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Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTOLIBRARYby the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVELIBRARY

1980


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THE STORY OF EXPLORATIONEDITED BY

J. SCOTT KELTIE, LL.D., Sec. R.G.S.

TIBET, THE MYSTERIOUSBV

SIR THOMAS HOLDICH, K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B.


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THE STORY OFEXPLORATION.THE NILE QUEST,

Sir H. Johnston, G.C.M G., K.C.B.THE PENETRATION OF ARABIA,

D. G. Hogarth, M.A.FURTHER INDIA,Hugh Clifford, C.M.G.THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN ANDITS BORDERLANDS,

S. E. Dawson, Litt.D., F.R.S.C.THE SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE,

H. R. Mill, LL.D., D.Sc.


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TIBET, THE MYSTERIOUS*10_^Xk_ .yTd^C(^*^C^

YSIR THOMAS HOLDICH,

K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E., C.B

IV/rff MAPS, DIAGRAMS, AND OTHERILLUSTRATIONS

AND MAP BY W. & A. K. JOHNSTON

LONDONALSTON RIVERS, LimitedMICROFORMED BYPRESERVATSON

DATE.. JUL 2 4 1989


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PREFACENo country in the world has exercised a morepotent influence on the imaginations of men orpresented such fascinating problems for solution to theexplorer as Tibet; and this influence has been activeamongst all the generations which have exploited thebyeways of the earth from the days of Herodotus tothose of Younghusband. It may be doubted whethereven now the fascination of Tibetan travel is dead. Butthe glamour of it has undoubtedly faded somewhat sincethe streets of Lhasa have been trodden by the spurredand booted Englishman and his ruthless hand hasexposed the mystic shams of that quaint and squalidcity.

With Lhasa, however, this book has little to do. Itis intended to illustrate to some extent the sequence ofexploration in that great wilderness of stony and inhos-pitable altitudes which lie far beyond Lhasa, and mayserve incidentally as a small tribute to the memory ofmany great achievements. In compiling a record ofadventure so varied as this, no apology is necessary forquoting the works of the best authorities within reach,and the sources of information which have been laidunder contribution (Russian, American, Italian, Indian,French, Swedish, and English) are so numerous that Ifeel it to be impossible to do more than present the


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PREFACEreader with a general bibliography of Tibet, and to saythat this work owes something to every authorityquoted.For the illustrations I am mainly indebted to Major

Ryder, Captain Rawling, Lieutenant Bailey, M. Sibikofif,Mr. Littledale, Mr. John Thomson, the Paris Geograph-ical Society, and to the Royal Geographical Society forthe use of their maps.

T. HUNGERFORD KOLDICH.


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CONTENTSCHAPTER I Page

Early Tales about Tibet Conformation of Tibetan Plateauand its Mountain Barriers Routes into Tibet North-western Routes Leh, Shipki, and Niti Passes SikkimPasses Eastern Routes Ta-chien-lu Routes fromthe North i

CHAPTER nGeological Evolution The Chang Tang and Northern Tibet Valleys of the Indus and Brahmaputra The JanglamTrade Route Eastern Tibet The Rivers of China andBurma The Southern Zone Climate 33

CHAPTER HIShort OutUne of Tibetan History Introduction of Bud-

dhism Struggles with China and Mongol InterferenceGrowth of Lamaism Chinese Administration . ... 49CHAPTER IV

The First Recorded Mogul Invasion of Tibet Mirza Hai-dar's Story His Geography Identification of his Routetowards Lhasa 60

CHAPl'ER VEighteenth Century Explorations Grueber Capuchin

Monks Their Mission at Lhasa and their StrugglesJesuit Interference Desideri Beligatti Last of theMission Van de Putte His Residence at Lhasa . . 68


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viii CONTENTSCHAPTER VI Page

Bogle's Mission and Policy of Warren Hastings Bogle'sRoute to Shigatze Description of the Country and ofGyangtse Reception by the Teshu Lania Turnerdespatched by Warren Hastings His Interview withthe Infant Teshu Lama 90

CHAFPER VIIThe Conquest of Tibet by China Remarkable Military Ex-pedition Its Route into Tibet and the Final Defeat ofthe Gurkhas near Katmandu Thomas Manning's Visitto Tibet and Lhasa His Route through Bhutan Experi-ences with Chinese Officials and Interview with the DalaiLama His Impressions Moorcroft's Expedition ^ toHundes His Probable Residence at Lhasa and his Fate 104

CHAPTER VIIIThe Jesuit Missionaries, Hue and Gabet Journey from

Manchuria to Koko Nor Notes on Early Christianity inCoriaThe Mongolian and Chinese Borderland FrontierFarms Mongolian Customs Trade with ChinaLamaism in Western Kansu The Koko Nor and Feastof Flowers at Kunbum 125

CHAPTER IXHue and Gabet (continued) From the Koko Nor to Lhasa Rockhill and Prjevalski in Northeastern Tibet Rock-

hill's Second Journey towards Lhasa and in the EasternValleys of Tibet 157

CHAPTER XHue and Gabet on the Post Road to China and in Eastern

Tibet Approaches to the East from the Koko Nor andits Geographical Connection with Assam De Rhins andGrenard Needham and Krishna The BrahmaputraValley and the Passes through Bhutan Kinthup's Ex-plorations and Reports The Methods of Native Ex-plorers Chandra Das Nain Sing's Early Journeys . 191


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CONTENTS ixCHAPTER XI Page

Nain Sing's Surveys in Southern Tibet Krishna Ugyen The Explorer G. M. N. The Gold Fields of ThokJalung The Source of the Indus and Brahmaputra . . 232

CHAPTER XnWestern and Northern Tibet European Explorers Deasy-Stein The Kuen Lun and Chang Tang Wellby

Bower Littledale Bonvalot Sven Hedin Compari-son of Routes from West and North 262

CHAPTER XniRecent Expedition to Tibet The Reconnaissance of the

Upper Brahmaputra by Ryder, and the Exploration of aPart of Western Tibet by Rawling 294

CHAPTER XIVThe Approaches to Lhasa The Dalai Lama and High State

Officials Feasts and Customs Temples and PalacesFolk LoreA Tibetan Story 300

CHAPTER XVGeneral Summary Significance and Value of Approach to

Lhasa from the Northeast Russia's Position relativelyto Tibet and India The Value of Eastern and South-eastern Tibet The Promise of Gold Necessity ofOpening up the Valley of the Brahmaputra .... 322

APPENDIX: Bibliography of Tibet 337INDEX 343


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ILLUSTRATIONSTibet. Coloured Map by J. G. Bartholomew . End of volumeThe Potala, from the South FrontispieceFra Mauro's Map of Tibet, 1459 . . . . Facingpage 8Map of Tibet. From Kircher's " China " . .Sanlan Sanpo. (Cane Bridge)A Typical Peak of South Eastern Tibet . . .Glacial Lake and Moraine, Chathangta Pass .A Tibetan Lhacham. (Tibetan Princess) . .A Tibetan Prince. Dungkhor at Home . .Tibet. From D'Anville's Map of Asia . . .Tibet. From Klaproth's Map of Central Asia, 1 830Van der Putte's Sketch MapTashi Lunpo, from the SouthManasarawarGeneral Group of LamasCliff Temple where Hue sojourned ....The Potala in the Seventeenth Century . . .W. W. RockhillA. E. CareyJules Leon Dutreuil de Rhins . . . ^ . ,N. M. PrjevalskiCaptain KozlofRai Bahadur Kishen Singh, Milamwal (Krishna)Shigatze, from the Fort looking East . . .The Southern Watershed of the Brahmaputra .

16244044505S84868898122142144148168168198204206208226232


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ILLUSTRATIONSOn the Brahmaputra Facingpage 232Alung Gangri Mountains " 236The Late Nain Sing. CLE. ..... " 238A Typical Tibetan Valley ^' 252Captain H. H. P. Deasy 266Captain Wellby ........... " 266Dr. Sven Hedin "274Colonel Bower ,. " 274G. Bonvalot " 280St. George Littledale " 280Major C. H. D.Ryder, D.S.O.,R.E. . . . ' 294The Gorges of the Brahmaputra above Lhatse . " 296Lhasa Plan of the City ....... " 298Tibetan Natives " 306


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TIBET THE MYSTERIOUSCHAPTER I

Early Tales about Tibet Conformation of Tibetan Plateauand its Mountain Barriers Routes into Tibet' North-western Routes Leh^ Shipki, and Niti Passes SikkimPasses Eastern Routes Ta-chien-lu Routes from theNorth

THROUGH all the ages Tibet has held a para-mount position amongst those regions of the

world which have been popularly invested with aveil of mystery because they are inaccessible andunknown.

