The Treasury of Lives

Tsarong Dundul Namgyal (bdud 'dul rnam rgyal tsha rong), also known as George, was born in Lhasa in 1920. His father was Dasang Damdul Tsarong (tsha rong zla bzang dgra 'dul, 1888-1959) who took over the Tsarong estates in the early twentieth century and married several members of the household. An ardent modernizer, he served as Commander General of the Tibetan army. His mother was Dasang Damdul's second wife, Pema Dolkar (pad+ma sgrol dkar), who was the daughter of the disgraced Kalon Wangchuk Gyelpo Tsarong (bka' blon dbang phyug rgyal po, 1866-1912).

He had a sister by the same parents, named Kunzang Lhakyi (kun bzang lha skyid), born in 1923, and seven siblings born to different mothers. The Tsarong (tsha rong) was an aristocratic family that claims to originate from the famed medical master Yutok Yonten Gonpo (g.yu thog yon tan mgon po, 790-833). They took the name of Tsarong when the newly ennobled family of the Tenth Dalai Lama Tsultrim Gyatso (ta la'i bla ma 10 tshul khrims rgya mtsho, 1816-1837) adopted the family name of Yuthok.

Dundul Namgyal was one of the first Tibetans to receive a modern education. His family sent him to St. Joseph’s College, a Jesuit boys' school in Darjeeling, India, from the years 1935-1940.

Returning to Tibet to serve in the Tibetan government, he worked at the Drapchi Mint (gra phyi) along with Reginald Fox (1881-1943) a junior British officer working in the Indian Mission in Lhasa who later joined the service of the Tibetan government. They successfully powered the printing machines using a ten horse-power diesel engine that Dundul had himself brought over from India. Then Dundul joined the project to build the first-ever hydroelectric power station in Lhasa. Besides Reginald Fox and Dundul himself, the project included his father Tsarong Dasang Damdul and Peter Aufschnaiter (1899-1973), the Austrian survey engineer who had escaped to Tibet from a British prison camp in India with Heinrich Harrer (1912-2006). In 1944 he began instructions in Wireless Telegraphy at the British Mission.

Dundul was later promoted to the rank of Rimshi (rim bzhi), fourth rank, and appointed as an assistant to the Drapchi office. There were seven ranks in the Tibetan government with the Dalai Lama holding the first rank; the fourth rank was considered a high rank. During his tenure as a fourth rank official, Dundul also held the position of Yaso General (ya so mda' dpon), a commander of a cavalry of 500 men.

Dundul Namgyal married Yangchen Dolkar (dbyangs can sgrol dkar) from the aristocratic Ragashar family (ra ga shar, also known as Dokhar) and had five children. Their second youngest son Tseten Gyurme was recognized as the Seventh Drigung Chetsang, Tendzin Trinle Lhundrub ('bri gung che tshang 07 bstan 'dzin 'phrin las lhun grub, b. 1946), one of the two heads of the Drigung Kagyu tradition.

Following the invasion of Tibet by the People's Liberation Army in 1949-1959, Dundul and his wife and children left Lhasa and resettled in Kalimpong, India. His father remained in Tibet. Following the March 10, 1959, popular revolt of Lhasa, his father and other leaders of the National Assembly were jailed in the Chinese army headquarters. His father died in jail three months later.

In India, Dundul Namgyal served in the newly established Central Tibetan Administration. He was recruited at first to work at the Tibetan Bureau in New Delhi, and then transferred to work under the Dalai Lama's older brother Gyalo Thondup (rgya lo don grub, b. 1928), making investments with the Tibetan government's gold and silver reserves. He also served as English translator to Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa (dbang phyug bde ldan zhwa sgab pa, 1908-1989), the former finance minister of Tibet.

Dundul Namgyal wrote a biography of his father In the Service of His Country: The Biography of Dasang Damdul Tsarong, Commander General of Tibet, published in 2000. He was one of Tibet's first and most important photographers and his photographs of early twentieth century Tibet are still an invaluable resource. He published a book of his photographs of Tibet, What Tibet Was: As Seen by a Native Photographer, in 1990.

Dundul Namgyal and his wife moved for some years to the United States where their daughter Namgyal Lhamo (rnam rgyal lha mo) and her husband Lobsang Samten (blo bzang bsam gtan), another brother of the Dalai Lama, had immigrated. He spent some time in Maryland working as companion to an elderly physician.

He spent the last years of his life in Kalimpong and Dehradun in northern India. He died in a Dehradun hospital on June 18th, 2011.