Chapter 29

The market in front of Hansen’s house. The structure on the extreme left is not what it looks like, for they have no such in Urga but it houses a prayer-cylinder

A youthful lama turning one of the myriad prayer-cylinders of Urga. Many written prayers are pasted inside, and each turn is equivalent to saying all of them

Women, whose crippled feet make going to the shops difficult, do much of their shopping from the two-boxes-on-a-pole type of merchant, constant processions of whom tramp the highways of China

An itinerant blacksmith-shop, with the box-bellows worked by a stick handle widely used by craftsmen and cooks in China

The present one played in unusual luck. To an even greater extent than his predecessors he took advantage of his position to become the Don Juan of Mongolia, and among his many light-o’-loves there was one to whom he wished to stick—or who decided to stick to him. Being a god is very convenient at times. This one calmly overruled the time-honored law that lamas, and especially “Living Buddhas,” may not marry—though of course this verb does not exactly fit the case—and attached the minx to him for life. She seems to have some such power over men as did the old Empress Dowager of China, an impression borne out by her masterful face in such photographs of her as are extant. Not only did she succeed in saving her paramour from the usual fate in his youth, but she so strengthened his position that he is still on his deified throne at an age variously reckoned at from fifty to sixty. Some explain this survival in another way: there were, they say, to have been a fixed number of reincarnations of the Buddha, of which this is the last, after which, we are led to infer, the stainless soul will pass into Nirvana; and of course a few years more or less of hanging back from that blissful state can do no one any harm, least of all in the Orient, where the sense of time is so nearly paralyzed. Even among those who do not accept this view there are many who claim that there will never be another “Living Buddha” in Mongolia, for political rather than lamaistic reasons.

The fact is, probably, that while the masterfulness of his consort had something to do with the survival of the present reincarnation, the powerful clique about him has been willing to permit it because of his weakness, which has prevented him from ever grasping any real authority. Since his gallant youth he has been tainted with that dread disease so wide-spread among the Mongols, which not only makes hima semi-invalid easily manipulated by the real power behind his pseudo-divinity, but which left him some years ago stone-blind. Because he is too sacred to be touched by impious hands, there was no way of curing him, and now it is too late. Besides, the high lamas preferred him sickly and supine rather than well and strong, not to mention the almost complete ignorance among the Mongols of the real nature of their well nigh universal ailment.

Perhaps his blindness increases his divinity in the minds of the faithful, as a sightless witch often wins more followers than one with all her senses intact. At any rate, Mongols of all classes treat their living fetish with divine honors. Pilgrims come from all over central Asia to prostrate themselves on the ground or the prayer-boards outside his compound; on special days they are blessed, not by his actual appearance in person—for visibility often breeds contempt, and the physical labor of being a god should be reduced to a minimum—but by being tapped on the heads with a contrivance in the hands of middle-class lamas to which is attached a rope the other end of which is grasped, hypothetically at least, by the “Living Buddha” seated on his throne inside his central palace. So divine is he that notwithstanding his infirmity the excretions of his body are collected in silver and gold vessels, sealed, and sent out among the credulous as a cure for their infirmities! Foreigners who have chanced to catch a glimpse of him on his way to or from the city temples to pray for rain—he has, of course, the latest and best thing in barometers—or some other ceremony, describe him as being more cleanly dressed than is the Mongol custom, but otherwise quite like any other lama of high class, plus a kind of gold crown. Close inspection might reveal that this alleged pulchritude is an exaggeration—I am skeptical of the possibility of combining cleanliness and Mongol—but that has never been permitted a foreigner.

While no manifestos are issued commanding the foreigner to remain within doors and avert his face, as was long the case when the emperor of China made his annual journey to sacrifice to the Altar of Heaven in Peking, armed guards as well as pious fanatics see to it that the divine being is not too nearly approached during his passing to and fro about Urga. No later ago than the month of my visit a group of Americans in an automobile were halted on one side of the unmarked route over which the “Living Buddha” was to return from the temple where he was just then enthroned, and compelled to get out and walk across it. As a special concession to the spirit of modernity, when the insistent guards were reminded that the abandoned machine could notadvance of its own will, they permitted the chauffeur to climb in again and technically break the divine law by riding across the prospective trail of the blind god.

