Sarat Chandra Das

“ There was nothing to give life to the scenery; the river flowed in a deep gorge, or else opened out into lake-like expanses; on either side the mountains seemed to reach to the sky; not a bird, not even a cloud in the heaven, not a sound save that of our feet crushing the light dry snow. It was 11 a.m. when we came to an unfrozen pool, by which we ate our breakfast of tea and meal. This place, which is in a broad portion of the valley, is a favourite summer pasture-ground (tser chan) for the Dokpas, who, from July to September, bring their herds of yaks here. ”

“ After an hour’s rest I went with the Tung-chen and Ugyen to visit the Palkhor choide. Its grand “temple of learning” (tsug-la khang) is a splendid and lofty edifice, the hall lighted by one thousand lamps. On three sides—the north, east, and west—are high niches, in which are huge images of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas. The image of the Buddha is made of copper, heavily gilt. Five hundred monks were engaged in divine service, and some two hundred more were occupied reading the sacred scriptures. No one lifted his eyes to look at us, so strict is the discipline observed here. ”

“ I looked down towards the deep gorge through which the Ringbi leaps with ceaseless roar. The snow-streams from the Yampung la flow into a lake some half-mile in circumference, called Tama chu, on account of its crescent shape; the Nepalese call it Lampokri.
With the Du la the difficulties of the ascent began. Ugyen complained of headache and shortness of breath, and said he was sick with la dug (mountain-sickness) ; and to add to our troubles, such a gale was blowing that I was thrown to the ground several times. One of the coolies fell helpless to the ground, his feet frost-bitten. ”

“ On the following morning Lhagpa, filled with horror at his impending fate, came and begged the sage to tell him how he might avert the horrible punishment—what acts of charity, what good deeds would save him; but the lama made no reply. Again the next day he came, and the saint looked in his magic mirror, and said, “If henceforth you give alms to the poor and helpless, of whatever station, creed, or country they may be, on every new moon throughout the year till your death, you will surely get immense wealth, as well as escape from rebirth as a crocodile. There are no other means to save you;” ”

“ We followed the ling-khor, as the road which encircles Lhasa is called. On the way we passed a small grove where is the elephant-shed, the solitary occupant of which—a present from the Rajah of Sikkim—was standing in a barley patch near by. Further on we came to a place where the corpses of the townspeople are fed to pigs, whose flesh, by the way, is said to be delicious. Near here are numerous huts of Ragyabas.
In the evening a drove of donkeys loaded with tsamba and butter arrived from Gyantse, and I was distressed to learn that my friend the minister had small-pox. ”

“ The punishment of the Djongpon had filled the people with fear of the Chinese. They apprehended new insults at the hands of the Chinese swaggering about the streets of Shigatse. People who had come to the market from a distance to sell their goods were packing them up to hurry off home. No provisions could be had, no purchases could be made. Ugyen met some grain-dealers whom he knew, and begged them to sell him some rice, but none would acknowledge even that they had any for sale. ”

“ After a hurried breakfast, while the servants were engaged in saddling the ponies and packing, I went and kotowed to the Buddha in the temple, placed khatag on the sacred images, and distributed alms to the monks assembled in the courtyard to offer prayers for my safe journey. Then I returned to my room, picked out the handsomest khatag I possessed, and presented it to the minister. His holiness graciously touched my head with his palms, and in solemn tones said, “Sarat Chandra, Lhasa is not a good place. The people there are not like those you meet here. ”

“ At Jorgya, which belongs to the Djongpon of Pagri, the same who stopped Sir Richard Temple near Chumbi, there is an irrigation canal running from the Nyang chu, and on its bank is a beautiful garden bordered with poplars, willows, and other fine trees. Its walks are tastefully laid out, and the two-storied building in its centre is the finest one this side of Tashilhunpo. In the principal lane of this village is a deep well about four or five feet in circumference at the mouth, and a number of women were drawing water from it in sheep’s paunches. ”

