Another thing that adds to the economic difficulties of the Tibetans is their tendency to grow more and more luxurious in their style of living, a tendency that began to be particularly noticeable from about twenty years ago. This has been inevitably brought about by the foreign trade of Tibet and the arrival of goods of foreign origin. All these circumstances have impressed the Tibetans with the necessity of extending their sphere of trade with foreign countries instead of confining their commercial operations within the narrow bounds of their own country. The consequence is that a larger number of the inhabitants have begun to proceed every year to China, India and Nepāl on commercial enterprises.
Now suppose that Tibet should prohibit her people embarking in this foreign trade, what would be the consequence? In the first place she would be unable to get any supply of goods from India, China and other countries, goods which are now articles of daily necessity for her people. This, though sufficiently hard, might be endured; but what would be unendurable would be the closing of Indian markets to the wool of Tibet, India being the most important consumer of this staple produce of the country. More wool being produced than can be reasonably consumed at home, the close of foreign markets is certain to bring down prices, and therefore to rob the sheep-farmers, or more properly the nomadic people of that country, of the greater part of the income they are at present enabled to get from their wool. The supply for food is, on the other hand, less than the demand, and as the prices of this essential of life cannot be expected to go down in proportion to those of wool, the sheep-farmers who constitute the greater part of the whole population would be threatened with starvation.
The incoming of gold from Mongolia being suspended, Tibet cannot, even if she would, cut off her commercial relations with the outside world.
Urged by necessity, trade is advancing with great strides, judging at least from the larger number of people engaged in it, for as matters stand at present the Forbidden Land may without exaggeration be considered as a “nation of shop-keepers”.
In fact all the people, with the exception of those who are disqualified through physical defects and age, are engaged in business of one kind or another. Even farmers are partly traders. In winter when farm-work is slack they proceed to northern Tibet to lay in their stock of salt, obtained from the salt lakes that are found there. Then these men start for Bhūtān, Nepāl or Sikkim, to sell their goods in those places.
Priests are not too proud to deal with secular dollars and cents, and monasteries often trade on a large scale.
PRIEST TRADERS LOADING THEIR YAKS.
The Government itself is a trader, not directly, but through its regular agents, who in virtue of the important trust reposed in them enjoy various privileges, such as the liberty to requisition horses for carrying their goods or to take lodgment gratis.