Knock-out Round Starts

In the last round of the pre-quarters for the street football at Changlimithang in Thimphu, CCFC defeated Young Stellers 2-1 goals and Atsara defeated ILCS 4-3 yesterday.

SK defeated Cypress FC by five goals, while its opponent team lost by two goals. Drukpa also scored four goals against BoB, who lost by one goal. YHSS wiil play against Ravengers, Gunners against SK Utd, CCFC will take on Atsara and Drukpa on Norling today in the first knock-out round of the first street football tournament

Source: Kuenselonline

Bhutan in the age-old battle against wildlife

In the age-old battle against wildlife, farmers in eastern Bhutan have tried and tested endless methods to keep wild animals off their farms.

Mongar farmers have finally landed a solution that probably appears to be a success.

Serving more than just a decorative purpose, stuffed toys, those of tigers, have today replaced the traditional scarecrow in Mongar farms. And it has worked so far.

Farmer Jamtsho, 45, from Drepong gewog said the real-sized tigers, with almost original patterns and features, have done magic to their farm, which was frequently attacked by monkeys that came in troops of not less than 50.

The tigers that cost about Nu 1,500 from shops in Mongar town are neatly placed at an elevation in the field. It appeared genuine and succeeded in frightening other animals, especially monkeys.

Jamtsho remembers constructing makeshift huts and spending countless nights there, guarding his farm.

He said, if they left the farm briefly, to attend events like village zomdu, half their yield would be gone.

“All our efforts would go to waste,” he said, adding they had to compete with the monkeys, wild boars and porcupines.

Jamtsho said the wild animals became such a nuisance, farmers tried clearing bushes around the fields, erecting numerous scarecrows and constructing fences using best materials.

When he nearly lost all hope, a simple stuffed toy did the trick. And today, not a single monkey can be spotted near his field.

“It’s no exaggeration but the tiger eased my life drastically,” he said.

His neighbour, a former gup, Pema Tshewang, said for the last two years, the tigers, almost a metre long, had been protecting his three-acre maize field.

He said they noticed monkeys disappearing for weeks after spotting the tiger in the field.

“But you should know how to place it,” he said, adding presenting the tiger behind a thin layer of bush or amid twigs made it look even more real.

It was often removed during the night and off-harvest season.

“Monkeys attacked mostly during the day,” he said.

Rinzin, 49, from Thangrong gewog, said many farmers in villages across Mongar preferred to use the tiger in place of other scarecrows.

“Some friends introduced it about two years ago,” he said. “This came as a blessing to poor farmers like us, who spent sleepless nights guarding our farms, only to be stripped off our yields at the end of the year.”

Source: Kuenselonline

Bhutan: A Holland & Holland gun

A Holland & Holland gun is considered as among the finest of modern times. It is known for its brilliant craftsmanship and today is one of the world’s most expensive handcrafted sports gun.

There is one such gun in Bhutan. It is a .458 double barrel. With engravings of the big game animals of Bhutan, it is the only of its kind and now worth more than £ 80,000.

The fourth king received it as his coronation gift in 1974. The managing director of the gun company, Malcolm Lyell, travelled from London to personally offer it. Lyell’s handwritten notes says, “The official day for present giving was Tuesday, June 4th but the King couldn’t wait! We were summoned the day before and presented it to him in the Royal Cottage.”

The third King, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, had ordered the gun two years earlier in 1972, before he passed away. The third king first met Lyell in 1949, in London at the Westley Richards’s gun showroom where, as Crown Prince, he had gone to buy hunting rifles. Ever since, the two gun enthusiasts maintained their friendship.

The doyen of the London gun trade visited Bhutan as the guest of the king. He first came in 1970 and was one of the earliest to trek extensively in our northern mountains. Using hand-drawn maps of botanist Frank Ludlow, Lyell and his family made four such expeditions into the then largely unknown northern mountains. Lyell was a game enthusiast and keen on wild animals and, during his treks, saw and recorded many of these wild animals namely, the blue sheep, blue bear, wild yaks, takins, and snow leopards.

The Gun
In 1972, after returning from one such trip, Lyell had the gun of our king engraved with the large game animals that he saw during his treks in Bhutan.

