Thomas Huxley, famous 19th century British biologist and educator, has been quoted to the effect that "it is a common fate of all knowledge to begin as heresy and end as orthodoxy." (1). Probably drawing from his rich experience as Darwin's staunch ally and eloquent supporter, Huxley refers here to scientific truth. It is, however, more than telling that he, the tireless fighter against "ecclesiasticism" (2) , employs a terminology which has its roots in a seemingly distant field, i.e. religion or to be more precise, in terms of the general Western understanding of "heresy" and "orthodoxy", exactly the Christian tradition in which it is so deeply rooted.

Of course, thinking in terms of a heretic/orthodox dichotomy is no prerogative of the church. Within Judaism, the 3rd century Mishnah identified certain beliefs as heresies, but it was not before the great doctor Maimonides (1135 or 1138 -1204) that a set of clearly stated dogmas was formulated which made it easier to judge what constituted heresy.(3) This list of Maimonides was inspired by a development within Islam -the first catalogue of Muslim doctrines drawn up earlier by Averro‘s (1126-1198) .(4) But the other great monotheistic tradition had been moving even faster: the first "heretic" to be put to death by a Christian state, poor Priscillian, met his end more than 800 years earlier in 384 CE. (5)

This space, however, is not intended for critique or condemnation of the past. Quite the contrary, what interests me here is a modern phenomenon: how does Tibetan, a language strongly influenced by Buddhism -this rather "scientific" teaching treasuring wisdom and knowledge- but due to political developments now highly exposed to other, both Western and Eastern tongues, deal with the concept of "heresy"?

The relevant dictionaries reveal an interesting pattern. Let us first look at the Western side. Goldstein's Modern Tibetan gives "chos log" for "heresy." (6) It could be following Dhongthog here though this native scholar not only offers an additional alternative, to wit "log chos", but further derives "heretic" (log chos pa), "heretical" (log chos kyi), and "heretically" (log chos ltar) from the latter. (7) Going one more step back, it seems that, as so often, Dhongthog's source was Jäschke's dictionary, at least as far as the two terms for "heresy" are concerned.

When the Moravian missionary Heinrich August Jäschke compiled his opus magnum, the English edition of which was first published in 1881, his chief motive lay "in the desire to facilitate and to hasten the spread of the Christian religion and Christian civilization, among the millions of Buddhists, who inhabit Central Asia, and who speak and read in Tibetan idioms." (8) Though not much is known about grand scale Christianization of the regions targeted, Jäschke managed to provide the scholarly world with a lexicon still valuable and rightfully appreciated. (9)

In its appended "English-Tibetan Vocabulary", this little treasure offers "chos log" as the Bodish equivalent of "heresy".(10) The main dictionary itself defines "chos log" by "a wrong faith, false doctrine, heresy" (11), and quotes on the same page, based on "Ma-ong-lung-bstan, a kind of Tibetan Apocalypse", "log chos" as homonym of "chos log" (12). Finally, under the lemma "chos", we learn that "lha chos" means "the religion of the gods or (Buddhist) deities, i. e. the Buddhist religion, as the only true one, in opposition to all other heresies and false religions (log chos), as well as to irreligiousness (chos ma yin pa)". (13)

According to this view, the logic of Tibetan would imply three possibilities as far as religion is concerned: a) none , b) the true one (Buddhism), and c) the false ones. Since in this model the last category also includes "heresies", this would mean that one here encounters an understanding distinctly different from, say, the monotheistic traditions. For the Christian, a "heretic had to be a Christian; Jews, pagans, atheists, Muslims, or other non-Christians were held to be guilty of 'infidelity' rather than heresy". (14) As a matter of fact, the same mechanism applies to all other religions which developed a concept of orthodoxy.

But whatsoever the actual Tibetan understanding might be, it has to be noted first that both terms, "chos log" and "log chos", are not modern creations. They can be found in traditional literature. Some minor difference in actual usage may exist, yet this has to be clarified through more extensive research. At the moment, it looks as if "chos log" was already part of the language of translations while "log chos" rather belongs to the realm of later native Tibetan compositions.