Tibetan, as I have said, is the Latin of lamaism. Even in Peking, where branch clusters of the faith exist, only two or three temples are permitted, by special dispensation, to carry on their services in Mongolian, and there is said to be only one in Asia where Chinese is used. The great stone letters on the flank of the sacred mountain, visible as far off as the eye can reach, are Tibetan characters. From Tibet come numbers of lamas, and orders tending to keep the ritual more orthodox; the Dalai-Lama himself once fled before foreign invaders to Urga. Neither these seekers after Nirvana from Lhasa and vicinity nor the traders from the more northern parts of Tibet make the journey now by the direct overland route. Not only are there bleak mountains and vast morasses, drearydespobladoswithout a sign of man for days, and the fanatical Mohammedan province of Kansu to cross, but in these settled times there are real dangers from bandits of several nationalities. So the beaten trail of to-day, except for those Tibetan divinities who come by sea, like any tourist, leads down through northern India and across into central China, thence northward through the former Celestial Empire, which still claims, if in vain, jurisdiction over all Outer Mongolia.

There is nothing more pleasant than a stroll on a brilliant autumn day across the golden-brown rolling plains about Urga, especially to the north and east, where they roll ever higher until all the holy city, to its most distant and isolated clusters of temples, lies spread out before one. No suggestion of modern industry breaks the peaceful quiet, which is enhanced by the law forbidding hunting or any other interference with wild creatures within a circuit of about twelve miles about the residence of Bogda-Han. Great flocks of pigeons fly up in purple-blue clouds only when the stroller has almost walked them down; less charming birds show a similar lack of fear of man; in the low forest along the crest of the sacred mountain roam elk, wild pigs, deer, bears, wolves, some say even moose and reindeer, not to mention many smaller and more harmless animals. Yet there is something ominous rather than tranquil and inviting about the scene as a whole; the Elysian charm is sullied and broken by various repelling things, particularly by the inhuman Mongol method of disposing of the dead.

This consists simply, except in rare cases of reputed gods or demigods, of feeding the corpses of all to the dogs. There seems to benothing corresponding to a funeral service. Foreign residents say that formerly it was the custom to load the body on a two-wheeled cart and drive pell-mell across the hillocks until it fell off, the driver not daring to look back under penalty of having all the evil spirits which inhabited the dead man enter his own body. Others say they have sometimes seen a kind of procession of lamas and relatives follow the corpse to the hills and stand some little distance off watching its consumption. Certainly in the great majority of cases there is no more ceremony involved than in tossing garbage on the nearest dump. There are no fixed spots for depositing the bodies, but they are thrown hit or miss on the outer edges of the town, often right beside the main trails and especially in the shallow, verdureless gullies breaking up the wrinkled brown country about it.

One must be on the ground early after a death to find enough of the body left to recognize it as more than a broken skeleton. The big black dogs, covered with long shaggy hair, which dot the landscape everywhere in and about Urga, filling its streets with murderous-looking eyes that keep the pedestrian on the constant qui vive, have learned their task well from many generations of practice. The rapidity with which they can reduce what was a sentient, moving being the day before to a mere sprinkling of broken bones is astonishing. This doubly endears these loathsome beasts to the Mongols, for they believe that the more quickly a body is eaten the better man does this prove the deceased to have been in life. It is especial good luck and proof of unusual sanctity to see the body eaten by birds, but the dogs rarely leave their feathered rivals an opportunity thus to bear testimony to the character of the departed. The birds have their turn after the dogs have given up hope of deriving further benefit from their exertions, and finish off the job by cleaning out the skull and the other morsels for which a bill is needed.

There is nothing either hidden or sacred about these graveless graveyards. Any one may stroll through them, and find them quite as abandoned as any city dump-heap. Dog-nests made of the ragged quilted cloaks in which the bodies are carried out are the only conspicuous feature, except the skulls which lie about everywhere. I wondered at first that there were never any remains of the skeleton except widely scattered and broken bones, until I beheld a dog pick up a rib and carry it off to a comfortable spot on the hillside, there to sit down on his haunches, break it in two, and gnaw the last scrap of nourishment out of it. In the dry desert air the skulls quickly bleach snow-whiteand brittle; only here and there is one still “green” enough to be gray in color, so solid as to pain the toe that kicks it across the plain. These vast bone-yards are no place for the Westerner, living on his over-refined food, to spend the hour before an appointment with his dentist, for his envy of the full sets of perfect white teeth in almost every skull may become overwhelming.

