GRUESOME TIBET.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4512, 8 January 1923, Page 3

GRUESOME TIBET.

EVEBEST CLIMBER’S REPORT. (By Capt. J. B. Noel.) Gyantse is one of the only three cities in Tibet At first you see only the Jong and its rock, but, approaching hearer and passing roupd the rock, you find the city and the huge monastery. Tiers of gompas and fine massive dwelling-houses of the Lamas', the lords of the land, terrace the hillside, and the whole is surrounded by a battlemented wall a. mile in circumference. At the Tibetan New Year is enacted at the Temple, the annual ceremony of purifying the city of the evils of the outgoing year. The Lamas produce a beggar man ,who is willing, through fanaticism and promise of eternal merit, to risk his life in the strangest of ceremonies. Naked, he clothes himself in the putrid entrails of anifaals, with the vile, bloofiy intestines ‘-coiled round his head, neck, arms, and body. He represents the evil, the disease, th? ill-luck, and the bad things of last year. He runs out of the Temple door, and the mad populace beat drums and blow trumpets to frighten away the devil in him. They hurl stones and beat the beggar with sticks. They chase him through the streets out into the open country, i? •he does not get killed'before !

HACKING THE DEAD.

After they have disposed thus of the troubles of . last year the people seek omens for good fortune ifi the coming year. Each man leads his pony to a •starting point outside the city. The ponies find their own way home without aiders, and those that make their way straight home bring good fortune with them. The most gruesome custom one can see at Gyantse is the disposal of the dead. At daybreak the body is carried to the crest of a low hill, a mile frpm the city. After a Lama has said prayer’s and incantations’ over the; naked corpse, the professional butchers slice the body up with knives, cutting off, separately, the legs and arms, and lastly the head. They hack and smash each member into pulp, on a rock with hatchets and th'row i,t to the vultures, which stand ■waiting only sft away. The birds consume every particle of the flesh and the crushed bone.