To put it in more concrete terms, "chos log" is attested in the normative Sanskrit-Tibetan dictionary Mahavutpatti where "chos log pas dkris pa" stands for Sanskrit "mithyaadharmapariita", one of the faults or defects (15), and is met with e.g. in the Tibetan translation of the Vinayavibhanga (16). "log chos" on the other hand appears in texts composed, for example, by Zhang Tshal-pa (1123-1193) who quotes opponents criticizing his own teachings as "chos kyi babs dang mi 'thun log chos" -"a perverse doctrine that does not accord with the real content of the Dharma".(17) Another example is Pabongka (1878-1941) who talked about "bon la sogs pa'i log chos" (Bon and the other perverse doctrines). (18)

While the examples of "log chos" do point into the direction of the Western concept of "heresy" as deviance from "orthodoxy", the situation is a little bit more complicated with "chos log". In Buddhist discourse, mithyaa and the equivalent Pali micchaa is the opposite of samyak/sammaa.(19) One is "right", the other "wrong". And "wrong doctrine" need not be confined to deviant beliefs cropping up within one community but can well refer to other religions.

Interestingly enough, the often highly praised "three-volume" Tibetan dictionary does not help here -it neither lists "chos log" nor "log chos". It has, however, "chos log pa" which is defined as "yang mi dag pa'i lta ba 'dzin mkhan"(20), someone holding incorrect views. This introduces an important new element, "views", into the discussion and actually leads straight into the Eastern side of the lexicon world.

The only representative there is, to the best of my knowledge, Tashi Tshering's English-Tibetan-Chinese Dictionary which mentions two Tibetan terms for "heresy" -"lta ba tha dad pa" and "chos lugs tha dad kyi dad pa"(21)- the former meaning "different view(s)" (22), the latter "belief in a different religion". This is not only remarkable because the value laden "wrong" is avoided and a completely neutral "different" is used instead, but also because the understanding of "heresy" is here differentiated into two layers, the general one dealing with views (lta ba) and the specifically religious one referring to chos lugs.

As a matter of fact, in some sense this two-pronged approach is a more faithful reflection of the situation in modern spoken English. According to Collins COBUILD Dictionary, for example, "heresy" denotes 1) "a belief, opinion, or way of behaving that most people think is wrong because it disagrees with beliefs that are generally accepted" and 2) "a belief, opinion, or way of behaving that seriously disagrees with the principles of a particular religion, and which is therefore considered to be a sin".(23)

Thus it seems that Tibetan is well equipped to deal with the complexities of Western (or English, for that matter,) "heresy", with Eastern lexicographers displaying the greater degree of sophistication. However, this rosy picture changes when we turn our attention to Tashi Tshering's treatment of the "heretic" who in the Anglo-Saxon world covers two layers of meaning parallel to those of "heresy." First of all, he marks it as a term related to religion ("chos") which reduces the field of meaning to one half, and then he lists "phyi rol pa", "lta log pa" and "mu stegs pa" as translations.(24) These terms mean, in turn, the "outsiders" (i.e. those who believe in religions other than Buddhism) (25) , those with perverse views (26) , and the "forders" (27) which again "refers to all non-Buddhist schools" (28). In other words, with the exception of the fuzzy "lta log pa," all other definitions of "heretic" do not correspond to the concept students of religion presently hold in the West.

In some way, though, this is not so astonishing. A.L. Basham, for example, called the "mu steg ston pa drug" (or six non-Buddhist teachers) straightforward "the six heretics". (29) Though not directly related to the language of the land of snow it further warrants notion that the Chinese accompanying Tibetan glosses -this refers of course to Eastern dictionaries- also summarily stays on this simplistic level. For Tashi Tshering, "heresy" means "yijiao" (different religion) or "xinfeng yijiao" (believing in a different religion) in Chinese, and the "heretic" is "yijiaotu" (follower of a different religion). (30) This is also the meaning attached to "chos log pa", with an additional "xinfeng xiemen waidao zhe" (someone who believes in perverse practices and the path of outsiders). (31)

In conclusion, modern Tibetan seems to provide ready vocabulary to express basic contents of what is meant by saying "heresy" in English. Nevertheless, there is one important semantic component implied in Western usage which is not reflected in any of the Tibetan translations I could identify so far. When Huxley calls beginning as heresy and ending as orthodoxy the common fate of all knowledge, the "heresy" he talks about implies the minority view which is not accepted by the majority. This idea of the few who acknowledge the divergent view seems completely lacking in Tibetan "heresy" although it is vital for an understanding of the meaning in Western discourse.

