R. B. Shaw —Stray Arlans in Tibet. 
29 
1S7S-.] 
mountain spirits. The scenery which inspires awe in a passing tra¬ 
veller, has made its mark on the minds of the inhabitants. These lofty 
solitudes are, from their earliest years, connected with ideas of dread, which 
shape themselves into myths. The priest affirms that sometimes in the early 
dawn while performing the annual worship, he perceives a white indistinct 
shape hovering over the cairn ; and this, he says, is the goddess of the spot 
revealing herself to her worshipper. The people believe that this demon 
keeps a special watch over all their actions, and in a country where frequent 
accidents by flood or fell are almost inevitable, and where a false step or a 
falling rock may cause death at any time, they put down such disasters to 
the vengeance of the goddess for the neglect of some of their peculiar 
customs which they have persuaded themselves are religious duties. 
Foremost among their tenets is the abhorrence of the cow. This is an 
essentially Bard peculiarity, though not universal among them. Unlike 
Hindus they consider that animal’s touch contamination, and though they 
are obliged to use bullocks in ploughing, they scarcely handle them at all. 
Calves they seem to hold aloof from still more. They use a forked stick 
to put them to, or remove them from, the mother. They will 7iot drink 
cow’s milk (or touch any of its products in any form) ; and it is only recent¬ 
ly that they have overcome their repugnance to using shoes made of the 
skin of the animal they so contemn. When asked whether their abstaining 
from drinking the milk and eating the flesh of cows is due to reverence 
such as that of the Hindus, they say that their feeling is quite the reverse. 
The cow is looked upon as bad not good, and if one of them drank its milk, 
they would not admit him into their houses. 
Again in reply to a question, they ascribed this custom to the will of 
their goddess. They found by experience that she would not allow them 
to drink the milk of cows with impunity. The son of a certain head-man 
of the village of Ganok, a Musalman Brokpa, had broken through the 
prohibition after living some years among the Baltis. After a time the 
goddess caused him to go mad and to throw himself into the river where he 
was drowned. 
Thus although the Brokpas of Dah-Hanu are nominally Buddhists, 
yet their real worship is that of local spirits or demons like the Lha-mo 
(goddess) of Dah. # 
* In this, however, they are not singular ; for the Tibetans of Ladak also have a 
reverence for similar spirits of purely local influence called Lha (cf. Lha-sa “ the city 
of gods”), a reverence which seems to be neither founded on the Buddhist dogmas, nor 
much countenanced by the more respectable members of the Lamaite hierarchy. An 
annual incarnation of one of these demons (a female) takes place at She, a village of 
Ladak, in the month of August; hut though Lamas are so plentiful in the country, it is 
to one of the lay members of, a certain family that the honour of giving a temporary 
body to the deity belongs, while Lamas are rarely to be seen in the crowds that witness 
