Thy name is Sikkim !

I enjoy what Gerda Lerner, a renowned historian, once quoted: “What we do about history matters? The often repeated saying that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them has a lot of truth in it. But what are 'the lessons of history? The very attempt at definition furnishes ground for new conflicts. History is not a recipe book; past events are never replicated in the present in quite the same way. Historical events are infinitely variable and their interpretations are a constantly shifting process. There are no certainties to be found in the past. As a toddler, we are here to comprehend the beauty of those immemorial days that have lived up to its days.” 

Fig 1. Delisle’s 1723 Carte d’Asie shows the first map of Sikkim, then written as Bramson

Often repeated words that history should never be repeated but re-created, I personally believe we have come to that hour of need where we can have local writers brushing up with some history exemplar, pushing behind those gloomy days. There were times in my academic life when the approach to this subject was ridden off with yarn and skimp. History should never be looked upon simply as long-drawn-out pages of the times of yore. The beauty lies in exploring the drift world of historical impudence; though we are left with much work of uncertainties, the more we uncover, the more magnificence it further lays.

Taking into consideration the misinterpretation of words on many occasions completely changes the context of the meaning of the words. I am interested in acquiring knowledge of the yore days of early Sikkim. The biggest difficulty I had was the ever-changing nomenclature of the people and places, and it is still going on. I live in Singtam, which was once known as Shingithang till the late 1880s; now it is more adapted as Singtam, but sometimes when I move my eyes across the signal tower in my mobile, I find rather two different names; it's Singtham, and in another occasion it is Sintam. Even in one instance one of the popular private banks in the heart of the town has written Singtom on its signboard. I dare not know what this place would be called towards the end of this century. Like Singtam, there are scores of places across Sikkim that have taken many angelized forms. 

Fig 2. Closer view of Bramson

Sikkim is the beautiful name of our state, but I never knew what it meant in modern-day concepts. Today, Sikkim is looked upon with curiosity rather than the achievements it has accredited over the past few decades. Talked more often as a thumb-sized state or a stamp-sized state, Sikkim, over the last decade, has had achievements in different fields that the larger states in India envy.

Ever since this Himalayan region came into existence, it has been known under different names depending upon the social order thriving in the regions such that Lepchas call it “Ney-Meyel-Renjyong-Lyang” while Tibetans named it “Denzong”. With the advent of groups of people from neighbouring Nepal and others, we had “Sukhim” modernized to today’s Sikkim. It must be talked about that Sikkimese Bhutia finds the word Sikkim to be the corrupt form of Shing-khyim i.e. “wooden house” as all the Bhutia dwellings are made up of stone and wood. The similar wooden house-like reference is also echoed by the Limbos from Nepal. Another often-used name for Sikkim is “Bayul Demajong”, i.e. Hidden Land of Sacred Treasures, the name Guru Padmasambhava gives. It is believed that Guru Padmasambhava had hidden the sacred texts in different caves around Sikkim. As for the natives of Tibet since no rice is grown, when they first saw the plant of rice being overly grown in the land of Sikkim, they called it “Denjong” i.e. Valley of Rice. Some scholars refer to this version of the myth related to the rice grains being introduced by Guru Padmasambhava at Chungthang.

The ethnic Lepcha call this region a place of pilgrimage or simply a paradise of perpetual youth, as AR Foning wrote in his “Lepcha—My Vanishing Tribe.”

"A Stranger's Notes & Other Essays”, edited by Sujit Chakraborty, while answering about the then quiz competition held in ‘Weekend Review' weekly newspaper from Gangtok, put in plain words that the original name of Sikkim depends on which language one is referring to. In Sikkimese, it could be one thing, something different in Lepcha and something quite different, again in Limboo, etc. Another likely derivative comes from “Sirkhin”, a dictionary word from the explorer Sarat Chandra Das which means land of non-celibate monks.

HH Rishley, in his ‘The Gazetteer of Sikhim’ published in 1894, gives his explanation that the word ‘Sikhim’ is more of a Parbatiya name applied to the country after the invasion by the Gorkhas and a probable derivation from a Sanskrit ‘Sikhin’, which meant crested. The crested form finds a characteristic appeal to the country they called Sukhim from their (Nepal) side, explains Rishley.

However, Dr. Waddell provides closer justification, adding that the word Sukhim was derived from two Limbu dialects, ‘Su’ and ‘Khim’, which meant new house or palace. Here, I find myself woven in the magic of beautiful words; when Tensung Namgyal, the second Chogyal of Sikkim, married the daughter of a Limbu King Yo-Yo-Hang from Nepal, she must have been the first person to exclaim her new house or her new palace at Rubdenste as ‘Sukhim’. 