For example, the right lock plate has an engraving of a group of takins - the national animal. The fore feet and body of the lynx are also just visible on the “fence” (standing breach at the left hand end of the barrel).

The left lock has an engraving of the Indian rhinoceros, which are found in the foothills of Manas. The tail and back of the snow leopard are scarcely visible on the “fence”. A Tibetan antelope, found along the Chumbi valley border, is engraved on the trigger guard, and the grip cap has an engraving of a blue sheep or bhurel.

History
Crafting a Holland & Holland gun took a long time and this became a setback as the soaring inflation of the 1970s cut into the company’s profit.

To sustain the business, Lyell started to craft presentation guns. These guns were fully functional but, because of the intricate artwork, enhanced its costs, and hence inflation did not affect its value.

Inspired by the gun makers of the 18th century, Lyell came up with the rococo gun, with deep engravings in gold and silver of classical motifs, such as Diana the huntress.

In 1966, the Shooting Times described it as the finest gun of modern times and, from then, Lyell produced a series entitled “Products of Excellence”. These included such guns as the Set of Five; beautifully matched shotguns in every gauge from 12 bore to .410; the African hunters series of big game rifles; and finally the Saurian four bore, decorated with scenes of prehistoric life.

Almost two decades later, after the launch of the “product of excellence”, in 1972, our late king ordered the .458 double barrel gun, which he never saw. In the memory of the late king, Lyell had it engraved with the big game animals of Bhutan and presented it to our fourth king during his coronation. Malcolm Lyell died early this year.

Source: Kuenselonline

Tenjur or the Buddha’s commentaries, will be translated into English

What is described as a daunting task, requiring three lifetimes, the Tenjur (Translated Treatises), or the Buddha’s commentaries, will be translated into English, according to professor Geshey Robert Thurman.

Calling it a “great treasure for humanity”, Geshey Robert Thurman, who is in the country giving talks on Buddhism, said that the Tibetan translation of the Tenjur from Sanskrit is the only remaining version of an ancient work taught by the Buddha and great Indian masters where Buddhism once flourished.

Work on the Tenjur, which is in 3,626 texts in 224 volumes, has already started, but the professor said that it is the first attempt to try to do the complete translation in a uniform way, with a terminology that is standard across all the works.

“About 40 years ago when I received my PhD, the Dalai Lama and my teacher, a Mongolian Geshey, asked me to translate the Tenjur,” said Geshey Thurman at his hotel yesterday. Working closely with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse rinpoche, who has initiated to translate the 108 volumes of Kangyur (Buddha’s words), Geshey Thurman said the Kangyur and Tenjur has to be translated to counter industrial science.

“The Kanjur has Buddha’s own words, but then people think of that as only religious like a Bible. Tenjur is more like a science – it is scientific, about inner science, about mind and how mind works,” he said. “This, the modern science doesn’t have, as they are all materialistic. So they really need these sciences, and this was one reason the Dalai Lama asked me to translate the Tenjur.”

Professor Thurman has already completed 15 to 20 works. “We have a series called the Treasury of Buddhist Sciences with Columbia University Press and published about 20 works so far. But the goal is to set up an institution in India, probably in Sarnath, where Buddha’s teaching started, to start the project.”

However, the Geshey feels that certain selections of the Tenjur can be translated in about five years, which can then be used to teach in English language schools for young Bhutanese. “Selection of very important works on logic, ethics and reasoning will be helpful in regular education, as it will teach children from a young age to reason, think rationally and critically,” he said.

“Translating these works isn’t only for the benefit of the English people, but also for young Bhutanese and young Tibetans in exile, because they speak English and they know no Choekyed or read it. So for them to read Buddhist literature, they need a good translation in English.”

In Bhutan, the professor said, because of the old fashioned Buddhist education was only for the monks and the farmers were just offering and coming to ritual and praying. “Lay people are learning and getting educated, but they aren’t educated in the Buddhist way. They are being educated in a materialistic modern way. That’s not good for a Buddhist country and so we want to create a way where lay people can get some aspects of that education,” he said, adding that he had been begging the monk body to thinks ways of teaching more simply some of the key things like logic and ethics.