Tibet is so isolated, so lofty, so irresponsive tooutside influences, has held herself so far apart fromthe meddling interference of the busy, commercialworld, as to provoke the enterprise of generations ofspeculative geographers, who, accepting " omne igno-tum pro magnifico," have startled the world with smallinstalments of truth surrounded by wide embroideriesof decorative fancy. One of the earliest, if not quitethe first, of these Tibetan romances dates from thedays of Herodotus, nearly five hundred years be-fore our era. When all the writings of the great" Father of history " can be carefully examined by the


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1 TIBETlight of modem research, it will be found that hisgeneral accuracy is indisputable. His knowledge ofAsiatic geography and his care in collating such evi-dence as may be gathered from the earliest of classical" travellers' tales " testifies to the possession by him ofconsiderable analytical faculty and discernment. Toone particular tale at any rate he gives a cautiousadmission of probability, but by no means a cordialassent. It was said that in the extreme northwestof India there existed a race of enormous ants, fierceand powerful, whose peculiar mission in life was thedigging out of gold. Traders, mounted on swiftcamels, occasionally succeeded in seizing the goldwhich was accumulated in heaps by these excavatingants, and then rode rapidly away, pursued by otherferocious guardians of the soil who slew them if theycaught them. Amongst all the ludicrous exaggera-tions of ancient classical tradition relating to India,this one story evinces a remarkable tenacity of exist-ence. It is repeated in every tale of the East that istold by compilers and adventurers before the days ofHerodotus, and is only doubtfully regarded by himas pure fiction. It was not until, in recent years, thetrans-Himalayan explorers of the Indian Surveyrecorded their experiences that any light could bethrown on its origin. These explorers, making theirway painfully over the terrific altitudes which inter-vene between India and western Tibet, reached atlength the gold-mining districts which lie beyond themountains on the great western plains. Here they


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TIBET 3discovered the Tibetan workman delving for gold aftera fashion of his own. The intense cold and the fiercewinds of the highlands compelled him to grovel on theground enfolded in a thick, black blanket, whilst hedug, or scratched, painfully and slowly at the alluvialsoil with the end of the first tool available to his hand,which was usually the horn of the Tibetan antelope.To all appearance he was a rough imitation of a hugehorned ant grubbing up the auriferous soil and pilingit in heaps for subsequent washing. Guarded by im-mensely powerful dogs (whose ferocity even to thisday is a byword amongst travellers in Tibet), he haspursued his unenviable calling from those very earlydays until now, hardly improving his processes, mak-ing but slight impression and shallow indentationsin the soil, and probably leaving behind two-thirds ofthe gold which it contains. Here, then, accordingto Sir H. Rawlinson, is the solution of the mysterythat surrounded that particular tale; and it is butone illustration of the perceptive faculty possessedby Herodotus that he should consider it worthy ofrecord.

Hardly anything of note concerning Tibet occurs inthe works of mediaeval geographical writers and com-pilers. The huge, great central upheaval south of theGobi depression extending along the whole length ofthe Himalayas (which form its southern buttress orrevetment through which the great natural staircaseslead upwards to the plateau from the plains), geologi-cally coeval with the Himalayas of the Northwest,


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4 TIBETbut newer by countless ages than those of the East,has ever been a barrier against the ever-recurrent tidesof human movement southwards. No mediaeval traderoutes ever crossed Tibet from the north. Along thelength of the intervening plains of Chinese Turkestanthey ran westward from China till they touched the cen-tral barrier (the Taurus of the Classics), which is theeastern wall of the Pamirs. They then diverged north-ward, or twisted over the Pamir region to Badakshanand the Oxus, but they ever avoided Tibet. Thecountless tides of Central Asian emigration (Aryans,Skyths, Mongols, etc.), when they overflowed intoIndia, passed by way of Badakshan and the HinduKush never across Tibet. No Chinese pilgrimseeking knowledge at the fountain-head in northernIndia ever traced his way across the Tibetan uplandsfrom the plains of western China and Kashgar,although he often selected a straighter route than thatof Mongol invaders. Avoiding the central Pamirregion and Tibet by crossing the Hindu Kush near itsnortheastern base by either the Wakjir or Baroghelpass, he entered the valleys of Gilgit and Chitral inorder to make his way over routes incredibly rough anddifficult to the ancient Gandhara the seat of all thatwas most sacred to Buddhism in the extreme north-west of India. The great rolling Tibetan highlandshave thus played a most important part in the historyof Asiatic migration. They have been the naturalbuffer-land between Central Asia and India, coveringso wide a space of the northern frontiers of India, that


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TIBET 5the only mountain gateways that have ever been openedfrom the north into the rich sunHt plains of the penin-sula are to be found beyond them, and within thecomparatively restricted length of the mountain bor-derland which stretches between Karachi and theKohistan of Kabul. Who shall say how much thewealth of India, depending on the accumulation ofcenturies of patient industry and taken from her ownprolific soil, owes to the Tibetan barrier. For count-less ages, ere there was added to the world a southernzone of communication represented by the ocean andocean-going ships, that wealth has been protectedby mighty land barriers. For ages, when adventur-ous and mobile forces bred in the eastern steppes ofhigh Asia, hardened and trained to the exercisesof war, found power to traverse the huge conti-nent which contained them, westward to Europeor southward to Cathay, and pillage the storesaccumulated in the cities of the unwarlike workingraces of a softer and more genial world, it was onlyfrom the west and by very narrow ways that theycould touch India. Truly they made good use oftheir opportunities when they found them, but it isworthy of record that the fiercest and most devastat-ing hordes of all the countless nomads who pouredout of Asia from age to age the Mongols onlymade India the scene of their destroying migra-tions when they could turn the western flank ofthe Himalayas. They never crossed the TibetanChang.


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6 TIBETThe great corrugated uplands of Tibet, seamed with

ridges of high altitude, inhospitable, bleak, and deso-late though they be, do not in themselves, however,present any insurmountable difficulty to geographicalexploration.The chief obstacles to Tibetan exploration have

ever been the mountain barriers which surround theplateau, rather than the plateau itself. These moun-tain systems on all sides of Tibet are massed intoa series of gigantic walls, the ranges and ridges ofwhich are not fashioned as long spurs reaching outfrom the highlands and gradually diminishing in alti-tude till they fade into the plains below, enclosing longsloping valleys which would answer the purpose oframps or shelving approaches to the heights ; but theyare folded range after range in gigantic altitudes(higher than the ranges of the plateau), forming arough but readily recognisable system of parallel flex-ures flanking the general edge of the central Tibetanupheaval.

Tibet may be described as a huge pear-shaped for-mation, with the small end of the pear attached to thesoutheastern corner of the Pamirs at the point wherethe Kashmir hinterland, from the heights of the giantMuztagh range, looks northward over the sources ofthe rivers of Chinese (or eastern) Turkestan. TheMuztagh range might almost be called the stem of thepear, the narrow end of the pear gradually wideningout therefrom being appropriately known as LittleTibet. Little Tibet is politically an outlying province


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TIBET 7of Kashmir. As the northern side of the pear-shapedformation curves boldly eastward it is represented bythe border mountain systems of Kuen Lun, AltynTagh, Nan Shan, etc., which, following each other insuccession, carry the northern boundary of Tibet tothe province of Kansu of China. Where exactlyKansu ends and Tibet begins is a matter rather of con-jecture than political certainty; but for the purposesof description we will consider all the country southof the Altyn Tagh and the Nan Shan ranges to beTibet. To the north of these ranges is the compara-tively low-lying region of Chinese Turkestan, withabundant fertility about its western extremity andalong the edges at the foot of the mountains, and asand-strewn desert in its midst, hiding the remainsof those cities which have been made known to us bythe researches of Sven Hedin and Stein. Throughoutthe Kuen Lun series of mountain systems there is acertain structural similarity. The main ranges arefolded in vast anticlinals parallel to the edge of Tibetand to each other, ridge upon ridge, like a series ofwalls. It is not to be supposed that the simplicity ofthis description is readily to be recognised in the moun-tain masses themselves. There is the usual complexityof subsidiary spurs and more or less isolated massifs,of geological faults, and inconceivably rough foothills,which present to the eye the appearance of mountainfeatures without arrangement and without plan.Nevertheless there is (as there is in the Himalayas)an underlying structural basis which marks them rather


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8 TIBETas successive walls of the plateau than as direct exten-sions from it.The result is extreme irregularity in the main lines

of drainage which cut their way through passagestransverse to the walls, following the weakest lines ofresistance (or, it may be, retaining a primeval courseduring the upheaval of the mountain masses) till theyreach the plains. Not only are the valleys which formthe natural approach to Tibet from the north thusliable to narrow restricted gorges and desperatelyrough intervals where they break across or through aridge, but they are lengthened inordinately betweenthe plains and the plateau. These main lines of ap-proach (so far as they are known) will be describedhereafter.On the east, at the broad end of the pear-shaped

plateau, the mountains of the Kansu border curveround southward (allowing the head-waters of theHoang Ho of China to pass through them as theycurve), and gradually merge into a fairly well-definednorth to south range which figures on the map as Sifan,Here, within the limits of Tibet, there occurs the com-mencement of a most remarkable orographical feature.Range after range striking outwards from the plateaufollows the same curving course from southeast tosouth, bending in orderly procession like the waves ofthe sea, deepening their valleys and steepening theirsides as they proceed southwards, till the whole south-eastern world of Tibet is but a succession of mountainwaves whose forest-crested summits gradually reach


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r^'^m

Fra Mauro's Map of Tibet, 1459.[To /ace p. 8.


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TIBET 9southwards into Burma. Down the deep troughs ofthese southeastern valleys of Tibet flow the waters ofseveral of the most important rivers of Asia. The Dichu (or Yang tsi) is the outermost, with a course ofeight hundred miles ere it passes the Tibetan frontier.The Mekong, the river of Siam, and the Salwin, one ofthe two great rivers of Burma, lie within the Yang tsi,and parallel to it. Recent evidence points to the factthat the Irawadi, the next great Burmese river, doesnot rise far, if at all, within the Tibetan border.

