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and thrown into the stream.
EAST ASIA.
The finger joints are also often preserved and strung
in chaplets, while the bones of arms and legs are converted into trumpets for
summoning the lamas to prayer. The lamas themselves are always buried in a
sitting attitude, and the practice of delivering the bodies to wild beasts seems to
have disappeared from West Tibet. But it still flourishes at Kiangka, in the
province of Kham, where a butcher cuts up the body, and the vultures alight in
the midst of the crowd to gorge on the flesh, accompanying the monotonous tones
of the lamas with the flapping
of their wings and the snapping of their bills. Yet
there are few countries where the dead are held ia greater respect than in Tibet.
Grand feasts are celebrated in their memory, and all passers-by are invited to the
funeral banquets. At night the houses are illumined and bonfires blaze on the hill-
tops, while the temples, aglow with light, echo to the sound of cymbals and
hymns in honour of the departed.
According to the missionary Orazio della Penna, an official census made by the
" royal ministers " in the last century gave the population of Tibet as 33,000,000,
of whom 690,000 were under arms. But while quoting this statement Klaproth adds
that 5,000,000 would be, perhaps, nearer the truth. Behm and Wagner stop with
the officers of the Russian staff at 6,000,000, but only because this forms the mean
between the two extremes, 3,500,000 and 11,000,000, recently proposed by various
geographers. The population would thus amount to about 8 persons to the square
mile, but it is known to be very unequally distributed. The Khachi plateau is
almost uninhabited, and in the south-west province of Ilundes, or Nari (Ngari,
Gnari Khorsum), there are only a few scattered groups. Owing to its forests,
mountains, and inaccessible ravines, the eastern province of Kham is very
unequally inhabited, so that the population is concentrated chiefly in the two
southern provinces of Tsang and Wei (IT, Wi) along the Middle Tsangbo, and in
its lateral river valleys.
TOPOGRAPHY.
Daba and most of the so-called towns and villages in the Upper Satlaj valley
are abandoned during the winter season. Puling, the highest permanently
inhabited village in this part of Tibet, stands at an elevation of 13,800 feet above
the sea. Taapmng, like Daba capital of a district, and situated to the north-west
of this place at a height of 15,400 feet, and far above the head-waters of the Satlaj,
is also unoccupied for a part of the year, and in summer contains no more than
some fifteen dwellings. The fortress of Takla-khar, another district capital, lies
on the southern slope of the Himalayas, on the
right bank of the Map-chu, or
" Great River," the main branch of the Karriali of the Nepalese. The fort consists
of excavations and galleries hollowed out of a rock 830 feet high. It contains
large stores of supplies, and the corn deposited here for half a century is said to be
in perfect condition, thanks to the dryness of the air. West of Takla-khar stands
Sitling-gonpa, the largest monastery in Hundes, and noted throughout Tibet and
Nepal
for its immense wealth.
The Upper Indus basin, like that of the Satlaj, is almost uninhabited. Yet