Three Years in Tibet

by Ekai Kawaguchi

GIRL WEEPING AT BEING SUDDENLY COMMANDED TO MARRY.

A girl who is unaware of this artifice will wash and scrub her face and body as her parents bid her, and make herself as smart as they please. It is to be noted that, as a general custom in Tibet, ordinary people never wash their faces or bodies at all, though the nobles do so every morning just after leaving their beds. The manner in which they wash their faces is almost more like a joke. When a nobleman gets up in the morning, a maid or attendant will bring him a ladleful of warm water which he first takes in the palms of his hands and then puts into his mouth. After holding it in there for a while he spits it back into his palms little by little and then washes his face with it. When the water in the mouth is all gone, he will spit several times on to his palms and again rub his face. It is true that basins are used by some Tibetans: the above is however the normal way.

To return, the girl, knowing nothing about the trick in store for her and expecting to go out for amusement, is cheerful and gay, busily engaged in her toilet, and adorning her hair with her old comb and pins, when her parents come to her with a new comb, pins and other toilet articles (all of which have been secretly presented by the groom’s parents through the middleman) and say to her: “Your pins and comb are too old, my dear, we have some new ones for you; here they are; and a good bottle of hair-oil too. You must dress yourself up as nicely as possible,” and so on. Then when at last the toilet is complete, the parents tell her for the first time that an engagement has already been made with so and so, whom she has to marry that day. This is the general custom not only in Lhasa, but also in Shigatze and other towns.

But, as I have already said, a sagacious girl who can see through her parents’ artifices is not generally willing to dress herself up for the occasion, but will be found weeping at her unforeseen calamities and sets herself to complaining in this strain “Oh! dear me! I don’t want to leave my home. It is not fair of father and mother to marry me off to a person whom I shall probably not like. How can I get out of it?” And then she becomes very depressed, and devotes absolutely no attention to her hair-dressing. In this case, however, the girl’s friends, who are there to help in the preparations for her wedding, try to cheer her up and encourage her to obey her parents, and even help her to adorn and dress herself.

After all these preparations are over, the bride’s parents have to give a series of farewell banquets for their daughter, which will last two weeks, or even more sometimes, if their family is rich or high in social rank, but two or three days only in the case of the poor. During these festivities, the relatives and acquaintances of her parents visit the family with presents of money, food, or clothes, to congratulate them on their daughter’s happy wedding, the value of the presents differing according to the visitor’s wealth as well as their intimacy with the family. These visitors are cordially entertained with Tibetan tea and cold spirits, which they drink to excess, visitors and host alike enjoying the good things provided, and having a regular good time or what they call a chachang pemma, the happiest state in the world.

While drinking, they eat nothing at all; but at the afternoon meal they take some meat and wheat-cakes. The meat they eat is generally the flesh of the yak, or that of goats or sheep; pork is sometimes used in Lhasa, but beef is very rare throughout the country, and is especially rare in the case of wedding feasts. Their cooking and bill of fare are very simple: three dishes of meat, raw, dried and boiled (roast meat is never seen at a wedding). The boiled meat is cooked in oil and salt, or sometimes in salt and water and is brought in first, together with tsu, a concoction of cheese, butter and sugar. When these are all gone, a big dish of boiled rice mixed with butter, sugar, raisins and Chinese persimmons is served. In the evening, again, the guests are entertained to a dinner in which a sort of vermicelli, made of wheat-flour and eggs, or pure Chinese cookery is set before the guests. In this manner they have three or four meals a day; and besides these, tea and intoxicants are constantly served during the intervals between the meals. While eating and drinking the guests are regaled with pleasant talk, and when the feasts begin to flag they revive the fun by singing and dancing. It is very interesting to see men and women like the moving beads of a rosary, dancing and jumping promiscuously round and round the circles. They dance in a regular and systematic manner, each keeping step with the music as carefully as if he were a soldier at drill, and yet the regularity and solemnity of the dance does not in least interfere with the keenness and zest of their enjoyment. The instrument used in their dance music is called damnyan, and is often used in accompanying singing as well as dancing.

Towards the close of the festive time (I may observe that it is only the poorest folk that dispense with the prenuptial feasts), usually on the eve of the wedding, the parents of the bridegroom send their representative and the middleman, with a number of attendants, to the bride’s home to receive the bride. They bring with them a present of some money as nurin or ‘breast money’ for the bride’s parents, who are obliged to seem a little backward about taking it, etiquette demanding that they should require a good deal of coaxing before accepting such a present. The nurin may vary in amount from a couple of dollars to two hundred or even five hundred dollars. Some parents (not many) refuse it absolutely, saying that the girl being their beloved daughter, it is not their expectation or their desire to receive any nurin, but that they “only hope heartily that their daughter will be loved by and enjoy a happy life among the family to which she is given in marriage.”

Then the middleman gives the bride the dress, belt, Chinese shoes and all other articles necessary for a bride during the wedding ceremony, these too being presented by the groom’s parents, and these the bride cannot refuse; she must wear them even though they do not suit her. In addition to these gifts the bride generally receives a precious gem, such as is usually worn by a woman of Lhasa on the middle of her forehead. This gem is said to be a sign of a woman’s being married, though in Lhasa there seems to exist no strict discrimination in the matter, for unmarried women in that city often wear it as a mere ornament. In Shigatze and the neighboring provinces, however, the use of the gem is strictly restricted, as a matter of fact, exclusively to married women, who wear it high up at the back of the head, so that they can be easily distinguished from single females. In the case of a divorce, a husband has simply to pluck off the gem from his wife’s head without the trouble of going to court, or asking the authorities to alter the census. This single act on the part of the husband properly and perfectly certifies and legalises the divorce.

Besides the things necessary for a bride to wear during the ceremony which the bridegroom’s parents have to provide, many valuable ornaments, a fringe, neck-rings, ear-rings, finger-rings, ornamented armlets and breast-jewels, are given by the bride’s own parents, for what the groom’s parents send the bride-elect is confined to the dress, belt, under-wear and shoes, to be worn on the occasion of the wedding ceremony.