It is the contiguity of these intervening ranges, thedifficulty presented by a succession of rugged moun-tain walls, which proves to be the great barrier betweenTibet and China on the east.

But while approach directly from the east is ren-dered almost impossible by this geographical distribu-tion of ridge and valley, the same distribution ratherfavours approach from the southeast, i. e., from theprovince of Yunnan in China, or from Burma. Thusthere is a route from Yunnan which takes advantageof the Di chu (Yang tsi) River valley. It is markedby the trade centre of Batang.

In more irregular but still recognisable form thecurving structure of the mountain system continuesover the intervening space westwards till it determinesthe bend of the river Brahmaputra, which changes itsdirection as it flows from Tibet into Assam, and thusrounds off, as it were, the eastern end of the Hima-layas. The irregular trans-Brahmaputra hills, throughwhich runs a part of the southern boundary of Tibet,


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lo TIBETare drained by one or two minor rivers which join theBrahmaputra from the east. They are supposed tobe within the sphere of British pohtical influence, butthey are practically beyond it, and through their val-leys, owing to the fierce and irreconcileable nature ofthe tribes which people them (Abors, Mishmis, etc.),no right of way to Tibet has ever been established. Itmay be that eventually it is here that we shall find thatopen door which, leading upward by paths indicatedby geographical structure as the easiest, will reach thecultivated lands of eastern Tibet (and ultimately theplateau) by a route involving no high passes and nolong detours. The Brahmaputra marks the naturalgateway of the hills. Westward of the Brahmaputra,to the extremest point of the Kashmir stem of the pear-shaped plateau, are interposed the great Himalayanbarriers, which are perhaps the most effective barriersof all.The structural relationship of the Himalayan ranges

on the south of Tibet is very similar to that of themountains on the north. Throughout their wholelength, from the great bend of the Indus (where thatriver leaves the longitudinal valleys of its upperreaches to break transversely across the ridges as itseeks its way to the plains) to the great bend of theBrahmaputra (where that river is forced into a curv-ing deflection from its Tibetan channels), throughfifteen hundred miles of mountains, there runs adominant water-parting, or backbone to the whole sys-tem. This is set back from the plains of India at a


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TIBET IIdistance of about one hundred miles. It is on thisdivide that the magnificent array of highest snow-capped peaks is to be found, from the giants of Kash-mir to the groups of pinnacles about Everest andKanchenjanga. It is the " snowy range " par ex-cellence, as seen from Himalayan hill stations. We arenot quite sure what becomes of it through the unex-plored regions of Nepal, but it apparently loses itscontinuity as a district. The general trend or axis ofthis great curving divide determines the shape of thesouthern edge of the Tibetan plateau. Infinitely higherthan the plateau, it is yet but part of that processionof mountain walls which form its southern support.Northward it overlooks the plateau; southward itoverlooks the apparently confused and tangled massof lower subsidiary ranges which fill up the inter-vening one hundred miles between itself and theplains of India. But there is no real structural con-fusion about these minor ridges and ranges. Mostof them maintain a parallel formation of ridge andvalley to the snowy range. This is very observablein the extreme northwest, and is recognisable through-out the Himalayas in spite of the maze of spurs andoffshoots which tend to disguise the fundamentaldesign. North of this range there is a minor (yetstill gigantic) subsidiary and parallel wall (enclos-ing a space of upland waste about thirteen thousandfeet above sea level) which overlooks the great troughswhere the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra col-lect their forces. The Sutlej and the Indus flow west-


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12 TIBETward by separate routes to India. The Brahmaputraflows eastward through southern Tibet till it is turnedin its course by the eastern walls of the plateau andforced through the Dihang gorges into upper Assam." On the north of the Himalayan wall rise the Kara-koram and Gangri mountains, which form the imme-diate escarpment of the Tibetan table-land. Behindthe Gangris on the north the lake-studded plateau ofTibet spreads itself out at a height averaging fifteenthousand feet. Broadly speaking, the double Hima-layan wall rests upon the low-lying plains of India,and descends north into the river trough beyond whichrises the Tibetan plateau. Vast glaciers, one of whichis known to be sixty miles in length, move their massesof ice downward to the valleys. The higher rangesbetween India and Tibet are crowned with eternalsnow. They rise in a region of unbroken silence likegigantic frosted fortresses, one above another, till theirwhite towers are lost in the sky " (W. W. Hunter).

Yet another river besides the Sutlej, the Karnali,one of the largest affluents of the Ganges, breaksthrough the Himalayas between the arms of the Indusand Brahmaputra. The Karnali is a Nepalese river,and its upper course is therefore but indifferentlyknown. There is no doubt, however, that its sourceslie beyond the Himalayas.The Indus rises on the slopes of Kailas, the sacredmountain, the Elysium or Siva's Paradise of ancientSanskrit literature. Its long and comparativelystraight course from its source at sixteen thousand


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TIBET 13feet above the sea, through channels running northwestthrough gigantic mountains, is often comparativelyplacid. It flows over broad gravel beds, gatheringstrength as it flows, for five hundred miles ere itplunges into the gorge of Iskardoh, which is said tobe fourteen thousand feet in sheer depth. The Sutlejrises on the southern slopes of Kailas. It flows nolonger from one of the sacred lakes of Manasarawar,famous in Hindu mythology. Abandoning its ancientcradle in Rakhas-Tal, it now issues from the foothillsof Kailas. It cuts its way from birth through a vastaccumulation of deposits by a deep gully between preci-pices of alluvial soil, and finally pierces the Himalayasby a gorge with mountains rising to twenty thousandfeet on either side. This is in the region of the fa-mous Shipki pass, where the Tibetan outposts holdthe frontier.The traveller who wishes to traverse the wide deso-

lation of the Tibetan plateau has a considerable choiceof routes. From north, south, east, and west explor-ers and adventurers have tackled the problem ofreaching the capital of the country, Lhasa, and withabout equal want of success. The northern routesfrom the plains of Chinese Turkestan which have beenexploited by Prjevalski, Sven Hedin, Deasy, Stein,Littledale, Bonvalot, and others are distinctly the mostdifficult and unpromising, partly because it is neces-sary to reach the plains of Kashgar before attemptingthem and this in itself is no mean performancepartly because these northern routes lead to the wildest


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14 TIBETand most desolate uplands of all the desolate fieldwhich Tibet presents. These are Russian routes, inas-much as they lead direct from the Russian Asiaticborderland of Chinese Turkestan, and they are longroutes, bristling with all the formidable barriers thata bleak and immensely high mountain system can setin their way ere the dreary open steppe is attained ataltitudes which are considerably greater than those ofsouthern Tibet. Russia is shut off from the capitalof Tibet by natural barriers which are infinitely greaterthan those which present themselves on the side ofIndia. Geographically, Lhasa, and all of Tibet whichholds promise of future civilised development, is withinthe meshes of the broad network of hinterland com-munication which is cast from India or from China,and never could be attached to a direct northern sys-tem by any but the weakest of geographical ties. Thereis nevertheless a bond of religious and commercialunion between Russia and Tibet which is maintainedby a much-traversed route on the northeast, a longroute and an important one, about which there ismore to be said hereafter.

These northern routes will be considered in con-nection with those explorations which led to theirdiscovery.From the south Tibet is approached by the Sutlej

opening through the Himalayas and by a group ofpasses leading from Kumaon. There are also routesabout which we know little leading direct from Nipal,but the principal (because the most direct and the


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TIBET 15nearest) group of trans-Himalayan passes into Tibetare those which traverse the valleys of Sikkim andBhutan.On the east one or two routes are well known,

amongst them one which from prehistoric days hasbeen the main and the best-trodden route from Chinato Lhasa, i. e., that which cuts the boundary at thefrontier station of Ta-chien-lu (Darchendo). Thisindeed not only connects Pekin with Lhasa, and ishistorically responsible for the great movement of theChinese race westward which ended in the conquestof Tibet, but it stretches its length (as will be explainedmore fully) to Kashmir and India, and must rank asone of the greatest of Asiatic trade routes.The routes into Tibet from the northwest diverge

from Leh, the capital of Ladak, and many a travellerhas started from that quaint Buddhist town in searchof adventure in the trackless Tibetan plateau land.Ladak is the extreme outlying, uptilted province ofKashmir, and the modern road between Srinagar (thecapital of Kashmir) and Leh is a well-laid-out routetwo hundred and forty miles in length, frequentlytraversed, but involving some formidable passes.Leaving behind him the sombre shade of the thick pinewoods of the Sind valley, the traveller encounters themain orographical line of division between Kashmirand Tibet at the point marked by the well-knownZoji La pass, a pass which is typical of many otherHimalayan passes, where the cutting back of thesouthern stream at its head has tended to obliterate


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i6 . TIBETthe steep slopes of the northern side. A sharp ascentof two thousand feet from the south, zigzagging up theface of a precipitous slope, flanking a narrow and steep-sided gorge, leads over the p>ass to an open and ap-parently level valley, partly blocked with debris andtalus, where it is difficult to determine in which direc-tion the stream runs. Approaching it from the Ti-betan side, the great traveller Sven Hedin calls it " theworst pass I have ever seen," although its altitude (notmore than eleven thousand five hundred feet) is lowcompared with many which he must have previouslyencountered in Tibet. But he crossed it on the 9thof January, when the pass is usually closed by wintersnow.