It seems to be the idea of these putative Buddhists, the Mongols, and of their brethren, the Buriats and Kalmucks, who follow the same custom, that, since all living creatures are brothers, the least a man can do for his dumb fellow-beings is to bequeath them his useless body as nourishment—and thereby, of course, win merit that will improve his reincarnation. The Tibetans do likewise, except that they feed their mountain eagles or condors as well as their dogs, and prepare the food for the latter by mixing it with ground grain. Gruesome as the custom is, there is a thoroughness and promptitude about it which greatly outdoes the Christian mode of burial, a real and visible return of “dust to dust.” I know of no other means of disposing of the dead which gives the corpse so nearly its true value, none which leaves such a true sense of the worthlessness of human remains. Between this and the opposite extreme of an elaborate funeral followed by a showy mausoleum I am not sure but that I prefer the Mongol method.

To the Mongols themselves there is no more sanctity about their scattered bones than about any other form of rubbish. Shepherds or others whose calling brings them there wander or sit about the skull-strewn gullies quite as calmly as if they were in a field of daisies. Relatives seldom if ever come to pick up any of the remains; sometimes the rains wash broken bones down the gullies into the edge of town, where they lie until they are covered up with silt and disappear. Most of them simply disintegrate into the semi-desert soil about them. There is never a sign that the Mongol riding by feels any distress at the thought that some day these same surly black dogs that are tearing to pieces the corpse at the roadside will do the same for him. The tops of skulls, especially of higher lamas and men of standing, are sometimes used as drinking-vessels, or as oil-receptacles in the temples, and specially sainted thigh-bones make excellent whistles for use in ritualistic uproars; otherwise no one seems to have thought of the commercial possibilities of the bone-yards. Nor are these strange people, who might punish with death the stranger who forced his way into the presence of their living god, in the least sensitive about the possession of their remains. A high lama dropped in upon my hostone day and chanced to spy a skull-top that had just been presented by some native admirer. He picked it up, looked it over carefully, held it up to a light, and announced that the original owner had been a very good man, proof of which was the condition of the zigzag joints and the fact that the skull was so thin in one spot that the light showed rosy red through it. Perhaps, he added, as he laid it back on the bric-à-brac table and accepted a cigarette, it had been the skull of his good old friend Lama So-and-so.

If I may hazard a guess, it is that this to us gruesome custom has grown up among the Mongols because they are nomads. They cannot carry the graves of their ancestors with them, whereas the dogs will follow of their own accord. Their attitude toward these surly black beasts without owners, which roam the plains as well as make every street of Urga a gauntlet, bears out this impression. Though they are as quick as we to beat them off with any weapon when they get too aggressive, they deeply resent a serious injury to or the killing of one of them by a frightened foreigner. Yet the tendency of any Westerner would be to do just that; I know of few assignments that would give me more satisfaction than to lead a regiment to Urga and exterminate her swarming dogs. Most of them seem to have acquired the disease most prevalent among those they feed upon, and one feels that the slightest bite would prove fatal. Luckily they spend the day largely in sleeping and making love, so that the streets are not always as dangerous as they might be. But they easily gather in packs, and especially at night or during the long hungry winters they are a distinct menace not merely to women and children but to the hardiest men. They are really cowards, these man-eating dogs of Mongolia, as the shrinking look in their tigerish eyes when they are effectively threatened proves; yet they are so accustomed to human flesh that man is to them natural prey, and they seem to have developed a knowledge of human anatomy which tells them where to attack most effectively, as well as what tidbits to prefer when they are not especially hungry. Urga is full of stories of the inability of these ugly beasts to await the natural end of their predestined victims. A man making his way late at night across the noisome market-place outside our window had been dragged down and eaten during the past winter. By poetic justice, he was a lama. In the outskirts just back of one of the temple compounds a Buriat woman was pulled off her horse and devoured one cold winter day before those looking on could come to her rescue. A year or so before, a Russian colonel newly arrived dined late with friends, whoasked him as he left whether they could not give him an escort, or at least lend him a cudgel. No, indeed, replied the departing guest, a Russian officer could not be afraid; besides, he had his sword. Next morning the sword and a few buttons and rags were all that could be found of the colonel.

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