Ancient thangka | Image source: Baotu.com
The encounter of the twelve-year-old teenager allowed the girl Ge Xiangjiu to meet the deaf and mute prodigy Mado who was drawing thangkas, and was shocked and inspired by the colorful colors of Mado's close to the gods and Buddhas. Since then, the two teenagers have been linked by fate, healing each other and redeeming each other. When faith and art collide, when art collides with life, the thangka culture that has been passed down for thousands of years, the exquisite painting techniques, the unique gemstones and rock colors, the ancient and mysterious ritual rituals... The Chinese writer Dai Sijie's novel "Bodh Gaya" unfolds the solemn and gorgeous art world of thangka painters, and explores the common propositions of mankind such as life and death, family affection, love, commitment, and conservatism with a quiet and beautiful posture far from the world.
Bodh Gaya
Daisy
Originally published in Flower City, No. 1, 2022
The full text is about 3700 words, and it takes about 5 minutes to read
Part I
1
Ge Xiang Nine
Abba was dying. The flames flickered on the bandages of his head. Two days earlier, he had climbed over a cliff with his herd, and the right front hoof of a yak was stuck in a crevice in the stone, unable to extricate himself. When Abba went to rescue him, his feet slipped and he fell into the abyss. When people found him at the bottom of the cliff, he was unconscious. In the middle of my tent is a stove. Next to the stove was where Abba and I ate during the day, where he slept at night. After his injuries, he remained unconscious on the ground next to the stove, covered with felt and cow and sheepskin and covered with tritium.
Anai's (aunt's) tent, not far from my house, can be ridden back and forth in half an hour on horseback. She didn't go back for two days, stayed with us, and took care of Abba. The next afternoon, she felt that the situation was not good, so she went to Jiegu Town and asked an Abba to treat Abba.
The tent door was open, and I could see Anai leading Abba's horse—a blob of brownish-red light—to the sink to drink water, and I could see some yak-black figures coming and going in the prayer wheel. Almost all of my yaks are huge and handsome in appearance, with tassel-like long hairs and pure black coats. Prayer wheels stand in front of the tent door, inscribed with scriptures and birds and beasts, studded with emeralds and corals, shining brightly.
I handed Abba a bowl of freshly beaten butter tea. He was about fifty years old, had sharp eyes, and held several duties on weekdays: driving away hailstones, divinating for newlyweds, or treating cattle and sheep... He is also said to be a well-known herbalist.
Abba opened his small wooden box, took a handful of tree roots from it, put it in his mouth, and chewed slowly and for a long time, his already brown teeth stained deeper by the soil of the roots. When Anai led Abba's horse to a stake outside the tent, the horse raised its front hooves and made a hissing sound that mixed with the sound of Abba chewing on the roots of the trees in the tent.
It is said that my mother also chews the roots of plants. She also had a small chest of black calfskin with a golden lock and red velvet inside, containing dozens of different kinds of grasses from her qiang hometown in northern Sichuan: roots and whiskers, and some with long-withered flowers, emitting a faint fragrance. Each grass is tied with thin threads of different colors. She's not Abba, she's not even Tibetan. My name—Ge Xiang Jiu—was a Qiang name she had given. Abba used to say to me, your aunt is the most beautiful witch in the world. When she first walked into the ancient town of Jiegu, people were stunned by her beauty, and the leaders who were holding a meeting at the toast house all stood up. She chewed on the grass roots and entered the world of God, barefoot, dancing on the burning charcoal fire until the charcoal flame was extinguished and turned into ashes. I can still see the sparks splashing in the ashes, dancing around your aunt's ankles.
The sound of Abba chewing on the roots of the tree stopped. The hissing of the horses and the barking of the yaks outside could not be heard. There was only one sound in the tent: Abba took his saliva, a light brown rain mist, from his mouth, through the beam of light that poured through the skylight on the roof of the tent, forming a halo of light, like a rainbow after the rain, falling into the four "walls" of the tent. Our house built a short wall of about a foot high with turf on all sides of the tent to block the intrusion of cold wind from the gap below. Clothing and grain were placed on low walls to protect them from moisture. Now, they're all stained with Abba's spit. Then he took a piece of cypress stick from the small wooden box and lit it, and walked to the corners of the tent. He then began to beat the air with a duster to drive the unwelcome ghosts out of the tent. Start at the stove and whipp to the left of the tent door, where we have cooking utensils such as pots and pans and a pile of dried cow dung for fuel. He also walked toward the small room where the dairy products were stored. It was filled with milk, yogurt, cheese, cream etc. Despite the very narrow space, he was unyielding, whipping the air inside.
It was starting to wind outside. I pulled on the rope, closed the lid of the skylight, and the tent suddenly darkened. Abba lit two candles beside his father. His black figure looked like a giant in the candlelight. Abba took a packet of powder from his small wooden box, mixed it into a paste, and added a little ash from the stove. As he untied the bandages on his father's head and re-bandaged him, his father opened his eyes, but for a fleeting moment, he sank back into a coma.
Anai talked about paying Abba. She said that the yak that caused her father to fall off a cliff (known to me as "white hair" because of a tuft of light-colored hairs on the nose) could not stay in our house any longer, and must be taken to the market in Jiegu Town to sell, and then the money from the sale was given to Abba. There is a street on the west side of the market square that leads to the end, which is Abba's home.
