British journalist recounts 'The Search for the Panchen Lama'

When the Dalai Lama arrived in Taiwan last March, Tibetans at the airport carried banners proclaiming "Free the Panchen Lama, the world's youngest political prisoner."

The Panchen Lama is Tibet's second most senior religious figure. Like his only spiritual superior, he is chosen as a child and considered to be the reincarnation of his predecessor. But he also has political significance. On a Dalai Lama's death, it is the Panchen Lama who oversees the search for his reincarnated successor. Thus the selection of a Panchen Lama is the crucial element in the selection of the next Tibetan spiritual leader, one of the most sensitive posts anywhere on the planet.

The government in Beijing is as aware of this as is the Dalai Lama's miniature exiled establishment in Dharamsala, India. So when the tenth Panchen Lama died in 1989, a serious situation, heavy with significance for the whole future of Tibet, was on everybody's hands.

In this book, Isabel Hilton, a British journalist and TV presenter, recounts the whole convoluted story of what transpired from 1989 onwards, plus the tangled history of Tibet from the earliest times. She also had, it transpires, a role to play in the drama herself.

Most people already know the eventual outcome. A child living in Tibet was chosen ("recognized") by the Dalai Lama, and his name -- Gedhun Choekyi Nyima -- announced to the world. (Hilton, effectively called in to provide a link to the international media, recorded the hurriedly-prepared ceremony, and arranged for it to be filmed by a Finnish film crew who happened to be in the area). The Beijing authorities immediately denounced the entire selection procedure, announced a rival Panchen Lama of their own, and shortly afterwards took the boy named by the Dalai Lama into custody, supposedly for his own protection.

What this book chillingly, but also entertainingly, reveals is that there was a great deal more to the whole business than that. There was, for instance, the question of the Golden Urn, a sacred vessel from which, according to the Chinese, one of a number of names ought to be picked as the culmination to the selection procedure. The Dalai Lama's camp points out that the use of the urn was a late addition to the ritual, imposed on Lhasa by the 18th century Chinese emperor Qianlong, and only intended for times of deadlock or stalemate between contending Tibetan factions (a more frequent occurrence than one is usually led to believe, apparently).

Then there is the sacred lake of Lhamo Latso, 144km southeast of Lhasa. Ripples on its surface, properly observed, were held to be indications as to where the reincarnated infant was to be found. Access to the lake was never easy (in the past several Dalai Lamas, according to Hilton, failed to survive the journey), and was made near-impossible during the sensitive time leading up to the rival announcements that reincarnations had been confirmed.

The Panchen Lama's seat of power was traditionally the Tashilhunpo monastery at Shigatse, Tibet's second city. The resistance of its monks to the Chinese over the issue, and the prosecutions and executions that followed, makes terrible reading. It was Tashilhunpo's abbot, Chadrel Rinpoche, who secretly led the search for the Panchen Lama's reincarnation within Tibet, much to the fury of the Beijing authorities. They had assumed he was a compliant ally and were shaken to discover he had retained contact with the Dalai Lama. He is currently in jail, sentenced to six years in 1997 for "leaking state secrets" and "splitting the country."