1898.] S. C. Das — Travels on the Shores of Lake Yamdo-Croft, 261 
For clothing purposes they have only cloth of wool, serge, or yarn, 
blankets, which are seldom more than a foot in 
Clothing. 
breadth, and skins with the hair on. In winter 
House. 
they use robes lined with lambskin. Silk robes lined with fur are used 
by the rich nobles and official Lamas. 
They live in walled houses made of stone and sun-dried bricks, built 
with flat or terrace roof. Their houses are 
spacious and several storeys high. The grand 
Lama’s residence at Lhasa is thirteen storeys and covers the entire 
summit of a hill. The temples are generally furnished with gilt turrets 
and domes made after the Chinese style. The houses are generally 
whitewashed with a kind of lime, their inside is often neatly plastered 
and contains paintings. The roof rests on wooden beams and is generally 
made of slate or clay beaten on branches of trees placed on the beams. 
The floor of their houses are generally kept clean. 
Mr. George Bogle and Captain Samuel Turner whom Warren Hast- 
_ A _ ings sent to the court of the Tashi Lama, 
Character and So- , 
cial Customs. brought back with them a very good opinion 
regarding the character of the Tibetans. Visit¬ 
ing Tibet full one century after Turner’s time, I returned with the same 
kind of impression of the character of the people. Humanity, and 
an unartificial gentleness of disposition, are the constant inheritance 
of a Tibetan. Without being officious, they are obliging; the higher 
ranks are unassuming, the inferior, respectful in their behaviour; nor 
are they at all deficient in attention to the female sex ; in this respect 
their conduct is equally remote from rudeness and adulation. The 
women of Tibet in higher life enjoy an elevated station in society. To 
the privilege of liberty, the wife adds the character of mistress of the 
family, and companion of her husbands. Among the humbler classes 
the company of all, indeed, she is not at all times entitled to expect, 
different pursuits, either agricultural employments, or mercantile specu¬ 
lations, may occasionally cause the temporary absence of each; yet 
whatever be the result, the profit of the labourer is expected to flow 
into the common store ; and when one of the husbands returns, what¬ 
ever may have been his fortune, he is secure of a grateful welcome to a 
social home. The custom of polyandry which prevails here links whole 
families together in the matrimonial yoke, cheeking the increase of 
population in this singularly unfertile country. It also tends to prevent 
domestic discords, arising from a division of family interests, and to 
concentrate all the spirit, and all the virtues, inherent in illustrious 
blood. Jealousy causes unhappiness and dissensions where several men, 
not brothers, live in the company of one wife. The several husbands 
are then called namdo-pyun , i.e., brothers on account of a joint wife. 
