With no less degree of familiarity, and with an equal portion of esteem,
is represented the name and character of the Ambassador from the East
India Company, to the court of the Teesho Lama, in Tibet. Materials for
biographical sketches, are in general easily collected, and when used
with skill, importantly contribute both to information and amusement. But
it rarely happens, that the writer or compiler of such sketches has the
advantage which our Sexagenarian possessed, of a personal intimacy with
so many individuals, of such various talents, pursuits, and employments.
With this last traveller the intercourse appears to have been frequent
and familiar, and it should seem that he had been consulted on the
subject of one of the most curious and interesting works in our language.
What had been vaguely and imperfectly represented of Bootan, Tibet, and
its Lama, had, till this work appeared, rather the character of Oriental
fiction, than of grave, sober, and accurate narrative. Fiction itself,
indeed, can hardly proceed further than is exemplified in the Tibetian
idea of their Lama, who though he never ceases to exist, withdraws
himself from the world, when the body, which he has vouchsafed to
inhabit, decays from age or disease, and at a proper interval, again
makes his appearance, by animating an infant; his presence in whom is
unequivocally ascertained by certain well-known and characteristic
symbols.
Few more important volumes than this communication on the subject of
Tibet, have appeared in modern times, and our Sexagenarian has not failed
to express himself with particular self-complacency from the circumstance
of having rendered some service in its publication.
It is not on every occasion that due sagacity and wisdom is exercised
in selecting agents for remote political missions, but as in the former
instance of the Ambassador to Ava, so in this of the deputation to Bootan
and Tibet, the East India Company could not possibly have decided with
greater propriety, or with sounder wisdom.
The people of Ava were a lofty, ostentatious, and courtly race. The
Ambassador to that region had a proper sense of his own dignity, and of
that of the nation of which he was the representative, and at the same
time entered into all the splendid gaieties of a gaudy court, without
rendering any violence to his natural disposition.
The Tibetians were grave, formal, and reserved; marked by the strongest
peculiarities of manners, and of prejudices. The agent sent among
them, was grave, serious, sensible, properly tenacious of his personal
importance, without offending peculiarities, the extreme simplicity
and eccentricity of which, cannot, under a less sanction than that of
the Ambassador’s assertion of what he witnessed, easily obtain credit.
What to a European, and more particularly to an Englishman can be more
preposterous, than the Polyandry of Tibet, and to see “one female
associating her fate and fortune with all the brothers of a family,
without any restriction of age or of numbers.” Marriage, it is observed
by our Traveller, is in Tibet, considered as an odium, an heavy burden,
the weight and obloquy of which, a whole family are disposed to lessen,
by sharing it among them. Indeed the number of husbands to one female, is
not defined nor restricted within any limits. Mr T. mentions one family
in which five brothers were living very happily together with one female,
under the same connubial compact.
The termination of this valuable traveller’s life was extremely
melancholy. His health had long been impaired by climate, as well as
by his fatiguing exertions in the discharge of his functions. In his
progress one day from his apartments in the West end of the town to the
city, he was attacked in Fleet-street with an epileptic fit, and as no
papers were found on his person, to designate precisely who he was, he
was carried to the poor-house to be owned. It is more than probable, that
under these circumstances, he did not receive all the attention, which
his real rank in life claimed, and his immediate situation demanded;
but in this place he was not recognized till he was actually dead. His
publication will, however, always rank exceedingly high in the class
to which it belongs, and the memory of his accomplishments, and of his
amiable and conciliatory manners, can cease only with the lives of those
who enjoyed the advantages of his friendship.
Et tamen hunc audes maculare et dicere nigrum
Desine; habet certe numen et iste suum.