Beyond the Zoji La the road drops into the Indusbasin, and is within the limits of Ladak (or LittleTibet), which geographically and climatically belongsrather to Tibet than to Kashmir. Hugging the riverbanks (but one hundred and fifty feet above it), itpasses through some of the grandest of trans-Hima-layan scenery. Near Leh the Indus is walled in be-tween tremendous precipices, where it has literallycarved a way for itself through the mountains. Itsdark green waters flow in tranquil silence throughbroad reaches, or break up in thundering cataractswhere the channel contracts. Occasionally the sun-light finds a way through the deep-shadowed cliflfsoverhanging its southern banks, and then it strikes thesurface into emerald patches, and sends long, slantingshafts into the glistening depths. It is a weird, wild


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Map of Tibet, 1670.(From Kircher's China.)

[To /ace p. i6.


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TIBET 17scene, a fit introduction to a weird and wild country.Yet there are broken spaces of cultivation where apri-cot and apple orchards hide the dwellings of as cheery-hearted a population of mountaineers as is to be foundin the wide world. The Ladaki lives to laugh, and,living (as he frequently does) a life in which the carry-ing of loads seems to be the fundamental object ofexistence, he nevertheless succeeds in securing forhimself a fair share of that happiness which knowsno fixed geographical limits.

Leh is the market town, the commercial centre ofwestern Tibet. The town climbs up the side of a hill,as do most Tibetan towns, and the general look ofit, flat-topped as to roofs and sloping as to walls, isalmost Chinese in effect; but it lacks the grace ofChinese outline. As usual, a monastery dominatesthe town with high splay-footed walls, perforated byperpendicular rows of windows (or openings) mark-ing successive flats. Red and white against a brownbackground of rugged hills is the prevaling colourscheme; the air is dry and dusty, with the clear butwintry light of all north Indian highland places. Lehis distinctly Tibetan. There is none of the airy graceof the rickety buildings which overlook the Jehlam atSrinagar. It is substantial, square built, and some-what heavy like the Tibetan himself. But it is abusy town, and caravans are constantly coming andgoing in its market-place.From Leh into the Tibetan plains there is but one

recognised road, and that road crosses the Chang

thf


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i8 TIBETLa (seventeen thousand six hundred feet) withinfifty miles of Leh. Still following the right bankof the Indus for a space, amidst scattered evidencesof the Buddhist faith (kists covered with stoneslabs stretching their length for hundreds of feetalong the river side, and repeating with monotonousreiteration the Buddhist formula " Om mane padmehum "), the road diverges suddenly eastward from thevillage of Sakti, and climbs the Chang La. It is notsuch a formidable pass as its altitude might lead one toexpect, as the snow is usually less here than on the outerHimalayan ranges of similar altitude. The vapour-bearing currents from the southwest lose their moistureon the outer Himalayan heights, where snow is precipi-tated in vast quantities. Tibet is on the whole remark-ably free from snow. The Chang La is occasionallypassable all through the winter, but it is precipitous anddifficult to climb, " nothing but blank walls of bare,gray rock," says Sven Hedin. However, he crossedon the 18th of December without any mishap. Fromthe pass the road drops eastward to the Shyok valley(where is Tanksi, with its picturesque monastery ofJova perched on a detached crag) , and then rises overthe intervening eastern water parting, and drops to thehead of the Pangong Lake. Here commences Tibetproper, and from here the recognised caravan roadssoutheast to Rudok, or by the northern shores of thelake to Gangra, have not always been those selected byadventurous explorers for the purpose of crossing theTibetan Chang when they designed to leave their tracks


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TIBET 19on the map of the interior. Here we leave it. Beyondthis point the road to Lhasa is an explorers' route, ofwhich we possess but a scanty descriptive outline,although it is one of the great highroads of Asia.From Srinagar to the Tibetan frontier it is the bestknown of all approaches to Tibet.

Next in order eastward amongst Himalayan ap-proaches are the Shipki and the Niti routes, which arefamiliar enough to residents in Simla or Naini Tal,but are, nevertheless, but seldom traversed by anyof them. Everyone who has visited Simla knowsthe highroad to Mahasu and Narkanda. The view ofthe northern mountains from Narkanda, forty milesfrom Simla, is the most striking view of Himalayanscenery that is to be obtained anywhere near Simla,a town which is not well placed for landscape effects.The sense of astonishment inspired by the magnificentwall of snow-capped mountains towering over theshadowed depths of the Sutlej valley is intensified bythe dramatic suddenness with which a sharp bend in theroad reveals the vision. So far the great central traderoute to Tibet (which this well-engineered road wasdesigned to be) has only carried one along the crestsof subsidiary spurs overlooking east and west, longwaving lines of green and purple hills spread abroad ininfinite variety of light and shade, and chequered withpatches of forest and terraced field. The rhododendronsand blue pines and silver oak of Simla have graduallygiven place to firs and green oak, and long, straight-stemmed pines standing thickly and darkly in the lower


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20 TIBETdepths ; but there has been no view of the majesty ofeternal snow and glacier till we reach Narkanda.At Narkanda one suddenly faces a stupendous

range, and looks through a vast space of the upliftedmountain side, slung, as it were, midway betweenunknown depths below and the bright glory of snowoutlines clear cut against the azure sky above.From Narkanda the road dips into the depths of theSutlej valley, passing under the shadow of giganticpines, thickly burdened with ferns and moss, till theriver itself is touched and the road commences to clingto it. It then follows the Sutlej valley to the mainpass on the Tibetan frontier at Shipki, but it is nolonger a road of the same class as that which connectsSimla with Narkanda. As a Tibetan trade route theroad is a failure, but there is a very large local trafficupon it, due to the development of villages and culti-vation in the valleys near Simla, which is largelydependent on local means of supply for wood and veg-etables. Once in Tibetan territory this route followsthe southeasterly course of the Sutlej to its source nearthe Rakhas-Tal, the westernmost of the twin lakes ofManasarawar. About midway it passes through theTibetan town of Totling, where there is a monastery,and which is a not unimportant centre of road com-munications in connection with the gold fields of thewest.

Farther east again we find a group of passes con-necting Kumaon with Tibet to the north of Almorah, the Mana, Niti, Milam, Darma (Langpya La), and


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TIBET aiByans (Mangohang La), all forking off from theupper tributaries of the Alaknanda affluent of theGanges. The Mana (eighteen thousand five hundredfeet), which is at the head of the Badrinath stream,leads directly northward to Totling on the Sutlej. Thealtitudes of the Niti and the Milam are not well deter-mined, but they cannot be much less than that of theMana on the west. All these passes appear to be overeighteen thousand feet. Across the Milam there isstill some traffic in gold-dust and borax, which isbrought across the Himalayas on the backs of sheep,which (in spite of certain objections on the part of thelamas at Lhasa) still continue to be beasts of burdenin southern Tibet. They travel remarkably well, andkeep their condition under circumstances which wouldprove fatal to the condition of mules. They take backto Tibet cooking-utensils, pots, pans, and earthenware,but naturally no very bulky merchandise can be trans-ported over the rugged mountain tracks in this way.The Karnali, or Crogra, River, rising near the sourcesof the Sutlej and Indus, also affords a trans-Hima-layan passage; but it leads through a maze of moun-tains to the same focus on which the more westernroutes converge, and has apparently no separate tradeoutlet of its own on to the Tibetan plateau. All theseroutes practically centre on the same point, the twinlakes of Manasarawar in the southern Tibetan districtof Nari Khursam, or Hundes, which lie below thesacred peaks of Kailas. The great alluvial plain ofNari Khursam divided by the gorge of the Sutlej


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11 TIBETRiver is a sort of landing in the Tibetan staircase. Inits midst Totling is the chief place of importance, aswe shall see further on. Beyond it are infinite mazesof mountains still intervening between the landing andthe rugged plateau land, but there are no more Hima-layas. The farther mountains are but lofty incidentsof the great central table-land.About the passes from Nepal to Lhasa we know

exceedingly little, although Nepal was the connectinglink of the Tibetan missions with India in the begin-ning of the eighteenth century. Nepal still maintainsa formal recognition of Chinese suzerainty, and fromKhatmandu there issues a periodic procession of priestsand high military functionaries bearing tribute toPekin. The procession moves by way of Lhasa, andstrikes straight into Tibet. Presumably it crosses themain Himalayas by a pass which was used by anIndian explorer in 1867, who made his way direct fromKhatmandu into the valley of the Yeru Tsanpo (Brah-maputra), to the well-known monastery of Tadum.Aided by the disguise of a pigtail and a false bottomto his box of merchandise, this explorer crossed bythe No-La (sixteen thousand six hundred feet), at thehead of a western affluent of the Gandak River ofNepal, and thence made a most eventful journeythrough Tibet. It is from such sources that we deriveall our geographical knowledge of the most importantpart of Tibet, i. c, the southern districts which lieimmediately north of the Himalayas and are wateredby the great Yeru Tsanpo. Doubtless the Gandak


