from attempts at conceptualizing it
and translating it into modern Western terminology. For a time, the relationship between the
spiritual and the temporal functions was described as the ‘patron-priest relation’. But this rather
inadequate, and potentially misleading, characterization of it has led to misapprehension.
The Tibetan Buddhist mchod gnas – a religious and very frequently an ordained monk – is scarcely a
‘priest’ in the common and current sense of this word. And, in a Buddhist society and polity, the yon
bdag/sbyin bdag is not a ‘patron’ in the sense of being superior either to the mchod gnas or to the
monk. Rather, he is simultaneously both a benefactor and a beneficiary in relation to the spiritual
preceptor and monk. In an ‘ideal’ Buddhist society and polity, the relation between donor and donee
is to be understood in accordance with one of Buddhism’s fundamental concepts, namely that of
dāna ‘giving/gift, liberality, alms’. In Buddhist thought and practice, it is indeed the donee as ‘merit-
field’ (puṇyakṣetra) who makes it possible for the donor to gain ‘merit’ (bsod nams = puṇya) or ‘good’
(dge ba = kuśala); thus, in effect, it is the donor or dānapati who turns out in the final analysis to be
dependent on the donee, who teaches dharma (dharmadāna) to the donor whilst the latter provides
him with food and other requisites for leading the religious life (āmiṣadāna). The question then
becomes: in this binary relation who is benefiting – or ‘patronizing’ – whom? And is the relationship
symmetrical or asymmetrical? To ignore or set aside fundamental Buddhist concepts, i.e. the
concepts that underpin much of Tibetan society, and from the outset to substitute Western concepts
and terms for them, is to skew and misrepresent what is truly significant in the mchod yon
relationship.
To respond to the question therefore requires making careful distinctions based on original
indigenous (‘emic’) categories beside modern comparative (‘etic’) and Western categories.

3
 III

In the Tibetan idea of governance, a government may be divided into two parallel branches: the
clerical (ser po ‘yellow[-clad]’) – known as the rtse skor – and the lay (skya bo, ‘white[-clad]’) – known
as the šod skor. In theory at least, this particular form of dyarchy came to inform a Tibetan practice
of government. This version of dyarchy, where spiritual and temporal power are distributed
between two persons or two groups, was not, however, the only one known in Tibet. For example, in
Tibetan, the expression bla dpon has sometimes been employed to designate a lama who is also the
ruler (dpon po) of a territory; but the term is polyvalent and hence ambiguous since it has been used
in different contexts.
The form of governance represented over recent centuries by the institution of the dalai lama (Tib.
tā la’i bla ma) is perhaps the best-known of these articulations of dyarchy. As a manifestation (sprul
pa) of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion (karuṇā = thugs rje) who is at the same time
regarded as Lokeśvara ‘lord of the world (of living beings)’ or ‘ethnarch’, the dalai lama has combined
in a single person both the spiritual and temporal orders and functions. This particular arrangement
was institutionalized in the seventeenth century, at the time of the Qošot Mongol ruler Gušri Qan
who conquered Tibet but then passed the rulership of Tibet to Dalai Lama V, the abbot of the dGa’-
ldan pho-brang in the ’Bras-spungs monastic seminary and head of the dGa’-ldan pho-brang
government in Tibet. A further complication is introduced into this scheme by the fact that Dalai
Lama V, even though he combined both spiritual and temporal powers by virtue of being a
manifestation of Avalokiteśvara-Lokeśvara, appointed a minister (sde pa, sde srid) to exercise
temporal functions in the government of Tibet.
To speak of the arrangement formalized in the institution of the dalai lama as a ‘theocracy’ is a
misnomer. What it has been is, rather, a ‘hierocracy’, or more precisely a ‘bodhisattva-cracy’, i.e.
government by a compassionate bodhisattva, namely Avalokiteśvara. Beneath the highest level –
that of the dalai lama as bodhisattva ruler combining both orders and functions in himself – the
government of Tibet has been dyarchic, being comprised of a clerical branch, the rtse skor, and a
branch made up of lay officials, the šod skor already mentioned above.
Other Tibetan hierarchs, too, have been religious figures ruling over important territories or
estates, large or small. Thus the Paṇ-chen Rin-po-che was the ruler over a large part of gTsang
province in southern Tibet. And the Karma-pa Lama too has ruled over extensive territory. A
comparable system of governance was to be found in Bhutan under the Žabs-drung Rin-po-ches. In
Mongolia, the Tibetan-born Jebtsundampa Qutuɣtu VIII (Tib. rJe-btsun dam-pa, known as ‘Boghda
Gegen’), a bla ma and spiritual leader of the Khalkha Mongols based in Urga, was in 1911 named head
of state of the newly founded independent country of Mongolia.

