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INDIA AND TIBET

THE DALAI LAMA

INDIA AND TIBET

A HISTORY OF THE RELATIONS WHICH HAVE

SUBSISTED BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES

FROM THE TIME OF WARREN HASTINGS TO

1910; WITH A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE

MISSION TO LHASA OF 1904

BY SIR FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND

K.C.I.E.

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1910

TO

MY WIFE,

ON WHOM FELL THE ANXIETY

AND SUSPENSE OF

DISTANTLY AWAITING THE RESULTS OF HIGH ADVENTURE,

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK,

IN THE HOPE THAT

FROM IT MAY COME SOME RECOMPENSE FOR

THE SUFFERING SHE ENDURED

PREFACE

An apology is needed for the length of this book. When it was passing through the press, a Parliamentary Blue-book appeared containing much important information as to recent developments, and what I had intended as only the account of our relations with Tibet up to the return of the Mission of 1904 I thought with advantage might be extended to include our relations to the present time. The whole forms one connected narrative of the attempt, protracted over 137 years, to accomplish a single purpose—the establishment of ordinary neighbourly intercourse with Tibet. The dramatic ending disclosed is that, when that purpose had at last been achieved, we forthwith abandoned the result.

The reasons for this abandonment have been—firstly, the jealousy borne by two great Powers for one another; and, secondly, the love of isolation engrained in us islanders. I have suggested that our aim should be to replace jealousy by co-operation, and, instead of coiling up in frigid isolation, we should expand ourselves to make and keep friendships.

The means I have recommended are living personalities rather than dry treaties, and what Warren Hastings and Lord Curzon wanted—an agent at Lhasa—is to me also the one true means of achieving our purpose.

I am fully conscious of having made mistakes in that part of the conduct of these affairs which fell to me to discharge. The exactly true adjustment of diplomatic with military requirements, and of the wishes of men in England with the necessities of the situation in Tibet, could only be made by a human being arrived at perfection. Not yet having arrived there, I doubtless made many errors. I can only assume that, if I had never made a mistake, I should never have made a success. Likewise, in my recommendations for the future, I may often be in error in detail, but in the main conclusion of substituting intimacy for isolation and effecting the change by personality, I would fain believe I shall prove right.

What I say has no official inspiration or sanction, for I have left the employment of Government, and am seeking to serve my country in fields of greater freedom though not less responsibility; but, in compiling the narrative of our relations with the Tibetans, I have made the fullest use of the four Blue-books which have been presented to Parliament. These contain information of the highest value, though in the very undigested form characteristic of Parliamentary Papers. Beyond personal impressions I have added nothing to them, but merely sought to deduce from them a connected account of events and of the motives which impelled them. To Sir Clement Markham’s account of Bogle’s Mission and Manning’s journey to Lhasa, to Captain Turner’s account of his Mission to Tibet, and to Perceval Landon’s, Edmund Candler’s, and Colonel Waddell’s accounts of the Mission of 1904, I am also indebted, as well as to Mr. White, Captain Bailey and Messrs. Johnston and Hoffman for photographs.

I lastly desire to acknowledge the trouble which Mr. John Murray has so kindly taken in correcting the proofs.

FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND.

September 7, 1910.

P.S.—Too late to make use of it, I have received the just published reprint from the T’sung Pao of Mr. Rockhill’s “The Dalai Lamas of Lhasa and their Relations to the Manchu Emperors of China.” The conclusion of this famous authority on Tibet, that the Tibetans have no desire for total independence of China, but that their complaints have always been directed against the manner in which the local Chinese officials have performed their duties, is particularly noteworthy.

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I]

WARREN HASTINGS’ POLICY: BOGLE’s MISSION—1774

Bhutanese aggression on Bengal in 1772, p. [4]. Warren Hastings repels aggression, p. [4]. Tashi Lama intercedes on behalf of Bhutanese, p. [5]. Warren Hastings replies, proposing treaty of amity and commerce, p. [7]. His policy, p. [7]. He selects Bogle for Mission, p. [8]. His instructions to Bogle, p. [9]. Value of discretionary powers to agents, p. [10]. Bogle’s reception by Tashi Lama, p. [13]. The Lama acknowledges unjustifiability of Bhutanese action, p. [14]. Conversation regarding trade, p. [16]. Bogle receives two Lhasa delegates, p. [17]. Tibetan fear of the Chinese, p. [18]. Bogle suggests alliance with Tibetans against Gurkhas, p. [19]. Obstructiveness of Lhasa delegates, p. [20]. The Nepalese instigate the Tibetans against Bogle, p. [21]. Conversations with Kashmiri and Tibetan merchants, p. [22]. Results of the Mission, p. [24].

[CHAPTER II]

WARREN HASTINGS’ POLICY (continued): TURNER’S MISSION—1782

Warren Hastings’ further efforts, p. [26]. Captain Turner sent to Shigatse, p. [27]. Power of the Chinese, p. [28]. Admission to traders granted, p. [29]. Nepalese invasion in 1792, p. [30]. Closing of intercourse with Tibet, p. [31].

[CHAPTER III]

MANNING’S VISIT TO LHASA—1811

Manning’s previous career, p. [33]. He makes friends with the Chinese, p. [34]. Obtains permission from them to visit Lhasa, p. [37]. He visits the Grand Lama, p. [37]. His stay in Lhasa, p. [38]. Results of his journey, p. [39]. Subsequent exploration, p. [40].

[CHAPTER IV]

THE BENGAL GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS—1873–1886

Bengal Government urge improvement of intercourse with the Tibetans, 1873, p. [42]. Press for admission of tea to Tibet, p. [44]. Delay caused by reference of local questions to central Governments, p. [45]. Colman Macaulay’s efforts in 1885, p. [46]. The Tibetans cross our frontier in force, 1886, p. [47]. Neither Chinese nor Tibetan Government can or will withdraw them, p. [48]. General Graham expels them, 1888, p. [49].

[CHAPTER V]

THE CONVENTION WITH CHINA—1890

The Chinese ask that a treaty should be made, p. [50]. Convention signed March, 1890, p. [51]. Trade Regulations signed December, 1893, p. [52]. Tibetans fail to observe Regulations, p. [54]. Bengal Government wish to protest, p. [55]. Government of India prefer to be patient, p. [55]. Tibetans occupy land inside Treaty boundary, p. [56]. Efforts to demarcate boundary, p. [57]. Tibetans remove boundary pillars, p. [59]. Sir Charles Elliott proposes occupation of Chumbi, p. [61]. Government of India adhere to policy of forbearance, p. [62]. Reasons for Tibetans’ seclusive policy, p. [63]. Chinese fail to arrange matters, p. [64]. Report on result of five years’ working of the Treaty, p. [65].

[CHAPTER VI]

SECURING THE TREATY RIGHTS—1899–1903

Attempts by Lord Curzon to open direct communication with Dalai Lama, p. [66]. Dalai Lama’s Mission to Russia, p. [67]. Russian Government disclaim its having political nature, p. [68]. Tibetans expelled by us from Giagong inside Treaty boundary, p. [71]. Rumours of Russo-Tibetan agreement, p. [72]. Reasons why Russian activity in Tibet should cause Indian Government anxiety, p. [73]. Indian Government propose sending Mission to Lhasa, p. [76].

[CHAPTER VII]

NEGOTIATIONS WITH RUSSIA—1903

Russian protests, p. [79]. Lord Lansdowne’s rejoinder, p. [81]. Russian assurances of no intention to interfere in Tibet, p. [82]. Such assurances did not preclude possibility of Tibetans relying on Russian support, p. [83].

[CHAPTER VIII]

A MISSION SANCTIONED—1903

Views of His Majesty’s Government on general question, p. [84]. Correspondence with Viceroy as to scope of Mission, p. [86]. Viceroy’s proposal to have agent at Gyantse, p. [87]. Decision to despatch a Mission to Khamba Jong, p. [87]. Correspondence with the Chinese, p. [88]. Instructions to the British Commissioner, p. [91]. Justification for despatch of Mission, p. [92].

[CHAPTER IX]

SIMLA TO KHAMBA JONG—1903

I am summoned to Simla, May, 1903, p. [95]. Receive Lord Curzon’s instructions, p. [96]. Mr. White’s arrival, p. [97]. Magnificent scenery on way to Darjiling, p. [100]. Views of Kinchinjunga, p. [101]. Assistance given by Bengal Government, p. [103]. Tropical forests, p. [104]. Character of Lepchas, p. [107]. Hard work of 32nd Pioneers, p. [108]. Reach Upper Sikkim, p. [109]. Tibetans protest against our passing Giagong, p. [110]. Lhasa delegates arrive on frontier, p. [111]. Mr. White, with escort, reach Khamba Jong, p. [112].

[CHAPTER X]

KHAMBA JONG—1903

I join Mr. White at Khamba Jong, p. [116]. Interview with Mr. Ho, p. [117]. Speech to Tibetan delegates, p. [118]. They refuse to report to Lhasa, p. [121]. Recreations at Khamba Jong, p. [122]. Deputation from Tashi Lama, p. [123]. Arrival of Mr. Wilton, p. [124]. Viceroy suggests to Resident he himself should meet me, p. [124]. Two Sikkimese seized by Tibetans, p. [125]. Shigatse Abbot arrives, p. [125]. Situation grows threatening, p. [128]. Departure of Mr. Ho, p. [131]. My suggestions to Government for meeting the situation, p. [132]. Aid given by Nepalese, p. [133]. British representation to Chinese Government, p. [138]. Recommendations of Indian Government, p. [140]. Secretary of State sanctions advance to Gyantse, p. [140]. Viceroy notifies Chinese Resident, p. [142]. Chinese Government protest, p. [143]. Russian Government also protest, p. [144]. Justification for advance, p. [146].

[CHAPTER XI]

DARJILING TO CHUMBI—1903

Question of advancing in winter or waiting till spring, p. [149]. Risks in crossing Himalayas in winter, p. [150]. Transport preparations, p. [151]. Departure from Darjiling, p. [152]. Crossing the Jelap-la (pass), p. [153]. Protests from Tibetans, p. [155]. Arrive Yatung, p. [156]. Macdonald occupies Phari, p. [157]. Obstruction of Lhasa monks, p. [159]. Extreme cold, p. [160]. Crossing the Tang-la, p. [160].

[CHAPTER XII]

TUNA—1904

Lhasa officials come to Tuna, p. [162]. I visit Tibetan camp, p. [163]. Critical situation, p. [166]. Conclusions as to Tibetan disposition, p. [167]. Lhasa General visits me, p. [168], Severe cold, p. [169]. Bhutanese Envoy arrives, p. [169]. His attempts to reason with Tibetans, p. [170]. Our losses from cold, p. [172]. Macdonald arrives, March 28, p. [173]. We advance to Guru, p. [174]. Troops advance without firing, p. [176]. Tibetans refuse to allow passage, p. [177]. Sudden commencement of action, p. [178]. Chinese Resident urges delay, p. [179]. Our arrival at Gyantse, p. [180].

[CHAPTER XIII]

GYANTSE—1904

Friendly attitude of people, p. [182]. But no signs of negotiators, p. [183]. I advocate preparations to advance to Lhasa, p. [184]. Tibetan troops again assemble, p. [185]. Mission attacked, p. [187]. Brander attacks Tibetans on Karo-la (pass), p. [189]. He returns to Gyantse, p. [191]. Advance to Lhasa sanctioned by Home Government, p. [191]. Mission escort reinforced, p. [192]. Captains Sheppard and Ottley, p. [192]. Brander attacks Palla village, p. [194]. I am recalled to Chumbi, p. [195]. Attacked at Kangma, p. [196]. I advocate preparing to stop at Lhasa for winter, p. [197]. Government discourage the idea, p. [199]. Renewed pledges to Russia, p. [201]. How these fettered the Indian Government, p. [201]. Meeting with Tongsa Penlop of Bhutan, p. [203]. More aid from Nepal, p. [206].

[CHAPTER XIV]

THE STORMING OF GYANTSE JONG—1904

Macdonald, with reinforcements, leaves Chumbi, p. [208]. Good feeling of country people, p. [208]. Reinforcements reach Gyantse, p. [209]. Ta lama arrives to negotiate, p. [211]. He is informed jong must be evacuated, p. [215]. Operations against jong commence, p. [217]. Gurdon killed, p. [218]. Grant leads assault, p. [219]. Jong captured, p. [220]. Negotiators not to be found, p. [221]. Preparations for advance completed, p. [221]. Tongsa Penlop informs Ta Lama of my readiness to negotiate en route to Lhasa, and Dalai Lama of our terms, p. [222].

