White Mountain

by Robert Twigger

  Bretherton’s replacement, a Captain Sheppard, also of the Royal Engineers, slung a steel hawser across the river to tow the barges into position (they had been swept downstream during the crossing). This then served as a guide rail for the boats going back and forth. But it was still lamentably slow. The mounted infantry found and paid for twenty-seven more coracles, some large enough to take six men. The operation got up to speed and everyone was across in five days.

  Before moving off, a custom had to be followed: Major Breth-erton’s kit was auctioned. It was a tradition of the Indian Frontier that a dead man’s kit be auctioned off so that his pack pony could be put to better use. Intimate personal belongings would be returned eventually to England via Darjeeling and Calcutta. Other stuff was all for sale. It is a measure of the conditions prevailing that a bar of soap that cost four pence would sell for four shillings and six pence.

  Bretherton had been a popular officer and was much missed. ‘I found,’ wrote the officer who conducted the sale, ‘that the adoption of the correct, breezy, business-like auctioneer’s manner was uphill work.’

  7

  The Tibetan Book of the Dead circa 1904

  If you drink the country’s water, obey the country’s laws.

  Tibetan proverb

  In 1904, in Tibet, when a man died custom dictated that he be dressed back to front, with his coat buttoned up at the back. Then he was tied with his legs crossed, or, in the villages, with his knees drawn up so that he could be placed in a large pot or cauldron. Once transported to the cemetery in the cauldron, the body was removed (no easy feat; one is reminded of removing a full bin liner from a cylindrical kitchen bin). Then, in a most unexpected turn, the cauldron, rinsed only once from the dirty stream you find in such places, would be used to make a soup, or, at poorer funerals, Tibetan tea. No one seemed to mind being served from this utensil. . .

  Over a period of several days a trapa – a monk somewhat lower than a lama – would sit with the decomposing corpse and advise him on what paths he should follow and which ones to avoid in the next world. In the wooded regions of Tibet around the Himalayas but below 3,500 metres, the body was then burned. But much of Tibet is above the timber line so fuel was not easy to come by. Corpses were therefore abandoned to birds of prey, either on the high solitary cliffs or in a cemetery devoted to such practices.

  For lamas and other religious notables, the body would be preserved in salt and then cooked in yak butter, which mummifies the body into what is known as a mardong. These mardongs were sometimes preserved in a monastery behind glass. Grand lamas were incinerated – again using butter, this time as a fuel – and their bones preserved. The funerary monuments, or chorten, of Tibet imitate the stupa of ancient Buddhists in India – at its simplest a pile of stones of decreasing size, one laid flat on top of another.

  In a typical ‘guide for the spirit of the dead’ we discover:

  1. The body is transported to the top of a mountain, dismembered, the four limbs cut away with a well-sharpened knife. Liver, lungs and entrails are spread across the ground for ravenous birds to descend upon, leaving the rest for wolves and foxes to eat as night falls.

  2. The body is thrown into a sacred river. The blood and humours are dissolved in the glacial blue water. The fish and otters eat the hanging parts of flesh and fat, leaving the bones to sink to the bottom or be carried downstream.

  3. The body is burned. Flesh, bones and skin are reduced to a heap of cinders. The Tisas are nourished by the foul, sweet, compelling odours of cremation. The Tisas are demigods who feed upon odours. Some prefer sweet fragrances; others feast on smells that are offensive to humans: excrement, rotting flesh, burning hair, eyes and vitals.

  4. The body is hidden in the earth. Flesh, bones and skin are sucked by worms.

  Families who could afford to pay for a monk or lama to officiate at a funeral abided by a rule that there must be a religious service held every day for the next six weeks. In Egypt, a ritual was performed every day for seven weeks; in Japan also. One wonders at the similarity here: is 40-49 days a psychological tipping point for emotionally digesting a profound loss?

