The Houses Are Of Mud, With Flat Roofs; But, Being
Summer, Many Of Them Were Roofless, The Poplar Rods Which Support The
Mud Having Been Used For Fuel.
Conical stacks of the dried excreta
of animals, the chief fuel of the country, adorned the roofs, but the
general aspect was ruinous and poor.
The people all invited me into
their dark and dirty rooms, inhabited also by goats, offered tea and
cheese, and felt my clothes. They looked the wildest of savages, but
they are not. No house was so poor as not to have its 'family
altar,' its shelf of wooden gods, and table of offerings. A
religious atmosphere pervades Tibet, and gives it a singular sense of
novelty. Not only were there chod-tens and a gonpo in this poor
place, and family altars, but prayer-wheels, i.e. wooden cylinders
filled with rolls of paper inscribed with prayers, revolving on
sticks, to be turned by passers-by, inscribed cotton bannerets on
poles planted in cairns, and on the roofs long sticks, to which
strips of cotton bearing the universal prayer, Aum mani padne hun (O
jewel of the lotus-flower), are attached. As these wave in the wind
the occupants of the house gain the merit of repeating this sentence.
The remaining marches to Leh, the capital of Lesser Tibet, were full
of fascination and novelty. Everywhere the Tibetans were friendly
and cordial. In each village I was invited to the headman's house,
and taken by him to visit the chief inhabitants; every traveller, lay
and clerical, passed by with the cheerful salutation Tzu, asked me
where I came from and whither I was going, wished me a good journey,
admired Gyalpo, and when he scaled rock ladders and scrambled gamely
through difficult torrents, cheered him like Englishmen, the general
jollity and cordiality of manners contrasting cheerily with the
chilling aloofness of Moslems.
The irredeemable ugliness of the Tibetans produced a deeper
impression daily. It is grotesque, and is heightened, not modified,
by their costume and ornament. They have high cheekbones, broad flat
noses without visible bridges, small, dark, oblique eyes, with heavy
lids and imperceptible eyebrows, wide mouths, full lips, thick, big,
projecting ears, deformed by great hoops, straight black hair nearly
as coarse as horsehair, and short, square, ungainly figures. The
faces of the men are smooth. The women seldom exceed five feet in
height, and a man is tall at five feet four.
The male costume is a long, loose, woollen coat with a girdle,
trousers, under-garments, woollen leggings, and a cap with a turned-
up point over each ear. The girdle is the depository of many things
dear to a Tibetan - his purse, rude knife, heavy tinder-box, tobacco
pouch, pipe, distaff, and sundry charms and amulets. In the
capacious breast of his coat he carries wool for spinning - for he
spins as he walks - balls of cold barley dough, and much besides. He
wears his hair in a pigtail. The women wear short, big-sleeved
jackets, shortish, full-plaited skirts, tight trousers a yard too
long, the superfluous length forming folds above the ankle, a
sheepskin with the fur outside hangs over the back, and on gala
occasions a sort of drapery is worn over the usual dress. Felt or
straw shoes and many heavy ornaments are worn by both sexes. Great
ears of brocade, lined and edged with fur and attached to the hair,
are worn by the women. Their hair is dressed once a month in many
much-greased plaits, fastened together at the back by a long tassel.
The head-dress is a strip of cloth or leather, sewn over with large
turquoises, carbuncles, and silver ornaments. This hangs in a point
over the brow, broadens over the top of the head, and tapers as it
reaches the waist behind. The ambition of every Tibetan girl is
centred in this singular headgear. Hoops in the ears, necklaces,
amulets, clasps, bangles of brass or silver, and various implements
stuck in the girdle and depending from it, complete a costume pre-
eminent in ugliness. The Tibetans are dirty. They wash once a year,
and, except for festivals, seldom change their clothes till they
begin to drop off. They are healthy and hardy, even the women can
carry weights of sixty pounds over the passes; they attain extreme
old age; their voices are harsh and loud, and their laughter is noisy
and hearty.
After leaving Shergol the signs of Buddhism were universal and
imposing, and the same may be said of the whole of the inhabited part
of Lesser Tibet. Colossal figures of Shakya Thubba (Buddha) are
carved on faces of rock, or in wood, stone, or gilded copper sit on
lotus thrones in endless calm near villages of votaries. Chod-tens
from twenty to a hundred feet in height, dedicated to 'holy' men, are
scattered over elevated ground, or in imposing avenues line the
approaches to hamlets and gonpos. There are also countless manis,
dykes of stone from six to sixteen feet in width and from twenty feet
to a fourth of a mile in length, roofed with flattish stones,
inscribed by the lamas (monks) with the phrase Aum, &c., and
purchased and deposited by those who wish to obtain any special
benefit from the gods, such as a safe journey. Then there are
prayer-mills, sometimes 150 in a row, which revolve easily by being
brushed by the hand of the passer-by, larger prayer-cylinders which
are turned by pulling ropes, and others larger still by water-power.
The finest of the latter was in a temple overarching a perennial
torrent, and was said to contain 20,000 repetitions of the mystic
phrase, the fee to the worshipper for each revolution of the cylinder
being from 1d. to 1s. 4d., according to his means or urgency.
The glory and pride of Ladak and Nubra are the gonpos, of which the
illustrations give a slight idea. Their picturesqueness is
absolutely enchanting.
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