tibetan terms & culture

Backsheesh – money

Tangkas/ Thangka – Tibetan money

Rupees – Indian currency

Porters described as Sherpa Bhotias.

Sherpas – Himalayan people living on the borders of Nepal and Tibet renowned for their skill in mountaineering.

Bhutia Nepalese:  Bhutia are a community of people of Tibetan ancestry, who speak Sikkimese, a Tibetan dialect fairly mutually intelligible to standard Tibetan.

Tigers – Shepa elite

Dzongpen – Tibetan officials (loosely translated as governor)

Chhoti barsat – the rains that herald the arrival of the monsoon

“Om mani padme hum” – hail the jewel in the lotus

Tibetan greeting of sticking tongue out.

The Tibetans thought the Brits were climbing to the top in search of treasure-wealth – a gold cow or yak at top that they would melt down.

BRITS REFLECT ON TIBETANS

Buddhists wouldn’t hurt a bug and ate ground barley to feed the worms in their stomachs but would hand out awful punishment for minor crimes like petty theft etc.

Locals useless in giving info on Everest. They called it Chomolungma. And they measured distance by number of days or cups of tea. Brits determined that 3 cups of tea were roughly equivalent to five miles. But nothing was precise.

Dzongpen – with long finger nails celebrated his idleness.

At every village, as he fully understood, tradition demanded that the men stop and drink.

Later small troupe of dancers arrived in late afternoon and put on a modest performance in the courtyard of the bungalow. Wheeler said “various meaningless stunts and some 1/2 cartwheels. One man played the drum, the woman the cymbals. Bury gave them 2 rupees w pleased them no end.”

Finch was helpful at camp and had great sense of humor. He wrote acidly “if one ever wishes to talk w a Tibetan it is advisable to stand on his windward side. A noble Tibetan informed me w great pride that he had had two baths, one on the day of his birth and the other on the day of his wedding… In this matter of physical cleanliness the Tibetan priests are even worse offenders than the laity; doubtless because they do not marry… Only once did I see a Tibetan having a bath. It was at shegar dzong…Disporting himself in the waters of a pool, quite close to the village, was a Tibetan boy, stark naked. On closer examination it transpired that the boy was the village idiot.

Then they reached the shining crystal monastery of shegar – stayed for 3 days. Bruce met w dzongpens to secure transport and more porters. Noel captured footage of ceremonial processions, monks in prayer and wildly theatrical rituals described by the British as devil dances.

Morris said he radiated a sort of positive goodness. “To each of us he gave a ceremonial scarf and then blessed us by lightly touching our heads w what looked like an ornate silver pepper pot… For our porters it was one of the great occasions of their lives. As they entered the presence each man prostrated himself and wormed his way forward to receive the blessing. None raised his head.”

As they left the monastery Bruce and Morris both thought of the hermit cells along the flanks of the valley. “How it is possible for human beings to stand what they stand, even for a year… Without either dying or going mad, passes comprehension” (Bruce)

Even Morris was bewildered and offended by the austerity of the practice “Tibetans regard these ascetic monks w the utmost veneration, but their vacuous faces, looking as thought they had lost the power of thought, gave me nothing but a feeling of disgust. It seemed horrible this deliberately to deny the purpose of life.”

The lamas talk of wrathful deities and wild creatures, yetis inhabiting the upper glaciers of the mountain inspired confidence in no one.

WHEN PORTERS DIE:  Mallory asked if the bodies of others should be retrieved and the Tibetans said the bodies of their friends and brothers should be left where they lay. The Brits saw this response as a sign of the universal spirit of mountaineers.

Somervell tormented by the loss and wished he too had been dead so that the others dead knew that the whites had shared in their loss.

Bruce alerted assumed Asian mind would take it in typical fatalistic manner – it was meant to be. And he would write to each family and compensate them accordingly. (based on how many kids, if he was eldest son, etc)

Mallory haunted by the fact that children the same age as his own would be left without a father.  “The consequences of my mistake are so terrible”

Dzatrol Rimpoche learned of accident asked climbers to attend a prayer service “to honor the spirits of those left behind.”

Climbers to monastery for service but it was also Mani Rimdu the ritual of intense devotion that over the course of nearly three weeks recalls and celebrates the original dissemination of Buddhism to Tibet.

Masks devil dancing etc Mallory likened it to Shakespeare. Scores of pilgrims there. The climbers were given a red pill – sacred offering. If swallowed allows one to eat the power of the Buddhist dharma.

Noel witnessed sky burial and though he had equipment he refrained from photographing it as it was simply too awful: prayers over naked corpse then body is butchered sliced w knives they hack and smash into a pulp on a rock w hatchets and throw it to the vultures who stand waiting only 5ft away. The birds consume all flesh and crushed bone.

Dzatrul Rinpoche – was ill and couldn’t carry out ceremony of blessing. Which they had hoped for the porters’ sake. So a small group went and visited the monastery w a yakload of portland cement and Hazard showed them how to mix the cement w gravel and sand to fix the monastery’s dominant chorten.

Noel was shown an unsettling mural painted since the 1922 expedition. Noel: “an old man with a gnarled face and only two teeth in his head shuffled over the courtyard wrapped in his maroon gown, and let me to the temple entrance, where on an inner wall, so dark that I could not at first distinguish it, he showed me a freshly executed painting… Most curious picture”. It depicted cloven-hoofed devils armed with pitchforks casting a party of climbers into a vortex that spun ever deeper into a cold abyss, a hell zone that for Tibetans is not a place of fire but a realm of ice snow, and murderous winds. Ferocious dogs guarded the flanks of Everest, while at its base lay prostrate a single white body, speared and ravaged by horned demons.

Noel took a tracing and photographed the image. His wife later added an alleged quote from Dzatrul Rinpoche: “Chomolungma, the awful and mighty Goddess Mother, will never allow any white man to climb her sacred heights. The demons of the snow will destroy you utterly”. It’s doubtful that the lama spoke those words.

The actual inspiration for the mural was not even the death of the 7 sherpas on the 1922 expedition – but after the Brits had left and left supplies of barley flour (tsampa) and rice, oil and other goods. The local herders and villagers were keen to salvage the supplies. Dzatrul Rinpoche cautioned against it. When they reached the base of the north col one of the herders saw 7 yetis spring from the snow. They raced down the valley and begged forgiveness.

1924:

Then ushered into a small courtyard lines on all sides w elaborate embroidered benches and sheltered at one end by an overhanging wooden roof. There beneath the veranda was the high lama seated on a red throne and flanked by attendants. Rinpoche’s dress was of the usual dark red material but in addition he wore a yellow hat elegantly adorned w gold.

“He pressed a silver prayer wheel against our heads. Then porters were blessed. Each prostrated himself 3 times before coming forth for lama to bless him.

Bruce jr made offering for all the sahibs and Norton presented the sacred gentleman w a roll of embroidery and a watch.

Norton asked the Rinpoche for a few words of encouragement for porters – he told them to obey the Brits and work hard on the mountain – the reason for the ceremony!  Then lama prayed. It ended in many repetitions of “om mani padme hum”.

Irvine said prayer wheel looked like a white metal pepper pot too!