Western Tibet and the British borderland; the sacred country of Hindus and Buddhists, with an account of the government, religion and customs of its peoples

Front matter

tVtc Sijrolnatra/ ^

PRINCETON. N. J.

d™„;„ "DSTSS S5

Preface

At a time like the present when, owing to freer access to the country, books on Tibet are becoming multiplied and the reading public is beginning to appreciate the homely truth which tells us that “ of making many books there is no end ; and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” it is not too much to say that the general information on matters Tibetan is wonderfully advanced in comparison with what it was even five years ago. In fact, so far have matters gone along the whole line of Tibetan exploration, that the public expects nowadays something which is decidedly new and distinctly additional to what has already been so ably put before it by writers in the past. It is therefore to a more highly enlightened and more exacting reader that an author has nowadays to address himself, and year by year the task will become more difficult. What has been the charm of the past is not to the same extent the charm of the present : what was once novel in the paucity of literature has now become familiar owing to the numerous books lately published which have become the classics of Tibetan research.

It is, then, with the greatest diffidence that I present

VI

PREFACE this venture to a critical public, and my apology is that the subject has been but little dealt with by previous writers, and that the information gathered on the spot does add, however inconsiderable the addition, something to that vastly interesting mass of knowledge which is the delight of those interested in comparative religions, ethnology and political science, while I trust this book will also find favour with the geographer and the lover of tales of travel. For there is a portion of Western Tibet and the British Borderland, full of holy lore, which is most sacred to the Hindu and Buddhist, where there is a romance of legends and myths and where quaint customs and manners appeal to the poetry that runs in all men’s veins. It is in regard to these subjects that I ask the reader to give a patient hearing, and to bear with whatever crudeness the narrative reveals in the telling, remembering in charity that fife on the border is not the school for hterature which the metropolis affords, and that words written amidst daily duties, while travelling in some of the wildest landscapes known to mankind, where tempestuous rain and freezing winds dull the mind and numb all thought, can never bear the rounded rhythm and the equal pose of those of the writer who enjoys an undisturbed comfort and a facility of seeing books of reference, which are the pleasures of civihsation.

The object of this book is entirely non-political, and most carefully have aU matters controversial been omitted, as is befitting a Government servant whose

PKEFACE vii

appointment and duties preclude him from entering upon such subjects.

I would also mention that there is an account of a chmb on the highest mountain in Western Tibet by Dr. T. G. Longstaff, and (although I am wholly ignorant of mountaineering myself) I think I may venture to say that this description of a chmb with Alpine guides should prove of extreme interest to all mountaineers and all good sportsmen, who are capable of appreciating pluck and endurance, while the fact that the climbers reached an altitude which is amongst the highest ever hitherto attained adds an additional zest to the tale. This is the first occasion on which a Tibetan mountain has been attacked according to approved modern methods.

I take this opportunity of thanking Dr. LongstafE for his kindness in allowing me the use of so many of his photographs : out of the one hundred and seventyfive illustrations sixty-four are his. The rest with the exception of six are mine, including the panoramic views, which are a special feature of this book.

To those interested in geography there are two illustrations of special interest : first, the panoramic view of the two lakes Mansarowar and Rakas showing the low hills separating the two with Kailas in the distance {see p. 261) : and secondly the panoranfic view of the whole length of the channel between these two stretches of water, showing the lakes at each end {see p. 271). Every reader can now solve for himself those problems

PREFACE viii

which have engaged the attention of the public for a century, viz., as to whether there is any, and if so what, connection between the two lakes.

I am much indebted to Messrs. Lawrie and Co., photographers, Lucknow, for the great pains they have taken over the photographs.

C, A. SHEERING.