[CHAPTER XV]

THE ADVANCE TO LHASA—1904

Dalai Lama asks Tongsa Penlop to effect a settlement, p. [223]. Action at Karo-la, p. [224]. At Nagartse find deputation from Lhasa, p. [225]. They ask us to return to Gyantse, p. [226]. They fear their religion will be spoilt, p. [230]. And that Russians might want to go to Lhasa, p. [231]. Importance I attached to good personal relations, p. [232]. The beautiful Yam-dok Tso (lake), p. [233]. Arrival at Brahmaputra, p. [234]. Letter from National Assembly, p. [235]. Question whether to negotiate here or go on to Lhasa, p. [236]. Major Bretherton drowned, p. [237]. Dalai Lama’s Chamberlain brings letter from his master, p. [238]. I reply that we must advance to Lhasa, p. [239]. We discuss general question of intercourse with India, p. [240]. Further discussion with Ta Lama, p. [243]. We advance across Brahmaputra, p. [247]. Final deputation attempts to dissuade us from going to Lhasa, p. [249]. Arrival at Lhasa, p. [250].

[CHAPTER XVI]

THE TERMS—1904

Disadvantage of being pressed for time, p. [251]. Views of Indian Government regarding terms, p. [252]. Their desire to have Agent at Lhasa, p. [252]. And to occupy the Chumbi Valley, p. [256]. The question of an indemnity, p. [257]. Of an Agent at Gyantse, p. [258]. Of exclusive political influence in Tibet, p. [259]. Of facilities for trade, p. [259]. His Majesty’s Government consider proposals excessive, and decide against Agent at Lhasa, p. [260]. And against Gyantse Agent proceeding to Lhasa, p. [262]. Amount of indemnity to be such as can be paid in three years, p. [262].

[CHAPTER XVII]

THE NEGOTIATIONS

Chinese Resident visits me day of our arrival at Lhasa, p. [263]. Question of entering Lhasa city, p. [264]. Impressions of city, p. [265]. Reception by Chinese Resident, p. [266]. Nepalese representative and Tongsa Penlop of Bhutan visit me, p. [267]. Flight of Dalai Lama, p. [269]. Chinese Resident says ordinary people anxious for intercourse, p. [270]. The Ti Rimpoche (Regent) commences negotiations, p. [273]. Disagrees with obstructive policy of National Assembly, p. [274]. Two Sikkimese prisoners released, p. [276]. Difficulties in regard to indemnity, p. [279]. Tongsa Penlop suggests that Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet should look to England, p. [280]. Chinese Resident denounces the Dalai Lama, p. [282]. Tibetans incline to agree to some of terms, p. [282]. But continue to protest against indemnity, p. [284].

[CHAPTER XVIII]

THE TREATY CONCLUDED—1904

Pressure for time, p. [289]. Military considerations demand very early withdrawal, p. [290]. Necessity for decisive action, p. [290]. Tibetans presented with final terms, p. [291]. They propose extension of time for payment of indemnity, p. [294]. Reasons for accepting proposal, p. [294]. Question of Chumbi Valley, p. [295]. Permission for Gyantse Agent to proceed to Lhasa, p. [299]. I insist on signing Treaty in Potala, p. [300]. The ceremony of signature, p. [303].

[CHAPTER XIX]

IMPRESSIONS AT LHASA—1904

Release of prisoners, p. [307]. Visits to monasteries, p. [309]. Character of Lamas, p. [310]. The effects of Lamaism on Tibetans and Mongols, p. [314]. Visit to Jo Khang Temple, p. [316]. The inner spirit of the people, p. [317]. Social side of Tibetans, p. [318]. Tibetan view of English, p. [319]. Chinese attitude to Tibetans, p. [321].

[CHAPTER XX]

THE RETURN—1904

Farewell visits, p. [325]. Sensations of good-will, p. [326]. Good behaviour of Indian troops, p. [327]. Exploring parties, p. [328]. Successful work of Rawling and Ryder, p. [330]. Return to Simla, p. [332]. Meeting with Lord Curzon, p. [333]. Audience of His late Majesty, p. [333]. Mission flag placed in Windsor Castle, p. [334].

[CHAPTER XXI]

RESULTS OF THE MISSION

Good-will of Tibetans, p. [335]. Friendship of Bhutan, p. [336]. Scientific results, p. [337]. Indemnity reduced by His Majesty’s Government, p. [338]. Period of occupation of Chumbi reduced, p. [338]. Permission for Gyantse Agent to proceed to Lhasa abandoned, p. [339]. Reasons of His Majesty’s Government for above, p. [339].

[CHAPTER XXII]

NEGOTIATIONS WITH CHINA—1905–1910

Convention with China confirming Lhasa Convention, p. [342]. Unfriendly attitude of Chinese in Tibet, p. [343]. Their attempts to prevent direct relations with Tibetans, p. [344]. Sir Edward Grey’s remonstrances, p. [345]. Indian Government complains of breaches of Lhasa Convention, p. [347]. Chinese device to prevent direct relations between us and the Tibetans in regard to payment of indemnity, p. [348]. Question of evacuating Chumbi Valley, p. [354]. Chumbi evacuated, p. [359]. Trade Regulations agreed to, p. [359]. Chinese forward movement commences, p. [362]. Bhutan taken under our protection, p. [365].

[CHAPTER XXIII]

ATTITUDE OF THE TIBETANS SINCE 1904—1904–1910

Favourable Tibetan attitude following signature of Treaty, p. [367]. Disturbances in Eastern Tibet, 1905, p. [368]. Batang annexed by Chinese, p. [372]. Dalai Lama’s movements in Mongolia, p. [377]. Anglo-Russian agreement in regard to Tibet, p. [378]. Dalai Lama arrives in Peking, p. [382]. Leaves Peking, p. [385]. Arrives near Lhasa, November, 1909, and complains of Chinese encroachments, p. [386]. Arrives in Lhasa, p. [387]. Chinese intention to take away his temporal power, p. [389]. Chinese troops arrive in Lhasa, p. [389]. Dalai Lama flees, p. [391]. Arrives in Darjiling, p. [392]. Visits Viceroy in Calcutta, p. [394]. Tibetan Ministers ask for British officer with troops to be despatched to Lhasa, and for alliance, p. [395]. Dalai Lama’s request for aid refused, p. [396]. But British Government makes protest to Chinese Government, p. [396]. Chinese state they merely wish to exercise effective control, p. [398]. Dalai Lama deposed, p. [399]. Chinese view of situation, p. [400]. Indian Government’s views, p. [403]. Lord Morley’s views, p. [404].

[CHAPTER XXIV]

SOME CONCLUSIONS

Tendency to centralization of control, p. [407]. Reasons why British administrators in India lack confidence in centralization in London, p. [408]. Remedies for evil, p. [411]. More intimate personal relationship, p. [412]. More trust in the “man on the spot,” p. [415]. Summary of situation in Tibet, p. [415]. Morality of intervention in Tibet, p. [416]. Co-operation with Russia, p. [421]. Chinese generally good neighbours, p. [421]. Necessity for securing removal of inimical local Chinese officials, p. [423]. And for preserving intimate touch with Tibetans, p. [424]. A forward policy recommended, p. [428].

[CHAPTER XXV]

A FINAL REFLECTION

“A strange force” or “the designs of bureaucrats,” p. [430]. No deliberate intention to conquer India, p. [432]. Impelled to intervene in Tibet, p. [433]. Probability of some force impelling us on, p. [434]. Reality of an inherent impulse, p. [435]. Its direction towards harmony, p. [436]. Hence disorder invites intervention, p. [436]. Our intellects should be used to give impulse definite effect, p. [438].

[APPENDIX]

Anglo-Chinese Convention, 1890; Trade Regulations, 1893; Anglo-Tibetan Convention, 1904; Anglo-Chinese Convention, 1906; Anglo-Russian Convention, 1907.

[INDEX] (p. [447]).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

1. THE CHINESE EMPIRE, SHOWING THE RELATIVE POSITION OF TIBET TO CHINA PROPER, INDIA, AND RUSSIA		[At end]
2. PART OF TIBET, SHOWING THE ROUTE FOLLOWED BY THE MISSION TO LHASA

INDIA AND TIBET

INTRODUCTION

This book is an account of our relations with Tibet, but many still wonder why we need have any such relations at all. The country lies on the far side of the Himalayas, the greatest range of snowy mountains in the world. Why, then, should we trouble ourselves about what goes on there? Why do we want to interfere with the Tibetans? Why not leave them alone? These are very reasonable and pertinent questions, and such as naturally spring to the mind of even the least intelligent of Englishmen. Obviously, therefore, they must have sprung to the minds of responsible British statesmen before they ever sanctioned intervention. The sedate gentlemen who compose the Government of India are not renowned for being carried away by bursts of excitement or enthusiasm, nor are they remarkable for impulsive, thoughtless action. They have spent their lives in the dull routine of official grind, and by the time they attain a seat in the Viceregal Council they are, if anything, too free from emotional impulses. Certainly, the initiation of anything forward and interfering was as little to be expected from them as from the most rigorous anti-Imperialist. The head of the Government of India at the time of the Tibet Mission was, it is true, a man of less mature official experience, but he happened to be a man who had studied Asiatic policy in nearly every part of Asia, besides having been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs; and even supposing he had been the most impulsive and irresponsible of Viceroys, he could take no action without gaining the assent of the majority of his colleagues in India, and without convincing the Secretary of State in England. India is not governed by the Viceroy alone, but by the Viceroy in Council. On such a question as the despatch of a mission to Tibet, the Viceroy would not be able to act without the concurrence of three out of his six councillors, and without the approval of the Secretary of State, who, in his turn, as expenditure is incurred, would have to gain the support of his Council of tried and experienced Indian administrators and soldiers, besides the approval of the whole Cabinet.

It is, then, a very fair presumption at the outset that if all these various authorities had satisfied themselves that action in Tibet was necessary, there probably was some reasonable ground for interference. What was it that influenced these sedate authorities, alike in India and in England, to depart from the natural course of leaving the Tibetans alone, to behave or misbehave themselves as they liked? What was it that persuaded these gentlemen that action, and not inaction, intervention, and not laissez-faire, were required, and that we could no longer leave this remote State on the far side of the mighty Himalayas severely alone? There must have been some strong reason, for it was not merely a matter of permitting an adventurous explorer to try and reach the “forbidden city.” After thirty years of correspondence what was eventually sanctioned was the despatch of a mission with an escort strong enough to break down all opposition. What was the reason?

The answer to this I will eventually give. But to make that answer clear we must view the matter from a long perspective, and trace its gradual evolution from the original beginnings. And, at the start, I shall have to emphasize the point that there has always been intercourse of some kind between Tibet and India, for Tibet is not an island in mid-ocean. It is in the heart of a continent surrounded by other countries. That it is a mysterious, secluded country in the remote hinterland of the Himalayas most people are vaguely aware. But that it is contiguous for nearly a thousand miles with the British Empire, from Kashmir to Burma, few have properly realized. Still less have they appreciated that this contact between the countries means intercourse of some kind between the peoples inhabiting them, even though it has to be over a snowy range. The Tibetans drew their religion from India. From time immemorial they have been accustomed to visit the sacred shrines of India. Tibetan traders have come down to Bengal, Kashmiri and Indian traders have gone to Tibet. Tibetan shepherds have brought their flocks to the pastures on the Indian side of the range in some parts. In other parts the shepherds from the Indian side have taken their sheep and goats to the plateaux of Tibet. Sometimes the Tibetans or their vassals have raided to valleys and plains of India, sometimes Indian feudatories have raided into Tibet. At other times, again, the intercourse has been of a more pacific kind, and intermarriages between the bordering peoples and interchanges of presents have taken place. In a multitude of ways there has ever been intercourse between Tibet and India. Tibet has never been really isolated. And, as I shall in due course show, the Mission to Lhasa of 1904, was merely the culmination of a long series of efforts to regularize and humanize that intercourse, and put the relationship which must necessarily subsist between India and Tibet upon a business-like and permanently satisfactory footing.

