IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Across Asia : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
RECORDS OF THE JOURNEY
tained and accompany her to the house of the bridegroom. The bride rides a horse, wears her dowry and carries a suit, a cap and a pair of boots for her future husband. The parents of the bridegroom are not among the guests and the bride is not accompanied to her new home by her parents. On arrival she is received by some women, who lead her into a tent put up for the occasion. Her hair is plaited before she starts out. All the guests are entertained as well as possible by the father of the bridegroom. When the lama considers the moment propitious, the bridal pair is led in and kneels first before the altar and then before all the older people present. A sheep is killed and Chinese gin is drunk. The men are fond of drinking, but the women are not. The entertainment is usually so meagre that there are no real drinking bouts. On the following day the young couple visits the parents of the bride, bringing some small gift, such as a piece of cloth or a bottle of gin or whatever it may be.
Weddings are about the only festivals of the Yögurs. At New Year they prepare rather more food than usual, the wealthier men kill a sheep, but no guests are invited. They do not have any gatherings for religious festivals or sacrifices. The lamas only read prayers on the Ist and r5th of each month, because, they say, nobody ever attends the services.
There is a certain want of manliness among the men. Quite a number of them possess guns that are fired by means of a wick, but they do no shooting, nor do they indulge in games, wrestling, sports on horseback, races etc., like the Kirghiz and Kalmuks. Possibly this may be due to their poverty. The richest Sarö Yögur is said not to own more than 6 or 7 horses, io cows and roo sheep.
The lamas are ignorant of medicine. In case of illnsss they are called in to pray. In some cases the lama burns scraps of paper round the patient, but I could not obtain any explanation of the reason for this procedure. »It has to be so according to our teaching» was all the explanation I was vouchsafed I was told that the tribe had decreased greatly in numbers. They do not intermarry with the Chinese or the Tanguts, the so-called Khei Fan zu (black Fanzy). There is no polygamy, even if a marriage remains childless. Divorce is unknown.
To-day we rode in a NNE direction over the same slightly porous and very saliferous December 16th.
ground to the village of Yem-tzu along the highroad from Suchow to Kanchow. In the early Hua-chuang-
morning we saw a few cattle near the houses of the Yögurs. They were lean and small. My tzu village.
host, the lama Kua, had promised to accompany me to Jentche. He rode a pony, more like a large rat than a horse. It travelled at such a pace, however, that my big Philip with his bad leg was unable to keep up with it. The lama complained of the bad soil and the coarse grass that did not fatten the cattle, and it must be admitted that the grass is very coarse.
There was not a breath of wind, and I, who dislike cold weather in general, thought the morning was lovely, but the lama, a young man of 28, complained of the cold. Time after time he took my matches, dismounted and set fire to a clump of grass, over which he crouched for a time before he caught us up again. I really believe any one of their women would have been hardier. I asked him to sing something and he regaled me with the same »ovr» in indescribably dull and dreary tones.
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