THIBET, a country of Asia, very little known to the Europeans, till of late that it has been in some measure explored by Mr Bogle, one of the servants of the English East India Company. In Bengal this country is known by the name of Boutan, and lies to the northward of Hindostan, separated from it by a range of high and steep mountains, properly a continuation of the celebrated mount Caucasus. This chain of mountains stretches from the ancient Media and the shores of the Caspian Sea, round the north-east frontiers of Persia to Candahar and Caffamire; from thence directing its course more easterly, it forms the great northern barrier to the various provinces of the Mogul empire, and probably ends in Assam or China. In the valleys lying between the lower mountains are many tribes of Indian people; and a dispute happening between the heirs of one of the rajahs or petty princes, one party called to their assistance the Boutaners, and the other the British. The latter prevailed; and the fame of British valour being carried to the court of Thibet, the Tasseo-Lama, who ruled the state under the Delai-Lama, at that time in his minority, sent a deputation to Bengal, desiring peace for the prince who had been engaged in war with the British. This was readily granted by the governor; and Mr Bogle was sent ambassador to the court of Thibet, where he resided several months; and after an absence of a year and a quarter, returned to Calcutta. The account of this gentleman's expedition hath not been published by himself; but from Mr Stewart's letter to Sir John Pringle, published in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. 67. we learn the fol-
lowing particulars, collected from his papers.
"Mr Bogle divides the territories of the Delai-Lama into two different parts. That which lies immediately contiguous to Bengal, and which is called by the inhabitants Doepo, he distinguishes by the name of Boutan; and the other, which extends to the northward as far as the frontiers of Tartary, called by the natives Pa, he styles Thibet. Boutan is ruled by the Dah Terriah, or Deb Rajah, as I have already remarked. It is a country of steep and inaccessible mountains, whose summits are crowned with eternal snow; they are intersected with deep valleys, through which pour numberless torrents that increase in their course, and at last, gaining the plains, lose themselves in the great rivers of Bengal. These mountains are covered down their sides with forests of stately trees of various sorts; some (such as pines, &c.) which are known in Europe; others, such as are peculiar to the country and climate. The valleys and sides of the hills which admit of cultivation are not unfruitful, but produce crops of wheat, barley, and rice. The inhabitants are a stout and warlike people, of a copper complexion, in size rather above the middle European stature, hasty and quarrelsome in their temper, and addicted to the use of spirituous liquors; but honest in their dealings, robbery by violence being almost unknown among them. The chief city is Tassey Seddin situated on the Patchoo. Thibet begins properly from the top of the great ridge of the Caucasus, and extends from thence in breadth to the confines of Great Tartary, and perhaps to some of the dominions of the Russian empire. Mr Bogle says, that having once attained the summit of the Boutan mountains, you do not descend in an equal proportion on the side of Thibet; but continuing still on a very elevated base, you traverse valleys which are wider and not so deep as the former, and mountains that are neither so steep, nor apparently so high. On the other hand, he represents it as the most bare and desolate country he ever saw. The woods, which every where cover the mountains in Boutan, are here totally unknown; and, except a few straggling trees near the villages, nothing of the sort to be seen. The climate is extremely severe and rude. At Chamnanning, where he wintered, although it be in latitude , only to the northward of Calcutta, he often found the thermometer in his room at under the freezing point by Fahrenheit's scale; and in the middle of April the standing waters were all frozen, and heavy showers of snow perpetually fell. This, no doubt, must be owing to the great elevation of the country, and to the vast frozen space over which the north wind blows uninterruptedly from the pole, through the vast deserts of Siberia and Tartary, till it is stopped by this formidable wall.
"The Thibetians are of a smaller size than their southern neighbours, and of a less robust make. Their complexions are also fairer, and many of them have even a ruddiness in their countenances unknown in the other climates of the east. Those whom I saw at Calcutta appeared to have quite the Tartar face. They are of a mild and cheerful temper; and Mr Bogle says, that the higher ranks are polite and entertaining in conversation, in which they never mix either strained compliments or flattery. The common people, both in
in Boutan and Thibet, are clothed in coarse woollen stuffs of their own manufacture, lined with such skins as they can procure; but the better orders of men are dressed in European cloth, or China silk, lined with the finest Siberian furs. The ambassador from the Deb Rajah, in his summer-dress at Calcutta, appeared exactly like the figures we see in the Chinese paintings, with the conical hat, the tunic of brocaded silk, and light boots. The Thibetian who brought the first letter from the Lama was wrapped up from head to foot in furs. The use of linen is totally unknown among them. The chief food of the inhabitants is the milk of their cattle, prepared into cheese, butter, or mixed with the flour of a coarse barley or of pease, the only grain which their soil produces; and even these articles are in a scanty proportion: but they are furnished with rice and wheat from Bengal and other countries in their neighbourhood. They also are supplied with fish from the rivers in their own and the neighbouring provinces, salted and sent into the interior parts. They have no want of animal-food from the cattle, sheep, and hogs, which are raised on their hills; and are not destitute of game, though I believe it is not abundant. They have a singular method of preparing their mutton, by exposing the carcase entire, after the bowels are taken out, to the sun and bleak northern winds which blow in the months of August and September, without frost, and so dry up the juices and parch the skin, that the meat will keep uncorrupted for the year round. This they generally eat raw, without any other preparation. Mr Bogle was often regaled with this dish, which, however unpalatable at first, he says, he afterwards preferred to their dressed mutton just killed, which was generally lean, tough, and rank. It was also very common for the head men in the villages through which he passed, to make him presents of sheep so prepared, set before him on their legs as if they had been alive, which at first had a very odd appearance.