CHAPTER I
BOGLE’S MISSION, 1774

It is an interesting reflection for those to make who think that we must necessarily have been the aggressive party, that the far-distant primary cause of all our attempts at intercourse with the Tibetans was an act of aggression, not on our part, not on the part of an ambitious Pro-consul, or some headstrong frontier officer, but of the Bhutanese, neighbours, and then vassals, of the Tibetans, who nearly a century and a half ago committed the first act—an act of aggression—which brought us into relationship with the Tibetans. In the year 1772 they descended into the plains of Bengal and overran Kuch Behar, carried off the Raja as a prisoner, seized his country, and offered such a menace to the British province of Bengal, now only separated from them by a small stream, that when the people of Kuch Behar asked the British Governor for help, he granted their request, and resolved to drive the mountaineers back into their fastnesses. Success attended his efforts, though, as usual, at much sacrifice. We learn that our troops were decimated with disease, and that the malaria proved fatal to Captain Jones, the commander, and many other officers. “One can hardly breathe,” says Bogle, who passed through the country two years later—“frogs, watery insects, and dank air.” And those who have been over that same country since, and seen, if only from a railway train, those deadly swamps, who have felt that suffocating, poisonous atmosphere arising from them, and who have experienced that ghastly, depressing enervation which saps all manhood and all life out of one, can well imagine what those early pioneers must have suffered.

Fortunately there was at the head of affairs the greatest, though the most maligned, of all the Governors-General of India, who was able to turn to profit the advantages accruing from the sacrifices which had been made. Fortunately, too, in those days a Governor-General still had some power and initiative left, and was able, without interminable delays, debates, correspondence, and international considerings, to act decisively and strongly before the psychological moment had passed.

Warren Hastings resisted the aggression of the Bhutanese, and drove them back from the plains of Bengal into their own mountains; but when the Tashi Lama of Tibet interceded on their behalf, he at once not only acceded, but went further, and made a deliberate effort to come into permanent relationship with both the Bhutanese and Tibetans. Nor did he think he would gain lasting results by any fitful effort. He knew well that to achieve anything effort must be long, must be continuous, and must be persistent, and that the results would be small at first, but, accumulating in the long process of years, would eventually amount to what was of value.

The Bhutanese, I have said, when they found themselves being sorely punished for their aggression, appealed to the Tashi Lama of Tibet to intercede for them with the Governor of Bengal; and the Tashi Lama, who was then acting as Regent of Tibet during the infancy of the Dalai Lama, wrote to Warren Hastings a very remarkable letter, which is quoted both by Turner and Markham, and which is especially noteworthy as marking that the intercourse between us and the Tibetans was started by the Tibetans. The Tibetans have stated on many a subsequent occasion to the Government of India, and on innumerable occasions to myself, that they are not permitted to have intercourse with us. But originally, and when they wanted a favour from us, the intercourse was started by themselves, and in a very reasonable, dignified, and neighbourly manner.

The Tashi Lama wrote to Warren Hastings, after various compliments: "Neither to molest nor to persecute is my aim.... But in justice and humanity I am informed you far surpass ... I have been repeatedly informed that you have been engaged in hostilities against the Deb Judhur, to which, it is said, the Deb’s own criminal conduct in committing ravages and other outrages on your frontier has given rise. As he is of a rude and ignorant race (past times are not destitute of instances of the like misconduct which his own avarice tempted him to commit), it is not unlikely that he has now renewed those instances, and the ravages and plunder which he committed on the skirts of the Bengal and Behar provinces have given you provocation to send your avenging army against him. However, his party has been defeated, many of his people have been killed, three forts have been taken from him, he has met with the punishment he deserved, and it is evident as the sun that your army has been victorious, and that, if you had been desirous of it, you might in the space of two days have entirely extirpated him, for he had no power to resist your efforts. But I now take upon me to be his mediator, and to represent to you that, as the said Deb Raja is dependent upon the Dalai Lama ... should you persist in offering further molestation to the Deb Raja’s country, it will irritate both the Lama and all his subjects against you. Therefore, from a regard to our religion and customs, I request you will cease all hostilities against him, and in doing this you will confer the greatest favour and friendship upon me. I have reprimanded the Deb for his past conduct, and I have admonished him to desist from his evil practices in future, and to be submissive to you in all matters. I am persuaded that he will conform to the advice which I have given him, and it will be necessary that you treat him with compassion and clemency. As for my part, I am but a Fakir, and it is the custom of my Sect, with the rosary in our hands, to pray for the welfare of mankind and for the peace and happiness of the inhabitants of this country; and I do now, with my head uncovered, entreat that you may cease all hostilities against the Deb in future."

On receipt of this letter, Warren Hastings laid it before the Board at Calcutta, and informed them that, in reply, he had written to the Tashi Lama, proposing a general treaty of amity and commerce between Bengal and Tibet. The letter of the Lama, he said, had invited us to friendship, and the final arrangement of the disputes on the frontier had rendered the country accessible, without danger either to the persons or effects of travellers. He had, therefore, written for and obtained a passport for a European to proceed to Tibet for the negotiation of the treaty, and he now purposed sending Mr. Bogle, a servant of the Company, well known for his intelligence, assiduity, and exactness in affairs, as well as for the “coolness and moderation of temper which he seems to possess in an eminent degree.” Warren Hastings, with great wisdom and knowledge of Asiatic affairs, adds that he “is far from being sanguine in his hopes of success, but the present occasion appears too favourable for the attempt to be neglected.”

This latter is precisely the point which we who have dealt with Asiatics can appreciate so well—taking the opportunity, striking while the iron is hot, not letting the chance go by, knowing our mind, knowing what we want, and acting decisively when the exact occasion arises. It is hard to do nowadays, with the Provincial Government so subordinate to the Government of India, with the Government of India so governed by the Secretary of State, with Cabinet Ministers telling us that the House of Commons are their masters, and members of the House of Commons saying they are the mouthpieces of their constituents. Nevertheless, the advantages of such a method of conducting affairs must not be forgotten. Decision and rapidity of action are often important factors in the conduct of Asiatic affairs, and may save more trouble than is saved by caution and long deliberation.

Warren Hastings’ policy was, then, not to sit still within his borders, supremely indifferent to what occurred on the other side, and intent upon respecting not merely the independence but also the isolation of his neighbours. It was a forward policy, and combined in a noteworthy manner alertness and deliberation, rapidity and persistency, assertiveness and receptivity. He sought to secure his borders by at once striking when danger threatened, but also by taking infinite pains over long periods of time to promote ordinary neighbourly intercourse with those on the other side. Both qualities are necessary. Spasmodic action unaccompanied by steady, continuous efforts at conciliation produces no less bad results than does plodding conciliation never accompanied by action. It was because Warren Hastings possessed this capacity for instantly seizing an opportunity, because he could and would without hesitation or fear use severity where severity alone would secure enduring harmony, but would yet persistently and with infinite tact, sagacity, and real good-heartedness work for humane and neighbourly relationship with adjoining peoples, that he must be considered the greatest of all the great Governors-General of India.

But to be successful a policy must be embodied in a fitting personality. And to appreciate Warren Hastings’ Tibetan policy we must know something of the agent he chose to carry it into effect. What was the character of the man who was to lead the first Mission ever sent to Tibet? We learn from Markham that he was born in 1746, and had at first been brought up in a business office; but on proceeding to India had been given a post in the Revenue Department. His letters to his father and sisters show him to have been a man of the strongest home feelings, and his conversations with the Tibetans indicate that he was a man of high honour and strict rectitude. Warren Hastings himself not only had a high opinion of his abilities and official aptitude, but also entertained for him a warm personal friendship.

MR. BOGLE

The youth of Warren Hastings’ agent is the first point to note: he was only twenty-eight. Nowadays we use men who are much too old. It is when men are young, when they are still crammed full of energy, when their faculties are alert, that they are most useful and effective. I often doubt whether the experience of maturer age possesses all the advantages which are commonly attributed to it, and whether young men act more rashly or irresponsibly than old men. The former have their whole careers before them, and their reputations to make. They are no more likely, therefore, to act rashly than “old men in a hurry.” Warren Hastings was therefore wise, in my opinion, to choose a young man, and he was equally wise to choose an agent of good breeding and with great natural kindliness of disposition. Asiatics do not mind quickness or hotness of temper, or severity of manner, as long as they can feel that at bottom the man they have to do with has a good, warm, generous heart. He need not wear it on his sleeve, but they will know right enough whether he possesses one or not. And that Warren Hastings’ agent had such a heart his home correspondence, his friendship with Hastings himself, and his eventual dealings with the Tibetans amply testify.

Having determined his policy and selected his agent, Warren Hastings gave him the following instructions,[^[1]] dated May 13, 1774: "I desire you will proceed to Lhasa.... The design of your mission is to open a mutual and equal communication of trade between the inhabitants of Bhutan [Tibet] and Bengal, and you will be guided by your own judgment in using such means of negotiation as may be most likely to effect this purpose. You will take with you samples, for a trial of such articles of commerce as may be sent from this country.... And you will diligently inform yourself of the manufactures, productions, goods, introduced by the intercourse with other countries, which are to be procured in Bhutan.... The following will be also proper objects of your inquiry: the nature of the roads between the borders of Bengal and Lhasa, and of the country lying between; the communications between Lhasa and the neighbouring countries, their government, revenue, and manners.... The period of your stay must be left to your discretion. I wish you to remain a sufficient time to fulfil the purposes of your deputation, and obtain a complete knowledge of the country and the points referred to your inquiry. If you shall judge that a residence may be usefully established at Lhasa without putting the Company to any expense, but such as may be repaid by the advantages which may be hereafter derived from it, you will take the earliest opportunity to advise me of it; and if you should find it necessary to come away before you receive my orders upon it, you may leave such persons as you shall think fit to remain as your agents till a proper resident can be appointed.... You will draw on me for your charges, and your drafts shall be regularly answered. To these I can fix no limitation, but empower you to act according to your discretion, knowing that I need not recommend to you a strict frugality and economy where the good of the service on which you are commissioned shall not require a deviation from these rules."

Did ever an agent despatched on an important mission receive more satisfactory instructions? The object clearly defined, and the fullest discretion left to him as to the manner of carrying it out. Hastings, having selected the fittest agent to carry out his purpose, leaves everything to his judgment. Whatever would most effectively carry out the main purpose, that the agent was at perfect liberty to do, and time and money were freely at his disposal. “I want the thing done,” says Warren Hastings in effect, “and all you require to get it done you shall have.”

The only equally good instructions I have personally seen issued to an agent were given by Cecil Rhodes in Rhodesia. I travelled up to Fort Salisbury with Major Forbes, whom Rhodes had summoned from a place two months’ journey distant to receive instructions, for he did not believe in letters, but only in personal communication. After dinner Rhodes questioned Forbes most minutely as to his requirements, as to the condition of things, as to the difficulties which were likely to be encountered, and as to his ideas on how those difficulties should be overcome. He said he wanted to know now what Forbes required in order to accomplish the object in view, because he did not wish to see him coming back later on, saying he could have carried it out if only he had had this, that, or the other. Let him therefore say now whatever he required to insure success. All that he asked, and more than he asked, Rhodes gave him, and then despatched him, saying, “Now, I don’t want to hear of you again till I get a telegram saying your job is done.”

These are, of course, ideal methods of conveying instructions to an agent, which it is not always possible for a high official to give. Lord Curzon would, I know, have liked to give similar instructions to me, and, as far as providing money, staff, military support, etc., he did. But, with the closer interconnection of public affairs, public business is now so complicated that it is not, I suppose, possible to leave to an agent the same amount of discretion that Warren Hastings did to Bogle. Still, great results in many fields, and, what is more, great men, have been produced by the use of Warren Hastings’ method of selecting the fittest agent, and then leaving everything in his hands. I do not see that any better results have been obtained by utilizing human agents as mere telephones. If the conduct of affairs has become complicated, that does not appear to be any reason in itself for abandoning the method. It appears only a reason for principals and agents rising to the higher occasion while still pursuing the old successful method. Ease of communication has brought nations more closely together and complicated affairs, but it has also made possible readier personal communication between principal and agent. And therefore there is need not so much for curtailing the discretion of the agent while he is at work as for utilizing the greater facility for personal intercourse now possible. In conversation the agent will be able to impress his principals with whatever local and personal difficulties he has to contend with, and the means required for carrying out their object, and they will be able to impress him with the limits outside which it is impossible to allow him to act. It is a clear certainty that the present tendency to concentrate, not merely control, but also direction, in London, cannot go on for ever. An Empire like ours, immense in size and immensely complicated, cannot be managed in detail from headquarters. The time must come when the House of Commons and the constituencies, overburdened with the great affairs with which they have to deal, will, by the sheer force and weight of circumstances, see the advantages of leaving more to the men on the spot. They will probably insist on agents being more carefully selected. They will require them to keep in much closer personal contact with headquarters. They will expect, too, that politicians who control should already be personally acquainted, or make themselves personally acquainted, with the countries they control. But with these conditions fulfilled they will, it may be hoped, be able to leave more to the men on the spot, removing them relentlessly if they act wrongly, but while they are acting, leaving them to act in their own way.

