THE HISTORY OF THE BELL OF LHASA

The first ones who proved the existence of a Christian bell in the town of Lhasa in 1904 were two British journalists, Edmund Candler from “Daily Mail”, and Perceval Landon from “The Times”; these two men were following the British Army under the lead of the Colonel Francis Younghusband.
 

The Jokhang drawn by Sarat Chandra Das,
in Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, 1902

The Jokhang today. By Claudio Cardelli, august 2004

Edmund Candler wrote: “…the most cultivated Tibetan people don’t even know that some Christian missionaries have lived here. However, in the cathedral we found a bell with the words Te Deum Laudamus written on it: it is surely a Capuchin remain”.
(The Unveiling of Lhasa, 1905)

Charles Bell, who lived in Lhasa during 1920/21, wrote about the missionaries in Tibet: “… I’ve found a little trace in Lhasa - when I visited the huge Temple downtown - inside the Sancta Sanctorum, the chapel in which the image of Buddha brought in Lhasa during the 7th Century is jealously conserved,. The way to the chapel is a narrow path; at its entrance, on the ceiling, I saw a huge bell, with the words Te Deum Laudamus written on it.
(The Religion of Tibet, 1931)

Heinrich Harrer, a German man who escaped from an internment camp in the North of India in 1934, came to Lhasa and lived there for a long time. “Inside a narrow and dark corridor I found a bell that hung from the ceiling. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the inscription on it: Te Deum Laudamus. This bell was probably the last remain of a chapel edified a lot of centuries before, by some Catholic missionaries, who couldn’t spread and were forced to leave the country. But since in Tibet every religion is deeply respected, the inhabitants chose to keep it inside the Cathedral. I would have learned more about this Capuchin chapel, but every information about it had got lost.
(Seven years in Tibet, 1952)

Hugh Richardson, an amazing scholar of Tibet, who lived in Lhasa as a representative of the British Government from 1936 to 1940, and from 1946 to 1950, wrote that: “…Ye-shu’I chen-po, ‘The great bell of Jesus’, comes from the Capuchin chapel, which was destroyed in 1745. It hang from the door of the ‘Du-khang’ (n. 16) and there is an inscription on it: Te Deum Laudamus. From the ceiling over the corridor there are some Chinese and Tibetan bells.”
(“The Jo-khang, ‘Cathedral’ of Lhasa”, Essais sur l’art du Tibet, by A. Macdonald – Y. Imaeda, Paris 1977)

The first photo of the bell and the most improbable explanation of its origin are both dated 1956: “The old lama who sat next to us was smiling mysteriously .… Te Deum Laudamus - where these Latin words and the black bell with its matt glow came from? .... We hung on the old lama’s every word and the most different hypothesis about the Christian missionaries came to our minds, .... but our guide surprised us with his brief explanation: it was the present from a great explorer who had lived with the Mongol Kahn for years, and this explorer was Marco Polo. The documents found in the Temple indicate that the bell should be dated in the late XIII Century, when it has been hung there after the third restoration of the building”
(Vladimír Sís e Josef Vanis, Der Weg nach Lhasa, Prag 1956).
 

The 4th of August 2004, Elio Marini, with the help of Federico Marini and Giampaolo Proni, took some detailed photos and a plastic cast of the bell. From these casts, a plaster model has been taken and from this one it will be possible to realize a twin bronze bell.

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS TE DOMINUM

This is the inscription in relief which is really written on the bell. The journalists wrote it partially because its photo was taken in 1956, and it still was hanging from the ceiling of a dark place, as Tibetan Temples usually are, and it was near a wall; so only one side of it was visible.
As you can see, the clapper wasn’t there, but the bell looks intact. When the bell was seen again, the clapper was there, but the bell had a large crack on its side, like an upside-down “L”.
The Monks from the Jokhang region assert that the crack is due to the Red Guards violence; during the 60s they destroyed and looted almost all the Chinese and Tibetan Temples.