The Treasury of Lives

Damcho Tsomo (dam chos 'tsho mo) was from a town called Drumgasha (brum dga' sha) in Dakpo. British trade agent David MacDonald (1870/73–1962) met her in 1919 and reported that she was in her seventies, which would put her birth decade as the 1850s.^[1] By most accounts she had been unable to speak or hear since birth. She worked as a shepherdess on the estate of a local aristocratic family, the Drumpa (brum, sbrum, and grum), a family of high enough status that in 1896 Lobzang Tashi (blo bzang bkra shis), the brother of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Tubten Gyatso (ta la'i bla ma 13 thub btsan rgya mtsho, 1876–1933), married into it as an adopted groom (mag pa). Despite the presence of at least one male child he became the head of the family.^[2] While working for the family Damcho Tsomo was taught to read and write. She communicated with gestures and writing.

She became pregnant and, on February 19, 1883, she gave birth, possibly to twin boys. The eldest was identified as the Ninth Paṇchen Lama, Tubten Chokyi Nyima (paN chen 09 thub bstan chos skyi nyi ma, 1883–1937) while the second—or possibly the product of a second birth—was identified as the Fifth Tsechok Ling, Pelden Tenpai Gyeltsen (tshe mchog gling dpal ldan bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan, born c. 1883). She named the first child Samdrub Gyatso (bsam grub rgya mtsho).

The identity of the father of her children was initially a matter of secrecy. A former monk of the Paṇchen Lama's seat, Tashilhunpo Monastery (bkra shis lhun po), named Kachen Jangpa Tubten (bka' chen byang pa thub bstan) told scholar Fabienne Jagou that Damcho Tsomo in fact stopped speaking on the day the Paṇchen Lama was born so as to never reveal the father's name.^[3] The same monk reported that the children were the product of a miraculous conception, Damcho Tsomo having been visited in a dream by a "Western man" nine months before their birth.^[4]

Other local legends reveal the attempt to link the Paṇchen Lama's father to the family of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama; MacDonald reported that a "widely credited" story had it that the father was a "high lama" from Dakpo, the same district where the Thirteenth Dalai was born, and that people could identify certain shared physical characteristics between the two lamas.^[5]

However, it seems that the father of the Paṇchen Lama was, in fact, identified, and that he married Damcho Tsomo and moved to Tashilhunpo with his family. He was named Tamdrin (rta mgrin), and, according to Jagou, he was a son of the Drumpa family.^[6] If Tamdrin was indeed the Paṇchen Lama's father, Lobzang Tashi's later marriage into the family effectively made Damcho Tsomo a relative to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama.

In January 1888 Dzala Nominhan Lobzang Dondrub (rdza bla no min han blo bzang don grub), the general administrator of Tashilhunpo, identified Damcho Tsomo's son Samdrub Gyatso as a candidate for the rebirth of the Eighth Paṇchen Lama, Tenpai Wangchuk (paN chen 08 bstan pa'i dbang phyug, 1855–1882), and brought him to Lhasa with two other young children. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama selected her son, and the choice was confirmed via the ritual of the golden urn as stipulated by the Manchu emperors in Beijing, on February 26, 1888. The next day the child was given lay vows, and on the same day Damcho Tsomo took nun's vows.^[7]

The Paṇchen Lama's father was murdered some time around 1903. Charles Bell (1870–1945) the British diplomat who spent a week with the Paṇchen Lama in 1906, reported on the circumstances of the murder in 1914. A Tibetan government investigation revealed in 1904 that Tamdrin had been having an affair with the wife of a Tashilhunpo official. The wife, wishing to marry Tamdrin, poisoned food intended for Damcho Tsomo, but because she was unwell that day Damcho Tsomo did not eat it. Tamdrin, several of his servants, and an unfortunate dog did eat the food, however. A doctor was able to save the lives of the men, but the dog died. With the discovery of the plot the wife was fined and imprisoned, as was Tamdrin, for having an affair. Seaking revenge, the humiliated Tashilhunpo official then ordered Tamdrin murdered. aHe was clubbed to death in his prison cell.^[8]

Damcho Tsomo resided at Tashilhunpo with her eldest son, in a building named Dekyilingka (bde skyid gling ga), until his flight from Tibet in 1923.^[9] One photograph of her included in David MacDonald's book shows her with two attendants and a dog. According to MacDonald she died in 1926, although the 1937 edition of Who's Who in Tibet has the year of her death 1923, the year her son fled to China.^[10] Had she remained behind she may have been imprisoned in Lhasa alongside other family members. That MacDonald does not mention this suggests she died prior to her son's departure.

 

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