15. Three Tibetan Repartee Songs. 
By JoHAaNn vAN MANEN. 
In his Manual of Tibetan, Major Lewin bewails the fact 
that with regard to Tibet, “ the familiar tongue of the people, 
their folk-lore, songs and ballads are all unknown.” This was 
written in 1879, almost half a century ago, and though since 
that date an enormous amount of new material has been 
published, shedding light on the most diverse problems connect- 
to this date. The relation between the known and the un- 
known is still quite disproportionate. Francke, Laufer, Marx, 
O’Connor and others have added to our knowledge of these 
matters, but of folk-lore, songs and ballads we know very little 
clined to think that he must have thought, amongst other 
_things, of a most remarkable expression of the Tibetan mind, 
the repartee song, or turn song, called ANAIS'AGF gsung 
bshad, in Tibetan. This word is not to be found in the dic- 
tionaries and without search through the literature I remember 
only a single reference to it in books on Tibet. This reference 
is to be found in Sarat Chandra Das’ Tibetan Grammar, but un- 
bears the English superscription : ‘‘ The love-songs of the sixth 
lai Lama Tshang-yang Gya-tsho”, and consists of three 
pages of Tibetan text. Unhappily the presentation is rather 
sed. h 
confused. I e first place, these love-songs are not repartee 
songs at all. Secondly, the text given does not consist of one 
piece, but of two pieces e first portion is a reprint with a 
- apparently leaves much to be desired from the points of view 
of both arrangement and method. The second portion, consist- 
ing of the last eight lines of page 2V, which are evidently 
also taken from songs attributed to Tshang-yang, though not 
contained in the little block-print, are arranged in a manner 
which allows of their being described as a repartee song. But 
