path that lay midway between the top and bottom of its slope, that is to say, toward the north of Dhavalagiri.
A HORSE IN DIFFICULTIES.
In the mountains below Tukje I found common pines and cedars growing in fair abundance, but now these became very rare, the obtusa species of pine taking their place, and even these attaining a height of not more than twenty feet at the most, the ground being otherwise covered with shrubby growths. Riding on the snow, which was still on the mountain, we had made a distance of about fifteen miles before we reached a hamlet named Kirung, where I found willow trees growing luxuriantly. The inhabitants hereabout were all Tibetans, and I saw fluttering on every house-top a white flag with certain religious texts printed on it. These flags are to be seen everywhere in the interior of Tibet, as I afterwards found, and that even where the people are living in tents. Leaving the village, we rode on northwards, over snow, through an obtusa-pine forest, till the night fell and the moon rose, when I again heard a cuckoo. Then I had an uta:
While marching onwards now the night o’ertakes
The pilgrim bold, the snowy floor his bed;
The moon-lit sky his canopy will be,
His lullaby, the cuckoo’s notes.
That night we put up in an inn in a hamlet called Kimiyi (fountain of fortune), that nestles in the snow-covered mountains. Ten miles on the following day brought us within sight of Tsarang, which, on reaching, I found to be a little town built on a plain which was about eleven miles from east to west, and three miles or more from north to south, enclosed by walls of snow-covered mountains. More accurately, the plain has to its west a snow-capped mountain, whence it extends in a very slow incline towards the east, until it breaks off into a valley. From Tsarang to the north-west plain of Tibet is a day’s trip, and the physical features of these regions are practically of the same character, devoid of large trees and desolate in the extreme. It was in the middle of May that I arrived in Tsarang, and I was told that the farmers had just finished sowing wheat. Skirting the town of Tsarang runs a stream, which has its rise in the mountain that forms the western wall of the plain, and on an elevated part of the town stands a castled palace, in which lives the King of the Lo State. Before the Gūrkha tribe had subjugated Nepāl, Lo was an independent State. At a little distance, opposite to the royal castle, is a temple of considerable size, belonging to the Kargyu-pa sect of the old school of Tibetan Buḍḍhism. The temple is a square structure of Tibetan style, built of stone and painted red, and adjoining it is a stone building painted white, which forms a dormitory for the priests of the temple. On a piece of level land to the west of the palace and the temple a group of about sixty large and small houses constitutes the town of Tsarang.
CHAPTER IX.
Beautiful Tsarang and Dirty Tsarangese.
At the foot of the mountain out of which we had emerged, and where the plain began, we came upon a stone-turreted gate about twenty-four feet in height. Standing by itself and entirely unprotected, the gate was not intended, as I was told, for any military purpose; but it was used for housing Buḍḍhas and other deities that would keep guard against the invasion of the locality by evil genii. About a mile and a half to the rear of the gate stood the town of Tsarang, at the entrance of which we were met by fourteen or fifteen men, who, as it appeared, anticipated our arrival. Serab Gyaltsan led me to the house of the Chief of the town, which was of considerable size. As in Tibet so in Tsarang, all well-to-do people generally have a separate chapel in their residence. When they have a visitor of rank and social position, they, out of respect, put him up in their chapel, and a person entitled to such distinction in these localities is generally a Lama. So it was that, as a Chinese Lama, I was given that privilege in the Chief’s chapel, which I found to be a typical one of its kind, with its image-crowned altar, a special depository for religious Texts, etc., and altogether much superior in its general finish and furnishings to the family dwelling. I may remark that these folk generally keep a good store of the Texts, not because they make use of them themselves, but more as a matter of form, the form showing their deep reverence for their religion; but it is apparently beyond their ken that volumes of Texts are but so many sheets of waste paper, if their possessors do not understand and live by them.
By the side of the chapel in which I was installed there was another small building, in which lived Serab Gyaltsan. My host was a widower, quiet and amiable, and living with two grown-up daughters, about twenty-three and eighteen years of age respectively, who between them managed the household and the family business, employing under them a number of servants, farm-hands and cattlemen. I could not but admire the two young women for the creditable manner in which they attended to their business. I also observed that the chief amusement of all the villagers consisted in spending evenings in dances and comic songs, except when they went to a sort of semi-religious meeting presided over by a Lama Maṇi, who would narrate the stories of ancient priests of great renown, or the biographies of the more famous monarchs of Buḍḍhist States, to the great delight of his audience.
The days I spent in Tsarang were, in a sense, the days of my tutelage in the art of living amidst filth and filthy habits. In point of uncleanliness, Tibetans stand very high among the inhabitants of the earth, but I think the natives of Tsarang go still higher in this respect. In Tibet people wash themselves occasionally, but they almost never do so in Tsarang. In the course of the twelve months that I lived there, I only twice saw a person wash himself, the washing being confined even then to the face and neck. Such being the case, the native’s skin all over the body has on it a peculiarly repulsive shine of polished dirt, so to say. I often noticed women, whose complexion would have appeared quite fair if only an occasional scrubbing were administered to the skin; but what can they do when it is a custom, as it is among them, to laugh at persons who wash their faces nice and clean, and to deride them as being very dirty in their habits? Not only in their appearance, but in all that they do, the natives seem to have absolutely no idea of cleanliness. To say that they think nothing of making a cup of tea for you with the same fingers with which they have just blown their nose, is to give only a very mild instance of their filthiness, and I have no courage to dwell here on their many other doings, which are altogether beyond imagination for those who have not seen them done, and are too loathsome, even unto sickening, to recall to mind. As it was, my life among these slovenly people did one good thing for me, in that it thoroughly prepared me for what I had to endure in Tibet.
My work with Serab Gyaltsan consisted in this: a lecture on Buḍḍhism for three solid hours in the morning, which required much preparation, and exercises in Tibetan rhetoric and penmanship for another three hours in the afternoon, which was, however, of a very easy nature, and gave me occasion to engage in discussions with my teacher.
There is in existence to this day in Tibet a sect of Buḍḍhists which believes in a teaching originated by a priest whose name may be translated into “born of the lotus flower” (Padma Sambhava) or Padma Chungne in Tibetan, and whom they regard as their savior and as Buḍḍha incarnate. His teaching is a sort of parody on Buḍḍhism proper, and an attempt to sanctify the sexual relations of humankind, explaining and interpreting all the important passages and tenets in the sacred Text from a sensual standpoint. Indeed, Padma’s own life was simply his teachings translated into actual practice, for he lived with eight women whom he called his wives, drank intoxicants to his heart’s content, and fed freely on animal food. Now in the Tibetan rhetoric in which I took lessons under Serab Gyaltsan I found this lewd and detestable teaching largely incorporated, and it was on this account that hot disputes not unfrequently arose between my instructor and myself. At times I felt sorry, as I feel sorry now, for my Serab, because, from what I was able to gather, he is one of those on whom (as the result
