The Lamaist Church has, in addition to the monthly festivals, four great annual ceremonies, and the greatest is the New Year feast, the Losar, which is celebrated in remembrance of the Sakya-muni, Buddha’s victory over the six heresies, the victory of the true religion over infidelity. It is always held at the beginning of February, and is therefore a festival of spring and light, in which the children of Buddha welcome the victory of the lengthening days over the darkness of winter, the passing away of the cold weather, the awakening of life and of the sprouting seeds after the winter sleep, and the approach of spring, when mild breezes, heralds of a warmer, brighter season, play with the streamers on all the temple roofs. The Losar is therefore an extraordinarily popular feast, which for quite fifteen days draws the labourer from his work, the herdsman from his yaks, and the merchant from his counter; a season of joy and pleasure, of feasting and dancing; a time for paying and receiving visits, and of giving and receiving presents; when the houses and temples are swept and garnished, and the best clothes and ornaments are taken out of the trunks; when friends gather to drink together in their apartments, and then in humble meditation squash their noses against the floor before the images in the dark temple halls; when broad anecdotes and strange stories of robbers are related to visitors from a distance, frequently interrupted by the hum of the prayer mills and the eternal truth “Om mani padme hum.”
All are admitted to the great temple festivals: no distinction is made between clergy and laity, monks and nomads, rich and poor, men and women, greybeards and children. A begging woman clothed in rags is seen beside a duchess loaded with precious stones. The Losar is a feast of the whole people, a carnival of Lamaism, like the Lupercalia and Saturnalia in ancient Rome.
It was my good fortune to arrive just in time for the greatest annual festival of Lamaism, and to be present at its celebration in the monastery town of Tashi-lunpo. At half-past ten appeared Tsaktserkan, a young chamberlain from the vatican, in a very elegant yellow robe of silk and a hat like an upturned dish, with a hanging tassel, and announced that he had come from His Holiness to fetch me to the festival, and that he was commissioned by the lama Lobsang Tsering to attend on me during my sojourn in Shigatse. He requested me to put on the finest clothes I had with me, for I should sit where I could be seen during the whole time from the seat of the Grand Lama. At the bottom of my box I had an old dress coat, several dress shirts, and patent leather shoes, which I had brought especially for the benefit of the Tashi Lama, and when Robert had rummaged out my shaving implements from another box, I assumed the appearance of a European gentleman among the bare mountains of Tibet. But I could not compare in gorgeousness with my interpreter Muhamed Isa, for his gold-embroidered turban surpassed everything. Of the rest only Robert, Tsering, Rabsang, and Namgyal were allowed to accompany me.
We mount the new horses from the Ngangtse-tso and ride to the monastery, a distance of twelve minutes. We leave on the right the Shigatse-dzong, which stands picturesquely on its hill in the sunshine, and reminds me of the palace at Leh. Our way passes across an open place, by detached houses and courtyards, fields, pools, and ditches; the crowd increases, the road becomes narrower; people stream in dense masses to the monastery—townsmen and nomads, pilgrims from distant lands and dirty ragged beggars; and old women sit at every corner offering with loud voice sweetmeats and cakes for sale. Boys, dogs, and Chinamen are all mingled together as in a huge ant-heap. But Tsaktserkan and his marshals open a way for us and we ride up the lane, beside which rows of great upright prayer mills are enclosed in white-washed masonry. A little higher the way becomes a proper street with tall white houses containing the cells of the monks, and we dismount at one of the chief entrances, a large gateway. High above us rises a brick-red temple building, the Tsogla-kang, and above all shines the white façade of the Labrang with a black frieze on the top and with awnings before its windows. We admire the imposing singular architecture, visible in all its lines and details and making an impression of uniformity and solidity. It is, perhaps, owing to my affection for Tibet that everything in this wonderful land is bewitching and magnificent in my eyes.
Now we mount up to the holy dwellings; the steep, corridor-like passages between the mysterious walls are paved with flagstones, varying in form and dimensions, but all smooth and bright as metal, though very uneven and worn, for they have been trodden for centuries by the feet of innumerable pilgrims and the soles of hurrying monks. Sometimes the crowding in this tightly packed stream of pilgrims is very uncomfortable, and in the lanes there is a musty odour of human beings. We mount higher and higher, go along winding passages, turn frequently at right angles left or right, pass through a gateway roofed over and with a massive threshold, and follow passages and corridors, dimly lighted, dark or pitch-dark, crowded with lamas in red togas, who have one or both arms bare, closely cropped hair, and no covering on their heads. They welcome us with kindly good-tempered smiles, and then move aside to let us pass. Where treacherous steps lurk in the darkness, I feel a strong arm ready to support me in case I stumble; it is some attentive lama at my elbow.