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TIBET 23affluents draining down the rugged sides of the mainrange afford opportunities for other passes than thatof the No-La. The Kirong, the Jong-ka-jong, and theKuti, north of Khatmandu, surmount the main Hima-layan water-parting at points which can hardly betwenty-five miles south of the Yeru Tsanpo. Nepalhas hitherto been a forbidden land to Europeans.Europeans have seen most of Tibet, traversed it fromnorth to south and from east to west; but no Euro-pean ever made close acquaintance with Nepalesetopography until Captain Wood was permitted to fixthe position of Mount Everest from points of observa-tion near Khatmandu in 1904. It is impossible tosay exactly by what passes the Chinese invaded andconquered that country. It is, however, certain thatthey must be fairly easy and accessible.The most significant group of passes leading from

India into Tibet is that of Sikkim, connecting thebasins of the Tista and of the Ammu Chu (river ofAssam) with the valley of the Tsanpo near Lhasa.Two or three routes into Tibet diverge from our

railway base at Siliguri on the eastern frontier. Oneis carried by the mountain railway line to Darjiling;and from Darjiling as his base the traveller (suchtravellers as Dr. Waddell, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, andthe Bengali pundit, Chandra Das, etc.) descends intothe Tista valley, and makes his way by an easily rec-ognisable, but occasionally difficult, route along theLachen affluent of the Tista and over the Kamba Laor Kangra pass (sixteen thousand six hundred feet)


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24 TIBETto Kamba Jong. Kamba Jong is separated from thetrade and religious centre of Shigatze on the Tsanpoby cross-country roads, for the most part no better andno worse than the ordinary unmade country trackspassing through the uncultivated areas of India, butwith one or two crossings of mountain passes en route.Or, instead of following up the Lachen affluent of theTista, the traveller may take the Lach-lung affluent tothe Donkia pass (eighteen thousand one hundred feet)and strike into the road to Gyangtse. This route, how-ever, involves five or six crossings of intermediatepasses before reaching Gyangtse, and although suchpasses are not formidable, they are obstructive. Byfar the most direct route to Gyangtse and Lhasa is thatwhich was followed by the Tibetan mission underColonel Younghusband. From Siliguri a cart roadruns by the Tista valley to Kalimpong, just belowDarjiling, and thence diverges to the northeast overa series of ascents and descents for forty-two miles toGnathong (twelve thousand feet), and on to the" smooth and easy " pass called Jelep La, which dividesthe basin of the Tista (or Sikkim) from the upperbasin of the Ammo Chu (or Chumbi), which is Tibet.At this point only Tibet drives a wedge southward intothe body of the Himalayas. The valley of the AmmoChu formerly belonged to Bhutan, but Tibet has re-cently asserted the right of occupation, and it is herethat her troublesome intrusions into British territorynecessitated the campaign of 1888, which succeeded indriving the Tibetan rabble over the Jelep La into


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^>


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44 TIBETdeparture, for those explorers who make Kashmirtheir base. On the south Tibet is approached moredirectly either by the Kumaon group of passes, byNepal, by Sikkim, or by Bhutan, the most direct routeto the heart of the southern provinces at Lhasa beingby Sikkim and the valley of Chumbi. On the east itis well to note the position of Ta-chien-lu, the Chi-nese frontier trading-post. It is by this route thatTibet has been finally conquered, and by this routeTibet now maintains by far the greater part of itstrade connections with the outside world. On thenortheast the position of Sining fu and the Koko Norregion are of great political importance. This marksthe line of route between Manchuria and Lhasa viaMongolia or China, and although the Mahommedanrebellions have temporarily thrown it out of popu-larity, it is still a great highway of pilgrimage, thechannel by which Lhasa maintains its supremacy inthe Buddhist world amongst the far-off peoples ofMongolia and western China. The influence of Lhasasouthward terminates abruptly at the Himalayan wall.Northward and northeastward it reaches to thefarthest limits of Asiatic civilisation, and it is to fourhundred millions of people in the far East what Meccais to the Mahommedan world of the West. On thenorth the bleak desolation of the mountain barrierswhich shut off the lowlands of Chinese Turkestan fromthe highlands of the Chang tang (as well as thebreadth of the Chang tang itself) admits of no basewhich is ever likely to be of the least importance for


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HO


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TIBET 45the support of either pohtical, commercial, or mihtaryenterprise. It is southern and northeastern Tibet, notnorthern, with which the world will interest itselfhereafter.The southern zone of Tibet, which includes the true

Bod-land, is divided into four provinces; viz., Narion the west, Kham (otherwise Do Kham) on the east,and in the centre Tsang (adjoining Nari) and U(adjoining Kham), these two provinces being knownconjointly as Utsang. A considerable belt of thecentral country is known as Hor, Nari includesLadak and Balti, which are now part of Kashmir, butwhich are frequently spoken of as Little Tibet, as wellas the districts of Khorsum and Dokthol, the latterbeing conterminous with western Nepal, and both beingunder the Lhasa government.

Nari has only been partially explored by Europeantravellers, the upper valleys of the Sutlej and Indus,the Manasarawar lake region, and the sources of theBrahmaputra and Karnali alone being accessible.Eastwards from Nari, the Dokthol country and theUtsang provinces (economically the most importantin high Tibet) were originally explored by the nativestaff of the Survey of India; they have now beenpartially surveyed by officers attached to the Young-husband mission, and geographically they may besaid to constitute the best-known part of Tibet. Thereare still, however, some important valleys watered bytributaries of the Brahmaputra flowing from the eastinto the central channel of the river (where it follows a


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46 TIBETsoutherly course to Assam) which are an absolute" terra incognita " so far as their topographical struc-ture is concerned. The valleys of upper Zayul andPoyul are within the pale of Tibetan administration.Lower Zayul is almost certainly outside that pale, andis occupied by independent and barbarous tribesMaris, Abors, and Mishmis who acknowledge noauthority. The elevation of lower Zayul is not morethan four thousand feet, and the climate of these low-lands is so repugnant to the Tibetan highlander thatlower Zayul is regarded and utilised as a penal settle-ment. We are not even absolutely certain that we arecorrect in uniting the Giama-Nu-Chu with the Salwin.So great an authority as General Walker considers thatthe body of water contained in the Salwin at the farth-est north point to which it has been explored from theBurmese side is not sufficient to warrant the inflow ofso large a river as the Giama-Nu-Chu, and that thelatter is really an affluent of the Irawadi and not of theSalwin. Native reports however make the Giama-Nu-Chu and the Salwin one and the same river, and thisis probably correct. We have at any rate some interest-ing geographical problems yet to solve in these re-gions, and they all lie near to our own border.A prevalent misconception about Tibet is that theclimate is so rigorous and the cold so intense thatEuropean existence in the country would be sustainedwith difficulty. It is true that very severe cold isencountered on the lofty passes leading into Tibet,but so far as the southern regions of the plateau are


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TIBET 47concerned the valley of the Brahmaputra and theeastern valleys of affluents of the Chinese riversno such extreme of temperature is to be feared. Theclimate is dry, and snow seldom lies long in the plainsbeyond the Himalayan barrier. Even in winter thestreams of the Brahmaputra basin are not alwaysfrozen. Two crops a year are raised on the cultivatedareas of the lower valleys such as Shigatze andGyangtse, or in the Kyichu. Climate and tempera-ture depend more on geographical position than onmere altitude, and the latitude of the Brahmaputravalley is low and its position sheltered. No vastplains of sand stretch their length across its flanks tosend scorching blasts across in summer, or the freez-ing winds of the Turkestan " shamshir " in winter.Under normal circumstances the climate of southernTibet (at eleven thousand five hundred feet) is de-lightful in summer, when " the land is covered withvegetation, streams flowing in every valley, and allnature bright, sparkling, and fresh." Even in winter,when snow and frost claim the land as their own, thereis general movement throughout the country. It isthen that the roads and rivers are rendered passableby ice to the trade caravans of the north and east. AtLhasa the mean temperatue observed by Indian sur-veyors is thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit in Februaryand March, and sixty-one in June and July. In theeastern valleys the climate is Himalayan in character,and its degrees of salubrity are more or less dependenton altitude. I have been cautious in dealing with


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48 TIBETmap altitudes which have been determined by meansof barometrical observations. No such observationsare trustworthy at such elevations, and they may veryeasily be in error by five hundred feet more or less.We now have certain accurately determined trigono-metrical results from the observations of MajorRyder, and his assistants with Sir Frank Young-husband's mission in southern Tibet, where it is nolonger necessary to depend too closely on the resultsobtained by native explorers.