4
 Through the course of history, Tibetan ideas of governance have thus been fairly dynamic and
perhaps somewhat fluid – even so to speak kaleidoscopic – and the actual implementation in practice
of ideas of governance has therefore been varied.

IV

A more or less close interrelationship between the religious/spiritual and the lay/temporal has, of
course, not been a feature exclusive to Tibet and Inner Asia, however characteristic it may have been
in the history of this area. Until modern times in Europe there have been prince-bishops and prince-
abbots, often men born into noble and powerful families. They have been regarded as vassals of the
temporal power, for example in the Germanic Holy Roman Empire.
In this Empire, the primacy of the papacy (and pope) over the empire (and emperor) was a burning
issue. The submission in 1077 at Canossa of the German emperor Henry IV to pope Gregory VII
therefore possessed great symbolic significance. But it did not permanently settle the ‘quarrel over
investiture’, that is, the contentious issue whether a layman emperor was empowered to invest
bishops with their crosier and ring of office, thus symbolically subordinating religious authority to
temporal power by making a bishop a kind of feudal lord in vassalage to the emperor. Attempts at
resolving the quarrel over investiture were made at the Diet of Worms (1124) and the Lateran
Council (1125) by redefining lay investiture. An accommodation was reached between the two
orders by making the investiture of a bishop with the sceptre a temporal prerogative and symbol,
whereas the conferment on him of the ring and crozier was ecclesiastical. In mediaeval times, the
opposition in the Empire between the papal party – known as the Guelphs (after the Germanic
princely family of the Welfen) – and the imperial party – known as the Ghibellines (after the party of
the Hohenstaufens of Waiblingen) – was an important factor in politics and its relation to religion; it
is reflected in Dante’s (1265-1321) writings including La divina commedia. As for the bishop of Rome,
the pope, he was an independent and supreme religious figure, the Holy Father; yet he was at the
same time the ruler of the Papal States (and still today he is the ruler of the Vatican City and thus a
head of state). Rather unexpectedly perhaps, the modern British monarch – descended from the
elector-kings of Hanover who were linked historically with the papal party of the Welfs – is now not
only defender of the faith but also at the head of the (Anglican) Church as its supreme governor; and
there has thus taken place a curious reversal of roles compared with the Welf/Guelph ancestors,
whose party counted as upholders of the supremacy of the papacy.
As late as the early nineteenth century, the French social philosopher F. R. de Lamennais (1782-
1854) began by defending ultramontanism – the paramountcy of the Roman papacy as opposed to
French Gallicanism –, only later to reverse his position, advocating a ‘liberal’ form of Christianity in
which state and church are entirely separate.
In the world of Eastern or Orthodox Christianity – Byzantium, Russia and so forth – the issue of so-
called caesaro-papism – the relation between emperor and patriarch – has been a very significant

