Luciano Petech
Encyclopedia
Luciano Petech was an Italian scholar of Himalayan
history and the early relations between Tibet
, Nepal
and Italy
. He was Chair of History of Eastern Asia at the University of Rome from 1955 to 1984. He is the most renowned of the students of Giuseppe Tucci
.
Luciano Petech was born in 1914 and retired in 1984. He learned almost all European languages, included Latin
, as well as Tibetan
, Chinese, Japanese
, Newari
, Sanskrit
, Arabic
, Hindi and Urdu
. His gift for languages and output on Asia would have been considered prodigious, were it not for his predecessor in the field, Giuseppe Tucci. Tucci was described, on the centenary of his birth, as a ‘una sorta di Mozart della filologia classica’ (La Stampa
June 2, 1994:19), a boy genius who wrote his first learned article at 17 years old. Tucci taught in Rabindranath Tagore
’s Visva-Bharati University
near Calcutta during the 1920s, visited Tibet for the first time in 1929 and then set up the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East in 1933.
Petech refers to his mentor as ‘my guru and friend’ (e.g. 1958: vii). According to de Jong:
As Petech noted later, this work ‘seemed to fill a real need, and continued to render service for several years’ (Petech 1977: xi). This work was a political history of Ladakh, rather than a cultural one, as was the follow-up monograph
he published 40 years later. In the latter work he says that cultural history was purposely excluded, since it was covered so much more adequately by David Snellgrove
(1977: xi).
at 25 years old, as a lector in Italian
at the University of Allahabad from 1938 to 1946. His first recorded article is for the Calcutta Review
in 1939. His subject was the dramas and stories of the great Italian author Luigi Pirandello
, who had recently died two years after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
. He says “the people” in Italy had unfairly turned their backs on the intellectual Pirandello as unrepresentative of the times (Petech 1939: 13) and as not speaking to their hearts (idem: 24). This could be argued to hold true of Petech’s work as well.
With the outbreak of World War II, since he was an Italian in British India, Petech spent most of that time in a civil internment
camp. Like Giuseppe Tucci
, who had read Sanskrit
texts during his early twenties, in the trenches of the First World War (La Stampa June 2, 1994:19), Petech used this time to study Tibetan literature
and write an article on the chronological system of the fifteenth-century Blue Annals
of Tibet.
Petech returned to Europe in 1947, to temporary teaching appointments at the Istituto Orientale of Naples
and University of Rome. For the next 8 years he wrote 30 pieces of varying length on Asia, always focused on the meeting of different cultures from Asia or Europe, in areas bordering India.
From 1955 to 1984 he held the chair of History of Eastern Asia in Rome University, publishing 14 books and over 80 articles on Asia. At the end of this period, the foreword to the anthology of his selected articles, made to mark his retirement, praised his ‘objective, calm and sensible judgment, his willingness to cooperate, and his learning’ (Petech 1988: viii).
These traits are evident in his many works. In his books on Ladakh, Nepal and Tibet from medieval to modern times, his approach has the outward appearance of “history”—unimpeded by philosophy or superstition—unlocked through a serious and critical engagement with historical sources that are described before any of the events described in them.
He shares the wide geographical interest of Tucci, but without the “big” ideas, like sacral kingship
in Tibet, that create paradigms for the study of Asia. Of his books, only Central Tibet and the Mongols, published in 1990, six years after his retirement, contains a concluding chapter; and this consisted of elegant remarks rather than any grand theory. Instead they are clear overviews of the ebb and flow of mundane power in royal or religious institutions at certain points in time only dimly known to other historians.
Beyond this, in works like the 7-part ‘I Missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, there is a sense of some religious calling to dialogue with the “East”, which is not missionary but rather ambassadorial in nature. He seems like a Himalayan political envoy to Rome, giving incisive accounts of others’ political or religious missions.
