TIBET AND ITS BORDERLAND by Sarah Douglass McMahon

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 10, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 32.

TIBET AND ITS BORDERLAND.

By Sarah Douglass McMahon

[Sarah Douglass McMahon, in The Independent.]

(Concluded.)

WHILE living for several years in the district of Kumaon, on the northern border of India, I had frequent opportunity of meeting the Tibetans. Altho the white man is rigidly excluded from the Forbidden Land, the Tibetans themselves and the hill tribes or Bhotiyas of India freely pass and repass over the frontier. Probably it was this spectacle which induced my missionary friends, Dr. Martha A. Sheldon and Miss E. C. Browne, of the Methodist Mission, to disguise themselves as Bhotya women and take a daring excursion over the frontier to Taklakot, an important Tibetan trading-post.

It is agreed by those who know the Tibetans that they are far from unintelligent, altho debased by superstition and vice. In many respects they are allied to our own Bhotiyas, and the two races do not find much difficulty in making themselves understood. Dr. Sheldon first came to Bhot, the British outland, with Tibet on the north and Nepal on the east, in the capacity of a medical missionary. If ever a region needed medical and surgical expert attendance for its wretched inhabitants it was Kumaon. Bleeding and burning were the favorite remedies employed by the native doctors. The spirits were invoked and placated to prevent disease. “Holy men” who came down from Tibet were welcomed with open arms if haply their prayers and incantations might ward off the demons bringing leprosy, smallpox, and other scourges. Easily and naturally Dr. Sheldon displaced the native fakirs and became physician-in-chief of the Land of Bhot.

In summer the doctor and her assistant, Miss Browne, live in their bungalow at Chaudas, 8,750 feet above sea-level. In winter they go down to Dharchula, a more sheltered station only 3,200 feet in altitude. It is their custom to itinerate over their entire district in journeys thirty and forty days’ length at a time. On these excursions, beside the medical treatment, a great deal of religious work is done. Her first task in uplifting the inhabitants was to translate the Bible into the Bhotiya or hill country language, and next came the ambition to put the Scriptures into Tibetan. Here was a great difficulty. It is high treason for an inhabitant of Tibet to communicate the sacred language to foreigners. At last the ladies found a Tibetan pundit (by name Karma, a star) who did not expect to return to his native land; and who taught them the written characters.

Over the high mountain passes between Kumaon and Tibet there flows during the summer months a busy stream of traffic and pilgrimage. In the coming and passing throngs are hill people on their way to trade in Tibet; venerable friars from the Buddhist monasteries; flocks of girls traveling in companies to make merry at a border village; kidnapping expeditions of young men seeking brides by violence, according to the ancient custom of the country; chowkidars or frontier guards of the Tibetan Government; outcasts and beggars, who have traveled as far as Delhi, making a scanty livelihood by precarious street fakery. The passes range in altitude from 17,000 to 21,000 feet. Of travelers, the incautious, missing their footing, are dashed down deep crevices and ravines to death. The faint and weak-hearted fail in the terrible ascent, and some literally perish of heart failure in the extremely rarefied atmosphere.

Miss Sheldon and her assistant, Miss Browne, were uncompromisingly turned back by the chowkidars

in their earlier attempts to penetrate Tibet. During five years of such efforts they never succeeded in getting more than seven miles beyond the border. In the summer of 1902 they decided to make a fresh attempt. The objective point was Taklakot, a trading center and seat of the local raja, ten miles from the border. The brave women thought they might obtain an escort in the person of an influential Bhotya, but they found not a single villager from the border towns would accompany them. The British subjects of Bhot knew too well the punishment meted out to those who smuggle foreigners over the line. Mutilation and flogging are common punishments in Tibet.

Not the least difficult of the problems was getting the native clothes. “The garments,” says Miss Browne, “are not many, but complex, but the way in which they are held up and draped is a secret. The skirt has no band and is held up under a sheet tied round the waist—altogether an uncertain way of fastening one’s skirt, especially in the hands of a novice. The surplus ends of the sheet hang in front of the person. The upper garment is a long, wide piece of woolen cloth, with an opening in the middle large enough only to allow of passing the head through. The head-dress is made in the form of a bag sewn at the two sides.” The outfit is completed by a pair of stout native boots for mountain climbing, and a wicker basket carried on the back.

Dr. Sheldon’s hope of getting through unobserved was through wearing the odd Bhotiya costume and keeping the head covering closed after the manner of women in India. A native girl taught the missionaries to step like Bhotiya women, and, accompanied by a few of their servants and coolies bearing food, necessaries, and a tent, they started out. Fuel had to be carried, and a small goat was killed and cut up for the itinerant table d’hote. Ahead marched Gangwa, the faithful servant; the two pseudo-hill women followed, Indian file. The man had a pack on his back and a formidable-looking bamboo rod in his hand. He waved it unceremoniously at natives who stopped and asked questions. Going through the villages on the way to Taklakot the women had many narrow escapes from being identified and turned back. The coolies were persuaded not to walk with them (which might attract undue attention), but to carry the baggage a considerable distance in the rear. Down, down the mountain-side came the party to the river which flows by the foot of the Tibetan city of Taklakot. Crossing the bridge, they found themselves among a crowd of Tibetans; but, going up the hill boldly, they landed among a colony of traveling Bhotiyas, and found a welcome resting-place in a roofless hut, over which a tent was about to be stretched. This was the limit of the journey, and here Miss Sheldon said: “Send for the raja and let him know that feringi [foreigners] have come.”

The arrival of the female travelers, who here threw off their disguise, was a nine days’ wonder to the Tibetans. Miss Sheldon and her assistant had time to hold a Gospel meeting, to sing and pray, and to relieve the sick, before officials arrived on the scene and demanded their return to British soil. One of the patients was the raja’s son, suffering of stomachache, which was relieved by Miss Sheldon’s ministrations. Whatever the reasons for clemency—or kindness to the scion of royalty, or the fact they were women—the Tibetans offered their unwelcome visitors no rough usage, and even allowed them to stay over night in Taklakot, tho annoyingly guarded by a couple of Tibetans, who occasionally poked their heads over the walls. The next day was Sunday, when they were obliged by the guards to commence their return march, which was uneventfully accomplished in the midst of a blinding snowstorm.

When Miss Sheldon’s three-day twenty-mile journey into Southern Tibet and back is compared with Miss Annie Taylor’s wonderful achievement some years previously in penetrating into the country from the Chinese border to within three day’s journey of Lassa it does not seem very significant. But Miss Taylor went through a sparsely-settled land, where the vigilance against foreigners was not very keen. Miss Sheldon, on the other hand, eluded the watchmen, spies, and emissaries of the monks guarding the southern passes against the advance of the British. Both missionary zeal and commercial enterprise anxiously await the entry through those passes of European civilization. That is why General Younghusband’s expedition, which aims to compel the Tibetans to carry out their commercial conventions with his Imperial Majesty’s British Government, and may, indeed, open up the entire country as Perry opened Japan, has the hearty good wishes of both English and Americans living in India.