TRADITIONAL ORIGIN. ' VEGC/RS.' 151 



Provisions for two or three months are taken on 

 pack-camels. Returning home laden with spoil, the 

 first act of the robbers is to implore God's forgive- 

 ness, and the more easily to obtain it they ride off to 

 the lake, where they buy, or perhaps appropriate 

 without payment, a quantity of newly-caught fish, 

 and throw these back into the waters. 



According to the Mongols the Kara-Tangutans 

 began to plunder this country and Tsaidam about 

 eighty years ago, and since that time have continued 

 uninterruptedly this mode of gaining a livelihood. 

 The Chinese governors of Kan-su are bribed by 

 the robbers to grive a certain deg-ree of counte- 

 nance to their proceedings, so that the complaints of 

 the Mongols are never listened to. A local Mongol 

 tradition on the origin of the Kara-Tangutans and 

 Mongol-Oliuths of Koko-nor runs as follows : — 



Several hundred years ago a people of Tangu- 

 tan race lived on the shores of Koko-nor, called 

 Yegurs,^ who professed Buddhism, and belonged to 

 the red-capped sect.'"^ These Yegurs were continually 

 plundering the caravans of pilgrims on their way 



and invasion was a regular practice of the mediaeval Tartars. See 

 ' Marco Polo,' 2nd ed. i. 256. — Y. 



1 These might be the Uigurs, were not they of Tangutan, not Mon- 

 golian race. [1 do not clearly understand this note. The Uigurs are 

 generally understood to be typical Turks, and in great measure the 

 progenitors of the present people of the Kashgar basin. But it is pos- 

 sible that the existence of these Yegurs \n Tangut may have to do with 

 the thesis so obstinately maintained by I. J. Schmidt that the Uigurs 

 were Tibetans. — Y.] 



"- Buddhists in Tibet are divided into two sects, the red-capped 

 and yellow-capped. The radical difference between them is that 

 while the former allow their lamas to marry, the latter oblige them to 

 live single. [This definition is not to be relied on. — Y.] 