“ At every military station, a certain amount of money is generally lent out by Government, on the interest of which the militia is paid by the quartermaster, who is one of the chief Government money-lenders. Usually when the person soliciting a loan is not known, or if doubts about his honesty are entertained, securities are required. Not so in Tibet, where the lenders have been known to use their power to collect debts from the heirs of debtors to the third generation. The more the debtor exceeds the fixed term for the payment of his debt the more urgent is the creditor in his demands. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. RESIDENCE AT LHASA.
Preceded by Pador carrying his long lance and by Tsing-ta driving the pack-pony, we entered the city. The policemen (korchagpa) 1 marked us as new-comers, but none of them questioned us. My head drooped with fatigue, my eyes were hidden by dark goggles, and the red pagri around my head made me look like a Ladaki. Some people standing in front of a Chinese pastry shop said, as I passed, “Look! there comes another sick man; small-pox has affected his eyes. The city is full of them. What an awful time for Tibet!” ”

“ Ascending a steep staircase, or rather a ladder, we came to a verandah, opposite which was a pretty glazed house, the dwelling of the khang-nyer (or “house-keeper”) , and were soon given by him a room to lodge in, and served with tea and chang by an old woman. From the window of our room we could see the damra, or grove of poplars and willows in a marshy bit of land adjacent to the Tangye-ling monastery, and further west shone the lofty gilt spires of Potala. ”

“ In cases of divorce between parties who were united at their own wish for the enjoyment of pleasure or merriment, the court should, without regard to the nature of their guilt, divide their property equally between them.5 In cases of marriage between slaves or serfs, the owner decides their separation or continued union. A man of this class is, for instance, married to a woman who, the owner thinks, might be of some service to him. When the woman is found useless, she is dismissed, being given one-sixth of her husband’s belongings, and her place is supplied by a new wife chosen by the owner. ”

“ January 2.—In the morning preparations were made for a grand reception of the Dahpon Phala and Kung Chyang-chan, the Tsipon.40 All the furniture of the room we occupied was replaced by choice articles from the minister’s storeroom. Silk drapings and curtains were hung in the waiting-room and lobby, beautiful silk cushions were spread in the minister’s drawing-room, and its ceiling made resplendent with a covering of orange-coloured Chinese brocade. Artistically worked dragons appeared everywhere—on the ceiling draperies, on the curtains, and even in the carpets. ”

“ Nothing can be more horrible and loathsome than a Tibetan jail. There are some dungeons in an obscure village two days’ journey up the river from Tashilhunpo, where life convicts are sent for confinement. The prisoner having been placed in a cell, the door is removed and the opening filled up with stone masonry, only one small aperture, about six inches in diameter, being left, through which the unhappy creature is supplied with his daily food. There are also a few small holes left open on the roof, through which the guards and the jailor empty every kind of filth into the cell. ”

“ Late in the afternoon the Mongol monk Lobzang tanzing, to whom I have previously referred, came to pay me his respects, and presented me a long khatag and the carcass of a large sheep. He had only a few days before been released from a two-months’ imprisonment, under suspicion of being implicated in a case of forgery, and had been repeatedly flogged. His tutor had been sentenced to three years of imprisonment, and had been sent to the prison of Khamba djong.
In the evening the monks of Tashilhunpo busied themselves illuminating their chapels. ”

“ After a few years the Amdo lama’s tutor returned to his home, and on parting he left his pupil a couple of earthen pots, a khatag, and a bag of barley, the most valuable things he possessed, as he told him. The pupil, disappointed with these gifts, carried the pots to the market and sold them for half a tanka, with which he bought butter that he put in the lamps burning before the great image of the lord (Jo-vo) , praying that if he ever became Regent of Tibet, he might be able to reform the social customs of the country. ”

“ The snow, reaching several miles below the Kangla pass on either side of the Namga, showed us that this pass was inaccessible. These early snows are called shingsa pahmo. The road led through dwarf rhododendrons, bushy junipers, and prickly shrubs bearing a red fruit. The river was frozen over, except in the narrow parts. In the distance the pine-clad flanks of Juonga, through which the Yalung dashes, were seen resplendent in the rays of the setting sun. ”

