The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu [45]
'Hmm ... I see. But have you yourself managed to get into Thibet?'
'Yes, Mr Holmes. The native has a few advantages in this respect. That is why the Department employs natives for conducting explorations and investigations in places like Thibet; especially from among those races living near the Thibetan frontier.
'I myself travelled to Thibet in the guise of a holy man, a pundit, but unfortunately aroused the suspicions of the authorities half-way to Lhassa, at the town of Shigatse, where the great monastery of the Teshoo Lama1 is located. The Manchu officer of the small Chinese garrison there was one of the most unpleasant representatives of the Celestial Empire I have ever had occasion to encounter. The blighter would have beheaded me on mere suspicion — dam' his eyes!
'By Jove, Mr Holmes, you will appreciate the irrevocability of my position, but at the eleventh hour I was saved from the executioner's sword by the mother of the Teshoo Lama, whom I had earlier cured of a mild dyspepsia with an effervescent draught of my own preparation. The pious lady sent a large bribe to the officer in question, which fortuitously relieved him of most suspicions concerning my status and activities. But I was forced to curtail my explorations and retire posthaste, to Darjeeling. So you see, Sir, a visit to Thibet is not all beer and skitties, as they say. Besides, what with the altitude, snow-storms, wild animals, bandits and what not — it can all be very trying.'
'Well, Hurree, you have certainly made the perils of a Thibetan journey clear enough. But one must cross one's bridges when one gets to them. For the present I will, with your invaluable guidance, confine my explorations to the complexities of the Thibetan language.'
So I commenced giving daily lessons to Mr Holmes. He was an admirable pupil, and had an unusually sensitive ear for the subtle tonal inflections in the language, which generally drove most Europeans to despair. For instance, the Thibetan 'la' could mean a mountain pass, an honorific suffix tagged to a person's name, a god, a musk deer, wages, to lose something, or even one's soul, all depending on the exact tonal inflection used when pronouncing it.
Sherlock Holmes also found no difficulty in the usage of honorifics, for the Thibetan language is not one language but three: ordinary, honorific, and high-honorific. The first is used towards the common people; the second towards gentlemen; and the third towards the Dalai Lama. One may think that these distinctions are merely a question of prefixes and suffixes. But that is not the case at all: even the roots of the corresponding words in each often have no relation to one another.
But I will not burden my readers with any further digression into the subtleties of the Thibetan language, for such a subject can only be of interest to a specialist. Nevertheless, for those readers who would like to know more about the Thibetan language I can recommend my Thibetan for the Beginner (Re 1), published by the Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, and the Grammar of Colloquial Thibetan, (Rs 2.4 annas) by the same publisher.
1. Probably
1. The monastery of Tashi-lhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. Early European travellers to Tibet and writers mistakenly referred to the Panchen Lama as the Teshoo' lama or the 'Tashi' lama, after the monastery.
9
A Pukka Villain
Runnymeade Cottage was just outside Chota Simla. Behind the cottage was a mule track which, seven miles beyond Chota Simla, led to the Hindustan-Thibet (or H-T) road. Sometimes our