CHAPTER XXXIV. ZANSKAR. CAMPING-GROUND-PADAM-SECLUSIONS OF ZANSKAR-ITS PEOPLE -AREA-ELEVATION-VALLEYS-A CURIOUS THEORY. AT Padam we were told to camp in a very unsuitable place half a mile from the town, among fields which next morning were flooded with water; but I would not do so, and found a delightful camping-ground about a quarter of a mile to the west of the town, on a fine grassy terrace under the shelter of an immense rock, which completely protected us from the wind. This capital of Zanskar may be called a town, or even a city, as matters go in the Himálaya, and was at least the largest village I had seen since leaving Shipki, in Chinese Tibet. It has a population of about 2000, and is the residence of a Thánadar, who governs the whole province as representative of the Maharaja of Kashmír, and who is supported by a small force of horse and foot soldiers. In the afternoon this Mohammedan official called, and presented a hazúr of Baltistan apricots, and said he would send a sowar or trooper with me to Súrú, in order to prevent any difficulty on the way. He was civil and agreeable, and was specially interested in my revolver; but I did not get much information out of him beyond learning that in winter the people of Padam were pretty well snowed-up in their houses; and, if that be the case there, at a height of only 11,373 feet, what must it be in the villages which are over 13,000 feet high? No province could be much more secluded than Zanskar is. The tremendous mountains which bound it, the high passes which have to be crossed in order to reach it, and its distance (both linear and practical) from any civilised region, cut it completely off from the foreign influences which are beginning to affect some districts of even the Himálaya. There is a want of any progressive element in itself, and its Tibetan - Búdhist people are in opposition to the influence of Mohammedan Kashmir. It yields some small revenue to the Maharaja; but the authority of his officers and soldiers in it is very small, and they are there very much by sufferance. Is is the same in the Tibetan portion of Súrú; but when I got over the long, wild, habitationless tract which lies between the Ringdom monastery and the village of Súrú, among a population who were more Kashmírí and Mohammedan than Tibetan and Búdhist, I found an immense change in the relations between the people on the one hand and the soldiers on the other. The former were exceedingly afraid of the soldiers, and the latter oppressed the people very much. as they pleased. There was nothing of that, however, visible in Zanskar, where the zemindars paid little respect to the soldiers, and appeared to manage the affairs of the country themselves, much as the zemindars do in other districts of the Himálaya which are entirely free from Mohammedan control. According to Cunningham, Zanskar has an area of 3000 square miles, and a mean elevation of 13,154 feet, as deduced from seven observations made along "the course of the valley;" but in no sense can it be correctly spoken of as one valley, for it is composed of three great valleys. Taking Padam as a centre, one of these runs up the course of the Tsarap Lingti which we have just descended; another, which we are about to ascend, lies along the upper Zanskar river, up towards the Pense La and Súrú; while a third is the valley of the Zanskar river proper, which is formed by the junction of the two streams just mentioned: these, when conjoined, flow in a nearly northern direction towards the upper Indus. In shape, this province is something like the three legs of the Manx coat of arms. Its greatest length must be nearly ninety miles, and its mean. breadth must be over fifty; but this gives no idea of what it is to the traveller who has to follow the course of the rivers and meets with difficult ground. It took me ten marches to get from one end of Zanskar to the other; and no one with loaded coolies could have done it in less than nine. Thornton, in his gazetteer of the countries adjacent to India, describes it as lying between lat. 33-34°, 30', and long. 76°-77°, 20'; and he says of it, "this region not having been explored by any European, little is known concerning it, except that it is drained by a large stream called the river of Zanskar, which, rising near Labrang, on the southern frontier, and holding a northerly course of nearly a hundred miles, receives several tributaries, and joins the Indus on the left side, about twenty-five miles below Leh." It must, however, have been pretty well explored since his time, for the Trigonometrical Survey have measured a number of stations in this province, and I understand that the reason why the routes through it have not been published is a rather uncalled-for fear that it might be exposed to an influx of travellers too great for its scanty resources. Cunningham translates the name Zanskar, or rather * 'Zangs-kar," as "white copper" or brass; but an * Emil Schlagintweit, in his 'Die Könige von Tibet' (aus den Abhandlung der k. bayer, Akademie der W. I. Cl., x. B. iii., p. 802, München, 1866), makes the following remarks on the meaning of this name :-"Ein enthusiastic Gaelic scholar suggests to me that it is the same as Sanquhar of Scotland, and has a similar meaning. This latter supposition may seem very absurd at first sight, Tibetan being a Turanian, and Gaelic an Aryan language; but his contention only is, that the names of innumerable places in Tibet and Tartary are identical with the local names of the Gaelic language; and for almost every Tibetan name I mentioned to him he found a Gaelic synonym, having a meaning which suited the character of the Tibetan localities very appropriately. I cannot do more than refer to this matter here, and the above is not sufficient evidence on which to build up a theory; but I should not be surprised if this view were borne out by a strictly scientific investigation of the subject, for it struck me forcibly before I left Zanskar that there must be some unknown relationship between the people of that province and the Scottish Highlanders. The sound of their language, the brooches which fasten their plaids, the varieties of tartan which their woollen clothes present, and even the features of the people (which are of an Aryan rather than a Tartar type), strongly reminded me of the Scotch Highlanders. The men had tall athletic forms, long faces, aquiline noses; and the garments of the women in particular presented many of the clan tartans, though the check was not so common as the stripe. Division of races and of languages have been employed of late to an unscientific extreme; but there is nothing improbable in the supposition that a particular · Beispeil der Verdünnung des Auslautes liefert der Name der provinz Zánkhar. Gewöhnlich Zangsmkhar geschrieben, Kupferfeste,' so auch findet sich zangsdkar Weiss-Kupfer' (so Cunningham) und bzang-khar 'gutes Fort.' Die verkurzte, Form Zang erklärt sich daraus, dass das s bei der Aussprache nicht gehört wird; dadurch kam eine neue Etymologie sehr leicht auf, von der wir für dieses Wort sogar noch ein weiteres Beispeil haben. Ich hatte bereits erwähnt dass es in meines Bruders Adolph Manuscripten zan-khar geschrieben steht." Himalayan tribe, of mixed Aryan and Turanian blood, speaking a mixed language which became almost entirely Aryan as they advanced, but preserving especially the local names of their Tibetan birthplace, with some peculiarities of dress and custom, may have pushed their way along the "Stony Girdle of the Earth" to the islands (if they were then islands) of the Western Sea. R and n being interchangeable, and as tartan is probably a word signifying crossing or weaving across, it is not absolutely impossible that tartan may have some relationship to Tartar, the name of the cloth being taken from that of the people who wore it. This is about as likely as the usual derivation of tartan from the French tiretaine; but it would be almost as unwarrantable to affirm it without some positive indication of its having been the case, as it would be to accept the derivation of an ingenious and learned friend who insists that the word tartan obtained its present application when the Assyrian General Tartan took Ashdod, and carried away the Egyptians captive in an imperfectly clothed condition, which must have made them bear a striking resemblance to Scotch Highlanders in their national costume. |