Houses of stone below and sun-dried brick above
Editorial contextGerard describes the flat-roofed, two-storey houses of Spiti: stone on the ground floor and unburnt (sun-dried) brick on the upper floor, which he hears is the rule across Ladakh too. In a footnote elsewhere he explains that the climate is so dry that such brick houses last as well as stone. Firewood is so scarce it is brought by yak and stacked on the roofs.
The lower half of the houses here, and I have heard, throughout most part of Ludak, is built of stone, and the upper of unburnt bricks : they are two stories high, and flat roofed.
About Tibetans of Spiti and Ladakh
A nine-foot prayer wheel worked by a winch
Editorial contextAt Soongnum Gerard saw three prayer cylinders kept turning by water, and at Nisung others turned by the wind. The largest, about nine feet high, stood in a square house with a wooden dome, lined with China silk, and needed two people to work it with ropes and a winch.
At Soongnum there are three cylinders kept constantly in motion by water, on the same principle as the water mills, and at Nisung several are turned by the wind.
About Tibetan Buddhists
'Very far removed from the ferocity' of the Tartar legend
Editorial contextGerard spent days travelling with boys from Tibetan villages as guides and describes them with real affection. He directly rejects the reputation for ferocity that the word Tartar carried in Europe. When he fell ill with rheumatism at Peenoo in Spiti, the villagers brought medicine, sugar, spices and tea.
They are of a mild and benevolent disposition, very far removed from the ferocity commonly attached to the character of a Tartar. I have had many instances of their humanity. At Peenoo, in Speetee, where I was confined to my bed for two days with rheumatism, I never experienced more attention
About Tibetans of Kinnaur and Spiti
Keep in mind
Gerard himself warns that he may have taken 'too favourable a view' of them (p.109).
'I'll make you a real Tartar': travelling on sheep
Editorial contextWhen Gerard could not find porters for his grain on the empty high plateau, his friend Putee Ram brought a flock of sheep. The trick was to load the grain on the sheep, eat the grain first, and then eat the sheep. It is a neat picture of how people actually crossed the high Tibetan uplands.
I'll make you a real Tartar: you have grain for ten or twelve days, and now you have no use for porters; load the sheep with the grain, finish it first, and then kill and eat the sheep : this is the way we travel on the uninhabitable tracts ; we never think of grain as long as we have plenty of sheep.
About Tibetans of Kinnaur
Tea that tastes like soup
Editorial contextTibetan butter tea, bought at the Gartok fair, is made with butter, salt, spices and a little meal instead of milk and sugar. Gerard grew to love it. Every traveller arriving at a Tartar village was offered a dish of it, and it was kept ready most of the day.
During my stay at Soongnum, Putee Ram insisted on bringing me daily tea, prepared after the Tartar fashion, which tastes like soup, and I took a great liking to it. The Tartars drink it in large quantities ; and when they arrive at their encamping ground, their first occupation is to make the tea
About Tibetans of Kinnaur
A frontier chief who refused 150 rupees
Editorial contextAt Peenoo in Spiti, Gerard asked the headman (styled Lafa) for leave to return by the Taree pass. The man sent back his 150 rupees and said the travellers were welcome to goats, sheep and blankets, but not to that road, though he would not fight them. Gerard admired his firmness and goes on to say that the Tartars of the Chinese frontier were as strict about strangers as officials at Peking; he had been turned back at four different points the year before.
The Chinese Tartars, on this remote frontier of their vast empire, are just as vigilant respecting the non-admission of strangers as their countrymen at Pekin : no sum of money, however great, will bribe them to infringe the orders of their superiors.
About Tibetans of Spiti; officials of Chinese-ruled Tibet
Brothers sharing one wife
Editorial contextExplaining his population figures, Gerard notes that polyandry (several husbands for one wife) was common in Kinnaur and in 'Chinese Tartary'. His footnote adds that so many people became celibate monks and nuns that in some villages they were almost half the population.
Polyandry also exists in Chinese Tartary and in the hilly tracts towards the plains. Besides this drawback on the increase of the population, there is another peculiar to Chinese Tartary and the adjoining countries ; that is, celibacy, which is professed by numbers of the inhabitants : and in some villages the monks and nuns form almost half the population.
About Kinnauris and Tibetans
'Tartar or Tatar is unknown here, and so is Tibet'
Editorial contextGerard lists what the people actually call themselves and their land: Bhoteeas or Zhads to the lowlanders, Bhot for the country, Keao for the people of Gnaree, and he notes that Zhad is an insult. Then he says flatly that neither 'Tartar' nor 'Tibet' was known there. 'Tartar' was the European name he was using for convenience.
The Tartars are called by the inhabitants of the lower parts, Zhads, Bhoteeas or Bootuntees, and their country is often named Bhot and Bootunt … Zhad is reckoned a term of reproach, and is applied by the Hindoos to those who eat bullock's flesh … Tartar or Tatar is unknown here, and so is Tibet.
About Tibetans of upper Kinnaur and western Tibet
Flags that frighten away hobgoblins
Editorial contextAt the corner of almost every Tartar house flew a long flag printed with 'Om mani padme hum' and topped with a tuft of black yak hair. Gerard reports that these flags and the stone piles on the roofs were believed to scare off ghosts and evil spirits.
The Durchuts and Lapchas are considered efficacious in frightening away ghosts, hobgoblins, and evil spirits, which are universally believed in.
About Tibetan Buddhists