5
one. The relation here between the spiritual and the temporal has been delicate. 2 The Orthodox
churches of eastern Christendom are each autocephalous, even if the patriarch of Constantinople is
regarded as the first among the bishops of the Eastern Church.
In the Shi‘i Islam of contemporary Iran, we find power divided between the Supreme Guide – a
jurist-cleric – on the one side and on the other side a President – who may be a layman and who is
constitutionally subordinate to the Supreme Guide. This is in terms of Khomeyni’s concept of
velayat-e-faqih or government of the learned giving primacy in government to the clerical Supreme
Guide. At first sight, perhaps, this concept is strangely similar to a form of the preceptor : donor
relation that has been prevalent in Tibet; but the resemblance is formal rather than real, and in
practice there has been little in common between the Supreme Guide as jurist-cleric and the dalai
lama as a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara-Lokeśvara.
In the Sunni world, the khalif – an Islamic emperor governing a more or less ideal caliphate – also
had a religious function as ruler over the umma or universal community of Muslims. The Islamic
caliphate was (and is often still) seen as possessed of a universal religious dimension. Hence, for
example, the califate movement in India after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire/caliphate
following World War I. In some quarters, the notion of an Islamic caliphate (khilafa) is very much
alive even today.
In the examples given above we can observe that, just as in Tibet, the religious and the temporal
orders and functions have sometimes been distributed between different persons, whilst at other
times the two have been in one way or the other vested in one single person.

When we search for possible Indian antecedents and precursors for the dyarchic Tibetan yon mchod
(sometimes also termed mchod yon) relation, we again find considerable complexity.
In Indian tradition, princes, kings and cakravartin emperors have frequently been associated with a
spiritual adviser and guide, a kalyāṇamitra or (rāja-)guru. The great Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher
Nāgārjuna, to whom hortatory texts and letters of advice addressed to a ruler are indeed ascribed,
was a renowned example towards the beginning of the common era. In legend, Maitreya is
associated with the Cakravartin-emperor Śaṅkha.
For the purposes of the Vedic sacrifice, a distinction was made in India between the sacrificer
(yajamāna) himself – i.e. the organizer and beneficiary of the sacrifice – and the ritual priests (ṛtvij)
who officiate for him at his sacrifice and to whom he offers a ritual gift or fee termed dakṣiṇā.
(Traditionally, this dakṣiṇā is not regarded as a payment made by the sacrificer to priests officiating
at his sacrifice.) Since the yajamāna is the ‘patron’ of the sacrifice he offers, and also the ‘patron’ of
the priests who officiate at his sacrifice, the word ‘patron’ has been in use to designate the yajamāna.
(The Indian jajmānī system of social interrelations involving gifts and services between individuals,

2
On caesaro-papism, see G. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre (Paris, 1996).

6
and the name of which has been supposed to be derived from the Sanskrit root yaj- ‘to sacrifice’, has
been seen as a system of patronage.)
As already seen above, the Tibetan word for the spiritual preceptor donee is precisely mchod
gnas/yon gnas, expressions that correspond to Sanskrit dakṣiṇīya/dakṣiṇeya ‘worthy of dakṣiṇā (the
ritual gift or fee)’. The Tibetan honoriific word yon here translates Skt. dakṣiṇā.
Now, in the Indian and Buddhist worlds, the familiar ‘etic’ oppositions spiritual/temporal,
sacred/profane, or lay/religious sometimes dissolve. This fact is brought home to us for example by
the virtual univocal untranslatability of the polyvalent Sanskrit word dharma: according to the
context, it may mean either religious or worldly duty, law, etc. The third goal of human action
(puruṣārtha) – i.e. dharma – may be either worldly or transmundane. Only in the last of the four goals
– mokṣa ‘liberation’ – do we find a specifically transmundane, and explicitly religious (or rather
spiritual-philosophical), goal. In the Hindu system of the stages of human life (āśrama), moreover,
one and the same (male) individual theoretically passes through the life-stages of a (celibate)
religious student (the brahmacārin), a (married) lay householder (gṛhapati), and a forest-recluse
(vānaprastha, still accompanied by his wife if still living), only sometimes to become, finally, a
(celibate) religious renunciant (saṃnyāsin) seeking mokṣa.
In the classical Indian varṇa (‘class, rank, category’) classification, too, there is no exclusively and
specifically ‘spiritual’ one, even if the first – that of the Brāhmaṇa (who is not simply a priest in the
usual or proper sense) representing the bráhman – may include this. The second varṇa – that of the
Kṣatriya or warrior/ruler representing the kṣatra –, does not include this explicitly; but a warrior or
king is still, of course, expected to conduct himself in accordance with the dharma proper to his class
or varṇa. Here also the familiar opposition sacred/profane seems problematic. (The question of
divine kingship in India cannot be considered here.)
In India, a partial parallel to the Tibetan preceptor monk is provided by the Śaṃkarācāryas, the
heads of the four great Śaiva monasteries of India at the four cardinal points of the compass,
beginning with the great maṭha at Śringeri. The Śaṃkarācārya of Kāñcī is another such figure. The
mediaeval kingdom of Vijayanagara had arrangements that are relevant here, as did the Hindu
kingdom of Nepal. (The purohita, the priestly functionary employed by a king at his court, is in a
different category.)3

