1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tibet
TIBET, or Thibet, a country of central Asia. It is the highest country in the world, comprising table-lands averaging over 16,500 ft. above the sea, the valleys being at 12,000 to 17,400 ft., the peaks at 20,000 to 24,600 ft., and the passes at 16,000 to 19,000 ft. It is bounded on the N. by Turkestan, on the E. by China, on the W. by Kashmir and Ladak, and on the S. by India, Nepal and Bhutan. It has an area of over 1,000,000 sq. m., and an estimated population of about 3,000,000, being very sparsely inhabited.
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Origin of Name.—The Tibetans call their country Bod, which word in colloquial pronunciation is aspirated into Bhöd or Bhöt, and in the modern Lhasa dialect is curtailed into Bhö. Hence the country is known to Indians as Bhōt, and the inhabitants as Bhōt-ias. This territory came to be known to Europeans as “Tibet” evidently because the great plateau with its uplands bordering the frontiers of China, Mongolia and Kashmir, through which travellers communicated with this country, is called by the natives Tö-bhöt (written slod-bod) or “High Bod,” or “Tibet,” which designation in the loose orthography of travellers assumed a variety of forms. Thus in Chinese annals are found T'u-bat (5th century, A.D.), Tu-po-te, Tie-bu-te, T'u-bo-te (10th and 11th centuries) and at the present day T'u-fan (fan, as Bushell shows, being the same Chinese character which had formerly the sound of po); in Mongolian, Tübet, Toböt; in Arabic, Tubbet; Istakhri (c. 590), Tobbat; Rabbi Benjamin (1165), Thibet; I. de Plano Carpini (1247), Thabet; Rubruquis (1253), Marco Polo (1298), Tebet; Ibn Batuta (1340), Thabat; Ibn Haukal (976), Al Biruni (1020), Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1328), Orazio della Penna (1730), Tibet, which is the form now generally adopted. The inhabitants of Tibet call themselves Bod-pa (pronounced usually Bhö-pa), or “people of Bod.” Other Tibetan epithets for the country sometimes used by flowery native writers are “The Icy Land” (Gangs-c'an) and the “Country of the Red Faces” (Gdong-mar-gyi yul). The Chinese name for central Tibet is Wei-Ts'ang, which is a transcription of the Tibetan designation of the two: provinces Ü and Tsang (spelt dbus-gtsang) that constitute central Tibet. Among the Mongols, Tibetans are called Tangutu and the country Barontala or the “right side,” in contradistinction to Dzöntala or “left side,” which was their own name for Mongolia itself.
Geography.—Physically Tibet may be divided into two parts, the lake region in the west and north-west, and the river region, which slpreads out on three sides of the former on the east, south, and west. The lake region extends from the Pangong t'so (t'so = lake) in Ladak, near the source of the Indus, to the sources of the Salween, the Mekong and the Yangtse. This region is called the Chang-t'ang (Byang tang) or “Northern Plateau” by the people of Tibet. It is some 700 m. broad, and covers an area about equal to that of France. From its great distance from the ocean it is extremely arid, and possesses no river outlet. The mountain ranges are spread out, rounded, disconnected, separated by flat valleys relatively of little depth. The country is dotted over with large and small lakes, generally salt or alkaline, and intersected by streams, and the soil is boggy and covered with tussocks of grass, thus resembling the Siberian tundra and the Pamirs. Its average altitude is over 16,000 ft., the northern portion of it being the highest. Salt and fresh-water lakes are intermingled. The lakes are generally without outlet, or have only a small effluent. The deposits consist of soda, potash, borax and common salt. This last is frequently found piled high and split into blocks apparently of artificial formation, but probably the result of the action of wind and intense cold. The loftiest lake so far as observed is Hospa t’so, near the Lingshi plain on the Kashmir frontier; its altitude is given as 17,930 ft. The lake region is noted for a vast number of hot springs, which are widely distributed between the Himalayas and 34° N., but are most numerous to the west of Tengri Nor (north-west of Lhasa). So intense is the cold in Tibet that these springs are sometimes represented by columns of ice, the nearly boiling water having frozen in the act of ejection. The southern portion, from Lake Pangong to Tengri Nor, is inhabited by pastoral tribes of Tibetans, and possesses a few hamlets, such as Ombo, Rudok and Senja jong. The river region comprises the upper courses of the Brahmaputra (Yaru Tsangpo), the Salween (? Gyama nyul chu), the Yangtsze (Dre chu), the Mekong (Nya-lung chu), and the Yellow River (Ma chu). Amidst the mountains there are many narrow valleys, partially cultivated from an altitude of 12,000 ft. downwards, with here and there fine forests covering the mountain sides. Villages of high stone built houses are to be found wherever the valley bottoms open out enough to afford a little space for agriculture. The northern portion of Tibet is an arid and wind-swept desert; but in the southern portion the valleys of Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and the Brahmaputra are covered with good soil and groves of trees, well irrigated, and richly cultivated.
The valley of the Brahmaputra (q.v.), or Yaru Tsang-po or simply Tsang-po—the river has also various local names—is the great arterial valley of southern Tibet. On the south it is bounded by the Himalayas, on the north by a mountain-system still more vast. This mountain-system was only vaguely known, in fact its existence throughout its length was only suspected, until Sven Hedin, during his journeys in 1906–1908, crossed it at several points. He found the system to form the chief physio graphical feature of southern Tibet, and stated it to be “on the whole the most massive range on the crust of the earth, its average height above the sea level being greater than that of the Himalayas. Its peaks are 4000 to 5000 feet lower than Mount Everest, but its passes average 3000 feet higher than the Himalayan passes.” Its extreme breadth is about 120 m. in the central part, its northern limit being marked by the chain of lakes running N.W. and S.E. between 30° and 33° N., beyond which the mountains of central Tibet are much lower. The system at no point narrows to a single range; generally there are three or four across its breadth. As a whole the system forms the watershed between rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean-the Indus and its tributaries, Brahmaputra and its tributaries, and Salween and the streams flowing into the untrained salt lakes to the north. The principal ranges in the system are the Nien-chen-tang-la, called Kanchung-gangri in the west, the Targo-Gangri-Lapchung range, the very lofty Hlunpo-Gangri range, the Dingla range, &c. The whole system had been marked by inference on some maps before Hedin's discoveries, and named Gangri; Hedin proposed for it the name of Trans-Himalaya.
Geology and Mineral Wealth.—Little is known of the geological structure of the central regions of Tibet. The observations of Strachey, Godwin-Austen and of Griesbach and other members of the Geological Survey of India only extend to the southern edge or rim of the great plateau, where vast alluvial deposits in horizontal strata have been furrowed into deep ravines, while Russian explorers have but superficially examined the mountain regions of the north and north-east, and the British mission to Lhasa in 1904 afforded observations merely along the trade-route to that city. The general structure of the trans-Himalayan chains appears to indicate that the main axis of upheaval of the whole vast mass of the Tibetan highlands is to be found on two approximately parallel lines, represented the one by the Kuen-lun and the other by a line which is more or less coincident with the watershed between India and the central lake region, extending from Lake Pangong to Tengri Nor, the plateau enclosed between the two being wrinkled by minor folds, of which the relative elevation is comparatively low, averaging from 1000 to 1500 ft. The strike of these folds is usually east and west and roughly parallel to the axes of elevation of the plateau. A remarkable economic feature is the almost universal distribution of gold throughout Tibet. The gold-digging is referred to in somewhat mythical terms by Herodotus. Every river which rises in Tibet washes down sands impregnated with gold, and it has been proved that this gold is not the product of intervening strata, but must have existed primarily in the crystalline rocks of the main axes of upheaval. In western Tibet the gold mines of Jalung have been worked since 1875. They have been visited by native explorers of the Indian Survey, who reported that much gold was produced and remitted twice a year under a Chinese guard to Peking. The Tibetan diggers collected together at the mines chiefly during the Winter, when the frost assisted to bind the loose alluvial soil and render excavation easy. These mines are within 200 m. of the Ladak frontier, near the sources of the Indus, at an elevation which cannot be less than 15,000 ft. above sea-level. They are worked in crude desultory fashion and are sometimes abandoned owing to the exorbitant imposts levied on gold production by Chinese and Tibetan officials. Between the Ladak frontier and Lhasa the plateau region teems with evidences of abandoned mines. These mines are excavations in the alluvial soil, never more than from 20 to 30 ft. deep.
The researches of Prjevalsky demonstrate that gold is plentiful in northern and eastern Tibet. Here Tungus diggers were encountered who had extracted handfuls of gold in small nuggets from a stream bed at a depth which they stated to be no greater than 2 ft. Another scientific explorer, W. Mesny, has observed similar evidences of the existence of gold at comparatively shallow depths in Koko Nor region, and records that he has seen nuggets, “varying from the size of a pea to that of a hazel-nut,” in eastern Tibet. The gold was almost pure and perfectly malleable. The Gork goldfields, which are visible from Koko Nor, are reported to have yielded to China considerable quantities of gold as lately as 1888. They are now deserted. Prjevalsky, indeed, predicts of northern Tibet that it will prove a “second California” in course of time. But little gold at present finds its way across the Tibetan passes to India; and the export to China has diminished of late years.
Iron is found in eastern Tibet in the form of pyrites, and is rudely smelted locally. Salt and borax exist in abundance in the western lake regions. The exportation of borax to India is only limited by the comparatively small demand. Lapis-lazuli and mercury are among the minor mineral products of the country.
Climate.—The climate of Tibet varies so greatly over the enormous area and different altitudes of the country that no two travellers agree precisely in their records. Tibet is affected by the s0uth-west monsoon, just as the Pamirs are affected, but m varying degrees according to geographical position. In western Tibet, bordering the Kashmir frontier, the climate differs little from that of Ladak. Intense dryness pervades the atmosphere during nine months of the year; but little snow falls, and the western passes are so little subject to intermittent falls of fresh snow as frequently to be traversable during the whole year round (see Ladakh). Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, whose bleak desolation is unrelieved by the existence of trees or vegetation of any size, and where the wind sweeps unchecked across vast expanses of arid plain. All the western region is but slightly affected by the monsoon. The central lake region, extending from the Kuen-lun to the Himalaya, is also characterized by extreme dryness in autumn, winter and spring, with an abundance of rain in summer, whilst the eastern mountain region, extending to China south of the Dang la (which, with an altitude of about 20,000 ft., stretches from 90° to 97° E. along the parallel of 33° N., and arrests the monsoon currents), is subject to much the same climatic influences as the eastern Himalaya. The southern slopes of the Dang la are deluged with rain, hail and snow throughout the year. Northern Tibet is an arid waste, subject to intense heat in summer and intense cold in winter. In March snow still lies deep in the Tsaidam passes, while Wellby found the heat oppressive in June at 16,000 ft. elevation on the plateau south of the Kuen-lun, and a temperate climate prevailing about the sources of the Dre chu (Yangtsze) in August.
All travellers testify to the perpetual wind currents from the west, which sweep across the salt bogs of Tsaidam (9500 ft.) and through the higher valleys of eastern Tibet. Wind is a prevailing feature throughout Tibet at certain seasons of the year, as it is in the Pamirs, in Turkestan, in western Afghanistan and in Persia. The climate of southern Tibet is, however, subject to considerable modifications from that of the northern and central regions, owing doubtless to its geographical connexion with northern India. Here, at an elevation of 15,000 ft., about the great Lake Dangra, we hear of well-built villages and of richly cultivated fields of barley, indicating a condition of climate analogous to that which prevails in the districts south of Lhasa, and in contrast to the sterility of the lake region generally and the nomadic character of its population. Modern travellers bear witness to a gradual progress of desiccation in the Tibetan uplands. Everywhere there are signs of the diminution of the lakes and the recession of the water line—a phenomenon that has also been observed in the Pamirs. There are still enormous glaciers about the head of the Brahmaputra, but the glacial epoch of the Chang-t'ang highlands has passed away, though comparatively recently.
