Three Years in Tibet

by Ekai Kawaguchi

The next day we rode into the post-town of Gyangtze, the third city of Tibet. The city contains a large Buḍḍhist Temple, Pankhor Choeten, inhabited by fifteen hundred priests, and in it was living the chief financial agent of the Lama Government, who was married to the niece of the old nun who once lived with me in the Minister’s residence. As he was an old and intimate friend of mine, I ventured to call upon him and was received with great joy. His residence, Serchok, was a large building on the outskirts of the grounds of the great Temple, and my friend was very urgent that I should spend some ten or twenty days with him. This I declined, on the ground that I was going on a pilgrimage; but as I was anxious to see the Temple, and as moreover it was absolutely necessary to provide oneself with all necessaries of life before attempting the trip across the mountains, I determined to stay for one or two days at least.

The temple is very large, and the tower is the largest in Tibet. The number of priests is comparatively small, but the monastery is about one-half the size of the Sera convent. Priests of the New Sect predominate, but those of the Old Sect are allowed to reside there, as are also the Sakya and Karma priests. I was shown a great number of sacred articles preserved in the Temple, and then returned to my friend’s residence.

Gyangtze is a good emporium for trade. A large market is held every morning outside the gate of the great temple, and people flock in from the whole neighborhood to buy and sell. There are many shops, stalls, and booths in which goods of all kinds are exposed for sale—vegetables, meat, flower, milk, butter, cotton and articles to tempt the fancy of the buyers. Also wool and yak’s tails, on their road from the table-lands of the north-west to India, are brought here in transit, and are distributed among the merchants who come so far to obtain them.

After stopping one night in the temple, we started on June 1st, 1902, at five o’clock. By the kindness of my host, a horse was lent to me for five days, and so I passed through the town of Gyangtze, crossed the river Tsangchu, and gradually proceeded southward to the place where the nunnery of Nening stands. I was told that in this nunnery there was a living goddess called Dolma in Tibetan, only seven years of age. I did not however see her. After taking dinner at the house opposite the temple, we hurried on for about twenty-five miles, and came to the native village of my luggage-carrier Tenba. That night we lodged in a small temple where his brother was living, and my man and he had a good carouse that night.

“Your master’s complexion is unusually fair,” said his brother, “and differs little from that of Mongolians. Is he not a European?”

“No, no,” said my servant, eagerly trying to dispel his brother’s suspicion, “he is an honorable physician in Sera.”

“I know the physician in Sera,” answered his brother, entirely forgetting that I was in the next room; “but he is a doubtful sort of man, one that brings the dead back to life. No man can do such things unless he is a European. Be careful, my good brother, that you come to no harm.”

“That is not so,” pleaded the other emphatically, relating what he had heard from the owner of Thien-ho-thang, “he is a Chinaman, an intimate friend of the owner of Thien-ho-thang.”

I pretended not to have heard the last night’s talk between the brothers, and early the next morning I left the house, and as we were at the point of departure the brother whispered something in my man’s ear. Walking toward the mountain south of us for about seven miles, we came to the post-station of Kangma. While we were resting, twelve or thirteen pack-horses led by a Chinaman, two of them with my baggage, came towards us in great haste. It seemed to me that the Chinese did not know the baggage was mine, and I was glad to see that it was on the way to Darjeeling.

The sight of my baggage may have increased Tenba’s suspicion. When it was first packed in Thien-ho-thang, he thought it was going to be left in the care of the drug-store, but now, to his surprise, he found it was going off somewhere. He shut his mouth, hung his head thoughtfully, and followed after me for a long while, till at last he suddenly broke the silence.