I must by this time have tried the patience of my readers with my personal recollections of the monastery of Tashi-lunpo. I have unintentionally tarried too long with the fraternity of the yellow-caps, and quite forgotten events awaiting our attention elsewhere. I might have remembered that temples and monks’ cells may not have the same interest for others as they have for myself, but the remembrance of this period is particularly dear to me, for I was treated with greater friendliness and hospitality in Tashi-lunpo than in any town of Central Asia. We came from the wastes of Tibet to the greatest festival of the year, from solitude into the religious metropolis swarming with thousands of pilgrims, from poverty and want to abundance of everything we wanted, and the howling of wolves and storms gave place to hymns and fanfares from temple roofs glittering with gold. The balls in Simla and the desolate mountains of Tibet were strange contrasts, but still greater the solitude of the mountain wilderness and the holy town, which we entered in the garb of far-travelled pilgrims, and where we were hospitably invited to look about us and take part in all that was going on.
It is now time to say farewell to Tashi-lunpo, its mystic gloom and its far-sounding trumpet blasts. I do so with the feeling that I have given a very imperfect and fragmentary description of it. It was not part of my plan to thoroughly investigate the cloister town, but on the contrary it was my desire to return as early as possible to the parts of Tibet where I might expect to make great geographical discoveries. Circumstances, however, which I shall hereafter refer to in a few words, compelled us to postpone our departure from day to day. As we were always looking forward to making a start, our visits to the monastery were curtailed. Moreover, I wished, if possible, to avoid exciting suspicion. Tashi-lunpo had on two occasions, more than 100 years ago indeed, been pillaged by Gurkhas from Nepal. The English had quite recently made a military expedition to Lhasa. Many monks disapproved of my daily visits, and regarded it as unseemly that a European, of whose exact intentions nothing was known, should go about freely, sketch the gods, see all the treasures of gold and precious stones, and make an inventory. And it was known that the dominant race in Tibet, the Chinese, were displeased at my coming hither, and that I had really no right to sojourn in the forbidden land. If, then, I wished to accomplish more, I must exercise the greatest caution in all my proceedings.
A few words on funeral customs before we take leave of Tashi-lunpo.
South-west of Tashi-lunpo lies a small village, Gompa-sarpa or the New Monastery, where, according to tradition, a temple formerly stood which was plundered by the Dzungarians. Here is now the cemetery of Shigatse and of the monastery, the Golgotha where the bodies of monks and laymen are abandoned to corruption in the same fashion.
When the soul of a lama grows weary of the earthly frame in which it has spent its human life, and the lama himself, after living perhaps fifty years in his dark cloister cell, perceives that the lamp of life is going out for want of oil, some brethren gather round his sick-bed, recite prayers, or intercede with the gods set up in his cell, whose prototypes in Nirvana or in the kingdom of the dead have something to do with death and the transmigration of souls. As soon as life is extinct, special prayers for the dead are recited to facilitate the severance of the soul from the body, and console it during its first steps on the dark road beyond the bounds of this life. The corpse of a lama lies in his cell for three days, that of a layman as long as five days, that there may be sufficient time for all the funeral rites and services. Rich people retain the corpse longer in the house, which is certainly more expensive, but allows more time for prayers which will benefit the deceased. Monks fix the date of interment and the moment when the soul is actually freed from its earthly fetters and soars up in search of a new habitation.
The dead lama in a new costume of the ordinary cut and style is wrapped in a piece of cloth and is carried away by one or two of his colleagues; a layman is borne on a bier by the corpse-bearers. These are called Lagbas, and form a despised caste of fifty persons, who live apart in fifteen small miserable cabins in the village Gompa-sarpa. They are allowed to marry only within the guild of corpse-bearers, and their children may not engage in any other occupation but that of their fathers, so that the calling is hereditary. They are obliged to live in wretched huts without doors or windows; the ventilators and doorways are open to all the winds of heaven and all kinds of weather. Even if they do their work well they are not allowed to build more comfortable houses. It is their duty also to remove dead dogs and carcasses from Tashi-lunpo, but they may not enter within the wall round the convent. If they have any uneasiness about their souls’ welfare, they pay a lama to pray for them. When they die, their souls pass into the bodies of animals or wicked men. But in consequence of the afflictions they have endured they are spared too hard a lot in the endless succession of transmigrations.
The Lagbas have only to hack in pieces lamas, their own relations, and the bodies of the homeless poor. Well-to-do laymen have this operation performed for their own people without calling in professional aid.
When the monks come with a dead brother to the place of dissection they strip him completely, divide his clothes among them, and have no compunction in wearing them the very next day. The Lagbas receive 2 to 5 tengas (11d. to 2s. 3d.) for each body and a part of the old clothing of a lama; in the case of a layman the Lagba receives all the raiment of the deceased, and the ear-rings and other simpler ornaments of a woman. The monks who have brought the body hurry off again with all speed, partly because the smell is very bad and partly that they may not witness the cutting up of the corpse, at which only the Lagbas need be present; even when the body is that of a layman, it is divided only in the presence of Lagbas.
| 147. Portrait of the Tashi Lama. (before retouching.) |