Flora.—Our knowledge of the flora of northern and central Tibet has been considerably increased by the collections of Prjevalsky, Wellby, Bower, Thorold, Littledale and the Lhasa Mission, and that of eastern Tibet by Rockhill. The former and other collections have been described in W. B. Hemsley's The Flora of Tibet or High Asia. Western and southern Tibetan flora were partially explored previously to the advent of these travellers. Professor Maximowicz concludes from an analysis of the Prjevalsky collection that the flora of Tibet is extremely ancient, and that it is chiefly composed of immigrants from the Himalaya and Mongolia. There is also a large percentage of endemic species. Chinese and European plants followed in the process of immigration. Those species which are distinctive of the eastern border ridges are found to reach the plateau, but do not spread westwards, so that a botanic separation or distinction is found to exist between the true plateau of Tibet in the west and the alpine tracts of the east. Thiselton-Dyer classes the flora of Tibet on the whole as belonging to the Arctic-Alpine section of the great northern division, but containing a purely endemic element. Two typical species are Lychnis apetala, which extends to Spitsbergen, and the well-known edelweiss. A single fern specimen obtained by Littledale (Polypodium hastatum) is indicative of eastern China. Of the forty or fifty genera obtained by Littledale in central Tibet a large proportion are British, including many of the most characteristic mountain forms. In the higher regions of northern and western Tibet the conditions under which vegetation exists are extreme. Here there are no trees, no shrubs, nor any plants above a foot high. Wellby says he saw nothing higher than an onion. The peculiar form of tussocky grass which prevails in the Pamirs is the characteristic feature of the Tibetan Chang-t'ang of the Tsaidam plains and of the bogs north-east of Lhasa. Of grasses indeed there are many forms, some peculiar to Tibet, but no trees or shrubs at any elevation higher than 15,000 ft., except in the Kharo Pass of central Tibet, where Waddell has recorded trees (? Hippophae sp.) about 20 ft. high at an elevation of 16,300 ft. A flowering plant (Saussurea tridactyla) was discovered by Bower at an elevation of 19,000 ft. In south-eastern Tibet, where Himalayan conditions of climate prevail, we have a completely different class of flora. Of the flora of Tibet Rockhill writes: “In the ‘hot lands’ (Tsa-rong) in southern and south-eastern Tibet, extending even to Batang, peaches, apricots, apples, plums, grapes, water-melons, &c., and even pomegranates, are raised; most of Tibet only produces a few varieties of vegetables, such as potatoes, turnips, beans, cabbages, onions, &c. The principal cereals raised are barley and buckwheat, wheat in small quantities, and a little oats. A few localities in the extreme southern portions of the country and around Lhasa possibly, are said to produce a non-glutinous variety of rice. A variety of mountain bamboo is found in southern and parts of eastern Tibet, and is much used for basket work. Tibet produces a large number of medicinal plants much prized by the medical profession in China and Mongolia, among others the Cordyceps sinensis, the Coptis teeta, Wall., and Pickorhiza kuwoa, Royle, &c. Rhubarb is also found in great quantities in eastern Tibet and Amdo; it is largely exported for European use, but does not appear to be used medicinally in the country. The trees most commonly found are the plane, poplar, maple, walnut, oak, the Cupressus funebris, and various varieties of the genera Pinus, Abies and Larix. Some valuable plants are obtained in the mountains of south and south-western Tibet, yielding the excellent yellow and red colours used to dye the native cloths.” Waddell gives a list of 164 species of plants collected by him at Lhasa, several being new species.
Fauna.—The fauna of Tibet has been by no means exhaustively investigated, especially the rodents and smaller species of animals. Among domesticated animals are to be found the horse, mule, donkey, cattle, sheep and goats, dogs, fowls and pigs, ducks and geese. Probably no country in the world, excepting perhaps inner Africa, so abounds in wild animals as the cold solitudes of the northern plateau. Here are to be found yak, wild asses (kyang), several varieties of deer, musk deer and Tibetan antelope (Pantholops); also wild sheep (the bharal of the Himalaya), Ovis hodgsoni and possibly Ovis poli, together with wild goats, bears (in large numbers in the north-eastern districts), leopards, otter, wolves, wild cats, foxes, marmots, squirrels, monkeys and wild dogs. To this list must be added the curious sloth-bear Aeluropus melanoleucus, a rare eastern species, and the so-called “unicorn” antelopes, the “tākyin” (Budorcas taxicolor), also an eastern Indo-Malayan species. Birds are fairly numerous, and include many varieties of water-fowl, several of which (Anser indicus, the bar-headed goose, for instance) breed in Tibet, while others are only found as birds of passage. In eastern Tibet, on the Chinese border, varieties of the pheasant tribe abound, some of which are rare. Among them are the “white” pheasant, the Ceriornis temminckii, two kinds of eared pheasant and Anderson's pheasant. The Tibetan sand-grouse is peculiar to the country, and the snow-partridge (Lerva nivicola) and the snow-cock (Tetraogallus tibetanus) are occasionally met with in the uplands, while the ordinary partridge (Perdix hodgsoni) is common in the ravines on the plateau.
People.—The Tibetan race, which probably belongs to the Turko-Mongol stock, is divided between the nomadic tent dwelling Tibetans of the lake region and transition zone between it and the river region, and the settled sedentary population of the valleys. The tent-dwelling Tibetans, called Dokpa or Drupa (spelt hbrog-pa), or “Steppe-dwellers,” are generally of a more Mongolized type than the people of the lowlands. The males measure about 5 ft. 5 in., except in eastern Tibet, where 5 ft. 9 in. is a common stature; the females are appreciably less. The head is mesati-Cephalic, verging on brachycephalic in the case of many of the Dokpa; the hair is black and somewhat wavy; the eyes are usually of a clear brown, in some cases even hazel; the cheek-bones are high, but not so high as with the Mongols; the nose is thick, sometimes depressed at the root, in other cases prominent, even aquiline, though the nostrils are broad. The teeth are strong but irregular; the ears, with tolerably large lobes, stand out from the head, but to a less degree than with the Mongols. The mouth is broad, the lips not full, and, among the people of the lower altitudes, decidedly thin. The beard is sparse, and, with the exception of the moustache, which is sometimes worn, especially in central Tibet, it is plucked out with tweezers. The shoulders are broad, the arms round; the legs are not well developed, the calf is especially small. The foot is somewhat small but broad, the hand coarse. The women are usually stouter than the men. The colour of the skin of the Tibetans is a light brown, sometimes so light as to show ruddy cheeks in children; where exposed to the weather it becomes a dark brown. Their voices are full, deep and powerful. They can endure exposure without much apparent inconvenience; and though the nature of the food they use is such that they cannot stand absolute privation for any considerable length of time, they can exist for long periods on starvation rations, if eked out with weak soup or buttered tea, which is drunk at frequent intervals.
The sedentary population of Tibet has to a greater or less degree the same physical traits as the Dokpa, but as one approaches China, India or the border lands generally, one observes that the admixture of foreign blood has considerably modified the primitive type. Among the customs of the Tibetans, perhaps the most peculiar is polyandry, the brothers in a family having one wife in common. Monogamy, however, seems to be the rule among the pastoral tribes, and polygamy is not unknown in Tibet, especially in the eastern parts of the country.
Their religion is described under Lamaism. (L. A. W.; T. H. H.*)
Language.—The language of Tibet bears no special name, it is merely known as "The Speech of Bod or Tibet," namely, Bod-skad (pronounced Bhö-kä), while the vernacular is called P'al-skad or “vulgar speech,” in contradistinction to the rje-sa or “polite respectful speech” of the educated classes, and the ch'os-skad or “book language,” the literary style in which the scriptures and other classical works are written.
It is not a uniform speech, but comprises several dialects which have been classed by Jaeschke into three groups, namely (1) the central or the dialects of Lhasa and the central provinces of Ü and Tsang (including Spiti) which is the lingua franca of the whole country, (2) the western dialects of Ladak, Lahul, Baltistan and Purig, and (3) the eastern dialects of the province of Khams. In addition to these, however, are many sub-dialects of Tibetan spoken in the frontier Himalayan districts and states outside Tibet, namely, in Kunawar and Bashahr, Garhwal, Kumaon, Nepal including especially the Serpa and Murmi of eastern Nepal, Sikkim (where the dialect is called Dänjong-kä), Bhutan (Lho-kä or Duk-kä), all of which are affiliated to a central group of dialects. Farther east the Takpa of Tawang in the eastern Assam Himalayas appears to form a transition between the central and the Sifan group of dialects on the Chinese frontier, which includes the Minyak, Sungpan, Lifan and Tochu dialects. On the north bordering on Turkestan the dialect of the nomadic Hor-pa tribes is much mixed with Turkic ingredients. The number of speakers of Tibetan dialects is probably not far short of eight millions.
Linguistically, Tibetan is allied to the Burmese languages, and forms with the latter a family of the so-called Turano-Scythian stock called “Tibeto-Burman” (q.v.), the unity of which family was first recognized by Brian Hodgson in 1828, and indeed several of the dialects of Tibetan are still only known through the copious vocabularies collected by him. The little that was known of the Tibetan language before Hodgson's time was mainly derived from the writings of the Romish friars who resided for several years in Lhasa in the first half of the 18th century.[1] The first serious European student of Tibetan was Csoma de Körös (1784–1842), an indefatigable Hungarian, who devoted his life to the study of this language and the ancient Buddhist records enshrined in its unknown literature. For this purpose he resided like a monk for several years among the lamas at the monasteries of Zangla and Pukdal in Zanskar and latterly at Kanum in upper Bashahr, enjoying the assistance of learned lāmas. His Tibetan-English Dictionary, and pioneer Tibetan Grammar, both published in 1834, opened to Europeans the way to acquire a knowledge of the Tibetan language as found in the ancient classics.[2] The next great advance in the study of the Tibetan language we owe to the labours of H. A. Jeaschke of the Moravian mission which was established in Ladak in 1857. This scholarly linguist, equipped with modern methods of scientific research, did not confine himself to the classical period like Csoma, but extended his investigations to the language as a whole, and provided Europeans for the first time with the means of making a practical study of modern Tibetan and the speech of the people. His Tibetan-English Dictionary and Tibetan Grammar are models of scientific precision and important sources of our knowledge of the structure and development of the language, and the former is not superseded by Chandra Das's Dictionary.[3]
The language was first reduced to writing with the assistance of Indian Buddhist monks in the middle of the 7th century A.D. by Thonmi, a Tibetan layman. The letters, which are a form of the Indian Sanskrit characters of that period, follow the same arrangement as their Sanskritic prototype. The consonants, 30 in number, which are deemed to possess an inherentGrammar. sound a, are the following: ka, k’a, ga, nga, c̀a, ča, ja, nya, ta, t'a, da, na, pa, p’a, ba, ma, tsa, ts’a, dza, wa, z’a, za, ’ha, ya, ra, la, s’a, sa, ha, a; the so-called Sanskrit cerebrals are represented by the letters ta, t'a, da, na, s'a, turned the other way. Ya, when combined as second consonant with k-, p-, m-, is written under the first letter. Ra, when combined as second letter with k-, t-, p-, is written under the first, and when combined with another consonant as first letter over the second. The vowels are a, i, u, e, o, which are not distinguished as long or short in writing, except in loan words transcribed from the Sanskrit, &c., though they are so in the vernaculars in the case of words altered by phonetic detrition. By means of agglutination, that is, by adding to the bases form-words as prefixes, suffixes or infixes, the Tibetan language has developed a considerable grammatical system and is now agglutinating rather than isolating. Agglomerations of consonants are often met with as initials, giving the appearance of telescoped words—an appearance which historical etymology often confirms. Many of these initial consonants are silent in the dialects of the central provinces, or have been resolved into a simpler one of another character. The language is much ruled by laws of euphony, which have been strictly formulated by native grammarians. Among the initials, five, viz. g, d, b, m, 'h, are regarded as prefixes, and are called so for all purposes, though they belong sometimes to the stem. As a rule none of these letters can be placed before any of the same organic class. Post-positions, pa or ba and ma, are required by the noun (substantive or adjective) that is to be singled out; po or bo (masc.) and mo (fem.) are used for distinction of gender or for emphasis. The cases of nouns are indicated by suffixes, which vary their initials according to the final of the nouns. The plural is denoted when required by adding one of several words of plurality. When several words are connected in a sentence they seldom require more than one case element, and that comes last. There are personal, demonstrative, interrogative and reflexive pronouns, as well as an indefinite article, which is also the numeral for “one.” The personal pronouns are replaced by various terms of respect when speaking to or before superiors, and there are many words besides which are only employed in ceremonial language. The verb, which is properly a kind of noun or participle, has no element of person, and denotes the conditions of tense and mood by an external and internal inflexion, or the addition of auxiliary verbs and suffixes when the stem is not susceptible of inflexion, so that instead of saying “I go,” a Tibetan says “my going.” The conditions which approximate most closely to our present, perfect, future and imperative are marked either by aspiration of the initial or by one of the five prefix consonants according to the rules of euphony, and the whole looks like a former system thrown into confusion and disorder by phonetic decay. As to the internal vowel, a or e in the present tends to become o in the imperative, the e changing to a in the past and future; i and u are less liable to change. A final s is also occasionally added. Only a limited number of verbs are capable of four changes; some cannot assume more than three, some two, and many only one. This deficiency is made up by the addition of auxiliaries or suffixes. There are no numeral auxiliaries or segregatives used in counting, as in many languages of eastern Asia, though words expressive of a collective or integral are often used after the tens, sometimes after a smaller number. A good deal of new research on the grammar is to be found in Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India, part III., 1908. In scientific and astrological works, the numerals, as in Sanskrit, are expressed by symbolical words. In the order of the sentence the substantive precedes the adjective and the verb stands last; the object and the adverb precede the verb, and the genitive precedes the noun on which it depends—this contrasts with the order in the isolating Chinese, where the order is subject, verb, object. An active or causal verb requires before it the instrumental instead of the nominative case, which goes only before a neuter or intransitive verb. The chief differences between the classical language of the Tibetan translators of the 9th century and the vernacular, as well as the language of native words, existed in vocabulary, phraseology and grammatical structure, and arose from the influence of the translated texts.
