The completion of the Lu Ting bridge seems to have had a considerable moral effect on the border tribes, for the Chih contains the names of dozens of t'u ssŭ (tribal chiefs) who immediately afterwards submitted to Chinese overlordship and consented to pay tribute. The more remote chiefs came in later, but most of those in the neighbourhood of the road to Tachienlu and the Ta Tu River hastened to become vassals of China during the five first years of the eighteenth century. The vassalage consisted—and for the most part still consists—merely in the payment of a small annual tribute. But the chiefs of the Greater and the Smaller Chin Ch'uan—the country that includes the valley of the Ta Tu and its branches above Wa Ssŭ Kou—resisted Chinese encroachments for many years in a most vigorous and courageous manner, and it was not till the reign of Ch'ien Lung, towards the end of the century, that the resistance of the last Chin Ch'uan roitelet was finally quelled—with the usual accompaniments of slaughter and devastation. Even as it was, the Chinese owed their ultimate success more to the assistance rendered them by other tribal chiefs—of whom the Ming Chêng Ssŭ or King of Chala was the most important—than to their own military skill. The war is well described—though from an exclusively Chinese standpoint—in the Shêng Wu Chi (聖武記).
NOTE 20 ([p. 129])
TACHIENLU
The Chinese characters (see [Itinerary]) used for the name Tachienlu are three separate words signifying strike, arrow, forge. These characters were originally chosen merely to represent the sound of the Tibetan name Tar-rTse-Mto or Dartsendo (derived from the names of the streams that meet there), but Chinese archæologists contrived to forget this and insisted upon finding an interpretation of the word that would suit the meaning of the three Chinese characters. Accordingly they constructed an ingenious legend to the effect that the famous Chu-ko Liang—always as useful in literary as he used to be in military emergencies—came to Tachienlu in the third century of our era, and ordered his lieutenant, Kuo Ta, to forge arrow-heads there for the imperial army. The actual forge is said to have been in a cave on a hill at a short distance to the north-east of the city. The proof of the absolute truth of this story consists in the incontrovertible fact that the hill in question is called the Kuo Ta hill to this day, and there is a cave in it. The story is further embellished by the statement that when the forge was in use a blue-black ram ran round the hill and frightened away the barbarians (i jên) so that the good work could proceed without interruption.
An ancient name of the Tachienlu district is said to have been Mao Niu Kuo—the Land of Yaks.
THE KING OF CHALA
NOTE 21 ([p. 129])
SINO-TIBETAN TRADE
Chinese accounts of Tachienlu as a trading centre may be found in the Hsi Tsang T'u K'ao, the Tachienlu T'ing Chih and the more easily accessible Shêng Wu Chi. In the fifth volume of the last-named work the town is aptly described as being (from the commercial point of view) the hub of a wheel—the centre at which all the spokes meet.