116 MR. 0. A. SHEERING ON 



time this barbarous custom has been given up, and the internal portions are only removed 

 after death, but while they are still reeking hot ; and many animals are slain before the 

 desired signs are apparent. 



The Bhotias are a most hard-working, practical race, and yet they are most supersti- 

 tious. They are always at work, both men and women, and in their idlest moments, for 

 example at the rambang, they are still making thread for weaving, and in all their busi- 

 ness they are most capable and clear-headed — still this is the race that is in the clutches of 

 a superstition that saps the very life-blood. They attribute all sickness to evil spirits ; 

 they place an axe at the door of a house where anyone is seriously ill ; when they take a 

 sick man to see a European doctor they fasten a sickle round his waist to fend off the evil 

 one ; a returning traveller, before entering his village, confines thorns and nettles under 

 stones, thinking that in this way he has laid the evil spirit ; and this practice is common at 

 the heads of passes, near dangerous bridges, or in difficult places. For the cure of sick- 

 ness these people resort to burning and bleeding in a manner that makes the civilized 

 beholder sick to look at, and these barbarous remedies are made more effective by incan- 

 tations. They no longer believe that a thunderstorm will take place if they rub their 

 metal vessels clean with earth in the usual manner (a belief that at one time made the in- 

 habitants of patti Darma notorious for their filthiness, for they cleaned their vessels on their 

 wearing apparel instead, and never washed themselves or their garments) ; but they do 

 believe that they must fire off guns to prevent the blacksmith {kali y a) from seizing the dei- 

 ties of the sun or moon at the time of an eclipse, and their other beliefs are on a par with 

 this. They worship at all the Tibetan monasteries in the same way as the Tibetans, and 

 they consider the Tibetan places of worship very sacred. They worship the same deities 

 that they find the Tibetans worshipping when they make their trips for trade purposes 

 into Tibet, and they worship their own deities and also the whole host of Hinduism, or 

 rather, to be accurate, all those that they have heard about, for they are only dimly initia- 

 ted into the mysteries of the Hindu faith in the supernatural. 



Each village has a deity of its own, and each patti has its own favourites, but the 

 deity Gabla is universally worshipped with offerings of goats, sheep, dalangs and rice 

 (sherj'e) as being the most powerful, and his votaries resort to him for removal of rain or 

 snow, or with prayers for success in business, or similar matters. Similai'ly the goddess 

 Nyungtangsya, or water- goddess, is everywhere worshipped ; one particularly sacred spot 

 being Kalapani, where the river Kali, also known as the Sarda, is supposed to have its 

 source, the object of the worship being to ensure a perpetual flow of the water. Paris 

 are made and offerred upon her saithan. 



In all villages we find tree-trunks with branches {dare ho) placed in front of houses 

 and at saithans with flying streamers {daja), to propitiate the local deities on occasions 

 such as the house-warming of a new building or when there has been trouble, the poles 

 being placed in the ground at the beginning of the new month. When Bhotias leave 

 their homes to trade in the warmer south they place baskets, just like waste-paper bas- 

 kets with the bottom knocked out, full of thorns and twigs, on the courtyard walls of their 

 deserted homes, to preserve the empty tenement from unwelcome guests of the spirit world. 



In the village of Kuti we have the god Gu/aeh, and in Nabi the god Thakpung: the 