Camp Tanakpur,

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Introductoky ......... 1

II. Askot and the Aboriginal Rajis ..... 9

Chapter I Introductory

A GLANCE at the map will show that British territory only touches Tibet in three places, viz., at Spiti in the Kangra District of the Punjab, secondly, at British Garhwal and Almora, these two districts forming part of the Kumaon Division of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and, thirdly, at Assam, where the Brahmaputra enters the Indian Peninsula ; whereas throughout the entire length of the rest of the border there are either protected Native States, such as Cashmere, Bashahr, Tehri Garhwal, and Sikkim, or independent States like Nepal and Bhotan. The Assam border is at present of little use to us owing to the wildness of the country and the savage character of the people, whereas Western Tibet, with which British territory comes into actual physical contact, is of enormous importance, while it may be safely said that it is difficult to find in any other portion of the earth a more interesting country than Western Tibet and the British Borderland which adjoins it. Geographically, this portion of Tibet is the nearest to Russian territory, and, although separated from Russian Turkistan by chains of the most forbidding mountain ranges, still the fact of its position gives it great political importance. But, above all else, it is interesting for its place in religious thought, for it is in this part of Tibet that we find Mount Kailas, the Heaven of Buddhists and Hindus, answering to the Olympus of Homer. This sacred spot is at present visited by some hundreds of pilgrims annually, but, with improved communications, these hundreds should become thousands in the near future, and the ultimate effect of this increase in the number of pilgrims should be very great.

This part of Western Tibet and the British Borderland is a country most sacred to Hindus and Buddhists, and appealing as it does with its awful solemnity and weird grandeur of landscape to all that is romantic in the human soul, it is clothed the while to the eye of faith with a garment of mystery which makes it the fit abode of the great gods of Hinduism and Buddhism. In India, the great Buddha has left associations which cling to numerous spots : at Gya he obtained Nirvana ; at Benares he preached his doctrine of sorrow and showed the path leading to its cessation ; at Taxila in a previous birth he accomplished the perfection of charity, when he gave his own head and distributed his flesh and blood to a tigress and her seven cubs ; but it is to Mount Kailas that the Tibetan points as the home of his gods and the axis of the universe. To the Hindu, death at Benares (“ Holy Kashi ”) is the supreme desire of the pious mind, and hundreds, aye, thousands, go there to await their end in this sanctum sanctorum with a cheerfulness which sees beyond the grave. Prag (Allahabad), where the Ganges and Jumna meet the third invisible stream of Sarasvati, and Hardwar, which marks the spot whence the sacred stream of Ganges leaves the Himalayas, attract their millions of earnest pilgrims ; but it is to Kedarnath and Badrinath in the everlasting snows that they point as the home

INTRODUCTORY of their gods, where Shiva lived, and Krishna dallied with the cow-herd maids, and to Mount Kailas, the heaven of Shiva and the goal of all happiness.

Waddell, in his “Buddhism of Tibet” (p. 81), writing of the belief of the Tibetans regarding their heaven, says : “ And in the very centre is the ‘ King of Mountains,’ Mount Meru (Kailas), towering erect, ‘ like the handle of a mill - stone,’ while halfway up its side is the great wishing-tree, the prototype of our ‘ Christmas-tree,’ and the object of contention between the gods and the Titans. Meru has square sides of gold and jewels. Its eastern face is crystal, the south is sapphire, the west is ruby, and the north is gold, and it is clothed with fragrant flowers and shrubs.”

Here also are the Holy Lakes of Mansarowar and Rakas, so eloquently described in the “Ramayana” in the passage given below (see pp. 36, 37).

The British territory, which adjoins this part of Tibet, is the Kumaon borderland, which is to the Hindu “what Palestine is to the Christian, the place where those whom the Hindu esteems most spent portions of their lives, the home of the great gods, the ‘ great way to final liberation.’ This is a living belief, and thousands every year prove their faith by visiting the shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath. To many the

JAGAT SING, POLITICAL PESHKAR fruition of all earthly desire is the crowning glory of a visit to the sacred places, by which the sins of former births are cleansed, and exemption from metempsychosis obtained. Each rock, or rivulet, is dedicated to some deity, or saint, and has its own appropriate legend. Nature in her wildest and most rugged forms bears witness to the correctness of the belief, that here is the home of the ‘great god’” (Atkinson’s “Himalayan Districts ”).