Now it becomes lighter in the monastery walks, and the profiles of the monks stand out black against the light. We enter a gallery with massive wooden pillars, and we take our places in a balcony shut off from the gallery by curtains of yak’s wool with horizontal white stripes at the bottom. An arm-chair of European form was placed for me, and I needed it; for this day’s spectacle, the grandest of the whole New Year festival, lasted three hours. Here we sat as on the second tier of an open-air theatre, and had an excellent view of the scene of action, like a rectangular market-place, and surrounded by open platforms or terraces supported by colonnades of wooden pillars. The whole reminded me of a vast roofless auditorium. In the centre of the paved court rose a tall mast which had suffered severely from the wind, and had been fissured by many summers and the frosts of the succeeding winters, and from its top long flags hung down to the ground. Immediately below our balcony ran the uppermost terrace, and beyond its edge we looked down over the whole courtyard where the religious ceremony was to take place, and over the galleries opposite and at the sides, one storey above the court below (Illustration 108).
| 111, 112. The Profanum Vulgus at the New Year Festival in Shigatse. |
Everywhere, on all the balconies and roofs, on all the projections and terraces, even right up under the gilded roofs curved in the Chinese style of the mortuary chapels, where departed Grand Lamas sleep, the people swarmed. From our elevated point of vantage we looked down on a sea of heads, a conglomeration of human beings, a mosaic of vivid glaring colours, an exhibition of national costumes, among which the Tibetan dress was certainly the most conspicuous, but where the eye lighted on figures hailing from Bhotan and Sikkim, Nepal and Ladak, while Chinese merchants, or soldiers and pilgrims from the grassy steppes of Mongolia, were easily distinguishable. An old lama of high rank, who had shown us to our places, informed us that there were more than 6000 spectators present, and this estimate was below rather than in excess of the truth. Right in front of the highest platform opposite us sits the Consul of Nepal, a young lieutenant in a round black cap with a gold band but no peak. He blows rings from his cigarette, and is the only one guilty of such a desecration of the holy place. Behind him sit a number of other Nepalese and representatives of other Himalayan countries attracted hither by business affairs or religious zeal. To the left of them are long rows of men in dresses entirely of red or of yellow, long kaftans with coloured girdles and sashes round the waist, and mushroom-shaped hats, also red or yellow, which have the circumference of a parasol and are fastened with a string under the chin; they are officials of different ranks, are either the city fathers, or are attached to the civil court of the Lama, or to the administrative bodies of the province Chang. On the gallery below them sit their wives and other ladies of rank, quite buried under the most varied and extraordinary adornments: their dresses are red, green, and yellow; they wear necklaces and silver pendants, silver cases inlaid with turquoise, and at the back of the neck tall white aureoles, thickly set with jewels and other ornaments. Their coiffures are of various forms: some have a parting in the middle, and hair, like polished ebony, puffed up at the sides; others have the hair plaited in a number of thin switches, which are fixed up and decorated with beads, etc. There are seated women from Pari and Kamba-dzong, from Ngari-khorsum in the west and Kham in the east, and from the black tents on the shores of Tengri-nor. They remind me of Leksand, Mora, and Vingåker, for there is life and colour in these female groups. Beauty, according to European ideas, will be sought in vain, but many seem agreeable and merry; they are healthy, strongly and symmetrically built, and evidently are much pleased with their pretty dresses. But if their relationship to the Venus de Milo is very remote, they are at any rate women; they talk and chatter, nibble dried peaches and sweets, blow their noses with their fingers, and throw glances at their neighbours which betray their firm conviction that they have outstripped their sisters in the elegance of their attire. How very different these ladies are to the women we have seen in Chang-tang! They do not, indeed, wash themselves every day, but to-day they have washed their faces for the festival, and one is astonished to see so many fair complexions—quite as fair as with us, with scarcely a tinge of yellow, and often with a colour on the cheeks as fresh as an apple.
On the platform under our balcony there are no dignitaries: there the people sit sociably together, there the profanum vulgus has its place; there sit country mothers hushing their crying children, and there stand ragged beggars leaning on their sticks, or sit on the ground with their backs against the wall, while they hum their usual begging songs, which are lost in the confusion of voices. Many have brought small cushions, or folded clothes to make a comfortable seat. In some groups tea is drunk out of wooden cups, in others acquaintances meet and lay their heads alternately in one another’s laps. Fresh spectators are constantly coming on to the platforms, and the crush becomes dreadful. The railing is low, so as not to hide the view of the scene below. The last-comers have to look for a place against the house wall, and stand that they may see over the heads of those seated before them. Some places right up under the roofs seem rather dangerous, but the people behave well and with great self-control; there is no jostling, no fighting for places, no one falls over the low balustrades, but the greatest harmony and the most perfect order prevail everywhere (Illustrations 111, 112).
The weather was all that could be desired for an al fresco festival. What an unpleasant odour must rise from the crowds of human beings when it rains during a festival in late summer! Towards the end a slight wind arose, causing the flags which hung down from the galleries to unfold and blow out. To-day every one was in a holiday mood, and little attention was paid to us, though we sat in the full sunlight in a position where we could be seen from all sides. Occasionally some one turned towards us and made a remark which caused merriment among the others.