"The religion and political constitution of this country, which are intimately blended together, would make a considerable chapter in its history. It suffices for me to say, that at present, and ever since the expulsion of the Eluth Tartars, the kingdom of Thibet is regarded as depending on the empire of China, which they call Catbay; and there actually reside two mandarines, with a garrison of a thousand Chinese, at Lahassa the capital, to support the government; but their power does not extend far: and in fact the lama, whose empire is founded on the surest grounds, personal affection and religious reverence, governs every thing internally with unbounded authority. Every body knows that the Delai Lama is the great object of adoration for the various tribes of heathen Tartars, who roam through the vast tract of continent which stretches from the banks of the Volga to Corea on the sea of Japan, the most extensive religious dominion, perhaps, on the face of the globe. He is not only the sovereign pontiff, the vicegerent of the Deity on earth; but, as superstition is ever the strongest where it is most removed from its object, the more remote Tartars absolutely regard him as the Deity himself. They believe him immortal, and endowed with all knowledge and virtue. Every year they come up from different parts, to worship and make rich offerings at his shrine:
even the emperor of China, who is a Manchou Tartar, does not fail in acknowledgments to him in his religious capacity; and actually entertains at a great expense, in the palace of Peking, an inferior lama, deputed as his nuncio from Thibet. It is even reported that many of the Tartar chiefs receive certain presents, consisting of small portions of that, from him, which is ever regarded in all other persons as the most humiliating proof of human nature and of being subject to its laws, and treasure it up with great reverence in gold boxes, to be mixed occasionally in their ragouts. It is, however, but justice to declare, that Mr Bogle strenuously insists, that the lama never makes such presents; but that he often distributes little balls of consecrated flour, like the pain benit of the Roman-Catholics, which the superstition and blind credulity of his Tartar votaries may afterwards convert into what they please. The orthodox opinion is, that when the grand lama seems to die, either of old age or of infirmity, his soul in fact only quits an actual crazy habitation to look for another younger or better, and it is discovered again in the body of some child, by certain tokens known only to the lamas or priests, in which order he always appears. The present Delai Lama is an infant; and was discovered only a few years ago by the Tayshoo Lama, who in authority and sanctity of character is next to him, and consequently, during the other's minority, acts as chief. The lamas, who form the most numerous as well as the most powerful body in the state, have the priesthood entirely in their hands; and, besides, fill up many monastic orders, which are held in great veneration among them. Celibacy, I believe, is not positively enjoined to the lamas; but it is held indispensable for both men and women who embrace a religious life: and indeed their celibacy, their living in communities, their cloisters, their service in the choirs, their strings of beads, their fasts, and their penances, give them so much the air of Christian monks, that it is not surprising an illiterate capuchin should be ready to hail them brothers, and think he can trace the features of St Francis in every thing about them. It is an old notion, that the religion of Thibet is a corrupted Christianity; and even Father Diderii, a Jesuit (but not of the Chinese mission) who visited the country about the beginning of this century, thinks he can resolve all their mysteries into ours; and asserts, with a truly mystical penetration, that they have certainly a good notion of the Trinity, since, in their address to the Deity, they say as often konekok-oik in the plural as konekok in the singular, and with their rosaries pronounce these words, one, ha, hum. The truth is, that the religion of Thibet, from whence ever it sprung, is pure and simple in its source, conveying very exalted notions of the Deity, with no contemptible system of morality: but in its progress it has been greatly altered and corrupted by the inventions of worldly men; a fate we can hardly regret in a system of error, since we know that that of truth has been subject to the same. Polygamy, at least in the sense we commonly receive the word, is not in practice among them: but it exists in a manner still more repugnant to European ideas; I mean in the plurality of husbands, which is firmly established and highly respected there. In a country where the means of substituting a family are not easily
found, it seems not impolitic to allow a set of brothers to agree in raising one, which is to be maintained by their joint efforts. In short, it is usual in Thibet for the brothers in the family to have a wife in common, and they generally live in great harmony and comfort with her; not but sometimes little dissensions will arise (as may happen in families constituted upon different principles) an instance of which Mr Bogle mentions in the case of a modest and virtuous lady, the wife of half a dozen of the Tayshoo Lama's nephews, who complained to the uncle that the two youngest of her husbands did not furnish that share of love and benevolence to the common stock which duty and religion required of them. In short, however strange this custom may appear to us, it is an undoubted fact that it prevails in Thibet in the manner I have described.
"The manner of bestowing their dead is also singular: they neither put them in the ground like the Europeans, nor burn them like the Hindoos; but expose them on the bleak pinnacle of some neighbouring mountain, to be devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey, or wasted away by time and the vicissitudes of weather in which they lie. The mangled carcasses and bleached bones lie scattered about; and, amidst this scene of horror, some miserable old wretch, man or woman, lost to all feelings but those of superstition, generally sets up an abode, to perform the dismal office of receiving the bodies, assigning each a place, and gathering up the remains when too widely dispersed."