Manners and Customs.
The Tibetans are very foul in their habits, some of which I may mention
here. In the house in which I stayed there were some twenty servants,
and they brought me a cup of tea every morning. They never washed the
cup which I used, but brought tea in it every day, and they would say
that it was quite clean, for I had used it only the night before,
though it was as dirty as it could be. They think cups are unclean
if they have been used by their inferiors, but they never wash those
used by themselves or their equals, for these are clean in their eyes,
though it is disgusting even to look at them. If I asked a servant to
wash my cup, it was wiped with his sleeve, which might be quite wet and
dirty from being used as a handkerchief. Then he said it was clean, and
poured tea into it. Just think of it! It is impossible to drink out of
such a cup, but still one must do so, for it would only arouse their
suspicions to be too strict about such matters. It seems to be nothing
compared with his other unclean habits that the Tibetan does not wash
his plates and dishes. He does not even wash or wipe himself after the
calls of nature, but behaves like the lower animals in this respect.
To this there is no single exception, from the high priest down to the
shepherd; every one does the same. I was, therefore, much laughed at
and suspected when I followed the Japanese custom in this particular,
and even the children would laugh at me. I was much troubled at this;
still I could not do otherwise. This was a still greater trouble in
the tents, for in Jangthang I used to have four or five dogs beside
me whenever I retired for private purposes. You can well imagine how
terrified I was at first, though I soon got accustomed to them. And no
sooner had I gone away than the dogs devoured the excrement. For this
reason there is little or no filth lying about in Jangthang.
Nor are these the Tibetan’s only unclean habits. He never washes his
body; many have never been washed since their birth. One would scarcely
believe that they boast in the country, if not in towns or cities, of
never having been washed. It calls forth laughter from others to wash
even the hands and face, and so the only clean part about them are
the palms of the hands and eyes, all other parts being jet-black. The
country gentlemen and the priests, however, have partially cleaned
faces, mouths and hands, though the other parts of their bodies are
just as black as can be. They are quite as black on their necks and
backs as the African negroes. Why then are their hands so white? It
is because they make dough with their own hands with flour in a bowl,
and the dirt of their hands is mixed with the dough. So Tibetan dishes
are made of dirt and flour, and the Tibetans eat with their teeth
black with sordes. It is a sickening sight! Why do they not wash their
bodies? Because they have a superstitious belief that it wipes off
happiness to wash the body. This belief is not quite so prevalent among
the inhabitants of Central Tibet as among those of the remote provinces
north of the Himālayas.
It is necessary at betrothal to show not only the countenance of the
girl, but also to show how black she is with filth. If she is all black
except her eyes, and her dress is bright with dirt and butter, she
is regarded as blessed. If she has a white face and clean hands she
will be less fortunate, for she is said to have washed away her luck.
Girls are equally superstitious about this, for they too attach much
importance in courting to the blackness of the boys. I know it is
difficult to credit what I have just stated; even I myself could not
believe it until I had visited several places and seen Tibetan habits
for myself. People below the middle class have no change of clothes,
but generally dress themselves in torn and filthy rags. They blow
their noses into their clothes in the presence of others. Their dress
is often as hard as hide with dried dirt. It is as it were a concrete
of butter, filth and mucus. But people above the middle class are a
little less untidy. The priesthood especially are instructed to wash
their hands and faces and keep their clothes clean. They are somewhat
cleaner, therefore, but only in comparison with their people. It was
often very difficult for me to accept invitations to dinner and tea
amid these foul habits. While at Tsarang I tried very hard to get
accustomed to them, but it is difficult to overcome physical revolt.
Still, amid these disagreeable things, the natural beauty of the
country often much comforted me. Once before the Tibetan New Year I
was reading as usual at my desk, while the people were busy preparing
for the New Year. I looked out of my window to see the snow. Oh the
splendor of the sight! You can little imagine how much I was delighted
when a crane appeared, strolling along in the snow, and filling me
with sentimental and poetical reminiscences of my native land. In this
wise I was comforted, amid the unpleasant habits of the people, by the
beautiful charms of nature, as well as by some interesting things which
I noticed among the ceremonies of the New Year.
