orders to proceed at once to Lhasa. The minister asked me if I would accompany him, and I readily assented, as it would enable me to make arrangements for my journey to Lhasa during the next summer.
On March 7 we started, and reached Tashigang the same day. Some of the people we passed were already ploughing, and the trees showed signs of budding.
The next day we reached Dongtse by 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We found the Dahpon's wife, a lady of about thirty, and his sister, Je-tsun Kusho, in the central room of the fifth floor of the castle (phodrang).
The Lhacham was dressed in a Mongol robe; on her head was a crown-shaped ornament studded with precious stones and pearls of every size. Pearl necklaces, strings of amber and coral hung over her breast, and her clothes were of the richest Chinese satin brocades and the finest native cloth.[1] The Je-tsun Kusho, an elderly woman and a nun, was dressed very plainly; but, though nuns all shave their heads, she wore all her hair. She belonged, it appears, to the Nyingma school, which allows nuns certain privileges, this one among others.[2]
The following day I prescribed some medicines for Je-tsun Kusho, who was suffering from bronchitis, and four days later I administered some to the Dahpon's wife, who had had until then a lama from the Tse-chan monastery attending her. My medicines did her no good, and at this the minister appeared much concerned. I tried a second dose, but with like absence of effect. In fact, the Lhacham felt worse, and said that evil stars were in the ascendant in her quarter of the sky (khams), and would work her ruin. Some people, she said, insisted she was being persecuted by evil spirits who had followed her here from Tingri (Djong), but she did not believe it; it was the stars which were against her. The minister looked at me and asked me how it was
- ↑ In the narrative of his journey in 1879 (p. 26), S. C. D. thus describes the headdress of the ladies of wealth and fashion at a festival at Tashilhunpo: "Their headdresses struck me much. The prevailing form consisted of two, or sometimes three, circular bands of plaited hair placed across the head and richly studded with pearls, cat's-eyes, small rubies, emeralds, diamonds, coral and turquoise beads as large as hens' eggs, pearl drops, and various sorts of amber and jade encircled their heads, like the halo of light round the heads of goddesses. These circles were attached to a circular headband from which six or eight short strings of pearls and regularly shaped pieces of turquoise and other precious stones hung down over the forehead."
- ↑ Farther on (p. 138), our author tells us that the incarnate goddess Dorje phagmo also wore her hair long.