  After the six weeks are up, a kind of scarecrow was constructed of sticks and dressed in clothes belonging to the deceased. For a face, a crudely drawn portrait on a hard-to-come-by sheet of paper. Sometimes left blank when no one was able to draw – hard though that may seem to believe. Monasteries increasingly sold printed faces, ready made for attachment to the guy – one a generic man with a fine moustache, another a full-faced woman. There was a place to write the name of the dearly departed at the bottom.

  The effigy was then carried to a final service and propped up to observe more prayers. Then the lama would remove the paper face and burn it in a butter lamp, letting the last curling grey snowflakes of ash rise up in the wind.

  The dead man’s clothes were given to the lama as part of his fee.

  After this symbolic burning, no ties remained to link the dead person to this world. This was keenly required by Tibetans, who feared haunting by ghosts and spirits. They were frightened of too many dealings with the dead. There were no professional undertakers – no one would do such a job. When the corpse was carried at last from the house on its way to the cemetery or cliff edge or burning ground, a meal was served with a portion laid out for the dead man. The oldest and most revered member of the family would address the deceased:

  You are dead. Eat well, for this is your very last meal in this place. Eat your fill and more for you have a long road and several mountain passes to cross. Take strength and do not return . . .

  Sometimes, when it was feared that the dead man was too attached to this life, the following words were added:

  And let me tell you that just after you died your house was destroyed by fire, everything you owned was burned, everything, including your yaks and milking things. Because of a debt you had long forgotten a creditor has taken your sons away as slaves in a new country beyond the white mountains. Your wife has left you for a new husband. Never return to see all this misery!

  The tale, of course, was a complete lie, but spirits were believed to be easily fooled by mere words as long as the right person, a most excellent and honoured elder, spoke them.

  The lama would join in, adding his own advice about following the new road and not looking back. This was sincerely meant for the benefit of the dead man, but the ordinary folk only thought about avoiding the return of a ghost which could be most dangerous.

  It was believed that the spirit, during these ceremonies, was travelling through the Bardo. This was a Dantean journey during which all manner of sights would be seen by the fleeing spirit, from strange apparitions to ghastly beings to beautiful wonderful creatures. If, while seeing such things, the deceased managed to keep his head (which might depend on what forms of concentration he had mastered in his lifetime, or what levels of natural piety he had attained), he would be able to hear the words of the officiating lama. These would lead him to the right path – a place among the gods or some other pleasant spot – where he might be reborn.

  But woe betide any men or women who had learned nothing of the Bardo in their short time on earth! And pity those who enter it while still full of regret about leaving the material world. Full of fear and longing for their lost life, they would be incapable of hearing or heeding the words of the lama. Their actions on earth would have consequences – not necessarily obvious ones, but unavoidable. If they’d been deceived in life, they would be doubly deceived in death. Lost in the Bardo, they might be tempted by some pleasant-looking grotto or seeming palace – only to find themselves reborn as a dog!

  Others believed that if you failed to seize the spiritual illumination you were offered at death, the fleeting vision of the near-death experience, you were doomed to join the frightened flock heading pell-mell towards Shinje, the Judge of the Dead.

  The wind ringing a bell: does it toll for thee?

  Shinje would examine each individual’s
past actions in a mirror, adding a black stone to one pile for certain deeds, a white stone for others. Never would it be made exactly clear on earth which acts contributed to which pile – only the growth of an inner sense would tell you. Claiming ‘you didn’t know’ would mean nothing to Shinje. Whichever pile of stones was the larger would dictate the species of being among whom your spirit would be reborn. Shinje will also determine your parents’ social standing, your beauty or ugliness, your intellectual gifts.

  No one could escape, as the following story illustrates:

  A lama of high repute was nevertheless an idle man. He had been blessed with excellent teachers and had inherited an important library; he was constantly surrounded by men of learning – yet he had scarcely learned how to read, still less apply the wisdom contained within the writings of others. He claimed he had learned wisdom from ‘life’, but he hadn’t done that either, for he was too busy feasting on the good vittles of the monastery and arranging his rise as a powerful man of the religious world. One day, of course, this lama died.

