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The Open Court

Founded by Edward C. Hegeler

Editors: GUSTAVE K. CARUS ELISABETH CARUS

SECOND MONOGRAPH SERIES OF

THE NEW ORIENT SOCIETY OF AMERICA

NUMBER TWO

CENTRAL AND RUSSIAN ASIA

EDITED BY

BERTHOLD LAUFER

Published

Monthly : January, June, September, December

Bi-monthly : February-March, April-May, July- August, October-November

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 337 EAST CHICAGO AVENUE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Subscription rates : $3.00 a year, 35c a copy, monograph copies, 50c

Entered as Second-Class matter March 26, 1887, at the Post Office at Chicago. Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.

CDl'VUIGlll

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.

1933

CONTENTS

Preface 65

Berthold Lanfer

Tibet 67

Sven Hediii

Chinese Turkistan 97

Owen Lattiuwre

Russian Asia 1 20

/. A. Lopatin

RUSSI/

5IA

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. View of a side glen, Tibet Frontispiece

2. The bridge between Chaga and Pindsoling, Tibet 79

3. The Targo-gangri to the northwest from Camp 150, Tibet 91

4. Urumchi from a temple on the hill, Chinese Turkistan 10.)

5. A Kazak family group, Chinese Turkistan 106

6. Kirghiz weaving. Near Sanju. Chinese Turkistan Ill

7. Caravan master and camels in snow. Chinese Turkistan 114

8. A typical old Goldi, Siberia 123

9. Goldi woman with huge earrings and a nose ring. Siberia 126

10. A Goldi in full equipment for winter hunting. He has a long spear in his right hand and a gun in the left. On the ground can be seen his skis and a small spear. The dog is tied to a strap. Siberia 127

11. An Orochc in full equipment for winter hunting, Siberia 123

THE NEW ORIENT IN BOOKS I

The Origin and Development of the State Cult of Confucius. By John K.

Shrvock. Publication of the American Historical Association. New York.

The' Century Co. Pp. xiv + 298. Price $4.00.

While matiy scholars have written on the doctrines of Confucius, there has not been an adequate account of the origin and development of the cult. Mr. Shryock has here collected complete and adequate historical sources which consist, for the most part, of imperial edicts and records in the tem- ples. He has followed the development of the cult from its origin in the Han period (before this only the K'ung family offered sacrifices) when sacrifices to the sage were ordered in the schools, through the various periods to the revolution, "1911-1927. The state no longer seems vitally interested in the cult. Yet for 2,400 years Confucius has been a model for men — "a teacher of ten thousand generations."

Religion in Various Cultures. By Friess and Herbert W. Schneider. New York. Henry Hok and Co. 1932. Pp. xxiv + 598. Illustrated. Price $5.00. This book presents a general survey of the most significant material, gathered from many sources, on religion in its relation to various cultures. After describing some of the religions in primitive cultures, the authors re- present in full Shintoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism from the Far East, and the Greek, Jewish and Christian religions of the West. Their aim has been to stress the significance of these religions at dift'erent times and places and to clarify their role in the life and organization of particular cultures. The excellent exposition as well as the many unusual illustrations make the book most interesting.

Daily Meditation or the Practice of Repose. By Dhan Gopal Mukerji. New

York. Button & Co. Pp. 40. Price 90c.

Mr. Mukerji here sets forth in detail the technique of meditation; the meditation which brings repose, and also that which brings the individual into closer harmony with the Infinite. In closing he remarks, "At the present time the Oriental thinks he lives by it. Can the modern American do without it?"

The Orient in American Transcendentalism. By Arthur Christy. Columbia University Press. New York, 1932. Pp. xx + 382. ($4.00). This is a study and an analysis of Oriental thought in Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. The task set by the author was "to tell why the Concord men read the Orientals and to what end; and most important of all, the sources from which they took Oriental ideas and ornamentation for some of the classic pages of American literature." Mr. Christy has had access to the li- braries used by them and to some unpublished material.

After a general introduction, the book is divided into three parts, Emer- son and the Over-Soul, Thoreau and Oriental Asceticism, and Alcott the Propagandist. In conclusion there is an appreciation of the Transcendental- ists by Orientals. A Hindu has written that Emerson translated the wis- dom of Ancient India into "the language of modern culture." And it is from Thoreau that Mahatma Ghandi "has taken much of his philosophy of civil disobedience."

THE NEW ORIENT SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The New Orient Society of America is now completing its first year, and and it can look back upon a successful time during a difficult economic period. At the annual meeting of November 18, the following Officers and Directors were elected :

PROFESSOR JAMES H. BREASTED Honorary President

■ Director Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

DR. BERTHOLD LAUFER Honorary Vice-President

Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois

PROFESSOR WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD President

Columbia L'niversity, New York, N.Y.

MR. JOHN PAYNE KELLOGG Treasurer

MISS CATHERINE COOK Secretary

BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

PROFESSOR JAMES H. BREASTED :\IR. EDWIN H. CASSELS

MR. HENRY FIELD MR. JOHN PAYNE KELLOGG

DR. BERTHOLD LAUFER PROFESSOR A. T. OLMSTEAD

PROFESSOR MARTIN SPRENGLING

Six monographs, listed below, have been published. During 1933 we will publish the second series of six monographs as special numbers of The Open Court. These monographs will deal with various cultural aspects of the New Orient, and will be edited by leading American scholars.

FIRST MONOGRAPH SERIES PUBLISHED BY THE OPEN COURT

January, 1932. The Heritage of July, 1932. Syria-Palestine.

Western Asia F.dited by Professor A. T. Olmstead,

Edited by Professor Martin Sprengling, University of Lnicago.

University of Chicago.

March, 1932. The Heritage of September, 1932. Egypt,

Eastern Asia Edited by Professor Halford L. Hoskins,

Edited by Professor A. E. Haydon, De- Department of History, Tufts College,

partment of Comparative Religion, Uni- Massachusetts, versity of Chicago.

May, 1932. Modern Turkey. December, 1932. Arabia.

Edited bv Professor A. II. Lybyer, Uni- Edited by Professor Martm Sprengling.

versity of Illinois. University of Chicago.

SECOND MONOGRAPH SERIES TO BE PUBLISHED DURING 1933

January, 1933. Persia. July, 1933. India.

Edited by Professor Arthur Upham Edited by Professor Walter E. Clark.

I'oi-c, Director of the Persian Institute. Department of Sanskrit, Harvard Uni-

March, 1933. Central and Russian versity.

Edited by Dr. Rcrthold Laufer, Curator, October, 1933. China.

Department of Anthropology, Field Mu- F.dited by Dr. Berthold Laufer, Field

seum of Natural History, Chicago. Muscvun of Natural History.

May, 1933. Japan. n^rtm'L't^'ofi^Xfn?"'.?'''' ^^"^n'-°^^ December, 1933. Northern Africa.

partment ot Political Science, Univer- sity of Chicago.

Those who are desirous of becoming members of the New Orient Society of America are invited to apply for particulars of purposes and privileges of membership to the Secretary, CATHERINE F.. COOK.

The New Orient Society of America

337 E. CHICAGO AVE. CHICAGO

The Open Court

Volume XLVII (No. 2) March, 1933 Number 921

NEW ORIENT SOCIETY MONOGRAPH : SECOND SERIES NUMBER TWO

CENTRAL AND RUSSIAN ASIA PREFACE

BY BERTHOLD LAUFER

TN PLANNING this monograph it has been my aim to secure the ■*■ good offices of the best Hving authorities on the three countries which are here represented. I was particularly fortunate in obtain- ing the collaboration of Dr. Sven Hedin while he resided in Chicago last year, supervising the erection of the Jehol Lama temple on the grounds of the Century of Progress. Dr. Sven Hedin, incontestably the greatest geographical explorer of Tibet of all times, past and present, has devoted his lifetime to science and research with a stupendous productivity in books and maps to his credit, all of per- manent value. No one is more qualified than he to write on Tibet, which is his second home. In the sketch here presented he has out- lined with the hand of a master a magnificent fresco painting, trac- ing the development in the exploration and opening of the land of mysteries, characterizing its geographical features, surveying its history, setting forth and interpreting its hierarchical system with the complex machinery of this priest-government and its relations to China. India, and England.

Mr. Owen Lattimore, author of The Desert Road to Turkistan, High Tartary, and Manchuria Cradle of Conflict, has extensively traveled in northern China, Manchuria, and Chinese Turkistan, and has studied political and social conditions with an open mind and keen observational power. His sketch of present-day Chinese Turkistan is a brilliant and penetrating analysis of intense interest. One of his statements that furnishes food for reflection is that al- though the currency of the country is worthless, yet its economic condition is remarkably steady, compared not only with China proper but with almost any country in the world and that although back- ward in every respect, it is probably more stable and contented than any region of equal area in the world. The latest news from Turki-

66 THE OPEN COURT

Stan is that it seeks complete independence from Chinese sovereignty ; Mr. Lattimore's article gives a clear answer to the why of this movement.

Mr. Lopatin is a young and energetic Russian ethnologist, now living and studying in this countr}-. He has successfully explored the Goldi and Tungusian tribes of the Amur region, and has pub- lished many scientific monographs. The vivid picture that he un- rolls here before our eyes of the transformation of Russian Asia under Soviet rule will be especially welcome at this moment when our Government seems to be determined to grant official recogni- tion to the U.S.S.R.

I wish to express my warmest thanks to the three eminent scholars for their excellent contributions to this monograph.

A chapter to be devoted to Mongolia was scheduled in the original plan for this monograph. The subject, however, proved too large to be included here. Both Dr. Hedin and Mr. Lattimore have briefly touched on ]\Iongolian problems, and in the monograph pertaining to China the editor will discuss modern cultural movements among the Mongols.

