These storms recur regularly every spring and continue for a period of about two months. They usually reach the town in the early afternoon. One sees them approaching with terrific rapidity in a huge black cloud. The Potala Palace disappears and at once everyone rushes for home. Street life stops, the windows rattle, and the animals in the fields resignedly turn their tails to the wind and wait patiently till they can start grazing once more. The countless street dogs huddle together in corners. (They are not usually so peaceful. One day Aufschnaiter came home with a torn cloak—he had been attacked by dogs, which had killed and devoured a dying horse; the pack had tasted blood.)
The period of dust storms is the most unpleasant time of the year. Even sitting in one’s room, one gets sand between one’s teeth as there are no double windows in Lhasa. The only positive comfort one can get out of these spring storms is in the knowledge that winter has really ended. All the gardeners know that they have no more frost to fear. At this season the meadows along the canals get their first breath of green and Buddha’s hair begins to bloom. That is what they call the famous weeping willow at the gate of the cathedral. The slender, hanging branches with the fine yellow blooms give a meaning to this poetic name in the springtime.
When I was able to hobble around again, I was anxious to make myself useful in some way or other. Tsarong had planted hundreds of young fruit trees in his garden. They were all grown from seed and had up to now borne no fruit. Together with George (my host’s son), I now set to work to graft them systematically. That gave the household something new to laugh at. In Tibet grafting is practically unknown and there is no word for it. They called it “marrying” and found it all very amusing.
Tibetans are a happy little people full of childish humor. They are grateful for any opportunity to laugh. If anyone stumbles or slips they enjoy themselves for hours. Pleasure in the misfortunes of others is almost universal, but somehow it is not ill meant. They make a mock of everything and everybody. As they have no newspapers they indulge their criticism of untoward events or objectionable persons by means of songs and satire. Boys and girls walk through the Parkhor in the evening singing the latest verses. Even the highest personages must put up with being pulled to pieces. Sometimes the government proscribes a particular song, but no one is ever punished for singing it. It is no longer sung in public, but is heard all the more in private.
The Parkhor is most thronged at the New Year. This street runs in a circle around the cathedral and most of the life of the city is concentrated in it. Many of the big business houses are here, and here all religious and military processions begin and end. Toward evening, especially on public holidays, pious citizens swarm over the Parkhor mumbling their prayers, and many of the faithful cover the whole distance in successive prostrations. But not only piety is represented in the Parkhor. You find also pretty women showing off their newest frocks and flirting a little with the young bloods of the nobility. Ladies of easy virtue are also there professionally.
In a word, the Parkhor is a center of business, sociability, and frivolity.
BY THE FIFTEENTH of the first Tibetan month, I was so much better that I, too, could attend the festivities. The fifteenth is one of the great days. There is a magnificent procession in which the Dalai Lama takes part. Tsarong had promised us a window in one of his houses looking onto the Parkhor. Our places were on the ground floor as no one is allowed to be at a higher elevation than the heads of the grandees, who march with measured tread along the street. No houses in Lhasa may be more than two stories high as it is considered a form of blasphemy to compete with the Cathedral or the Potala. This rule is strictly observed and the wooden shanties—easily taken to pieces—which some of the nobles put up on the flat roofs of their houses in the warm weather disappear like magic when the Dalai Lama or the regent takes part in a procession.
While the brightly colored crowd flowed through the streets, we sat at our window with Mrs. Tsarong. Our hostess was a friendly old lady, who had always mothered us. We were very glad of her company in surroundings very strange to us, and her familiar friendly tones explained to us the novel sights that met our eyes.
