178 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Mr Rockhill, who is less severe, thinks that "the Tibetan's 

 character is not as black as Horace della Penna and Desgodins 

 have painted it. Intercourse with these people extending over 

 six years leads me to believe that the Tibetan is kindhearted, 

 affectionate, and law-abiding 1 ." He concludes, however, with a 

 not very flattering native estimate deduced from the curious 

 national legend that " the earliest inhabitants of Tibet descended 

 from a king of monkeys and a female hobgoblin, and the character 

 of the race perhaps from those of its first parents. From the king of 

 monkeys [he was an incarnate god] they have religious faith and 

 kindheartedness, intelligence and application, devotion to religion 

 and to religious debate ; from the hobgoblin they get cruelty, 

 fondness for trade and money-making, great bodily strength, lust- 

 fulness, fondness for gossip, and carnivorous instinct-." 



While they are cheerful under a depressing priestly regime, all 



allow that they are vindictive, superstitious, and cringing in the pre- 



sence of the lamas, who are at heart more dreaded 



Lamaismon tnan revered. In fact the whole religious world 



* s one vast or arnsec l system of hypocrisy, and 

 above the old pagan beliefs common to all primitive 

 peoples there is merely a veneer of Buddhism, above which 

 follows another and most pernicious veneer of lamaism (priest- 

 craft), under the yoke of which the natural development of the 

 people has been almost completely arrested for several centuries. 

 The burden is borne with surprising endurance, and would be 

 intolerable but for the relief found in secret and occasionally even 

 open revolt against the more oppressive ordinances of the eccle- 

 siastical rule. Thus, despite the prescriptions regarding a strict 

 vegetarian diet expressed in the formula " eat animal flesh eat thy 

 brother," not only laymen but most of the lamas themselves 

 supplement their frugal diet of milk, butter, barley-meal, and fruits 

 with game, yak, and mutton this last pronounced by Turner the 



comme bien plus civilise que les pasteurs ou bergers du nord " (Le Thibet, 



P- 253)- 



1 Notes on the Ethnology, &.c. p. 677. It may here be remarked that the 

 unfriendliness of which travellers often complain appears mainly inspired by 

 the Buddhist theocracy, who rule the land and are jealous of all "interlopers." 



2 Ibid. p. 678. 



