The inhumation of the dead is entirely unpractised in Tibet. The body of the sovereign Lama alone is preserved entire, and deposited in a shrine which is ever after looked on as sacred, and visited with religious awe. The bodies of inferior Lamas are burnt, and their ashes carefully preserved, to be enclosed in small metallic images, which have places assigned them in cabinets ranged in the sacred buildings. Sometimes, but not often, bodies are committed to the waters of lakes or rivers; but the common disposal of the dead is by making them over—
——κυνεσσιν
οιωνοισι τε πασι—
either in carrying the corpses to the tops of lofty eminences, where the divided limbs are left for a prey, or, in depositing them in regular golgothas assigned for the purpose. These are enclosed yards, having openings left in the foot of the walls for the admission of dogs and wolves. But the most popular form of this practice is when the body is cut in pieces at once, and given to the dogs to eat. For the interment, or rather the incanition, of persons of distinction, in certain convents sacred dogs are maintained, which are set apart to this office. Strabo, Cicero, and Justin mention such customs as current among the nations of Central Asia. They prevail not only in Tibet, but among the nomad tribes of Mongolia, and appear to have no connection with the existing religion of these races. The practice of the Parsees is well known to be of a similar character. The most sanctified Lamas are privileged to eat and drink out of the skulls of bodies which have been thus devoured by beasts. Rosaries also are made from these skulls, and the larger bones are often converted into trumpets.
The profane vulgar, though uninstructed in the tedious liturgic lore which the Lamas acquire, not without plentiful corporal chastisement in the days of their pupilage, are enabled to achieve a meritorious amount of devotion by the aid of certain whirligigs, or prayer-mills—cylinders of wood or pasteboard, inscribed with the words of prayer, and rotating on a spindle. These chu-kor, or turn-prayers, which at one time, as a pet subject of allusion with Thomas Carlyle, almost rivalled Thurtell's gig, are either portable or stationary, generally turned by hand, but often by water-power; and in the Tartar huts they are suspended over the fireplace, so as to rotate like smoke-jacks, in behalf of the peace and prosperity of the family.
Various penances are performed by the pilgrims who visit the sacred places. Some make the circuit of the convent buildings laden with enormous piles of sacred books. The task achieved, they are reckoned to have recited all the prayers which form their load. Others perform the same circuit in measuring their length upon the ground at each step. This is a task often undertaken by great numbers following each other in single file; and if the convent be extensive, the day, from dawn till dusk, is occupied in the task. Some penitents, instead of making the tour of a single convent, perform long journeys in this fashion. The practice is known in India; and we remember to have heard of a Hindoo worthy, who, some sixty or seventy years ago, undertook to measure his way from Hurdwar to Calcutta, prophesying the while that, when he should have achieved his dusty task, the days of the Feringees' power would be numbered. Great was the twisting of mustaches and the furbishing of tulwars among the disaffected; but, alas! in passing Cawnpoor the unlucky prophet made his last prostration; he was laid hold of by the general, and hanged.
We had purposed to conclude this paper with a sketch of the journeys of previous travellers in Tibet, and some details of the last very interesting one from which we have derived many particulars, but we have now room for only very brief indications.
The name of Tibet appears to have first become known to Europe in the itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish Rabbi, who travelled to the far East about the year 1160. He mentions that country as producing musk, but errs widely in placing it only four days' journey from Samarkand.
In the succeeding century, when the flood of Mongolian conquest, under Jenghiz and his successors, dissolved all political barriers, and brought the civilisations of the East and West for the first time in contact, a greater amount of intercourse ensued between Europe and interior Asia than has ever occurred before or since. At the noise of the coming Tartars, Europe stood amazed, and even the bewildered Danes were deterred for one season from starting for their herring fishery on our northern shores, lest they should fall into the hands of this mysterious foe. Pouring over Hungary and Poland to the frontiers of Silesia, they defeated and cut in pieces the duke of that country with his army, and it seemed as if the knell of Christendom had sounded, when providentially the death of the great Khan summoned the host back into Tartary; and the invasion of Western Europe, though often threatened, was never resumed. Embassies from the Roman Pontiff and European princes, at first of intercession and supplication, afterwards on more equal terms, when the dread of the Khan had passed away, were despatched and reciprocated. Monks of Flanders, France, and Italy, visited the seat of the Grand Khan, and a Latin archiepiscopate was established in Pekin. French artists worked in gold and silver for the court of Kara-Korum, and a banished Englishman was the first ambassador from the Tartars to the king of Hungary; whilst Mongols of distinction found their way to Rome, to Barcelona, to Paris, to London, to Northampton. "The arts, the faith, and the language of the nations of Asia became a subject of curiosity and study, and it was even proposed to establish a Tartar chair in the university of Paris."[18]
During this extraordinary intercourse, which continued for a century and a half, the lines of travel eastward lay generally to the north of Tibet, and hints of its existence are rare and slight. Marco Polo, indeed, who travelled in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, devotes two of his Herodotean chapters to "the Province of Thibet." A few particulars, such as the existence of powerful dogs, of the musk animal, and the current use of salt in barter, are recognisable, but the country referred to is apparently the wild and rugged region of the Si-fan, towards the east and north-east of Tibet.
Oderic of Portenau, a travelling friar, who died in 1331, mentions Tibet, and is the first who speaks of the Grand Lama as the pope of the idolaters.