oxygen in the air delays the healing of the wound, but
“ out of sight, out of mind ” is as true in Tibet as elsewhere,
and the beast is still ridden day after day. On
the crupper and bridle there are often fine filagree plates
of brass and sometimes good Chinese enamel. The
stirrups are unnecessarily heavy | a handsome dragon
design is often embodied in them.
I have said that the Tibetans are a courteous race.
Unlike Hindustani races, they not only have, but continually
use, the words for please (ro nang, literally
“ good help ” ) and thank you (tu che). The greeting to a
visitor, corresponding roughly with “ how do you do,”
is literally " sit and adhere to the carpet,” while the
farewell of a visitor may be translated “ sit down
slowly.” His host speeds his departing guest with an
adjuration to “ walk slowly.” The language is entirely
distinct both from Hindustani and Chinese. It is
an agglutinative, monosyllabic tongue, and neither the
structure nor the fairly large vocabulary is difficult to
acquire. But the trouble is that almost from the outset
the practical colloquial language is found by the learner
to be an inextricable tangle of idioms. Experience of
the East should long have taught one never to say
“ why ? ” but the eccentricities of the Tibetan wrench
it from one at every turn. A thing which is at once
apparent, is the indistinctness with which it is muttered.
If you were to say to a man “ call me tomorrow
morning at six o’clock,” “ nga-la sang-nyin
shoge chutseu druk-la kttang ” deliberately and slowly,
he would smile politely, but make not the slightest
attempt to understand; but if, on the other hand, you
threw at him something like “ nyalsannin-shoshutsu-
dullaketn ” you would be understood in a moment.
Some words used in Tibetan are very expressive ;
the word for a duck is “ mud fowl ” ; to awaken is to
“ murder sleep,” a flower is a “ button (or canopy) of
fire ” ; a general is a “ Lord of the Arrow ” ; sunshine
on the skirts of a departing rain storm is prettily
rendered as a “ flower-shower ” ; bribery could hardly
be more neatly defined than by the Tibetan “ secret
push.” One peculiarity of the language is the use of
two opposites in conjunction to express the quality
in which they differ— thus : distance is literally “ far-
near ” ; weight is “ light-heavy ” ; height, to-men, is
“ high-low ” and dang-to, “ cold-warm,” means temperature.
The honorific vocabulary is an additional
stumbling-block. For ordinary travelling purposes it
is hardly necessary ; the stranger will always be pardoned
if he prefaces his remarks with an apology
for not being able to speak the language of courtesy;
but as every remark will instinctively be made to
him in that language in spite of his protest, he will
find himself very little advantaged. The vocabulary
of the Tibetan language is enormous, and it is very
widely known. It is not, perhaps, necessary to say
more than that there is ready for use in Tibetan a
single word, ten-del, which signifies “ the interdependence
of causes.” *
The literature of the country is almost entirely religious.
It consists of the Kan-gyur, or sacred scriptures,
in over one hundred volumes ; the Ten-gyur, or
commentaries thereon, in three hundred volumes, and
* This is hardly the occasion for a full account of either the written or the spoken
language. I may, however, in reference to the former, point out the difficulty of the
spelling. Thus the province of “ U ” is spelled “ D b u s ” and “ d § ” (rice) is
spelled “ abras.” “ Ready ” is pronounced “ tan-di,” but spelled either “ gral-sgrig ”
or “ phral-grig.”