The Tibetan Bamboo Pen: Writing the Dharma on the Plateau
With the advent of the elegant Tibetan script, the plateau's long-established civilization at last began its "history of writing" on this land, ensuring that Songtsen Gampo's renown would be passed down through the ages and that Siddhartha's compassionate teachings would acquire a new course. In "Go Khukpa Lhetse, 19th century," the localized view depicts students listening to and writing down the Dharma's instructions, while the local view portrays scholars undertaking translation—the author behind all scriptures.
Within those enormous scriptural tomes, the boundless grasslands and a nomadic shepherdess’s hectic everyday existence come into view. So too does the vivid rainbow that King Gesar left in the sky as he rode past. One observes nobles lingering anxiously on the Potala Palace’s walls amid a heavy snowfall, as well as the vibrant spectacle of Lhasa hosting envoys from far and wide—a scene whose grandeur Gendun Qunpei once called 'sitting three-fourths of the world.
But when we shut our eyes and pull back our thoughts, we glimpse things unfamiliar. What shows up first is a pen—like an undying pillar propping up the universe—with eyes behind it that have watched this nation's whole story. (Tun Mi Sangbuzha portrait; image: tsemtulku.)
In the 1970s, two bamboo pens were excavated from the Western Xia site at Zhang Yibao in Wuwei, Gansu. Across thousands of years, this pen has broken through the constraints of time and space, and upon it ancient wisdom and spiritual energy flow without interruption, turning it into a bridge. Through countless hardships, its sharp point has penetrated reality, dispelling all deceptions, and functioning as an unwritten law that firmly protects the fundamental boundary of that civilization. Writing with a bamboo pen. Image source: Internet.
Excavated alongside the two pens were some Tibetan and Western Xia manuscripts and other artifacts. The first pen, 13.6 cm in length and 0.7 cm in diameter, was made of thin bamboo, with one end whittled into a pen-tip shape and a groove down the middle; it showed no signs of use. The second pen, measuring 9.5 cm by 0.8 cm in diameter, was shorter and probably the product of repeated sharpenings.
A bamboo pen was unearthed in Wuwei, Gansu in 1972. In Tibetan, the word for "pen" is pronounced as "纽枯" (སྨྱུ་གུ), a term that reveals its original material—bamboo. These two bamboo pens, bearing multiple sharpening marks and passing from Tubo to Tibet, from Tibetan script to Western Xia script, have stepped from the backstage of history onto its center stage. Their journey reminds us to look beyond the history they document and toward the history carried within them.
In Tibetan, bamboo is referred to as "纽玛" (སྨྱུག་མ), from which the central term "纽" is taken; "枯" indicates "small" or "part," so "纽枯" in Tibetan means "short bamboo." A distinctive craft of Tibetan regions is the making of bamboo pens, and the shaping process follows a particular method: the bamboo must first be coated with a layer of butter or cattle bone marrow, then left to soak for a certain period. Afterward, it is hung in the sun to dry until the surface takes on a yellow color tinged with red, and only then is it ready to be shaped.
In the "Knowledge Compilation," a method for producing bamboo pens is also described: the bamboo is first suspended in a chimney to absorb smoke, then shaped into a pen, coated with butter, placed inside roasted barley, and finally polished until it achieves a hardness like bone. Making such pens requires skill in sharpening and writing. A Tibetan proverb says, "Skilled in carving, skilled in writing," highlighting the significance of the craft of carving bamboo pens.
Both pens excavated from Wuwei have a groove carved into the middle of the tip, which serves to hold ink, as per the traditional Tibetan method of making and using bamboo pens. The groove becomes thinner from the base toward the tip, giving the pen a sharper point. A narrower slit at the tip slows the ink flow, while a broader slit allows ink to flow more quickly, making it well suited for fast writing. The groove width and slit size can also be varied according to the size of the characters being written.
Depending on the surface used for writing, a zigzag-shaped carving may appear close to the nib to assist with writing in straight lines—this is the case with tools such as wooden slates, the traditional Tibetan writing board employed for calligraphy practice. Scholars of earlier times always carried a sharp knife to repeatedly reshape the pen tip, since maintaining its sharpness was essential for using the same pen across different font sizes or styles. children learning calligraphy Image: Bettmann
For the pre-phase of bamboo pen production, even a knife this small demanded extreme precision, as Gong Zhu Yun Deng Jia Cuo skillfully stated in his "Compendium of Knowledge": "The key to skill lies in the knife, with a sharp edge made of high-quality iron, both sharp and flexible... the back of the knife should be straight and thin... the blade should be able to cut hair when sharpened.
When writing Tibetan script with a bamboo pen, the way the pen is held differs from the hand gestures used in Chinese calligraphy. The index finger and thumb work together as the main basis for this grip, with the pen secured between them. The rotation of the thumb is what determines the thickness of the strokes. Beneath the pen rests the middle finger, while the other two fingers remain bent.
Good posture and the coordinated movement of joints throughout the body enable clear writing and prevent fatigue during long periods of sitting. According to traditional calligraphy theory, the three fingers holding the brush should create a space in the palm large enough to contain a crow's egg. Image credit: Christopher Banigan, depicting Tibetan writing pen-holding posture and pen types. The discipline inherent to a writer.
There may be logic behind certain prohibitions: both an overly short pen body and excessively lightweight pen tips can seriously hinder writing. For this reason, people refrain from using very short pens, as they are thought to shorten the writer's life, and they also avoid crafting pen tips at both ends of the bamboo, since this thrifty habit is believed to cause financial hardship for the writer. As a general rule, a Tibetan bamboo pen's length should correspond to the span of an adult hand, with the minimum length being no less than the fingers.
The pen's spiritual worth is heightened when it is tied to the writer's destiny, as it then goes beyond being a mere implement and takes on a character intertwined with that of the author. A section of the mural at the Potala Palace, "The Monk Official Writing Documents", illustrates this connection.
In the belief of some scholars from many years ago, the bamboo pen, a unique writing tool for Tibetan, has been used without interruption and has never lost its importance in writing. This stands in contrast to the brush, which served as an essential writing instrument for Chinese characters for thousands of years but, since the early twentieth century, has been increasingly removed from necessity and transformed into a tool solely for artistic creation.
Even now, it remains highly regarded and continues to serve a unique function, thanks to its practicality, its straightforward rendering of Tibetan letters, and how simple it is to craft. Yet, in much the same way that brushes were affected by the arrival of pens and pencils, Tibetan scribes are likewise encountering challenges brought on by newer writing implements. Although a growing number of modern Tibetan pens are being developed, the bamboo pen still faces the possibility of being reduced to merely a specialized instrument for artistic expression, shaped by how people choose to use it. This is reflected in the artworks of British calligrapher Tashi.
Translated from JiangbaiXirao's blog, this article's references are as follows: དཔའ་རིས ་སང ས་རྒྱས།, 《སྨྱུ་གུ་བཟོ་ཐབས་དང་འཛིན་སྟངས་མ་ཕྱི་དཔེར་ལེན་ཚུལ་བཅས་ཀྱི་སྐོར་བཤད་པ།》; Pu Chongju, 'The "Four Treasures of the Study" of the Tibetan Ethnic Group in China'; Zong Ruibin, 'The Development of Tibetan Calligraphy Forms'; and 'The Complete Collection of Snowland Calligraphy Thangkas.' History does not stop, even though the pen does not till.