TIBET

BY SVEN HEDIN

NOT BEFORE the middle of the thirteenth century did the first knowledge of the existence of a country called Tibet reach Europe. At least 1500 years earlier the people of India had some scanty notions of Tibet which, however, chiefly consisted of epic songs, legends, and tales of Mount Kailas and the sacred Lake Manasarovar. In the Buddhistic world system Mount Meru or Sumeru rises like a venerable Olympus from the axis of the earth and forms the center and foundation of the universe. But only as glimpses or mere names do the eternal mountains of Himalaya, Meru and Kailas, and Lake Manasarovar light up the interminable and dull stories of the Ramayana and other sacred scriptures of the In- dians. In the Bhagavata and Vayu Purana eight mountains are enum- erated of which Humboldt and Ritter recognized the Altai, Mustagh or T'ien-shan, Kunlun, and Himalaya. The farther north, east, and west from the sacred mountain and lake, the more foggy and fictitious became the knowledge about Tibet in Indian antiquity. This is quite natural, for Manasarovar was probably, already in a very remote antiquity, an important "tirtha," and the pilgrims wan- dered to its shores to bathe in the sacred waters, as they still do, persuaded as they are that the sacred Kailas is Siva's paradise and the abode of gods. The sacred lake was supposed to give rise to four great rivers, among them the Indus and the Sutlej.

Both Lake Alanasarovar and Mount Kailas are sacred to the Tibetans as well as to the Hindus. In Tibetan the mountain is called Kang Rimpoche and is surrounded by four monasteries ; the lake is called Tso Mapang and is surrounded by eight monasteries.

Herodotus who had heard of the great gold production of India does not mention the existence of mountains in this part of Asia. But he has heard the strange story about the gold-digging ants which has been so much discussed and so well explained by Laufer.

An immense step forward in geographical knowledge was made by Alexander and his generals which embraced the land of the Paro- pamisadae or Kabulistan and India to the Ganges. Himalaya was called Emodus and regarded as a part or rather continuation of the Paropamisus or Indian Caucasus. All writers agree in placing the sources of the Indus in the Emodus. Eratosthenes (born 276 B.C.)

68 THE OPEX COURT

believed that a great range, under ditlerent names in ditterent sec- tions, Taurus. Paropamisus, and Imaus, traversed the whole of Asia from west to east. Strabo describes the mountain range that served as a boundary of India to the north. His geographical knowledge is remarkable for his time. He places the source of the Indus not far above the Ganges and mentions its tributaries. It took centuries be- fore Europe acquired such a correct conception of the hydrography of India as that given by Strabo. Pliny's hydrography is not as good as that of the Greek geographers, who knew India and the moun- tain barrier to the north, but never had heard a word about Tibet.

The greatest among the ancient geographers was Ptolemy, who used the best sources of his time (about a.d. 160). His repre- sentation of the Indus, Sutlej, and Ganges is wonderful. On maps of 1800 the source of the Sutlej is not improved on Ptolemy.

Tibet was called by Arabic geographers Tobit or Tobbat. The greatest. Masudi (died 956), tells a good deal about Tibet. Ista- kri and Ibn Haukal also mention Tibet. Alberuni has even heard of Lake Manasa, but he derived his information from the Puranas. He places the source of the Jehlum and Ganges in the same moun- tain range behind which China is situated, but the Indus comes from another range in Turkish territory. Idrisi (born 1100) tells both of the mountains and rivers. His and the other Arabs' Tibet is in reality identical with Ladak. Abulfeda (born 1273) mentions Tobbat, but only quotes Istakri. Like most other travelers and geographers, Ibn Batuta (1304-77) avoided Tibet, the inaccessible country beyond the mountains. Of the Indus he says that "it is the greatest river in the world," and of the mountains of Kamru, north of Bengal: "These are extensive mountains, and they join the mountains of Tibet, where there are musk -gazelles. The inhabitants of these mountains are, like the Turks, famous for their attention to magic." Sherefeddin from Yesd (died 1446), the historian of Tamerlane, mentions Tibet in his Zafar Xauia or Book of \*ictory. Tamerlane, who had drenched lialf Asia in l)lood, did not care for the uninhabited country north of India, Imt he i)r()l)al)lv knew some- thing about it; for he sent special cxin'ilitinns and scouts all over the interior of .\sia. In his autol)iograiih\ ihc s^rcat I'-alicr ( 1482- 1530) makes a short reference to the mountains in the north,

Mirza Ilaidar. who in 1533 was sent by the Khan of Yarkand upon a campaign against Ursang (Lhasa) to destroy the temples and their idols, is tiu- first reliable traveli-r t'rom Leh along the up-

TIBET 69

per Indus and the np]ier 1 Brahmaputra. He mentions a lake that must be Manasarovar.

It is surprising that the great Shah Akbar knew so little about Tibet. His historians and geographers had a very detailed knowl- edge of the tributaries of the Indus, but the source of the main river they placed either "between Kashmir and Kashgar" or "in China." As to the mountains north of India, the old Hindu orogra- phy was adopted. In Shah Jahangir's time Tibet embraced only Baltistan and Ladak. Himalaya was called the mountains of Jam- mu and Kangra. On European maps of the same time Himalaya was called "the mountains of Nagracot."

The first European to mention Tibet (Ruri-Tabet) was Friar John of Pian de Carpine who started from Lyons in 1245 and de- livered a letter from the Pope to Kuyuk Khan.

Of much greater importance was the journey of the Flemish Franciscan, William of Rubruk, who started in 1252 and returned three years later. He made a series of great geographical discover- ies and was the first to describe the Lamas, their temples, ritual, living Buddhas, their use of the prayer-wheels and of the famous formula Om mani padmc liuiu. He found out the true peculiarities of writing of Tibetan and other languages. Even the animals did not escape his keen observation, and he is the first to tell us of the wild ass or kiang of Tibet, and of the wild sheep which later on became so celebrated with Marco Polo's name (Oz'is poll).

In his admirable narrative the great Alarco Polo mentions Tibet three times. He traveled through Asia in 1273 and remained in China for some twenty years. His account is the first reliable one on Tibet ever written by a European. As he approached much nearer to the inaccessible country than Pian de Carpine and Rubruk, and probably got information from natives on the trade route between Tibet and western China, he has more to tell of the inhabitants, their customs, and their country. Though he visited only the eastern borderland, his description of Tibet is in many respects very characteristic, and certain portions of it could well have been writ- ten in our own days. He knew that Tibet was a new country of verv great extent, embracing eight kingdoms, subject to the Great Khan, a fact that was completely unknown to cartographers even some four hundred years later.

It is curious that Alarco Polo does not mention the Himalayas or the Kunlun, though he traveled along the northern foot of the

70 THE OPEN COURT

latter from Kashgar to Lop. But he knew that Tibet contained lakes in several sections. He told something of corals, woolens, en- chanters, and astrologers, mastiff dogs and musk, all things that agree with later observations. He even observed that the Tibetans used salt instead of money, which now, six hundred and seventy years later, is still the case. W'lien Alarco Polo speaks of Tibet, he does not mean Ladak and Baltistan as do nearly all other travelers, even four hundred years after his time ; for he had come in contact witli Tibetans in western Szechuan, and he knew that it bordered upon Kashmir and that it was subject to the Great Khan.

From the year 1328 we have to remember Friar Odoric di Por- denone who had nothing of ]\Iarco Polo's perspicacity or intelli- gence. Even such great experts on Asiatic exploration as Klaproth and Sir Henry Yule accepted him as being the first European who ever traversed the whole of Tibet and reached Lhasa. His kingdom of Rybot or Tybot was supposed to be Tibet proper, for he tells us that the inhabitants live in black tents, their capital is very beauti- fully built of white stone and the streets well paved. Its name is Gota. It is forbidden to shed blood of human beings or animals by reason of an idol who is worshiped there. There lives their obassy or pope. Then follows the old story of the treatment of the dead, the head being cut off the dead father and given to the son who eats it, while the body is cut to pieces and given to eagles and vul- tures. Regarding Odoric's narrative, however. Dr. Laufer has ar- rived at the following conclusion : . "Odoric of Pordenone has never traversed Tibet proper, has never been at Lhasa — a feat with which he has been unduly credited for so long a time, and to which he himself lays no claim." Odoric's definition of Tibet "which is on the confines of India proper" indicates that he means Ladak, and his Gota may indicate koffa or k^t which means "fort" or "castle," a term widely spread in the western Himalayas.

The East India travelers of the seventeenth century practically knew nothing about Tibet. In 1610 William Finch had heard of Kashmir and Kashgar and the musk trade and that "u]ion these mountains keeps a small king called Tibbot." J. 1*. Travcrnier also found out that the best musk comes from the kingdom of P)hutan (Tibet), wliich is situated "beyond the Ganges towards the north." Thevenot, in 1666, knew that Kashmir had "to the east a part of Tibet," and to the north Tartary. In the seventeenth century Ptolemy was still regarded as the greatest authority on these re-

TIBET 71

gions. Even after the journeys of Andrade and Grueber and Dor- ville, the mysterious country remained hidden behind impenetrable clouds and insurmountable mountains.

None of these European travelers had ever heard the name of the famous lake Manasarovar. The first who mentioned it was Father Antonio Monserrate (1536-1600) who called it Mansariior and even offered a small map of the lake. Much later (1638), Johann van Twist has some notion of Purbet (Kailas), Jankenck- haer (Sutlej), and Maseroor (Manasarovar). Walter Schouten, who traveled 1658-65, speaks of "a great sea" Massrout, which he identifies with the Black Sea ! Later on it happened that Manasaro- var was confounded with Koko-nor, and Lago di Chiamay, that for a hundred years was shown northeast of India on all European maps, is certainly nothing but the famous Lake Manasarovar.