Apart from their religious attributes, this part of Tibet and the adjoining block of the Himalayan range, full of snow peaks and giant mountains, are unrivalled in the whole world for sublime grandeur, for, in the small area of a strip thirty miles wide along the Kumaon border, there must be some eighty peaks above 20,000 ft., and standing out boldly above their setting are Nanda Devi, 25,689 ft., the highest mountain in British territory throughout the world, and her sister Kamet, 25,373 ft., her rival in elevation and beauty, while north of this mass of grandeur lies the tableland of Tibet, of an average height of 13,000 to 15,000 ft. above sea level, and dominating all her fellows is Gurla Mandhata, a gigantic pile, the highest peak of which is 25,350 ft., visible as a landmark for very many miles.

This beautiful country, full of sacred associations, and replete with nature’s greatest and most awe-inspiring marvels, is inhabited on the British side by a race named Bhotias, who, intrepid traders as they are, yearly endure vicissitudes of climate and dangers of mountaineering which win our admiration for their manly qualities ; while at the same time, they are a people who absorb our interest owing to the extremely quaint manners and customs which still find a place amongst

INTRODUCTORY them in these lonely hills. And beyond them live the Tibetans, of whom hitherto so little has been known, with their mysterious religious rites of prayer-wheels and prayer-flags, their monasteries full of lamas, and their wizards, who drink blood in cups made of human

TAHSILDAR KHARAK SING, FORMER POLITICAL PESHKAR

(in front)

skulls, and eat human bones and skin, and conjure the spirits of the “vasty deep” by means of trumpets of human thigh-bones and other implements of their black art.

Having had the good fortune to be posted officially in the Almora district for some time past, I have been often thrown in close contact with the interesting people who live in these grand mountains, and have been able to study some of their ways, and to get an intimate knowledge of the life and problems of the frontier. This information has now been supplemented by a trip in Western Tibet.

On this expedition, in addition to my usual staff, I was accompanied by Dr. T. O. Longstaff, of the Alpine

RAI SAHIB PUNDIT GOBARIA

A rich Bhotia trader, one of the interpreters

Club, who had with him two Alpine guides, Alexis Brocherel and his brother Henri Brocherel, of Courmayeur in Italy, and also by the Tahsildar Kharak Sing Pal, formerly for ten years Political Peshkar on the frontier, with his brother Jagat Sing, the present Political Peshkar. Both these latter are cousins of the Raj bar of Askot, whose territory of Askot is so situated as to command all the principal passes into Tibet, as well as the Kali River, which is our frontier against Nepal.

HARARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE, BETWEEN ALMORA AND ASKOT

This book has been written with the hope that the information acquired during past years may prove of interest and use to others who may be brought into contact with this part of the world, or whose sympathies have been drawn towards those mysterious marvels of the Forbidden Land which have attracted the minds of so many.

THE ESCORT OF ARMED POLICE

Chapter II

The most picturesque, as well as the most interesting, spot, from which to commence this narrative, is Askot, distant some seventy miles from Almora and ninety miles from Taklakot, the latter being the first large town one meets on entering Tibet, where there is the seat of a Jongpen and a large monastery ruled by a powerful lama. The most direct approach to Askot from the plains of India is along a fairly good road running parallel to the frontier of Nepal, the large mart of Tanakpur, which is at the foot of the Himalayas, being only some eighty miles distant ; should at any time the forty miles intervening between Tanakpur and the railway at Pilibhit be linked up, Tibet would be directly brought into close contact with some of the large cities and manufacturing centres of India, such as Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow, and indirectly with Calcutta and Bombay. In the afternoon after our arrival the Raj bar of Askot paid us a formal visit accompanied by his two eldest sons. He is a fine specimen of a native gentleman, and has always received the greatest consideration at the hands of Government. He claims descent from the Kings of Katyur, who ruled from Kabul to Nepal, and who have left a memento of their name in that portion of the Almora District which is known as Katyur. Askot, as I have said, commands the roads leading to the principal passes into Tibet, while, from its position on the borders of Nepal, it is of the greatest importance in our relations with that country. The present Raj bar is an Honorary Magistrate with powers in criminal work of awarding imprisonment up to six months and of fining to a maximum of two hundred rupees. He enjoys universal respect, and takes great pains to keep his family from that stagnation which is the ruin of so many of the Indian nobility. His two eldest sons (he has five sons and five daughters) are being educated at Allahabad, and, to ensure proper supervision of the best kind, they are residing in the Oxford and Cambridge Hostel, where the University influence of England can be brought to bear upon them.

