An Eighteenth Century Italian Missionary in Ladakh
I’m just back from Italy where I took part
in a conference on Ippolito Desideri (1684-1734), a Jesuit priest who travelled
through Ladakh on his way to Lhasa in 1715.
The conference took place in Pistoia,
Desideri’s home town, which is in Tuscany, close to Florence. The photograph shows the town as seen from
the bell tower next to its cathedral.
Here is a link to
the conference programme:
The convenor was Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi,
who is also from Pistoia. The image here shows Enzo at the opening
session with the mayor of Pistoia, Alessandro Tomasi, on his left; and Maria
Stella Rasetti, the director of Biblioteca San Giorgo on his right. Enzo worked
tremendously hard to arrange the conference, and I hope that he is delighted
with the success of a long-held ambition.
Desideri was a voluminous writer in both
Italian and Tibetan. His Italian writings have recently been translated into
English by Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling. See: http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/mission-tibet/praise. Even more recently, Donald Lopez and Thupten
Jinpa have published extracts from Desideri’s Tibetan works: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674659704
.
Donald Lopez (shown here) spoke about the translation at
the conference, and Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling sent video presentations
with new information about Desideri’s Tibetan adventures drawing on a hitherto
unexamined text – his account book.
Other
Italian and international scholars spoke about Desideri’s Jesuit
background, his geographical discoveries, and his engagement with Buddhism. My
own contribution was a discussion of his journey through Ladakh where he had
his first encounter with Tibetan Buddhism, but depended heavily on assistance
from Kashmiri Muslim guides.
The conference proceedings will be
published in the Buddhist-Christian
Studies journal from the University of Hawaii in 2018.
John Bray