VI

3
It might perhaps be supposed that the relation between a lay donor (dānapati) concerned with temporal
affairs and a preceptor donee concerned with spiritual matters might reflect the emic opposition between the
mundane (laukika) and the transmundane (lokottara), but in fact this does not appear to be the case: the
preceptor can be involved in the temporal and mundane as well as in the transmundane, whilst the donor is not
entirely dissociated from religious affairs. And the relation does not really correspond to the etic opposition
sacred : profane. Nor does the relation mirror the opposition between the pragmatic-transactional vyavahāra
and the absolute paramārtha in Buddhist thought.

7
The year 2011 marked a new chapter in the interrelationship between the spiritual and temporal
functions for Tibetans and for Tibetan polity, and the distribution and exercise of the spiritual and
temporal functions then once again assumed particular significance. As already noted, since at least
the seventeenth century, in Tibet the dalai lamas combined spiritual and temporal powers in a single
person. At its summit, Tibetan polity has been ‘bodhisattva-cratic’, the dalai lama being regarded as
a bodhisattva ruler. It was also seen that, below this summit, government in Tibet could be divided
into two distinct branches, the ‘yellow’ monk officials (ser po) and the ‘white’ lay officials (skya bo),
this twofold division operating at levels below the dalai lama.
However, in the spring of 2011, Dalai Lama XIV Blo-bzang bsTan-’dzin rgya-mtsho announced that
he was renouncing his temporal function, henceforth to be vested in an elected Prime Minister (bka’
blon khri pa, at the time Blo bzang Sangs rgyas). The present Dalai Lama’s stated intention was to
continue to act as the spiritual guide and preceptor of the Tibetan people. He thus reverted to an
articulation of dyarchy (the lugs gñis) in which spiritual authority and temporal power, regarded as
complementary, are distributed and vested in two separate persons. In other words, he returned to
the old but classical form of the bicephalic mchod yon model. Although distributed, the two
components of dyarchy, thus envisaged, are not symmetrical given the fact that the spiritual order is
still to be paramount.
In the absence of an independent (or even totally autonomous) Tibetan national territory, the
temporal power now vested in the Prime Minister seems to concern in the first place Tibetans of the
diaspora. And the mchod yon relationship as formerly operating between a religious preceptor and a
lay donor thus takes on a new aspect. For his part, the dalai lama remains the spiritual preceptor and
guide of his entire people, wherever they may live.
Dalai Lama XIV announced his decision to separate the spiritual and temporal orders one century
after Jebtsundampa Qutuɣtu VIII of Urga, the religious head of the Khalkha Mongols of Outer
Mongolia, was proclaimed head of state of a newly founded independent Mongolian state. This
arrangement was, however, an abortive one that events were to bring to an early end barely a decade
later, in 1924, when the Jebtsundampa died, not to be replaced as head of state in Mongolia by a
successor in this hierarch’s spiritual line. A much more striking parallel to the renunciation of his
temporal activities by Dalai Lama XIV is to be found in the fact that, in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI
announced his renunciation of the office of pope, becoming a sort of pope emeritus.

VII

It thus appears that the Tibetans are to give up the undistributed and monocephalic model of
governance, where the spiritual and the temporal functions are both vested in the single person of
the dalai lama, and to turn to a version of the distributed preceptor-ruler model, that is, to a
bicephalic mchod yon paradigm where the two functions are distributed between (at least) two
distinct persons and institutions.