European exploration in Tibet had a brilliant start through the wonderful journey of the Portuguese Jesuit, Father Antonio de Andrade, the founder of the first Catholic mission in Tibet. His journey to Tsaparang or Chaprang on the Sutlej and the ten years of missionary work at that place have been ably recited by C. Wes- sels, who also has rediscovered a score of other missionaries to Tsaparang and other parts of Tibet. It would take us too far to mention them all. In 1624 Andrade and Alanuel Marques crossed the Mana Pass and arrived at Tsaparang. During his second stay in that city 1625 Andrade heard of the great country Utsang, and the next year the two Jesuit missionaries Cacella and Cabral were sent to Tibet. In the beginning of 1627 they went to Bhutan. Ca- cella continued to Shigatse. In 1628 Cabral joined him. The same year Cabral returned to India by way of Nepal to Katmandu, he being the first European to set foot in this Himalayan state. He regarded Shigatse as "the gate to the whole of Tartary, China, and many other pagan countries." Cacella also returned to India, and on his way back to Tibet died at Shigatse in 1630. After a visit in Shigatse by Cabral the L^tsang ]\Iission was given up. Thus, this early Jesuit mission had entered Tibet by three roads. The geo- graphical results were meagre, for these missionaries crossed the highest mountain system in the world without having a word to say about it.

The journey undertaken (1661-62) by the two Jesuit fathers, Grueber and Dorville, from Peking by way of the Koko-nor through Tibet to Lhasa and thence to India was a brilliant achievement for

12 THE OPEN COURT

its time. They were the first Europeans who ever reached the capi- tal of Tibet. Though Father Gerbillon, who in 1688-98 made several journeys in eastern ^Mongolia, never was in Tibet himself, the de- scription he gives of the roads from Koko-nor to Lhasa is much better than that of Father Grueber. Gerbillon tells more of the gigantic mountains and the accentuated plastic features of the high- lands than Grueber. The French Jesuit, friend of the great em- peror K'ang-hi, heard that the Dalai Lama resided in a palace on a mountain, Poutala. "At the foot of this mountain one sees a rather great river flowing, which is called Kaltjou muren. It is said to be a very nice place, and in the middle of the mountain is the pagoda with its seven stories."

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the scientifically trained Jesuits in Peking accomplished the famous imperial map of China. The order to make this work was given in 1708 by the emperor K'ang-hi. The Jesuits Bouvet, Regis, Jartoux, Fridelli, Cardosa, IMailla, and Henderer undertook the work. After long preparations the emperor ordered two Lamas to make a map of the countries subject to the Great Lama from Sining to Lhasa and thence to the sources of the Ganges. In 1717 the material of the Lamas' survey was delivered to Father Regis, who found it good and mapped it out into three sheets. In 1773 these were pub- lished in Paris by D'Anville. Some parts of these maps are rather good, others are far from reality. We find Mount Kailas and Lake Manasarovar, and they had gained the erroneous idea that the Ganges originated there. Mount Everest is to be found under its Tibetan name Chomo-lungma. The source of the Tsangpo-Brahma- putra is far better than Nain Sing's a hundred and fifty vears later.

At the same time European missionaries were at work in Tibet. In 1707 and 1709 Cai)uchin missionaries founded a station at Lhasa, and in 1716 three more arrived. Half a year before their arrival the most brilliant and intelligent of all missionaries in Tibet, Ip- l)nlit(t l)csi(lcri, had made his entrance into the holy city. Accom- panied by luuanuel l<"rcyrc, he started from Ladak in June, 1715, and as the first luu-opcan traveled along the upper Indus to Mana- saro\ar and then in the Aalley of the Tsangpo to Lhasa. Desidcri remained '(^\i:: years in Tibet and left Lhasa in AimmI, 1721. He was the last missionarv of the Jesuits in Tiliet.

Dr. De I'"ilip])i has just piilih'shcd Dcsideri's inanuscri])ts with an inln i(hu'ti(in b\ ('. W'essels. llcre full inslico has l)ccn done to

TIBET IZ

this admirable Jesuit father who knew "the wide plains called Ciang Tang (Chang-tang), Trescij-Khang (Tashi-kang), Cartoa (Gar- tok), Mount Ngnari-Giongar (Kailas), and the plain, Retoa, with a great lake, of which Desideri says: "It is believed to be the source of the Ganges. But from my own observation and from what I heard from various people who knew this country and the whole of Mogol, it seems that the above mentioned mountain Ngnari-Gion- gar (Kailas) must be regarded as the fountain-head not only of the river Ganges, but also of the Indus, Mount Ngnari-Giongar being the highest point of this region the water drains off on two sides." He tells us that the Indus drains to the west. "On the eastern side another large body of water flows into Lake Retoa and eventually forms the river Ganges." There is such a river falling into the lake, though Desideri could not see it in the beginning of December.

Desideri is the first European traveler who ever visited Mana- sarovar, as he is also the discoverer of Mount Kailas and tells about the korle or "pilgrimage" around the sacred mountain. He started the controversy about the location of the source of the Indus, and his own view comes very near the truth. He is also the first who ven- tilated the question as to the source of the Ganges. He was told that the sacred river originated from the Manasarovar, but in his own opinion it was situated on the Kailas and then entered the lake, a problem which he could not solve as he did not go sufficiently far south and southeast. At the same time the Lamas confounded the Sutlej with the Ganges. Desideri discovered the water-parting between the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra in Maryum-la, and he is the first European to follow the Tsangpo from Maryum-la to Chetang. His description of the people of Tibet and its religion is surprisingly clear and correct.

On his w'ay to Kutti he crossed "the high and difficult moun- tain called Langur." Wiser than other travelers of the time, who be- lieved that the mountain sickness was due to exhalations from poisonous plants or minerals, Desideri gives an excellent description of his symptoms and says, "Many believe such discomforts are caused by exhalations from some minerals in the bowels of the mountains, but as until now no trace of these minerals has been dis- covered, I am inclined to think the keen penetrating air is to blame ; I am the more persuaded of this because my chest and breathing became worse when I met the wind on the top of Langur."

74 THE OPEX COURT

For a hundred years after Desideri no European, as far as we know, visited the sacred lake and the region of the sources of the great rivers. In 1812 \\'iniam ^Moorcroft made his interesting jour- ney to the lakes and stated that no river flowed out of ^Slanasarovar and Rakas-tal.

In the following years the region was visited by James B. Fraser, Alexander Gerard, J. D. Herbert, Francis Hamilton, and Henry Strachey (1846), who found no superficial effluence from Rakas- tal, but a stream a hundred feet broad and three feet deep going out of Manasarovar and emptying itself in Rakas-tal. In 1848 Richard Strachey traveled to the lakes and found an effluence from Mana- sarovar to Rakas-tal.

Alexander Cunningham, the brothers Schlagintweit, and many other travelers have visited these parts of Tibet. About 1861, Captain T. G. ]\rontgomerie began to send pandits, British subjects, who were trained for exploration, into the unknown parts of Tibet. One of the most famous of these, Xain Sing, went to Lhasa through central Tibet and through the whole valley of the Tsangpo, the same road as Desideri. From their reports Montgomerie published excellent narratives and maps.

In 1897-1903 the Japanese priest, Ekai Kawaguchi, made his in- teresting journey through southern Tibet. He says that all Euro- peans who have visited Manasarovar represent it too small. In reality, he says, its circumference is about 200 miles, though as a matter of fact it is only 45 miles. He also says that the Rakas-tal is the higher of the two lakes, though Manasarovar in reality is thir- teen meters higher than Rakas-tal.

In 1904 four British officers, i\Iajor C. H. D. Ryder, Captain C. G. Rawling, Captain H. Wood, and Lieutenant F. M. Bailey, traveled the same way from Lhasa to Manasarovar as Desideri, though in opposite direction. Ryder found "the lakes being now en- tirely disconnected at all times of the year from the Sutlej river," and he therefore places the source of the Sutlej in the hills west of the lake.

In 1907 T readied the sources of the Tsangpo-r>rahmaputra and the Indus and located the source of the .Sutlej aj')pr(~)Nimately. At that time there was no connection between the two lakes, nor were they connected with the Sutlej. but in 1*^11 T received information that water again flowed from the Manasarovar to the Rakas-tal, but not from the l.'ittcr to tlic .'^utlcj.

TIBET 75

In 1864 Thomas W. Webber made a hunting trip in the region around the upper Tsangpo without penetrating to its source, nor did Nain Sing on his journey (1865) through the Tsangpo valley reach the source of the famous river. Kawaguchi has some valuable information about its source. Desideri is as usual the most perspi- cacious of the old travelers and even tells us that the Tsangpo is the upper course of the Brahmaputra. This settled a problem that took nearly 200 years for European geographers to solve.

Fra Cassiano Beligatti, who in 1741 traveled from Nepal to the Capuchin station in Lhasa, gained the curious impression that the Ki-chu, the river of Lhasa, was the upper course of the Tsangpo.

Still in 1906 a patch of 65,000 square miles to the north of the Tsangpo was unknown. The mountain system filling this region and stretching from west to east I have called the Trans-Himalaya. Its eastern continuation had in 1661-62 been crossed by the Jesuit fathers, Grueber and Dorville. They went from Koko-nor by the pass of Tang-la to Reting-gompa and Lhasa and continued by Shigatse to Katmandu. The Capuchin father, Orazio della Penna, has written a good description of the Chang-tang or Northern Plain and other parts of Tibet, but he only traveled to and from Lhasa himself and therefore quotes the Dutchman, Samuel van de Putte, who in 1738 traveled from Lhasa to Peking and back and who shortly before his death at Batavia burnt all his notes. Nearly two hundred years elapsed until the famous journey of the French Lazarist fathers, Hue and Gabet. along the same route as Grueber and Dorville and van de Putte. They crossed the Trans-Himalaya at Tang-la.

A little before that time three great German geographers, Julius Klaproth, Carl Ritter, and Alexander von Humboldt, with all avail- able material tried to construct the main features of the orographical backbones of Asia. Brian Hodgson in 1857 made a similar attempt, though less successful than the Germans. Such able and learned scholars as Joseph Hooker, Thomas Thomson, A. Campbell, and Alexander Cunningham could possibly see some parts of the Trans- Himalaya at a distance, but had no real conception of its existence as a gigantic mountain system. In the years 1867 and 1873 a few pandits were sent by Major Montgomerie into the interior of Tibet, but none of them crossed the white patch of unknown land. One of them in 1871-72 crossed the Trans-Himalaya at Khalamba-la which is situated east of my easternmost pass, Sela-la. In 1873-74 Nain

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Sing made his important journey along the northern foot of the Trans-Himalaya, on which he discovered several of the great cen- tral lakes, Dangra-yum-tso, Ngangze-tso, and Kyaring-tso.