The Tibetan language, presenting such marked differences between its written and spoken forms, has a great interest for philologists, Philology. on account of its bearing on the history of the monosyllabic languages of eastern Asia, with their so-called “isolation” or absence of form-words and consequently of grammatical forms. Is the Tibetan a monosyllabic language passing to agglutination, or the reverse? The question has turned mainly upon the elucidation of the phenomenon of the silent letters, generally prefixed, which differentiate the spelling, of many words from their pronunciation, in the central dialect or current speech of Lhasa. Rémusat rather dubiously suggested, while Schmidt and Schiefner maintained, that the silent letters were a device of grammarians to distinguish in writing words which were not distinguished in speech. But this convenient opinion was not sufficient for a general explanation, being supported by only a few cases. Among these are—(a) the addition of silent letters to foreign words in analogy with older terms of the language (e.g. the Persian tadjik was transcribed staggzig or “tiger-leopard,” because the foreign term left untouched would have been meaningless for Tibetan readers); (b) the addition for the sake of uniformity of prefixed letters to words etymologically deprived of them; (c) the probable addition of letters by the Buddhist teachers from India to Tibetan words in order to make them more similar to Sanskrit expressions (for instance rje- for “king,” written in imitation of raja, though the original word was je or she, as is shown by cognate languages). On the other hand, while phonetically the above explanation was not inconsistent with such cases as rka dkah, bkah, bska, and nga, rnga, ngad, sngags, lnga, ngad and brtse, brdzun, dbyar, &c., were the italicized letters are renounced in full and the others are left aside, it failed to explain other cases, such as dgra, mgron, spyod, spyan, sbrang, sbrul, bkra, k'ri, krad, k'rims, k'rus, &c., pronounced ḍa, ḍon, čod, or šwod, čen, dang, ḍeu, ṭa, t'i, tad or teh, t'im, tu, &c., and many others, where the spoken forms are obviously the alteration by wear and tear of sounds originally similar to the written forms. Csoma de Körös, who was acquainted with the somewhat archaic sounds of Ladak, was able to point to only a few letters as silent. Foucaux, in his Grammaire (1858), quoted a fragment from a native work on grammar several centuries old, in which the pronunciation of the supposed silent letters is carefully described. Since then the problem has been disentangled; and now minor points only remain to be cleared up. Jaeschke devoted special attention to the dialectical sounds, and showed in several papers and by the comparative table prefixed to his dictionary that in the western and eastern dialects these sounds correspond more or less closely to the written forms.
Jaeschke first noted the existence of tones in Tibetan, and these have been found by Professor Conrady to have developed on the Tones. same lines as in Chinese. Thus intransitive bases seem to have begun only with soft consonants, and it is doubtful whether the parent tongue possessed hard consonants at all; while transitive bases were formed by hardening of the initial consonants and at the same time pronouncing the words in a higher tone, and these two latter changes are supposed to have been indicated by a prefix to the base-word. Many of these old soft initial consonants which are now hardened in the modern dialects are preserved in classical Tibetan, i.e. in Tibetan of the 7th to the 9th century A.D. The old language seems to have pronounced prefixes extensively which in modern pronunciation in central Tibet are largely lost, whilst the soft initials have become aspirated or hardened and tones have developed, and in the west and east, where prefixes and soft initials have been preserved, there are no tones. Thus the valuable testimony of these dialects may be added to the evidence furnished by foreign transcriptions of Tibetan words, loan words in conterminous languages, and words of common descent in kindred tongues. And the whole shows plainly that the written forms of words which are not of later remodelling are really the representatives of the pronunciation of the language as it was spoken at the time of the transcription.
The concurrence of the evidence indicated above enables us to form the following outline of the evolution of Tibetan. In the 9th century, as shown by the bilingual Tibeto-Chinese edict at Lhasa, there was relatively little difference between the spoken and the written language. Soon afterwards, when the language was extended to the western valleys, many of the prefixed and most of the important consonants vanished from the spoken words. The ya-tag and ra-tag, or y and r subscript, and the s after vowels and consonants, were still in force. The next change took place in the central provinces; the ra-tags were altered into cerebral dentals, and the ya-tags became č. Later on the superscribed letters and finals d and s disappeared, except in the east and west. It was at this stage that the language spread in Lahul and Spiti, where the superscribed letters were silent, the d and g finals were hardly heard, and as, os, us were ai, oi, ui. The words introduced from Tibet into the border languages at that time differ greatly from those introduced at an earlier period. The other changes are more recent and restricted to the provinces of Ü and Tsang. The vowel sounds ai, oi, ui have become ē, ō, ū; and a, o, u before the finals d and n are now ä, ö, ü. The mediae have become aspirate tenues with a low intonation, which also marks the words having a simple initial consonant; while the former aspirates and the complex initials simplified in speech are uttered with a high tone, or, as the Tibetans say, “with a woman's voice,” shrill and rapidly. An inhabitant of Lhasa, for example, finds the distinction between s' and z', or between s and z, not in the consonant, but in the tone, pronouncing s' and s with a high note and z' and z with a low one. The introduction of the important compensation of tones to balance phonetic losses had begun several centuries before, as appears from a Tibetan MS. (No. 462b St Petersburg) partly published by Jaeschke (Monatsber. Akad. Berl., 1867). A few instances will serve to illustrate what has been said. In the bilingual inscriptions, Tibetan and Chinese, set up at Lhasa in 822, and published by Bushell in 1880, we remark that the silent letters were pronounced: Tib. spudgyal, now pugyal, is rendered suh-pot-ye in Chinese symbols; khri, now t'i, is kieh-li; hbrong is puh-lung; snyan is sheh-njoh and su-njoh; srong is su-lun, su-lung and si-lung. These transcriptions show by their variety that they were made from the spoken and not from the written forms, and, considering the limited capacities of Chinese orthoepy, were the nearest attempt at rendering the Tibetan sounds. Spra or spreu (a monkey), now altered into deu at Lhasa, ṭeu in Lahul, Spiti and Tsang, is still more recognizable in the Gyarung shepri and in the following degenerated forms—shreu in Ladak, streu-go in Khams and in cognate languages, soba in Limbu, saheu in Lepcha, simai in Tablung Naga, sibeh in Abor Miri, shibe in Sibsagar Miri, sarrha in Kol, sara in Kuri, &c. Grog-ma (ant), now altered into the spoken t'oma, is still kyoma in Bhutan, and, without the suffix, korok in Gyarung, k'oro- in Sokpa, k'orok, k'alek in Kiranti, &c. Grang-po- (cold), spoken t'ammo, is still grang-mo in Takpa, k'yam in Burmese, &c. A respectful word for “head” is ü, written dbu, which finds its cognates in Murmi thobo, Sibsagar Miri tub, &c. Bya (bird), spoken cha, is still pye in Gyarung. Brjod (to speak), pronounced jod, is cognate to the Burmese pyauhtso, the Garo brot, &c. The word for “cowries” is 'gron- in written, rum- in spoken Tibetan, and grwa in written Burmese; slop (to learn), spoken lop, is slop in Melam. “Moon” is zlava in written and dawa in spoken language, in which -va is a suffix; the word itself is zla-, cognate to the Mongol ssara, Sokpa sara, Gyarung t-sile, Vayu cholo, &c. The common spoken word for “head” is go, written mgo, to which the Manipuri moko and the Mishmi mkura are related. Sometimes the written forms correspond to double words which have disappeared. For instance, gye (eight), which is written brgyad and still spoken vrgyad in Balti in the west and Khams in the east, is gyäd in Ladak, Lahul, Tsang and Ü. The same word does not appear elsewhere; but we find its two parts separately, such as Gurung pre, Murmi pre, Taksya phre and Takpa gyet, Serpa gye, Garo chet, &c. Rta (horse) is reduced to ta in speech, but we find ri, rhyi, roh in Sokpa, Horpa, Tochu, Minyak, and tā, tah, teh, t'ay in Lhopa, Serpa, Murmi, Kami, Takpa, &c., both with the same meaning. Such are the various pieces of evidence obtained from an endless number of instances. The cases referred to above do not, owing to the difference of the causes, yield to any explanation of this kind. And it must be admitted that there are also many cases, some of them caused by irregularities of writing, modification of spelling by decay, and by a probable use of prefixes still unascertained, which also resist explanation, though the account just given stands good whatever solution the question of prefixes may receive in future.
Literature.—The religious literature, which is very considerable, is referred to under Lamaism. The non-religious literature of Tibet is not extensive, probably owing to the printing being in the hands of the priests. One of the most popular and widely circulated books is called The Hundred Thousand Songs of the Venerable Milaraspa. Their author Milaraspa (unless the work should be attributed to his disciples), often called Mila, was a Buddhist ascetic of the 11th century, who, during the intervals of meditation travelled through the southern part of middle Tibet as a mendicant friar, instructing the people by his improvisations in poetry and song, proselytizing, refuting and converting heretics, and working manifold miracles. His legends are not without wit and poetical merit. An equally popular book is the Love Songs of Ts'angs-dbyangs rgyamts'o, attributed to the dissipated young Dalai lāma who was deposed in 1701 (see Lhasa). There are a number of poems written in an elevated style, also dramatic works chiefly of the character of mystery plays, and collections of fairy tales and fables. The Kesar Epic, which has been translated by A. H. Francke under the title of the Kesar Saga, is a widely known tale of a heroic warrior king of northern Asia named Kesar (believed by some to be a transcription of “Czar”), but it is not found as a printed book. Several collections of folk songs have also been published by A. Francke from Ladak. A long story book, called the Djiung yi (Sgrungs gyi gsungs?), and regarded as the national epic in Khām, has been partly seen by Desgodins and Baber. It is in prose; but the dialogue, interspersed with songs, is metrical, and is much more extensive than the prose framework. Religious discussions and philosophical dissertations alternate with comic episodes. It includes three divisions—the Djiung ling, which describes the invasion of part of Tibet by the Djiung or Moso; the Hor ling, which recounts the conquest of the Hor (Turk tribes) by the Tibetans, and conveys much historical information in a tale of magic and marvel; and the Djia ling (Chinese division), which narrates a contest of unknown date between the Tibetans and the Chinese. This work has apparently never been published, and even the manuscripts of the three divisions cannot, says Baber, be obtained in a complete form. But every Tibetan, or at least every native of Khām, who possesses any education, is able to recite or to chant passages of great length. Another Tibetan epic in Khaur, the Gyaldrung, praises Dagyolong, a famous warrior who subdued the savage men of Khām. Dramatic works exist, as also a version of the Ramayana in the first volume of the Bstodts'ogs of the Bstan-hgyur.
Writing.—Writing was not introduced until the 7th century. Notched sticks (shing-chram) and knotted cords were in current use, but the latter contrivance is only faintly alluded to in the Tibetan records, while of the other there are numerous examples. No mention is anywhere made of a hieroglyphical writing, but on the eastern frontier the medicine-men or tomba of the Moso have a peculiar pictorial writing, which is known in Europe from two published MSS. (in Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc., 1885, vol. xvii.); though apparently now confined solely to purposes of witchcraft, it perhaps contains survivals of a former extensive system superseded by the alphabetic writing introduced from India. According to tradition—a tradition of which the details are still open to criticism—the alphabet was introduced from India by Tonmi, a lay Tibetan minister who was sent to India in 632 by King Srong-btsan to study the Sanskrit language and Buddhist literature. Tonmi introduced the modified Sanskritic “writing in thirty characters” (already detailed under Language and six of which do not exist in Sanskrit) in two styles—the “thick letters” or “letters with heads” (u-ch'en), now commonly used in printed books, and the half-cursive “cornered letters,” so called from their less regular heads. The former are traditionally said to have been derived from the Landza character. The Landza of Nepal, however, is certainly not the origin of the Tibetan letter, but rather an ornamental development of the parent letter. The close resemblance of the Tibetan characters “with heads” to the Gupta inscriptions of Allahabad shows them to have been derived from the monumental writing of the period; and various arguments appear to show that the other Tibetan letters came from the same Indian character in the style in which it was used in common life. The Tibetan half-cursive was further developed into the more current “headless” (u-med) characters, of which there are several styles. The ancient manuscripts discovered by Dr M. Aurel Stein in Khotan seem to include very early, if not the earliest known, Tibetan documents.