Bogle, with these free instructions and this ample support, set out from Calcutta in the middle of May, 1774, that is, less than two months from the date of the despatch of the Tashi Lama’s letter from Shigatse, so that Warren Hastings, if he had left ample leisure to his agent to carry out his purpose, had himself acted with the utmost promptitude, even in so important a matter as sending a mission to Lhasa with the possibility of establishing there a permanent resident. Rapidity of communication has not resulted in the rapidity of the transaction of public affairs, and the consideration of despatching a mission to Lhasa nowadays takes as many years as weeks were occupied in the days of Warren Hastings.

During his passage through Bhutan, Bogle found many obstacles placed in his way; but he eventually left the capital in the middle of October, and on the 23rd of that month reached Phari, at the head of the Chumbi Valley, up which we marched to Lhasa 130 years later. Here he was received by two Lhasa officers, and farther on, at Gyantse, where the Mission of 1904 was attacked and besieged for nearly two months, he was entertained by a priest, “an elderly man of polite and pleasant manners,” who sat with him most of the afternoon, and drank “above twenty cups of tea.” Crowds of people appear to have assembled to look at him, but beyond the irksomeness of these attentions he suffered no inconvenience or opposition.

On November 8, 1774, he arrived at the place near Shigatse where the Tashi Lama was at the time in residence. The day following he had an interview with the Lama, and delivered to him a letter and a necklace of pearls from Warren Hastings. This was the first official interview which had ever taken place between a British officer and a Tibetan, and as such is particularly worthy of note.

The Tashi Lama received Bogle[^[2]] “with a very courteous and smiling countenance,” seated him near him on a high stool covered with a carpet, and spoke to him in Hindustani, of which he had “a moderate knowledge.” After inquiring about Warren Hastings’ health, and Bogle’s journey through Bhutan, he introduced the subject of the war in Behar—that is, the Bhutanese invasion of the plains of Bengal. “I always,” said the Lama, “disapproved of Deb Judhur (the Bhutanese Chief) seizing the Behar Raja (the Raja of Kuch Behar) and going to war with the Fringies (the English); but the Deb considered himself as powerful in arms, and would not listen to my advice. After he was defeated, I wrote to the Governor, who, in ceasing hostilities against the Bhutanese, in consequence of my application, and restoring to them their country, has made me very happy, and has done a very pious action. My servants who went to Calcutta were only little men, and the kind reception they had from the Governor I consider as another mark of friendship.”

Bogle explained that Kuch Behar was separated from the British province of Bengal only by a rivulet; that the Bhutanese from time immemorial had confined themselves to their mountains, and when they visited the low countries it was in an amicable manner, and in order to trade; that when many thousand armed men issued at once from their forests, carried off the Raja of Kuch Behar as prisoner, and seized his country, the Company very justly became alarmed, and concluded that the Bhutanese, encouraged by their successes in Kuch Behar to-day, and undeterred by so slight a boundary as a small stream, might invade the British provinces to-morrow. Bogle continued that Warren Hastings, on the people of Kuch Behar applying to him for assistance, immediately despatched a battalion of sepoys to repel the invaders, but was extremely glad, on receipt of the Tashi Lama’s letter, to suspend hostilities and subsequently to conclude a peace with the Bhutanese and restore them their country. In conclusion, he said that Warren Hastings, being happy to cultivate the friendship of a man whose fame was so well known, and whose character was held in veneration by so many nations, had sent him to the Lama’s presence with the letter and tokens of friendship which he had laid before him.

The Lama said that the Deb Judhur did not manage his country properly, and had been turned out. Bogle replied that the English had no concern with his expulsion; it was brought about by his own people: the Company only wished the Bhutanese to continue in their own country, and not to encroach upon Bengal, or raise disturbances upon its frontier. “The Governor,” said the Lama, “had reason for going to war, but, as I am averse from bloodshed, and the Bhutanese are my vassals, I am glad it is brought to a conclusion.”

The point, then, that it was an act of aggression on the part of a vassal of the Tibetans which was the initial cause of our relationship with the Tibetans; that that act was considered unjustifiable by the then ruler of Tibet, and that our own action was approved of and appreciated by him, is established by this conversation. Except for the unjustifiable aggression of the Bhutanese upon our neighbours, we would never have been brought into conflict with these vassals of Tibet; and but for the intervention of the Tibetan Regent on their behalf, we should not then have thought of any relationship with the Tibetans. The initiation of our intercourse did not rest with us. We were not the interferers. It was the Tibetans themselves who made the first move. This much is clear from the Tashi Lama’s conversation.

We may well pause for a moment to consider the man who had thus first communicated with us. It so happens that he was the most remarkable man Tibet has produced in the last century and a half, and one cannot help thinking that if he had lived longer, and Warren Hastings had remained longer in India, these two able and eminently sensible and conciliatory men would have come to some amicable and neighbourly agreement by which the interrelations of their respective countries might have been peacefully conducted from that time till now.

Bogle says of him that he was about forty years of age, that his disposition was open, candid, and generous, and that the expression of his countenance was smiling and good-humoured. He was extremely merry and entertaining in conversation, and told a pleasant story with a great deal of humour and action. “I endeavoured,” says Bogle, “to find out, in his character, those defects which are inseparable from humanity, but he is so universally beloved that I had no success, and not a man could find it in his heart to speak ill of him.”

The Lama treated Bogle in the most intimate manner. He would walk the room with the strange Englishman, explain to him the pictures, and make remarks upon the colour of his eyes. “For, although,” says Bogle, “venerated as God’s vicegerent through all the eastern countries of Asia, endowed with a portion of omniscience, and with many other Divine attributes, he throws aside, in conversation, all the awful part of his character, accommodates himself to the weakness of mortals, endeavours to make himself loved rather than feared, and behaves with the greatest affability to everybody, particularly to strangers.”

Continuing his conversation on the subject of Behar, the Lama, in subsequent interviews, said that many people had advised him against receiving an Englishman. "I had heard also,"[^[3]] he said, “much of the power of the Fringies: that the Company was like a great King, and fond of war and conquest; and as my business and that of my people is to pray to God, I was afraid to admit any Fringies into the country. But I have since learned that the Fringies are a fair and a just people.” To this Bogle replied that the Governor was, above all things, desirous of obtaining his friendship and favour, as the character of the English and their good or bad name depended greatly upon his judgment. In return the Lama assured Bogle that his heart was open and well disposed towards the English, and that he wished to have a place on the banks of the Ganges to which he might send his people to pray, and that he intended to write to Warren Hastings about it. This he did, after Bogle’s return, and a piece of land was given him on the banks of the Hooghly branch of the Ganges, opposite Calcutta, and a house and temple were constructed on it by Bogle for the Lama.

The conversation now turned to the question of trade. The Tashi Lama said that, owing to the recent wars in Nepal and Bhutan, trade between Bengal and Tibet was not flourishing, but that, as for himself, he gave encouragement to merchants, and in Tibet they were free and secure. He enumerated the different articles which went from Tibet to Bengal—"gold, musk, cow-tails (yak-tails), and coarse woollen clothes"—but he said the Tibetans were afraid to go to Bengal on account of the heat. In the previous year he had sent four people to worship at Benares, but three had died. In former times great numbers used to resort to Hindustan. The Lamas had temples in Benares, Gaya, and several other places; their priests used to travel thither to study the sacred books and the religion of the Hindus, and after remaining there ten, twenty, or thirty years, return to Tibet and communicate their knowledge to their countrymen; but since the Mohammedan conquest of India the inhabitants of Tibet had had little connection with Bengal or the southern countries.

Bogle assured him that times were now altered, that under the Company in Bengal—and it must be remembered that when he was speaking our rule did not extend beyond Bengal on that side of India—every person’s property was secure, and everyone was at liberty to follow his own religion.

The Lama said he was informed that under the Fringies the country was very quiet, and that he would be ashamed if Bogle were to return with a fruitless errand. He would therefore consult his officers and some men from Lhasa, as well as some of the chief merchants, and after informing them of the Governor’s desire to encourage trade, and of the encouragement and protection which the Company afforded to traders in Bengal, “discuss the most proper method of carrying it on and extending it.”

The following day the Lama told Bogle that he “had written to Lhasa on the subject of opening a free commercial communication between his country and Bengal.” “But,” says Bogle, “although he spoke with all the zeal in the world, I confess I did not much like the thoughts of referring my business to Lhasa, where I was not present, where I was unacquainted, and where I had reason to think the Ministers had entertained no favourable idea of me and my commission.”

Later on, at the request of the Tashi Lama, two deputies from Lhasa came to visit Bogle. They said the English had shown great favour to the Lama and to them by making peace with the Bhutanese and restoring their country. Bogle replied that the English were far from being of that quarrelsome nature which some evil-minded persons represented them to be, and wished not for extent of territories. They were entrusted with the management of Bengal, and only wished it should remain in tranquillity. The war with the Bhutanese was of their own seeking. The deputies might judge whether the Company had not cause for alarm when eight or ten thousand Bhutanese, who had formerly confined themselves to their mountains, poured into the low country, seized the Raja of Kuch Behar, took possession of his territories, and carried their arms to the borders of Bengal. The deputies could judge for themselves whether the Company were not in the right in opposing them. In the course of the war some of the Bhutan territory was taken from them, but was immediately restored at the request of the Tashi Lama, and so far from desiring conquest, the boundaries of Bengal remained the same as formerly.

The Lhasa deputies said the Lama had written to Lhasa about trading, but that the Tibetans were afraid of the heat, and proceeded, therefore, only as far as Phari, where the Bhutanese brought the commodities of Bengal and exchanged them for those of Tibet. This was the ancient custom, and would certainly be observed.

Bogle stated that besides this there was formerly a very extensive trade carried on between Tibet and Bengal; Warren Hastings was desirous of removing existing obstacles, and had sent him to Tibet to represent the matter to the Tashi Lama, and he trusted that the Lhasa authorities would agree to so reasonable a proposal. They answered that Gesub Rimpoche (the Regent at Lhasa) would do everything in his power, but that he and all the country were subject to the Emperor of China.

“This,” says Bogle, “is a stumbling-block which crosses me in all my paths.” And in the paths of how many negotiators since has it not stood as a stumbling-block! The Tibetans are ready to do anything, but they can do nothing without the permission of the Chinese. The Chinese would freely open the whole of Tibet, but the Tibetans themselves are so terribly seclusive. So the same old story goes on year after year, till centuries are beginning to roll by, and the story is still unfinished. When in the Audience Hall of the Dalai Lama’s Palace at Lhasa itself I had obtained the seals of the Dalai Lama, of the Council, of the National Assembly, and of the three great monasteries, to an agreement, and had done all this in the presence of the Chinese Resident, I thought we had at last laid that fiction low for ever. But it seems to be springing up again in all its old exuberance, and showing still perennial vitality.

Bogle, at the request of the Tashi Lama, related to him the substance of his conversation with the Lhasa deputies. The Lama assured him again of the reasonableness of his proposals in regard to trade, but said that, in reply to the letter he had written on the subject, he had received a letter from the Lhasa Regent mentioning his apprehension of giving umbrage to the Chinese. There were, too, disturbances in Nepal and Sikkim which rendered this an improper time to settle anything, but in a year or two he hoped to bring it about. As to the English, the Lhasa Regent had received such accounts as made him suspicious, “and,” added the Tashi Lama, “his heart is confined, and he does not see things in the same view as I do.”

Bogle then hinted at the advisability of the Tibetans coming into some form of alliance with the English so that the influence of the latter might be used to restrain the Gurkhas of Nepal from attacking Tibet and its feudatories. This argument evidently much struck the Lama, who asked if he might write it to the Lhasa Regent. Bogle told him he might, and that he had no doubt that Warren Hastings would be ready to employ his mediation to make the Gurkha Raja desist from his attempts on the territories subject to Lhasa, and that he had reason to think that from the Gurkha Raja’s dread of the English it would be effectual. The Lama said that the Regent’s apprehensions of the English arose not only from himself, but also from his fear of giving offence to the Chinese, to whom Tibet was subject. The Regent wished, therefore, to receive an answer from the Court at Peking.

