The most appreciated dancing, from a Tibetan [[165]]point of view, is when the performer can continue his evolutions, bringing his legs forward alternately with knees bent low and almost touching the ground. In a way, this dance is not unlike Russian peasant dancing. The best dancers give solo performances, while the rest join in a circle round and round them until they get tired out and dizzy.
The women’s dancing has precisely the same characteristics, except that it is done with no sword. Only a kata is held in the right hand, and the contortions are less exaggerated, and, therefore, more graceful. The abrupt end also is done away with, together with odd posturing. The women, whenever I saw them dance, usually danced singly to the accompaniment of softer and more sentimental music than was the case with the men. They added sad, melodious chanting to their movements, weird and wild to a degree, yet full of expression and quite pleasing to the ear. [[166]]
CHAPTER XV
The Tibetan in his normal life is occasionally an amusing being, full of coarse humour, and with a bounce which carries him through his existence. When alone, he is quiet in his manner, and will spend his leisure hours spinning wool or in some other such feminine occupation, while his women-folk do all the hard work about the tent. As will be seen by the illustrations in this book, both Tibetan men and women look clumsy and heavy. Anatomically, they are well-built, small but wiry, and rather thickly set, but very seldom with any great abundance of flesh and fat, except the Lamas, who lead a lascivious and lazy life.
A Typical Tibetan
Tibetan clothing is mostly responsible for the funny appearance they present, men wearing sometimes three or four coats, skin or woollen, one on the top of the other. The sash or belt, which is intended to be at the waist, is usually considerably [[167]]lower down owing to the weight of the variety of articles the wearer constantly carries stored away round the waist in his outer coat,—wooden bowls, balls of butter, bags of tsamba, a bundle of wool for spinning with the distaff, the prayer-wheel, and a quantity of rags,—which bulge out at the waist all round his body and drag down his coat. This often gives them the appearance of being quite short-legged, though, of course, they are not really.
Men and women wear picturesque, most comfortable and practical long boots, the legging being usually red or white, the thick soles of rope well protecting the foot all round. These boots are largely manufactured in Lhassa and Shigatz, but people also manufacture them themselves. Officials wear leather boots of the Chinese type, with thick wooden or leather soles with a few huge iron nails underneath and a curled-up toe.
Among the coloured illustrations will be found paintings of Tibetan women—from babyhood, in an ample and striking robe of white and blue checks; at the age of twelve, with shaggy hair hanging down the back and shoulders and a sufficient collection of ornaments round the neck; an older dame, of middle class and age, in her everyday costume, with [[168]]a sash enveloping nearly one-third of her body; then a lady of rank and beauty, fully decorated with amber necklace, gold and malachite brooch, elaborate earrings, and a much-adorned aureole upon the head. She sits modestly on bags of borax, and displays feet of some considerable size. Well, that is the fault of the ample and padded boots which she wears, and not a fault of the foot inside—not small, mind you, but generally well-formed—nor of the painter who depicted the scene.