Explaining why the Kanjur and Tenjur are the great treasure of humanity, the professor said that, in ancient time, around 5th and 6th century, India was the most developed place and people would come to study at Buddhist universities from Europe, China, Iran and Indonesia, where all the great universities were Buddhist and the faculty was monks. “The library from that place was really precious to humanity, and not only to Buddhists. Particularly, the Tenjur has Buddhist sciences, as the original text were not only religious, they were philosophical, medical, aesthetic (soyi rigpa) and what we call science of language today,” he said.

“Until the western people discovered Sanskrit, there didn’t have linguistic. They took it from Sanskrit what is called the modern science of linguistic.”

Asked how they would go about with the project, professor Thurman said he is hoping to create a major separate situation like the Dharma Chakra institution to keep the work going. He said that one of the problems of the 150 years of work that has gone on by academic is that each of them had their own English words for the regional Tibetan words, which comes from Sanskrit.

When the Kanjur and Tenjur were translated from Sanskrit to Tibetan, they had a certain dictionary and a king who said that they have to use one word. Therefore the words were all the same. “With our new effort, we’re going to have a single dictionary and it will be readable and uniformly across many works by many people,” he said. “Most of the translators will be Buddhist and, therefore, they’ll have a different feeling about the works and take special care, unlike scholars who didn’t care and didn’t have faith and devotion of the meaning. “

Although the project would cost millions of dollars, Professor Thurman said they would do, no matter how long it takes. “The Tibetans took 400 years because they didn’t have computers and had to travel frequently, and even in 13th century, some editing was going on. We can do more quickly, provided we have the support,” he said.

“In 30 years we’ll have a version of Tenjur and that will cost around USD10-15M. Dzongsar Khentse has a plan of 100 years to translate the Kanjur, but he can be much quicker, because a lot of preliminary works was done already.”

Source: Kuenselonline

Lumang gewog, Trashigang, waited patiently for the election officials

Dressed in their best attire, villagers in Chhengri under Lumang gewog, Trashigang, waited patiently for the election officials to begin the zomdu.

The chiwog’s school dining hall filled with the buzz of people greeting and chatting with each other. Cold wind seeped in from the wall made of mud and bamboo.

A couple of minutes later, the dzongkhag electoral officer started the session, but quickly introduced the chiwog’s lone gup contestant. The gathering, however, already knew the candidate and went on to unanimously nominate him as the gup candidate from their chiwog.

While the chiwog failed to produce any mangmi candidate, the lone tshogpa candidate was also endorsed without a hitch. The candidate was required to produce a signature support from five different households.

The zomdu was short and election team swiftly moved to the next chiwog, Doongmanma. There the process went on for at least three hours.

A male and a female gup aspirant were asked to introduce themselves. Both appeared hesitant and claimed not to know what to say. Both, however, promised to bring in development activities and serve people well.

The people were then asked to vote at the electronic voting machine placed neatly at the side. Some immediately took out their citizenship identity card from their pocket. A few had neatly wrapped it in a plastic. A handful, having forgotten to bring it along, rushed home to pick up the card.

Soon the result was declared and the female candidate was elected to contest from the chiwog. However, the villagers insisted the defeated candidate should contest for the mangmi post.

With another candidate already vying for the mangmi post, another round of voting was held to select a mangmi candidate. The candidate was once again defeated.

The chiwog, facing a dearth of tshogpa contestants, insisted the defeated candidate to stand as tshogpa.

“If we need to develop our chiwog, we need a tshogpa,” said one. Another said he need not do much walking, since the chiwog was now connected with mobile connection. The room filled with murmurs as others agreed to his nomination. It was long before the candidate reluctantly agreed to contest for tshogpa.

The election team, after lunch, moved on to Kharphoog Kurchhilo, where excited villagers promptly nominated a gup, mangmi and four tshogpas, including a woman.

On their way to Wamrong, where they will halt for the night, the election team received a phone call from the Doongmanma tshogpa candidate informing he was tendering a resignation since he didn’t feel comfortable enough to take up the post.

Source: Kuenselonline