One day we went to see the so-called “ wild men ” (Ban Manus) who live quite close to Askot town, though I had seen them before, and had, in fact, during the cold weather camped quite close to their dwellings. They live in a valley some two thousand feet below the town, and in the heat of the end of June the descent into such a furnace was quite a consideration. However, we started at three in the afternoon, to get as much of the cool of the day as possible, and descended rapidly to the stream in the valley. The difference of temperature in these valleys as compared with the hill tops has often been remarked by travellers, but I think nothing, apart from actual physical experience, would have borne the fact home to our party. Longstaff and his two men were in perfect physical training, having just come from a trip of considerable hardship, and yet they felt the heat terribly. When we ■ arrived at our goal, we found one old man present at the huts, while all the others were in the woods, and until these appeared we sat down in the shade away from the piercing rays of

Kharak Sing Jagat Sing

Kharak Sing’s The Rajbar’s

father The Rajbar eldest son ASKOT the sun, which seemed to cut into us, and two of our attendants fanned us with an impromptu fan made of a sheet held between them, as we all felt so terribly exhausted from the heat. At length eight men and one woman came, and later on two children, but Longstaff had to make several attempts to photograph

RAJIS, OR RAWATS them before he succeeded, for every time he stood up he nearly fainted from the heat.

The above description will convey some impression of some of the difficulties of touring in the hills in the hot weather, and of the heat we endured at times. The climate of the higher levels is very pleasant, but the heat of some of the valleys is almost intolerable.

We sat and had a long talk with these interesting people, and, to break the ice (purely metaphorical in that warm spot), smoked and offered them the contents of a tobacco-pouch, but they suspected the tobacco ; however, without more ado, they put it into an ordinary

ASKOT AND THE ABOKIGINAL RAJIS 13

hookaE-bowl and placing a liot coal on tlie top solemnly handed it to one of our servants to smoke first. Without question they suspected something wrong, but our attendants, who knew them well, speedily dispelled their fears. In a few minutes the hookah was passed

RAJIS, OR RAWATS

from hand to hand and Players’ Navy Cut was duly appreciated.

These wild men, clad in the scantiest loin-cloth, claim royal origin, and in the East one is never surprised at such apparent anomalies. Does not the Brahman chuprassi claim that he is a deity ? and do his wages of six shillings and eight pence a month prevent his being invariably called “ Maharaj ” ? These royal wild men, when visiting the Raj bar of Askot, sit close by his side and call him “ younger brother,” and his Rani “ younger sister,” while they love to pose as of elder royal stock, nor will their royal dignity permit them to salute any man great or small. They are known as Raj is, or Rawats, and speak an aboriginal language, which is

RAJIS, OR RAWATS

believed to be of the Tibeto-Burman family, but this point will shortly be made clear by Mr. Grierson, who is in charge of the Linguistic Survey of India, and to whom specimens of their dialects have been submitted. Similar aborigines are found also in Doti in Nepal, and these Askot men admit that they are all of the same race. They have very little hair on the face, though beards can be grown among them, but they are always thin, and the general appearance of the face is hairless, while the type appears to be Mongolian.

