>Doug writes:
>
>> Sorry, I only know what I read in books.
>
>Better check on the books you read:
>
>http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2001/8/30-2_1.html
>Grunfeld also uses Bell's statement that "slavery was not unknown in
>the Chumbi valley" to imply that slavery was a standard institution
>throughout Tibet. Once again Grunfeld does not include Bell's
>subsequent remarks that the institution was then on the wane and
>that "only a dozen or two (slaves) remained"; and that "the slavery
>in the Chumbi valley was of a very mild type."
Wow, that's a relief.
As is this:
>Which brings up the question, is Grunfeld's book comparable to the
>works of revisionist historians like David Irving who claim that the
>holocaust had never happened, that the gas chambers had never
>existed, but were invented for British propaganda purposes and then
>picked up by Jews to extort German and American finance for Israel?
>On serious reflection, I don't think such a comparison can be made.
>First of all David Irving is a real historian, whose works have been
>published by major publishers in Sweden, Germany and Macmillan in
>Britain, and not like Grunfeld's book which was published by Zed
>Books in London, probably some left-wing propaganda outfit.
Funny, coming from a mouthpiece for a Tibet propaganda outfit.
I don't see any refutation of the analysis of the social structure, however - a feudal society in which an impoverished mass supported a parasitical caste of priests. Should I conclude that Grunfeld basically got this right?
Doug