8
 There of course exist significant differences between the prince-bishop/prince-abbot model on the
one side and the Tibetan model traditionally embodied in the institution of the dalai lama. In the
Germanic Holy Roman Empire, the ecclesiastic was an imperial elector (a Kurfürst), like his lay
counterparts. A prince-bishop’s function as imperial elector depended directly less on his
ecclesiastical function as bishop than on his temporal role as the princely ruler of a component part
of this Empire. But in the case of the pope – the Holy Father as Bishop of Rome but also the temporal
ruler of the (former) Papal States and (now) of Vatican City –, the latter role does seem to derive
directly from his religious function, which is clearly paramount.
In the Tibetan Buddhist model, a dalai lama has acted as temporal ruler precisely in virtue of his
spiritual function, as the manifestation (sprul pa) of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara-Lokeśvara, the
compassionate guide and protector of the Tibetan people, and so to speak their ‘ethnarch’
(Lokeśvara).
This appears to have been the case already when a young descendant of Altan Qan, the conquering
ruler of the Tümed Mongols, was chosen to be Dalai Lama IV Yon-tan rgya-mtsho (1589-1617).
(Historically speaking, this case seemingly represents an example of ‘patronage’ being sought by
Tibetans from powerful non-Tibetan rulers who nevertheless counted as Buddhists.) It was the same
Altan Qan who had earlier conferred the (Mongolian) title of dalai lama (Tib. tā la’i bla ma) on bSod-
nams rgya-mtsho (1543-1588), Yon-tan rgya mtsho’s Tibetan predecessor in the line of dalai lamas.
(bSod-nams rgya-mtsho’s two immediate predecessors in the line – dGe ’dun grub (1391-1475) and
dGe ’dun rgya mtsho (1475-1542) – then came to be regarded respectively as the first and second
dalai lamas, even though they had never actually borne this title during their lifetimes.) This
relationship between the spiritual and temporal functions largely replicated the one established in
the thirteenth century between the hierarchs of Sa-skya and Chinggisid rulers. The same
relationship was subsequently established between Dalai Lama V Ngag-dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho
(1617-1682) and Gu šri Qan, the conquering ruler of the Qošot Mongols, who then also offered the
rulership of Tibet to the lama. The relationship of the two functions took on greater complexity
when Dalai Lama V appointed a minister (sde pa, sde srid) to look after temporal affairs in Tibet; the
relationship between the two functions thus became ternary (even if not symmetrical) instead of
being binary.
Still later, a further variant of the relationship was established between the Manchu (Qing)
Emperor, identified as a manifestation of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and the dalai lama, the
manifestation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara-Lokeśvara. Thus, at one level – namely that of East
and Inner Asia taken as a whole – a relationship was established between a preceptor donee and an
imperial donor ruler in what was, at least seemingly, a symmetrical relationship given that the
Emperor too was counted as a bodhisattva. But at a second level – that of Tibet – the two functions
remained combined in the person of a single religious, the dalai lama, who exercised both spiritual
authority and temporal power, with the latter function being eventually delegated to a minister.
That is, within a greater East and Inner Asian domain, the dalai lama was regarded as the Manchu