The next morning, an a tractor for delivering goods that Anai had contacted was just about to return to jiegu Town, and he could take me and the yak with him.
I went to find "White Hair". The yaks slept crouched behind the tents for the night, and immediately surrounded me when they saw me. There are thirty-eight yaks in our family, each of which is a behemoth weighing five or six hundred kilograms. They crowded with each other, some pulling at my clothes with huge horns, and some rubbing my face with their furry heads. Although the heat from their mouths blurred my vision, I saw the "white hair": it was one of the few old bulls in my family. It was beautiful when it was young, with thick, curly hair hanging long. It also has a pair of huge horns on its head that are particularly beautiful, with the end slightly curved outward. When my elementary school classmates finished school doing homework at home, they liked to tease it, feed it food, and then touch its horns. The hairs on its back and on the upper sides of its body had turned brown, and the hair on its head had turned gray. The tuft of white hair that gave it its name on the nose also lost its former luster and began to turn gray. The ends of its proud horns have been bent inwards, and the lower parts of the horns have gray-brown folds.
The "white hair" also saw me, and it stared at me with angry eyes. Did it have a premonition of doom? No, yak has countless advantages, hard-working, loyal and honest. But their intelligence is no higher than that of other cattle. Maybe it smells something ominous by smell. Yaks have poor hearing and vision, but are born with a keen sense of smell and can smell the breath of people at least a kilometer away from the wind. It didn't run away, it didn't even retreat. It rushed straight towards me. I couldn't dodge and was knocked to the ground by it. I had just gotten up from the ground and it rushed over from the left again.
I once heard Abba say that as long as the average animal hears the gunshot, whether it is shot or not, it sprints in the opposite direction of the gunshot, and after escaping from the distance, it looks back at where the shooting came from. Only the yak does the opposite, and when the gun is fired, it will rush in the direction of the gun. If the hunter fired a second shot at it, it was shot again, but it did not turn around and run away, but continued to rush towards the hunter. The third shot, the fourth shot, when it finally fell, was only a few meters away from the hunter.
In the end, Anai and I subdued the "white hair", and even the tractor pilot was involved in it, shirtless. The "white haired" villain was caught in the body of the tractor.
Unexpectedly, the tractor actually broke anchor 20 kilometers away from Yushu. Although I knew that if I walked to Jiegu Town with white hair, the market there would have long ended, but I was still on the road. Fortunately, when we climbed the second slope, we encountered a Sino-Tibetan caravan coming to the top of this mountain from the direction of Jiegu Town. They had more than 20 yaks, one of which had been worn by a pack and had a hard time walking. When they stopped to bandage it, they just looked at the "white hair" and paid for it.
Except for a small Dharma drum, I had little impression of the ancient town of Jiegu. I only passed by once before I went to pay Abba back, when I was in the first grade of elementary school. It was the Year of the Tibetan Calendar, and Abba took me to Jiegu Temple to see Tibetan opera and the skeleton dance performed at the temple. He wore a Tibetan robe trimmed with snow leopard skin, a large, ruby-encrusted silver earring on his left ear, and a long, wide, exquisitely ornamented Tibetan knife around his waist. To the left of the belt are cigarette bags and pipes. He rode my brown horse and put me on the saddle bridge of his saddle. We followed the mighty Zaqu River and first came to Jiegu Town. Abba wanted to buy a silk scarf embellished with shells for me to give as a New Year's gift. We went to the market square, but it was already afternoon. The square was empty. Several cordyceps dealers gathered in a corner of the market, playing with "ropes" on the ground, their fanatical eyes rolling along the trajectory of the dice on a wooden plate. A wandering monk of the incarnation beat a small drum in his hand again and again, and I told Abba not to wear a silk scarf, what I liked was this small drum. I said as I jumped off my horse. Dad asked You Fang monk, the daughter of a Qiang wizard, if she could play the Dharma drum? Monk You Fang said that anyone can. I took the Dharma drum from him. Abba opened his wallet, which contained his savings for a year, ready to donate all of them to YukikoJi Temple. He took out a few bills and handed them to the monk. I put on my saddle and started shaking the Dharma drum. The sound of drums melts in the sunshine of the bazaar. We march on horseback. The sun was shining brightly, and I was half squinting, shaking my drums, and smiling at passers-by I didn't know. Even if it started to snow on the way to Yukikoji Temple, it didn't affect my good mood. I shook the Dharma drum in the snow. Yukikoji Temple is built on a mountain. Ochre red prayer halls, main halls, pulpits, and monastic houses are layered on top of each other. Before we could get to the Jokhang Hall, the snow stopped. When we ascended to the Temple of Maitreya, the sun was shining. I rang the drum of Dharma, and for the first time I had a bird's eye view of a city in front of me: the ancient town surrounded by continuous mountains on three sides, the houses that were darkened by time and extended towards the horizon, the chimneys of the forest, the straight avenues, the winding alleys and streets... We watched the performance, but it was neither a Tibetan opera nor a skeleton dance, but a dance originally created by Yukioji Temple called "Dodō Qiuzhuo". When dusk fell, a huge dark cloud flew over the ancient town of Jie and flew towards us. Abba told me it was a flock of migratory starlings. This large black, crushing, endless bird actually heard the Dharma drum sounded by the daughter of a Qiang wizard, and landed on the roof and eaves of the summit of The Jiegu Temple, huddled tightly together.
……