The only three official buildings of any importance in Tachienlu are the residences or yamêns of the king, the prefect or chün liang fu and a Chinese colonel (hsieh-t'ai). Of these by far the largest is the king's. I visited him a day or two after my arrival, and was received very cordially. He is a man of about forty years of age, of rather delicate appearance, but active and vivacious. He speaks Chinese (with a strong Ssuch'uan accent) in addition to his own language, and has adopted Chinese dress. His position in Tachienlu cannot be a very pleasant one, owing to the peculiar nature of his relations with the Chinese Government. The prefect appears to regard him as a kind of enlightened savage, and apparently considers that the most effective method of demonstrating the superiority of the suzerain power is to treat the vassal with the least respect possible. The Chinese regard all Tibetans much as they used to regard Europeans—as barbarians outside the pale of true civilisation. I heard it stated that if a Chinese in Tachienlu kills a Tibetan he is merely mulcted in two packets of tea, but that if a Tibetan kills a Chinese the lives of three Tibetans must pay the forfeit; I cannot, however, vouch for the truth of this. The king would be glad to remove the centre of his government to another part of his territories and leave Tachienlu to the absolute control of China; but this he is not allowed to do. A few years ago a lama versed in magic spells prophesied to the king that if he spent any one of the next three consecutive New Year seasons in Tachienlu great misfortunes would fall upon him, but that if he spent them elsewhere all would be well. The king, who like all Tibetans is prone to superstition, lent a willing ear to the wisdom of the lama, and spent the last and first months of the next two years in one of his mountain retreats. When the third New Year season came round the frontier war had commenced, and the king's presence was urgently necessary in Tachienlu in connection with the transport arrangements; but his superstitious dread of unknown calamities again decided him to retire to the mountains. He came back in due course to find that he was in trouble.
"SWORN BROTHERS"
The ula arrangements had suffered by his absence, and the Chinese officials held him to blame. Since then he has been zealously endeavouring to regain the confidence of his Chinese masters, with only partial success. His friendly intercourse with the few Europeans he has met is regarded somewhat suspiciously by the Chinese as well as by the lamas; and it is possible that when the days of trial and tribulation come to him he will look—I fear he will look in vain—to his European friends for protection and support. With two or three of his Protestant missionary friends he has actually entered into "sworn brotherhood,"[168] an old Chinese custom whereby close friends enter into a mutual compact which creates between them a kind of fictitious relationship. This may explain a not quite accurate passage which occurs in Waddell's recent book, Lhasa and its Mysteries.[169] He says that "the Tibetan chief of Dartsendo (Tachienlu), the king of 'Chala,' is especially well-disposed towards foreigners; and when the Dalai Lama threatened to punish him on this account, he is reported to have become 'sworn brothers' with the Protestant Christian Tibetans." Colonel Waddell adds that the king of Chala was said to be building forts in his country, and could put ten thousand fighting men in the field; but I know no reason for supposing that the king's intentions are other than entirely pacific.
A few weeks' residence in Tachienlu served to open my eyes to the fact that scandal and gossip are not confined to Western societies. Even the Tibetan is sufficiently civilised to take an intelligent interest in his neighbour's sins. One story which caused much hilarity among the Smart Set of Tachienlu concerned the wife of a certain court official. A distinguished person of royal lineage (not the king) is a man who is known to be of an amorous disposition, and has been the hero of several pathetic romances. He gazed upon the court official's lady and saw that she was fair. Steps were immediately taken to send the husband on a mission to a far country, he having been assured that his domestic interests would be carefully protected in his absence. The lady, reluctantly or otherwise, speedily bestowed her caresses on her exalted lover. For some time all went well; but, unlike the less fortunate Uriah in the Biblical story, the official returned to his family in safety, discovered the intrigue, and promptly repudiated his lady. The tragedy of the situation consists in the fact that she was also repudiated by her "royal" lover, his fickle affections having meanwhile found another object. The lady subsequently consoled herself by marrying a Chinese merchant, and is said to be still carrying on a monotonous existence within the curtained recesses of that gentleman's private house. The episode is one which might perhaps be commended to Mr Stephen Phillips for dramatic treatment.