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CHAPTER IIIShort Outline oj Tibetan History Introduction of Buddhism Struggles with China and Mongol Interference Growth

ofLamaism Chinese AdministrationAN uninterrupted tale of exploration in the wil-

- derness of Tibet, devoid (as Tibetan tales mostlyare) of the stirring incidents of personal adventure,would prove but flat and unprofitable reading if theydid not lead to a position from which we may forma fair estimate of the present status of Tibetan nation-ality, and make a rough forecast of the possible futureof Tibet in the world of political strategy. But itwould take too much space to consider in detail theopinions expressed by each individual traveller and tocompare their impressions seriatim. It will be moreuseful to gather them at once into one collective whole,and to give a short summary of the existing form ofgovernment in Tibet and of its evolution, before wefollow further the lines of modem exploration. Weshall at least incidentally explain the position of someof those Tibetan functionaries with unpronounceablenames who are so frequently referred to in the recordsof Tibetan travel.The history of Tibet is the history of a country

which, like India, has never lately been able to claim


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50 TIBETan integral nationality amongst the nations of theworld. Foreign domination, either in Mongol or Chi-nese form, is invariably to be recognised, and it needbe no matter of surprise to us if Tibetan traditionspoint to a final domination which is neither Mongolnor Chinese, but European. We are indebted to Prin-sep, Kosma de Coros, Schlagentweit, and Sarat Chan-dra Das for the earliest records which may be calledhistorical, including lists of kings dating from legen-dary beginnings (about the fifth century b. c.) to theend of the monarchy in 914 a. d. Throughout theselegendary beginnings there runs a sort of traditionalrecognition of a dual form of government for Tibet,spiritual and temporal, a form of administrationakin to that of Rome, and one which finally foundexpression in Lhasa with the evolution of the DalaiLama and his regent.The aboriginal Tibetans appear to have been a sav-

age and warlike people who invaded China and upperBurma with success, and even dictated terms of peaceto the Chinese government. It was from China thatthe first principles of civilisation crept across the moun-tains to Tibet, coincident with the introduction ofBuddhism by the young Chinese wife of the TibetanKing Srong-tsan-gumpo. She was the daughter ofthe Chinese emperor, and was received in marriageby the king after his successful invasion of China inthe year 640 a. d. She found a useful ally in the Nepa-lese wife of the same monarch, and the two ladiesworked together in harmony to lay the foundation of


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A Tibetan Lhacham (Tibetan Princess) in full dress./ To face p. 50.


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TIBET 51one of the mightiest religious institutions that the worldhas ever seen. King Srong-tsan-gumpo (convertedto Buddhism by his wife) founded Lhasa, and Lhasahas ever since been the pivot of Buddhist thoughtand Buddhist faith for all eastern Asia. It has beenas the holy of holies, the dwelling of the ark of thecovenant, to one-third of the human race. It is sostill. If ever England aspires to be a Buddhist powershe must reckon first with Lhasa.The Buddhism then introduced into Tibet was sup-

ported by books and relics collected from India, andtwo great monasteries (Labrang and Rinpoche) werefounded. But Indian Buddhism had long lost thegrand simplicity of first principles. This had dis-appeared with the invasion of the Huns about thebeginning of our era. Fa Hian (the Chinese trav-eller) found the doctrines of the " Great Vehicle(sometimes called the Skythic form of Buddhism) infull force at Peshawur in the fifth century a. d." Saints and angels sprang into existence, and grewand flourished till the Buddhist sky was full of them "(says Prof. Rhys Davids). Then the animism of thebarbarous Huns was revived, with debasing beliefsin charms and ceremonies. The Tantra system, whichwas started at Peshawur in the sixth century a. d.was nothing better than witchcraft and sorcery. TheBuddhism of Tibet thus partly derived from India didnot supplant the older forms of Tibetan demonologytill King Kir Song de Tsan reigned over the land(a. D. 740-786). It was then that true religion was


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52 TIBETacknowledged by ecclesiastical historians to be firmlyestablished, and the Samye monastery was founded tocontain the books collected from India. King KirSong de Tsan is reckoned in Buddhist records to bethe most illustrious and the most pious monarch whoever reigned over Tibet. It is worth noting that theson of this king was one of the greatest socialists inhistory. He enacted that all men should be equal; hecompelled the rich to share their riches with the poor;he favoured an absolutely equal distribution of all thecomforts and conditions of life. This was indeed theattainment of a high ideal but it did not answer.In a very short time his people by the natural forceof personal idiosyncrasy returned to their former con-dition of inequality, and after repeating the experi-ment three times he gave it up. The wise men ofTibet said it was due to a survival of inequality inmethods of existence during former lives.

In the early years of the ninth century a severestruggle with China took place, and thereafter,throughout a period of intricate history, struggleswith Mongols from the north and with China on theeast were periodic. Nothing stands out very clearlyafter the break up of the Tibetan monarchy into fourprovincial kingdoms about the end of the tenth cen-tury, until the arrival of the celebrated Indian Bud-dhist Atisha, who settled in the great lamaserai ofThoding in Ngari. He introduced books and educa-tion and some of the elements of astronomical sciencein 1026, and he was probably the first of the great


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TIBET S3priests whose authority became paramount in thecountry. He put the whole Tantra system into thebackground and resorted again to first principles.For three hundred years a purer form of Buddhismmaintained its ground, whilst priests and lamas mul-tiplied exceedingly, until the Mogul Emperor KublaiKhan (son of Genghis Khan) invested the high priestof the red-cap sect with sovereign power over thethirteen provinces of U and Tsang (which compriseTibet proper), together with Kham and Amdo, in1252. This was a complimentary exchange for thekindly offices of the abbot in crowning him emperorof the widest empire the world has ever seen. Forfour centuries more the lamas of the Sakya monasteryremained spiritual rulers of Tibet, temporal authoritybeing exercised by regents whom they appointed.

Meanwhile a new and powerful sect had arisen inTibet. Modern lamaism (defined by Prof. RhysDavids as " the union of ethical and metaphysicalideas with a hierarchal system and temporal sover-eignty at Lhasa ") may be said to have been foundedby the great reformer Tsong kapa (the Luther ofTibet) in 1390. By 14 10 there were three huge mon-asteries and thirty thousand disciples to testify to theactivity of the reformation. In all respects Tsongkapa appealed to first principles, following Atisha, andpleading for the re-establishment of ancient customs.It was he who founded the custom of an annual weekof fasting and prayer in which churchmen and laymenalike take part, and which is described by the Jesuit


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54 TIBETmissionary Hue. He never disputed the authority ofthe red-cap Sakya lamas. His sect is known to thisday as the " yellow " or " orange " sect, from thecolour of the robes its disciples wear. By the middleof the fifteenth century the yellow caps were para-mount, and a dual spiritual authority was establishedover Tibet at Lhasa and Tashilumpo.When the Mongol dynasty of China ceased, that of

the Mings yet further enlarged the authority of theTibetan rulers and recognised the chief lamas. Thefailing power of the Mings in China favoured theinterference of the Mongols in Tibetan affairs again,and a Tartar invasion occurred in the middle of theseventeenth century, which partially ended the Sakyared-cap rule and established that of the rising yellowcaps. The fifth of the grand lamas of the reformedfaith appears to have been a man of great strength ofcharacter and much diplomatic ability. According toWaddell he made excellent use of the opportunityafforded by the incident of the Tartar irruption, andwith the assistance of the Tartar prince wrested thetemporal authority out of the hands of the red-caps,and established himself as the first Dalai (or Tale)Lama of Tibet, practically uniting in his person theoffices of high priest and king, although a Tartarprince was nominally installed as king at Lhasa. Theword " Dalai " appears to be merely the Mongolianrendering of his name (Vast as the Ocean).He then set about establishing for himself and his

successors a divine origin, based on a book of " reve-


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TIBET 55lations " which he " discovered," proving that allgrand lamas were incarnations of the Great KingSrong-tsan-gumpo, and enforcing his claims and hiscreed with such strong measures that the Jesuit mis-sionary Grueber calls him " devilish God the Fatherwho puts to death such as refuse to adore him." Hehowever recognised the Grand Lama of Tashilumpo(Shigatze) as the reincarnation of a pseudo-Buddha,second only to himself in spiritual significance, andthus founded the present recognised system of a dualspiritual rule in Tibet. The theory of reincarnationin infant form was not introduced into practice tilllater, and it was the cause of so much friction betweenrival sects as to lead to another Tartar invasion in1717, when Lhasa was taken by storm.Then the Emperor of China intervened with a

powerful army. He ejected the Tartars, establishedthe succession of the Dalai Lama by re-births, and cur-tailed his power at the same time. Two Ambans (orAmbassadors) were then appointed, with a Chinamanas regent or king. The " king " was murdered by theDalai Lama in 1727, and the inevitable Chinese re-prisals included the transfer of temporal power toa " mayor of the palace," one Miwang, of whom weshall hear more from the Capuchin fathers of theTibetan missions, whom he befriended for years. Amassacre of the Chinese in 1749 led to another puni-tive expedition (which will be referred to later), andfrom this time Chinese influence has been paramountin Tibet, until it was discredited by the late war. Lat-


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56 TIBETterly the present Dalai Lama, assisted by the young'* national " party, has openly defied Chinese authorityand has declared himself pro-Russian.We may note here that the present Dalai Lama isthe thirteenth in succession; that he has reached themature age of thirty (his four predecessors havingdied or disappeared about the age of eighteen)and that he shows every disposition to follow the dic-tates of a headstrong will under Russian influence.There is a popular saying in Lhasa, referred to byone of the native explorers of the Indian Survey fortyyears ago, that the thirteenth Dalai Lama will be thelast.

