'Lha Gyalol Victory to the gods!'
The more pious ones strung coloured prayer flags of cheap cotton from wind-weathered poles stuck on the cairns. This custom of the Thibetans has been much misunderstood by European travellers to the Himalayan frontiers, some of whom have observed that the natives were wont to worship mountains and stones. In truth, the Thibetans consider such inanimate objects sacred only by virtue of their being a residence of a god or lha who is present as animus assistentis and not as animus animantis. Some of these lha have their counterpart in the Roman numina.
Mr Holmes also laid a khatag on the top of a cairn. He noticed me looking at him and chafed me in a light-hearted way. 'Come on, Huree, pay your respects to the gods, like a good babu. We are in their provenance now. From here on, science, logic and Mr Herbert Spencer simply cease to exist. Lha GyaloV
I had never seen him quite so cheerful and light-hearted before. It could have been the rarity of the air. Altitude affects people in strange ways. While it just gave me occasional headaches, it appeared to make Mr Holmes happy. He had also gradually stopped taking those injurious drugs.
That night we halted at a little village at the foot of the pass. We pitched our tents by the side of a small brook, under an enchanting grove of apricot trees. Unfortunately it was not the right season for the fruit, but the sweet scent of the blossoms was sufficient to make our repose pleasurable.
But from then on the land became increasingly waterless and desert-like, what geographers would describe as a dorsum orbis. After two days we reached the town of Tsaparang, once the capital of the ancient Thibetan kingdom of Guge, abandoned around 1650 because of incessant wars and a drop in the water table. The citadel of the kings, an impregnable fortress, stood on the top of the sheer cliffs that rose above the ruins of the city. I had learned from certain records in the archives of the Asiatic Society that the first Catholic mission station had been founded here in 1624. The Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio de Andrade, had formed a Catholic community and is reported to have built a church. I told Mr Holmes this strange story and both of us searched for traces of a Christian building in the ruins, but found nothing.
'Did the good father succeed in converting many of the natives?' asked Holmes, knocking the ash out of his pipe against the side of a broken wall.
'Not very many, I would think. Thibetans are notorious in missionary circles for their obstinacy in clinging to their idols and superstitions.'
'They revel in their original sin, do they?' chuckled Mr Holmes. 'Anyhow, there is a surfeit of religion in this country already. Why should the missionaries want to bring in another?'
Next day we rode into Tholing, the other capital of the kingdom of Guge. This town is more populated and relatively prosperous. It has a picturesque monastery with golden canopies and spires, and is considered to be the largest and the oldest monastery in western Thibet. Unfortunately we could not visit it as we had to meet the governor of the district.
His servants were waiting for us outside our allocated quarters, a small whitewashed structure made of sun-dried bricks. As we dismounted they all doffed their caps and bowing low stuck out their tongues. It seemed to me to be an excellent example of the 'self surrender of the person saluting to the individual he salutes,' which Mr Herbert Spencer has shown to lie at the bottom of many of our modern practices of salutation. They had presents for us from the governor: entire carcasses of sheep, bags of cheese and butter, trays of eggs, and sacks of tsampa, which is the staple food of all Thibetans. After resting for a while and refreshing ourselves, we went to pay our respects to the governor at his official residence, a gloomy stone mansion on the edge of the town.
His name was Phurbu Thondup or'Thursday Wish-Fulfilled', and he was a man of Falstaffian proportions, larger even than myself. He was dressed in yellow silk robes and wore the long turquoise earring and top-knot, like Tsering. But to indicate his superior rank – he was a fourth ranker to Tsering's sixth – he had a small gold amulet in his piled-up hair. The nobles in Thibet are ranked in seven classes, to the first of which only the Grand Lama belongs. Yet in spite of his apparent seniority, the governor was very deferential to Tsering and addressed him with great politeness. There was something more to our young friend than met the eye. Phurbu Thondup cleared his throat noisily and ceremoniously before relating the latest instructions he had received from the Grand Lama's secretary.
We were to travel as swiftly as possible to Lhassa. Advance arrangements had been made at all the villages and nomadic encampments on the way, and also at the isolated tasam houses, the small caravanserais in which one can change a mule and find lodgings. But we were to try and be as inconspicuous as possible. We were to be especially careful, he continued, when we got to Shigatse, and on no account should we go anywhere near the Chinese consular office there.
Oh ho! So it is politics, I thought. Could our entree into Thibet have some kind of connection with the troubles that the Thibetans are having with the Manchu Amban in Lhassa?
I confided this to Sherlock Holmes on our way backfrom the governor's mansion, but he did not seem too impressed with my conjecture.
'I am not saying you are wrong, Huree, but as I gave you to understand before, it is a cardinal error to theorise without sufficient data. Consider the contrary. Wouldn't inviting a foreigner to Thibet, if discovered, cause a more serious problem with the Manchu representative, whose xenophobia, I have been given to understand, is unusually virulent, even for the normally suspicious Chinese? So spare me such further speculations, I beg you.'
Early next morning, shivering and grunting in the morning chill, I slung my umbrella (tied on both ends with a piece of string like a rifle-sling) across my back, and climbed sleepy-eyed onto my pony.
For a week we rode by the banks of the Sutlej river, across a country that had an original beauty in spite of a certain barrenness. All kinds of small birds flitted about the gorse bushes and rocks, while lumbering saurus cranes picked for fish in the shallows. We also had our first encounter with the kiang (equus hemionus), the Thibetan wild ass. A large herd of this most graceful animal sauntered up to have a look at our caravan. Their curiosity satisfied, they turned all at once, as if at a single command, and trotted off in the most elegant manner.
Fortunately for these birds and beasts such opportunities afforded for shikar did not seem to delight Mr Holmes. It was an unusual attitude on his part as every other Englishman I knew revelled in the slaughter of tigers, deer, pigs, birds, fishes and what not. Mr Holmes's aversion to blood-sport raised him in the esteem of the Thibetans, and also Kintup and Jamspel who subscribed to the Buddhist and Jain doctrine of the sacredness of life in all its forms. We also came across a number of nomad encampments with their herds of sheep and the famous yaks of Tartary {bos grunnions).
Then, as we were approaching the tasam at Barga, a chain of glaciers, gleaming in the evening sun, came into view, and with it the towering Gurla Mandatha peak and the most holy mountain of Kailash. This mountain is sacred not only to Buddhists, who consider it to be the abode of the deity, Demchog (Skt. Chakrasamvara), but to Hindus as well, who regard it as the throne of Shiva. Because of this many Buddhist and Hindu ascetics and pilgrims have been drawn to the area for the past two thousand years or so, to worship the mountain, to practise austerities by it, and to go around it in holy perambulation. The Thibetans call Mount Kailash, Kang Tise, or Kang Rimpoche, the Precious Mountain, and it plays an important role even in the pre-Buddhist shamanist religion, Bon. Mount Meru, the central mountain axis of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology is probably founded on the unique physical and geographical properties of Kailash.