Indian Antiquary Vol 60

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 257

DECEMBER, 1931)
SCRAPS OF TIBETO-BURMAN FOLKLORE
227
of the larger ones, on which a great deal of sculptural effort has been expended, are expected to last a year, and are solemnly replaced at some annual festival."
6. Tea. "The corpse [of the pony) lay in the little stream (pp. 236, 237) which ran down from here to the village at the bottom of the valley. We later found the stream was the water supply for this village ; but the Tibetans are not at all fastidious in these matters, though they have a healthy dislike to drinking cold water, water being only drunk in the form of chang or tea, the preparation of which rendere it more or less safe. It is curious to find how in many cases popular superstitions have as their basis a certain amount of truth. The Tibetans regard tea as a preventive of typhoid and other forms of fover. The truth is, of course. that in order to prepare the tea they have to boil the water, thereby killing the germs."
7. Buttered Tea. "The tea is of a very coarse kind (p. 161). It is all imported, chiefly from China in the form of compressed bricks. As it is difficult to make leaves stick together, the tea is mixed with small quantities of yak-dung, which acts as a cement. A portion will be broken off a tea-brick and thrown into the water to boil. After it has bubblod for some time a huge mass of butter will be added, and at the same time a small quantity of soda and salt. This is thoroughly mixed, and then allowed to boil again for several minutes. Needless to say, the use of milk and sugar is unknown. Sometimes sheep's fat will take the place of butter. In any case the butter which is made from the yak's milk is invariably rancid. It is kept for months and even years before being used. As with us wine, so with the Tibetans butter is considered to be improved by age. This buttored tea is consumed in increasing quantities, and served as a food as well as drink."
Tea-bricks, though distinctly manufactured articles, have long been and are still [1892) used in precisely the same way as currency as is salt in many places, mulberries in Persia and sago in the Malay Archipelago, all about the borders of Burma. For numerous references as to the use of tea in bricks, see Indian Antiquary, XXVI, 285 f.
8. Cooking. « The natives (p. 75) of this part of the world [Sikkim) have a prejudice against meat cooked in any way except by boiling. They believe that roasted or grilled meat impedes the breathing when climbing mountains. The same notion in regard to roasted meat obtains in Tibet, I found out later, the nomads in particular having a prejudice against meat cooked in any other way than boiling."
In Burma " there is a particular objeotion to the smell of cookery, and when anything is fried in oil or prepared so as to produce a strong savour, it is always done to the leeward of the house, and where the fumes may not reach any other dwelling. Such smells are believed to be very productive of fever.” Shway Yoo, The Burman, 70. In large towns, like Mandalay, the use of oil in cooking is a frequent source of violent quarrelling.
VIII. MEASUREMENTS. .
1. Reckoning. "The Tibetans are extraordinarily bad (p. 228) at arithmetio, and find it impossible to add even the simplest problem of arithmetic in their heads. Pen-and-paper calculations are also almost unknown, so that they are forced to count either on their fingers, with little stones, or with beads. This last is the most common way, and nearly every Tibetan is possessed of a rosary, whioh he sometimes uses for .... his prayers and sometimes for secular purposes to add up his accounts. In the larger cities use is also made of the abacus, which is so frequently employed in China. Even with this aid the Tibetans find calculation very hard work, and it took our friends nearly an hour, squatting in the courtyard and fingering their beade, before they arrived at the sum which I had done in my head in a very