India and Tibet : vol.1 / Page 27 (Color Image)

0027	India and Tibet : vol.1

INTERCOURSE WITH TIBET 3

properly realized. Still less have they appreciated that

this contact between the countries means intercourse of

some kind between the peoples inhabiting them, even

though it has to be over a snowy range. The Tibetans

drew their religion from India. From time immemorial

they have been accustomed to visit the sacred shrines of

India. Tibetan traders have come down to Bengal,

Kashmiri and Indian traders have gone to Tibet. Tibetan

shepherds have brought their flocks to the pastures on the

Indian side of the range in some parts. In other parts

the shepherds from the Indian side have taken their sheep

and goats to the plateaux of 'Tibet. Sometimes the

Tibetans or their vassals have raided to valleys and plains

of India, sometimes Indian feudatories have raided into

Tibet. At other times, again, the intercourse has been of

a more pacific kind, and intermarriages between the

bordering peoples and interchanges of presents have taken

place. In a multitude of ways there has ever been inter-

course between '.Tibet and India. Tibet has never been

really isolated. And, as I shall in due course show, the

Mission to Lhasa of 1904,. was merely the culmination of a

long series of efforts to regularize and humanize that inter-

course, and put the relationship which must necessarily

subsist between India and Tibet upon a business-like and

permanently satisfactory footing.

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