If we go by Dr. Waddell's explanation of the etymology of Sukhim, we are left to understand that Sukhim was more limited to Rabdenste rather than the whole country, which is also supported by the text of the ‘The Gazetteer of Sikhim’ that mention of the old map by Hamilton had the name Sikhim in place of Rubdenste. The book also carries names of Kirkpatrick’s writing mentioning a name of a place as 'a town and district of Sookhim’, and in another instance a name of a place as ‘Sikhem’ in the itinerary from Bijapore to Daling jurisdiction somewhere near the Rungeet. I would support the words of Rishley, where he lastly writes, “The name was originally given to a place and not a country.”

I would be unfinished if I failed to mention the word “Sikhim”, the most popular word known to the Western world then, made more popular from the memoirs of John Claude White, the first Political Officer of Sikkim. White publishes his book “Sikhim and Bhutan, Twenty-One Years on the North-East Frontiers 1887-1908” in 1909, one of the complete books on Sikkim history. Lastly, not to forget is “Sikim” found along the corrupt lines occasionally.

It was great excitement for me at least; surfing around the web pages on cartography, commonly called mapmaking of Asian countries, I came upon a page called “David Rumsey Map Collection”, a house of rare and classic maps of the ancient continents. I believe I discovered something that had never been published on any pages related to Sikkim history before. I was looking at the first map of the Sikkim region, then mentioned as “Bramason”. The map of Bramason was published in the third decade of the 18^th century as Delisle's 1723 Carte d'Asie. Guillaume Delisle was a French cartographer and a great traveller. To be specific in his artistic work, Delisle must have gathered the information originating from the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries who had, in the meanwhile, taken up residence in Tibet.

Fig 3. van Putte's sketch drawn between 1730-1745

About Delisle’s 1723 Carte d’Asie, Romolo Gandolfo, in his article “Bhutan and Tibet in European Cartography (1597-1800)” writes “Delisle introduces much new information: he indicates the correct course of the Tsanpo, the great river of Tibet which crosses the Himalayas and flows into the Bengal Gulf; he replaces Tache Linbou with the more important nearby town of Gegace [Shigatse]; and identifies several new ‘countries,’ such as the kingdom of Tacpo, east of Lhasa, and those of Bramson [Sikkim] and Pary [Phari] to the south.”

“Bramson”, after all, was an interesting name to me, at least, the name that drifted my attention from my actual study for some moments. The purpose of my study on Sikkim etymology was slowly melting away, and I had a little time to find that Bramson was nothing but a corrupt name of ‘Denjong’. I re-opened the pages of ‘The Gazetteer of Sikhim’, mother of all books on Sikkim; in one of its pages, Rishley had written “The Tibetan names for Sikkim are pronounced Denjong, Demojong and Demoshong though actually spelt hBras-IJongs, hBras-ma-IJongs and hBras-gShongs and mean valley of rice” Similarly some of the western travellers who travelled in this region in early 18^th century might have gone with its actual pronunciation as such the western world knew about this small Himalayan region as Bramson, Bregion and Bramashon. 

Here, I would like to leave a small link for further study. I have heard about the word 'Barahimizong', a festival celebrated by the Mangar community around and beyond Sikkim. Do the words Bramson, Bregion, and Bramashon point fingers at the Mangar community for their origin?

Romolo Gandolfo, in his article, also uncovers a wonderful sketch map of Sikkim drawn by Samuel van Putte between 1730 and 1745. Van Putte depicts the kingdom as Bramascjon (well...another name for Sikkim along the lines of Bramson, Bregion, etc.). This map today finds its mention only on “George Bogle’s Mission to Tibet” published in 1876. The original sketch kept at the Museum of Middleburg (Netherlands) was destroyed during the Second World War. The sketch shows the kingdom of Bramascjon being surrounded by the Brukpa, now Bhutan, in the east, Nepal in the west, Great Thibbet, now Tibet (China), towards the north, and Indostan, now Hindustan or India at its southern boundary. The sketch had some inputs in Italian. Another full feature of the sketch is the presence of a mountain in the middle, which perhaps signifies Mt. Kanchenjunga. Horace della Penna, another celebrated explorer of this region, used this name for Sikkim.

To this date, we are not able to determine the true meaning of the subject and the origin of Sikkim's original name. As history is often breached along its wary way, we are to blame for not keeping enough accounts of our past!