Any dialogue attempts a meeting of horizons between the two parties, but is undergirded or undermined by an interplay of cultural cooption of the other. Petech’s monographs attempt to bring Himalayan history into the light of world history. This aim was always to be appreciated, and, as Herbert Franke
noted in 1950 when Petech published “China and Tibet in the early 18th century”,
It may be considered as a fortunate coincidence... just now when the Chinese government tries to establish again its suzerainty
over the land of snow because it will enable the reader to get a clear notion how the Chinese protectorate
in Tibet came into being. (Franke 1950)
These are sentiments with which many would thoroughly agree. However, Petech’s early attempts also tend to subsume unique events within western explanatory frameworks. In 1947 he wrote:
This attempt to universalise the process of empire-building
also has politically loaded connotations in a time when Italy had just failed to regain the Roman Empire
, thwarted by the dwindling imperial powers of Britain and France and the new empire, America.
When he returned to the topic of Ladakh
in 1977, he admitted that ‘I found my first effort hopelessly obsolete’ (1977: xi). His second treatment is more nuanced, and he finally explains the collapse of Ladakhi power with more of an emphasis on economic overstretch (idem: 79).
Central Tibet and the Mongols, Petech’s latest book-length study, is a more fluidly written narrative, character-led and more descriptive in tone. It is still authoritative, and has naturally overtaken Tucci’s work on the same period. As Elliot Sperling
wrote in his 1995 review:
This is undoubtedly a testament to the unique work of this most gifted of Tucci’s pupils. It will remain to be seen whether, as in his epitaph for Pirandello (Petech 1939: 25), “Petechism” will die with Petech, “as one of the best Italian authors of the twentieth century, but not the starter of a new school” (ibid.)
Petech’s most prominent students are Piero Corradini in East Asian studies and Elena De Rossi Filibeck
in Tibetan studies.
Luciano Petech died in his home on 19 September 2010.
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
history and the early relations between Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. He was Chair of History of Eastern Asia at the University of Rome from 1955 to 1984. He is the most renowned of the students of Giuseppe Tucci
Giuseppe Tucci
Giuseppe Tucci was an Italian scholar of oriental cultures, specialising in Tibet and history of Buddhism. During its zenith, Tucci was a supporter of Italian Fascism, and he used idealized portrayals of Asian traditions to support Italian ideological campaigns...
.
Luciano Petech was born in 1914 and retired in 1984. He learned almost all European languages, included Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, as well as Tibetan
Standard Tibetan
Standard Tibetan is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan...
, Chinese, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Newari
Nepal Bhasa
Nepal Bhasa is one of the major languages of Nepal, and is also spoken in India, particularly in Sikkim where it is one of the 11 official languages. Nepal Bhasa is the mother tongue of about 3% of the people in Nepal . It is spoken mainly by the Newars, who chiefly inhabit the towns of the...
, Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Hindi and Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
. His gift for languages and output on Asia would have been considered prodigious, were it not for his predecessor in the field, Giuseppe Tucci. Tucci was described, on the centenary of his birth, as a ‘una sorta di Mozart della filologia classica’ (La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
June 2, 1994:19), a boy genius who wrote his first learned article at 17 years old. Tucci taught in Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
’s Visva-Bharati University
Visva-Bharati University
Visva Bharati University is a Central University for research and teaching in India, located in the twin towns of Santiniketan and Sriniketan in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India...
near Calcutta during the 1920s, visited Tibet for the first time in 1929 and then set up the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East in 1933.
Petech refers to his mentor as ‘my guru and friend’ (e.g. 1958: vii). According to de Jong:
Petech first studied Arabic, but in 1934 began to follow Tucci’s lectures and decided to change the direction of his studies. He soon mastered Tibetan and, following the advice of Tucci, studied the chronicles of LadakhLadakhLadakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
. (Indo-Iranian Journal 40/4 (1997): 404)
As Petech noted later, this work ‘seemed to fill a real need, and continued to render service for several years’ (Petech 1977: xi). This work was a political history of Ladakh, rather than a cultural one, as was the follow-up monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
he published 40 years later. In the latter work he says that cultural history was purposely excluded, since it was covered so much more adequately by David Snellgrove
David Snellgrove
David Llewellyn Snellgrove is a British Tibetologist noted for his pioneering work on Buddhism in Tibet as well as his many travelogues.-Biography:...