We saw strange, framelike objects rising from the ground, sometimes to a height of thirty or more feet. She told us that these were for the butter figures. Soon after sunset these works of art, made of butter by the monks, are brought along. There are departments in the monasteries where particularly gifted monks, true artists in their own line, knead and model figures out of butter of different colors. This work, which requires inexhaustible patience, is often in the finest filigree. There is competition in the production of these masterpieces of a single night, as the government gives a prize for the best one. For many years past the monastery of Gyü has been the winner. Soon the whole street front of the Parkhor was hidden behind these gaily colored butter pyramids. In front of them was an endless mass of people, and we wondered if we should be able to see anything. It was beginning to grow dark when the Lhasa regiments marched up to the sound of trumpets and drums. They lined the street and pressed the spectators back against the houses, leaving the roadway free.
Night fell swiftly, but soon the scene was brightly illuminated with a swarm of lights. There were thousands of flickering butter lamps and among them a few petroleum pressure lamps with their fearful glaring light. The moon came up over the roofs to throw more light on the proceedings. The months are lunar in Tibet, so it was full moon on the fifteenth. Everything was ready: the stage was set and the great festival could now begin. The voices of the crowd were hushed in anticipation. The great moment had come.
The cathedral doors opened, and the young God-King stepped slowly out, supported to right and left by two abbots. The people bowed in awe. According to strict ceremonial they should prostrate themselves, but today there was no room. As he approached they bowed, as a field of corn bends before the wind. No one dared to look up. With measured steps the Dalai Lama began his solemn circuit of the Parkhor. From time to time he stopped before the figures of butter and gazed at them. He was followed by a brilliant retinue of all the high dignitaries and nobles. After them followed the officials in order of precedence. In the procession we recognized our friend Tsarong, who followed close behind the Dalai Lama. Like all the nobles, he carried in his hand a smoldering stick of incense.
The awed crowd kept silent. Only the music of the monks could be heard—the oboes, tubas, kettledrums, and chinels. It was like a vision of another world, a strangely unreal happening. In the yellow light of the flickering lamps, the great figures of molded butter seemed to come to life. We fancied we saw strange flowers tossing their heads in the breeze and heard the rustling of the robes of gods. The faces of these portentous figures were distorted in a demonic grimace. Then the God-King raised his hand in blessing.
Now the Living Buddha was approaching. He passed quite close to our window. The women stiffened in a deep obeisance and hardly dared to breathe. The crowd was frozen. Deeply moved, we hid ourselves behind the women as if to protect ourselves from being drawn into the magic circle of this Power.
We kept saying to ourselves, “It is only a child.” A child, indeed, but the heart of the concentrated faith of thousands, the essence of their prayers, longings, hopes. Whether it is Lhasa or Rome—all are united by one wish: to find God and to serve Him. I closed my eyes and hearkened to the murmured prayers and the solemn music and sweet incense rising to the evening sky.
Soon the Dalai Lama had completed his tour around the Parkhor and vanished into the Tsug Lag Khang. The soldiers marched away to the music of their bands.
As if awakened from a hypnotic sleep, the tens of thousands of spectators passed from order into chaos. The transition was overwhelmingly sudden. The crowds broke into shouts and wild gesticulation. A moment ago they were weeping and praying or sunk in ecstatic meditation, and now they are a throng of mad-men. The monk-guards begin to function. They are huge fellows with padded shoulders and blackened faces to make them more terrib
le. They lay about them with their whips, but the crowds press frantically around the statues of butter, which are now in danger of being overturned. Even those who have been bludgeoned come back into the fray. One would think they were possessed by demons. Are they really the same people who just now were bowing humbly before a child?
The next morning the streets were empty. The butter figures had been carried away, and no trace remained of the reverence or the ecstasy of the night before. Market stalls had taken the place of the stands that had carried the statues. The brightly colored figures of the saints had melted and would be used as fuel for lamps—or would be made up into magic medicines.
9
Asylum Granted
Many people came to visit us. Tibetans journeyed from far and wide to Lhasa to attend the New Year Festival, among them people whom we had got to know on our journey. It was not hard for them to find us, as we were still much talked of, and every child knew where we lived. Some brought us presents of dried meat, which is much appreciated in Lhasa. We learned, moreover, from these people that the officials through whose districts we had passed had been severely censured by the government. It depressed us to feel that persons who had received us in such a friendly manner had suffered such unpleasantness on our account. But it seemed that they bore us no grudge. We met a bönpo whom we had bamboozled with our old travel permit, and he only laughed and seemed glad to see us again.
