The Last Forbidden Land

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 514, 17 November 1928, Page 24

The Last Forbidden Land

Mysterious Tibet Ruled by a Man-God Still Presents Inhospitable Frontiers to Western World.

.Recent cables from Peking indicate that Soviet Russia is taking active steps to exclude Chinese and foreign trade from Tibet, a State under Chinese suzerainty, and that the Chinese Nationalists are contemplating political counter-measures. The Russians even now are said to be busy in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The following article, by Owen Lattimore, deals with conditions in Tibet, which is still a “Forbidden Land.”

| we think of the way

that Arabia has been penetrated, A f r i c ; opened up and the Arctic and Antarctic vannnißhprl anmotimp

i u appears as though no lands .>. i mystery are left with secrets for the adventurer to lay bare. Yet Tibet even in this age of shrunken dis tances, wide-ranging publicity am l swift communications, still holds a ! magic that captures the imagination | Above all the legendary sanctity o: j the Dalai Lama, its enigmatic ruler challenges the wonder of the busy j trafficking quarrelling, thronging world —the idea of a man-goden ! throned in barbaric glory in his tow l ering fortress-palace on the hill of the Potala, secluded in a wilderness higher than the tops of our mountains; a man-god whose soul, at his | death, is believed to appear again in

the body of a child. Paradoxically, we know more Tibet than we do of some more at cessible countries. We know e ffl of the chronicles of its early phe kings, and we know more of its war dering tribes, stone villages sue temple communities of fanatics monks than we do of Mongolia, - country more easily entered fro l every direction. In earler time there was not even the hostile distrust of strangers which we now takas a matter of course in considerinthe problems of Tibet. Two to»dred years ago the Capuchin Friarkept up a mission in the sacred cityi Lhasa itself, and they appear to h>’been driven out more by poverty tiaby the resistance of the Tibetan 15 What aroused the world’s inters in Tibet was the long struggle, dunrthirty or forty years of the century, when, one after anotto Russian, Swedish, American **jBritish explorers staked their count and their skill on the attempt to * their eyes on Lhasa. All of toe failed Tibetan resistance was down, and the world had a to s glimpse of its inner sanctuaries a.temples, when the Younghnstoexpedition, with a small British aL - Indiau force, fought its way to I®*=in 1904. Then the veils of seen*again were drawn. Since then * travellers (the famous Dr. McGof - among the number) have encroac an Tibet. Many travellers use the word l _ o describe what are really 1,0 * erritories or special regions, sue he Tsaidam or Kokonor country ,adakh. In these regions, boat - is often quite as difficult, ven more dangerous, than m iroper. jnKi Why is it that in modern 'ibet has fought valiantly to re 11 but impenetrable, while in last travellers and missionaries ered in comparatively large nu® nd with little danger? F nvasion and bitter memories ppression account for the he frontiers, as they do umours of renewed politic®* 1 ind brewing troubles that na cently been reported. f4 [i The women are not by any the leaders in the life of tn munity. As a rule the “ (Continued on Pa9 e ®