Political Divisions.—Tibetans divide their country into five provinces: (1) Amdo, which comprises that part of the Chinese province of Kansuh which is inhabited by Tibetans, and Koko Nor region, extending southwards to the Yellow river and westwards as far as the Tsaidam. Amdo is inhabited in its eastern part by Tibetans, called Rongwa or “ravine-folk,” who are agriculturists, and in the western by pastoral tribes, collectively called Panaka or the Three Panakas. (2) Khams or Khamdo, which includes all eastern Tibet between the Chinese provinces of Szechuen and Yunnan, and the district of Lhorong jong, which forms the eastern border of the Lhasa-governed territory. This province is divided into the five Horba tribes, the eighteen Nyarong states in the valley of the upper Yalung, and the districts of Litang, Batang, Dergē, Gartok Chiamdo and Draya. In Khamdo, but subject to the direct rule of Lhasa, are several small districts, the principal are Nyarong, Tsarong, and Mar Khams or “Lower Khamdo.” Most of these districts are governed by dēba or chiefs, while a few have kings or gyalpo, the most powerful of the latter being the king of Dergē, famous for its inlaid metal and leather work, and of Chagla, or, as it is better known, Tachienlu, as it is called by the Chinese or the Dartsemdo of the Tibetans, the headquarters of the tea trade with China. Khamdo is under the direct rule of the Chinese provincial authorities of Szechuen. Some of its rulers send also tribute missions to Peking. For convenience of classification we may include in Khamdo a long strip of country extending along the northern border of the Lhasa territory of Lhorong jong and Larego as far as Tengri Nor, and bounded to the north by the Dang-la mountains, which is designated by Tibetans as Gyade or “the Chinese province.” This strip of country has its own native chiefs, but is under the control of a high Manchu officer stationed at Lhasa, known colloquially as the “superintendent of savage tribes.” (3) The third political division of Tibet is Ü (written Dbus), meaning “Central.” It includes Lhasa and a large number of outlying districts in south-eastern Tibet, such as Po, Pemakoichen, Zayul. The pastoral or Dokpa tribes, north and north-east of Tengri Nor, are also under its rule. (4) The fourth division of Tibet, called Tsang, includes all south-west Tibet from the Lhasa or Central province to the Indian frontier as far as Lake Manasarowar. (5) The fifth division, called Nāri (Mngah-ris) by the Tibetans or Hūndēsh by the Indians, who call the inhabitants Hūniyas, comprises the whole country around the sources and along the upper course of the Indus and the Sutlej, and also all north-western Tibet generally, as far as Ladak and the border of Kashmir. Tsang and Nari are under the rule of Lhasa, all the high civil and military authorities in these provinces holding their offices from it. These five provinces, however, do not include the elevated steppes of Tsaidam (extending between the Kuen-lun and the Altyn Tagh or Nan Shan ranges), inhabited by a mixed race of marauding people, Tunguts and Mongols. Yet Tsaidam is geographically but a northern extension of the great Tibetan plateau, and in most of its essential physical features it is more closely allied to the Chang-t'ang of the south than to the great sandy depressions of Chinese Turkestan or Mongolia on the north.
Government.—Though the whole of Tibet is under the suzerainty of China, the government of the country is divided into two distinct administrations, the one under the rule of the Dalai lama of Lhasa, the other under local kings or chiefs, and comprising a number of ecclesiastical fiefs. Both are directed and controlled by the high Chinese officials residing at Lhasa, Sining Fu, and the capital of the Chinese province of Szechuen. Northeastern Tibet or Amdo, and also a portion of Khamdo, are under the supervision of a high official (Manchu) residing at Sining Fu in Kansuh, whose title is Imperial Controller-General of Koko Nor. The native chiefs of the Panaka and other Tibetan tribes of this region are styled pömbo (“official” or “headman”) by both the natives and the Chinese. The region under the supervision of the imperial controller includes all the countries north of the upper course of the Dre chu (Yangtsze-kiang). The people pay a small poll-tax to China, and are exempted from any other impost; they also pay a small tax in kind, sheep, butter, &c., to their chiefs. The province of Khamdo, including all eastern Tibet, is governed by local chiefs, styled gyalpo, “king,” and dēba, “chief,” succession to the chieftainship being usually assured to the eldest son not a lama. Each chief appoints a certain number of civil and military officers to assist in the government of the country, and each village has its headman or besē, also an hereditary office. None of these officials receive salaries; they are only exempt from taxation, and some have grants of land made to them. The only tax paid to China is a so-called “horse-tax” of about 5d. for each family. Once in every five years the chiefs send a tribute mission to the capital of Szechuen, and once every ten years to Peking, but the tribute sent is purely nominal. The Chinese maintain a few small military posts with from six or eight to twenty men stationed in them; they are under the orders of a colonel residing at Tachienlu. There are also a few lama chiefs.
The part of Tibet under the rule of Lhasa, by far the largest and wealthiest, includes the central province of Ü, Tsang, Nari and a number of large outlying districts in southern and even in eastern Tibet. The central government of this part of the country is at Lhasa; the nominal head is the Dalai lama or grand lama. The Tashi lama or head of the monastery of Tashilhunpo near Shigatse is inferior to the Dalai lama in secular authority, of which, indeed, he has little—much less than formerly—but he is considered by some of his worshippers actually superior to him in religious rank. The person next in consideration to the two great lamas is the regent, who is an ecclesiastic appointed during the minority of each Dalai lama. Under him are four ministers of state (sha-pē or kalön), who divide among themselves, under the immediate supervision of the two imperial Chinese residents (or amban), the management of all secular affairs of the country. There is also a Tsong-du or National Assembly, divided into a greater assembly, including all government officials, and called together only to decide on matters of supreme importance, and a lesser assembly, consisting of certain high officials of Lhasa, noblemen, and delegates from the monasteries of Debung, Sera and Galdan, and fairly constantly in session. The Tsong-du discusses all matters of importance, especially relating to foreign policy, and its decisions are final. The army is under the command of the senior Chinese amban, a Tibetan generalissimo or mag-pön, and six Tibetan generals (dah-pön or de-pön). The military duties of the generals are slight, but their political status is high. Under the dah-pön are six rüpön or colonels, and a number of subordinate officers. The regular army consists (in theory) of 6000 men, on active service for three years, and at home on half-pay for three years. After the six years they pass into the reserve or militia (yulmag). The taxes paid to the Lhasa government are mostly in kind, sheep, ponies, meal, butter, wool, native cloth, &c., and the coin paid is said to be about 130,000 ounces of silver a year. Chandra Das states that the crown revenues of Lhasa amount to about 2,000,000 rupees annually. All high Tibetan officials, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, are appointed subject to confirmation by the Chinese government. The administrative subdivisions of the Lhasa country, of which there are fifty-four, are called jong, or “prefecture,” each of which is under the rule of two jong-pon, the one a lama, the other a layman. They collect all taxes, are responsible for the levy of troops, the courier service, corvées, &c., and exercise judicial functions, corresponding directly with Lhasa. There are 123 sub-prefectures under jong-nyer. Under them are village headmen or tso-pön, headmen or mi-pön, and elders or gyan-po. All are appointed for indefinite periods by the prefects.
Industries and Trade.—The industries are confined to the manufacture of woollen cloth of various degrees of fineness, and colour, and called truk, tirma and lawa, to that of small rugs, pottery of an inferior quality, utensils of copper and iron, some of which show considerable artistic skill in design, and to such other small trades as are necessary to supply the limited wants of the people. The best artisans are Nepalese and Chinese, the former being the best workers in metal and dyers.
The great trade routes are, first, that which, starting from Cheng-tu, the capital of the Chinese province of Szechuen, passes by way of Tachienlu or Dartsedo, Litang, Batang, Chiamdo, Larego, Lhasa, Gyantse, Shigatse, reaches the Nepalese frontier at Nielam and goes thence to Katmandu. This route is called Gya-lam, “the China road” (or “high road”); Trade Routes, &c.the great bulk of Tibetan travel goes over it. Minor roads go from Sining Fu in the Chinese province of Kansuh via Tsaidam and the Tang la pass to Nagchuka and Lhasa. This road, called the Chang lam or “northern road,” was much used by traders till the middle of the 19th century, when the Mahommedan rebellions in north-western China practically closed it. Another road starts from Sung-pan in north-western Szechuen, and, by way of the sources of the Yellow River, joins the Gya-lam at Chiamdo; it is little used, as it passes through the country of the wild marauding Golok. Still another route starts from Tachienlu, and by the valley of the Yalung and the Dze chu runs to Yekundo, and thence to Chiamdo. From this point it leads to Riwoche, and then through Gyade or Chinese province to Nagchuka and Lhasa. An important trade road starts from Likiang Fu in Yunnan, and by way of Chung-tien (Guiedam of the French missionaries) joins the Gyalam at Batang.
The most direct route from India to Lhasa, and that most frequented by the traders of Lhasa, is by the Chumbi Valley, and was followed by the British Mission. It crosses the Himalayas by the Tang Pass (15,200 ft.), and thence proceeds via Gyantse (13,200 ft.) and the Kharo Pass (16,500 ft.), Yamdok Lake (15,000) to the Tsang-po (12,100 ft.), and crossing the river winds up along the Kyi Chu, on which Lhasa stands, 33 m. from the Tsang-po. The total distance from Siliguri railway station is 357 m. From Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, a difficult mountain route runs by Kirong to the No la (16,600 ft.), descending from which pass it strikes the Tsangpo about midway between Lhasa and Lake Manasarowar. Farther west Tibet may be reached from Kumaon by one of a group of passes (of which the best known is the Milam) leading to Lake Manasarowar. The lake becomes a sort of obligatory point on all routes to Tibet which lie between Ladak and Nepal. The Shipki road from Simla, which strikes the Sutlej at Totling (where there is a bridge), leads up to Manasarowar, coinciding with the great high-road (Changlam) after passing Totling. The remarkable area of gold-mining industry which lies to the north-east of Gartok is reached by another route from Leh, which, crossing the Chang la close to Leh, passes by Rudok at the eastern extremity of Lake Pangong in a south-easterly direction, running north of the great mountain masses which crowd round the Indus sources. It continues through the central lake district to Tengri Nor and Lhasa. The principal trade with China is carried on over the Lhasa-Tachienlu road.
According to a summary furnished by Lieut.-Colonel Waddell (Lhasa and its Mysteries), the chief imports from China are silk, carpets, porcelain and tea-bricks. From Mongolia come leather, saddlery, sheep and horses, with coral, amber and small diamonds from European sources; from Kham perfumes, fruits, furs and inlaid metal saddlery; from Sikkim and Bhutan rice, musk, sugar-balls and tobacco; from Nepal broadcloth, indigo, brass work, coral, pearls, sugar, spices, drugs and Indian manufactures; from Ladak saffron, dried fruits and articles from India. In the market at Lhasa opium sells for its weight in silver. The exports from Tibet are silver, gold, salt, wool, woollen cloth, rugs, furs, drugs, musk. By the Nepal, Kumaon and Ladak routes go borax, gold and ponies. Patna in Bengal is the chief market for the Nepal trade; Diwangiri and Udalguri for Assam, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong for Sikkim and Chumbi. One of the most universal articles of consumption in Tibet is the Chinese brick-tea, which even passes as currency. The tea imported from Szechuen is for the most part of very inferior quality, estimated at 35% tea-leaves and 65% twigs and other material. It is compressed into large bricks, and costs two-thirds of a penny per pound. Efforts have been made by the planters of the Duars to prepare Indian brick-tea for the Tibetan market, which is calculated to consume some 11,000,000 ℔ yearly.
Money.—It is curious that Tibet, though using coined money, seems never, strictly speaking, to have had a coinage of its own. Till nearly the end of the 18th century the coinage had for a long time been derived from Nepal. That valley prior to the Gurkha domination (1768) was under three native dynasties (at Bhatgaon, Patan and Katmandu), and these struck silver mohurs, as they were called, of the nominal value of half a rupee. The coins were at first not struck specially for Tibetan use, but were so afterwards. These latter bore (obverse) a Nepalese emblem surrounded by eight fleurons containing the eight sacred Buddhist jewels, and (reverse) an eight-petalled flower surrounded by eight fleurons containing the names of the eight jewels in Tibetan characters. Ingots of Chinese silver were sent from Lhasa with a small proportion of gold dust, and an equal weight in mohurs was returned, leaving to the Nepal rajahs, between gold dust and alloy, a good profit. The quality of these coins (weighing about 81 grains troy) was low, and at last deteriorated so much that the Tibetans deserted the Nepal mints. The Gurkhas, after becoming masters of Nepal, were anxious to renew the profitable traffic in coin, and in this view sent a deputation to Lhasa with a quantity of coin to be put in circulation. But the Gurkhas were mistrusted and their coin refused. A coinage was then issued (it would appear once only) in Tibet for domestic use, modelled on an old Kathmandu pattern and struck by Nepalese artists. The Gurkhas, however, in 1788 and following years continued to strike coins of progressively debased quality, which were rude imitations of the old Nepalese mintage, and to endeavour to force this currency on the Tibetans, eventually making the departure of the latter from old usage a pretext for war and invasion. This brought the intervention of the Chinese, who drove the Gurkhas out of Tibet (1792), and then began to strike silver coins for Lhasa use, bearing Chinese and Tibetan characters. For practical use these Tibeto-Chinese coins (of which 212＝1 rupee, and which are known as naktang, i.e. nagskyang, “cash”) are cut into aliquot parts by the guidance of the figures on them. Large lumps of Chinese silver, stamped with the imperial seal, are also used. But of late years there has been an enormous influx of Anglo-Indian rupees, so that these have become practically the currency of the country, even to the frontier of China, and are now counted, instead of being valued as bullion. They are called Piling tanka, (foreign coins), from the Hindi tankā, a rupee.