The New Year’s celebrations did not pass off this year without a mishap. An accident that attracted much attention occurred on the Parkhor.
Every year they put up high flagstaffs made of heavy tree trunks fitted into one another. These are brought from distant places, and it is quite a task to carry them to Lhasa. It is managed in a very primitive way, and my indignation was aroused when I saw, for the first time, a procession coming in. It reminded me of the Volga boatmen. About twenty men drag each trunk, which is attached to them by a rope round their waists. They sing a monotonous air as they trudge along, keeping step with one another. They sweat and pant, but their foreman, who leads the singing, gives them no pause for rest. This forced labor is in part a substitute for taxation. The carriers are picked up at villages on the road and dismissed when they come to the next settlement. The monotonous airs to which they drag their burden are said to distract their minds from the severity of their task. I should have thought they would do better to save their breath. The sort of fatalistic resignation with which they lent themselves to this backbreaking toil always used to infuriate me. As a product of our modern age, I could not understand why the people of Tibet were so rigidly opposed to any form of progress. There obviously must be some better means of transporting these heavy burdens than by manhandling them. The Chinese invented and used the wheel thousands of years ago. But the Tibetans will have none of it, though its use would give an immense impulse to transport and commerce, and would raise the whole standard of living throughout the country.
When, later, I was engaged in irrigation works, I made various finds that strengthened my belief that the Tibetans had known and used the wheel many centuries ago. We uncovered hundreds of great blocks of stones as big as wardrobes. These could not have been carried save by mechanical means from the remote quarries where they had been hewn. When my workmen wanted to carry such a block from one place to another, they had first to hew it into eight pieces.
I became more and more convinced that Tibet’s great days belonged to the past. There is a stone obelisk dating from A. D. 763 that bears witness to my theory. It records the fact that in that year the Tibetan armies marched to the gates of the Chinese capital and there dictated to the Chinese terms of peace, which included an annual tribute of fifty thousand bales of silk.
And then there is the Potala Palace, which must date from Tibet’s days of greatness. No one today would think of erecting such a building. I once asked a stonemason who was working for me why such buildings were no longer put up. He answered indignantly that the Potala was the handiwork of the gods. Men never could have achieved anything like it. Good spirits and supernatural beings had worked by night on this wonderful building. I found in this view another instance of the indifference to progress and ambition that characterized the attitude of the men who dragged the tree trunks.
To return to my story. When the tree trunks are brought into Lhasa, they are bound together with strips of yak’s hide to form a thick mast nearly seventy feet high. Then a huge flag bearing printed prayers and extending from the top to the bottom of the pole is nailed onto it. On this occasion the trunks were probably too heavy for the yak-skin straps, for the whole mast broke into its component parts, which crushed three watchers to death and injured several others. The whole of Tibet took this for an evil omen, and people prophesied a black future for the country. Catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods were foretold. Men spoke of war and looked meaningly toward China. Everyone, even those who had had an English education, was a prey to superstition.
Nevertheless, they did not carry the men wounded in this accident to their lamas, but to the British Legation, where there was a hospital with a number of beds for Tibetans. The English doctor had plenty of work. Every morning there was a queue of clients waiting before his door, and in the afternoon he visited his patients in the town. The monks tolerated in silence this intrusion into their territory. They could hardly do otherwise, because it was impossible to ignore the doctor’s success.
The policy of the government toward medicine is a dark chapter in the history of modern Tibet. The doctors of the British legations were the only qualified medical men in a population of three and a half million. Doctors would find a rich field of activity in Tibet, but the government would never consent to allow foreigners to practice. The whole power was in the hands of the monks, who criticized even government officials when they called in the English doctor.