Sarat Chandra Das traveled in Tihet in 1879-1881 and made many important observations, most of them with reference to the people and their religion.

From 1870 to 1885 General X. M. Prshevalsky carried out a series of epoch-making journeys in eastern Tibet. His pupils, Ro- borovsky and Koslofif, continued his brilliant work.

In 1877 Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, who was thoroughly familiar with the geography and geology of China, published his magnificent work. China, which shows an enormous increase in our knowledge since Ritter and Humboldt.

Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henry of Orleans crossed Tibet from Lop-nor in 1889 and reached the Trans-Himalaya at Dam-la whence they were forced to turn east. The same was true of Du- treuil de Rhins and Fernand Grenard in 1893-94 ; in the course of this journey Dutreuil de Rhins was murdered. From the north shore of Tengri-nor they were forced east by the Tibetans. St. George R. Littledale, in 1895, made a similar attempt and crossed the Trans-Himalaya at Goring-la, and was turned west. The follow- ing year I crossed northern Tibet between Arkatagh and Kokoshili at the same time as Captain Wellby crossed the country south of Kokoshili.

Captain Bower crossed the whole of Central Tibet from west to east in 1890, and in 1896 Captain C. Deasy explored, in western Tibet, a region which was the object of Captain C. G. Rawling's exploration in 1903, the same year as the American, O. T. Crosby, and the Frenchman, Fernand Anginieur, traveled a little farther north.

In eastern Tibet the American, W. W. Rockhill, has conducted two very important expeditions which he has described with the knowledge and perspicacity of a real oriental scholar. Approximate- ly on Hue's route Tibet was crossed in 1905 by Count de Lesdain. In the same region we have also to remember General George I'ercira who went on foot to Lhasa (1921-22) with only six native followers. There also. Professor Nicolai Roerich made his journey, and two r)ther travelers have jienctrated int^ Lhasa in recent years, Mnie D.'i\id .Xcel and William Maclloxcrn. In nitrtheastcrn Tibet the most ini])<)rtant work was done li\ hi-. Mlicrt Tafcl. Twi^ jour-

TIBET ■ n

neys were made by Dr. Wilhelm Filchner, one in the northeast and the other (1925-28) from east to west through Central Tibet on which he touched a couple of the central lakes. Jebbu and Chone on the boundary of northeastern Tibet to Kansu have been visited by the American scientists, Dr. Rock and Dr. Berthold Laufer, and by the Swede, Dr. Daird Hummel, a member of my last expedition.

Sir Henry Hayden and Cesar Cosson, in 1922, proceeded from Lhasa to Dangra-yum-tso. It was a great loss to science that Sir Henry was killed in the Alps before he had elaborated his very im- portant geological results. So far. his is the only expedition that has crossed the great white patch after my journey in 1906-08. In 1900-02 I crossed Tibet in several directions.

It would take us too far would we try and remember all the travelers in westernmost Tibet. Less than a century has passed away since the Karakorum first was looked upon as an individual moun- tain system. One of the first travelers to get some information of these regions was Franqois Bernier in 1664, but all he knew was that a caravan road joined Kashmir and Ladak with Kashgar and Khotan. Lieut. Macartney of the Kabul Mission of 1808 is probably the first European to use the name "Karra-Koorrum."

Herman and Robert Schlagintweit in 1856 gave Europe very valuable scientific knowledge of these parts of Tibet, and so did Adolph Schlagintweit who was murdered in Kashgar in 1857. \V. H. Johnson, in 1865, was the first to cross the highland to Khotan. In western Tibet and the Karakorum we have to remember K. H. Godwin-Austen, Robert Shaw, J. W. Hayward, and T. Douglas Forsyth's two important expeditions in 1870 and 1873, the latter with a great staff of scientists, most able among them the geologist. Dr. Stoliczka. During the Great War Dr. Filippo de Filippi's well- organized scientific expedition in the Karakorum advanced our knowledge of these regions. And in 1927-29 Dr. Emil Trinkler and Dr. de Terra did excellent work in western Tibet. Just now, in 1932, Dr. Erik Xorin, geologist of my expedition, has crossed north- ern and western Tibet from the region of Lake Lighten to Ladak, while my astronomical member, Dr. Nils Ambolt, is on his way through northern Tibet to Temirlik and Astintagh. He has carried out a great number of pendulum observations for determination of gravity. In 1928 two other members of my staff, Folke Bergman and Lieut. H. Haslund, traveled in northeastern Tibet.

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Thus, our geographical knowledge of Tibet has grown gradually through centuries. Every new expedition has contributed more or less, and since Fra Alauro's first entry of the name Tebet on his map of 1459, our conception of the country has increased step by step. In later years some political and sporting expeditions have given their valuable share to our knowledge ; for instance. Sir Fran- cis Younghusband's campaign in 1903-04, and the Mount Everest expeditions of 1921, 1922, and 1924, which cost Mallory, Irvin, and several natives their lives. A very valuable contribution has been given, also, by Burrard's and Hayden's Sketch of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet, and nobody has more thoroughly studied the Tibetans in their daily and religious life than Sir Charles Bell who spent a year in Lhasa.

Tibet is the highest and the greatest mountainous upheaval of the earth's crust. At its southern edge is Mount Everest, the high- est peak in the world, rising 29,002 feet. Since the middle of the Tertiary epoch and during the following geological periods, strong tangential movements in the earth's crust forced the bottom of the sea, which then covered most of Europe and Asia, to rise. Against the resistance of Indo-Africa, the whole southern part of Eurasia was raised into enormous earth-waves, and the ridges of these folds, the tops of the future mountain ranges, were, in the course of ages, gradually rising above the sea. The oldest folds, Kunlun, were lo- cated in the north, after them Karakorum, Trans-Himalaya, and finally Himalaya were formed, the last-mentioned being the south- ern edge of the magnificent region of upheaval. The wall that was strong enough to offer resistance to the continued formation of folds farther south was the Indian peninsula and the mountain masses in it which are hidden below the surface of the earth. Toward the end of the Pliocene and before the beginning of the Pleistocene, the folding activity ceased after having definitely built up the great mountain systems, in which the atmospheric agencies were active as they still are to this day — denudation, weathering, erosion, and deposition. According to Anders Hennig, who has worked out and published the interpretation of the collection of specimens of rocks which I Ijrought home in 1909, the latitudinal valley which sepa- rates Trans-Himalaya from Himalaya and through which the upper courses of the Indus and the Brahma])utra How, is mainly an ero- sive formation, even if this valley originally was of tectonic or

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orogenetic character. The other latitudinal valleys in central and northern Tibet may, on the other hand, be regarded as tectonic fold- valleys.

Some sixty years ago knowledge of the plastic of the Tibetan highland \vas very scanty. When the Indian Pandit, Nain Sing, in 1873 told us that one could drive in a car from Panggong-tso to Dangra-yum-tso without crossing a single pass, one got the im- pression of a rather even plateau. On his journey (1876-77) Prshewalsky showed that the Tibetan highland with very high moun- tain ranges stretched the whole way to the neighborhood of Lop-nor, a fact of which even the al)le Jesuits had been ignorant. Since then the expeditions to the interior of Tibet have proved that several great mountain systems, somewhat diverging to the east, are filling up the whole interior of Tibet, the Kunlun, Karakorum, Trans-Hima- laya, and Himalaya being the principal ones.

We know also that the whole interior of the Tibetan highland is self-contained, i.e., has no outlet either to the sea or to Central Asia. I have calculated that this self-contained portion occupies an area of 718,000 square kilometers, nearly as much as Sweden and Nor- way together. In the west, south, and east the boundary of the tri- angular self-contained region coincides with the continental water- parting, outside of which the peripheric regions are situated with their accentuated relief, their vertical lines, and their deep-cut val- leys occupied by the source branches of the Indus, Ganges, Tsangpo- Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salwen, Yangtse-kiang and Hwang-ho. The self-contained interior of Tibet consists of some hundred and fifty large and several thousand small individual basins. The largest of all, that of Selling-tso, has an area of 33,000 square kilometers. In the lowest part of each basin there is a salt lake. \"ery often fresh water lakes are connected with them. The lakes are formed by three dififerent causes — by the damming up of a main valley, by the gravel scree from a tributary valley, and by glacial erosion or dif- ferential movements in the earth's crust.

All lakes of Tibet are in a state of dessication, and old beach- lines may very often be seen around them. At Poru-tso I found them at 108 meters and at Lakor-tso at 133 meters above the present level of the lake. P.oth are situated in western Tibet.

It has l)cen suggested that the lakes are drying up because of the still continued rising of the Himalayas by which the water-carrying cloud masses of the southwest monsoon in constantlv incrcasiner de-

TIBET 81

gree are prevented from crossing the mountain ranges. On the other hand, the dessication proceeds much quicker than the up- heaval of the mountains. The drying-up of the lakes seems rather to be due to the periodical changes of climate. In the famous pair of lakes, Manasarovar and Rakas-tal, it is easy to observe a double period, one of higher order on which the outflow of the Sutlej from the Rakas-tal depends, and one of lower order that influences the channel betwen the two lakes. Two hundred years ago, when De- sideri traveled there, the Sutlej flowed out of Rakas-tal, but since then both lakes have been cut off from the river. In the years 1819, 1846, 1848, and 1910 the channel between the lakes was in function, but during other years it has been dry. These two lakes constitute the best instrument for studying the two periods one of which em- braces centuries, the other decades. However, Sir Sidney Burrard is perfectly correct in saying that both lakes still belong to the drainage of the Sutlej.

In the interior of Tibet the leveling is still going on. As there is no vegetation, except scanty grass, and as the differences of tem- perature between day and night, summer and winter, are so great, the weathering is very eff'ective. Wind and running water constant- ly carry the fine material down to the central parts of the basins. In the course of thousands of years the mountain ridges are lowered, and the bottoms of the basins are gradually filled. The relative al- titudes decrease and the surface becomes more and more even. The absolute altitudes above the sea are enormous, in the north 16,000 feet, in the valley of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra 14,000.

