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
SIGNIFICANT CHINESE APPOINTMENT 363
prehensive schemes for all the measures to be undertaken 4. in Tibet, and to draft Regulations. The officials should
receive liberal salaries, and be generously rewarded for
meritorious service. They should all be permitted to bring 14 their . families with them, and would be required to hold
their appointments for long periods. To meet the I necessary expenditure, the Board of. Finance was to
provide a sum of from 400,000 to 500,000 taels every year h in order to aid in this important undertaking, and the lit Viceroy of Szechuan was to give his assistance when til required, even beyond the limits of his own jurisdiction.
Sir John Jordan, as events have proved, was amply
justified in drawing attention to the significance of this appointment of Chao Erh-feng. He was a man of both ability and energy, but also of severity. His dealings with the semi-independent States of Eastern Tibet will be related in the following Chapter. Here it is important to
~1 emphasize the facts that he was turning these States one
after another into districts directly administered by Chinese officials, and that he was making a special set against Lamaism *—regulating the numbers who might become priests, curtailing the donations to monasteries, increasing the taxes they had to pay, prohibiting the construction of temples except by Chinese officials, and declaring the inefficacy of the Lama's prayers—excellent reforms in many ways, but when carried out with the severity with which Chao was introducing there in Eastern Tibet, inevitably calculated to arouse anger and suspicion at Lhasa.
Following the appointment of this high-handed Viceroy bearing a special mandate to " reform " the Government of Tibet appeared anti-British articles in a Lhasa newspaper,t
published by the Chinese officials and circulated throughout Tibet. The Tibetans were exhorted not to be afraid of Chao and his soldiers ; they were not intended to do harm to Tibetans, but to other people." The Tibetans were to remember how they felt ashamed when the foreign soldiers arrived in Lhasa, and oppressed them with much tyranny. Chinese and 'Tibetans must all strengthen themselves on this account ; otherwise their common religion
* See especially p. 373. f Blue-book, IV., p. 178.
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