TO RALUNG: MORE SUPPLY MATTERS: A VISIT TO A MONASTERY
From Gyantse to Ralung is a steady upward incline, and took us three
days. It rained most of the time, both day and night; it was difficult
to get dry again when once you were wet, and there was a good deal of
discomfort experienced in all quarters. One camping ground was
particularly unpleasant, which for the most part consisted of ploughed
land that was not only soaking with the rain, but had recently been
irrigated. As we had risen considerably higher than the Gyantse plain,
the crops on this and similar ground had hardly begun to show. In fact,
from here onwards for many days to come, there seemed very little
chance of obtaining any grazing for our animals. We had taken all the
transport we could, and loaded it with as many supplies as possible, all
selected according to our known needs on the one hand, and the possible
but unknown resources of the country on the other; but even so our
prospects were not rosy. The mule, for instance, cannot live on grain
alone: he must have fodder, and one mule in a very few days will consume
as much fodder as is equivalent in weight to his own authorised load.
Hence, if you provide a mule with a reserve of fodder to last him that
number of days and make him carry it, you might just as well leave him
behind, since he will then be able to carry nothing else except his own
fodder. This, in a country where fodder is not locally procurable, is,
at any rate in the case of the pack mule, one of the great problems of
army transport, and we were brought face to face with it more than once
during this march. Grain too is heavy stuff, or, in other words, gets
quickly consumed. We used over two hundred maunds a day, or more than a
hundred mule loads, and so could not start our march with many days'
supply in reserve without excluding other things that also had to be
carried. The next heaviest item was tsampa (the Tibetan barley flour
which we were now using as a substitute for the 'ata' or coarsely ground
wheat flour usually consumed by natives). Of this we used seventy maunds
daily, and so had only a few days in reserve. Meat, though a large item,
is much more tractable stuff, for it walks on its four feet till you
kill it. It can even be of use in carrying other things. For instance,
we had made up our minds that, if sheep and cows ran short, we would eat
each yak that, on account of the depletion of supplies, had no longer a
load to carry! The other items of food, though many of them costly and
highly essential, were none of them very bulky, and of these we had been
able to bring along some weeks' reserve.
Our more pressing needs were therefore confined to fodder and grain and
tsampa, and many were the foraging parties that went forth on arrival in
camp, or that made a detour from the line of march in search of these
articles, some drawing blank, some getting very little, and some
occasionally a fair haul. At Ralung we got a fair haul. There is a very
fine monastery there, situated up a valley five miles from where we
camped. I remember spending a very pleasant afternoon there. I had gone
there, immediately after arriving in camp, with my commanding officer to
see what could be got out of the place. We found some whole barley, some
tsampa, and a fair stock of straw. My commanding officer left me there
to await the necessary transport while he went back to camp to send it.
I really had a very pleasant time, being hospitably entertained both by
the monks and also the nuns--especially the latter. They brought me out
'chang' to drink, a home-brewed light wine, made I believe from barley,
and the carcass of a sheep that had been cooked whole, and from which
you were expected to pick off your individual requirements. It had
already had a lot taken from it, and from a certain self-assertiveness
that there was about it, I concluded that it had been a standing dish
for a considerable period, and contented myself with my own sandwiches.
Then they came and talked to me through the interpreter whom I had with
me, and quite a youthful little nun in a picturesque woolly red cap came
and sat beside me and did her knitting. My overcoat had been wet through
for three days, and the sun coming out gave me a chance of drying it.
Quite warm and cosy it all was, with ladies' society and all thrown in.
I was quite sorry when, after several hours of waiting, a long
serpent-shaped line of mules slowly trailed up the valley and came for
the grain, the tsampa, and the straw.
We were paying again for what we foraged, and I remember doling out what
must have seemed to the recipients a prodigious number of rupees.
Tibetan monasteries are undeniably rich, but, especially in outlying
parts, I fancy they do all their buying and selling in kind. For
instance, they collect their taxes in kind, and it is certainly feasible
for them to obtain labour, clothing, and such necessaries without having
recourse to coin. The fact that the average Lama was unused to dealing
in large sums of money seemed to always have one of two opposite
effects. He either did not seem to grasp the fact that a large sum of
money really represented 'articles of value,' and had no desire whatever
to part with any of his possessions in exchange for it, or else, being
either less ignorant and knowing its value, or more simple-minded and
attracted by its glitter, he would accept the money with pronounced
greed.
The effect of all the coin that we took to and left in the country must
have had a curious economic effect on Tibet. For a country that trades
largely by barter to be suddenly flooded with rupees should, according
to the ordinary principles of political economy, raise the current
prices of all commodities to an extraordinary extent. However, Tibet,
queer country that it is, has probably a political economy all of its
very own, and will arrange such a matter entirely differently from
Western expectation.
Even our rupees, as such, were not always approved, a distinction being
sometimes drawn between those enfaced with King Edward's head and those
enfaced with Queen Victoria's. The latter were approved on the ground
that they were 'Kampani' rupees, the Queen's face being apparently
regarded as the trade mark of the East India Company, of which the past
generation of Tibetans must have heard and passed on the memory to their
children, who still thought it was in existence. A new symbol, such as
that of a man's head, was thus naturally viewed at first with
suspicion.