An interesting geographical homology is the following. At the northern foot of the Gurla-mandata is Lake Manasarovar, at the northern foot of Targo-gangri is Dangra-yum-tso, and at the north- ern foot of Nien-chen-tang-la is Tengri-nor. Each of the three highest mountains of Tibet thus has at its northern foot one of the largest lakes of the country, and all three are sacred in the eyes of the Tibetans. Here, of course, the differences of altitude are great. As Burrard shows, it is also a curious fact that the great ocean-going rivers have cut their valleys through the Himalayas in the immediate neighborhood of the highest mountain peaks.

The climate of Tibet is very hard. In winter I experienced — 39.8° C. The summers are pleasant, especially in the southern parts. In the north one encounters hail-storms and snow even in midsummer. A'ery trying are the hard storms, generally coming from

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the southwest and west. As a rule the snowfall in winter is not very heavy, though occasionally one must travel through deep snow. The summer is the rainy season, and the rains in the east and the south- east may be rather heavy and continuous. The abundant precipi- tation in these parts of the countrv gives rise to the great rivers. Wild animals abound, especially in the northern and the central parts of Tibet. The wild yaks roam about in herds of many hun- dreds, and the kiang or wild asses by thousands, though occasional- ly in small herds or even alone. The antelopes and gazelles are very numerous, and in rock regions the wild sheep. The Tibetan bear is mostly living on hares ; the wolves, on antelopes. Foxes are sel- dom seen.

In the southeast barley, mustard, wheat, radishes, turnips, peas, and other vegetables are cultivated. A good deal of arable ground is to be found in the lower valleys. Only there trees are seen. The apricot and walnut are not rare, and even forests grow in valleys and on mountain slopes. Hail-storms and frosts are the most dan- gerous enemies of the crops. In the interior there is not one tree, and even bushes are extremely rare. Only in the Indus valley from Gartok to Ladak and not far from the southern shore of Dangra- yum-tso did I find scanty bushes. Otherwise even grass is very rare in the interior, though quite sufificient for the flocks of sheep and yaks of the nomads and for the wild animals.

The name Tibet as used in the western w^orld is unknown to the Tibetans themselves. They call their country Bod-yul or Po. To-po or Upper Tibet may have created the form Tobbot used by the Arabic geographers. Pian de Carpine introduced the name Thabet to Europe whereas Rubruk and Marco Polo used the form Tebet which also appears on Fra Mauro's and many other maps. The Chinese called it by different names at dififerent periods — T'u-fan, Hsi-fan, and Wu-tsang. r>arontola is a Mongol appellation of Lhasa which found its way to many old European maps.

Tibet is situated between 27° and 39^ N. latitude and 78° and 100° E. longitude. It is about one seventh of the area of the United States and se\cn times the area of the r)ritish Isles.

( )n the Lch-Cartok trade route, the boundary between Ladak (Kashmir) and Tibet is very well demarcated, but north of that road the boundary is very much imaginary, and this is to a still higher degree the case in tlir nDith, in the system of the Kunlun

TIBET 83

mountains where nobody can tell where the boundary line between Sin-kiang and Tibet runs. If the extent of the wanderings of the Tibetan yak-hunters, to about 33° or 34° N. latitude, should be re- garded as signifying the extension of Tibet, this country would not even reach as far as the Kunlun system. In the east the Chinese provinces of Kansu, Szechuan, and Ytinan are neighbors of Tibet ; of several districts it is difficult to say whether they belong to China or to Tibet, as they are in dispute between both countries. British India shares a boundary of some two thousand miles with Tibet, which is generally demarcated by the Himala}'as.

According to Dr. Laufer, Tibet was uninhabited some two thou- sand years ago, and we cannot speak of a state of Tibet as a national and political unit before the beginning of the seventh century a.d. We know nothing of an ancient culture within its boundaries. Be- fore that time numerous tribes, who were not aborigines, but im- migrants from western China at a very early date, lived amid the mountains. Thus the expansion has gone from east to west, and Tibet has been its limit. The only struggles these immigrants en- gaged in were to press the Himalayan tribes southward which must have taken place not earlier than the fourth or fifth century of our era.

According to their own tradition, the Tibetans are descended from a monkey who was an incarnation of the compassionate Bo- dhisattva, Chen-re-zi (x\valokitesvara).

The early history of the "Snowland" is hidden in clouds, and not before the seventh century do we meet a real historical person- age, the great king, Song Tsen Gampo (written Srong btsan sgam- po), who was converted to Buddhism by his two queens, a Chinese and a Nepalese princess, in allusion to the fact that Tibetan civili- zation came from both China and India. Song Tsen Gampo organized the priesthood, built monasteries, and introduced writing, laws, and religious spirit, though much of the old animistic Bon religion with its shamanistic worship of nature, its good and evil spirits of earth, sky, rivers, and lakes, its sacrifices of human beings and animals, its sorcerers and soothsayers, and magical drums remained, and was adopted into the new religion. In eastern and southeastern Tibet survivals of the old Bon religion and even Bon monasteries still exist. Every traveler in Tibet has observed many superstitious features among the people, obviously survivals of their old primi- tive faith.

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King Song Tsen Gampo was also the victorious warrior who conquered great parts of Burma, Nepal, and western China. Where Potala is now situated he built his royal palace. The civilization he gave Tibet was strongly influenced by China, while the religious influence came from Nepal and India.

In the latter half of the eighth century King Ti-Song Detsen (written K'ri Srong Ideu btsan) made himself famous by summon- ing the Tantric Buddhist. Padma Sambhava, from northwestern India to Tibet, where he became the real founder of the new re- ligion. He built the first famous monastery. Samye, southeast of Lhasa, and is the chief saint of the original Buddhism of Tibet, the sect of the Red Hats. Padma Sambhava is much venerated and is worshiped in the Lamaistic world.

During the reign of Ralpachan (ninth century"), the religion deyeloped more and more, and several temples were built. Tibet was a power in those days and included great parts of China, Nepal, and Turkistan.

As an enemy of Buddhism King Langdarma was hated by the Lamas who wrote Tibetan history. He was therefore assassinated by a priest.

When in 1270 Kublai Khan invited the high priest of Sakya and gave him the sovereignty of Tibet, the first step was then taken in establishing a series of priest-kings.

King Changchub Gyaltsen was a supporter of Buddhism and ap- proached China. He was the founder of the Sitya dynasty which in 1635 was ousted by the king of Tsang who soon afterwards was beaten by Gushi Khan and his Olot Mongols.

While the existing priesthood was called the Red Hats, a new sect, the Yellow Hats or the "\"irtuous," was founded by Tsong- khapa, a native of Amdo (1356-1418). He was a great reformer, introducing a more severe code of morals and forbidding the priests to marry and to drink wine. Black art and magic were abolished to a great extent. He also w^as the founder of the two great monas- teries, Galdan and Sera, which, together with Drepung, are called "the three i)illars of the State." All three are situated near Lhasa. Tsongkhapa is buried at Galdan. His image is found in almost every temple of Tibet and Mongolia, and is as much honored and wor- shiped as Buddha himself. The no less famous monastery, Tashi- Ihunpo, was founded by Ganden Truppa, and became later the residence of the Tashi-Lania.

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Ganden Triippa died in 1474, and after him the behef in the system of reincarnation was diffused all over the country. At the present time it is estimated that nearly one thousand incarnate Lamas live in Tibet.

Sonam Gyatso spread the new religion both over Tibet and Mon- golia, and was honored by the Mongol chieftain with the title Dalai Lama Vajradhara, "the all-embracing Lama, Holder of the Thunder- bolt."

The famous fifth Dalai Lama, Lobzang Gyatso, in 1641, called on the Olots for help against the old church. The Olots came and subdued the Red Hats, whereupon the Dalai Lama became sovereign of Tibet and took up his residence in the Potala palace. His teacher became Grand Lama of Tashi-lhunpo and an incarnation of Amita- bha, god of Boundless Light and lord of the Western Paradise. The Dalai Lama was and is an incarnation of Avalokitesvara. The Tashi Lama (Panchen Rinpoche or Panchen Bogdo) is regarded as occupying a higher spiritual standing than the Dalai Lama.

Lhasa was made the seat of the central power by the prime minis- ter of the fifth Dalai Lama. The fifth Dalai Lama died in 1680. His death, for political reasons, was kept secret for some time. His successor, Tsangyang Gyatso, led a frivolous life. China now grew more powerful in Tibet and conquered Tachienlu. In 1718 the em- peror K'ang-hi made war against Tibet, took Lhasa, and left a strong Manchu garrison there. His grandson, the emperor Ch'ien- lung, strengthened China's power in Tibet and installed two Am- bans in Lhasa (1750).

The great Governor General of India, Warren Hastings, in 1774, sent George Bogle to Tashi-lhunpo for the purpose of opening the country to trade with India and studying its possibilities and wealth. Five years later the emperor Ch'ien-lung invited the third Tashi Lama, Palden Yeshe, to Peking Avhere he died in 1780.

In 1783 Samuel Turner was sent to Tashi-lhunpo with the same commission as Bogle. In 1811 Manning traveled to Lhasa.

After some trouble on the boundary the Gurkhas of Nepal at- tacked Shigatse aild Tashi-lhunpo in 1791. The next year the em- peror Ch'ien-lung sent a Chinese-Tibetan army the whole way through Tibet and Himalaya against the Gurkhas who were beaten one day's journey from Katmandu, capital of Nepal. Thereupon the power of China and the Ambans increased in Tibet, and Chinese officials were posted in Shigatse, Tingri, Chamdo, and Traya. The

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Chumbi A'alley and Phari came under Tibetan rule. The Ambans also became influential in the elections of Dalai Lamas and Tashi Lamas.