Bogle contended that Warren Hastings, in his proposals to facilitate trade, was promoting the advantage of Tibet as well as of Bengal; that in former times merchants used to come freely into Tibet; that the Gurkha Raja’s wars and oppressions had prevented their coming for some years past, and he only prayed the Lama to remove the obstacles which these had occasioned. To this the Lama replied that he had no doubt of carrying the point, but that it might require a year or two to do it effectually.

So we see the well-intentioned Tashi Lama held back by the obstructive Lhasa authorities; and this was still more evident at Bogle’s next interview, which was with the Lhasa deputies. They came to pay him a farewell visit, and in the innocence of his heart he made the very simple request that they would convey a letter from him to the Lhasa Regent. Nothing could be more natural than such a request; but, till recently, one might just as well have asked a Tibetan to touch a red-hot poker as to carry a letter from an Englishman. The deputies said that if it contained anything to do with business they could not carry it. “I confess,” says Bogle, “I was much struck with this answer.” Poor man, he might well be! And I was equally struck, 130 years later, when I was formally deputed on a mission to Tibet, with the full consent of the Chinese suzerain, when Tibetans still refused to take a letter from an Englishman. It was only when we were in full march to Lhasa, and but a few miles distant, that they at last consented to so simple a proceeding as receiving a letter, though now they have changed so completely round, that this year the Dalai Lama himself, at Calcutta, appealed to the Viceroy of India “to secure the observance of the right which the Tibetans had of dealing direct with the British.”

Bogle told the Lhasa deputies that he wished to know the grounds of the Regent’s suspicions, but they replied “that much conversation was not the custom of their country,” and wished him a good journey back to Bengal. Bogle endeavoured to get them to listen to him, as he wished to introduce the subject of trade, but it was to no purpose.

“This conversation gave me more concern,” he records, “than any I had in Tibet.” He immediately asked to see the Tashi Lama, and told him “with some warmth,” as he was “a good deal affected,” that he could not help being concerned that the Regent should suspect him of coming into his country to raise disturbances; that God was his witness that he wished the Regent well, and wished the Lama well, and the country well, and that a suspicion of treachery and falsehood he could not bear. The Tashi Lami tried to calm him, and eventually dictated a letter in Tibetan in Bogle’s name to the Lhasa Regent. This letter contained only one sentence of pure business. It simply said: “I request, in the name of the Governor, my master, that you will allow merchants to trade between this country and Bengal.” Not a very aggressive request to make or a very great favour to ask, especially as the Tibetans had begun their intercourse by asking a favour from us. But it was not for a century and a quarter, and not till we had carried our arms to Lhasa itself, that that simple request was answered, although all the time the people and traders of Tibet were only too willing to trade with us.

Why Bogle did not himself go to Lhasa, as he was empowered to do by his instructions, seems strange. The Tashi Lama said that he himself would have been quite willing, but that the Lhasa Regent was very averse, and he dissuaded Bogle, saying that the Regent’s heart was small and suspicious, and he could not promise that he would be able to procure the Regent’s consent.

And now the feeling of suspicion was to be increased by an unfortunate occurrence. The Gurkha Raja of Nepal wrote to both the Tashi Lama and the Lhasa Regent, announcing that he had subdued certain districts. He said he did not wish to quarrel with Tibet, but if they had a mind for war he let them know he was well prepared, and he would desire them to remember he was a Rajput. He wished to establish factories at places upon the Tibetan border, where the merchants of Tibet might purchase the commodities of his country and of Bengal, and he desired the concurrence of the Tibetans. He also further desired the Tibetans "to have no connection with Fringies or Moghuls, and not to allow them into the country, but to follow the ancient custom, which he was resolved likewise to do." A Fringy had come to him upon some business, and was now in his country, but he intended to send him back as soon as possible, and desired the Tibetans to do the same with Bogle.

Thus were Bogle’s difficulties still further increased. And in one respect, at least, we have advanced since his day; for the Mission to Lhasa in 1904, instead of being hampered, was warmly supported by the Nepalese. The Dewan of Nepal wrote strongly to the Lhasa authorities, urging them to reason, and his agent at Lhasa was of the greatest assistance to me in my negotiations with the Tibetans.

Besides China and Nepal thus entering into this Tibetan question, there was also some mention of Russia even so far back as that. The Tashi Lama had already questioned Bogle about the Empress of Russia. He now told Bogle that there was a quarrel between the Russians and the Chinese over some Tartar tribe. The Russians had not yet begun hostilities, but he imagined they would soon go to war about it. Bogle told him that as the Russians were engaged in a very heavy war with the Turks—how far back that other story reaches!—he supposed they would hardly think of entering into another with the Chinese. He said the Russians were a very hardy and warlike people, capable of great efforts, and he doubted whether the Chinese would be able to cope with their troops.

Bogle then had conversations with the Kashmiri traders, who had been sent to him by the Tashi Lama, and who wanted to be allowed to trade with Bengal through Bhutan. They stated the difficulties which the Bhutanese placed in their way, and said that the Chief of Bhutan would soon remove these if the Company would threaten him with war, as after the last war he was in great dread of the English. It is a point which should be specially noted by those who believe that Warren Hastings’ policy was aggressive, that Bogle, in reply to this hint, told the merchants[^[4]] that he had no power to use such language to the Bhutanese, and that whatever he did with the Raja must be by peaceable and friendly means. The Company had entered into a treaty of peace with them, “which, according to the maxim of the English Government, would ... remain for ever inviolate.”

Tibetan merchants also came, at the Tashi Lama’s request, to see Bogle. They dealt chiefly in tea, some of them to the extent of two or three lakhs of rupees a year—of the then value of £20,000 to £30,000. They said the Lama had advised them to send agents to Bengal, but they were afraid to go into the heat of the plains. They had a tradition that about eight hundred years ago people of Tibet used to go to Bengal, but that eight out of ten died before their return. Bogle told them that if they were afraid of sending their servants thither, the Kashmiri would supply them with what they wanted. They said that formerly wool, broadcloth, etc., used to come through Nepal, but since the wars in Nepal the trade had diminished. They added that people imagined from gold being produced in Tibet that it was extremely rich, but that this was not the case, and if extraordinary quantities of gold were sent to Bengal, the Emperor of China, who was Sovereign of the country, would be displeased.

At his farewell interview Bogle said that Warren Hastings would send letters to the Lama by his own servants, upon which the Lama said: "I wish the Governor will not at present send an Englishman. You know what difficulties I had about your coming into the country, and how I had to struggle with the jealousy of the Gesub Rimpoche (the Regent) and the people at Lhasa. Even now they are uneasy at my having kept you so long. I could wish, therefore, that the Governor would rather send a Hindu. I am in hopes my letter to the Regent will have a good effect in removing his jealousy, and I expect in a year or two that the government of this country will be in the Dalai Lama’s hands, when I will inform the Governor, and he may then send an Englishman to me and to the Dalai Lama."

The Tashi Lama repeated his concern at Bogle’s departure and the satisfaction he had received in being informed of the customs of Europe. He spoke all this, in and with a look very different from the studied compliments of Hindustan. “I never could reconcile myself,” continues Bogle, “to taking a last leave of anybody; and what from the Lama’s pleasant and amiable character, what from the many favours and civilities he had shown me, I could not help being particularly affected. He observed it, and in order to cheer me mentioned his hopes of seeing me again.”

Of Bogle’s own warm-hearted and affectionate feelings to the people of Tibet there can be no question. On the eve of his departure he wrote in a letter to his sister: “Farewell, ye honest and simple people! May ye long enjoy the happiness which is denied to more polished nations; and while they are engaged in the endless pursuits of avarice and ambition, defended by your barren mountains, may ye continue to live in peace and contentment, and know no wants but those of nature.”

At the close of Bogle’s Mission we may review its results. He was sent by Warren Hastings to establish relationship and intercourse of trade with the Tibetans. How far did he succeed in carrying out that object?

It is sufficiently clear that, as regards personal relationship, he was eminently successful, and that was about as much as he could have expected to establish at the start. As we have already seen, Warren Hastings never expected any very striking result from the first communication. He wished to lay the foundation for neighbourly intercourse, and in this much he succeeded. He had had experience enough of Asiatics in other quarters to be aware that they are very naturally suspicious of a European Power, then by some apparently irresistible process gradually expanding over smaller Asiatic peoples. As the instance of the Gurkha Raja’s letter showed, there are few Asiatic rulers who, if they have the power to subdue a weaker neighbour, will not as a perfectly natural course proceed to bring that neighbour under subjection. This is looked upon by most Asiatics as a quite normal and inevitable proceeding. Naturally, therefore, the Tibetans would assume that it would only be a matter of time before the English Governor of Bengal would attack Tibet. He had the power to subdue the country; he would therefore subdue it. In the first instance he would, of course, send up an agent to spy out the land, to see what it was worth, and to find out the best way into it; and such an agent doubtless Bogle was, in their opinion. It was inevitable, therefore, that Bogle should be viewed with suspicion, and that the Tibetans should not, at the first jump off, throw their country freely open to trade. How much wiser, in their opinion, would be the views of some shrewd old counsellor who said: “Keep the English at a distance; don’t let one into our country; stay behind our mountain barrier and have nothing whatever to do with anyone beyond it. This is the ‘ancient custom.’ Do not let us depart from it. Let us be civil to this Bogle now he is here, lest we offend his powerful master, but for God’s sake let us get rid of him as soon as we can, and put every polite difficulty we know of in the way of any other Englishman coming amongst us.”

We can imagine how sound such an opinion would seem to the generality of the old greybeard’s hearers, and how difficult it would be for anyone—even the Tashi Lama—to contend against it. And with such a feeling in existence Bogle could not do more than produce a favourable personal impression, and put in an argument or two, whenever he had the opportunity, to show that there were also some advantages in having relationship with the English, in the hopes that these arguments might gradually sink into the Tibetan mind, and when the opportunity should arise, bring forth fruit. And this much he did most effectively in carrying out the Governor’s policy.

CHAPTER II
TURNER’S MISSION, 1782

Warren Hastings was not content with a single effort to reopen the commercial and friendly intercourse which in former times had subsisted between Tibet and India. As he had expected little from the first move, so he had always intended to work continuously with the same end in view, hoping to eventually gain that end by repeated efforts over long periods.

Bogle returned to Calcutta in June, 1775, and in November of the same year Hastings deputed Dr. Hamilton, who had accompanied him to Tibet, on a second mission to Bhutan. Hamilton spent some months in Bhutan, inquiring into and settling certain causes of dispute; and in July, 1777, he was sent on a third mission to Bhutan to congratulate a new Deb Raja on his succession. Thus, as Markham points out, Warren Hastings, by keeping up a regular intercourse with the Bhutan rulers, by maintaining a correspondence with the Tashi Lama, and by means of an annual fair at Rangpur, prevented the opening made by Bogle from again being closed.

Warren Hastings also intended to send another mission to Tibet itself, and in 1779 Bogle was appointed Envoy for a second time. But in the meanwhile the Tashi Lama had decided to undertake a journey to Peking to visit the Chinese Emperor. Bogle, therefore, was to have been sent to Peking to meet the Lama there, but, most disastrously for all friendly intercourse between Tibet and India, the Lama died in Peking in November 1780, and Bogle himself died at Calcutta in April, 1781.

The success of Asiatic affairs depends so much on the influence of personalities that the death of these two men, who had conceived such a real respect and affection for one another, was an almost fatal blow to Warren Hastings’ plans for the improvement of the relationship between Tibet and India. Nevertheless, he kept steadily on with his deliberate policy, and watched for some other opportunity of carrying it to fruition. Persistency of aim and watchfulness for opportunities, making the most of the occasion offered, and decisiveness of action—these were always Hastings’ guiding principles. So when, in February, 1782, news reached Calcutta that the Tashi Lama, in accordance with the Tibetan ideas of reincarnation, had reappeared in the person of an infant, he resolved to send another mission to Tibet to congratulate the Regent.

For this duty he selected Captain Samuel Turner, an officer who had distinguished himself at the Siege of Seringapatam and on a mission to Tippoo Sultan, and who was then thirty-three years of age.