This party of Raj is was composed of eight men, four women and some children, and these formed two families (dharas). It is difficult to enter into domestic details with the royal wild men without giving obvious offence, but there can be no doubt that polyandry is practised, though publicly it is denied — in fact, this is notorious scandal among their neighbours. Marriage must take place outside the “family” (dhara) and only when the young lady is of age, and has reached a marriageable state. Child marriage is unknown and highly disapproved. The inclinations of the bride are not consulted, but, with naive simplicity, the only formality is the fixing of a date with her parents, and then she is fetched away by the bridegroom and his party. If the groom is a man of means, he pays five shillings to six shillings for her to her parents, and the wedding is complete. There is no ceremony of any kind whatever, except that her parents give the wedding breakfast, nor are even the services of the priest required. There is a priest (whom they call Dhami) who acts for all the Raj is in the Askot district ; we did not see him as he was at this time living on the other side of a neighbouring hill, where there were other Raj is. This priest is one of themselves specially appointed, and the priesthood runs in the family. I have not been able to discover any gods of their own apart from the local deities Khudai and Malikar Jan, whom they worship in common with Hindus. They have no idols amongst them, and they do not worship the other deities of Hinduism except on one day, i.e., on the festival of Nanda Devi, the goddess who presides over the highest mountain in the British Empire, when they sing and dance, forming two rows facing each other, and move round in a circle. The curious point is that they move from left to right in the e^cactly opposite way to that in which Tibetans twirl their prayer-wheels, and in which the Hindus turn when they bathe in sacred rivers.

On the birth of an infant they dispense with the

ON THE WAY

services of a midwife ; the mother always goes through her time of trial alone, unless, which is frequently not the case, there are other married women near by, who can conveniently attend her. For two months after child-birth they drink no water from the hands of the mother, considering her to be unclean. The ceremony of naming the child is certainly peculiar. On the fifth day the priest appears and works himself into a religious frenzy, and it is popularly supposed that the god takes possession of his human frame. In the midst of his ecstatic trance he names the child. All children have two names, one Hindu such as Mohan Sing, Deb Sing, &c., and the other in the aboriginal tongue, e.g., Dharemia, Sistia, &c.

It has been said that the Rajis bury their dead,* but these men certainly nowadays practise cremation, whatever their former practice may have been, and the spot chosen is always on the bank of some stream. They employ no mourning ceremonial whatever, except that they fast on the day of death, and the next day eat rice instead of ordinary food.

They are extremely particular as to the water they drink, never drinking from anywhere except at the actual source of the spring, and all river water they refuse absolutely, fearing contamination. They do not carry these sanitary precautions as far as their dwelling-houses, for the smell round their abodes is simply appalling, and in person these aborigines look as if they had never washed in their lives. They live in stone houses, nicely built, and have a few fields of cultivation adjoining. They keep a few cattle, and eke out their livelihood by fishing and trapping. They never use a net, or a rod, to catch the fish, but always rely upon getting them by tickling with the hand as the fish lie concealed behind some rock. They showed us a fish eight inches long which had just been caught. They have never used for the destruction of big game, bows and arrows like the Bhotias, whose national weapons they once were, but always rely on snares, the common trap being a very heavy stone poised upon sticks, which give way as soon as the animal approaches

* C/. Atkinson’s “Himalayan Districts,” xi.-367.

B for the bait, and they have killed tigers and every description of animal by this simple contrivance. They make a very common bait for deer by saturating a particular spot with urine, and when they see that the deer are

THE FUASIING KALI, OR SARDA

drawn to this place by the saline deposits in the ground, in fact, when the spot has become a “ salt-lick,” they erect a heavy stone delicately balanced on sticks ready to fall on the next comer.

The royal wild men are not nearly so shy now as they were some thirty years ago. They will even go for medicine to the Raj bar, who has always shown them great kindness, and will sell wooden bowls to the

ROPE BRIDGE AT DHARCHULA BETWEEN BRITISH TERRITORY AND NEPAL

LONGSTAFF IN THE CRADLE traveller, but the nomadic spirit seems to be unquenchable, and nothing will keep them in one place long. They are here one day and gone the next, and nobody knows their movements. Nor can they ever forget their royal descent. When we parted ours were the only salutations.

