Among Their Rude Plenishings Are Large Stone
Corn Chests Like Sarcophagi, Stone Bowls From Baltistan, Cauldrons,
Cooking Pots, A Tripod, Wooden Bowls, Spoons, And Dishes, Earthen
Pots, And Yaks' And Sheep's Packsaddles.
The garments of the
household are kept in long wooden boxes.
Family life presents some curious features. In the disposal in
marriage of a girl, her eldest brother has more 'say' than the
parents. The eldest son brings home the bride to his father's house,
but at a given age the old people are 'shelved,' i.e. they retire to
a small house, which may be termed a 'jointure house,' and the eldest
son assumes the patrimony and the rule of affairs. I have not met
with a similar custom anywhere in the East. It is difficult to speak
of Tibetan life, with all its affection and jollity, as 'family
life,' for Buddhism, which enjoins monastic life, and usually
celibacy along with it, on eleven thousand out of a total population
of a hundred and twenty thousand, farther restrains the increase of
population within the limits of sustenance by inculcating and rigidly
upholding the system of polyandry, permitting marriage only to the
eldest son, the heir of the land, while the bride accepts all his
brothers as inferior or subordinate husbands, thus attaching the
whole family to the soil and family roof-tree, the children being
regarded legally as the property of the eldest son, who is addressed
by them as 'Big Father,' his brothers receiving the title of 'Little
Father.' The resolute determination, on economic as well as
religious grounds, not to abandon this ancient custom, is the most
formidable obstacle in the way of the reception of Christianity by
the Tibetans. The women cling to it. They say, 'We have three or
four men to help us instead of one,' and sneer at the dulness and
monotony of European monogamous life! A woman said to me, 'If I had
only one husband, and he died, I should be a widow; if I have two or
three I am never a widow!' The word 'widow' is with them a term of
reproach, and is applied abusively to animals and men. Children are
brought up to be very obedient to fathers and mother, and to take
great care of little ones and cattle. Parental affection is strong.
Husbands and wives beat each other, but separation usually follows a
violent outbreak of this kind. It is the custom for the men and
women of a village to assemble when a bride enters the house of her
husbands, each of them presenting her with three rupees. The Tibetan
wife, far from spending these gifts on personal adornment, looks
ahead, contemplating possible contingencies, and immediately hires a
field, the produce of which is her own, and which accumulates year
after year in a separate granary, so that she may not be portionless
in case she leaves her husband!
It was impossible not to become attached to the Nubra people, we
lived so completely among them, and met with such unbounded goodwill.
Feasts were given in our honour, every gonpo was open to us, monkish
blasts on colossal horns brayed out welcomes, and while nothing could
exceed the helpfulness and alacrity of kindness shown by all, there
was not a thought or suggestion of backsheesh. The men of the
villages always sat by our camp-fires at night, friendly and jolly,
but never obtrusive, telling stories, discussing local news and the
oppressions exercised by the Kashmiri officials, the designs of
Russia, the advance of the Central Asian Railway, and what they
consider as the weakness of the Indian Government in not annexing the
provinces of the northern frontier. Many of their ideas and feelings
are akin to ours, and a mutual understanding is not only possible,
but inevitable. {1}
Industry in Nubra is the condition of existence, and both sexes work
hard enough to give a great zest to the holidays on religious
festival days. Whether in the house or journeying the men are never
seen without the distaff. They weave also, and make the clothes of
the women and children! The people are all cultivators, and make
money also by undertaking the transit of the goods of the Yarkand
traders over the lofty passes. The men plough with the zho, or
hybrid yak, and the women break the clods and share in all other
agricultural operations. The soil, destitute of manure, which is
dried and hoarded for fuel, rarely produces more than tenfold. The
'three acres and a cow' is with them four acres of alluvial soil to a
family on an average, with 'runs' for yaks and sheep on the
mountains. The farms, planted with apricot and other fruit trees, a
prolific loose-grained barley, wheat, peas, and lucerne, are oases in
the surrounding deserts. The people export apricot oil, dried
apricots, sheep's wool, heavy undyed woollens, a coarse cloth made
from yaks' hair, and pashm, the under fleece of the shawl goat. They
complained, and I think with good reason, of the merciless exactions
of the Kashmiri officials, but there were no evidences of severe
poverty, and not one beggar was seen.
It was not an easy matter to get back to Leh. The rise of the Shayok
made it impossible to reach and return by the Digar Pass, and the
alternative route over the Kharzong glacier continued for some time
impracticable - that is, it was perfectly smooth ice. At length the
news came that a fall of snow had roughened its surface. A number of
men worked for two days at scaffolding a path, and with great
difficulty, and the loss of one yak from a falling rock, a fruitful
source of fatalities in Tibet, we reached Khalsar, where with great
regret we parted with Tse-ring-don-drub (Life's purpose fulfilled),
the gopa of Sati, whose friendship had been a real pleasure, and to
whose courage and promptitude, in Mr. Redslob's opinion, I owed my
rescue from drowning.
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