698 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



hair aud sheep's wool, aud make tents/' aud the Aunals of the Tnng 

 dynasty (T'ang shu, Bk. i*21), which covers the period from A. i). 618 

 to 907, says of these same people, "Men aud women wear long skin 

 gowns, or gowns of coarse woolen stuff with a nappy surface." 



Among the pastoral Tibetans of the present day cloth is woven from 

 the hair of yaks and goats and from the wool of sheep. The wool is 

 cut oft' the sheep with a knife and isof very irregular staple; very gen- 

 erally it is not washed before it is s])un into yarn. The usual occupa- 

 tion of pastoral Tibetan men and women, or perhaps one may call it 

 their usual amusement, is spinning yarn. They carry a small package 

 of wool or yak hair in the bosom of their gowns and twist the yarn as 

 they walk along herding their sheep, or when sitting in their tents 

 over their tea. The spindle, of which a specimen is in the nniseum 

 (see Diary of a Journey, etc., p. 132), is about 11^ to 12 inches long and 

 consists of a straight wooden rod with a notch at the end in which 

 the yarn is caught, and terminates at the lower end in a flattened clay 

 whorl about 2 inches in diameter. 



Sometimes the clay whorl is replaced by two sticks at right angles, 

 and a little iron hook is fixed in the end of the rod instead of the notch 

 above referred to. There is in the collection even a more primitive spindle, 

 ill which the whorl is a short bone and the rod has a fork at the end on 

 which the yarn catches. This spindle was collected among the Ordos 

 Mongols, who spin and weave, by the way, exactly as the Tibetans do, 

 though they practice the latter art to a much less extent (see Diary of 

 a Journey, etc., p. 22). 



The loom usually used in Tibet is of extreme simplicity; it is also in 

 use in Mongolia and generally in the border country of northern China. 

 The warp, which is hardly ever over 10 inches to a foot broad aud about 

 40 to 50 feet long, is fastened to the ground by large pegs at either end; 

 the weaver squats over this and pushes the balls of thread through the 

 warp; two or three blows from a heavy wooden batten are given on each 

 thread of the woof, aud the alternate threads of the woof are kept 

 separated by two small sticks and the batten itself. The part of the 

 warp near the weaver is kept raised to a convenient height from the 

 ground by either a little rounded piece of wood raised on feet and placed 

 under it, or else by a big stone. The woof, according to Jaeschke 

 (Tib. Engl. Diet., p. 331), is called ^>M>t {sjmii), the spindle, [pang] and 

 the whorl ( pang-lo). In this primitive fashion the material for the black 

 hair tents of the pastoral tribes is woven, and also the woolen material 

 used to make clothes, boot-linings, bags, etc. This latter stuff", which 

 is always used undyed, is called la-iru, or ta in some sections of the 

 country, and is sometimes quite fine. The coarser varieties, all man- 

 ufactured by the Kokonor Tibetans, are represented in the Museum's 

 collections by Xos. 13120S, 1(37202, and 167203,* in the last there are 

 narrow bands of l)lack wool. 



*Not illustrated lu tliis paper. 