9
Emperor’s religious preceptor; and, within the confines of the Tibetan cultural world, the dalai lama
combined both spiritual and temporal functions as Lokeśvara ‘Lord of the world (of living beings)’, or
‘ethnarch’, that the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara also is.
The political and military situation and the practical relationships it actually engendered were
indeed complex and many-faceted. But the relation was not unworkable, and the arrangement
adopted lasted for a long time, until far-reaching historical changes radically transformed East and
Inner Asia.
In these cases, the relationship between the two orders represented by the mchod yon (or yon
mchod) model can be understood as concomitant with the conquest and military domination by one
group (Mongols, Manchus, Han Chinese) over another (Tibetans). This relationship might perhaps
even be described as a form of patronage of a client (and client nation) by a patron (and suzerain
power). In order to be sustainable and enduring, however, the relation had to be conceived and
expressed through concepts and terms that were culturally familiar and meaningful to those
concerned. Otherwise, the arrangement – a kind of concordat – might be seen as mere window-
dressing, as putting a good face on a potentially very uncomfortable situation, perhaps even as
‘saving face’. But, evidently, it could be conceived, perceived and received as more than this alone.
In sum, if it was to be reasonably satisfactory in the eyes of those concerned and thus to endure, the
relationship between the spiritual and temporal functions had to be expressed in socio-political and
religio-political terms that were acceptable to both sides. And the preceptor donee : ruler donor
relationship adopted – i.e. the mchod yon/yon mchod paradigm – was evidently flexible enough to be
able to serve the purpose. It was not only rooted in Buddhist concepts and terminology, but it could
also help very significantly to found a religio-political accommodation, a modus vivendi, in Inner and
East Asia. The frame of this relationship could eventually be filled out in detail with more or less
variable contents according to the particular historical circumstances prevailing at a given time.
As already noted, the governance and polity of Tibet, in particular but not exclusively under the
dalai lamas, can be best described as ‘hierocratic’, or more precisely still as ‘bodhisattva-cratic’,
rather than as ‘theocratic’ (a concept that is close to being unintelligible in emic Tibetan and
Buddhist terms). Earlier, during the ancient royal or ‘imperial’ period of Tibetan history at the end
of the first millennium of the common era – that is, at a time when Tibet was a major independent
actor in Inner Asia – governance had come to be regarded as ‘bodhisattva-cratic’, with three great
Tibetan rulers (btsan po) of the time coming to be identified in later Tibetan historiography with
bodhisattvas.
This ‘bodhisattva-cracy’ evolved over time. As seen above, the basic paradigm is a binary relation-
ship between the spiritual and temporal orders represented respectively by a preceptor donee and a
ruler donor. Ideally, the preceptor donee was paramount, but either member of the binary relation
sometimes dominated in practice, and according to circumstances. At the same time, it is important
to recognize that, in Tibet, ‘bodhisattva-cracy’ also possessed an apparently temporal dimension
linked with Lokeśvara.

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 Following the decision recently proclaimed by the present Dalai Lama XIV, and noted above, this
‘bodhisattva-cracy’ is to be regarded in future as quintessentially religious and spiritual, with no
precisely defined temporal function. And this spiritual function is to be – or rather to remain – para-
mount and the mainspring of the governance of a Buddhist country. As such, and unpartitioned, it is
not to be counterbalanced by a symmetrical temporal power. Nor is it really to be ‘patronized’ by
any ‘patron’. Still, while staying uncompromised, the spiritual order might well enter into an
association – even into a pragmatic accommodation or modus vivendi – with temporal state power.
Such an accommodation will, perhaps, become possible one day in the framework of a future Inner
and East Asian commonwealth of peoples and nations. Most certainly, this outcome would require
fresh and imaginative initiatives proceeding from clear and inspired forward thinking, a kind of
thinking which the traditional structures discussed above in no way preclude, but which now
prevailing national and international law – not to speak of sovereignist supremacism congealed in a
frigid nationalist-hegemonist mind-set – are still unable to conceive and effectuate. Historically
informed lucidity as well as mental and moral courage would be required for the purpose.