“ From this point we retraced our steps to Tse-tang, which we reached the same day, recrossing the Yarlung chu by a long stone bridge near the monastery of Tse-chog-pa, where we saw a number of the monks bathing in the river.
The Yarlung valley appeared to me to be a most prosperous one, the people gentle and good-natured. The soil produces grain and fruit in greater abundance than any other part of Tibet; chang, butter, meat, oil, barley, wheat, and fuel were everywhere plentiful. ”

“ The dancers are eighty in number, and their gowns are made of white, red, and green satin. Each one holds in his left hand a wooden skull, and in his right a short club, from which hang five silk scarfs of different colours. They prance about, wildly waving their arms, for half an hour or so, when suddenly there is heard wild shrieking, and a second set of dancers, or masks called Kambab, come in. They are dressed to represent the various gods, most of them extraordinarily hideous to look at. These continue the wild dance to the music of cymbals, drums, and flutes for a couple of hours. ”

“ Phurchung much regretted that one of his best friends among the Limbus of this place had gone to a distant village to attend a marriage, for he might have rendered great assistance in many ways.
The marriage customs of this people are very curious and interesting. Some among them at the time of marriage consult astrologers. When a man and a girl think of marrying, they meet, without consulting their parents, at some place—a market, if there be one near—in order to sing witty songs, in which test the man is required to excel his fair rival. ”

“ When I told her that in India a husband had several wives, and that among the Phyling34 a man had but one wife, she stared at me with undisguised astonishment. “One wife with one husband!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you think we Tibetan women are better off? The Indian wife has but a portion of her husband’s affections and property, but in Tibet the housewife is the real lady of all the joint earnings and inheritance of all the brothers sprung from the same mother, who are all of the same flesh and blood. ”

“ A lama is employed to perform certain funeral ceremonies, with a view to cause the spirit of the deceased to pass out through a certain slit in the skull.9 If this ceremony is omitted the soul will make its exit by some other passage and go to a state of damnation. The lama remains alone with the corpse, all the doors and windows being closed, and no one is allowed to enter until he declares by what passage the soul has fled. In return for this important service he receives a cow, yak, sheep, or goat, or a sum of money, according to the means of the deceased. ”

“ Another means of wife-winning is by courting her in the house of her parents, to which free access is readily gained by presenting the girl’s nearest relative living in the house with a pig’s carcass, a present called in their language phudang. When the marriage ceremony takes place, the bridegroom, if rich enough, kills a buffalo or a pig, which is presented to the bride’s parents, a native coin fixed on its forehead. Among the lower people, the parents of the bride seldom know anything about the marriage till the return of the girl from her captor’s house. ”

“ It is universally believed in Tibet that after two hundred years the Tashi lama will retire to Shambala, the Utopian city of the Buddhists, [181] and will not return to Tibet, and that in the mean time the whole world will succumb to the power of the Phylings (Russians and English) . Neither the Emperor of China nor the combined legions of gods and demi-gods who reside round the golden mount of Rirab (Sumeru) will be able to arrest the progress of their arms or the miracles of their superior intellect. ”

“ At present the great religious dance of Tibet is the black-hat dance (Dza nag cham) , which was introduced in the eleventh century, A.D., to commemorate the assassination of the iconoclast King Langdarma by Lama Lhalun Paldor, the murderer having disguised himself in black when seeking to approach the king. The ordinary dance of Tibet (dzabs bro) is performed by men and women on all or any occasion of rejoicing. Sometimes they dance in pairs, sometimes in a ring, and at others the women hand-in-hand on one side, the men in like fashion on the other. ”

“ The two Chinese Residents at Lhasa inspect each year in turn the Nepal-Tibet frontier, in order to ascertain the discipline of the garrison at Tingri and the state of the defences and military resources of the several frontier posts. As the task is a most tedious and fatiguing one, owing to the desert-like condition of the country, the Ambans draw lots to find out who is to go on the inspection tour. In the latter part of October of this year it fell to the junior Amban’s lot to visit Tingri djong and Shigatse. ”