  Dugpa Kunlegs, meanwhile, was loitering in the area. A saint to some, to the less enlightened a mere vagabond and roughspeaking ‘philosopher’ – many are the stories you will hear about Dugpa Kunlegs. As he sat and contemplated a waterfall, Dugpa saw a girl of comely appearance stop to draw some water. As if possessed, he grabbed the lass and without saying a word roughly tried to violate her.

  This was no wilting lily; the girl was robust, yet she was surprised at the force of her blows. Having landed Dugpa a hearty kick in his exposed privates, she ran back to her village and told her mother of the assault.

  Her mother was shocked. The men of that region were known as gentlemen. None would attempt such a thing – the brute had to be a wandering criminal. But as the daughter described in detail her attacker, the mother, a wise woman in her own right, recognised that it was Dugpa Kunlegs, no less, who had tried to roughly seduce her only child. The mother had observed Dugpa while on a pilgrimage and her inner sense – on which she unfailingly relied – told her he was truly a saint and endowed with much wisdom.

  She knew that ordinary rules do not apply to such men. They have their reasons for what they do – and it is always in accordance with the ways of the universe, rather than merely to appease a vulgar and temporary observer. She said to her daughter: ‘This man is Dugpa Kunlegs – a great man of insight and knowledge. Whatever he does springs from great understanding. Return and offer your maidenhood to him!’

  Somewhat stunned, but of natural piety and knowing her mother’s good sense, the girl returned to the brook. Dugpa Kunlegs was looking morose, but he was at least now fully covered. She prostrated herself at his feet.

  ‘Oh, I do not care about that!’ he said with a shrug. ‘Women awake no desire in me. However, the Grand Lama of the nearby monastery has died, having neglected all forms of instruction. His spirit wanders frightened and aimless in the Bardo towards an inevitable bad rebirth. Out of compassion, I wished to procure him a human body but such is the power of his evil deeds that my help is of no use. Such is the power of retribution for his sloth and heedlessness, you were given the strength to escape. And while you ran home to your good mother, the asses in yonder field began to copulate. The Grand Lama will soon be reborn as a donkey.’

  Stories of death, the during and after of it, abounded as the British looked for a way to force the Tibetans into signing some kind of agreement.

  8

  The Signing

  A hand and a foot do not clap together.

  Pashtun proverb

  The convention was to be signed in the great Audience Hall of the Potala Palace. The Dalai Lama refused to return, fearing the British when he should have feared the Chinese, who would, within a few years, strip him of all his official powers.

  The steps to the Audience Hall were worn smooth by human traffic, a barefoot traffic that left the sloping steps slippery to all the hobnailed British officers and their bodyguards. They reportedly had to climb crabwise up the steep steps, as if ‘negotiating some device at a funfair’.* Only Macdonald, still wearing his red rubber gumboots, retained his equilibrium and his dignity and was seen for the first time leading an advance.

  Wars strengthen the position of those who seek power through the disruption of old certainties. The Chinese were the ultimate beneficiaries of the invasion of Tibet, not the British or the Tibetans. Some prisoners were released once the treaty was signed: two who had been locked up for aiding Ekai Kawaguchi, and two for helping Chandra Das, the Bengali spy sent by the Indian government in the 1880s. The latter two had been imprisoned nineteen years. ‘All,’ Younghusband wrote, ‘were in abject fear of the Tibetans, bowing double before them . . . their expression unchangeably fixed in horror, and their skin white and dry as paper.’ Candler, his stump now on the path to recovery, felt for them: ‘We who looked on these sad relics of humanity felt that their restitution to liberty was in itself sufficient to justify our advance to Lhasa.’

  But ends never justify means. In the late nineteenth century, the era of Rhodes and Kitchener, the ends increasingly were used to justify the means – be they sentimental, as in the case of Candler’s observation, or brutally pragmatic, as in the case of Rhodes. It is no accident that Rhodes was one of the very few Englishmen that Hitler openly admired.