Weights and measures.—The weights and measures in use are practically those of China; the dry measures, the most commonly employed, are the bre or bo of about four pints and the bchal of twenty bo; the capacity of the bo varies according to localities. The most commonly used measures of length are the span (mto), the cubit (kru), and the arm’s-length or fathom (dompa).
Exploration.—Tibet was long a terra incognita to Europeans. It is difficult of access on all sides, and everywhere difficult to traverse. Its great elevation causes the climate to be rather arctic than tropical, so that there is no gradual blending of the climates and physical conditions of India and Tibet, such as would tend to promote intercourse between the inhabitants of these neighbouring regions; on the contrary, there are sharp lines of demarcation, in a mountain barrier which is scalable at only a few points, and in the social aspects and conditions of life on either side. No great armies have ever crossed Tibet to invade India; even those of Jenghiz Khan took the circuitous route via Bokhara and Afghanistan, not the direct route from Mongolia across Tibet. Added to this was the religious exclusiveness of the Tibetans themselves. Thus it was no easy matter for the early European travellers to find their way into and explore Tibet. Friar Odoric of Pordenone is supposed to have reached Lhasa c. 1328, travelling from Cathay; but this visit is doubtful. On the strength of certain statements in the narrative of Fernão Mendes Pinto, some authorities hold that he may have visited Lhasa in the course of his journeys in the middle of the 16th century. The Jesuit Antonio Andrada, a native of Portugal (1580–1634), travelling from India, appears to have entered Tibet on the west, in the Manasarowar Lake region, and made his way across to Tangut and north-western China; in 1661 the Jesuit fathers Johann Grueber (an Austrian) and Albert D'Orville (a Belgian) travelled from Peking via Tangut to Lhasa, and thence through Nepal to India. The extracts from Grueber’s narrative, given by Athanasius Kircher in his China illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667), are accompanied by a good drawing of Potala. During the first half of the 18th century various Capuchin friars appear to have passed freely between Calcutta and Lhasa (1708) by way of Nepal. They even founded a mission in Lhasa, which, after failing at first, was more firmly established in 1715 and lasted till 1733.
In 1716 two Jesuits, P. Ipolito Desideri, of Pistoia, and P. Freyre, a Portuguese, reached Lhasa by way of Kashmir, Ladak, and the enormous journey from Ladak by the holy lakes and the valley of the Tsangpo. Desideri remained at Lhasa till April 1721, witnessing the capture of Lhasa successively by Dzungar and Chinese. Of the moderation of the latter, and their abstinence from all outrage or plunder, he speaks highly. His departure was due to controversies between the Jesuits and Capuchins at Rome, which caused an order to be issued for his retirement from Tibet. An interesting letter from him, dated the 10th of April, 1716, is printed in the Lettres édifiantes, rec. xv., and he left a large MS. volume of his observations. The next European visitor was Samuel Van de Putte, of Flushing, an LL.D. of Leiden, whose thirst for travel carried him through India to Lhasa (1730), where he is said to have resided a long time, to have acquired the language, and to have become intimate with some of the lamas. After travelling from Lhasa to Peking with a lama mission he returned, again by Lhasa, to India, and was an eyewitness of the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1737. Unhappily he ordered his papers to be burnt after his death, and the knowledge that such a traveller must have accumulated died with him. In 1745 the Capuchin mission finally collapsed after a revival had been attempted in 1741 by a party under Orazio della Penna, of which Cassiano Beligatti was chronicler. We possess some of the results collected by this mission in an excellent short treatise on Tibet by P. Orazio himself, as well as in the Alphabetum Tibetanum of the Augustine monk A. Georgi (Rome, 1762). Some fifty volumes, the relics of the mission library, were in 1847 recovered from Lhasa by Brian Hodgson, through the courtesy of the Dalai lama himself, and were transmitted as an offering to Pope Pius IX. The first Englishman to enter Tibet was George Bogle, a Writer of the East India Company, in 1774, on an embassy from Warren Hastings to the Tashi lama of Shigatse. In 1783 Lieut. Samuel Turner was dispatched on a mission similar to that of Bogle, and reached Shigatse. In 1811–1812 the first English visit to Lhasa occurred. The traveller was Thomas Manning, a Cambridge man of Caius College, who had been long devoted to Chinese studies, the “friend M.” of Charles Lamb, from whom “Elia” professes to have got that translation of a Chinese MS. which furnished the dissertation on roast pig. After residing some years at Canton, Manning went to Calcutta, bent on reaching the interior of China through Tibet, since from the seaboard it was sealed. He actually did reach Lhasa, stayed there about five months, and had several interviews with the Dalai lama, but was compelled to return to India. He never published anything regarding his journey, and its occurrence was known to few, when his narrative was printed, through the zeal of Mr (afterwards Sir) C. Markham, in 1876. The account, though containing some passages of great interest, is disappointing. Manning was the only Englishman known to have reached the sacred city without the aid of an army. But the Abbé Huc states that William Moorcroft, an Englishman who made a journey into Tibet in the neighbourhood of Lake Manasarowar in 1812, and another into Kashgar in 1824, lived in Lhasa for twelve years disguised as a Mussulman. He was supposed to have died on the Afghan frontier in 1825 on his second journey; but if Huc’s story is true he reached Lhasa in 1826, and did not leave it till 1838, being assassinated on his homeward journey, when maps and drawings were found on him, and his identity was for the first time suspected by the Tibetans. During the 19th century Europeans were systematically prevented from entering the country or speedily expelled if found in it. In 1844—1846 the French missionaries, Evariste Régis Huc and Joseph Gabet, made their way to Lhasa from China. They travelled from China the route followed by Grueber and by Van de Putte, via Siningfu, and reached Lhasa on the 29th of January 1846. On the 15th of March they were sent off under escort by the rugged road to Szechuen. Huc’s book, Souvenirs d’un voyage, &c., is one of the most delightful books of travel. Huc was, indeed, not only without science, perhaps without accurate knowledge of any kind, but also without that geographical sense which sometimes enables a traveller to bring back valuable contributions to geographical knowledge though unable to make instrumental observations. He was, however, amazingly clever as a narrator and sketcher of character. It was Ke-shen, a well-known Chinese statesman, who was disgraced for making peace with the English at Canton in 1841, and was then on a special deputation to Lhasa, who ostensibly expelled them. The Tibetan regent, with his enlightened and kindly spirit, is painted by Huc in most attractive colours, and Markham expressed the opinion that the native authorities were then willing to receive strangers, while the jealousy that excluded them was Chinese only. The brothers Henry and Richard Strachey visited Manasarowar Lake in 1846 and 1848 respectively. In 1866 the Abbé Desgodins travelled through portions of eastern Tibet and reached Chiamdo (in Khām), but was prevented from approaching any closer to Lhasa.
Beginning in 1863 a number of native Indian explorers were sent by the government of India into Tibet, for the purpose of surveying the country and collecting information about its inhabitants. These men were specially trained at Dehra Dun in the work of surveying, and entered Tibet with a strong wooden box with a specially concealedThe Secret-Service Pundits. secret drawer for holding observing instruments, a prayer wheel with rolls of blank paper instead of prayers in the barrel on which observations might be noted, and lamaic rosaries by the beads of which each hundred paces might be counted. As may be imagined, they carried their lives in their hands in case of discovery. The best known of these men were Pundit Nain Singh, Pundit Krishna, originally known as A.-K. (from the first and last letters of his name transposed) and Ugyen Gyatso, or U.-G. Nain Singh reached Lhasa in the course of two remarkable journeys. In the first, after an ineffectual attempt by Nepal, he travelled by the Manasarowar Lake, and the road thence eastward, parallel to the course of the Tsangpo, reaching Lhasa on the 10th of January 1866, and leaving it on the 21st of April 1867. On the second journey (1874) he started from Ladak, crossing the vast and elevated plateau by the Tengri Nor and other great lakes, and again reaching Lhasa on the 18th of November. Nain Singh gave an account of his journeys, and of his residence there, which, though brief, is full of intelligence and interest. This enterprising and deserving man, on the completion of his journey in 1875, was rewarded by the Indian government with a pension and grant of land, and afterwards received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and the Companionship of the Star of India. He died early in 1882.
In 1878 A.-K. also revisited Lhasa, stayed a year, and afterwards continued into Tsaidam, not returning to India till 1882. Lama Ugyen Gyatso, a semi-Tibetan, who was originally a teacher of Tibetan in a Darjeeling school, was trained by the Indian Survey Department as a surveyor, and being deputed to take tribute from his monastery to Tashilhunpo, he secured permission in 1879 from the Tashilhunpo authorities for Sarat Chandra Das, Bengali schoolmaster at Darjeeling, to visit that monastery, where his name was entered as a student. This was the opportunity for a series of valuable exploratory journeys through the Tibetan provinces adjoining the Indian and Nepalese frontiers, which added greatly to our stock of information about Lhasa and the districts surrounding that city. In their first journey the travellers set out from Jongri in Sikkim, and traversing the north-east corner of Nepal, crossed into Tibet by the Chatang la, and travelled northwards to Shigatse and Tashilhunpo. They returned by much the same way to near Khamba jong, and re-entered Sikkim by the Donkya pass. The journey was fruitful of information and valuable for mapping. Ugyen Gyatso undertook another journey in 1883 to complete and extend his former surveys. Travelling by way of Khamba jong directly to Gyantse and Shigatse, he turned eastwards at the latter town, finished the survey of the Yamdok t’so, and crossed the Himalaya into the valley of the Lobratsangpo or Upper Manas river. At Shakhang jong he was arrested, and his true character discovered. He managed, nevertheless, to extricate himself, and turning north-eastwards he passed through Chetang, and reached Lhasa by way of Samye monastery. From this city he started for Darjeeling, which he reached on December 15th, 1883. Chandra Das made a second journey in 1881, with the intention of reaching Lhasa. He travelled by way of Tashilhunpo, lay dangerously ill for some time at Samding monastery, duly reached Lhasa, where he visited the Dalai Lama, but owing to small-pox in the city could remain there only a fortnight, though he made full use of this time. During a journey home occupying nearly half a year he collected much further valuable information. Sarat Chandra Das’s reports of his two journeys were published by the Indian government, but for political reasons were until 1890 kept strictly confidential. In 1899 they were edited by the Royal Geographical Society and in 1902 published. They contain valuable information on the superstitions, ethnology and religion of Tibet. Chandra Das also brought back from his journeys a large number of interesting books in Tibetan and Sanskrit, the most valuable of which have been edited and published by him, some with the assistance of Ugyen Gyatso and other lamas.
The Russian explorer Prjevalsky, although he was not, strictly speaking, an explorer of Tibet, did much incidentally towards determining the conformation of its north-eastern and eastern mountain systems. His third journey into Central Asian wilds, which lasted from March 1879 to October 1880, included the sources of the Hwang Ho, orRussian Explorers. Yellow river, till then unmapped and unknown. His fourth journey, between November 1883 and October 1885, covered much of northern Tibet, and established the true character of Tsaidam. It was when setting out in 1888 to make an attempt to reach Lhasa that he died.
After Prjevalsky’s death, V. I. Roborovski, with several companions, explored the western ranges of the Kuen-lun, and crossed southwards into Tibet, tracing the course of the Kiria river to the north-western plains of the central plateau. The distinguishing feature of these explorations, led by Russian officers, is their high scientific value and the contributions they have offered to the botany, natural history, geology and meteorology of the regions under investigation in addition to the actual geographical data attained. The Kuen-lun is known in their writings as the Russian Range.
In 1888 Mr W. W. Rockhill, an American possessing the unique qualifications for Tibetan exploration of a profound knowledge of the language and history of the country, coupled with the instincts and training of a scientific explorer, left the lamasery of Kumbum in north-western Kansuh with three Chinese servants and a smallW. W. Rockhill,
1888–1889,
1891–1892. caravan, proceeded round the north shore of Koko Nor, crossed eastern Tsaidam, and explored some of the rivers and lakes directly south of that region. Leaving Barong Tsaidam, he travelled south by way of the sources of the Yellow river, till he reached the Dre chu (upper Yangtsze-kiang), which he crossed to the north of the important trading centre of Yekundo. From this point he followed the valley of the Dre chu till about lat. 30° 31′, when he passed into the basin of the Yalung river, traversed the Horba states and finally reached Tachienlu by the Gi la and the valley of the Darchu.
