LHASA AND CENTRAL TIBET.« 



By C;. Ts:. Tsybikoff.'> 



After a journe}^ of twenty-two days over the sparsel}^ populated 

 north Tibetan phxteaii, onr caravan of pilgrims camped July 19/' 1000, 

 on the banks of the San-chu, at the northern foot of tlie Bumza 

 ISIountain. The caravan had been formed at the Kumlnun monastery 

 in Amdo, and started April 24: on the way to Lhasa. There were 

 about To persons in the party, almost all of them Amdo and IMongo- 

 lian Lamas, and were quartered in 17 traveling tents. Alwut 200 mules 

 transported men and baggage. 



We here first met inhabitants of Central Tibet. Close to the road 

 was a great l)lack tent in which lived the local soldiery, an advance 

 post on the lookout for foreigners. They had special orders to watch 

 during the present 3'ear for P. K. Kosloff's Russian expedition, of 

 which the authorities at Lhasa had received information as early as 

 April. 



The guards immediately approached our camp, but seeing that it 

 was an ordinary caravan of pilgrims, the men Avere soon busied in 

 making trifling exchanges to supply their wants, our men keeping a 

 watchful eye on articles that might readily be stolen. After four 

 short marches from here we reached the Nakchu monastery, the resi- 

 dence of two governors of the local nomads, appointed b}" the central 

 government of Tibet. One of them belongs to the clerg}^ and is called 



"Translated from the Izvestia of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, St. 

 Petersburg, vol. x.xxix, 1903, part ni, pp. 187-218. 



& " M. Tsybikoff is a Buriat by birth, and a Lamaist by religion, who finished his 

 education at a Russian university, and, after having prepared himself for this journey, 

 went quite openly, like so many other Buriat pilgrims, to Lhasa. There he remained 

 more than twelve months, making an excursion to Tsetang (or Chetang) and visiting 

 some of the most venerated monasteries, after having previously stayed, during his 

 journey to Lhasa, in the Mongol monasteries of Labrang and Kumbum. During 

 his stay at Lhasa he made, moreover, a most valuable collection of books, written by 

 all the most renowned Lama writers during tlie last nine centuries. This collection 

 represents 319 volumes on philology, medicine, astronomy and astrology, history, 

 geography, and collections of ku-rims (praises, prayers, and incantations, and so on). 

 .It has been presented by the Russian Geographical Society to the Academy of 

 Sciences." — The GeographiqalJournal, London, January, 1904. 



cThe dates in this paper are old style, or twelve days behind the Gregorian 

 calendar. 



SM VMS i7 727 