The following Dalai Lamas all died young as victims of political and religious intrigues. The present Dalai Lama, Xgavang Lobzang Tupden Gyatso, was born in 1876 of humble parentage from Takpo. He is the thirteenth of the dignity, and has occupied his high posi- tion since 1903. He can therefore look back upon a very long and, on the whole, happy reign. The occupant of the divine throne in Potala is a Bodhisattva, and as such he is entitled to enter Nirvana, though he consents to be reborn for the benefit of humanity.

The Dalai Lama's power is absolute, though he depends upon the Council, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Chief Secretary. After the death of a Dalai Lama, the Tashi Lama, the abbots of Sera, Drepung and Galdan, the state oracle at Lhasa and the oracle at Samye gather and select a successor. Among several boys they decide as to who is the right one ; this is revealed by signs and miracles. For the final decision the golden urn given by the emperor in 1793 may be used.

In the Dalai Lama's surroundings the Lord Chamberlain is the head of all ecclesiastical officials in Tibet, whereas the Chief Secre- tary is responsible for the communication between the Dalai Lama and the outer world ; he may be more powerful even than the Coun- cil, and he has ten assistants. Further, there are a Master of the Bed Chamber, a Court Chaplain, a Chief Butler, and others.

A few important dates in the modern history of Tibet may be of interest, the more so as the present Dalai Lama has proved to be an able statesman and a clever politician. In 1890 the British took a step approaching Tibet on the treaty that recognized a British protectorate over Sikkim, and three years later a new treaty estab- lished Yatung as a trade mart on the Tibetan side. After some frontier disputes in 1899, the Dalai Lama returned letters from Lord Curzon unopened. At the same time he seemed to be in negotiations with Russia through the assistance of his old tutor, the Buriat Dorjiefif, who was sent with rich presents to the czar. Lord Cur- zon regarded a strong Russian influence in Tibet as a danger to India, and in 1903, therefore, sent a military expedition under Sir Francis '^'ounghusband by way of Gyangtsc and Tima to Lhasa, where it arrived in the spring of 1904. Shortly before its arrival

TIBET 87

the Dalai Lama had fled to Urga, capital of Mongolia and seat of the Gegen Hutuktu.

Among the paragraphs of the treaty of Lhasa were the follow- ing: Two new marts to be opened for British trade — Gyangtse and Gartok. No duties on British merchandise. Half a milHon pounds to be paid in 75 annual installments. The Chumbi Valley to be oc- cupied by the British until the whole amount be paid. Tibet to have no intercourse with other powers.

After Russian protests in London the British Government dis- avowed a good deal of what Younghusband had accomplished. The indemnity was cut down to 166,000 pounds, and the Chumbi Val- ley was to be evacuated within three years. The main result of the mission to Lhasa was a great increase of China's power in Tibet. The Chinese paid the sum of 166,000 pounds, and in 1907 the Chumbi Valley was restored to Tibet.

After the convention between Great Britain and China in 1906, which granted China the exclusive right to concessions in Tibet, Chang Yin Tang was appointed High Commissioner for Tibet, He controlled the intercourse between India and Tibet and lessened British influence.

In 1907 Great Britain and Russia made an agreement to prevent friction in Asia. It concerned Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The two powers decided to abstain from interference in Tibetan affairs. Negotiations in Tibet should be carried out only through China as intermediary. N'o representatives should be allowed in Lhasa. No concessions for roads or mines should be made. During three years no scientific expeditions should be allowed — as if the scientific exploration of Tibet had not sufficient difficulties to over- come even without the assistance of European powers !

The Chinese lost face by not taking part in the agreement, by which, however, their power in Tibet increased considerably. In 1908 trade regulations signed by Great Britain, China, and Tibet prohibited British subjects from traveling in Tibet beyond the new marts, Gyangtse and Gartok. Therefore the old Hindu pilgrim- ages to Manasarovar could not be undertaken without breaking the law. In a few years Tibet had come under Chinese domination, a direct consequence of the strange policy of Great Britain, Young- husband's mission, and the treaties. Chang Yin Tang made ener- getic propaganda in Tibet. Through Tachienlu Chinese troops were sent into the country, and great parts of eastern Tibet were occupied.

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The Dalai Lama, who had fled in 1904. was deposed by the em- peror. In 1908 the Tibetan hierarch went to Peking- where he per- formed rites at the burial of the emperor Kuang-sii and the old Empress Dowager. In December of the same year he left Peking and returned to his capital a year later. On February 12, 1910, Chinese troops entered Lhasa. The following night the Dalai Lama with all his ministers again fled from his capital, taking the seals of office along. At Chaksam Ferry on the Tsangpo he left a de- tachment of soldiers to hold back his Chinese pursuers. After a nine-day journey he crossed the frontier of Sikkim and a few days later arrived in Darjeeling, where he was very well received. A second time the Chinese deposed him, an action ridiculed by the Tibetans.

China had some three thousand soldiers in Tibet, and her power was absolute. Great Britain was prevented by treaties from helping Tibet. She had to abandon Tibet to China. The Ambans were ab- solute despots in Lhasa, and China now turned her attention to Nepal and Bhutan as feudatory states, though without success. The Chinese revolution of 1911 suddenly changed the situation. In No- vember the garrisons mutinied, and during the summer of 1912 China lost her power in Central Tibet. After spending two years in Darjeeling as guest of the British with Sir Charles Bell as inter- preter, the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa. The Chinese troops were expelled by way of Sikkim and India. At the same time the governor of Szechuan sent troups to restore Chinese power in Tibet.

Far north of Tibet other political moves took place. At the end of 1912 Russia made an agreement with IMongolia in LTrga, agreed to preserve Mongolia's autonomy, and obtained economical and po- litical privileges which gradually led to complete control over Outer Mongolia. The next year an agreement was concluded between Rus- sia and China in which Russia acknowledged the suzerainty of China over Mongolia, and China recognized Mongolia's autonomy. The same year a treaty was concluded between Mongolia and Tibet to aid each other in case of danger. Autonomy in Tibet was a British interest as a strong Tibet would mean a protection to India in the north.

In October of 1913 a conference took place in Simla, and in Ajiril of the following year a convention was concluded in which China's suzerainf}- was recognized. China was not to convert Tibet into a Chinese province, drcat Britain was not allowed to make any

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annexations. Autonomy was accorded to outer Tibet (Lhasa, Shi- gatse, etc.)- Chinese troops were not allowed in outer Tibet. But China was not forbidden to send troops to inner Tibet (Litang, Batang, etc.). A Chinese Amban in Lhasa was granted a guard of three hundred men. The British trade agents were allowed to have an escort.

Despite the mistakes made by British statesmen Tibet gradually approached Great Britain. The Tibetan army should be organized according to British principles, and British assistance was desired for mining purposes.

In eastern Tibet the situation was unsettled as both China and Tibet were up in arms there. During the great war the sympathy of Tibet was shown by the Dalai Lama's offer to send one thousand soldiers and by the great monasteries praying for a British victory.

Sir Charles Bell, in 1920, obtained the Dalai Lama's permission for the Mount Everest Expedition, and was in constant contact with the Dalai Lama, his Prime Minister, the Grand Council, and the National Assembly.

The great Manchu emperors were very keen to establish China's power in Tibet for the sake of Mongolia. The two countries were closely connected by the same religion. If China lost her grasp on Tibet, Mongolia would also be lost. Now everything has changed. Outer Mongolia is under Russian control, and the old trade route from Urga to Lhasa is completely cut off. In 1923 I could easily get permission to travel from Peking to Urga. When I asked for the same favor in 1929, if was refused. Before the revolution a great Mongol caravan was twice a year sent to Lhasa. For a long period a Tibetan mission was sent to Peking once in three years, and a Nepalese mission once in five years. This practice also came to an end in 1911. The political situation of Tibet has improved despite the ties with Mongolia being broken. The administration is better, and brigandage is disappearing. The Tibetans still have great re- ligious sympathy with the Mongols. Hitherto some seven hun- dred Lamas in Tibet have been Mongols, a figure which probably will decrease on account of the political barriers.

We have recited the history of the present, the thirteenth, Dalai Lama. It may not be amiss to say a few words about the Tashi Lama, the Panchen Rinpoche, the sixth who has played a less im- portant part in the history of Tibet, but whose great religious au- thoritv and influence and whose charming personality make him

90 THE OPEN COURT

worthy of special attention. In 1905 the Tashi I.ama was in India to visit the sacred places of Buddhism. In 1907 when I was his guest in Tashi-lhunpo for forty-seven days, he was twenty-five years old, and had occupied his high position for nineteen years. In 1924 hos- tilities, as so often before, broke out between Lhasa and Tashi-lhun- po, not so much between the two hierarchs as between the high priests of the principal monasteries. The Dalai Lama followed a policy approaching India-England, while the Tashi Lama adhered to China. Many high priests were on his side, especially the Lamas of Drepung, the headquarters of the Chinese party in Tibet. The Dalai Lama was the stronger of the two, the Tashi Lama fled by way of Koko-nor to Suchow with the intention to continue to LTrga. The military chief of Suchow presented to him the invitation of the Chinese government to come to Peking. There he was received with royal honors and established his residence in the palace of the late emperor Kuang-sii in the Nan Hai of the Forbidden City, where I visited him several times in December, 1926.

Afterwards he traveled in Manchuria and Mongolia. During the summer 1929 he was for a long time the guest of the Sunit Wang, blessing pilgrims by the thousands and visiting the greater monas- teries. Finally he traveled to Mukden, where he still resided in 1930. In October 1932 he returned to Peking.