In 1891 Mr Rockhill, starting again from Kumbum with three Chinese, passed south of Koko Nor through the country of the pastoral Panaka Tibetans, and by a very difficult pass (Vahon jamkar la) entered again the basin of the Tsaidam. He then turned west, followed the base of the south Tsaidam range as far as the Naichi Gol, where he entered the southern mountainous region forming the northern borderland of Tibet. From this point the traveller followed a general south-westerly direction around the heads of all the feeders of the upper Dre chu, and thence into the lake region of northern central Tibet, crossing Bonvalot’s route south of the Chi-Chang t’so and that of Bower a few days farther south. Near the Namru t’so his farther progress south was arrested and he was compelled to take an easterly course. After making a long détour north, often crossing the roads previously travelled by Bonvalot and Bower, and passing by Riwoche, he came to Chiamdo and Tachienlu. The results of Mr Rockhill’s two journeys were important and valuable.
Messrs A. D. Carey and A. Dalgleish in 1885–1887 made a protracted journey from Ladak, in the course of which they crossed the Aksai Chin, reached Khotan, entered the Tarim basin, and subsequently made their way eastward and then southward across the Altyn Tagh and other ranges to the Tsaidam region. FinallyA. D. Carey and
A. Dalgleish,
1885–1887. a great circuit was made to the north and west, across the Humboldt range, and by Hami, Urumchi, and Yarkand to Ladak again.
Bonvalot, accompanied by Father Dedeken of the Belgian Catholic Mission and Prince Henri d’Orléans, left Charkhlik, south-west of the Lob Nor, in November 1889, and taking a very nearly due southerly course, reached on the 13th of February 1890 the eastern end of the Tengri Nor. Then pushing on southwards, he crossedGabriel Bonvalot, 1889–1890. the Nienchen-tang-la and entered the Dam district near the Lhasa-Sining high road. Here the party was stopped by Tibetan authorities and forced to take the tea route through Chinese Tibet (Gyade) by way of Batasumdo, Chebotenchin, Riwoche, Chiamdo to Chiangka, near the upper Yangtse-kiang, whence they proceeded to Tachienlu by Batang and Litang. Bonvalot noted some extinct volcanoes in the northern Tibet desert.
Accompanied by Dr W. G. Thorold, of the India Medical Service, and a native sub-surveyor, Captain Hamilton Bower, I.S.C., set out from Leh on the 1st of June 1891, and crossed the Lanak la and the Ladak frontier on the 3rd of July. From this point the party took a general easterly direction past the Mangtza t’so, Captain H. Bower, 1891–1892.Horpa t’so, Charol t’so, and around the northern end of the Aru t’so, all important lakes, at an average altitude of about 16,500 ft. From the Aru t’so the travellers took a south-easterly direction across the great northern plateau or Changtang till they reached the south-east side of the Garing t'so, in about 31° 30′ N. and 89° 10′ E. At this point Bower was stopped by some of the headmen of the Tibetan pastoral tribes (here under the rule of Lhasa), and obliged to make a long circuit to the north well out of Lhasa territory, and then eastward—till he struck the road to Chiamdo through Gyade or Chinese Tibet. Crossing the Sining-Lhasa road a little south of the Dang la range, and about two days' journey north of Nagchuka, Captain Bower crossed the Su chu, and following a course parallel to the Giarna-nu chu, he made his way to Riwoche and thence to Chiamdo, from which town he followed the Lhasa-Tachienlu high road to the latter town, which he reached on the 10th of February 1892. The results of Captain Bower's journey were all of first-class importance.
Miss Annie R. Taylor, an Englishwoman of the China Inland Mission, started from Tao-chow (Kansuh) in September 1892, Miss A. R. Taylor, 1892. accompanied only by five Asiatics. Passing by the famous lamasery of Labrang, south of the Yellow river, she crossed that river and traversed the southern part of the country inhabited by the predatory Tibetan tribes called Golok. Thence, after crossing the upper Yalung, which flows by the town of Kanze, she pursued her journey to the upper course of the Yangtse-kiang (Dre chu), crossing that river somewhere near where A.-K. had crossed it in 1881 and Rockhill in 1889, and then came to the town of Gye-Yekundo. From this point she seems to have followed the Chiamdo road to near that town, when she turned westwards and continued in that direction till she came on the high road from Lhasa to Sining Fu somewhere north of Nagchuka. Here, like all other European travellers who have tried to reach Lhasa from the north, she was stopped by the Lhasan authorities. She appears to have followed about the same route on her way back to China, for she again went to Yekundo and thence by the high road, followed previously by A.-K. and Rockhill, to Tachienlu in Sze-ch'uen, where she arrived on the 12th of April 1893.
In 1893 MM J. L. Dutreuil de Rhins and Fernand Grenard, both Frenchmen, left Cherchen, with Lhasa as their objective. After Dutreuil de Rhins and F. Grenard, 1893-1894. crossing the Kara muren davan in the Arka Tagh, they entered the lake region of north Tibet and followed a general southerly direction across low ranges of hills and by numerous small lakes till they arrived in 32° 30′ N., where they changed direction to east-south-east, passing to the north of the Chargut and Zilling lakes. The travellers were able to push on as far as the north-eastern bank of the great Tengri Nor, which they reached on the 30th of November 1893. Here they were finally stopped by the Tibetans, and after a delay of six weeks passed in vain attempts to obtain permission to go to Lhasa, they were only allowed to proceed to Nagchuka on the Sining-Lhasa road, and to continue by the Gyade route to Yekundo, near the upper Dre chu, and thence to Sining in Kansuh. From Nagchuka the travellers followed a heretofore unexplored road through the Gyade country, crossing Rockhill's route in the Pere-Sangyi districts near Tashiling (their Tachi gomba). The road followed by them to Yekundo is called by Tibetans the upper road (gong lam), and had apparently been followed previously by Miss Taylor. Reaching Yekundo (or Giergundo) on the 21st of May 1894, the travellers started for the Koko Nor and Sining on the 1st of June; but the party was attacked near Tungbumdo (Tumbumdo of previous travellers), and Dutreuil de Rhins was killed on the 5th of June. M Grenard after a few days resumed his march, passed east of the Noring t'so, the eastern extremity of Tosu Nor, and thence by the south-east corner of Koko Nor to the town of Sining Fu in Kansuh. The results of this exploration were a large number of maps and a report of great scientific importance.
Mr Littledale, an Englishman, accompanied by his wife, left Khotan in the early part of 1895, and travelling thence to St George R. Littledale, 1895. Cherchen, he turned southwards, and following up the course of the Cherchen darya to a point near its source, he continued in that direction between 87° and 89° E. across the northern plateau of Tibet till he reached the Zilling (or Garing) t'so. Pursuing, amid great difficulties, his southerly course, he finally reached the western bank of Tengri Nor. Pushing rapidly on in the direction of Lhasa, when not over 50 m. away from the city (camp, 30° 12′ 12″ N.) he was finally stopped by the Lhasan authorities and obliged, in great part on account of the severe illness of Mrs Littledale, to give up the attempt to reach Sikkim, and to take a direct trail to Ladak. In the latter part of this remarkable journey Littledale's route lay parallel but to the south of the routes followed previously by Nain Sing, and more recently by Bower. Passing by Rudok, the party re-entered Ladak at the village of Shushal on the 27th of October 1895, and Leh on the 2nd of November. Mr Littledale surveyed about 1700 m. of country between Cherchen and Shushal, and brought back a valuable collection of plants, which, added to those collected by other travellers in this part of Tibet, enabled botanists considerably to extend their scanty knowledge of this region.
Accompanied by Lieut. N. Malcolm of the 93rd Highlanders, Captain Wellby, of the British army, left Leh on the Captain M. S. Wellby, 1896. 4th of May 1896. The travellers were compelled to enter Tibet by way of the Lighten t'so in 35° N. From this point they turned due east and continued, with the usual incidents experienced by all travellers in those regions—cold, storms, lack of food and of grass, loss of ponies and pack animals, &c.—until they reached the northern branch of the Dre chu, the Chumar. Passing into the valley of the Nomoron Gol, south of the Tsaidam, they made their way by Barong Tsaidam to Donkyr and Sining Fu by the high road along the northern shore of the Koko Nor.
Captain Deasy, of the British army, left Leh on the 27th of May 1896, and crossing the Lanak la, passed by the Mangtza t'so, Captain H. H. P. Deasy, 1896. north of the Horpa t'so, to Yeshil kul. Thence he, endeavoured to proceed due east, but was obliged by the nature of the country to turn south, crossing Bower's route on the west side of the Aru t'so. He finally completed a valuable survey of an important part of Western Tibet.
In 1898 a Dutch missionary in China named Rijnhart started with his wife from the vicinity of Koko Nor, with the intention of Rijnhart, 1898. reaching Lhasa, but at the upper Mekong, to the east-north-east of the city, he was murdered, and his wife reached the Chinese province of Sze-ch'uen with great difficulty alone.
In 1896 Sven Hedin, a Swede (1865-), left Kopa, a point about 100 m. south of Cherchen, and after crossing the Arka Tagh Sven Hedin, 1896-1908. took an easterly course between that range and the western continuation of the Kokoshili range till he entered the valley of the most northerly feeders of the Dre chu, when he passed into the valley of the Naichi Gol and entered the Tsaidam. His careful observations concerning the meteorology of this region are of great value, and his surveys between Kopa and the Naichi Gol were in a country not previously explored. During his second and more important journey in Central Asia (1899-1902), Sven Hedin left Charkhlik, on the edge of the Taklamakan desert, in May 1901, intending to cross Tibet in a diagonal direction to the sources of the Indus. He made crossings of the lofty Arka Tagh and other parallel ranges to the south (running east and west). On his final penetration southward, arriving within fourteen days of Lhasa, he left the bulk of his caravan and pushed rapidly on towards that city, but was stopped when about five days from it (Aug. 5, 1901). Rejoining his caravan he turned westward, and passing through the country previously traversed by Bower and Littledale he reached Leh on the 20th of December 1901. His careful and detailed maps, lake soundings, hydrographic, geological, meteorological and other investigations gave him the highest rank among modern explorers.
On a third journey (1906-1908) he travelled by way of Turkish Armenia, Persia, Baluchistan and India, and entered Tibet by way of the Aksai Chin. Proceeding south-east, or diagonally across the country, he traversed 840 m. of unknown country, investigating the lake Ngangon t'so or Ngantse t'so, which had hitherto been only hypothetically mapped, and marched thence over the watershed between this and the Tsangpo. This watershed was found to lie much farther north than had been supposed, and to consist of very lofty mountains, in complicated ranges, from which large tributaries descend to the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra). After a journey of half a year Hedin reached Shigatse; on leaving it he turned north again, intending to explore the large sacred lake Dangra-yumso, west of Ngantse t'so, but when within sight of it he was prevented by Tibetans from approaching it. He now followed a devious route to Lake Manasarowar, entering Nepal for a short distance from Tradum, discovering the main source of the Brahmaputra in a great mass of glaciers called Kubigangri, in the northernmost chain of the Himalaya. He next investigated the sources of the Sutlej, made hydrographic investigations of the Manasarowar lakes, with the neighbouring underground waterways, and proceeded thence to Gartok. He confirmed the existence, long suspected, of a lofty mountain chain extending right across the country from the lake Tengri Nor (i.e. about 90° E.) to the district north of Gartok (about 81° E.). He returned to Ladak in 1908. He was created a K.C.I.E. in 1910.
In May 1900 Kozlov, in command of the Russian Geographical Society's expedition to Central Asia and Tibet, left Barong Tsaidam, and travelling southwards, came to the Dre Captain P. K. Kozlov, 1900-1901. chu (his Ndu chu, or Blue river), at about the same point as Rockhill in 1889. Assisted by the old chief of Nyamtso, he crossed the river and reached Yekundo (his Iarku Lomba). One stage beyond this place he left the route followed by former travellers and pushed northwards to near the town of Chiamdo, where after a sharp fight with the natives he turned eastwards. The winter was passed in the valley of the Ra chu, a tributary of the Chiamdo chu (his Dza chu), and excursions were made as far as Derge droncher. In the spring of 1901 the expedition resumed its march eastwards around the Dre chu and the Ja chu (Yalung river), followed up the left bank of the latter and got back to Russian Lelu (Oring t'so) on the 30th of May 1901.
In 1903 Captain C. G. Rawling and Lieut. A. J. G. Hargreaves of the Somerset Light Infantry, starting from Leh as Captain C. G. Rawling, 1903. a base, carried out careful survey work (their chief object being to extend that of Captain Deasy) in the territory lying east of the British frontier, i. e. about 80° to 83° E., and 34° N.
The British armed mission of 1904 performed a brilliant feat of marching and reached Lhasa, whose mysteries were thus unveiled, but this exploit belongs to the section dealing with history, below.
- (T. H. H.*; L. A. W.; O. J. R. H.)
History.—Previous to the 7th century A.D. there was no indigenous recorded history of the country, the people being steeped in barbarism and devoid of any written language. The little that is known of this prehistoric period is gathered from the legends and the more trustworthy sidelights of contemporary Chinese records.