(1977: xi).
Biography
Petech began his teaching career in IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
at 25 years old, as a lector in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
at the University of Allahabad from 1938 to 1946. His first recorded article is for the Calcutta Review
Calcutta Review
The Calcutta Review is a bi-annual periodical, now published by the Calcutta University press, featuring scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines.-History:...
in 1939. His subject was the dramas and stories of the great Italian author Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
, who had recently died two years after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
. He says “the people” in Italy had unfairly turned their backs on the intellectual Pirandello as unrepresentative of the times (Petech 1939: 13) and as not speaking to their hearts (idem: 24). This could be argued to hold true of Petech’s work as well.
With the outbreak of World War II, since he was an Italian in British India, Petech spent most of that time in a civil internment
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
camp. Like Giuseppe Tucci
Giuseppe Tucci
Giuseppe Tucci was an Italian scholar of oriental cultures, specialising in Tibet and history of Buddhism. During its zenith, Tucci was a supporter of Italian Fascism, and he used idealized portrayals of Asian traditions to support Italian ideological campaigns...
, who had read Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
texts during his early twenties, in the trenches of the First World War (La Stampa June 2, 1994:19), Petech used this time to study Tibetan literature
Tibetan literature
Tibetan literature generally refers to literature written in the Tibetan language since the invention of the Indic-style script in the mid 7th century...
and write an article on the chronological system of the fifteenth-century Blue Annals
Blue Annals
The Blue Annals completed in 1476, authored by Gö Lotsāwa Zhönnu Pel , is a Tibetan historical survey with a marked 'ecumenical' view, focusing upon the dissemination of various sectarian spiritual traditions throughout Tibet.An English translation by George de Roerich with help from Gendun...
of Tibet.
Petech returned to Europe in 1947, to temporary teaching appointments at the Istituto Orientale of Naples
Naples Eastern University
The Naples Eastern University is a university located in Naples, Italy. It was founded in 1732 and is organized in 4 Faculties...
and University of Rome. For the next 8 years he wrote 30 pieces of varying length on Asia, always focused on the meeting of different cultures from Asia or Europe, in areas bordering India.
From 1955 to 1984 he held the chair of History of Eastern Asia in Rome University, publishing 14 books and over 80 articles on Asia. At the end of this period, the foreword to the anthology of his selected articles, made to mark his retirement, praised his ‘objective, calm and sensible judgment, his willingness to cooperate, and his learning’ (Petech 1988: viii).
These traits are evident in his many works. In his books on Ladakh, Nepal and Tibet from medieval to modern times, his approach has the outward appearance of “history”—unimpeded by philosophy or superstition—unlocked through a serious and critical engagement with historical sources that are described before any of the events described in them.
He shares the wide geographical interest of Tucci, but without the “big” ideas, like sacral kingship
Sacred king
In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning, that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and of judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king need not necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position...
in Tibet, that create paradigms for the study of Asia. Of his books, only Central Tibet and the Mongols, published in 1990, six years after his retirement, contains a concluding chapter; and this consisted of elegant remarks rather than any grand theory. Instead they are clear overviews of the ebb and flow of mundane power in royal or religious institutions at certain points in time only dimly known to other historians.
Beyond this, in works like the 7-part ‘I Missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, there is a sense of some religious calling to dialogue with the “East”, which is not missionary but rather ambassadorial in nature. He seems like a Himalayan political envoy to Rome, giving incisive accounts of others’ political or religious missions.
