Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 437, March 1852Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 437, March 1852
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The Bhotan territory remains, which, from language, religion,
manners, and political connection, may justly be considered as
Tibetan, though occupying not the table-land north of the Himalaya,
but the whole breadth of the range itself, from the Tsang country to
Assam. Bhotan is a mass of mountains clothed in perpetual verdure,
its slopes covered with forests of large and lofty trees; populous
villages, girt with orchards, are scattered along the sides and
summits of the spurs; every declivity of favourable aspect is carved
into terraces, cultivated to the utmost, and carefully irrigated
from the abundant streams. Nothing could be physically in greater
contrast with the bleak and arid plains or rocky hills of Tibet. The
people of Bhotan are a remarkably fine race. Scarcely anywhere else
in the world shall we find an equal proportion of men so straight,
so well made, and so athletic, many of them more than six feet high.
Deformity is almost unknown, except that arising from goitre, which
is very prevalent among them, as it is, indeed, over the whole
extent of the Himalaya, and of the Turaee, or forest tract, at the
base of the mountains; whilst Tibet Proper is entirely free from it.
Tibetan geographers, according to Csoma de Körös, compare Ngari,
with its fountains, to a tank, U-Tsang to the irrigating channels,
and Kham to the field irrigated. We do not appreciate the aptness of
the similitude. More intelligibly, European geographers have likened
Tibet in form to a vast cornucopia pouring from its wide eastern
mouth vast rivers forth, to fertilise the happier plains of China,
Siam, Burma, and Assam.
All these countries, with the exception of Little Tibet, or Balti,
and of Ladakh since its seizure by the Sikhs, acknowledge more
or less directly the supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and,
beyond him, that of China. Since the accession of the existing
Manchoo dynasty to the throne of Pekin, they have always maintained
two envoys at the court of Lhassa. Mr Prinsep aptly compares the
position of these ministers to that of a British resident at the
court of Luknow or Hyderabad. They do not, however, appear to
meddle much with the ordinary internal administration, nor is their
military force maintained in the country large. Besides a few
hundred men at Lhassa, and guards established at intervals on the
post-road from China, they take upon them the superintendence of the
passes of the Himalaya, and see to the exclusion of Europeans by
those inlets with unrelaxing rigour. In other parts of Tibet there
are no Chinese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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