Once upon a time there was a great dark emptiness. The wind blew and blew and churned it into an ocean, from which arose a great mountain peak. This was the beginning of the universe; and when all the seas, lands and mountains were formed, the first man appeared.
It was called the Land of Snows, otherwise known as Tibet.
Tsering Shakya, a leading Tibetan scholar, quotes this story to try to convey something of the spirit of his homeland. Citing it in his introduction to a new book by the persecuted Tibetan monk, Palden Gyatso, Shakya says that such mythical stories are enshrined in the collective mind of the Tibetan people.
It fosters their sense of independence, he says. To young protesters, it is "clear that Tibet is as old as the universe". This is what set it apart from China, so long ago.
Speaking in the slightly incongruous setting of Buswell's Hotel in Dublin recently, Shakya was in the company of the monk who has been witness to almost five decades of oppression, since Chinese forces moved into Tibet in 1950. Palden Gyatso (64) was released in 1992 after 33 years in prison. He fled to India, carrying with him some of the instruments used to torture him while he was incarcerated, including tiny thumbcuffs used to shackle prisoners' hands high up behind their backs, knives with serrated edges and electric batons capable of producing a shock of up to 70,000 volts.
Shakya met him two years ago in London and found himself writing the English version of the monk's harrowing autobiography.
It took 120 cassette tapes, recording over 300 hours of conversation. The transcribed result, entitled Fire Under The Snow and just published by the Harvill Press in London, is a most moving account of suffering, pain, torture, cruelty and also of great compassion - dating back to 1959 when a young monk was arrested after a peaceful demonstration for Tibetan freedom. "One of the most extraordinary stories of suffering and endurance", it is "an inspiration to us all", according to the Dalai Lama.
The Chinese Communist Party had declared that "the earth and the sky had changed places", and this was what it felt like after 1950 for so many like Palden Gyatso. He got his first glimpse of the Dalai Lama a year after the People's Liberation Army invaded. Returning with his father to their home village of Panam, he remembers that they were like "children returning from a great adventure". He became a fully ordained monk, with a class of 19, and undertook a trek to the monastery of Drepung near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa; but some 45 years later, he is the only one of that class still alive.
His father was beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution, after being denounced by his own daughters. The monk's brother was also killed during "thamzing" - or reeducation. He witnessed the razing of monasteries, the torture and death of compatriots - among them Kundling Kunsang, leader of a group of women who staged a demonstration against the Chinese in Lhasa in 1959 and was executed.
Palden Gyatso was tortured, and in his book names some of those responsible. One attempt to escape resulted in recapture, and more persecution, within a mile of the Bhutanese border.
Yet as he speaks, hands clasped, head bowed, he does so without any apparent trace of bitterness or lust for retribution. Just two years before his release, for instance, he was hauled out of his cell by a prison guard who taunted him with the prospect of liberation, using an electric baton which he pushed into the monk's mouth. Palden Gyatso lost all his teeth over the following few weeks, but does not hate his persecutor. The guard was part of a system; he was "doing his job" in his view.
Instead, his eyes dance as he speaks of peace and reconciliation in an effort to raise awareness. He is not in favour of economic sanctions against China, although he feels that the promotion of economic trade without regard for human rights is a form of "black marketeering".
He did not write his book to "bring someone to court or find the guilty people" or make a name for himself, he says. He wrote it to make the point that there should not be such injustice, in Tibet or anywhere else. During his promotional trip with his translator, supported by the British Free Tibet Campaign, he "heard of greater suffering elsewhere", he says.
The Irish Republic has been one of the few independent voices at United Nations level to speak for Tibet - a state not recognised by the international body, he and his translator emphasise. The new UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, has her work cut out for her in this respect. She will have been passed documents which he handed in to the UN Secretary General last year about the situation facing those still imprisoned, he says. "I'd urge her to look into the question of human rights with fair mindedness, and without pressure from other countries."
Palden Gyatso takes an essentially optimistic view, on everything from Tibet's ability to survive independently, to speculation about the Chinese government's possible release of the leading dissident, Wei Jingsheng.
He offers no answers, says he holds no strong political views ("I do not understand this difference between left and right, but believe in greater freedom and happiness") but believes that change will come from within China itself and that he will see an independent Tibet within his own lifetime. One of his great hopes is to confront his persecutor - in this case, the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin - and to convince him that Tibet is not part of China. The younger generation of Tibetans will continue to fight for independence, he believes, in spite of a policy of "cultural genocide" and the colonisation of large areas by many Han Chinese.
His translator, Tsering Shakya, agrees. Tibet is no "Shangri-la" but it is does have "a vision". The power stations, the new sports stadiums, the "glittering lights of discos and five-star hotels" funded from Beijing "do not restore a people's dignity or allow them to reclaim their heritage".
Fire Under The Snow: Testimony Of A Tibetan Prisoner by Palden Gyatso, translated by Tsering Shakya, is published by the Harvill Press, London, £17 in UK.