Seven Years in Tibet. Heinrich Harrer
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the school of medicine in Lhasa. He was much respected and was able to live richly on the provisions which he received as fees for his services. His methods of treatment were diverse. One of them was to press a prayer-stamp on the spot affected, which seemed to succeed with hysterical patients. In bad cases he branded the patient with a hot iron. I can bear witness to the fact that he thus restored a seemingly hopeless case to consciousness, but this treatment affected many of his patients adversely. He also employed this drastic treatment on domestic animals. As I was reckoned a sort of half-doctor and am greatly interested in everything connected with medicine, I used to have long conversations with this monk. He confessed to me that his knowledge was limited, but he did not worry himself unduly about that and managed to avoid unpleasant incidents by frequently changing his place of residence. His conscience was relieved by the fact that the emoluments derived from his dubious cures served to finance his pilgrimages.
In the middle of February we had our first Tibetan New Year. The year is reckoned by the lunar calendar and has two names, one of an animal and the other of an element. The New Year festival is, after the birth- and death-days of Buddha, the greatest event of the year. During the previous night we already heard the voices of singing beggars and wandering monks going from house to house in quest of alms. In the morning fresh-cut pine-trees decked out with flags were stuck on the roofs, religious texts were solemnly recited and tsampa offered to the gods. The people bring an offering of butter to the temples and soon the huge copper cauldrons are overflowing. Only then are the gods propitiated and ready to grant favours in the New Year. White silk veils are draped round the gilded statues as a special mark of respect, and the worshippers reverently lay their foreheads against them.
Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings, to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquillity and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. The people did not only pray at the turn of the year. For seven days they danced, sang and drank under the benevolent eyes of the monks. In every house there was a party, and we, too, were invited.
It is sad to remember that the festal celebrations in our house were overclouded by a tragedy. One day I was called into the room of our hostess’s younger sister. The room was dark, and only when hot hands gripped mine did I realise that I was standing near her. When my eyes had got accustomed to the darkness, I looked towards the bed and recoiled in a horror which I could hardly conceal. There lay completely transformed by sickness one who two days before had been a pretty, healthy girl. Though a layman, I instantly saw that she had smallpox. Her larynx and tongue were already attacked and she could only cry out with thick articulation that she was dying. I tried to tell her that it was not so, and then escaped from the room as quickly as possible to have a thorough wash. There was nothing to be done and one could only hope that an epidemic would not break out. Aufschnaiter also visited her and agreed with my diagnosis. Two days later she died.
So after the joys of the festival, this mournful event made us acquainted with the ceremonies of a Tibetan burial. The decorated pine-tree which stood on the roof was removed and the next day at dawn the body was wrapped in white grave-cloths and borne out of the house on the back of a professional corpse-carrier. We followed the group of mourners, who consisted of three men only. Near the village on a high place recognisable from afar as a place of “burial” by the multitude of vultures and crows which hovered over it, one of the men hacked the body to pieces with an axe. A second sat nearby, murmuring prayers and beating on a small drum. The third man scared the birds away and at intervals handed the other two men beer or tea to cheer them up. The bones of the dead girl were broken to pieces, so that they too could be consumed by the birds and that no trace of the body should remain.
Barbaric as all this seems, the ceremony draws its origin from deep religious motives. The Tibetans wish to leave no trace after death of their bodies, which, without souls, have no significance. The bodies of nobles and high-ranking Lamas are burned, but among the people the usual way of dealing with them is by dismemberment and only the bodies of very poor people, for whom this form of disposal is too costly, are thrown into the river. Here the fishes perform the function of the vultures. When poor people die of contagious diseases, they are disposed of by special persons paid by the Government.
Fortunately the cases of smallpox were few and only a small number died. In our house there was mourning for forty-nine days, and then a fresh tree with prayer-flags was hoisted on the roof. At this ceremony appeared many monks who said prayers to the accompaniment of their own peculiar music. All this naturally costs money, and when deaths occur in the family the Tibetans usually sell some of their jewellery or the possessions of the defunct, the proceeds of which pay for the obsequies performed by the monks and the oil used in their countless little lamps.
During all this time we continued our daily walks and the excellent snow gave us the idea of making skis. Aufschnaiter got hold of a couple of birch trunks which we stripped of their bark and dried before the fire in our room. I started making sticks and straps and with the aid of a carpenter we succeeded in producing two pairs of decent-looking skis. We were delighted with their workmanlike appearance and looked forward to trying them with great excitement. Then, like lightning from a clear sky, came an order from the Pönpo forbidding us to leave Kyirong except for walks in the immediate neighbourhood. We protested energetically, but were told that Germany was a powerful state and that if anything happened to us in the mountains, complaints would be made in Lhasa and the authorities in Kyirong held responsible. The Pönpo remained unshaken by our protestations and did his best to convince us that in the mountains we should be in great danger of attacks by bears, leopards and wild dogs. We knew that their anxiety about our safety was all humbug, but conjectured that they had adopted their attitude in deference to the requests of the superstitious population, who possibly believed that our visits to the mountains might make the gods angry. For the moment we could do nothing but submit.
During the next few weeks we obeyed orders, but then we could not resist the temptation to go ski-ing. The attraction of the snow and ice slopes was too much for us and one day we had recourse to a stratagem. I took up my quarters provisionally by one of the hot springs only half an hour distant from the village. A few days later when the people had got accustomed to my absence, I fetched our skis and carried them by moonlight some way up the mountain-side. Early on the following morning Aufschnaiter and I climbed up over the tree-line and enjoyed ourselves on a splendid snow-surface. We were both astonished at being able to ski so well after being so long away from it. As we had not been spotted, we went out again another day but this time we broke our skis and hid the remains of these weird instruments. The people of Kyirong never found out that we had been snow-riding, as they called it.
Springtime came, work in the fields began and the winter corn came up in lovely green shoots. Here, as in Catholic countries, the cornfields are blessed by the priests. A long procession of monks, followed by the villagers, carried the 108 volumes of the Tibetan bible round the village accompanied by prayers and sacred music.
As the weather grew warmer my yak fell sick. He had fever and the local vet declared that only the gall of a bear would do him good. I bought the stuff, and dear it cost me, not so much from a belief in its properties as to give satisfaction to the “doctor.” I was not astonished at the lack of results. I was then advised to try goat’s gall and musk and hoped, subconsciously, that the long experience of the Tibetans in the treatment of sick yaks would save my precious beast. However, after a few days I was obliged to have poor Armin slaughtered, as I wanted at least to save his meat.
For such cases the people use a slaughterer; a man obliged to live as an outcast on the fringe of the village like the blacksmith, whose craft ranks lowest in Tibet. The slaughterer receives as pay the feet, the head and the intestines of the yak. I found the manner in which he dispatched the animal to be as speedy as, and more humane than, the methods of our slaughterers. With one swift stroke he slit open the body, plunged his hand in and tore out the cardiac artery, causing instant death. We took away the meat and smoked it over an open fire,