The Tibetans use neither the Indian calendar, nor the Chinese, but the
Turkistan, which resembles the Chinese in that it has one leap year in
every four, but it is always one year behind the latter. We find many
strange things in its way of counting days. There are often given,
say, two seventh days, or we sometimes find the eleventh day after
the ninth but without the tenth. I could not quite make out what all
these meant. Upon inquiring from an astrologer, I was told that it was
sometimes necessary to add one day, or to leave one out, because they
were lucky or unlucky, and a lucky day was duplicated, while an unlucky
one must be omitted. In this convenient way is constructed the calendar
as generally used in Tibet, though some disagreements are found between
the calendars used in different parts of the country, as for instance
in fixing the New Year or other great days. But this is a matter that
should cause little wonder. The Tibetan calendar is computed by four
officials appointed by the Government, who count days with black and
white stones or shells. When their calendars differ, the best ones are
chosen, and an oracle is consulted to decide which is the proper one
to be adopted. The New Year’s ceremony is generally held on the day
given in the Government calendar, but it is very rarely that the New
Year’s Day of the Tibetan calendar falls on the same day as that of the
Chinese, there being generally a difference of one, two, or even three
days between them.
On New Year’s morning a piece of fire-colored silk, or handkerchiefs
sewn together in the shape of a flag, is put over a heap of baked
flour, on which are strewn some dried grapes, dried peaches and small
black persimmons. The head of the house first picks up some of the
fruits with his right hand, tosses them up three times, and eats
them. Then his wife, guests and servants follow his example one after
another. Next comes Tibetan tea, with fried cakes of wheat flour
for each. These are brought in on a tray, something in the shape of
a copper plate, gilded and white at the centre. They drink the tea
and eat the cakes, but, unlike the Japanese, exchange no words of
congratulation, and seem mostly to enjoy the eating. They take meat
dried, raw, and boiled, but roast meat is regarded as unceremonial.
Tibet produces fresh-water fish, but the Tibetans do not usually eat
it; they subsist chiefly on the meat of the yak, goat, and sheep,
for they consider it sinful to kill fish. Pork is eaten, but only by
the Tibetans who have dealings with the Chinese. After the morning
ceremony, they again meet at about ten o’clock to drink tea or wine,
and eat cake or fruits. At two in the afternoon they have dinner, at
which they eat, if rich, a sort of macaroni mixed with eggs. The soup
has mutton or something else dipped in it. At nine or ten o’clock in
the evening they make a sort of meat gruel, commonly composed of wheat
flour, wheat dumplings, meat, radishes, and cheese. But the course of
dishes mentioned above is not settled, for they sometimes eat the gruel
in the morning, though generally in the evening. The above are the
dishes taken by the Tibetans of the higher circles.
The lowest class find it hard to get cheese and meat for their gruel,
and put fat in their stead. Nor is it less difficult for them to get
radishes. If they put wheat dumplings in the gruel, which they make
on special occasions, it is reckoned among their best dishes; their
usual gruel is made very thick with baked flour with some herbs and
flowers put in it. In the winter, when they have no fresh herbs or
flowers, they use what they have stored and laid by during the summer.
The radish is however much grown in some parts of Tibet, where it is
largely used. The Tibetan is fonder of baked flour than of rice, all
classes generally living on the former. The Tibetans at Darjeeling live
on baked flour from Tibet, for they fall ill if they live on rice.
Baked flour can of course be had in India, but the Tibetan seems much
superior to the Indian, for they send orders to Tibet for their native
productions.
In this way I passed the festive New Year season, and, while reading
my Scriptures amid these charming scenes, learned much about Tibetan
customs and homes, and found good material for my study.
[Illustration: READING THE TEXTS.]
