TIBET IS GUARDED BY INHOSPITABLE FRONTIERS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6810, 14 January 1929, Page 3

TIBET IS GUARDED BY INHOSPITABLE FRONTIERS

Ruled by a Man God Recent cables from Pekin indicate that Soviet Russia is taking active steps to exclude Chinese and foreign trade from Tibet, a State under Chinese suzerainty, and that the Chinese Nationalists arc contemplating political counter-measures. The Russians even now are said to be busy in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. When we think, writes Owen Lattiraore, of the way that Arabia has been penetrated, Africa opened up, and the Arctic and Antarctic vanquished, sometimes it appears as though no lands of mystery are left with secrets for the adventurer to lay bare. Yet Tibet, even in this age of shrunken distances, wide-ranging publicity, and swift communications, still holds a magic that captures the imagination. Above all the legendary sanctity of the Dalai Lama, its enigmatic ruler, challenges the -wonder of the busy trafficking, quarrelling, thronging, world —the idea of a man-god enthroned in barbaric glory in his towering fortress-palace on the hill of the Potala, secluded in a wilderness higher than the tops of our mountains; a man-god whoso soul, at his death, is believed to appear again in the body of a child. Why Frontiers Were Closed.

Paradoxically, we know more of Tibet than we do of some more accessible countries. We know even of the chronicles of its early priest-kings, and we know more of its wandering tribes, stone villages, and temple communities of fanatical monks than we do of Mongolia, a country more easily entered from* every direction. In earlier times there was not even the hostile distrust of strangers which we now take as a matter of course in considering the problems of Tibet. Two hundred years ago the Capuchin Friars kept up a mission in the sacred city of Lhasa itself, and they aj>pcar to have been driven out more by poverty than by the resistance of the Tibetans. What aroused the world’s interest in Tibet was the long struggle, during 30 or 40 years of the last century, when one after another, Russian, Swedish, American, and British explorers staked their courage and their skill on the attempt to set their eyes on Lhasa. All of them failed.

Tibetan resistance was broken down, and tho world had a brief glimpse so its inner sanctuaries and temples, when the Younghusband expedition, with a small British and Indian force, fought its way to Lhasa in 1904. Then the veils of secrecy again were drawn. Since then few travellers (the famous Dr. McGovern among the number) have encroached on Tibet. • Many travellers use the word Tibet to describe what arc really border territories or special regions, such as the Tsaidam or Kokonor country of Ladakh. In these regions, however, travel is often quite as difficult, and even more dangerous, than in Tibet proper.

Why is it that in modern times Tibet has fought valiantly to remain all but impenetrable, while in times past travellers and missionaries entered in comparatively large numbers and with little danger ? Pear of invasion and bitter memories of oppression account for the closing of the frontiers, as they do lor the rumours of renewed political intrigue and brewing troubles that have recently been reported. V/omen and Lamas. The women are not by any means the leaders in the life of the community. As a rule the husbands decide among them what is to be don£, and the wife agrees; but it is said tnat in some districts the women have the deciding voice and arrange which of the husbands is to do work with a cara\an, which to look after the sheep, which to stay at home on the tiny farm scratched out among the stones and so on. One thing is at least plain —most of tho married women, having more than one husband to complain about are shrill, bad-tempered shrews. The Tibetan custom of polyandry, under which a woman may have several husbands, must have originated in harsh, natural conditions, making it necessary to limit the population. The usual custom is for a family of brothers to have one wife between them, the eldest brother being the chiuf husband. Among the richer Tibetans, however, a man likes to have a wife moro or less to himself, and it is not unknown for a man to have several wives. The lamas, nominally, are monks bound to abstain from marriage and all -worldly things. Actually, most lamas arc grossly immoral, and the resulting state of affairs, taken with tho promiscuous marriage system, makes the Tibetans even more immoral, if possible, than the Mongols. Their notions vf morality, however, are not nearly so shocking to other races and religions as their ideas of death and burial. To them the soul is everything and tho body nothing. When a man dies his soul departs, to cuter into a new body —a man, animal, insect, or divine being, according to his virtues or sins in tho life just finished. The corpse is worth neither mourning nor honour. Burial, it is true, is not unknown, but, usually the body is thrown out for dogs, vultures and wild animals to devour.