A cord fastened to a post driven into the ground is passed round the neck of the corpse, and the legs are pulled as straight as possible—a feat requiring great exertion in the case of a lama, who has died and become rigid in a sitting posture. Then the body is skinned, so that all the flesh is exposed; the Lagbas utter a call, and vultures which roost around come sailing up in heavy flight, pounce down on the prey, and tear and pluck at it till the ribs are laid bare. There are no dogs here as in Lhasa, and even if there were, they would get no share in the feast, for the vultures do their work quickly and thoroughly. We afterwards visited convents where sacred dogs were fed with the flesh of priests. The Lagba sits by while the vultures feed, and these are so tame that they hop unconcernedly over the man’s legs.
The head is usually cut off as soon as the body is skinned. The skeleton is crushed to powder between stones, and is kneaded with the brains into a paste, which is thrown to the birds in small lumps. They will not touch the bone-dust unless it is mixed with brains. The guild of corpse-cutters pursue their task with the greatest composure: they take out the brains with their hands, knead it into powder, and pause in the midst of their gruesome employment to drink tea and eat tsamba. I am exceedingly doubtful if they ever wash themselves. An old Lagba, whom I summoned to my tent to supplement the information I had received from the monks, had on that very morning cut up the body of an old lama. Muhamed Isa held his cap before his face all through the conversation, and had at last to go out, for he began to feel ill. The man had an unpleasant rough aspect, wore a small grey soft cap, and was dressed in rags of the coarsest sacking. He had his own theories of post-mortem examination and anatomy. He told me that when an effusion of blood was found in the brain it was a sign that the man had been insane, and that when the substance of the brain was yellow the man had been an habitual snuff-taker.
In some cases, so a monk assured me, the corpse is not skinned, but the head is cut off, the trunk is divided in two along the spine with a sharp knife, and each half is cut into small pieces, and the vultures are not called till this has been done. Small children and grown-up men are cut up in the same manner. There is not the least respect shown for the nakedness of dead women. The whole aim of this method of disposing of the body is that the deceased may have the merit of giving his body to the birds, which would otherwise be famished. Thus even after his death he performs a pious deed which will promote the peace of his soul. The vultures here act the same part as in the Towers of Silence among the Parsees of Bombay and Persia.
As soon as the demands of religion are fulfilled, the relatives take leave of the deceased. He is then gone away, and his body is quite worthless; when the soul has recommenced its wanderings, the body may be consigned to the brutal treatment of the Lagbas without the least hesitation. No one follows the corpse to the home of the vultures when it is carried out of the house at night to be cut up before the sun rises. There is no legal regulation, and when the bodies are numerous, the sun has generally risen before the work is finished. After that, one, or at most two, of the corpses are left till evening and are taken in hand after sunset. This is also because the vultures are satiated with their morning’s feed and must have a rest before supper. It is seldom that more than two deaths are reported in Gompo-sarpa in one day. About twelve years ago when an epidemic of smallpox raged in Shigatse, forty to fifty bodies were removed daily. Then, after the vultures had gorged themselves, the rest of the bodies were wrapped in thin shrouds and buried.
One would suppose that the dying man would shudder at the thought that, at the very moment when the gates of death were opened for him, his body, with which he was so closely connected during his life, which he had cared for so anxiously, endeavouring to shield it from danger and sickness, nay, from the slightest pain, would be consigned to such barbarous treatment. But probably he thinks more of his soul in his last moments, and counts up the good deeds he has performed and the millions of manis he has recited.
There is, then, not the slightest touch of sentiment in the funeral customs of the Tibetans and their attitude towards the dead. The children of Islam visit the graves of their loved ones and weep out their sorrow under the cypresses, but the Tibetans have no graves and no green-covered mounds where they may devote an hour to the remembrance of a lost happiness. They weep not, for they mourn not, and they mourn not, because they have loved not. How can they love a wife whom they possess in common with others, so that there is no room for the idea of faithfulness in marriage? The family ties are too loose and uncertain, and the brother does not follow his brother, the man his wife, and much less his child, to the grave, for he does not even know if the child is really his own. And, besides, the corpse in itself is a worthless husk, and even a mother who has tenderly loved her child feels not a shadow of reverence for its dead body, and has no more horror of the knife of the corpse executioner than we have of the doctor.