From the 11th century B.C. the Chinese used to call by the name of Kiang (or Shepherds) the tribes (about 150 in number) of nomads and shepherds in Koko Nor and the north-east of present Tibet; but their knowledge continued to be confined to the border tribes until the sixth century of our era. In the annals of the T'ang dynasty it is said that the population of the country originated from the Bat-Kian or Fah Kiang; and, as the information collected in the first part of the notice concerning Tu-bat, afterwards Tu-ban, the modern Tu-fan, dates partly (as is proved by internal evidence) from a time anterior to the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618), some degree of reliance may be placed on it. There we are told that Fanni, a scion of the southern Liang dynasty of the Tu-bat family (which flourished from 397 to 415 at Lian-chow in Kansuh), who had submitted to the northern Liang dynasty, fled in 433 with all his people from his governorship of Lin-sung (in Kan-chow) westwards across the Yellow river, and founded beyond Tsih-shih (“heapy stones”) a state amidst the Kiang tribes, with a territory extending over a thousand li. By his mild and just rule he was soon enabled to establish his sway over an immense territory. His original state was apparently situated along the upper course of the Yalung river, an affluent of the Kin-sha-kiang.
Through the exertions of Prinsep, Csoma de Koros, Emil Schlagintweit, Chandra Das, Rockhill, Huth, Waddell and others, we possess many copies of lists of kings, forming the dynasties of Tibet from the legendary beginnings between the 5th and 2nd century B.C. down to the end of the monarchy in 914. But the serious divergences which they show (except as to later times and in general outlines) make their unauthentic character plain. As one of the lists is accompanied by a commentary, it is the easiest to follow, and requires only to be supplemented here and there from the other lists and from the Chinese sources, translated by Bushell and Rockhill. The first king, Gnya-khri btsan-po, is said to have been the fifth son of King Prasenajit of Kosala, and was born with obliquely drawn eyes. He fled north of the Himalayas into the Bod country, where he was elected king by the twelve chiefs of the tribes of southern and central Tibet. He took up his residence in the Yarlung country south of Lhasa. This Yarlung, which borrowed its name from the Yalung of the state of Fanni Tu-bat, is a river which flows into the Yaro-tsangpo (Brahmaputra). The first king and his six successors are known as the seven celestial khri; the next series consists of six kings known as the earthly legs; and they were followed by eight terrestrial ldé. This threefold succession is apparently an imitation or a debased form of the ancient legend of heavenly, earthly and human rulers, which was carried into Persia and China, and from the latter country into Japan and Tibet—the relative number of kings being altered in the last-named countries to suit local convenience and the small amount of truth which they contain. Whilst giving an Aryan descent to their first kings, the ancient Tibetans assigned to their princesses a divine origin, and called them lhamo, “goddess”. The gynaecratic habits of the race are manifested in the names of all these kings, which were formed by a combination of those of their parents, the mother's generally preceding that of the father. The ldé kings were followed by four rulers simply called btsan ("migty”).
Then occurs a break in the lineal descent, and the king next in order (c. 461) may be the Tatar Fanni Tu-bat, but most probably his son and successor. His name was Lha-tho thori gnyan-tsan, otherwise Gnyan-tsan of Lha-tho thori, according to the custom usual in Tibet of calling great personages after the name of their birthplace. Lha-tho means “heaps of stones,” and therefore appears to be a translation of Tsih-shih, “heapy stones,” the country mentioned in connexion with the foundation of a state by Fanni Tu-bat. It was during his reign that the first Buddhist objects are reputed to have reached Tibet, probably from Nepal. Little is said of his three immediate successors. The fourth was gNam-ri srong btsan, who died in 630. During his reign the Tibetans obtained their first knowledge o arithmetic and medicine from China; the prosperity and pastoral wealth of the country were so great that “the king built his palace with cement moistened with the milk of the cow and the yak.” To the same king is attributed the discovery of the inexhaustible salt mine called Chang-gi tsa'wa (Byang-gi-tsa'wa = “northern salt”), which still supplies the greater portion of Tibet. The reign of his illustrious son, Srong tsan gam-po, opened up a new era; he introduced Buddhism and the art of writing from India, and was the founder (in 639) of Lha-ldan, afterwards Lha-sa. He was greatly helped in his proselytism by his two wives, one a Nepal princess, daughter of King Jyoti varma, the other an imperial daughter of China; afterwards, they being childless, he took two more princesses from the Ru-yong (= “left corner” ō) and Mon (general appellative for the nations between Tibet and the Indian plains) countries. As a conqueror he extended his sway from the still unsubdued Kiang tribes of the north to Ladak in the west, and in the south he carried his power through Nepal to the Indian side of the Himalayas. How far southward this dominion at first extended is not known; but in 703 Nepal and the country of the Brahmans rebelled, and the Tibetan king, the third successor of Srong tsan gam-po, was killed while attempting to restore his power. It is rather curious that nothing is said of this Tibetan rule in India, except in the Chinese annals, where it is mentioned until the end of the monarchy in the 10th century, as extending over Bengal to the sea—the Bay of Bengal being called the Tibetan Sea. J. R. Logan has found ethnological and linguistic evidence of this domination, which was left unnoticed in the Indian histories. Mang-srong mang tsan, the second son and successor of Srong tsan gam-po, continuing the conquests of his father, subdued the Tukuhun Tatars around the Koko-Nor in 663, and attacked the Chinese; after some adverse fortune the latter took their revenge and penetrated as far as Lhasa, where they burnt the royal palace (Yumbu-lagang). Khri lde gtsug-brtan-mesag-ts'oms, the grandson of Mang-srong and second in succession from him, promoted the spread of Buddhism and obtained for his son, Jangts'a Lhapon, who was famous for the beauty of his person, the hand of the accomplished princess Kyimshang, daughter, otherwise kung-chu, of the Chinese emperor Juy (? Tai) tsung. But the lady arrived after the death of her betrothed, and after long hesitation became the bride of the father. She gave birth in 730 to Khri srong lde tsan, in the Buddhist annals the most illustrious monarch of his country, because of the strenuous efforts he made in favour of that religion during his reign of forty-six years (743-789). His son and successor Muni tsan-po, being determined to raise all his subjects to the same level, enacted that there should be no distinction between poor and rich, humble and great. He compelled the wealthy to share their riches with the indigent and helpless and to make them their equals in respect of all the comforts and conditions of life. He repeated this experiment three times; but each time he found that they all returned to their former condition, the rich becoming still richer and the poor still poorer. The sages attributed this curious phenomenon to the good and evil acts of their former lives. Nothing of importance occurred during the following reigns, until that of Ralpachen, who won glory by his care for the translations of the Buddhist scriptures which he caused to be completed, or rewritten more accurately when required. In this reign a severe struggle took place with China, peace being concluded in 821 at Ch'ang-ngan and ratified at Lhasa the following year by the erection of bilingual tablets, which still exist. Ralpachen was assassinated by the artisans of Lang-dharma and the country fell into disorder. Lang-dharma instituted a violent persecution of Buddhism; but he was soon assassinated in his turn and the kingdom divided into a western and an eastern part by his two sons. The partition did not, however, prevent internecine wars. The history for some time now becomes rather intricate and requires some attention. Pal K'or tsan, the second western king, after a reign of thirteen years, died leaving two sons, Thi Tashi Tsegpa-pal and Thi Kyida Nyimagon. The latter went to Nari (Mngari) and founded the capital Purang; he left three sons, of whom the eldest declared himself king of Mang-yul, the second seized Purang, and the youngest, Detsud-gan, became king of the province of Shang-shung (the modern Gughè). The revival of Buddhism began with the two sons of the last-named, the elder of whom became a monk. The younger, Khorré, inherited his father's throne, and was followed in his authority by twenty successors. Tashi Tsegpa also had three sons—Palde, Hodde and Kyide. The descendants of the first made themselves masters of Gung-t'ang, Lugyalwa, Chyipa, Lhatse, Langlung and Tsakor, where they severally ruled as petty chiefs. The descendants of Kyide spread themselves over the Mu, Jang, Tanag, Yarulag and Gyaltse districts, where they also ruled as petty princes. Hodde left four sons—Phabdese, Thide, Thichung and Gnagpa. The first and fourth became masters of Tsangrong, the second took possession of Amdo and Tsongkha, the third became king of Ü (or the central Lhassan province), and removed the capital to Yarlung, south of Lhasa. He was followed on his throne from son to son by eleven successors. History is silent as to the fate of the eastern king, the other son of Lang-dharma, and his successors, but the geographical names of the chieftainships enumerated above make it clear that the western kingdom had extended its power to the east. Chronology is deficient for all that period. While the dynasty of Khorré in Shang-shung and that of Thich'ung in Ü were running, another authority, destined to become the superior of both, had arisen in Tibet. Khorré left his throne to his son Lhade, who was himself succeeded by his three sons, the youngest of whom invited the celebrated Indian Buddhist, Atisha, to leave his monastery Vikramashila for Tibet. where he settled in the great lamaserai of Thoding in Nari. Besides religious books and teachings, he introduced in 1026 the method of computing time by cycles of sixty years, “obtained from the Indian province of Shambala.” He was the first of the several chief priests whose authority became paramount in the country. The kings of Ü greatly patronized them, as for instance in the case of the celebrated Sakya Pandita by the seventh of these kings. Pandita, at the special request of Kuyuk, the successor of Ogdai, paid a visit to his court in 1246-1248. Five years afterwards Kublai Khan conquered all the east of Tibet; and, after he had ascended the throne of China, the Mongol emperor invited to his court Phagspa Lodoi Gyaltshan, the nephew of the same Pandita. He remained twelve years with the emperor, and at his request framed for the Mongol language an alphabet imitated from the Tibetan, which, however, did not prove satisfactory, and disappeared after eighty-five years without having been very largely used. In return for his services, Kublai invested Phagspa with sovereign power over (1) Tibet proper, comprising the thirteen districts of Ü and Tsang, (2) Khám and (3) Amdo. From this time the Sakya-pa lamas became the universal rulers of Tibet, and remained so, at least nominally, under twenty-one successive lamas during seventy years (1270-1340). Their name was derived from the Sakya monastery, which was their cradle and abode, and their authority for temporal matters was exercised by specially appointed regents. When the power of the Sakya began to wane, that of the rival monasteries of Digung, Phagdub and Tshal increased largely, and their respective influence and authority overbalanced that of the successors of Phagspa. It was at this troubled epoch that Chyang Chub Gyaltshan, better known as Phagmodu from the name of his native town, appeared on the scene. He subdued Tibet proper and Khám, for the continued possession of which he was, however, compelled to fight for several years; but he succeeded in the long run, and with the approval of the court of Peking established a dynasty which furnished twelve rulers in succession. When the Mongol dynasty of China passed away, the Mings confirmed and enlarged the dominion of the Tibetan rulers, recognizing at the same time the chief lamas of the eight principal monasteries of the country. Peace and prosperity gradually weakened the benign rule of the kings of this dynasty, and during the reign of the last but one internecine war was rife between the chiefs and nobles of Ü and Tsang. This state of things, occurring just as the last rulers of the Ming dynasty of China were struggling against the encroachments of the Manchus, their future successors, favoured the interference of a Khoshot Mongol prince, Tengir To, called in the Tibetan sources king of Koko Nor. The Mongols were interested in the religion of the lamas, especially since 1576, when Altan, khakan of the Tumeds, and his cousin summoned the chief lama of the most important monastery to visit him. This lama was Sodnam rGyamtso, the third successor of Gedundub, the founder of the Tashilhunpo monastery in 1447, who had been elected to the more important abbotship of Galdan near Lhasa, and was thus the first of the great, afterwards Dalai, lamas. The immediate successor of Gedundub, who ruled from 1475 to 1541, had appointed a special officer styled depa to control the civil administration of the country. To Sodnȧm rGyamtso the Mongol khans gave the title of Vajra Dalai Lama in 1576, and this is the first use of the widely known title of Dalai Lama. During the minority of the fifth (really the third) Dalai Lama, when the Mongol king Tengir To, under the pretext of supporting the religion, intervened in the affairs of the country, the Pan-ch'en Lo-sang Ch'o-kyi Gyal-ts'ang lama obtained the withdrawal of the invaders by the payment of a heavy war indemnity, and then applied for help to the first Manchu emperor of China, who had just ascended the throne. This step enraged the Mongols, and caused the advance of Gushri Khan, son and successor of Tengir To, who invaded Tibet, dethroned all the petty princes, including the king of Tsang, and, after having subjugated the whole of the country, made the fifth Dalai lama supreme monarch of all Tibet, in 1645. The Chinese government in 1653 confirmed the Dalai Lama in his authority, and he paid a visit to the emperor at Peking. The Mongol Khoshotes in 1706 and the Sungars in 1717 interfered again in the succession of the Dalai lama, but the Chinese army finally conquered the country in 1720, and the present system of government was established. It is probable that the isolation of Tibet was inspired originally by the Chinese, with the idea of creating a buffer state against European aggression from this direction.
