A Study On The Autobiography

Although autobiography is traditionally considered to be a Western genre, the Tibetan autobiography arose separately from the Western form, with examples of the genre dating back to as early as the eighth century, with a significant increase in production in the sixteenth century and a boom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, there are few intellectuals studied such works specially and any theory related to the genre was introduced in Tibetan literary history until 20th century when Tibetan aitobiographies are considered as a valuable academic research. More or less, Tibetan intellectuals trend to study the works in the perspective of literary analysis, and western tibetologists, on the other hand, are more interested in gender issue and historical matters. For instance, Janet’s study on’jigs med gling pa is considered as a representative work. This thesis tried studying the autobiography of ’ol dga’ bshad pa’i rdo rje depending on related theories and representative researches on other works.This thesis is composed of three chapters. In the first chapter, I tried to answer what Tibetan autobiography is and how such genre emerged. After discussing the fundamental issues, I also pointed out the fact that such works could supplement the historical researches.Namtar is a contraction of nampar tharpa, which literally means ’complete liberation’, which, similarly to the cases of the vast majority of Tibetan autobiographers, refers to the genre’s focus on individuals who have achieved total enlightenment. Autobiography is considered to be an account of someone’s life written by the subject of the work, but sometimes authorship in Tibetan autobiography has its individual characters. As many traditional intellectuals clarified that this genre derived from Indian Buddhist Literature, while several researcher proves autobiography is created and developed successfully by Tibetans according to its particular social and cultural environments. More importantly, many historical events are recorded in these autobiographies. For instance, ’ol dga’bshad pa’i rdo rje wrote down many details during sixth and seventh Dalai lamas which scarcely recorded in general historical texts.In the second chapters, I more precisely studied ’ol dga’bshad pa’i rdo rje himself and some matters pertinent to his life which are the relationship with his masters, his monastery and his advocate of non-sectarian. All analyses above based on records in his autobiography, and I comparatively studied some issues within with additional resources. As I realized on the process, there are variant voices about his attitude with non-sectarian, and it’s difficult to make judgment for its purity. Therefore, I clarified different attitudes from several representative researchers but remained such judgment to be demonstrated more widely.The third chapter is the main part. I tried to analyze three historical events which are relationship between Fifth Dalai lama and sde srid sang rhyas rgya mtsho, the issue of Sixth Dalai Lama and the invasion of Mongolian army. Concerning these events, there are controversial opinions about them in historical records. Several west Tibetologist thinks that sde srid sang rhyas rgya mtsho is son of Fifth Dalai lama, but, on the other point, many Tibetan intellectuals are appose of such ideas. Among Tibetan history texts, Sixth Dalai Lama is controversial figure. His identity, death time and life story remained to be researched. This autobiography provides several important records to explain the matter in a wider sense. According to the history texts, Mongolian invasion is a result of political contradictions and it affected Tibetan society from a large extent. In this thesis, I tried to explain the event more closely based on the autobiography, and in a certain level, it bring a contribution for the research in this area.