As we left Askot the Bajbar was very anxious for Longstaff to give his professional advice about a stroke of paralysis which had overtaken his uncle, the father of Karak Sing. The old man was placed under the shade of a tree on the road, and Longstaff very carefully overhauled him and explained at length the exact working of the electric battery, which Karak Sing had very dutifully bought, and which must have cost a large sum as it was a good one. The scene was a pretty one. A large crowd of villagers watched the application of this European cure, and, of course, little boys and girls were crawling everywhere where they should not, and in the centre sat the dignified old man in his dandy, with the Raj bar standing by his side, while Western science was explained to sons, who with gentle hands applied the battery : and aU around us the grand mountains towered overhead, and the surging river Kali rushed on its course.

As we began our descent to the river we very soon felt the heat, for the road descends to the glacial stream of the Gori, and then runs along a hot, confined valley to the junction of this river with the Kali. This spot of the junction is a particularly sacred one, and in winter, i.e., when the water in the Kali is low, there is a small bridge built across the river to enable traders to pass, and devotees to frequent the shrine which stands on the narrow tongue of land between the two rivers. Our British boundary on the Nepalese side is the Kali river,

Askot, and that is so constructed that, by removing one bolt on the British side, the whole bridge can fall into the river. This bridge takes one’s thoughts back to the early part of the nineteenth century, when we had only just wrested Kumaon from the Nepalese and both parties were anxious to secure themselves against invasion. The only other bridges are the one which we had just reached, a frail edifice of beams (two logs laid side by side), lodged on piles of stones, and a third which we came to at Dharchula, This place is the winter headquarters of the Pohtical Peshkar, the which is known as the Sarda in the plains, and over the entire length of its course, except near its source, the Kali is unfordable, being throughout a tearing, raging torrent. The only suspension bridge, which was built by the British, is at a spot some thirty miles below

NEPALESE LIEUTENANT AT DHARCHULA residence of two missionary ladies, and the cold weather rendezvous of very large numbers of Bhotias ; while on the Nepalese side there is a court house, a gaol and the residence of the Nepalese Lieutenant, who is in civil and criminal charge of this part of the country. The bridge connecting the two sides here is composed of one

NATIVE CROSSING ROPE BRIDGE

rope ! The ordinary native climbs over by the help of his hands and feet, being kept from falling into the abyss of angry waters by a noose of rope round his body, to which is fixed a bar of wood to counteract the friction. Longstaff and I have been on this rope-bridge, but neither of us could persuade the other to adopt the native method. The more sedate cradle appealed very forcibly to us.

We halted at Balwakot, twelve miles from Askot and at Dharchula ten miles further on, but our stay at both places was of the shortest, owing to the great heat, which is most oppressive in this long valley of the Kali river. Further, we were much troubled by mosquitoes and sand-flies, and at Dharchula we had scorpions, only one of which, however, did any harm. In the cold weather, when my wife and I were camping here, although we had scorpions in our bedding and under our

NATIVE CROSSING ROPE BRIDGE

pillows, and the servants were continually finding them in their quarters, we had all escaped in the most fortunate way, but this time one stung the cook on the forehead in two places. He had a sleepless night from pain, but in the morning a couple of injections of eucaine by Longstaff brought immediate relief. This fact is of interest because there are some who say that scorpions and snakes lose their venom in the hills, but the reverse is my own experience ; certainly one servant of mine at Binsar would have actually died from snake-bite, had it not been for instant application of the knife and the usual remedies.

There is no relief from the warmth of this hot valley of the Kali until one reaches Khela, which is 5000 ft. in elevation, and is about thirty miles from Askot. Here we rested to let the whole camp thoroughly recover from the effects of the great heat we had passed through.