A little white and black bird like a crow, called _Kyaka_ in Tibetan,
used to come to my window. It was a knowing bird, and could tell one
man from another, and was very regular in its ways. One day while I was
looking out of my window I saw one of a flock, seemingly their head,
pecking another to death, as if angry with the latter because it had
quarrelled with the other members of the flock. I was surprised and
told my landlord about it, when he told me that birds were more regular
than men, and related several stories which showed how strict the birds
were. It is a common saying, he added, that one might deviate from
human laws by the breadth of a log, before a hair-breadth’s deviation
from bird’s law would be tolerated.--(_Cha tim ta nga tsam shikna mi
tim nya shing tsam shik go._)
Having stayed in this place a long time in order to read the
Scriptures, I was determined to leave on the 14th March, as it was
getting warmer. In the morning the family asked me to recite to them
the Three Refuges, and the Five Commands or moral precepts of Buḍḍhism,
which I did with pleasure. After dinner as I was leaving the house I
was presented with some money and a priest’s robe, red in color and
made of wool, which must have cost some thirty-five yen. I departed
accompanied by a servant, who carried my luggage, for they told me they
could not send me off on horseback, much though they desired to do so,
for all their horses were away on trading journeys.
Up the Yak-Chu river I went for about ten miles eastwards, till I came
to a post village called Che-sum, where I stopped for the night. I
started at six o’clock the next morning, and went on along the river
for another seven miles. It was a narrow pass, walled up between high
mountains; the snow lay deep in the valleys and the water of the
streams was frozen. At the end of about seven miles I came to a little
opening and, looking up to the top of a mountain on the left, I noticed
a white building which looked neither like a temple nor like the
dwelling of a priest. What could it be? Upon inquiring of my companion
I was told it was a hail-proof temple.
I had never heard of such a temple, and was surprised at seeing one.
When I heard the name for the first time I could not believe my own
ears, but when I asked more particularly about it at Lhasa, I found
that what had been told me was true. I will now relate the strange
method which the Tibetans have for keeping off hailstones, which they
dread exceedingly, especially in summer, for then the crops of wheat
and barley, which they can reap only once in a year or two, may be
entirely destroyed. So they naturally try to find some means to keep
off the hailstones, and the method they have discovered is certainly
curious enough.
The nation is so credulous in the matter of religion that they
indiscriminately believe whatever is told to them by their religious
teachers, the lamas. Thus for instance they believe that there are
eight kinds of evil spirits which delight in afflicting people and
send hail to hurt the crops. Some priests therefore maintain that
they must fight against and destroy these evil demons in order to
keep them off, and the old school profess that in order to combat
these spirits effectually they must know when the demons are preparing
the hail. During the winter when there is much snow, these spirits,
according to the priests, gather themselves at a certain place, where
they make large quantities of hail out of snow. They then store the
hail somewhere in heaven, and go to rest, until in the summer when
the crops are nearly ripe they throw down the hail from the air.
Hence the Tibetans must make sharp weapons to keep off the hail, and
consequently, while the spirits are preparing their hail, the Tibetans
hold a secret meeting in some ravine where they prepare ‘hail-proof
shells,’ which are pieces of mud about the size of a sparrow’s egg.
These are made by a priest, who works with a servant or two in some
lonely ravine, where by some secret method he makes many shells,
chanting words of incantation the while, whereby he lays a spell on
each shell he makes. These pellets are afterwards used as missiles
when hail falls in the summer, and are supposed to drive it back.
None but priests of good family may devote themselves to this work.
Every village has at least one priest called Ngak-pa (the chanters of
incantations of the old school) and during the winter these Ngak-pas
offer prayers, perform charms, or pray for blessings for others. But
the Tibetans have a general belief that the Ngak-pas sometimes curse
others. I was often told that such and such person had offended a
Ngak-pa and was cursed to death.
Having spent the winter in this way, the Ngak-pas during the summer
prepare to fight against the devils. Let me remark, in passing, that
Tibet has not four seasons, as we have, but the year is divided into
summer and winter. The four seasons are indeed mentioned in Tibetan
books, but there are in reality only two.
