3 4S 
TIBET. 
Terpaling, the Annees rise to their orisons, chant their mid-day mass, 
and having concluded their vespers, retire to their solitary cells. 
This association of nuns had often been mentioned to me, but in the 
course of my travels I had never yet seen one of them before, though 
many were said to be existing at that time, in various parts of Tibet. 
I would gladly have gone to visit these devotees in their secluded 
station, but it was at some distance from our road, and the loss of time 
dissuaded me from the attempt. Though nuns, the admission of male 
visitors among them during the day, is not prohibited; but no male is 
ever suffered to pass a night within the walls that enclose the Annees, 
any more than a female is, within those that surround the Gylongs. 
That they should be thus drawn, in such, multitudes, to these soli¬ 
tary retreats, from the business and the pleasures of the world, will 
less excite our surprise, when we reflect on the peculiar custom that 
prevails, with regard to the union of the sexes, in Tibet; a custom, at 
once different from the modes of Europe, where one female becomes 
the wife of one male; and opposite to the practice of Asia, at least of 
very great part of it, where one male assumes an uncontrolled des¬ 
potism over many females, limiting his connexion with wives and con¬ 
cubines only by the extent of his resources. Here we find a practice 
equally strange, that of polyandry, if I may so call it, universally 
prevailing; and see one female, associating her fate and fortune with 
all the brothers of a family, without any restriction of age, or of 
numbers. The choice of a wife, is the privilege of the elder brother: 
and singular as it may seem, I have been assured, that a Tibetian 
wife is as jealous of her connubial rites., though thus joined to a 
