A house that three yaks can carry
Editorial contextWood continues his tour of the tent: a willow frame lined with reed mats knitted over with coloured wool, embroidered bands hung with saddles and sewing things, a curtained corner for the women, and fifty lambs tethered on a line inside. The whole home, he adds, packs onto three yaks.
The opposite segment was allotted to the young lambs of the flock. A string crossed the tent to which fifty nooses, twenty-five of a side, were attached, to each of which a lamb was fastened. … Three yaks are able to carry the tent and all its contents. One takes the oostakhan, literally the bones or frame-work, another the felts, and a third its furniture
About Kirghiz nomads
Continue in this sourceLieutenant Wood's winter journey to the source of the Oxus1836 to 1838 · 13 passagesDressed like the Turks, crowned with a wooden horn
Editorial contextIn Himatala, near Badakhshan, people behaved and dressed like the Turks, in wool, skin and felt. Married women wore a wooden horn about three feet long on the head, with two branches standing for the husband's father and mother; when one parent-in-law died a branch was removed, and when both were dead the horn was given up.
In respect of their modes of behaviour and forms of etiquette, their clothes of wool, and skin, and felt, they are like the Turks. Their wives wear upon their head-dress a wooden horn about three feet or so in length. It has two branches (a double branch) in front, which signify father and mother of the husband.
About People of Himatala, living like the Turks
Continue in this sourceXuanzang's Records of the Western Regions629 to 645 · 12 passagesDozens of fortified towns, yet the people live in felt tents
Editorial contextBecause the land bordered the Turks, its people took up Turkish ways and were raided by them. They scattered, held dozens of strong walled towns each under its own chief, and lived in domed felt tents, moving about. Towns and tents side by side, in the same breath. Beal's English of this passage runs across pages 290 to 291.
[They took on] their [the Turks'] customs, and were also raided by them, and so defended their own borders. Therefore the people of this country are scattered in different districts, in several tens of strong walled towns, each with its own chief. They live in domed felt tents and move about from place to place.
Working translation
Original wording
其俗又見侵掠自守其境故此國人流離異域數十堅城各别立主穹廬毳帳遷徙往來
About People of Himatala, neighbours of the Turks
Continue in this sourceXuanzang's Records of the Western Regions629 to 645 · 12 passagesInside a Kirghiz felt tent on the Pamirs
Editorial contextWood and his party were invited into one of the best tents of a Kirghiz camp of 100 families. He describes its coarse dun felts held by broad white bands, the ice-bag by the door that served as the family's water supply, a Russian iron cauldron on a tripod over the fire, and the measurements of the tent.
Close to the door lay a bag filled with ice … the water of the family. On drawing aside the felt which screened the entrance, the air of tidiness and comfort that met our eyes was a most agreeable surprise. … The Kirgah had a diameter of fourteen feet, a height of eight, and was well lighted by a circular hole above the fire-place.
About Kirghiz nomads
Continue in this sourceLieutenant Wood's winter journey to the source of the Oxus1836 to 1838 · 13 passages