sity of keeping a serf people in an unarmed condition,
has made of the Tibetans a quiet race unused to war.
I do not for a moment wish to say that the Tibetan
was found by us wanting in individual pluck, but it is
a long step from the innate courage of an untutored and
misled barbarian to the effective self-confidence of the
same man properly officered and buoyed up with all
the confidence that religion and discipline can instil.
Herein lies a characteristic of Buddhism which, from a
political point of view, cannot be classed otherwise than
as a serious fault. So long as the earth remains divided
into races whose first duty is self-preservation, so long,
deplorable as it may be from an ideal point of view, a
religion which does not also help to protect the nation as
well as defend the family, stands little chance of propagating
its own good influences. Now, Lamaism has
no such tendencies. It does not make of the man a good
fighter, and it certainly does not make .of him either an
intelligent citizen or a good father of a family. I suppose
that under these three heads almost every human
virtue can be classed. That it does not help him in his
civic life is obvious enough, for absolute servitude,
mental and physical, is the political result of Lamaism
upon its flock. So far as concerns his domestic relations, it
seems clear that the polyandry practised in Tibet is
not likely to lead to a high standard of morals. The
results of the large proportion of women who, in consequence,
have no chance of becoming wives, and the
complication in family relationships that is caused by
these strange marital customs, might be less harmful if,
as happens in Sumatra and on the coasts of Malabar,
the women undertook also the management of the
district. But they do n o t ; far from i t ; they have
no voice whatever in the government of the country ;
they still remain merely the toys or the beasts of burden
of their male acquaintances. I t need not be said that,
in the conventional sense of the word, morals are unknown
in Tibet.
But it must not be supposed that Tibetans are therefore
devoid of characteristics which, after all, may rank
as high as the virtues of sterner moralists. They are
courteous and hospitable, and so long as they do not feel
that their wits are being challenged, their word may be
relied upon and their kindliness taken for granted. They
are industrious and, as we have seen, capable of extraordinary
physical activity. It is true that this activity
finds its vent rather in the muscles of the legs than in
those of the fingers, but this is only to be expected. They
remain dirty, but dirtiness is a merely relative expression.
If you must have your daily tub you will not travel far,
except on the high roads of this world— I had almost said
of England. But far more than this fact, which must be
known to a traveller within even a limited radius, there remains
the fact that dirt— so far, I mean, as affects the
human being— is far less offensive in high and cold altitudes
than it would be in London, and it is hardly too
much to say that there was no one in the expedition who
did not, after a comparatively short time, come to look
upon the dirtiness of those who surrounded him with a
mere mental shrug of the shoulders.* It has been before
suggested that the cold of Phari was one of the reasons of
* It is not uninteresting to remember that for days at a time on the plain of Phari in
January and February it was foolhardiness to attempt to wash one’s hands before midday.
I remember once reaching out, in the early hours of the morning, for an aluminium
cup which had had some water in it over-night and thoughtlessly trying to drink from
it. My lips stuck to the aluminium, and the skin came away with it. The water
was, of course, a block of ice, and the temperature: was —15°.