Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/58

"To Fooshee," I replied, realising full well that I was to go through the ordeal of an inquisition. "You speak Chinese, of course?" then asked the gentleman. My reply in the affirmative caused him at once to talk to me in quite fluent Chinese, which put me in no little consternation in secret. Compelled by necessity, I ventured calmly: "You must be talking in the official Peking dialect, while I can talk only in the common Fooshee tongue, and I do not understand you at all." He was not to let me off yet. Says he next: "You can write in Chinese, I suppose." Yes, I could, and I wrote. Some of my characters were intelligible enough to my guests, and some not, and after all it was agreed that it was best to confine ourselves to Tibetan. As our conversation progressed, my principal guest came to the crucial part of the inquisition and asked: "You say you have come from the landward side : well, from what part of Tibet have you come?" "In sooth, from Lhasa, sir; I have been on a pilgrimage through Darjeeling to Buḍḍhagayā, and from thence here," I replied. I was requested to say, then, in what part of the city of Lhasa I lived. Being informed that I was in the grand Sera monastery, he wanted to know if I was acquainted with an old priest who was the Tatsang Kenpo (grand teacher) of that institution. I was bold enough to say that I was not a perfect stranger to the priest in question, and made a right good use of what I had learned from Lama Shabdung at Darjeeling. So far I managed to keep up my disguise, but each moment that passed only added to my fear of being trapped, and compelled to give myself away. To avoid this danger, I felt it important to head off my inquisitorial visitors by dispelling their suspicion, if they entertained any, about me. I was remarkably successful in this, the information obtained from Lama Shabdung again doing me excellent service. For, when