The summer there is from about the 15th of March to the 15th of
September and all the rest of the year is winter. As early as March or
April the ploughing of the fields and sowing of wheat begins, and then
the Ngak-pa proceeds to the Hail-Subduing-Temple, erected on the top
of one of the high mountains. This kind of temple is always built on
the most elevated place in the whole district, for the reason that the
greatest advantage is thus obtained for ascertaining the direction from
which the clouds containing hail issue forth. From the time that the
ears of the wheat begin to shoot, the priest continues to reside in the
temple, though from time to time, it is said, he visits his own house,
as he has not very much to do in the earlier part of his service. About
June, however, when the wheat has grown larger, the protection of
the crop from injury by hail becomes more urgent, so that the priest
never leaves the temple, and his time is fully taken up with making
offerings and sending up prayers for protection to various deities. The
service is gone through three times each day and night, and numberless
incantations are pronounced. What is more strange is that the great
hail storms generally occur when the larger part of the crops are
becoming ripe, and then it is the time for the priest on service to
bend his whole energies to the work of preventing the attack of hail.
When it happens that big masses of clouds are gathering overhead, the
Ngak-pa first assumes a solemn and stern aspect, drawing himself up
on the brink of the precipice as firm as the rock itself, and then
pronounces an enchantment with many flourishes of his rosary much in
the same manner as our warrior of old did with his baton. In a wild
attempt to drive away the hail clouds, he fights against the mountain,
but it often happens that the overwhelming host comes gloomily upon
him with thunders roaring and flashes of lightning that seem to shake
the ground under him and rend the sky above, and the volleys of big
hailstones follow, pouring down thick and fast, like arrows flying in
the thick of battle. The priest then, all in a frenzy, dances in fight
against the air, displaying a fury quite like a madman in a rage. With
charms uttered at the top of his voice he cuts the air right and left,
up and down, with his fist clenched and finger pointed. If in spite
of all his efforts, the volleys of hail thicken and strike the fields
beneath, the priest grows madder in his wrath, quickly snatches
handfuls of the bullets aforementioned which he carries about him, and
throws them violently against the clouds as if to strike them. If all
this avail nothing, he rends his garment to pieces, and throws the
rags up in the air, so perfectly mad is he in his attempt to put a
stop to the falling hailstones. When, as sometimes happens, the hail
goes drifting away and leaves the place unharmed, the priest is puffed
up with pride at the victory he has gained, and the people come to
congratulate him with a great show of gratitude. But when, unluckily
for him, the hail falls so heavily as to do much harm to the crops, his
reverence has to be punished with a fine, apportioned to the amount of
injury done by the hail, as provided by the law of the land.
[Illustration: PRIEST FIGHTING WITH HAIL.]
To make up for the loss the Ngak-pa thus sustains, he is entitled at
other times, when the year passes with little or no hail, to obtain
an income under the name of “hail-prevention-tax;” a strange kind of
impost, is it not? The “hail-prevention-tax” is levied in kind, rated
at about two _sho_ of wheat per _tan_ of land, which is to be paid to
the Ngak-pa. In a plentiful year this rate may be increased to two and
a half _sho_. This is, indeed a heavy tax for the farmers in Tibet, for
it is an extra, in addition to the regular amount which they have to
pay to their Government.
There is another custom even more singular than that. The power of
jurisdiction over the district resides in the person of the Ngak-pa,
this being founded on the belief that the plentitude or deficiency of
the crops each summer is dependent entirely on his power. The Ngak-pa
being thus the administrator of justice receives a large salary in
that capacity in addition to his income as preventer of hail. It might
therefore be supposed that this class of priests is quite wealthy, but
the Tibetan Ngak-pas are most of them singularly poor. Their gains,
coming from deception founded upon the superstition of the people, are
soon dissipated, for what is ill-got is ill-spent, as the saying is.
But the influence they exercise over the people is very strong. For
instance, when a poor-looking Ngak-pa, attired like a beggar, meets
with a fine gentleman on the road, the latter is sure to stick out his
tongue and to bow down in profound respect. So these Ngak-pas gain much
in peaceful days, though they are at the same time subject to a heavy
penalty when the hail season sets in. Occasionally too, some of them
are flogged on their naked bodies. The Tibetans are very strict in this
respect, and no nobleman who has committed wrong is spared a flogging
because of his caste. So far about the hail tax.
