A factor of determining importance now suddenly thrust itself into the situation. At the very time when the Viceroy was making these fruitless efforts to enter into direct communication with the Dalai Lama came the information that this exclusive personage had been sending an Envoy to the Czar. Our Ambassador at St. Petersburg forwarded to the Foreign Office an announcement in the official column of the Journal de Saint Petersbourg of October 2 (15), 1900, announcing the reception by His Majesty the Emperor of a certain Dorjieff, who was described as first Tsanit Hamba to the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And, some months later, our Consul-General at Odessa forwarded to the Foreign Office an extract from the Odessa Novosti of June 12 (25), 1901, stating that Odessa would welcome that day an Extraordinary Mission from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, which was proceeding to St. Petersburg with diplomatic instructions of importance. At the head of the mission was the Lama, Dorzhievy (Dorjieff), and its chief object was a rapprochement and the strengthening of good relations with Russia. It was said to have been equipped by the Dalai Lama, and despatched with autograph letters and presents from him to His Imperial Majesty. And, among other things, it was to raise the question of the establishment in St. Petersburg of a permanent Tibetan Mission for the maintenance of good relations with Russia.
This Dorjieff, it appeared from an article in the Novoe Vremya of June 18 (July 1), 1901, was a Russian subject, who had grown up and received his education on Russian soil. He was by birth a Buriat of Chovinskaia (in the province of Verchnyudinsk, in Trans-Baikalia, Eastern Siberia), and was brought up in the province of Azochozki. He had settled in Tibet twenty years before his present visit to Russia. “This reappearance of the Tibet Mission in Russia proved,” said the Novoe Vremya, “that the favourable impressions carried back by Dorjieff to his home from his previous mission have confirmed the Dalai Lama in his intention of contracting the friendliest relations with Russia.... A rapprochement with Russia must seem to him [the Dalai Lama] the most natural step, as Russia is the only Power able to frustrate the intrigues of Great Britain.”
Count Lamsdorff, however, in conversation with the British Ambassador[[12]] on July 3, 1901, characterized “as ridiculous and utterly unfounded the conclusion drawn in certain organs of the Russian press, that these Tibetan visitors were charged with any diplomatic mission.” He said Dorjieff was a Mongolian Buriat of Russian origin, who came occasionally to Russia with the object, he believed, of making money collections for his Order from the numerous Buddhists in the Russian Empire. Count Lamsdorff added that on the occasion of Dorjieff’s visit in the previous autumn to Yalta, the Emperor had received him, and he himself had had an opportunity of learning some interesting details from him of life in Tibet; the Russian Geographical Society also took an interest in his visit, which had, however, no official character whatever, although he was accompanied on this visit by other Tibetans.
But, in spite of this declaimer, Dorjieff was still styled an Envoy Extraordinary, and the Messager Officiel of June 25 (July 8, 1901) had the announcement that his Majesty the Emperor had received on June 23, in the Grand Palace at Peterhof, the Envoy Extraordinary from the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And as the Russian press announced that the Envoys had paid visits to Count Lamsdorff and M. Witte, Sir Charles Scott, the British Ambassador, took an opportunity at an interview with Count Lamsdorff of ascertaining some further particulars.[[13]] The latter said that, although the Tibetan visitors had been described as Envoys Extraordinary of the Dalai Lama, their mission could not be regarded as having any political or diplomatic character. The mission was of the same character as those sent by the Pope to the faithful in foreign lands. Dorjieff had some post of confidence in the Dalai Lama’s service, but Count Lamsdorff believed that he still maintained his original Russian nationality. He had brought the Count an autograph letter from the Dalai Lama, but this letter merely expressed a hope that Count Lamsdorff was in the enjoyment of good health and was prosperous, and informed him that the Dalai was able to say that he himself enjoyed excellent health.
These proceedings naturally enough attracted the attention of the Secretary of State for India, who on July 25 pointed out to the Foreign Office[[14]] that the Dalai Lama had recently refused to receive the communications addressed to him by the Viceroy, and that while the Viceroy was thus treated with discourtesy a mission was publicly sent to Russia, and the publicity given to the Tibetan Mission which had recently arrived in St. Petersburg could not fail to engender some disquietude in the minds of the Indian Government as to the object and result of any negotiations which might ensue. The Secretary of State for India suggested, therefore, that our Ambassador should be instructed to inform Count Lamsdorff we had received his assurance with satisfaction, as any proceedings that might have a tendency to alter or disturb the existing status of Tibet, would be a movement in which His Majesty’s Government could not acquiesce. This suggestion was adopted, and on September 2, 1901, our Ambassador informed Count Lamsdorff that His Majesty’s Government would naturally not regard with indifference any proceedings that might have a tendency to alter or disturb the existing status in Tibet. The Russian Minister repeated his assertion that “the mission was chiefly concerned with matters of religion, and had no political or diplomatic object or character.”
For the time being the Government of India itself took no action in regard to this new factor, though in concluding a despatch to the Secretary of State on February 13 of the following year (1902) they declared that it was desirable that the unsatisfactory situation in Tibet should be brought to an end with as little delay and commotion as possible, since there were factors in the case which, at a later date, might invest the breakdown of the unnatural barriers of Tibetan isolation with a wider and more serious significance.
They continued to plod steadily along at the settlement of the frontier, and corresponded with the Secretary of State and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce about the introduction of tea to Tibet now that the five years, during which it was to be excluded had expired. But they acted with much more decision than previously, and instead of waiting year after year for the arrival of Chinese or Tibetan deputies to meet our representatives, they sent Mr. White, in the summer of 1902, to Giagong, to reassert British rights to the tract of country which the Tibetans had been occupying in contravention of the treaty of 1890, and, if necessary, to expel them from the British side of the frontier. Mr. White had suggested that an effective and simple way would be to occupy the Chumbi Valley, but the Government of India, though they considered grounds for strong action were far from lacking, were not for the time in favour of such a proposal. And another alternative of stopping all Tibetan trade they thought would be hard on our own traders, and might drive trade permanently away to Nepal and Bhutan. They accordingly adopted the above-mentioned course.
Mr. White went to Giagong on June 26, 1902, with 200 men, and camped half a mile from the Tibetan wall, where the Khamba Jongpen and 40 men were stationed. He gave them twenty-four hours’ notice in which to move to the other side of the boundary. On the following morning, after some protests, the Tibetans removed across the boundary. On July 4 a number of Tibetan officials visited him, and said they had come under instructions from the Tashi Lama to show him the Giagong boundary. Mr. White told them that his orders were to lay down the boundary as shown in the Convention of 1890, which had been signed by the Chinese Amban on behalf of the Tibetans. To which they replied that they had heard of the treaty, but that it was invalid, as it had not been signed by any Tibetan. The Tibetans, however, asked for a copy of the treaty and for the names of the passes, and Mr. White told them they could see for themselves if the water ran into the Sikkim Valley or into Tibet, and where the water parted into Sikkim and Tibet was the boundary. He found on the tract 6,270 sheep, 737 yaks, out of which only 1,143 sheep and 80 yaks belonged to the Sikkimese, and the remainder were Tibetan. Near the top of the Naku La he found a Tibetan wall running across the valley, with a blockhouse on the east.