In 1941, philosopher and poet Gendun Chopel (1903-51) sent a large manuscript by ship, train, and yak across mountains and deserts to his homeland in the northeastern corner of Tibet. He would follow it five years later, returning to his native land after twelve years in India and Sri Lanka. But he did not receive the welcome he imagined: he was arrested by the government of the regent of the young Dalai Lama on trumped-up charges of treason. He emerged from prison three years later a broken man and died soon after. Gendun Chopel was a prolific writer during his short life. Yet he considered that manuscript, which he titled Grains of Gold, to be his life's work, a book to delight his compatriots with tales of an ancient Indian and Tibetan past, while alerting them to the wonders and dangers of the strikingly modern land abutting Tibet's southern border, the British colony of India. Now available for the first time in English, Grains of Gold is a unique compendium of South Asian and Tibetan culture that combines travelogue, drawings, history, and ethnography. Gendun Chopel describes the world he discovered in South Asia, from the ruins of the sacred sites of Buddhism to the Sanskrit classics he learned to read in the original. He is also sharply, often humorously critical of the Tibetan love of the fantastic, bursting one myth after another and finding fault with the accounts of earlier Tibetan pilgrims. Exploring a wide range of cultures and religions central to the history of the region, Gendun Chopel is eager to describe to his Buddhist audience in Tibet all the new knowledge he gathered in his travels. At once the account of the experiences of a tragic figure in Tibetan history and the work of an extraordinary scholar, Grains of Gold is an accessible, compelling book animated by a sense of discovery of both a distant past and a strange present.

Grains of Gold, Gendun Chopel, The University of Chicago Press, Hardcover, 473 pages, $57.20.

Gendun Chopel (1903-1951) is widely regarded as one of the most important Tibetan figures of the twentieth century, famous for his skills as a poet and infamous for his controversial views.

Thupten Jinpa is adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal. He has translated and edited numerous books and is the author, most recently, of Essential Mind Training.

Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan.

CONTENTS: Grains of Gold
	Introduction By Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez Jr.	29
1	First, How I Set Out from Lhasa	29
2	General Formation of the Land of India and How It Acquired Its Name	59
3	How the Lands Were Given Their Names	71
4	The Snow Mountains of the North and Analysis of Related Issues	89
5	What the Famous Places of the Past Are Like	95
6	On Men, Women, Food, Drink, and Various Apparel	129
7	Identification of Various Species of Flowers and Trees and How to Recognize Them	175
8	Writing Systems of Various Lands of Past and Present	189
9	On the Linguistic Rules of the Tibetan Language	209
10	The Inscriptions of the Dharma King Asoka Carved on the Rock Face of Mount Girnar	221
11	The Gupta Dynasty	229
12	The Pala Dynasty	259
13	From 1,600 Years after the Passing of the Buddha to the Present	279
14	On the History of Singhala	305
15	On the Conditions and the Customs of the Tibetan People in Ancient Times	349
16	The Religion of the Tirthikas	363
17	Conclusion	397
	Acknowledgments	417
	Appendix A: Tibetan Transliteration	419
	Appendix B: Glossary of Terms	425
	Notes	427
	Index	453