IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
244 THE ADVANCE TO LHASA
Amban and Tibetan officials had come to India on the
last occasion, it was natural that we should expect to
meet in 'Tibet on this. I added that when the Chinese
and Tibetan officials came to India we treated them as
our guests, as Mr. White, who was present at Darjiling,
could testify ; we provided houses, food, and transport for
them ; allowed them to have their own soldiers as escort ;
and took them down to Calcutta to visit His Excellency
the Viceroy. On the other hand, when Mr. White and I
arrived at Khamba Jong last year we were not even allowed
to buy supplies.
The 'Ta Lama said that what was meant by the
Khamba boundary was not the top of the mountains, but
the wall at Giagong. He did not deny that Tibetan
officials had been treated as guests at Darjiling, but he
said we did not realize the great expense the Tibetan
Government had incurred in transporting them to the
Indian frontier. I then asked the 'Ta Lama what reason
they had for originally starting this trouble, which after all
originated in their invasion of Sikkim in 1886. Why did
they send troops into the territory of a British feudatory
State ? We had lived for so many years without troubling
one another : why did they start a trouble which had lasted
up to the present time ?
He replied that they considered Sikkim to be a
feudatory of Tibet, and the Dalai Lama was accustomed
at that time to send orders to the Sikkim chief. I said
that they must surely have been aware of the treaty which
had been concluded more than twenty years previous to
the Tibetan invasion of Sikkim, between Sikkim and the
British Government, by which the former acknowledged
the suzerainty of the latter. If the Tibetans had had any
objection, the proper course would have been to make
representations at the time, and not twenty years after to
send troops into Sikkim.
As regards the treaty we now wished to make with
them, how would the negotiations be conducted ? I asked,
and who had the final authority in the State ? The Ta
Lama said that Councillors and secretaries and representa-
tives of the National Assembly would meet me and discuss
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