After conversing for a while and drinking a few cups of tea, the Lhacham withdrew, and one of her maids showed me the rooms in the mansion. The furniture was much the same as that in the Lhacham’s room, only of inferior quality and ruder make. The walls were painted green and blue, with here and there pictures of processions of gods and demons, and the beams of the ceiling were carved and painted. The doors were very roughly made and without panels; the windows were covered with paper, with a very small pane of glass fitted in the middle of each. There were no chimneys in any of the rooms, but earthenware stoves, or jala. In a few of the rooms flowers were growing in pots.
Returning to the Lhacham’s room, dinner was served me at noon, and while I ate she asked me many questions concerning the marriage laws of India and Europe. When I told her that in India a husband had several wives, and that among the Phyling[1] a man had but one wife, she stared at me with undisguised astonishment. "One wife with one husband!" she exclaimed. "Don’t you think we Tibetan women are better off? The Indian wife has but a portion of her husband’s affections and property, but in Tibet the housewife is the real lady of all the joint earnings and inheritance of all the brothers sprung from the same mother, who are all of the same flesh and blood. The brothers are but one, though their souls are several. In India a man marries well several women who are strangers to each other." "Am I to understand that your ladyship would like to see several sisters marry one husband?" I asked. "That is not the point," replied the Lhacham. "What I contend is that Tibetan women are happier than Indian ones, for they enjoy the privileges conceded in the latter country to the men."[2]
June 7.—My two men had heard from Gadan Tipa, a soothsayer, that they would be stricken with small-pox if they ventured to go to Samye, and they besought me to give up the idea; but I declared emphatically my resolve to visit that famous lamasery, and also that of Gaden.
- ↑ I.e. "foreigners;" literally, "outside-country." The word has no connection, as was once supposed, with Feranghi or Franks.—(W. R.)
- ↑ Our author tells us further on (p. 216) of a woman married to two men not related. Elsewhere he makes mention of a lamasery in which monks and nuns cohabit, and bring up their children in their profession. Polygamy also obtains among the wealthier Tibetans, who have probably adopted it from the Chinese, and monogamy has a few votaries. See 'Land of the Lamas,' p. 211 et sqq.