Why is he tarrying so long in China, Manchuria, or Mongolia? Is he waiting for some new important political change that may open for him the rocky gates to his beloved Tibet and allow him to return to A]mitabha's throne in Tashi-lhunpo? What really hap- pened in Tibet in 1924 is not clear. Ever since Lhasa and Tashi- lhunpo became the two great centers of Lamaism there has been a rivalry between them. Lhasa has officials in Shigatse to watch e\'ents in Tashi-lhunpo, as I was very well aware in 1907. Despite the British mission to Lhasa in 1904, the Dalai Lama has turned his sympathy entirely to India-England, and it seems possible that the Tashi-T^ma would not go so far in pro-British politics. There- fore he had to leave the country. That the Chinese Government forced him to go to Peking instead of to Urga is easy to under- stand. Only a few years previously Mongolia had belonged to China. An independent Mongolia or to a still higher degree, a Mongolia in the hands of Soviet Russia could easily be a danger to China, and the highest spiritual authority in the Lamaist world could possibly ])ecomc dangerous if he used his influence for po-

TIBET

91

THE TARGO-GANGRI TO THE NORTHWEST FROM CAMP 150 Photograph by Dr. Sven Hedin

litical aims. Therefore he was forced to go to Peking and to be under Chinese control. Since then the poHtical situation has changed again. Manchuria has been transformed into the state of Manchu- kuo, and there the Tashi Lama would be free. The Russians would probably not allow him to go to outer Mongolia, the Mongolian republic with its capital, Ulan Batur Khoto ("The Red Hero's City"), as Urga is now called.

What is going to happen in the future? Nobody knows. It is hazardous to prophesy. Everything that happens is surprising. If China should come again under the iron hands of a T'ang Tai Tsung or a K'ang-hi, she would probably extend her power over Tibet as during two hundred years of ]\Ianchu rule, and then the Tashi Lama would no doubt be allowed, and might even wish to return to Amitabha's throne. Lender such circumstances Great Britain will try as hitherto to maintain cordial relations with both the Lamaist hierarchs, whose relations with China probably will remain friendly.

92 THE OPEN COURT

As could be expected, the highest mountain land in the world is very sparsely populated. The population is estimated by some as about three or four million, by others as only one million and a half.

As to Tibet proper I would divide it into four belts stretching from west to east. The northernmost embracing the Kunlun and Arka-tagh, the Kokoshili, Dungbure and Buka-magna's nearly paral- lel mountain systems, and the latitudinal valleys between them, is uninhabited and uninhabitable on account of its tremendous altitude. Only in those parts of this belt which open to eastern Turkistan and where the altitude is moderate are there small communities of East- Turkish tribes, Kirghiz and Tagliks, nomads, and occasionally na- tives from the southern oases of eastern Turkistan going farther south to dig for gold and called Altunchis or Gold-diggers. In the southern outskirts we sometimes come across a few Tibetan yak hunters, usually possessing a small number of sheep and yaks, but mainly living on the meat of the wild yak and the Orongo ante- lope (Pantolops).

South of this belt and all the way to the northern foot of the Trans-Himalaya we find the country of the nomads (Drokpa). They are far from being numerous. Sometimes one may travel for several days without seeing a single tent. The Drokpas are wander- ing shepherds living on the milk, butter, and cheese of their sheep and yaks. Some of these shepherds are also hunters. In the south- ern regions of this belt there are also sedentary people ; for instance, at the shore of Dangra-yum-tso, Kyaring-tso, and Tengri-nor, and there are even a few temples, as Sershik-gompa, Mendong-gompa, Lunkar-gompa, and Selipuk-gompa, and several places where gold dust is dug out from sand deposits, as for instance Thok-jalung. The two northern belts together are called Chang-tang or the North- ern Plain, and the inhabitants are called Changpas or Northerners.

The third belt is Trans-Himalaya, which may be subdivided into two halves, the l)oiuKlary between which coincides with the con- tinental water parting. The southern half is much more densely populated than the northern. In the transverse valleys opening to the south and carrying tril)utaries to the r>rabniaputra there are a number of villages of stone huts and small houses, and there are a good many temple monasteries or gompas. The population increases from west to east, as T found on my eight crossings of the Trans- Himalayan system. Still fartlicr cast, in the valley of the Ki-chu

TIBET 93

where Lhasa is situated, the country is, of course, well populated. There are numerous nomads who live in black tents the whole year round, and half-nomads who during the summer live in stone huts and cultivate barley, but otherwise graze their flocks in the sur- rounding mountains. In the valley of Mii-chu there are many small villages. Tong is quite a group of villages. Barley, peas, and some wheat are cultivated. As a rule the villages are placed in the mouths of the tributary valleys to make use of the water for irrigating purposes. But even here you may travel a day without seeing a single tent. In the region Tsaruk-gunsa there were thirty tents near together. In the district of Bongba-kyangrang some forty tents re- mained over winter. The inhabitants of sixtv tents have to provide the monks of Selipuk with fuel and water and to take care of their flocks. The district Rundor had a hundred and fifty tents, and at the uppermost Indus I counted thirteen tents. Along the shores of the lakes one never sees a tent. x\t Ngangtse-tso, for instance, there are fifty or sixty tents, all of them in the lower parts of val- leys opening to the lake.

The southernmost belt includes the broad valley of the Tsang- po and the land to the southern boundary of Tibet. As a rule the region of the Tsangpo and eastern Tibet are the most densely populated parts of Tibet.

The Tibetans have several trade routes to China and India. Tachienlu on the eastern border is the greatest trade depot be- tween China and Tibet. The old trade route to Urga in Mongolia does not exist any more. From Kalimpong through Sikkim a very important road enters the Chumbi Valley, by Jelep-la to Phari, Gyangtse, and Lhasa, and there are other roads from Assam to Tibet. From Ladak a road passes along the upper Indus and Tsangpo, but there trade is insignificant. The most important import article is Chinese brick tea, and the principal export articles are wool, hides, musk, and medical herbs. Yaks, ponies, and donkeys are used as beasts of burden, and sheep are used for the transport of salt.

As said before, the whole northern part of Tibet is called Chang- tang. U is the central province with Lhasa as capital, Tsang is a province of southern Tibet whose capital is Tashi-lhunpo. Ngari khorsum is western Tibet, and central Trans-Himalaya is Bongba. Kham is the name of the eastern part, and the easternmost district of Kham is Xyarong. Considerable parts of Kham are under Chin- ese control. There are other tribes than Tibetans in eastern Tibet ;

94 THE OPEN COURT

for instance, the Derge who are clever metal workers, the Goloks, nomads and brigands, and others ; in northeastern Tibet on the borderland of Kansu there are Tanguts who practically are Tibetans. In the south are the Lepchas and Buthias.

The whole country is for the sake of administration subdivided into a great number of districts, whose chiefs have the title of dzongpon.

The population of Tibet is slowly decreasing, the most import- ant causes being polyandry and the celibacy of the Lamas. In the same way the manly w^arlike qualities of the people of Jengis Khan have deteriorated. As this development was in the interest of the great Manchu emperors, they encouraged Lamaism by all means and built the famous temples of Jehol.

Traveling in Tibet is and has always been a serious undertaking, far more difficult than in most other parts of the globe outside the poles. Therefore our geographical knowledge of the country has developed so slowly, and the scientific exploration has just begun. This is natural by reason of the enormous altitude of the highlands and of the still higher mountain ranges and their passes. As an example I may mention the Trans-Himalayan passes I have crossed and of which seven were unknown before :

Sela-la -. --... 5506 meters

Chang-la-Pod-la 5572 meters

Angden-la 5643 meters

Sangmo-bertik-la 5820 meters

Samye-la 5527 meters

Surnge-la - 5276 meters

Lhamo-latse-la 5426 meters

Jukti-la 5825 meters

'J1uis the highest, Jukti-la. has an altitude of 19,100 feet, and the lowest one Surnge-la 17,300 feet which is very low for Trans- Plimalaya.

Every ex])C(Hlion through Til)et proper must therefore be very well equipped with good ponies and mules, and at the start from Ladak or Chinese Turkistan take with them a hundred donkeys or more carrying maize for the beasts of burden. The donkeys have to be sent back when the supply of maize is exhausted, and on the wav they have to pick up the dung of yaks and wild asses to keep alive. The most difficult task is to start from the north where

TIBET 95

I once had to march two months and four times three months be- fore meeting the first nomads. During these three months through the highest part of the country, about three quarters of the caravan was lost by starvation, fatigue, storms, and cold, and the survivors were in a miserable state when the first nomads were reached and new pack animals, usually yaks and sheep, could be bought.

The journey therefore becomes a continuous fight against natural difficulties, and the traveler has to look out for comparative- ly favorable places for camping ; that is, where some grass is to be found. As a rule he has no difficulty in finding water and fuel, which nearly always consists of yak dung. As soon as he has reached nomads, the worst difficulties are behind him. Usually he finds guides who may show him the best grazing grounds. The marches are very short, thirteen or fourteen miles a day, in winter even less, as it is hard to expose oneself to the terrible cold and the biting wind. Quiet days without a storm or a heavy wind are very rare.

Despite all these hardships a journey through Tibet is very fas- cinating and full of exciting interest, especially in unknown coun- try, where every mountain, glacier, lake or river and every village, monastery, or nomad's camp is a new addition to human knowledge. The landscape is nearly always majestic in the great solitude of mountain desert, where only the wild yaks, kiangs, and antelopes roam in undisturbed peace. Every evening the cloud formations are modeled in fantastic beauty, and the sunsets are brilliant. As a rule it is easier than in other parts of the world to see the shadow of the earth just after sunset, slowly rising above the eastern horizon.

Approaching the high mountains. Trans-Himalaya and Himalaya, a pilgrim from the western world will enjoy the increasing interest of deep-cut valleys, imposing ridges, and chains, gigantic mountain peaks, considerable rivers, nomads in black tents or sedentary agri- culturists in simple stone huts, or the Lamas in their picturesque gompas or monasteries. There he will be captivated by the color and pomp of the religion of Tibet with its mysterious ceremonies and its survivals of spirits and demons of which earth, water, and air are supposed to be full. A westerner who has been fortunate enough to pass some years in Tibet will feel a constant longing to return to the fascinating beauty of a magnificent alpine world and to the mvsterious tinkling of golden temple bells.