1) See Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine (Boston and London: New Science Library [Shambhala], 1985) p. 75.

2) See for example "...between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across the Channel call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace nor truce" in Thomas H. Huxley, "Agnosticism and Christianity" [1899] , Collected Essays V, p. 313.

3) See Geoffrey Wigoder, The Encyclopedia of Judaism (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989) p. 335. Interestingly enough, a few years after Maimonides' death the rabbis in Northern France and Germany sought to have his books condemned as heretical, see David S. Ariel, The Mystic Quest: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1995) p. 32. This episode is also alluded to in Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997) p. 192-193. Johnson's book, "a national best seller", makes for interesting reading, is however marred by breathtaking bias. Statements like "Gnosticism, or the lore of secret knowledge-systems, is an extremely insidious parasitic growth, which attaches itself like a poisonous ivy to the healthy trunk of a major religion" (p. 195) or "[the critical faculty] was the source of their rationality, one of the factors which brought them to monotheism in the first place, for their critical sense would not allow them to accept the follies of polytheism" (p. 206) are a little bit too emotional to be regarded as serious scholarship.

4) See Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994) pp. 192-195.

5) See Owen Chadwick, A History of Christianity (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) p. 64.

6) See Melvyn Goldstein, English-Tibetan Dictionary of Modern Tibetan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) p. 200. Cf. loc. cit. "chos log byed mkhan" for "heretic".

7) See T. G. Dhongthog, The New Light English-Tibetan Dictionary (Dehradun: Sakya Centre, 1988) p. 197.

8) See Heinrich August Jäschke, A Tibetan-English Dictionary (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Company, first Japanese edition, 1985) p. iii.

9) See Stephan V. Beyer, The Classical Tibetan Language (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) p. xxiv.

10) See Heinrich August Jäschke, op. cit., p. 635.

11) Idem, p. 553.

12) Loc. cit.. For the explanation of the source see idem, p. xxi.

13) Idem, p. 163.

14) See Jeffrey Burton Russel, "Heresy: Christian Concepts", in Mircea Eliade, editor -in-chief, The Encyclopedia of Religions (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), vol. 6, p. 276.

15) See ACIP R4 (Asian Classics Input Project Release IV), Texts, REF, R0061A1.ACM, 2443 (section 127, entry 2).

16) See ACIP R4, Texts, KANGYUR, KD0003I1.INC ('Dul ba rnam par 'byed pa) p. 196b.

17) See David Jackson, Enlightenment by a Single Means (Wien: Verlag der …sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994) p. 51.

18) See ACIP R4, Texts, SUNGBUM, S0034N.ACT (Lam gtso'i zab khrid stsal skabs kyi gsung bshad zin bris lam bzang sgo 'byed) 10a.

19) See T.W. Rhys Davids and William Stede, Pali-English Dictionary (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, first Indian edition, 1975) p. 532.

20) See Zhang Yisun, editor-in-chief, Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo (Peking: Minzu chubanshe, compact edition, 1993) p. 844.

21) See Tashi Tshering, English-Tibetan-Dictionary (Delhi: Sherig Parkhang Sonam Tsering, no date) p. 438.

22) "lta ba tha dad pa" can already be found in the classical language. According to ACIP R4 (Asian Classics Input Project Release IV), Texts, REF, R0061A1.ACM, 862 (section 30, entry 57), the Sanskrit equivalent is naanaad.r.s.ti.

23) See John Sinclair, editor in chief, Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1988) p. 682.

24) See Tashi Tshering, op. cit., p. 438.

25) See Zhang Yisun, op. cit., p. 1746.

26) Or those who have lost the correct view, see Zhang Yisun, op. cit., p. 1084, 1083.

27) See Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness (London: Wisdom Publications, 1983) p. 320.

28) See Herbert V. Guenther, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1986) p. 110, n. 27.

29) See A.L. Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion (Delhi, Varanasi, Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, reprint 1981) p. 10.

30) See Tashi Tshering, op. cit., p. 438.

31) See Zhang Yisun, op. cit., p. 844.