But the Tibetans were apparently thoroughly nervous about the British, and prejudiced against us on account of our subjugation of India. They were much impressed by the moderation of our rule, by the freedom we gave, and by the hospitals and schools. Tibetans in Darjiling who had these advantages, and who were given small Government posts, were much attached to our rule. And Queen Victoria was believed to be an incarnation of the goddess of the Jo-khang Temple. All this, says Kawaguchi, they quite acknowledged, but when they considered that these same Englishmen annexed other people’s lands to their own dominions, their favourable opinion received a shock, and they explained this to themselves by supposing that "there must be two different kinds of Englishmen in India—one benevolent and godly, and the other infernal and quite wicked."
The Dalai Lama, who, though very anxious to clear away all corruption from the Buddhism of Tibet, was “richer in thoughts political than religious,” feared the British, and was always thinking how to keep us out of Tibet. The reason why he, “who was at first as timid as a hare towards England, should become suddenly as bold as a lion,” was that he had a secret treaty with Russia, which he believed to be the only country in the world strong enough to thwart England. Kawaguchi then proceeds to relate how Dorjieff virtually monopolized the confidence of the young Lama, how he brought gold and curios from Russia and liberal donations to all the monasteries, and even a Bishop’s robe from the Czar for the Dalai Lama. He tells how Dorjieff wrote a pamphlet showing that the Czar was an incarnation of one of the founders of Lamaism, and how the Tibetans came to believe that the Czar would sooner or later subdue the whole world and found a gigantic Buddhist Empire. He mentions, too, how one day after Dorjieff’s return he saw a caravan of 200 camels, and that he was told they conveyed rifles and bullets, and that 300 camel-loads had already arrived, and the Tibetans were then elated, and said that “now for the first time Tibet was sufficiently armed to resist any attack which England might make, and could defiantly reject any improper request.”
These rifles were of American manufacture, and, I believe through neglect, got so completely out of order that the Tibetans were only able to use very few against us. We have the assurance of the Russian Government, too, that no agreement was made with Tibet. But these observations of the Japanese form a remarkable corroboration of the reports we had heard as to the mischief done by Dorjieff’s proceedings.
Summarizing the characteristics of the Tibetans, we may say, then, that while they are affable outwardly and crafty within, as most dependent people have to be; while they are dirty and lazy; and while their religion is degraded, and they show no signs of either intellectual or spiritual progress, yet at heart they are not an unkindly or unsociable people, and they have undoubtedly strong religious feelings. Immorality is not entirely unchecked. The Lama who married a nun had his official career blighted. Ministers have been known to refuse their salaries as they had enough to live on without. There is often much affection and staunch friendship among the Tibetans. And there are in them latent potentialities for good, which only await the right touch to bring them into being.
Of the attitude of the Chinese to the Tibetans I took particular note, for I was myself a Resident in an Indian Native State, and I was interested in observing the attitude of a Chinese Resident in a Native State of the Chinese Empire. One point which immediately struck me about it was its tone of high-handedness. A century ago Manning had remarked how “the haughty Mandarins were somewhat deficient in respect,” and I noted the same thing. Every British Resident gives a chair to an Indian gentleman who comes to visit him, but I found that the Chinese Resident did not give a chair to even the Regent. He, Councillors, Members of the National Assembly, Abbots of the great monasteries—all had to sit on cushions on the ground, while the Resident and his Chinese staff sat on chairs. In his reception and dismissal of them he preserved an equally high tone of superiority. He did not rise from his chair to receive them, as any British Resident would rise to welcome Indian gentlemen or high officials; he merely acknowledged their salutation on entrance with a barely noticeable inclination of his head. And, in dismissing them, he simply said over his shoulder to his interpreter, “Tell them to go.” Our countrymen are often accused, and sometimes with justice, of being too high-handed with Asiatics, but we are not so high-handed with Asiatics as Asiatics are with one another.
In another respect the Chinese are very different from us in their dealings with a feudatory State. Hardly one of the Chinese officials we met in Tibet could speak a word of Tibetan. Except that they married Tibetan wives for the time that they were actually serving in Tibet, they troubled themselves little about the people. They remained quite aloof, took small interest in them, and certainly never worried themselves, as a British Resident would, to improve their lot in some way. The Chinese, both here and in Chinese Turkestan, where I had also observed them, preserved great dignity, were very punctilious in ceremonial, were always, so to speak, in full-dress uniform, and they were ever highly respectful to one another. But the Tibetans were “barbarians” in their eyes, were treated with disdainful contempt, and the Chinese officials thought of little else but how soon they could get back to their own civilized country.
The Tibetans naturally resented this, and hated the Chinese, but they were also greatly awed and brow-beaten by them; and I think, too, that the mere fact of seeing more civilized men than themselves in their midst, and of being attached to a great Empire, with an all-powerful Court in the background, has in itself had much to do with lifting the Tibetans out of barbarism. The aboriginal Tibetans were a savage and warlike race, who constantly invaded China. They have received both their civilization and their religion from China, for Buddhism, as I have said, reached them, not directly from India, but through a Tibetan King’s Chinese wife, the daughter of a Chinese Emperor. Books and relics came from India, but it was the personal influence of the Chinese wife which seems to have had the greatest practical effect in establishing Buddhism.
The Chinese have, too, on occasions done great service to the Tibetans in repelling invaders, and the march of the Chinese general, over many lofty passes, to expel the Gurkha invasion in 1792 was a military feat of which any nation in the world might be proud. Chinese prestige in Tibet had, according to Kawaguchi, who lived in Lhasa for three years, dwindled since the Chino-Japanese War; and we had practical proofs even before then that their influence was not as effective as a suzerain’s should be. But the memory of the prodigious efforts which China does every now and then make always inspires a certain awe in the Tibetans, and they never feel quite sure when another may not be made.
The Chinese, then, undoubtedly impress the Tibetans, but I am bigoted enough to think that their methods are not practically so successful as our own. Tibet is a protected Chinese State; Kashmir is a protected Indian State. In Tibet the Chinese Resident has, to support him, several hundreds of Chinese soldiers, and in the present year 2,000. In Kashmir the British Resident has not even a personal guard of British soldiers or even of British-Indian soldiers. In Tibet the Chinese are replacing the Tibetan by Chinese police; in Kashmir all the police are of the Kashmir State. Kashmir is 80,500 square miles in extent, and contains nearly as many inhabitants as Tibet, and it borders on Tibet, Turkestan, and through its feudatories on Afghan territory, while Russian territory is only twelve miles distant. But the whole of this is controlled and the bordering tribes are kept in order entirely through Kashmir State troops. British officers are employed, but not a single British or British-Indian soldier or policeman. Yet it is unthinkable that Kashmir troops should, against the wishes and orders of the British Government, invade the territory of a neighbouring State, as Tibetan troops, against the wishes and orders of the Chinese Government, invaded Sikkim in 1886. And it is inconceivable that the Kashmir State should repudiate and refuse to fulfil a Treaty concluded on their behalf by the British Government, as the Tibetans repudiated and refused to fulfil the Treaty made on their behalf by the Chinese in 1890. By all the logic of the case the Chinese, as fellow-Asiatics and as co-religionists of the Tibetans, should have much greater influence in Tibet than we as aliens, with a different religion, have in Kashmir. Yet the contrary is most emphatically the case.