The road curves round to the right, under the village
of Chorten-karpo, picking its way through the barberries
and roses which grow between the boulders.
Galinka can be identified by its tall scaffolding poles,
that appear before the houses come into sight, and
these, when first we passed through the place, we
believed to be the poles of prayer flags. The mistake
was a natural one, for a few torn shreds of gauze
still rippled bravely in the breeze. But the real use
of these tall posts was made clear in harvest time.
Between each of them a little pent-house of straw protected
from the rain the oddly shaped stack of winter
fodder.
Prayer flags in Tibet are the commonest possible
means of invocation. The “ airy horses ” printed upon
long perpendicular strips of limp tarlatan, or rather
butter muslin, about twelve inches wide, are nailed to
the pole, from twenty to thirty feet in height. These
fringes stand out in the wind, till they are frayed back
to the very nails, or tear themselves loose in ragged
streamers.*
Among the private convictions of Sir Isaac Newton
was the singular belief that prayers went to Heaven
by vibration. It was not, perhaps, one of the most
demonstrable theories of that great man, and very
little stress has ever been laid upon this curious idea,
though I believe it underlies the almost universal use
of incense as a symbol of prayer. But your pious
Tibetan would have understood Sir Isaac in a moment;
to him, movement is prayer, and no inert petition
that the distinction is due to the fact that the snow-topped mountain barriers of Tibet lie
chiefly to the south.
* In Lhasa itself a peculiarity is noticeable. The prayer flags there are tightly bound
into the pole.