Turner himself was very favourably received at Shigatse, and at his first interview informed the Regent that Warren Hastings had an earnest solicitude to preserve and cultivate the amicable intercourse that had so happily commenced between them; that this correspondence, in its earliest stages, had been dictated by the purest motives of humanity, and had hitherto pointed with unexampled sincerity and steadiness towards one great object, which constituted the grand business of the Tashi Lama’s life—peace and universal good; that the Governor-General, whose attention was always directed towards the same pursuits, was overwhelmed with anxiety lest the friendship which had been established between himself and the Regent might undergo a change, and he had therefore sent a trusted agent to convey his congratulations on the joyful reappearance in the world of the late Tashi Lama, and to express the hope that everything that was expected would at length be effectually accomplished.

To this the Regent replied that the present and the late Tashi Lama were one and the same, and that there was no manner of difference between them, only that, as he was yet merely an infant, and his spirit had but just returned into the world, he was at present incapable of action. The Regent assured Turner of the firm, unshaken attachment which the Tashi Lama had entertained for Mr. Hastings to his latest breath, and he was also loud in his encomiums on the occasion that gave birth to their present friendship, which originated entirely in his granting peace to the Bhutanese in compliance with the intercession of the Tashi Lama.

In other interviews the Regent assured Turner that during the interview of the late Tashi Lama with the Emperor of China, the Lama had taken several opportunities to represent in the strongest terms the particular amity which subsisted between the Governor-General and himself. The Regent said that the Lama’s conversation had even influenced the Emperor to resolve upon commencing a correspondence with his friend. Turner was also assured that the Tashi Lama particularly sought from the Emperor liberty to grant admission to Tibet to whatever person he chose, without control. And to this the Emperor is said to have consented; but, owing to the death of the Tashi Lama and the jealousy of the Chinese officials, nothing resulted.

The power and influence of these Chinese officials in Tibet was evidently very great, for in his intercourse with the Tibetan officials Turner could plainly trace, though they were averse to own any immediate dependence upon the Chinese, the greatest awe of the Emperor of China, and of his officers stationed at the Court of Lhasa, who had usurped even from the hands of the Dalai Lama the greatest portion of his temporal power. When Turner offered to attend a certain ceremony, the Regent excused himself from accepting the offer of his company on account of the Chinese, whose jealousy of strangers was well known, and to whom he was particularly anxious to give no occasion for offence. On a subsequent occasion the Regent told Turner that many letters had passed between himself and the Dalai Lama, who was always favourably inclined towards the English; but he attributed the discouragement and obstruction Turner had received to the Chinese officials at Lhasa. “The influence of the Chinese,” adds Turner, “overawes the Tibetans in all their proceedings, and produces a timidity and caution in their conduct more suited to the character of subjects than allies.” At the same time, they were very jealous of interference by the Chinese, and uneasy of their yoke, though it sat so lightly upon them. And while they respected the Chinese Emperor, and had this fear of Chinese officials, they “looked upon the Chinese as a gross and impure race of men.”

And now again, as in Bogle’s time, we see traces of Russian influence. The Regent and the Ministers told Turner that they were no strangers to the reputation of the reigning Czarina, Catherine, her extent of dominion, and the commerce carried on with China. Many overtures, they told him, had been made on the part of Russia to extend her commerce to the internal part of Tibet, but the disinclination of the Tibetans to enter into any new foreign connection, and the watchful jealousy of the Chinese, had hitherto defeated every attempt of that nature.

Turner spent nearly a year in Tibet, and though he was unable to visit Lhasa owing to the antipathy of the Lamas, he was able to obtain some substantial concessions from the Regent of the Tashi Lama at Shigatse. He obtained[^[5]] “his promise of encouragement to all merchants, natives of India, that may be sent to traffic in Tibet, on behalf of the Government of Bengal,” and he reports to Warren Hastings that his authority alone is requisite to secure these merchants the protection of the Regent, who had promised to grant free admission into Tibet to all such merchants, natives of India, as shall come recommended by the Governor of Bengal; to yield them every assistance requisite for the transport of their goods; and to assign them a place of residence for vending their commodities, either within the monastery at Shigatse, or, should it be considered as more eligible, in the town itself. He did not consider it consistent with the spirit of Warren Hastings’ instructions, he reports, to be importunate for greater privileges than those to native traders. Such as he had obtained he hoped would suffice to open the much-wished-for communication. When merchants had learnt the way, tasted the profit and established intercourse, the traffic might bear a tax, which, if laid upon it in its infancy, might suppress its growth.

Turner rejoined Warren Hastings at Patna in March, 1784, and I remember seeing, among some original letters of Warren Hastings in the Indian Foreign Office, an enthusiastic appreciation of Turner’s work, and an expression of the great pleasure the meeting afforded him; for Hastings was as warmly appreciative with some men as he was coldly reserved with others.

As long as Hastings remained in India our intercourse with Tibet prospered. But soon after his departure a contretemps occurred, and all his work was undone. In 1792 the Nepalese invaded Tibet, sacked Shigatse, and carried off all the plunder of the monasteries. The Lamas had to flee across the Brahmaputra and apply for protection to the Chinese. A Chinese army was despatched to their assistance. The Nepalese were defeated and driven back across their own frontier, and peace was only concluded upon the conditions of an annual tribute to the Emperor and the full restitution of all the spoils which they carried off.

By an unfortunate circumstance, through the first British Envoy having arrived in Nepal just about the time of this invasion, the Chinese commander formed the impression that we had instigated, or at least encouraged, the Nepalese in their attack on Tibet; and the representations which he made to his Government, coupled, says Turner, with our declining to afford effectual assistance to the Lamas’ cause, had considerable weight. As a consequence, all communication between Tibet and India was stopped, and “the approach of strangers, even of Bengal and Hindustan, was utterly prohibited.” The Hindu holy men were charged with treachery in acting as spies and guides for the Nepalese, and were forbidden to remain any longer in Shigatse; and “from this period,” continues Turner, “unhappily is to be dated the interruption which has taken place in the regular intercourse between the Company’s possessions and the territory of the Lama.”

It was a sad ending to what had begun so promisingly, and one is tempted to reflect what Warren Hastings would have done if he had still held the reins of government in Bengal, and whether he would have been able to restrain the Gurkhas, to assist the Lamas, and to reassure the Chinese. Certainly it is a most unfortunate circumstance that we so often are unable to help our friends just when they most need our help, and press our friendship upon them just when they least want it.

Thus the results of Warren Hastings’ forethought and careful, steady endeavour were all lost. Yet it must be conceded by the sturdiest advocate of non-interference that those endeavours were not merely statesman-like, but humane. There was never any attempt to aggress. No threats were ever used; no impatience was shown. Warren Hastings, as the representative of a trading company, looked, firstly, to improve trade relations; but as the ruler of many millions of human beings, he knew that trade or any other relationship must be based on mutual good feeling, and he knew that good feeling with a suspicious people can only be established by a very, very slow process. He therefore took each step deliberately, and he strove to secure permanently the advantages of each small step taken; and, having done this, he had some right to expect that when he himself had shown so much restraint and moderation, those who followed after would continue the same deliberate policy.

Unfortunately, as we have seen, the policy of drift and inaction in regard to Tibet set in on Warren Hastings’ departure. The promotion of intercourse had proved a difficult business; and with so much on hand elsewhere in the building up of the Indian Empire, it was perhaps natural that the ordinary Governor-General should let the matter drop.

CHAPTER III
MANNING’S VISIT TO LHASA

Now when statesmen were most lukewarm about Tibet the inevitable English adventurer came to the front. And it is a curious circumstance that it was just when our relations with the Tibetans were at their coldest that the only Englishman who ever reached Lhasa before the Mission of 1904 achieved this success. He was not an accredited agent of Government sent to bring into effect a deliberate policy such as that conceived by Warren Hastings. He was a private adventurer, and he went up in spite of, and against the wishes of, the Government of the time.

His name was Manning. At Cambridge he was the friend of Charles Lamb, and was of such ability that he was expected to be at least Second Wrangler, but he was of an eccentric nature, and “had a strong repugnance to oaths,” and left the University without a degree. He conceived, however, a passionate desire to see the Chinese Empire. He studied the Chinese language in France and England, afterwards made his way to Canton, remained there three years, and in 1810 procured a letter of introduction from the Select Committee of Canton to Lord Minto, then Governor-General of India, asking him to give him every practicable assistance in the prosecution of his plans. But he received little or no aid from the Government, and was left to his own resources, without official recognition of any description.

Manning, attended by a Chinese servant, proceeded to Tibet through Bhutan, and on October 21, 1811, arrived at Phari, at the head of the Chumbi Valley. His description of the Jong then precisely corresponds with our own experiences in Tibet on many an occasion since: “Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke. Misery, but good mutton.”

A Chinese Mandarin arrived there about the same time, and Manning gave him two bottles of cherry-brandy and a wineglass. This, and probably Manning’s very original manners, evidently unfroze his heart, for he asked him to dinner, and promised to write immediately to the Lhasa Mandarin for permission for him to proceed. Manning also received applications to cure soldiers, and his medicines “did wonderfully well, and the patients were very grateful.” They even petitioned for him to go with the Mandarin towards Gyantse, and the Mandarin granted their request.

Altogether, Manning made a very favourable impression on the Chinese who, he remarked, lorded it in Tibet like the English in India, and made the Tibetans stand before them. And he considered then that there were advantages in having the Chinese in this superior position. “Things are much pleasanter now the Chinese are here,” he says; “the magistrate hints about overtures respecting opening a commercial intercourse between the Chinese and the English through Bhutan. I cannot help exclaiming in my mind (as I often do) what fools the Company are to give me no commission, no authority, no instructions. What use are their Embassies when their Ambassadors cannot speak to a soul, and can only make ordinary phrases pass through a stupid interpreter? No finesse, no tournure, no compliments. Fools, fools, fools, to neglect an opportunity they may never have again!”

Poor Manning experienced very severe cold, and travelled to Gyantse in great discomfort, and felt these discomforts acutely, so that the greater part of his diary is filled with quaint denunciation of his Chinese clerk; of a vicious horse which kicked and bit him; of the “common horse-furniture,” which was “detestable”; of the saddle which was so high behind and before that he sat in pain unless he twisted himself unequally; of another pony “which sprang forward in a full runaway gallop, with the most furious and awkward motion he ever experienced”; of yet another that was “so weak, so tottering, and so stumbling, and which trembled so whenever he set his foot on a stone, which was about every other step,” that he could “hardly keep up with the company”; of his being “so eaten up by little insects” that he had to sit down in the sunshine and get rid of as many as he could, for he “suffered a good deal from these little insects, whose society he was not used to”; of his at last finding “a very pleasant-going horse with a handsome countenance,” which he was tempted to buy, “but was checked by the prudent consideration that he might encumber me at Lhasa,” and too much disencumber his lean purse. Strange that the first Englishman ever to visit Lhasa should have been incommoded for want of a five-pound note with which to buy a rough hill pony.

At Gyantse the Chinese Mandarin and General, in whose train Manning had come, appointed him a little lodge in the courtyard of the principal house, and whatever he required was soon supplied by the Chinese soldiers and others who wished medical treatment from him. “One brought rice, one brought meat, another brought a table, another brought a little paste and paper and mended a hole in the window, another brought a present of a pen and candles.” Every Chinaman in the town came to see him. The General was “vastly civil and polite,” and invited him to dinner. But though he was “very much of a gentleman,” Manning concluded that he was “really no better than an old woman.” The dinner was tolerably good, and the wine excellent, but the cooking was indifferent.

On the other hand, the Mandarin was impressed by Manning’s beard. He had known men with better moustaches than Manning’s, for he had, “for convenience of eating, song, and drink,” cut his short in India, and it had not yet grown again. But the beard never failed to excite the General’s admiration, and he declared he had never seen one nearly so handsome. The General, likewise, approved of his “countenance and manner.” He pretended to skill in physiognomy and fortune-telling, and foretold very great things of Manning.

Manning also visited the Tibet Mandarin, who lived “in a sort of castle on the top of a hill,” the Jong, which General Macdonald attacked and captured in 1904, and they discussed Calcutta and Tibet together for half an hour, but what they said Manning does not record. The Tibetan intimated that he would return the visit the next day, and he sent “some rice and a useful piece of cloth, but did not come himself.”