APPENDIX

A few words may be in order here about the counterparts of a ruler or a patron, namely the people,
his subjects, or his clientele. In India, the jajmānī system of relations between individuals mentioned
above has been seen as an example of the patron-client relation. In Tibet and its adjacent cultural
areas, relations of the kind called clientelism have of course existed. But ‘patronage’ and
‘clientelism’ ceratainly cannot adequately describe, much less define, the nature of the relation
existing between the preceptor donee and the ruler donor, the central topic of this paper. From the
foregoing materials it emerges that Western conceptions of patronage do not always fit in a neat
fashion the cultural and religious concepts that have largely prevailed over the centuries in the
world of Buddhism, and which underlie the donee-donor (mchod yon/yon mchod) relationship in Inner
Asia. There a major part of what in Western parlance, and in etic language, is known as patronage
has been expressed and understood in terms of gifting, generosity and liberality, that is, in the emic
terms of the central Buddhist ideas of dāna (Tib. sbyin pa) and the dānapati (Tib. sbyin bdag, yon bdag).
Historically in the west, patronage has often meant that a noble or a high ecclesiastic had the right
to bestow an office or benefice on a subordinate or client. Sometimes patronage became entwined
with simony and the purchase of offices. But other uses of the word ‘patronage’ of course exist. A
patron of the arts is known also as a Maecenas. Sometimes the patron is thought of as being
economically, and perhaps also socially, above the protégé, who is then ‘patronized’ not just in the
sense of being materially supported but also as subordinate (and perhaps looked down upon as an
inferior). Not unlike the French word ‘patron’, the English word ‘patron’ sometimes means a ‘boss’.
But, of course, French ‘mécénat’, and ‘évergétisme’, as equivalents of English ‘patronage’, do not

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carry a pejorative connotation. And when the Maecenas or patron is the state or an enlightened
person or cultural organization, no pejorative connotation is present.
The terms ‘patron’ and ‘patronage’ – along with current Western (or etic) conceptualizations of the
‘spiritual’ and ‘temporal’ not to speak of the opposition sacred/profane – do not, then, always fit
smnoothly, and without residue, the Inner Asian, Himalayan and South Asian (emic) concepts of the
donee (Skt. dakṣinīya/dakṣiṇeya and Tib. mchod gnas) we seek to analyse and understand.
Occasionally, indeed, our current terms seem in danger of being non-referring and empty: they do
not correspond to the Indian and Tibetan conceptual grids, categories and realities with which we
have to deal, and which we try to translate. We are then obliged to abandon the Procrustean
undertaking of stretching Indian or Tibetan concepts and expressions to fit current Western
preconceptions, preoccupations and terminology, forcing endogenous (and emic) categories into
exogenous (and etic) moulds. Such parochialism – be it ultimately of missionary, political,
journalistic or other origin – only misrepresents and distorts what we hope to study, analyse and
understand.
Still, provided that these caveats and the relevant cultural and religious contexts are kept clearly in
mind, the concepts of patron and patronage can no doubt sometimes have a use in the comparative
study of cultural areas. Examples of what might legitimately be called patronage are, for instance, to
be found in Tibet in the cases of religious endowments and the founding of temples, stūpas and
monasteries, and in the commissioning of images, manuscripts and printed books, which, in Tibet,
have more often been religious than not. In such cases, the Tibetan expression corresponding ‘to
patronize’ may be ‘to establish’, ‘to found’, or ‘to offer/give’ and, more fully and significantly, ‘to act
as donor’ (of a holy thing, and for a beneficiary).
The relations of patronage between social and political actors located at different levels of society
in Indian, Himalayan and Inner Asian areas, need of course to be explored and analysed in further
detailed research, which will no doubt seek to distinguish between purely ideal forms of relationship
on the one side and their expression in actual practices of society and government on the other side.
This holds true, too, for the study of the practical implementation of the theoretical relationship
between the spiritual and the temporal orders and functions discussed in this paper.
Concerning clientship, an examination is required of the situation of the Tibetan mi ser, the tenant
or villein of a monastic or lay estate, who has been described as a serf in Marxist-inspired literature
on (so-called) Tibetan ‘feudalism’. The lexical definition of the Tibetan mi ser is ‘subject’ (’bangs), or
mi dmangs ‘common person, (common) people’, as opposed to a lord (dpon po’i ldog phyogs). Used as a
(partial) synonym of mi dmangs, the word mi ser appears to alternate lexically with mi mang ‘the
people, populace, masses’. And dmangs gtso has even become a Tibetan expression for ‘democracy’. A
lexical and conceptual problem posed by the vocabulary of contemporary Tibetan usage influenced
by Chinese usage is pointed up by the fact that, in Classical Tibetan, dmangs has been employed to
translate Sanskrit bhṛtya ‘dependent, servant’; and in the Mahāvyutpatti (a ninth century Sanskrit-
Tibetan lexicon), dmangs rigs translates Skt. śūdravarṇa, while Tib. rjeu’i rigs translates Skt.

