Mongol pilgrims bow nine times before the Lama
Editorial contextTurner watched a party of 'Kilmauks' (Kalmyk or Oirat Mongols) waiting outside the palace for a sight of the infant Lama. When he appeared they prostrated themselves nine times and then handed over bullion and goods. Turner learned that such offerings were one of the main sources of the Lamas' wealth.
There came this day, a party of Kilmauks, (Calmuc Tartars) for the purposes of devotion, and to make their offerings to the Lama … they dropped upon their knees, and struck their heads against the ground. This, with the same motions, was repeated nine times.
About Kalmyk / Oirat Mongols ('Calmuc Tartars')
Kumiss dried in bags under a horse's belly
Editorial contextServed soured milk (dhy) by the Lama of Phari, Turner compares it with the kumiss of the Tartars, made from mare's milk in the same way. He adds a hearsay detail: it is sometimes dried into chalk-like lumps, and the drying is done by hanging it in cloth bags under the horses' bellies.
The Kummuz of the Tartars is mare's milk, prepared by the same process: this is sometimes dried in masses till it resembles chalk; and is used to give a relish to the water which they drink, by solution with it. I have been told, that the operation of drying it, is sometimes performed by tying the Dhy tight in bags of cloth, and suspending it under their horses' bellies.
About Tartars (steppe nomads, in comparison)
Keep in mind
The drying detail is hearsay ('I have been told').
Tartar herdsmen and their yaks
Editorial contextNear his camp Turner met Dukba herders who lived only in tents. One brought him milk and butter. Their 200 to 300 yaks, owned by three families, grazed the mountains by day and at dusk were called in, tied in a double line before the tents and guarded by two big Tibetan mastiffs. They moved north to south with the seasons.
Near our encampment, was a party of Tartar herdsmen, called Dukba, whose sole occupation is tending cattle, and who always live in tents. One of them brought me a large quantity of milk, which was excellent, and some very good butter.
About Dukba herders of Tibet ('Tartar herdsmen')
Yellow caps and red caps across all Tartary
Editorial contextWatching monks in yellow robes and conical yellow hats, Turner explains that Tibetan Buddhism is split into yellow-hat and red-hat sects that between them cover 'almost the whole of Tartary'. The red hats allow their priests to marry. The yellow, favoured by the Emperor of China, is the most orthodox and powerful.
I notice this peculiarity of colour in their dress, as it is a distinction adopted, to mark one of the two religious sects that divide almost the whole of Tartary, from Turkistan to the eastern limits of this continent. The other colour is red; and the tribes are known as belonging to the red, or the yellow cap.
About Tibetan and Mongol Buddhists
Keep in mind
The claim that these sects cover all Tartary 'from Turkistan' is a large generalisation from what he was told.
Dice worn on every Tartar belt
Editorial contextTurner says that no journey, marriage or naming was done in Tibet without first seeking an omen, often from a monk skilled in divination. For small decisions people simply threw dice, which is why a pair of dice hangs from a Tartar belt. He cheerfully admits he travelled only when his own monk-diviner said so.
in trivial affairs, the mind is often governed by a casual cast of the die; and hence, dice are almost always found to constitute an appendage to a Tartar dress.
About Tibetans ('Tartar dress')
A Manchu 'Tartar' at the Tibetan court
Editorial contextTurner's most important informant, Soopoon Choomboo, the Panchen Lama's cup-bearer and second officer of the court, was Manchu by birth. Turner calls him a 'Mantchieux Tartar', using the European habit of calling the Manchu rulers of China Tartars. Two pages on he describes his 'Tartar' features: small eyes, thin eyebrows, high cheek bones, no beard.
Soopoon Choomboo, who was styled also Sadeek, held the second rank in the court of Teshoo Loomboo. He was by birth a Mantchieux Tartar
About Manchus ('Mantchieux Tartar')
The lost ancient nation of Lake Baikal: no trace
Editorial contextTurner had read a European theory, fashionable in the 1700s, that a lost ancient people near Lake Baikal had taught arts and sciences to India and Europe. He asked the Manchu-born chamberlain Soopoon Choomboo, who had travelled along the Baikal, about it. The answer: the area was thinly peopled and he knew of no monument showing remote antiquity. A striking early test of a 'lost civilisation of Tartary' idea.
My inquiries respected an ancient nation, supposed to have once inhabited the borders of the Baikal sea, in the interior of Tartary, and from which some persons conjecture, the learning, arts, and sciences of India, and even of Europe, to have been originally derived. If such a nation ever existed, the remembrance of it seems now to be buried in deepest oblivion.
About Mongols and Siberian peoples ('northern Tartars')
Keep in mind
The same page adds Soopoon Choomboo's answer: 'nor to his knowledge, was any monument existing, that bore marks of remote antiquity.' Turner's own view is only that the tradition, if real, is forgotten.
Heaps of monster bones across Tartary and Siberia
Editorial contextDiscussing why lions are carved on Tibetan buildings though none live nearby, Turner remarks that if lions ever lived there wild, it was in the age of the huge animals whose bones lie in heaps in Tartary and Siberia. He takes the bones (mammoths) as proof of a great convulsion of the globe. This is Turner's own speculation, a common idea in his day.
it must have been at the same time with those vast monsters, whose bones are found in huge heaps in various parts of Tartary and Siberia at this day, and clearly point to some great convulsion, and change, in the order of our globe.
About (none: fossil animals)
Keep in mind
Turner's own inference from reports of mammoth bones; he did not see them.