With his medical practice Manning had a greater success. To one Chinaman and his wife, who were suffering from “an intermittent fever,” he gave “opium, Fowler’s solution of arsenic, and afterwards left them a few pages of bark. The mother-in-law, also, who had the complaint of old age, he cheered up with a little comforting physic.”

The General often came to see him, “for, like many other Generals, he had nothing to do, and was glad of a morning lounge.” He managed, however, to foist a Chinese servant on to Manning as cook. This man’s cooking was bad, but “in drying and folding up linen he saved him infinite trouble,” for, says Manning, “I never could to this day fold up a shirt or other vestment. A handkerchief or a sheet I can manage, but nothing further.”

Manning, hearing that the General was fond of music, and “no bad performer,” took the opportunity “one day, while he was smoking his pipe in my courtyard, of introducing the subject, and paying my court to him by requesting the favour of hearing music. This brought me an invitation to take an evening repast and wine with him, which was just what I liked. He gave us a very pretty concert.... The Chinese music, though rather meagre to a European, has its beauties.... The General insisted upon my giving him a specimen of European (Calcutta) music on the Chinese flute. I was not acquainted with the fingering of that instrument, but I managed to produce something, which he politely praised.”

The answer from the Lhasa magistrate to his request to be permitted to proceed to Lhasa arrived a few days after his arrival at Gyantse. A passport was given him, transport and supplies furnished, and as he neared Lhasa he was met by a “respectable person on horseback, who dismounted and saluted,” and who had been sent out by the Tibetan authorities to welcome him and conduct him to Lhasa.

The view of the Potala, “of the lofty, towering palace, which forms a majestic mountain of a building,” excited his admiration, but if the palace had exceeded his expectations, he says, the town as far fell short of them. There was “nothing striking, nothing pleasing, in its appearance. The habitations were begrimed with smut and dirt.... In short, everything seemed mean and gloomy, and excited the idea of something unreal.”

His first care was to provide himself with a proper hat, and, having found one, he proceeded to pay his respects to the Chinese Mandarin. Coming into his presence, he for the first time in his life performed the ceremony of ketese, or kneeling. The Mandarin received him politely, and said he had provided him with quarters. On the following day he visited two of the chief Tibetan officials.

On December 17, 1811, he went to the Potala to salute the Grand Lama. He took with him as an offering some broadcloth, two pair of china ewers, and a pair of good brass candlesticks, which he had “clean and furbished up,” and into which he put “two wax candles to make a show.” He also took “thirty new bright dollars, and as many pieces of zinc,” and, besides this, “some genuine Smith’s lavender-water ... and a good store of Nankin tea, which is a rarity and delicacy at Lhasa, and not to be bought there.”

Arrived in the great hall he made due obeisance, touching the ground three times with his head to the Grand Lama, and once to the Ti-mi-fu. While he was bowing, "the awkward servants contrived to let fall and break the bottle of lavender-water." Having delivered his present to the Grand Lama, he took off his hat, and “humbly gave his clean-shaved head to lay his hands upon.”

This ceremony over, he sat on a cushion, not far from the Lama’s throne, and had suché brought them. But “the Lama’s beautiful and interesting face and manner engrossed almost all his attention.” His face was, he thought, poetically and affectingly beautiful. He was at that time about seven years old, and had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated, princely child. Sometimes, particularly when he looked at Manning, his smile almost approached to a gentle laugh. “No doubt,” naïvely remarks Manning, “my grim beard and spectacles somewhat excited his risibility.”

The little Grand Lama addressed a few remarks to Manning, speaking in Tibetan to the Chinese interpreter, the interpreter in Chinese to Manning’s Chinese Munshi, and the Munshi in Latin to Manning. “I was extremely affected by this interview with the Lama,” says Manning. “I could have wept through strangeness of sensation.”

Here in Lhasa, as at Gyantse, Manning had many applications made to him for medicine, and he treated both Chinese and Tibetans. But spies also came, and “certainly,” says Manning, “my bile used to rise when the hounds looked into my room.” The Tartar General detested Europeans. They were the cause, he said, of all his misfortunes. Sometimes he said Manning was a missionary, and at other times a spy. “These Europeans are very formidable; now one man has come to spy the country he will inform others. Numbers will come, and at last they will be for taking the country from us.” So argued the Mandarins, and, indeed, there were rumours that the Chinese meant to execute Manning. He had always fully expected this possibility, and writes: “I never could, even in idea, make up my mind to submit to an execution with firmness and manliness.”

Yet, on the whole, he was not badly treated. He remained on at Lhasa for several months, paying many visits to the Grand Lama, and eventually orders came from Peking for him to return the way he came. He left Lhasa on April 19, and reached Kuch Behar on June 10, 1812.

Manning’s own object was “A moral view of China, its manners, the degree of happiness the people enjoy, their sentiments and opinions so far as they influence life, their literature, their history, the causes of their stability and vast population, their minor arts and contrivances; what there might be in China to serve as a model for imitation, and what to serve as a beacon to avoid.” Having been foiled in this his main object, he does not appear to have regarded the subsidiary circumstance that he had reached Lhasa as of particular interest. And he seems to have been so disgusted with the Government’s refusal to support him, that when he returned to Calcutta he would give no one any particulars of his journey. The account which Markham published sixty years later was only discovered long after his death.

It is a meagre record of so important a journey, yet it exemplifies one or two points which are worthy of note. It showed that an individual Englishman, with delicacy of touch and with a real sympathetic feeling towards those among whom he was travelling, could find his way even into the very presence of the Dalai Lama in the Potala itself. It showed, too, that he could get on perfectly well with the Chinese personally. But it showed likewise that at the back of the minds of both the Tibetans and Chinese was a strong dread of the British power, which made them fear to allow a single Englishman to remain in Tibet or even pass through the country.

Yet Manning confirmed what Bogle and Turner had also noticed—that, while the Tibetans dreaded the Chinese, they disliked them intensely. He says that the Chinese were very disrespectful to the Tibetans. Only bad-charactered Chinamen were sent to Tibet, and he could not help thinking that the Tibetans "would view the Chinese influence in Tibet overthrown without many emotions of regret, especially if the rulers under the new influence were to treat the Grand Lama with respect; for this is a point in which those haughty Mandarins are somewhat deficient, to the no small dissatisfaction of the good people of Lhasa." These words would be very fairly applicable to the situation at the present day.

After Manning, no Englishman, in either a private or official capacity, visited Lhasa till the Mission of 1904. This seems to show want of enterprise on the part of Englishmen in India; but some did make the attempt, and many more would have if they could have obtained the necessary leave from all the authorities concerned. British officers in India are keen enough to go on such adventures, but leave can very rarely be obtained. I had myself planned out such a journey in 1889. I had interviewed the Foreign Secretary, now Sir Mortimer Durand, and not only obtained permission, but even some pecuniary assistance, when, at the last moment, I was refused permission by the Colonel of my regiment. Such restrictions must, I know, have prevented many another besides myself. Still, efforts were made by individual officers, unsupported by Government, to explore Tibet, and, if possible, reach Lhasa. Moorcroft explored Western Tibet, and, according to some reports, actually reached Lhasa and died there; Richard and Henry Strachey visited the sources of the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej; Carey, Littledale, Bower, Wellby, Deasy, and Rawling explored in Northern Tibet; and native surveyors mapped even Lhasa itself, to which point Sarat Chandra Das also penetrated at great risk and brought back most valuable information.

These and other efforts to explore the country by the Russian travellers Prjevalsky, Pievtsoff and Kozoloff; by the Frenchmen Huc and Gabet, Bonvalot, Prince Henri d’Orléans, Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard; and by that indefatigable and courageous Swedish traveller, Sven Hedin, have all been brought together by Sir Thomas Holdich in his recent work on exploration in Tibet. It is not necessary here to do more than refer to the fact that efforts to gain a knowledge of the country were almost continuously being made through the second half of last century; my object is rather to describe the effort, not so much to explore the country, as to regularize and foster the intercourse which already existed with its people.

CHAPTER IV
THE BENGAL GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS, 1873–1886

It was not till a century had elapsed since Warren Hastings had begun his attempts to form a friendship with the Tibetans that the Government in India again made any real effort to come into proper relationship with their neighbours. For a century they were content to let things take their course, in spite of their informality, and in spite of the fact that Indian subjects were having all the worst of the intercourse, for while Tibetans were allowed to come to India when and where and how they liked, to trade there without duty and without hindrance, to travel and to reside wherever they wished, on the other side, obstructions of every kind were placed in the way of Indians, and still more of British, trading, travelling, or residing in Tibet. But in the year 1873 the Indian Government began to stir, and take stock of the position, and to reflect whether this one-sided condition of affairs might not be changed to the advantage of Indians and Europeans without hurting the Tibetans.

In that year the Bengal Government addressed the Government of India a letter, a copy of which was sent to the Royal Geographical Society, in which they urged that the Chinese should be pressed “for an order of admittance to Tibet,” and that “the authorities at Peking should allow a renewal of the friendly intercourse between India and Tibet which existed in the days of Bogle and Turner.” The Bengal Government said that the Government of India and the Secretary of State had repeatedly expressed the great interest which they took in this subject, and the wish that no favourable opportunity should be neglected of promoting the development of commercial intercourse between British India and those trans-Himalayan countries which were then practically closed to us. If only the Chinese and Tibetans would remove the embargo at present imposed upon the entry of our trade, there were, by routes under our own control, no serious difficulties or dangers of any kind to overcome, and none of the risks of collision which existed elsewhere.

Tibet, the Bengal Government said, was a well-regulated country with which our Hillmen were in constant communication. When Europeans went to the frontier and tried to cross it, there was no display of violence or disturbance. They were civilly turned back, with an intimation that there were orders not to admit them. All the inquiries of the Lieutenant-Governor led to the belief that the Tibetans themselves had no objections to intercourse with us. The experiences of the great botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, who in 1849 had travelled to the Tibetan border, and Blanford among the recent travellers, and of Bogle and Turner in the past, were singularly at one upon this point. The Commandant of Khamba Jong, who had met Mr. Blanford on the frontier in 1870, assured him that the Tibetans had no ill-will to foreigners, and would, if allowed, gladly receive Europeans. The fact appeared to be, the Lieutenant-Governor said, that “the prohibition to intercourse with Tibet is part of the Chinese policy of exclusion imposed on the Tibetans by Chinese officials and enforced by Chinese troops stationed in Tibet.” He fully sympathized with the Chinese desire to keep out foreigners in China. “But,” he said, “in Tibet there is not wealth enough to attract many adventurers; there is room only for a moderate and legitimate commerce;” and among a people so good and well regulated as the Tibetans there would be no such difficulties as existed in China. If the road were opened, it would be used only by fair traders and by responsible Government servants or travellers under the control of Government.

In seeking to press the Chinese for admittance to Tibet, he said, the most emphatic declaration might be made that, having our natural and best boundary in the Himalayas, we could not, and would not in any circumstances, encroach on Tibet, and we might offer to arrange that none save Hillmen or classes domiciled in Tibet should be allowed to go in without a pass, which would be given under such restrictions that Government would be responsible for the conduct of the holders.

The Lieutenant-Governor adduced as a further reason for entering into formal relationship with the Tibetans that, if we had an understanding between us, we should together be able to keep in order the wild tribes inhabiting the hilly country between British territory and Tibet. And he instanced the case of the Mezhow Mishnies, who for murdering two French missionaries in 1854 were punished both by us and by the Tibetans, and who, in consequence, ever after had “a most salutary dread of using violence.”

The Bengal Government also contended then in 1873, as they are still contending now, for the admission of our tea. Indian tea is grown in large quantities on the hills in British territory bordering Tibet. But, said the Lieutenant-Governor, nearly forty years ago: “The Tibetans, or rather their Chinese Governors, will not, on protectionist principles, admit our tea across the passes. An absolute embargo is laid on anything in the shape of tea.” The removal of this, he thought, might well be made a subject of special negotiation. And besides tea, the Bengal Government thought that Manchester and Birmingham goods and Indian indigo would find a market in Tibet, and that we should receive in return much wool, sheep, cattle, walnuts, Tibetan cloths, and other commodities.

Thus, thirty years before the Tibet Mission started the local Government had made a real effort to have the Chinese pressed to abandon their policy of exclusion so far as Tibet was concerned. The lineal official descendant of Warren Hastings in the Governorship of Bengal neither attempted nor advocated any high-handed local measures. He stated his case calmly and reasonably, and advocated the most correct course—the attempt to settle the matter direct with the Chinese.

