The sacred peak of Shangri Moupo was not of significance to the Tibetans only. At its back, in front of an immense sheer white cliff called Loupaper, there was a huge stony platform on which the Nakhi Shamans, called dtombas, held a conclave once in ten years. This was preceded by much feasting and drinking in tents and then the dtombas arranged a series of shamanistic dances representing various felicity ceremonies such as the Longevity ceremony. They were attired in Chinese figured mandarin robes and wore five-petal diadems on their heads. The dance was a slow one, always turning on one leg and swaying; it was monotonous but strangely rhythmic and, to me, very hypnotic. In one hand they held a magic sword and in another a ndseler. A ndseler is a cymbal, made of an alloy of gold, silver and brass, to which, as a striker, a small brass weight is attached on a string. The sound of it is most beautiful and quite unlike anything produced by a triangle or a similar orchestral instrument of the West.
There is little doubt that the dtomba practices were closely affiliated to those of the Mongolian Shamans. They had originated in the remote past long before the great religions made their appearance in the world. There is a close affinity between the Dtombas and Bonists, that is to say, the adherents of the 'Bon' or Black Church of Tibet. The Bon Church was the dominant cult of Tibet before the establishment of Buddhism. It is founded entirely on the practice of black magic and communication with evil spirits through necromancy and other morbid and macabre rites. The cups, made of human skulls, and flutes of human bone are used freely in certain religious services. There are a number of Bon lamaseries in Kham, where these practices take place, and it was occurrences such as these that helped to make Tibet known as a land of horrible occult rites and other unspeakable mysteries.
It cannot be said that the dtombas represented an established church like Lamaism. They worked independently, the art passing from father to son. They had a loose association, but it was by no means a recognized institution or club. They knew each other and, when occasion offered, they combined together for large ceremonies, and they were needed for the exorcising, during special ceremonies, of the demons of suicide and other calamities. As such occurrences were frequent, their trade was quite lucrative. They claimed control over spirits both bad and good, and as their performances always produced a trance or semi-trance they were a somewhat unbalanced people and were very heavy drinkers.
I believe that the Chinese Taoist cult of Changtienssu, established during the Han dynasty, borrowed many of its magic practices from the Bon lamas. It was this Taoist Church, the lowest of all, that encouraged the unwarranted and contemptuous opinion in the West about Taoism. Europe and America still have not realized that the true Taoist Church of China are the Lungmen Church with its sublime teaching of Lao Tzu, practised in all its purity, and the second church of Cheng-I Taoism which specializes in the knowledge of nature and man's relation with the world of spirits. Much of what is best in Chinese civilization and the character of the Chinese people is entirely due to the philosophy and teaching of these two churches.
The higher Taoism buttressed by the written teachings of Lao Tzu and Chuan Tzu, conceives the Universe as a product of Tao, which means the Universal Mind, independent of the being itself, of space and of time: in other words a conception of God. Lao Tzu advisedly did not use the word 'God' because the Chinese language does not possess such an all-embracing and all-inclusive term. Immediately the word 'God' is used in the Orient it conjures up in the human mind a vision of a glorious, effulgent Man sitting on a flaming throne somewhere in immeasurable space. The teachers of Christianity in the Orient have always been handicapped by this all-important definition, and the Bible, provided for the different churches and sects implanted by the missionaries in China, has never been given by its translators a unifying term for God.
Lao Tzu, in his teaching, does not specifically mention Earth or its affairs: he simply and unequivocally states that the Universe is the product of Tao (Great Mind) which, by the Power of its Will, brought forms out of the formless, differentiated them by the flow of numbers and series, and activated life by the eternal rhythm of Yang and Ying which made all things and events in space and time relative to each other.
Therefore, since both the visible and invisible worlds are the creation of one and the same Mind, their difference is only relative and it becomes understandable that an interplay between them is possible and natural.
1 The author leaving on a tour of inspection of remote co-operatives
2 Author's friend Hokuoto. A typical mountain Nakhi peasant from Lashiba
3 Akounya. The Minkia girl at whose house the author always stayed when travelling by caravan to Hsiakwan
4 Likiang. Author's house. Front gate and main street of Wuto village
5 View of Mount Satseto (alias Snow Peak, Snow Mountain, or Yulungshan) from Likiang hill near the author's house
6 Mme Lee at her shop in the morning, facing the bar at which her customers sit
7 Caravan from Hsiakwan to Likiang. Author's baggage has just been delivered to the author's courtyard by the caravan leader (standing)
8 A Tibetan buying pottery at Mme Yang's shop inside the gate
9 Likiang street scene. A lama shopping
10 A Tibetan at Likiang Market
11 Likiang market-place. A Hsiangchen Tibetan woman shopping
12 Ahouha—one of the pangchinmei (girls) of Likiang in formal everyday wear
13 Likiang market square. Mme Yang's daughter Afousya sits at her own stall on the left selling cakes and cigarettes. Mme Yang's shop is opposite
14 Likiang Park
15 The Yangtze River at the Copper Mining Co-operative
16 The Yangtze River is entering the 11,000-ft-deep gorge Atsanko. The road through the gorge is on the left bank
17 Yuenfoungsze Lamasery (Shangri Moupo gompa). Lama dance
18 The Yuenfoungsze (Shangri Moupo gompa) Lamasery sacred orchestra playing during lama dances
19 Yuenfoungsze Lamasery
20 Yuenfoungsze Lamasery (Shangri Moupo gompa). The venerable lama
21 Shangri Moupo Lamasery. Senior lamas with the lama Manager on the right
22 The author's friend Wuhan with his first-born son, old mother, and wife — all formally dressed
23 Mme Lee's husband and grandson in front of an ancestral tomb