  The only judgement that counts is the one that the future makes, the one that foresight tries to envisage. In this the whole enterprise, born of Curzon’s imaginings about Russian influence and Younghusband’s desire for action, resulted in quite the reverse of what was intended. The Dalai Lama was stripped of his status, setting a precedent for what would happen fifty years later. The Chinese strengthened their hand, horning in on British military success but treating the Tibetans with high-handed disdain and not the simple courtesies the British visited on them (it is only in costume dramas that British officers behave like Prussians). When the British left Lhasa, as was always intended, the Chinese stayed and put about the rumour that they had forced the British to leave, that they were the saviours of the Tibetans, their true friends and allies. No Russian rifles or real evidence of a Tibetan-Russian pact was found.

  The lesson perhaps being: punitive expeditions don’t work. Unless you are planning to stay and rule, with all the headaches that entails, you are better off never trying to force your way in in the first place.

  Younghusband had, in order to make the Tibetans sign, agreed to a seventy-five-year period for paying off the war reparations incurred because of the various attacks on the column as they approached Lhasa. It was a sum of 75,000 rupees, and a canny move no doubt by the Tibetans to put off paying for so many years. The other side of the bargain was that the British had the right to maintain a presence in what Younghusband described as ‘the key to Tibet . . . the only strategical point of value in the whole north-eastern frontier from Kashmir to Burma.’

  London would later be incensed by this agreement and Younghusband would be their scapegoat. But what choice did he have at the time? The Indian government backed him up fully, but already the seeds of centralism, the desire for control that heralds the end of real enterprise in any large organisation, had begun to be sewn. A century earlier and Younghusband would have been treated very differently.

  The thirteenth Dalai Lama sports a fine moustache

  The thirteenth Dalai Lama spent his later years wandering. He made it first to Mongolia, where he wasn’t popular, and then to Peking in 1907. Only one other Dalai Lama – the fifth – had ever deigned to visit the Chinese capital, and for him they built a ramp over the walls of the Forbidden City since it was undignified for such a man to be forced in his palanquin to go beneath a gate. Things were different now. After eight days haggling, he was allowed to approach the Last Emperor and only kneel rather than prostrate in a full kowtow. In 1909 he went back to Lhasa and the place was in turmoil. In February 1910 he slipped out of Lhasa with Chinese troops hot on his tail. His own bodyguard fought off the Chinese purs
uers at the ferry over the mighty Tsangpo at Chaksam – some seventy Chinese were reported killed. Crossing into Sikkim, a motley bunch of bedraggled horsemen (the fourteenth Dalai Lama would be riding a dzo), appeared at the Gnatong telegraph station.

  The sergeant on duty, unruffled by reports that he was in the presence of a religious royalty, asked, ‘Now which of you blighters is the Dalai Lama?’

  The British provided him with a house in Darjeeling but gave him no satisfaction by recognising the puppet government set up in Lhasa and backed by the Chinese. As the diplomat Sir Charles Bell commented at the time, ‘The Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the British military expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat were primarily responsible.’ It was a policy known on the North-West Frontier as ‘Butcher and Bolt’ and had led to many misguided operations.

  In 1911 the Manchu dynasty was overthrown and it would be fifty years before the next dynasty – the communist one – would carry on with unfinished business in Tibet. Meanwhile, the Republic of China, under the shaky grip of Sun Yat Sen, reinstated the thirteenth Dalai Lama and bade him return to a chaotic Lhasa. Which he did. Fighting between Tibetans and Chinese troops petered out and the Chinese were repatriated through Darjeeling and back to Peking. But the moment she lost control of Tibet, China changed her claim from one of suzerainty to that of sovereignty. When the Chinese returned, they would swallow Tibet whole . . .

  The last forbidden country had been stormed and found to be . . . not so very magical after all. Another dead end had been reached. But tireless men were already exploring other aspects of the forbidden – including creatures that could not possibly exist. . .