In His Family Temple Gergan Offered Gifts And Thanks For
The Deliverances Of The Journey.
He had been assisting Mr. Redslob
for two years in the translation of the New Testament, and had wept
over the love and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He had even
desired that his son should receive baptism and be brought up as a
Christian, but for himself he 'could not break with custom and his
ancestral creed.'
In the usual living-room of the family a platform, raised only a few
inches, ran partly round the wall. In the middle of the floor there
was a clay fireplace, with a prayer-wheel and some clay and brass
cooking pots upon it. A few shelves, fire-bars for roasting barley,
a wooden churn, and some spinning arrangements were the furniture. A
number of small dark rooms used for sleeping and storage opened from
this, and above were the balconies and reception rooms. Wooden posts
supported the roofs, and these were wreathed with lucerne, the
firstfruits of the field. Narrow, steep staircases in all Tibetan
houses lead to the family rooms. In winter the people live below,
alongside of the animals and fodder. In summer they sleep in loosely
built booths of poplar branches on the roof. Gergan's roof was
covered, like others at the time, to the depth of two feet, with hay,
i.e. grass and lucerne, which are wound into long ropes, experience
having taught the Tibetans that their scarce fodder is best preserved
thus from breakage and waste. I bought hay by the yard for Gyalpo.
Our food in this hospitable house was simple: apricots, fresh, or
dried and stewed with honey; zho's milk, curds and cheese, sour
cream, peas, beans, balls of barley dough, barley porridge, and
'broth of abominable things.' Chang, a dirty-looking beer made from
barley, was offered with each meal, and tea frequently, but I took my
own 'on the sly.' I have mentioned a churn as part of the
'plenishings' of the living-room. In Tibet the churn is used for
making tea! I give the recipe. 'For six persons. Boil a teacupful
of tea in three pints of water for ten minutes with a heaped dessert-
spoonful of soda. Put the infusion into the churn with one pound of
butter and a small tablespoonful of salt. Churn until as thick as
cream.' Tea made after this fashion holds the second place to chang
in Tibetan affections. The butter according to our thinking is
always rancid, the mode of making it is uncleanly, and it always has
a rank flavour from the goatskin in which it was kept. Its value is
enhanced by age. I saw skins of it forty, fifty, and even sixty
years old, which were very highly prized, and would only be opened at
some special family festival or funeral.
During the three days of our visits to Hundar both men and women wore
their festival dresses, and apparently abandoned most of their
ordinary occupations in our honour. The men were very anxious that I
should be 'amused,' and made many grotesque suggestions on the
subject. 'Why is the European woman always writing or sewing?' they
asked. 'Is she very poor, or has she made a vow?' Visits to some of
the neighbouring monasteries were eventually proposed, and turned out
most interesting.
The monastery of Deskyid, to which we made a three days' expedition,
is from its size and picturesque situation the most imposing in
Nubra. Built on a majestic spur of rock rising on one side 2,000
feet perpendicularly from a torrent, the spur itself having an
altitude of 11,000 feet, with red peaks, snow-capped, rising to a
height of over 20,000 feet behind the vast irregular pile of red,
white, and yellow temples, towers, storehouses, cloisters, galleries,
and balconies, rising for 300 feet one above another, hanging over
chasms, built out on wooden buttresses, and surmounted with flags,
tridents, and yaks' tails, a central tower or keep dominating the
whole, it is perhaps the most picturesque object I have ever seen,
well worth the crossing of the Shayok fords, my painful accident, and
much besides. It looks inaccessible, but in fact can be attained by
rude zigzags of a thousand steps of rock, some natural, others
roughly hewn, getting worse and worse as they rise higher, till the
later zigzags suggest the difficulties of the ascent of the Great
Pyramid. The day was fearfully hot, 99 degrees in the shade, and the
naked, shining surfaces of purple rock with a metallic lustre
radiated heat. My 'gallant grey' took me up half-way - a great feat -
and the Tibetans cheered and shouted 'Sharbaz!' ('Well done!') as he
pluckily leapt up the great slippery rock ledges. After I
dismounted, any number of willing hands hauled and helped me up the
remaining horrible ascent, the rugged rudeness of which is quite
indescribable. The inner entrance is a gateway decorated with a
yak's head and many Buddhist emblems. High above, on a rude gallery,
fifty monks were gathered with their musical instruments. As soon as
the Kan-po or abbot, Punt-sog-sogman (the most perfect Merit),
received us at the gate, the monkish orchestra broke forth in a
tornado of sound of a most tremendous and thrilling quality, which
was all but overwhelming, as the mountain echoes took up and
prolonged the sound of fearful blasts on six-foot silver horns, the
bellowing thunder of six-foot drums, the clash of cymbals, and the
dissonance of a number of monster gongs. It was not music, but it
was sublime. The blasts on the horns are to welcome a great
personage, and such to the monks who despised his teaching was the
devout and learned German missionary. Mr. Redslob explained that I
had seen much of Buddhism in Ceylon and Japan, and wished to see
their temples. So with our train of gopas, zemindar, peasants, and
muleteers, we mounted to a corridor full of lamas in ragged red
dresses, yellow girdles and yellow caps, where we were presented with
plates of apricots, and the door of the lowest of the seven temples
heavily grated backwards.
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