I’m about to take a three-month sabbatical to deal with webmaster matters and do a bit of travelling, but before going offline I need to make a correction. In April, and for that matter whenever I’ve written about visiting the world’s highest mountain, I’ve repeated the common story that the Tibetan and Sherpa name for Mount Everest – Chomolungma – means “Goddess Mother of the Earth”. I’ve now learned that’s not quite true.
Tibetan and Sherpa Tradition
Sherpas are a Buddhist people of Tibetan origin who live in the Khumbu region of Nepal. Their spiritual tradition embraces many gods and goddesses who reside on the great Himalayan mountains, so the idea of a single supreme “Goddess Mother of the Earth” is inaccurate. Although we now know that Everest is the highest peak in the world, that isn’t immediately obvious on the ground. In Sherpa tradition it is certainly sacred like other great peaks, but not supreme. In fact, their most holy of mountains is distant Kailash more than 600 kilometres away in western Tibet.
The more precise transliteration is Jomolangma. Jomo means “lady” and Langma is an abbreviation of Miyolangsangma, goddess of inexhaustible giving. She is said to be one of Five Sisters of Long Life who reside on some of the great Himalayan peaks. As resident goddess on the mountain, it is Miyolangsangma from whom Sherpas and many Western climbers seek blessing before attempting the summit.
Terminological Politics
Everest. Nepal was closed to foreigners until 1950, so the discovery that it’s highest in the world had been made remotely by colonial Britain’s Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in the 19th Century. It could only be guessed because closer mountains like Makalu or Kanchenjunga looked taller. Measured from six different locations, the mountain variously designated Peak B, Peak H and Peak XV was finally established as the world’s highest in 1852. The Royal Geographical Society in London named it after the long-serving head of the Survey, Sir George Everest although he objected because he felt that mountains should be given their local name. But with both Nepal and Tibet closed at the time, that wasn’t known.
Sagarmatha. The Sherpa residents of the Khumbu Valley are a Buddhist minority in a Nepal which is 80% Hindu. When the country first opened to foreigners in 1950 there wasn’t a Nepalese name for Mount Everest which Westerners were now anxious to climb. To a Hindu government, a Tibetan or British name for such an important national treasure wasn’t acceptable so, in 1956, it decreed that a Sanskrit name should be found, Sanskrit being an ancient language known only to religious Hindus and scholars. The choice was “Sagarmatha“, which means something like “Head of the Earth Touching the Sky” or, more simply “Forehead in he Sky”.
Qomolangma. On the other side of the Himalayas, when China occupied Tibet in the 1950s it designated Chomolungma as Zhumulangma feng (珠穆朗玛峰) and in 2002 declared the official Mandarin pinyin translation to be Qomolangma feng (Mount Qomolangma) – see the photo at the top from a 2019 visit in Tibet.
Incidentally “Himalaya” comes from the Sanskrit hima (“snow”) and alaya (“abode”), meaning that the correct term for the great mountain range is the singular “Himalaya” – Abode of the Snow. In English, however, we often use plurals for mountain ranges, although we don’t refer to a single “Alp” or Pyrenee”. Ironically, the correct Sanskrit plural is the same as the singular anyway–”Himalaya”.
But for now…
Undoubtedly there will be other corrections to make as I do some website maintenance over the summer, and I’d be happy to learn of any others by email or over a refreshing something at a local watering hole. Meanwhile, I’m signing off for the next three months. Here’s wishing you a happy summer (or, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere – winter).
Happy Canada Day!