Briefly we may indicate the chief features of presentTibetan administration.The Ambans appointed by China are responsible

for the foreign and military government of the coun-try, leaving civil and religious administration in thehands of the Tibetans. They are appointed for threeyears only. Subordinate to them at Lhasa and Shi-gatze are two chief commandants and two paymastersof the Chinese army. These, with three subordinatecommanders at Lhasa, Shigatze, and Dingri (on theNepal frontier), and three non-commissioned officerscomplete the entire administrative staff of China. Itis not a large one. The whole force of Qiinesc troopsin the country does not exceed forty-five hundred men,distributed between Lhasa, Shigatze, and the Nepalesefrontier. The chief civil authority in Tibet is investedin the head of the Tibetan hierarchy, the Dalai


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TIBET 57Lama (gyal-rinpoche), who resides in the far-famedPotala at Lhasa. Nominally equal to him in rank, butin reality secondary in authority, is the Panchen rin-poche, or Grand Lama, who resides at Tashilumpo, nearShigatze; and there is in the far Mongolian distance(directly under Russian influence) a third Grand Lamaof Tibet, known as the Bogda (himself an " avatar "),the supreme pontiff of the Lamaistic church, whoresides at Urga. This spiritual dignitary is really ofolder creation than the Dalai Lama, for his office wasfounded when the Mongol dynasty in China finallydisappeared. The authority of the Dalai Lama isunquestioned. His decision is final, and he is onlyquestioned in cases of emergency. His powers aretransmitted to a special officer nominated by theChinese government, who is called by various names.He is the Gyalpo, or regent (when the Dalai Lama isa minor), or Nomokhan (Mongolian), the "kingof the law," and he is frequently referred to in booksof travel as the " king." He is traditionally selectedfrom the four head lamas of the monasteries of Cho-moling, Kondoling, Tangialing, and Chajoling, eachone of whom is an " avatar," i. e., he is reincarnatedat death in the body of an infant. Equal in rank tothe Nomokhan is the Deba Lama of Galdan, the greatmonastery near Lhasa. But he is not an " avatar."Next to him is the Lama Guru or chaplain of the DalaiLama, who (like the Deba Lama of Galdan) is thesubject of Chinese nomination.

China thus preserves a careful supervision over the


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58 TIBETreligious element in the Tibetan government. TheNomokhan rules with the help of a council of fiveministers representing the financial, judicial, revenue,and home departments, with a lama for ecclesiasticalaffairs. The four provinces, Nari, U, Tsang, andKham, are each under a Kablon, or governor, assistedby a competent staff. Outside these provinces areseveral minor " kings," or Gyalpos, and within themthere are four principalities directly under Chineseauthority. These are Dyag and Chiamdo on the east,Tashilumpo, and Sakya Kongma to the southwest ofTashilumpo. In the east the principalities of Dargeand Ta-chien-lu (amongst others) are more or lessdirectly under the control of China. The remarkablefeature about this form of government is the main-tenance of Chinese authority throughout so vast acountry with the assistance of so small a militaryforce. China was till lately nominally dominanteverywhere, holding the keys of all important posi-tions in Tibet, and regulating all important appoint-ments. Lately the authority of the Amban has beenset aside without difficulty when convenient to theTibetan rulers to dispense with it. Tibet has assumeda new and stronger position of independence since theresults of the late Chinese war have discredited thepower and prestige of China; and doubtless Chinesediplomacy sometimes finds it convenient to shift theresponsibility of action on to Tibetan shoulders when-ever such action might jeopardise her friendly relationswith foreign powers whom she has reason to respect.


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A Tibetan Prince. Dungkhor at Home.[ To face p. 58.


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TIBET 59Such a government presents unusual difficulties to

political negotiation. A nebulous responsibility in thecouncils of Tibet has hitherto baffled our efforts at es-tablishing a definite basis for the opening of trade andfree intercourse with the rich and promising valleys ofsouthern and eastern Tibet. The Tibetan governmenthas throughout all historical negotiations treated theIndian government with the contempt which is alwaysshown by the semi-barbarous and ignorant tribespeopleof the Indian frontier towards a power whose reluc-tance to use force is attributed to weakness. We mayperhaps hope for a stronger position in future, but itwill depend on some outward and visible sign of ourauthority at Lhasa.


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CHAPTER IVThe First Recorded Mogul Invasion of Tibet Mirza Hai-

der's Story His Geography Identification of his Routetowards Lhasa

ISLAM has never made much impression on Tibet.Sweeping past its northern hills into High Asia, or

through the western passes into Hindustan, the bannersof Mahomed left Tibet almost unvisited. And yetthere has been no lack of determined effort to estab-lish Islamism in these elevated strongholds. We havein the excellent translation by Ney Elias of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi a history written by one Mirza Haidar,the Mogul cousin of the Turko-Mogul EmperorBaber (who established the Mogul dynasty in India) a very authentic account of the conquest of LittleTibet {%. e., Ladak) in the sixteenth century a. d., andthe extension of that conquest into Kashmir. Thismay be reckoned the beginning of modern Tibetanexploration, and is well worth a reference in this bookfor its geographical indications. The history concernsthe doings of a branch of the Mogul Khans who sepa-rated themselves early in the fourteenth century fromthe main branch of the Chagatai, which was then theruling (albeit a declining) power in Transoxiana, andconsidering the disorder which reigned among the


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TIBET 6ileading- families, their constant movements throughcountries which had no definite boundaries, and theinfinite compHcations resulting from intermarriage, itis a very clear exposition of the events of the times ofwhich it treats, i. e,, the commencement of the six-teenth century. Mirza Haidar was but one of the classwho made history in those days, a roving adven-turer, or soldier of fortune, exposed to all the vicis-situdes of the times. Neither as a writer nor as asoldier was he comparable to his inimitable cousinBaber (afterwards Emperor of India), but he is notaltogether unjustified in his claim to be considereda master of verse-making and of epistolary style at atime when literature was the study of every well-bredMogul gentleman.

Whilst quite a boy he was raised to high positionby his kinsman Sultan Said Khan, whom he servedfor nineteen years as a soldier; commencing in 1527with a successful expedition against the Kaffirs ofBolor (which then included Hunza, Gilgit, and Chit-ral). He followed with a less successful incursioninto Badakshan; and it was not till 1531 that heundertook his most important service for Sultan SaidKhan. This was, first, the invasion of Little Tibet,or Ladak, then of Kashmir and Baltistan, and finallyof Tibet proper, t. e., the Tibet of our modem maps.The excuse for a wanton attack on Ladak was theusual one. There was much paganism in that country,and the Khan, animated by a love of Islam and adesire to carry on holy wars, was anxious to smite


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62 TIBETthe infidel. This was not the first time that Ladak hadbeen invaded by the Mussalman hordes of the north,but we know very little about the earlier records.None of them made much impression; nor did eventhe successful advance of Mirza Haidar. The Ladakihas fallen, like the Kashmiri, under the Hindu yokeof the Dogra since then, but he still preserves his con-nection with Lhasa in all religious and social matters.

It is at any rate clear that such northern routes asexist were well enough known in those days. SultanSaid in striking south from Kashgar was apparentlyinclined to follow the Kiria-Polu route from Khotan,and to cross the western extremity of Tibet to Leh.This indicates that this was a recognised route then,and it is significant that this is the direct route to thewestern gold-fields of Tibet, which centre to the northof the upper Indus, some three hundred miles to thesoutheast of Leh. But Mirza Haidar knew what thenorthern steppes (the Aksai Chin) were like, and dis-suaded Sultan Said from attempting to cross a comerof Tibet which has since proved fatal to more than oneexpedition. The advancing force crossed the Kara-korum by the usual trade route between Leh and Kash-gar; and it is a matter of surprise that any force(mobile as the Mogul troops undoubtedly were)should have been able to invade Ladak by such anelevated, bleak, inhospitable route as that whichstretches its length across that dreary space betweenthe two towns. The invasion was entirely successful." The talons of Islam seizing the hands of infidelity,


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TIBET 63the enemy were thrown into disorder and routed.Having deserted the fort, they fled in confusion anddismay, while the Mussalmans gave them chase as faras was possible, so that not one of these bewilderedpeople escaped. Bur Kapa was slain together with allhis men ; their heads formed a lofty minaret, and thevapour from the brains of the infidels of that countryascended to the heavens." Sultan Said Khan followedhis army into the field, but " damgiri " (or mountainsickness) assailed him, and he nearly died on thejourney. He recovered sufficiently to lead a part ofhis army into Baltistan, where he suffered great hard-ships, and had to retreat first to Ladak and then toKashmir. But " damgiri " was too much for him onthe return route. He died on the Suget pass, and wassucceeded by his son. Mirza Haidar meanwhile hadadvanced into Kashmir by the Sind valley and ZojiLa route, and gained some victories. But he couldnot control his army, and retired without effectinganything important. On the death of the Khan, MirzaHaidar pursued the holy war with much zeal. Heeven started on a " jehad " to " earn merit " by de-stroying Lhasa. He advanced into Tibet with twoor three columns by the same southeastern route whichmust, through all time, have been the recognised lineof communication between Leh and Lhasa. It is now,as it was then, the great trade route from Kashmirto Pekin. Unfortunately Mirza Haidar is not assound a geographer as he is historian, although it istrue that as a geographer he gives us information


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64 TIBETwhich is of some value. It is from his writings, forinstance, that we can define the hmits of the ancientkingdom of Bolor, which for centuries has been thedespair of the geographical compilers. But whendealing with Tibet he is unsatisfactory. He puts thedistance between Leh and Lhasa at one hundred andsixty marches. The configuration of mountain andvalley and the opportunities for a route through suchhighlands as those of southern Tibet could not havediffered largely then from those which obtain at pres-ent. The same physical difficulties faced the travellerof the sixteenth century as would face the traveller ofthe twentieth. The route must have been determinedby the same distribution of mountain ridge and rivercourse, and on that route certain obligatory pointsexist which must have defined the position of the chieftrade and religious centres just as they define themstill. Four hundred years have modified or changed thenames (Tibetan names are not easily transcribed atany time), but the sites of the principal towns in thevalleys of the upper Indus and Brahmaputra cannothave shifted far. The first place of importance reachedwas called Barmang. Here sheep were captured, andthe Champa people (/. e., the settlers in the valley)were plundered of their goods and horses. I can findno trace of Barmang in modern maps, and as there isno mention of a fortress, it is possible that it was nomore than what it is described to be, i. e., a suitablepasture land for a halt. The next place is Khardun.I see no reason w'-y this should not be the modem