TACHIENLU GOSSIP
Court intrigues have given rise to incidents more sombre than this. The last king, elder brother of the present one, is said to have had the date of his death foretold to him by a certain lama. When the date was close at hand, the king took ill and died, after two days' illness, exactly on the date prophesied. For some dark reason the lama—who should probably have been tried for murder—succeeded in acquiring such potent influence over the dead man's successor, the present king, that he persuaded his Majesty to adopt his daughter. Quite apart from the fact that lamas have no right to possess daughters at all, it does not seem to be quite clear what the lama stood to gain by this proceeding. The king was at that time childless, but he has since acquired a daughter of his own. I saw both the lama's child and the king's during a visit to the Summer Palace in the mountains, and was astonished to find that the lama's daughter—a little girl of eight—was being brought up as a boy, and was attired in boy's clothes. There was some mystery connected with the whole affair which I failed to fathom. As may be gathered from stories of this kind, the lamas do not enjoy a good reputation. Their private morals are not above reproach, and they are too fond of meddling in mundane affairs; but they do not wield the great political power of which in other Tibetan states the lamas have gradually possessed themselves.
The heir to the "kingdom" is the king's younger brother, a very amiable man whose love of outdoor sports would endear him to the heart of many an Englishman. He does not meddle with questions of la haute politique, and loves to spend his time in the delightful mountain residence to which I have just referred as the Summer Palace, a place known in Chinese as the Yü Lin Kung. I was invited to spend a few days there as the king's guest, and was received and most hospitably entertained by his brother. It is a large, rambling building, beautifully situated in a lonely spot among the mountains about 8 miles from Tachienlu. One of the greatest attractions of this place is a hot sulphur spring, the water from which is made to flow into a capacious tiled bath. The Tibetans are said to be an unclean race—and I will not gainsay it—but they delight in hot water when they can get it. The neighbouring forests are strictly preserved for sporting purposes, and afford splendid cover for pheasants and other game. Our "bag" was an insignificant one; but I was filled with admiration for the zeal of the king's brother, who was armed only with an old-fashioned muzzle-loading weapon of venerable appearance and doubtful efficiency. He deserved success, if he failed to command it. Behind the palace are some of the tombs of the royal family. They are surrounded by clusters of prayer-flags—strips of white cloth tied to the top of sticks or slender poles and bearing the usual prayer formulas. Close by is a rivulet in which there is a large prayer-wheel: a large wooden cylinder, appropriately inscribed, placed perpendicularly in a strong framework of timber. Through the cylinder runs a fixed wooden pin, and the whole structure is so arranged that the lower end of the cylinder is always in the water. The flow of the stream causes it to revolve unceasingly, and each revolution is supposed to be equivalent to a single utterance of the words, om mane padme hom. The prayer-flags and prayer-wheels may thus be regarded as continually engaged in saying masses for the souls of the dead princes. In my subsequent travels through the Tibetan states I found wheels and flags of the same kind in great abundance; and they are, of course, well known to all who have travelled anywhere in Tibet. As a rule, a cluster of flags is all that marks a Tibetan graveyard, especially in places where cremation is the general method of disposing of the dead. Prayer-wheels may be found wherever there is flowing water; and I observed that the Tibetans—who have not as much objection as the Chinese to imbibing cold water—would often stop to drink just below a prayer-wheel, as if under the impression that the water, which had performed the pious act of turning the wheel, had acquired thereby some mysterious sanctity. In connection with this I may mention that holy water is not a monopoly of Roman Catholic countries, for it is quite commonly used for ritualistic purposes in lama temples. As every reader knows, this is not the only respect in which there are resemblances or coincidences—sometimes startling enough—between the ceremonial usages of lamaism and Catholicism.
VIEW FROM THE "SUMMER PALACE" NEAR TACHIENLU.