IT WAS A HOPEFUL OMEN for our future when Aufschnaiter was summoned by a high monastic official and commissioned to build an irrigation canal. We were speechless with joy! This was our first step toward a settled existence in Lhasa, and it was the monks who had put us on the road.
Aufschnaiter began at once to work on his measurements. I wanted to help him as he had no trained assistant, so I walked out to his workplace on the Lingkhor. An indescribable scene awaited us. There squatted hundreds, nay thousands, of monks wearing their red cowls and busy doing something for which privacy is generally regarded as essential. I did not envy Aufschnaiter his place of work. We went obstinately on with our job, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but vowed to ourselves to move as soon as possible from the neighborhood.
Aufschnaiter made good headway and in a fortnight was ready to start digging. A hundred and fifty workers were placed at his disposal, and we began to feel that we were important contractors. But we had yet to learn the methods of work practiced in this country.
In the meantime I had also found a job myself. I was still an invalid, and Tsarong’s garden was the best place for a man in my condition; but I kept wondering what I could do to make it more beautiful. Then I had an inspiration. I would make a fountain.
I took measurements and made drawings and soon had prepared a beautiful plan. Tsarong was enthusiastic. He chose the servants who were to help me, and I sat comfortably in the sunshine and directed my gang. Underground pipes were soon laid and a pool dug. Tsarong insisted on taking a hand personally in the cementing. Since the erection of the famous iron bridge he had been an authority on reinforced concrete. Then we had to build a cistern on the roof of the house to supply the fountain with water. It was pretty hard work pumping the water up into the cistern, but I made a virtue of necessity and used the hand pump for training my muscles.
At last the great moment arrived and for the first time a jet of water, as high as the house, sprang from my fountain. We were all as happy as children. This was the only fountain in Tibet and from now on it was the pièce de résistance at Tsarong’s garden parties.
New impres
sions and an unwonted activity almost made us forget our cares. One day Thangme brought us a newspaper in Tibetan and showed us an article about ourselves, which related in a very friendly spirit how we had burst our way through the mountain barriers and reached Lhasa, and how we were now begging for the protection of this pious, neutral country. We thought that these friendly lines could have a favorable influence on public opinion and hoped they might lend some support to our petition. It is true that the journal in question would have been of little account in Europe. It appeared once a month and was published at Kalimpong, in India. Its circulation did not exceed five hundred copies, but it was read rather extensively in Lhasa in certain circles, and individual numbers were sent to Tibetologues throughout the world.
THE NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS were not yet at an end, though the most important ceremonies had been performed. Now came the athletic gathering on the Parkhor in front of the Tsug Lag Khang. As an old athlete, I was particularly interested, and every day at sunrise found me at the games, which started early in the morning. We had been lucky enough to secure places at a window on the second floor of the Chinese Legation, from which we watched, well concealed behind a curtain. That was our only way of getting around the order forbidding anyone to sit above the ground floor in the presence of the regent, who sat, enthroned behind a muslin curtain, on the first floor of the Tsug Lag Khang. The four cabinet ministers watched through the windows.
The first events were wrestling bouts. I could not make up my mind whether the wrestlers’ methods were more like the Greco-Roman or the catch-as-catch-can style. They obviously had their own rules. Here a fall is given when any part of the body except the feet touches the ground. There are no lists of competitors nor any preliminary announcements. A felt mat is spread out, and men come out of the crowd and take each other on. The combatants wear only a loincloth and shiver in the cold morning air. They are all well-grown, muscular fellows. They jig around with wild gestures under the noses of their opponents and assume an air of swaggering courage. But they have no notion of the art of wrestling and would be easily vanquished by a real wrestler. The bouts are soon over, and a new pair comes on the scene. One never seems to see a keen struggle for victory. Winners get no special distinction, but winners and losers both receive white scarves. They bow to the bönpo, who hands them the scarves with a benevolent smile, and prostrate themselves three times in honor of the regent; after which they rejoin the crowd the best of friends.
Seven Years in Tibet Page 17