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TIBET 6sKhardam, a little to the south of the Manasarawarlakes, near the sources of the Sutlej and Brahmaputra.Next he mentions a place called Luk Liuk or LukLanuk (there are other variants of the name) as beinghalf way to Ursang (which is clearly Lhasa, Lhasabeing the capital of the Utsang province), and he asso-ciates it with a fortress near a great lake one hundredand sixty miles in circumference. Ney Elias identifiesthis place with Manasarawar on account of the enor-mous size of the lake, and from the fact that one ofthe two Manasarawar lakes is called the Tso Lanak.But there are difficulties in the way of accepting thisidentification. In the first place, we should have togive up Khardam, for Khardam is too close to thelake to coincide with the narrative; and in the nextplace, we should find ourselves nowhere near to thehalf-way point between Leh and Lhasa. About sucha matter as this Mirza Haidar would be likely to befairly correct. The length of marches no doubt variedconsiderably (as they would vary to-day), but theaverage over a long distance would remain fairly con-stant. About half way we find the main road approachthe Brahmaputra at a point where the monastery ofLikeche overlooks the river, nearly opposite Tadum.This more nearly corresponds to Mirza Haidar's de-scription of the castle on the shores of the lake, butraises the objection that it is a river and not a lakewhich is so commanded. But his estimate of the sizeof the lake (one hundred and sixty miles in circum-ference) is so vastly in excess of the size of the Mana-

s


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66 TIBETsarawar lakes (even putting the two together andallowing for the very probable extent of desiccationwhich has occurred in the last four hundred years) asto throw some doubt on his accuracy in describing itas a lake at all. The river widens greatly at this point,and flows with a broad and placid surface, and it ishere navigated by Tibetan boats. Looking east andwest it would appear limitless, even as an enormouslake might appear.

Finally he records that with an attenuated force ofninety mounted men (the rest of the horses havingdied of damgiri) he succeeded in reaching and pillag-ing a place called Askabrak. There is nothing inmodern maps answering to this name, but there is onlyone place of importance which would give opportunityfor the capture of valuable booty anywhere near theposition assigned to it by Mirza Haidar (i. e., eightmarches from Lhasa), and that place is Shigatze. Itis, however, impossible to arrive at any certainty in theidentification of this early record of Tibetan invasion.The loss of his horses decided him to return from thispoint, wherever it may have been, and he retired appar-ently unmolested, overtaking the remnants of his forceon their way back and forming a rendezvous at Guga.There is no difficulty about identifying Guga as Gartokon the upper Indus, about eighteen marches (accord-ing to the narrative) from Maryul or Leh. The nameGiugh La is still preserved in the pass which crossesthe first range north of Gartok on the way to themining district of Thok Jalung. The expedition failed


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TIBET 67in its object, but it was not altogether disastrous.There had been but little fighting, and that little hadbeen near the commencement of the raid at Barmang,against a force of three thousand men sent by a" Hindu Rai," who are said to have fought with shortknives. This, as Ney Elias points out, appears to havebeen a Nepalese force armed with kukris (the nationalweapon of the Gurkha) and not a Tibetan force. Butthe fight was severe, and Mirza Haidar lost a braveyoung brother, who was cut to pieces " so completelythat each separate part of his cuirass and coat was inthe possession of some infidel." The people of Guga,with true Tibetan complacence, received the brokenand battered remains of the frostbitten and starvingforce with all hospitality. They fed them and keptthem, and finally assisted Mirza Haidar to raise a freshforce with which to harry the western districts of theirown country. This is the earliest authentic recordof any expedition into the southern regions of Tibetwhich can be said to be productive of geographicalinformation.


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CHAPTER VEighteenth Century Explorations Grueber CapuchinMonks Their Mission at Lhasa and their Struggles

Jesuit Interferefice Desideri Beligatti Last of theMission Van de Putte His Residence at Lhasa

IN estimating the position which Lhasa holds asone of the great centres of the rehgious world,it is necessary to recognise the significance of her re-ligious affinity with Mongolia. The sort of affinitywhich is based on community of faith bridges overgeographical space as nothing else bridges it. AcrossMongolia, from Manchuria to the northeastern borderof Tibet, there intervenes a good thousand miles ofmore or less difficult and desert country ; but this thou-sand miles is but a step when the way is a pilgrims' way,and faces are set towards Lhasa as the centre of reli-gious light. No power paramount in Mongolia wouldexperience much difficulty in reaching out its fingersto the indefinite fringe of Tibetan borderland indi-cated by Tsaidam and the Koko Nor region. Theacceptance of such a power by Mongolia would be aspiritual introduction to Tibet, and with such anintroduction geographical distances and physical diffi-culties would be found to disappear with marvellousrapidity.


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TIBET SsMongolia has assimilated Buddhism from a very

early period. Mongol power in China was first brokenby a Buddhist lama, who founded the Ming dynasty ofChina in 1355 a. d. Subsequently we find that a notedMongol chief, Altan Khan, embraced Buddhism aboutthe year 1570, and as the result of his successful raidsinto Tibet he brought lamaist prisoners to the north,who introduced lamaism to the Turned branch of hisrace. He received at his court one Bogda SodnamGyamtso Khutuktu, a notable lama of high degree,who is now represented by one of the great leaders ofthe Buddhist hierarchy who resides at Urga in north-ern Mongolia under the shadow of the Russian domi-nation. In the beginning of the seventeenth centuryMongolia was honoured by the selection of a DalaiLama from amongst her infants, and by the time thatthe Ming dynasty was replaced by the Manchu, andthe Ordus Mongol tribes were established in the loopof the Hoang Ho River under the suzerainty of China,the power of the Buddhist lama had grown para-mount. Probably there is at this time more realhonest devotion to the faith of Buddhism amongstthe rough and scattered herdsmen of the Mongoliansteppes than there is in all Tibet put together. TouchLhasa, and all Mongolia to the borders of Manchuriawill certainly respond.Mongol expeditions into Tibet from the northeasthave been constant through all Asiatic history ; but thereis little detailed record of them, nor do they add muchto our geographical knowledge. Trustworthy narra-


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70 TIBETtive of Tibetan exploration (other than military expedi-tions) commences only with the seventeenth century.

Friar Odoric of Pordenone is said to have reachedLhasa from Cathay in 1328, and there appears to besubstantial reason for believing that he really was thefirst European to cross Tibet of whom we have anyrecord. But authentic information regarding his jour-ney is unobtainable, and we must content ourselveswith according him the honour of being first in theTibetan field. The great Marco Polo never reallyentered Tibet at all, although he crossed the Pamirs.In the seventeenth century the first great traveller ofwhom we have authentic record (and whose adven-tures have been published in at least five Europeanlanguages) was the Jesuit father Antonio de Andrada.But the story of his travels as we possess it at presentis unsatisfactory in many particulars. The letterswritten in 1626 to his superior, the Jesuit GeneralMutio Vitelleschi, give but scanty and confused detailsof a journey which apparently terminated at Tsapa-rang on the river Sutlej. It is difficult to reconcile theaccount of his explorations beyond the Manasarawarlake to Rudok, and thence to Cathay and back, eitherwith the topography of the Tibetan highlands, or withthe exigencies of time that would be required for sucha journey. In spite of his hitherto prominent positionas a pioneer in the field of Asiatic geography, An-tonio de Andrada must be regarded as but a doubtfulauthority.The next recorded exploration in Tibet is that of


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TIBET 71the Jesuit fathers Johannes Grueber and Albert de Dor-ville (which appears to be his correct name, althoughit is usually written d'Orville) in the years 1661 and1662. We are indebted to Herr R. Tronnier for anexhaustive examination into the records of this re-markable journey, published in the " Berlin Zeitschriftder Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde " for 1904, which hasbeen made with the object of giving the German Jesuitthe place to which he appears to be entitled in geo-graphical history. He is clearly the first Europeanwho brought back a genuine record of Tibet and itspeople, and his journey was one of geographical dis-covery, for it was imposed, not by missionary zeal, butby the necessity of discovering a new route from China,via Lhasa, to Europe. The material from which anaccount of his travels is constructed are his letters (ofwhich one written from Rome in 1664 is by far themost important), a report by the Jesuit AthanasiusKircher (who published his sketches in his " ChinaIllustrata "), and a long Italian " Relazione " by anunknown author, which appears to be an authenticaccount taken from the lips of the travellers themselves.De Dorville was a Belgian by birth, who had labouredfor some years in the Chinese missionary field atShansi. Throughout the journey he appears only asthe companion of Grueber, to whom alone we are in-debted for the astronomical determinations and noteswhich render this exploration notable in geographicalannals. De Dorville died at Agra in 1662, from theeffects of the hardships involved in the journey.


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72 TIBETGrueber originally occupied the position of mathe-

matical assistant to the Court of Pekin, but after thedeath of the first emperor of the Manchu dynasty(February, 1661) he was " rec

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