From this temple I went eastwards for about seven miles, when I came to
a village called Yase. From the mountains east of this village flows a
river called Yakchu, which, running north-west, empties itself into the
Brahmapuṭra. Some European maps incorrectly give the Yakchu as having
its source in lake Yamdo. Going on some two miles, I found one of the
strangest lakes in the world. It is called lake Yamdo-Tso in Tibetan,
but some foreign maps call it lake Palti. Palti however is not the
name of the lake, but of the village on the western side. The lake is
about one hundred and eighty miles in circumference, and has an island
with a mountain range in its centre. Many lakes have small islands in
them, but authoritative geographers state that none has so large a
mountain as this. I must, however, here say that the land in the lake
is connected with the main land at two points on the south, so that it
is not actually an island. No words can describe the beautiful scenery
here. The lofty peaks of the Himālayas stand high in a line from the
south-east to the south-west of the lake, and add to its magnificence,
and the tempest often lashes it into high waves, which dash roaring
upon the shore. Standing on a high rock by the shore, I marvelled to
see the terrible scene of the angry lake waves, with the peaks of the
Himālayan mountains amidst the clouds, looking like a superhuman being.
I proceeded for about four miles to the east, and then the road turned
to the north-east. On the left stood a wall of high mountains, while
on the right I could see the peaks of mountains in the lake. I went
east and then north along a rather wide path by the lake for about
six miles, till I came to Palti. There is a castle on a hill in this
village, and very beautiful the lake looks when the castle throws its
shadow on the water.
I lodged at a house at the foot of this castle. I had walked
twenty-five miles that day, but the invigorating mountain scenery
dispelled my fatigue, though I had been very tired. On the following
day, March 16th, I started at four o’clock, in the snow and ice, and
went north-east along the lake. There were mountains on the left and
the lake on the right, as before. The path went pretty nearly north,
but straight up and down in a zig-zag along the mountain. Often I
slipped on the ice, or went deep into the snow, and I encountered much
trouble, which was, however, almost nothing when compared with those
which I had met in passing over the Himālayas.
At dawn I climbed up the mountain in deep snow, and looked down upon
the surface of the lake. I could see among the shadows of the mountains
the crescent moon beautifully reflected dimly and faintly on the water.
The bright day was soon coming, the moon began already to lose its
dim light, and the morning star twinkled on the surface of the water.
Amid the charms of nature I lost all my fatigue and weariness, and I
stood quite entranced. Soon the water-fowl were heard on the sands
along the lake, and some mandarin ducks were amusing themselves in
the water, while cranes were wildly flying about with noisy cries.
What a contrast it was with the scene of the day before! No pleasure
on a journey can be greater than travelling in this way at dawn. I
still went on for about twelve miles along the lake and came to a
little stream in the mountains at about nine o’clock. It is here that
travellers make tea, and bake their wheat for eating. The lake is full
of water, but it is poisonous.
A strange story is told about how it turned poisonous. About twenty
years ago, as the Tibetans tell, the famous Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās, an
Indian by birth, who passed for an Englishman, came from India and
pronounced a spell upon the lake; the water at once turned as red as
blood. A lama, they say, came along and turned the water back to its
original color, but it still remained poisonous. One cannot believe
anything that the Tibetans say, but the water seems to have really
turned red. Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās cannot have done that, but, unfortunately
for him, it was just after his return from Tibet that the water thus
changed. Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās, as every one knows, is an Indian, but
Tibetans, with few exceptions, think him to be an Englishman. Any way
the water of the lake must have been poisonous for a long time, for
the water is stagnant, there being no current, and there are divers
poisonous elements near the lake.
There also seem to be places where I think there must be coal; I saw
several kinds of strange ores and many kinds of herbs which I think
may have dissolved in the water and have colored it. I have seen some
foreign maps in which the water of this lake is made to flow into the
Brahmapuṭra, which is quite false.
I found several persons taking lunch as we did amid this beautiful
scenery. This being the way that runs between Lhasa and Shigatze there
were travellers on it, among whom was a soldier from Nepāl. He was one
of the most humorous fellows I ever saw, and was very good company for
me.