In 1872-1873 some attempt was made by Indian officials to open up trade with Tibet; further attempts followed in 1884, and in 1886 a mission was organized to proceed to Lhasa. Modern British and Russian Relations. The Chinese, however, although they had at first granted a passport to this mission, later objected to its advance, and it was abandoned. The Tibetans assumed this to show England's weakness; they invaded Sikkim, and in 1888 it was necessary to send a force under General Graham to expel them. In 1890 a treaty was concluded, and trade regulations under this treaty in 1893; but the negotiations were carried on with the Chinese authorities, and the lamas, considering themselves to have received insufficient recognition, repudiated them and offered further insults. A new development presently appeared in the situation. A lama, a Mongolian Buriat by birth and a Russian subject, whose Russianized name was Dorjiev, had come to Lhasa about 1880. When subsequently visiting Russia, he appears to have drawn the attention of the authorities towards Tibet as a field for their statecraft, and he established himself as the unofficial representative of Russia in Lhasa. He obtained a commanding influence over the Dalai Lama, impressed upon him the dangers which threatened Tibet from England, and suggested the desirability of securing Russian protection and even the possibility of converting the tsar and his empire to Buddhism. The Dalai Lama assented, and was even prepared to visit St Petersburg, but was checked by the Tsong-du (assembly). He therefore sent a representative of high rank, who had audience of the tsar, and returned with proposals for a treaty and for the residence of a Russian royal prince in Lhasa in order to promote friendly relations. But both the Chinese authorities in Lhasa and the Tsong-du were averse from any such proceedings. The Dalai Lama, inspired by Dorjiev, now took steps to bring on a crisis by provoking England. He felt sure of Russian support. Russian arms had been imported into Lhasa. It was suspected, although denied, that a treaty was in draft under which Russia should assume the suzerainty of Tibet. A further encroachment on British territory in Sikkim was made by Tibetans, and various other slights were offered.
The Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, now decided that strong action was necessary; but the home government at first assented only to the despatch of Colonel (afterwards Sir) F. E. Younghusband with a small escort to negotiate at Khambajong, to the north of the Sikkim frontier. The mission arrived at this point on the 7th of July 1903, and here it remained till the 11th of December. No responsible Tibetan representatives appeared, and such negotiations as were carried on were abortive. On the 3rd of October, therefore, the British government authorized the occupation of the Chumbi valley, and an advance to Gyantse in Tibet and military preparations, with the difficult attendant problem of transport, were undertaken. Colonel Younghusband again accompanied the mission, and the troops were commanded by General Ronald Macdonald. The Jelep pass was crossed and British Armed Mission, 1904. the entry into Tibet effected on the 12th of December. An advance was made to Tuna, where part of the expedition wintered. A further advance being made on the 31st of March 1904, the first hostile encounter took place at Guru, when the Tibetans (the aggressors) were defeated. With some further fighting en route the expedition reached and occupied Gyantse on the 12th of April; here some of the British forces were subsequently beleaguered, and the most serious fighting took place. In fact the advance to Lhasa, resumed after the storming of the Gyantse jong (fort) on the 6th of July, met with comparatively little opposition, and the capital was reached on the 3rd of August. The Dalai Lama had fled with Dorjiev. Partly on this account, and in spite of the attempts of the Chinese authorities to bring about a settlement, there was some delay owing to the attitude of the lamas, but finally a treaty of peace was concluded on the 7th of September. The principal provisions were—the Sikkim frontier violated by the Tibetans was to be respected; marts were to be established for British trade at Gyantse, Gartok and Yatung; Tibet was to pay an indemnity of £500,000 (subsequently reduced to one-third of this sum); and no foreign power was to receive any concession in Tibet, territorial or mercantile, or to concern itself with the government of the country. The expedition left Lhasa on the 23rd of September and reached India again at the close of the following month. The treaty was slightly modified later in matters of detail, while the adhesion of China to the treaty was secured by an agreement of the 27th of April 1906.
The Anglo-Russian convention of 1907 determined the following conditions with respect to Tibet—the recognition of the suzerain rights of China and the territorial and administrative integrity of the country; that no official representative at Lhasa should be appointed either by England or by Russia, and that no concessions for railways, mines, &c., should be sought by either power. An annex to the convention provided that, except by arrangement between England and Russia, no scientific expedition should be allowed to enter the country for three years.
In January 1908 the final instalment of the Tibetan indemnity was paid to Great Britain, and the Chumbi valley was evacuated. The Dalai Lama was now summoned to Peking, where he obtained the imperial authority to resume his administration in place of the provisional governors appointed as a result of the British mission. He retained in office the high officials then appointed, and pardoned all Tibetans who had assisted the mission. But in 1909 Chinese troops were sent to operate on the Sze-ch‛uen frontier against certain insurgent lamas, whom they handled severely. When the Dalai Lama attempted to give orders that they should cease, the Chinese amban in Lhasa disputed his authority, and summoned the Chinese troops to enter the city. They did so, and the Dalai Lama fled to India in February 1910, staying at Darjeeling. Chinese troops followed him to the frontier, and he was deposed by imperial decree. The British government, in view of the apparent intention of China to establish effective suzerainty in Tibet, drew the attention of the government at Peking to the necessity of strictly observing its treaty obligations, and especially pointing out that the integrity of the frontier states of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim must be respected. To the Dalai Lama, who had attempted to obtain British intervention at Peking, it was made clear that he personally had no claim to this, as the British government could only recognize the de facto government in Tibet.
Authorities.—Besides the records of the earlier explorers, the following works may be consulted: Clements Markham, Tibet (Bogle and Manning, London, 1879); W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas (London, 1891); Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet (Washington 1895); Geographical Journal, vol. iii.; “Tibet from Chinese Sources,” Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc. (1891); Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet (Washington, 1895); Chandra Das, Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet (London, 1899); G. Bonvalot, De Paris au Tonkin à travers le Tibet inconnu (Paris, 1892); H. Bower, Geog. Journal, vol. i.; Diary of a Journey across Tibet (Calcutta, 1893); Miss A. R. Taylor, National Review (September 1893); Geog. Journal, vol. iii.; Dutrueil de Rhins and F. Grenard, Mission scientifique dans la haute Asie (Paris, 1897); St G. Littledale, Roy. Geog. Journal, vol. vii.; M. S. Wellby, Geog. Journal, vol. xii.; Through Unknown Tibet (London, 1898); H. H. P. Deasy, Geog. Journal (August 1900); Sven Hedin, Through Asia (London, 1898); Geog. Journal (April 1902 and April 1909); Central Asia and Tibet (London, 1903); Adventures in Tibet (London, 1904); Trans-Himalaya (London, 1909); S. C. Rijnhart, With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple (London, 1901); Delmar Morgan, Geog. Journal, vol. ii.: L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism (London, 1895); “The Falls of the Tsangpo,” Geog. Journal (1894); Lhasa and its Mysteries (London, 1905); Sir R. Strachey, Geog. Journ. (Feb., March and April 1900); N. M. Prjevalsky, “Notes on Gold-washing," Proceedings of Roy. Geog. Soc., vol. vii.; “Journeys and Discoveries," ibid., vols. x., xi., xii., &c.; Roborovski, “Journeys and Discoveries,” Proceedings of Roy. Geog. Soc., vols. xii. and xiii.; A. von Rosthorn, “Notes on Tea Trade between China and Tibet,” Geog. Journ., vol. vi.; General Walker, “Four Years' Journeys by A. K.,” Proceedings of Roy. Geog. Soc. (Feb. 1885); P. K. Kozlov, “The Russian Tibet Expedition, 1899–1901,” Geog. Journ. (May 1902); “Through Eastern Tibet and Kam,” ibid. vol. xxxi. (1908); W. B. Hemsley, “The Flora of Tibet or High Asia,” Linnean Soc. Journ. (1902), vol. xxxv.; Graham Sandberg, Exploration of Tibet (Calcutta, 1904); Tibet and the Tibetans (London, 1906); F. Grenard, Tibet: the Country and its Inhabitants (London, 1904); C. G. Rawling, The Great Plateau (London, 1905); E. Candler, The Unveiling of Lhasa (London, 1905); P. Landon, Lhasa (London, 1905); W. Filchner, Das Kloster Kumbun in Tibet (Berlin, 1906); Official Reports, &c., of the British Mission; Blue-Book (ed. 5240) on Anglo-Tibetan relations (September 1904–May 1910) (London, 1910). (T. de L.; L. A. W.; O. J. R. H.)
- ↑ The Capuchin friars who were settled in Lhasa for a quarter of a century from 1719 studied the language; two of them, Francisco Orazio della Penna, well known from his accurate description of Tibet, and Cassian di Macerata sent home materials which were utilized by the Augustine friar Aug. Ant. Georgi of Rimini (1711–1797) in his Alphabetum tibetanum (Rome, 1762, 4to), a ponderous and confused compilation, which may be still referred to, but with great caution. The Tibetan characters were drawn by Della Penna and engraved by Ant. Fontarita in 1738. In 1820 Abel Rémusat published his Recherches sur les langues tartares, a chapter of which was devoted to Tibetan.
- ↑ The first Tibetan dictionary for Europeans was a Dictionary of the Bhotanta or Bhutan Language, published at Serampur near Calcutta in 1828. It was, however, crude and unedited and contained many serious mistakes, having been taken from the MS. notes of an unknown Italian priest (now believed to be Father Juvenal of Agra, who had been stationed near the frontier of Bhutan), whose MS. was translated into English by Fr. Chr. G. Schroeter and published without supervision by any Tibetan scholar; and Csoma was unaware of its existence when compiling his dictionary. At St Petersburg J. J. Schmidt published his Grammatik der tibetischen Sprache in 1839 and his Tibetisch-deutsches Wörterbuch in 1841, but neither of these works justified the great pretensions of the author, whose access to Mongolian sources had enabled him to enrich the results of his labours with a certain amount of information unknown to his predecessors. In France, P. E. Foucaux published in 1847 a translation from the Rgya tcher rol-pa, the Tibetan version of the Lalita Vistara, and in 1858 a Grammaire thibétaine; while Ant. Schiefner had begun at St Petersburg in 1849 his series of translations and researches. His Tibetische Studien (1851–1868) is a valuable collection of documents and observations. In 1861 Lepsius published his paper Ueber chinesische und tibetische Lautverhältnisse; and after 1864 Léon Feer brought out in Paris many translations of texts from Tibetan Buddhist literature. In 1828–1849 the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal published comparative vocabularies of spoken and written Tibetan by Brian H. Hodgson, and grammatical notices of Tibetan (according to Csoma's grammar).
- ↑ Jaeschke from 1860 to 1867 made several important communications, chiefly with reference to the phonetics and the dialectical pronunciation, to the academies of Berlin and St Petersburg, and in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1868 at Kyelang he published by lithography A Short Practical Grammar of the Tibetan Language, with special reference to the spoken dialects, and the following year a Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary. He also published in 1871–1876 at Gnadau in Prussia by the same process a Tibetan and German dictionary. Afterwards he prepared for the English Government a Tibetan-English Dictionary, with special reference to the prevailing dialects, in 1881. Dr H. Wenzel, one of his pupils, edited in 1883 from his MS. a Simplified Tibetan Grammar. Major Th. H. Lewin with the help of a Sikkimese lama compiled A Manual of Tibetan, or rather a series of colloquial phrases in the Sikkimese dialect, in 1879. In 1894 Mr Graham Sandberg compiled a useful Handbook of Colloquial Tibetan. Père Desgodins in 1899 issued from Hong-Kong a large Tibeto-Latin-French dictionary, Dictionnaire thibétain-latin-français. In 1890 Captain H. Ramsay published at Lahore his useful Practical Dictionary of Western Tibet. In 1902 was brought out at Calcutta Sarat Chandra Das's Tibetan English Dictionary with Sanskrit synonyms, a massive volume compiled with the aid of Tibetan lamas and edited by Graham Sandberg and the Moravian missionary A. W. Heyde. The Tibetan Manual by V. C. Henderson (1903) is a useful work, and so is the Manual of Colloquial Tibetan by C. A. Bell (Calcutta, 1905), which has full English-Tibetan vocabularies, graduated exercises and examples in the Lhasa dialect of to-day. An interesting and important analysis of many of the dialects and of the general structure of the language has been made by Dr G. A. Grierson, with the collaboration of Dr S. Konow, in his Linguistic Survey of India (1908). As regards native philology, the most ancient work extant is a grammar of the Tibetan tongue preserved in the Bstan-hgyur (mdo cxxiv.). This collection also contains other works of the same kind, dictionaries by later writers, translations of many Sanskrit works on grammar, vocabulary, &c., and bilingual dictionaries, Sanskrit and Tibetan. As separate publications there are several vocabularies of Chinese and Tibetan; Mongol and Tibetan; Chinese, Manchu, Mongol, Oelöt, Tibetan and Turkish; Tibetan, Sanskrit, Manchu, Mongol and Chinese.