Any dialogue attempts a meeting of horizons between the two parties, but is undergirded or undermined by an interplay of cultural cooption of the other. Petech’s monographs attempt to bring Himalayan history into the light of world history. This aim was always to be appreciated, and, as Herbert Franke
Herbert Franke
This is an article about a German sinologist. For the science fiction writer, see Herbert W. FrankeHerbert Franke was a German historian of China...
noted in 1950 when Petech published “China and Tibet in the early 18th century”,
It may be considered as a fortunate coincidence... just now when the Chinese government tries to establish again its suzerainty
Suzerainty
Suzerainty occurs where a region or people is a tributary to a more powerful entity which controls its foreign affairs while allowing the tributary vassal state some limited domestic autonomy. The dominant entity in the suzerainty relationship, or the more powerful entity itself, is called a...
over the land of snow because it will enable the reader to get a clear notion how the Chinese protectorate
Chinese Protectorate
The Chinese Protectorate was an administrative body responsible for the well-being of ethnic Chinese residents of the Straits Settlements during that territory's British colonial period. Protectorates were established in each area of the Settlements, namely Singapore, Penang and Malacca. Each was...
in Tibet came into being. (Franke 1950)
These are sentiments with which many would thoroughly agree. However, Petech’s early attempts also tend to subsume unique events within western explanatory frameworks. In 1947 he wrote:
As to LadakhLadakhLadakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
, there is little to be said. It suffered the fate of all countries which tried to build an empire without that indispensable foundation, a sufficiently large population of the home country. (1988 [1947]: 39)
This attempt to universalise the process of empire-building
Empire-building
In political science, empire-building refers to the tendency of countries and nations to acquire resources, land, and economic influence outside of their borders in order to expand their size, power, and wealth....
also has politically loaded connotations in a time when Italy had just failed to regain the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, thwarted by the dwindling imperial powers of Britain and France and the new empire, America.
When he returned to the topic of Ladakh
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
in 1977, he admitted that ‘I found my first effort hopelessly obsolete’ (1977: xi). His second treatment is more nuanced, and he finally explains the collapse of Ladakhi power with more of an emphasis on economic overstretch (idem: 79).
Central Tibet and the Mongols, Petech’s latest book-length study, is a more fluidly written narrative, character-led and more descriptive in tone. It is still authoritative, and has naturally overtaken Tucci’s work on the same period. As Elliot Sperling
Elliot Sperling
Elliot Sperling is Associate Professor of Central Eurasian Studies and an expert on the history of Tibet and Tibetan-Chinese relations at Indiana University.He earned his B.A. at Queens College , and his Ph.D...
wrote in his 1995 review:
...since the 1949 publication of Giuseppe Tucci’s Tibetan Painted scrolls [and in] the absence of any single monograph dedicated to the public, this last work was often taken by default as the main secondary source on the subject....[While] “Central Tibet and the Mongols” is a relatively short work and leaves a few subjects less than fully explored... [it] is now the basic secondary source to which students of Yuan-Tibetan relationsTibet under Yuan administrative ruleThe Yuan administrative rule of Tibet was a period in Tibetan history when the region was structurally, militarily and administratively controlled by the Yuan Dynasty, a division of the Mongol Empire...
must turn. (Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995): 342–3)
This is undoubtedly a testament to the unique work of this most gifted of Tucci’s pupils. It will remain to be seen whether, as in his epitaph for Pirandello (Petech 1939: 25), “Petechism” will die with Petech, “as one of the best Italian authors of the twentieth century, but not the starter of a new school” (ibid.)
Petech’s most prominent students are Piero Corradini in East Asian studies and Elena De Rossi Filibeck
Elena De Rossi Filibeck
Elena De Rossi Filibeck graduated in East Asian History under Professor Petech in 1971. Since 1980 she has been a researcher at the Department of Oriental Studies in the Faculty of Arts, University “La Sapienza”, Rome, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the same university...
in Tibetan studies.
Luciano Petech died in his home on 19 September 2010.
Further reading
- Luciano Petech. 1988. Selected Papers on Asian History. Roma: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. pp. xi–xviii.
External links
- Luciano Petech on ippolito-desideri.net (in Italian)
- obituary at JIATS