Local officers are often told that they are too impatient, and that they too frequently want to settle a matter by local action, when it might be so much better disposed of by correspondence from headquarters; by negotiations, for instance, between London and Peking, or London and St. Petersburg. They are urged to take a wider view, and to display a calmer spirit, and greater confidence in the wisdom and sagacity of their London rulers. But when thirty years after this very moderate and perfectly reasonable request was made by the local authority, the matter was still no nearer settlement than it was when the request was made; and when the House of Commons, which controls the destinies of the Empire, was still asking why we did not apply to the Chinese, the local officer’s faith in the superior efficacy of headquarters treatment is somewhat shaken. And he often questions whether matters which, after forming the subject of voluminous correspondence between the provincial Government and the Government of India, between the latter and the India Office, between the India Office and the Foreign Office, between the Foreign Office and the Ambassador abroad, between him and the Foreign Government, which are discussed in the Cabinet, and form a subject for debate in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and for platform speeches and newspaper articles innumerable, do not in this lengthy process assume a magnitude which they never originally possessed; whether, having assumed such magnitude, they ever really do get settled or only compromised; and whether, after all, they might not have been settled expeditiously and decisively on the spot before they had been allowed to grow to these alarming proportions.

There are, one knows, many cases which can only be settled by the Central Government, and which are so settled very satisfactorily, but I am doubtful if Tibet is one of these, and whether we have been wise in the instance of Tibet, and in many others connected with China, to make so much of, and expect so much from, the Chinese Central Government, which has so little real control over the local Governments. Perhaps if the Government of Bengal, with the countenance and support of the Imperial Government, had long ago dealt directly with the Lhasa authorities, Chinese and Tibetan matters might have been arranged more expeditiously and satisfactorily. At any rate, it cannot be safely assumed that the Central Government method is necessarily the best.

In this case, for instance, all that resulted was that the Chinese Government, in the Chefu Convention concluded three years later, undertook to protect any mission which should be sent to Tibet—an undertaking which was literally valueless, for when a mission was actually sent to Tibet they were unable to afford it the slightest protection, and the Chinese representative in Lhasa confessed to me in writing that he could not even get the Tibetans to give him transport to enable him to meet me.

The Government of Bengal had therefore to content themselves with improving the road inside our frontier, and with doing what they could on our side to entice and further trade.

But in 1885 a renewed effort was made to come to an understanding with the Tibetans. The brilliant Secretary of the Bengal Government, Colman Macaulay, visited the frontier to see if any useful relationship could be established with the Shigatse people by the route up the head of the Sikkim Valley. The Tashi Lama, who resides at Shigatse, had always been more friendly than the Lhasa people, and this seemed more promising. Macaulay saw a local Tibetan official from the other side, entered into friendly intercourse, and found, as Bogle and Turner had found, that apart from Chinese obstruction there was no objection on the part of the Tibetan people themselves to enter into friendly relationship. Macaulay was filled with enthusiasm. He threw his whole soul and energy into the matter. He secured the support of the Government of India. And, more important still, he fired the Secretary of State for India with ardour. Never before had such enthusiasm for improving our relations with Tibet been shown. And as it happened that this Secretary of State was the best the India Office have ever had—the man who without any faltering hesitation annexed Burma, to the lasting benefit of the Burmese, of ourselves, and of humanity—there seemed now a real prospect of success. Lord Randolph Churchill and Colman Macaulay were something of kindred spirits, and Macaulay was sent to Peking with every support and encouragement to get the necessary permit for a mission to Lhasa. The Chinese assented. Permission was granted. Macaulay organized his mission, bought rich presents, collected his transport, and was on the eve of starting from Darjiling when “international considerations” came in and Government countermanded the whole affair.

“Everything had gone so fairly,” wrote Macaulay to Sir Clements Markham from Darjiling in October, 1886, “that it was difficult for us here to believe that we should be shipwrecked within sight of the promised land.” Yet so it was, and he took his disappointment so deeply to heart that he completely broke down in health, and died a few years later.

Immediately following on the abandonment of the mission came the most unprovoked aggression on the part of the Tibetans. They crossed the Jelap-la, the pass from Chumbi into Sikkim and the frontier between Tibet and our feudatory State, and they occupied Lengtu, eighteen miles on our side of the frontier, building a guard-house there, and turning out one of our road overseers, placed there to superintend the road which Sir Richard Temple had made when Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. And on hearing that the mission had been countermanded, they became so elated that they boasted that they would occupy Darjiling, only seventy-eight miles off, and something like a panic ensued in this almost unprotected summer resort. At the same time, on the opposite side of Tibet they were still more actively aggressive, expelling the Roman Catholic missionaries from their long-established homes at Batang, massacring many of their converts, and burning the mission-house.

This is a very essential fact to bear in mind in the consideration of the Tibetan question—that after both Tibetan and Chinese susceptibilities had been given way to on every occasion, it was the Tibetans who invaded us. It was a Bhutanese invasion of the plains of Bengal, followed by a letter from the Tashi Lama, that had initiated our relations with Tibet in the time of Warren Hastings. And it was this invasion of Sikkim that forced upon us the regularization of our relations with the Tibetans.

When the Tibetans thus invaded the territory of our feudatory, we should have been well within our right in forthwith expelling them by force; but, in accordance with the policy of forbearance we had so consistently pursued, we referred the matter to the Chinese, and requested them to procure the withdrawal of the Tibetans. We also allowed the Chinese ample time, a year, within which to bring their influence to bear. Then, at the end of 1887, we wrote to the Tibetan commander that unless he evacuated his position before March 15, 1888, he would be expelled by force. This letter was returned unopened. In February we wrote to the Dalai Lama himself to the same effect, but again we received no reply. It was only on March 20, 1888, that a British force assumed the offensive, and advanced upon the Tibetans in the position they had occupied within our frontier at Lengtu.

The Tibetans, for the time being, offered no resistance, and retired to Chumbi, on their own side of the frontier, and our troops occupied a position at Gnatong, on our side. Two months later, however, the Tibetans again showed truculence, and with 3,000 men attacked our camp at Gnatong. They were repulsed, and once more withdrew. But in September they, for the third time, advanced across our border, and in a single night, with that skill in building for which they are so remarkable, threw up a wall three miles long and from 3 to 4 feet high in a position just above Gnatong, and some miles within our border.

This position General Graham attacked on the following day, and drove the Tibetans from it over the Jelap-la Pass, and in the ensuing days pursued them into the Chumbi Valley. But here again, in accordance with our principle of respecting Chinese susceptibilities, our troops did not remain in Chumbi a single day, but returned at once to Gnatong. For two years now the Tibetans had been encroaching on our side of the frontier, but not for one day would we permit our troops to remain on the Tibetan side. Forbearance could scarcely go further than this, but yet it was to be still more strained on many a subsequent occasion.

CHAPTER V
THE CONVENTION WITH CHINA

The Chinese Amban, or Resident, at Lhasa now appeared upon the scene to effect a settlement, and during 1889 we endeavoured to have the frontier line properly fixed and our exclusive supremacy in Sikkim, which was recorded in well-known treaties, definitely recognized. We also wished, if possible, to have trade regulated. Considering that we had abandoned the proposed mission to Lhasa out of deference to Chinese and Tibetan susceptibilities, that the Tibetans had assumed the offensive, and that the Chinese had shown themselves utterly unable to control them, this was not an unreasonable expectation to hold. We made no demand for indemnity or for any accession of territory. We merely asked that the boundary and trade should be regulated. Yet a year of negotiation passed and no result was obtained, and the Government of India told the Chinese negotiators that they had decided “to close the Sikkim incident, so far as China is concerned, without insisting upon a specific agreement.”

But now that the Indian Government, knowing that they could perfectly well hold their own up to their frontier, and finding that the Chinese were of little use in controlling events beyond it, were quite prepared to drop negotiations, the Chinese themselves came forward and pressed for their conclusion. This is an important point. It was now the Chinese who were pressing for an agreement. Further, and this is still more important, they stated that “China will be quite able to enforce in Tibet the terms of the treaty,” and they asked the Government of India to depute officers to meet the Chinese Resident at Gnatong. For the agreement which was subsequently reached the Chinese are therefore in the fullest sense responsible. They had themselves sought it, and they had themselves undertaken to control the affairs of the Tibetans.

Agreement was eventually reached in 1890, and a Convention was signed by Lord Lansdowne and the Chinese Resident in Calcutta on March 17. It laid down that “the boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Teesta, and the affluents from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu, and northwards into other rivers of Tibet.” It admitted the British protectorate over the Sikkim State. By it both the Chinese and British Governments engaged “reciprocally to respect the boundary as defined in Article I., and to prevent acts of aggression from their respective sides of the frontier.” The three questions of providing increased facilities for trade, of pasturage, and of the method in which official communications between the British authorities in India and the authorities in Tibet should be conducted were reserved for discussion by joint Commissioners from either side, who should meet within six months of the ratification of the Convention.

This Convention proved in practice to be of not the slightest use, for the Tibetans never recognized it, and the Chinese were totally unable to impress them. But it was at least a start towards effecting our ultimate object of regularizing our intercourse with Tibet, and for another three years we solemnly occupied ourselves in discussing the three reserved points; the Chinese Resident, Sheng, being himself the joint Commissioner on the side of the Chinese, and Mr. A. W. Paul representing the British Government.

Our principal aim was to get some mart recognized, to which our merchants could resort and there meet Tibetan merchants. We did not attempt to gain permission for our traders to travel all over Tibet, as Tibetan traders can travel all over India. We merely sought to have one single place recognized where Indian and Tibetan traders could meet to do business with each other. And the place we sought to get so recognized was not in the centre of Tibet, or even in Tibet proper at all. It did not lie on the far side of the Himalayan watershed. It was Phari, at the head of the Chumbi Valley, on the southern side of the main Himalayan range. Yet to even this the Chinese and Tibetans would not agree, and eventually Yatung, at the extreme southern end of the Chumbi Valley and immediately on our border, was agreed upon.

Having made this concession, and having refrained from pressing for permission to allow British subjects to travel beyond this or to buy land and build houses there, we had hoped that the Chinese would meet our wishes in regard to the admission of tea. Speakers in Parliament scoffed at the idea of pressing tea upon the Chinese, but for the Bengal Government it is an important point. All along the low hills bordering Tibet there are numerous tea-plantations, affording both an outlet for British and Indian capital and employment for many thousands of Indian labourers. To a responsible local Government it is of importance to encourage and foster this industry. Now, just across the frontier are three millions of tea-drinkers. Tea is just the kind of light, portable commodity most suited for transit across mountains, and it was perfectly natural, reasonable, and right that the Bengal Government should press for its admission to Tibet, that the Tibetans might at least have the chance of buying it or not, as they pleased. But the Chinese, in spite of concessions in other matters by the Government of India, remained obstinate, and still remain obstinate, in regard to the admission of tea, and eventually only agreed to admit Indian tea into Tibet “at a rate of duty not exceeding that at which Chinese tea is imported into England,” which, as the latter rate of duty is 6d. per pound, and the tea drunk in Tibet is very inferior, was in reality the imposition of an ad valorem duty of from 150 to 200 per cent., and was therefore a concession of not the slightest value.

On December 5, 1893, the Trade Regulations were signed at Darjiling. The trade-mart at Yatung was to “be open for all British Subjects for purposes of trade from the first day of May, 1894,” and the Government were to be “free to send officers to reside at Yatung to watch the conditions of British trade.” British subjects were not at liberty to buy land and build houses for themselves, but were to be free “to rent houses and godowns (stores) for their own accommodation and for the storage of their goods,” and “to sell their goods to whomsoever they please, to purchase native commodities in kind or in money, to hire transport of any kind, and, in general, to conduct their business without any vexatious restrictions.” Goods other than arms, liquors, and others specified, were to be “exempt from duty for a period of five years”; but after that, if found desirable, a tariff might be “mutually agreed upon and enforced.” The Political Officer in Sikkim and the Chinese Frontier Officer in conference were to settle any trade disputes arising.

No arrangements for communication between British and Tibetan officials were made, but it was laid down that despatches from the Government of India to the Chinese Resident should be handed over by the Political Officer in Sikkim to the Chinese Frontier Officer.

And as to grazing, it was agreed that at the end of one year such Tibetans as continued to graze their cattle in Sikkim should be subject to such regulations as the British Government might lay down.