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vaiśyavarṇa. Tib. dmangs mo has also translated Skt. vṛṣalī, a word designating a low-caste or Śūdra
woman.
In some of these examples, the Tibetan lexicon and semantics have clearly been influenced and
modified through modern Chinese usage. Earlier, semantic shifts already took place when Tibetan
was the target-language for translations from an Indian source-language. Nowadays, semantic
difficulties may arise when exogenous (and etic) concepts and the terms of modern sociology and
political science are superimposed on Tibetan Buddhist realities, as observed above. In this case, the
terminology imposed does not accurately fit the materials being examined; and instead of clarifying
and explaining, the concepts and terminology employed may confuse and obfuscate. This is, of
course, just what they could be expected to do when wielded as instruments in the armoury of a
project of alien provenance.

SUMMARY. The Tibetan conceptualization and terminology of the relationships existing between the
spiritual and temporal orders and functions in their various forms are complex, and sometimes
ambiguous or kaleidoscopic. The materials brought together in this paper focus on a number of
central Buddhist and Tibetan ideas that can be related to patronage and gifting, and to the situation
of the spiritual order (represented by the preceptor-officiant donee) in relation to the temporal
order (represented by the ruler donor). The actual practices prevailing in this relationship between
the two orders and functions need of course to be examined in individual detail and case by case.
The themes of the dakṣiṇā – the (ritual) remuneration/fee – and of the dakṣiṇīya / dakṣiṇeya – the
donee receiving the dakṣiṇā and represented by the Tibetan mchod gnas/yon gnas – bind together
several ideas to be considered in relation to patronage. In Inner Asia and Himalayan areas, the
concepts of dāna ‘giving/gift, donation, alms’ and dānapati ‘donor’ underpin the idea of patronage in
the Buddhist conception of society and governance. Behind Buddhist activities of patronage lie the
idea of giving and the gift, and the fundamental Buddhist and Indian virtue of generosity and
liberality (Skt. and Pali dāna, Tib. sbyin pa). For reasons discussed in this paper, to describe the
relationship between the preceptor donee and the ruler donor as a ‘patron-priest relation’ can,
therefore, be inadequate if not actually misleading.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Cüppers (ed.), The relationship between religion and state in traditional Tibet. Lumbini, 2004.
Y. Imaeda, Histoire médiévale du Bhoutan: établissement et évolution de la théocratie des ’Brug pa (Thesis,
University of Paris VII, 1987). Tokyo, 2011.
L. van der Kuijp, Kālacakra and the patronage of Tibetan Buddhism. Bloomington, 2004.
K. Sagaster, Die weiße Geschichte. Wiesbaden, 1976.

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L. Petech, Aristocracy and government in Tibet 1728-1959. Rome, 1972.
– Central Tibet and the Mongols. Rome, 1990.
D. Seyfort Ruegg, ‘mChod yon, yon mchod and mchod gnas/yon gnas: On the historiography and
semantics of a Tibetan religio-social and religio-political concept.’ In: E. Steinkellner (ed.), Tibetan
history and language: Studies dedicated to Uray Géza on his seventieth birthday, pp. 441-453. Vienna, 1991.
– Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée bouddhique de l’Inde et du Tibet. Publications de l’Institut
de Civilisation Indienne. Paris, 1995.
– ‘The Preceptor-Donor (yon mchod) relation in thirteenth-century Tibetan society and polity, its
Inner Asian precursors and Indian models’. In: H. Krasser, M. T. Much and E. Steinkellner (ed.),
Tibetan studies – Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz, 1995,
Volume II, pp. 857-872. Vienna, 1997.
– ‘Introductory remarks on the spiritual and temporal orders.’ In: C. Cüppers (ed.), pp. 9-13.
Tsung-Lien Shen and Shen-Chi Liu, Tibet and the Tibetans. Stanford, 1953.

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