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CKX'IKAI, ASIA

CHINESE TURKESTAN

BY OWEN LATTIMORE

SIN-KEA.NG (Hsin-chianq-, the New Erontier) or Chinese Turki- stan, like Manchuria, AfongoHa, and Tihet, is a part of the en- circling land frontier of China. Its history and its modern prob- lems are inseparable from those of China, yet always distinct. It has been the regular historical practice to treat all of these border countries, which are not quite dependencies and not truly nations, as the proper field for the expansion of Chinese influences. This does not give the whole picture. Actually, periods of Chinese ex- pansion have alternated with periods when 'the power of the frontier barbarians extended into China.

"Chinese" dynasties "ruling" the border ])arbarians have fre- quently been established by the barbarians themselves, either as the result of open invasion or through the alliance of tribesmen beyond the Great Wall with political factions in China. The barbarian dy- nasties became Chinese, and the capitals remained in China ; but power often remained in the hands of the still barbarian tribesmen. The frontier tended to rule the country. Erom this arises the para- dox that the periods of maximum expansion of Chinese influence and culture beyond the Great Wall are not necessarily the periods in which the frontier dominated China, taking from China, in the way of cultural influences, not what was imposed on it but what it wanted. This is true even of the great Han dynasty (206 b.c- A.D. 220). The real Han expansion stopped at the outer Great Wall systems ; the activities of its most able statesmen and generals in Central Asia were not the result of genuine conquest, but were made possible by adroit manipulation of the diiTerent Central Asian peoples.

Another characteristic of the frontier as a whole is its division into an "inner" and an "outer" region. This division is most ob- vious in Inner and Outer IMongolia ; but the same structure exists in Manchuria, Central Asia, and Tibet. Briefly, it may be said of this "inner" and "outer" structure that the "inner" region is more closely associated with China, alternately as the garrison-territory of barbarians holding power in China, or as the outpost-region of

98 THE OPEN COURT

Chinese power beyond the Great Wall in periods of Chinese ascen- dency. The "outer" region is that which less frequently took part in direct assaults on China, and was less affected by Chinese con- trol in the periods of reaction. Chinese Turkistan belongs to the '"outer" sphere, and unless this is clearly apprehended its relation to China cannot properly be appreciated. The important Moslem "pale" in western Kansu province stands to Chinese Turkistan as Inner IMongolia to Outer Mongolia, and graduates in the same way the interaction of China and Chinese Turkistan on each other.

It is against this historical background that Chinese Turkistan must be considered. The province, which is really a group of "na- tive protectorates," has been closely linked with China from the time of the Han dynasty, when a great silk traffic through the Cen- tral Asian deserts brought the empires of China and Rome into remote relation and when Central Asia was the key to the foreign policies of China. In the succeeding two thousand years, however, Chinese authority over what is now Sin-kiang has only been opera- tive during some 425 years, i divided into several periods, of which the present Chinese overlordship is the fifth important period.

The present geographical boundaries of Chinese Turkistan, and its tribal and administrative organization, follow the lines laid down under the Manchu or Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911). Although nomi- nally determined by Manchu conquest, they were actually the result, in the main, of the advantage taken by the iNIanchus of internecine wars among the tribes themselves. At the time when the Manchus conquered China, the whole frontier region, from Tibet to the Pa- cific, was riven bv war. The gravest preoccupation of the Manchus was the prevention, within the frontier region, of the rise of any tribal power that might rival their own. They accomplished their aim only in very small measure by direct conquest. They relied chiefly on setting one tribal element against another, coming for- ward as arbitrators when the different rivals were exhausted by lo- cal warfare, and arranging settlements on the basis of tribal "spheres of interest" and the acceptance of the Manchu liouse as nominal overlord by each pair of combatants. The element of compromise in these nominal conquests is revealed by the fact that the "tribute" to the cui])eror was regularly offset by handsome subsidies and presents to the ])rinccs and chiefs.

IC. P. Skrinc, Chinese Central .Lua, London. 1928.

CHINESE TURKISTAN 99

At the time of the Chinese revohition in 1911, the position held by the Manchus passed to the Chinese. The fall of the empire prompted a series of outbreaks in Chinese Turkistan, which were cut short by the emergence of a single able individual, a Chinese (not native to the province) named Yang Tseng-hsin. He succeeded in effecting what was virtually a confirmation of the status quo, with the government transferred from imperial appointees to a Chin- ese civil service, which maintained the general services of the prov- ince and continued to hold the old balance between the different tribal, racial, and religious elements. The government was composed in the first instance of Chinese who had served under the Manchus, and has since hardened into a group of office-holding families, which recruit new members only with caution. While, therefore, China has been struggling for twenty-one years with the inevitable re- sults of the revolution, Chinese Turkistan has lived almost com- pletely at peace, by virtue of avoiding every implication of the revolution, under what amounts to the fiction that the revolution never occurred.

The Chinese governing minority in Sin-kiang is comparable to the British element in India ; but with the difference that there is no valid connection between the government of Chinese Turkistan and the government of China. They are sundered by the "inner frontier" of Moslem Kansu. The power of the Chinese in Turki- stan is largely a fiction, and in so far as it is real is maintained not by the real strength of the Chinese themselves, but by playing off against one another the dift"erent subject populations — Moslems against Lama-Buddhists, nomads against settled peoples, towns against country districts. The compactness of the Moslems as the most important minority is discounted by the hostility of sects. Is- lam, as the "protestantism" of the Middle Eastern religions, has the protestant characteristic of splitting into innumerable sects. Un- der the lulled rhythm of all life in Central Asia, so long as economic conditions and general political relations are reasonably tranquil, the quarrels of religious sects are not primary causes of disturbance ; but they are nevertheless constantly in dispute, and when other conditions combine to precipitate war, they flare up vigorously. It is the incompatibility of sects that prevents cohesion both within the Moslem "pale" of Kansu and the Moslem popu- lation of Chinese Turkistan, and has enabled the Chinese to keep the

100 THE OPEN COURT

upper hand: it has hcen the ruin of each of the great ^Muhammadan rebelHons.

The province of Sin-kiang has an area of roughly 400,000 square miles (about twice the size of the pre-war German empire) of which the greater part is desert. The population is probably about two mil- lion, which may include between one and two hundred thousand Chinese : but not even roughly accurate figures are available. Ex- ternally its frontiers are well defined by mountains and deserts ; the commanding internal features are the great southern and cen- tral desert of the Taklamakan, the northern desert of Jungaria, and the T'ien-shan range. This range forms a kind of backbone to the country, and is roughly the historical frontier between nomads on the north and settled peoples on the south. The main precipitation of rainfall is on the north, and for this reason there has always been a corridor of migration along the pasture belts on the northern side of the T'ien-shan, linking ^Mongolia and Russian Central Asia.

South of the T'ien-shan the rainfall is insufficient to support con- tinuous grazing. The water supply depends chiefly on the rivers which come down from the crests of the high ranges — the Kun- lun and Karakorum ranges on the south as well as the T'ien-shan on the north. Nomads live in the upper mountains, but the regular mountain formation is one in which an arid foothill range is in- terposed between the main range and the plains, acting as a barrier between the nomads and the people of the oases. Where the streams issue from the foothill range it is possible to spread the water out fanwise through irrigation systems, to form an oasis of great fer- tility. This accounts for agricultural conditions of extraordinary stability, because the water, depending not on rainfall but on the melting of snows and glaciers, becomes most plentiful when it is most needed. Speaking in general, there are two periods of abun- dant water ; one in the spring, when the snow melts in the lower hills, and one in summer when the thaw extends to the highest snows and the glaciers. This greatly favors the growth of cotton (the most important export crop), as well as the grapes, melons, and other fruits, for which the oases are fatuous.

Thus, the economic geography of the c«nintr\, with which racial grou])ing closely corresponds, may be summarized as follows: an inner backbone range of high mountains, with jicaks rising to

CHINESE TURKISTAN 101

about 24,000 feet ; an outer range of desert mountains, and an ir- rigated oasis at each point where a stream from the inner moun- tains issues by a difficult gorge through the barrier-range. Below the oasis the water of the stream runs to waste, vanishing in the desert or ending in reed-beds, meres, or lakes, in the Taklamakan desert in southern Chinese Turkistan or the Jungarian desert in Jungaria or northern Chinese Turkistan. In these terminal basins and reed-beds there are zones of grazing land ; but these, in south- ern Chinese Turkistan, are separated by desert ga])s which impede nomadic migration.

In southern Chinese Turkistan, therefore, population is distrib- uted vertically, from the low-lying reed-beds to the oases, and so up through the barrier mountains into the main ranges. Lateral communication is difficult. The oases are connected, like beads on a string, by an arterial road following the foot of the hills. Local trade is between the plain and the mountains, with the oasis-town as center of distribution and of the petty manufactures which meet most local needs. The arterial road, therefore, serves in the main only for the export of such surplus as can be taken entirely out of the country ; since to transport it to an exactly similar neighbor- ing oasis would be useless.

Under modern conditions the chief exports are cotton, wool, hides, furs, small amounts of gold and jade, and the raisins that have been a delicacy in China ever since the introduction of the grape in the Han dynasty. The imports are silks, tea, piece-goods, and a certain number of sundry goods. Generally speaking, not use- ful goods but luxuries are the most profitable to import ; the smaller the bulk and weight, and the higher the value, the more chance of profit, because of the great distances over which goods have to be transported. The movement of culture, historically, has been paral- lel to that of trade. There has been a marked tendency to import the incidental aspects, rather than the basic values, of Chinese cul- ture. In more ancient times, the luxury class of trade was even more important. Practically the only exports of Chinese Turkistan were gold, jade, and horses of specially fine breed, while the im- ports were silk and tea : and probably, from the \A'est, weapons of superior make.

There have been two great arterial trade routes, each with its minor variations, in southern Chinese Turkistan : the Lop-nor route.

102 THE OPEN COURT

now abandoned in part, and the T'ien-shan Xan Lu, the Road South of the Heavenly ]\Iountains. This, the great route of the present day, enters Sin-kiang from Kansu and passes from Hami (Komul) to Urumchi, which is actually north of the T'ien-shan. Then it passes back to the south of the mountains and runs through Tur- fan, Toksun, Karashahr, Korla, Kuchar, Aksu, and ]\Iaralbashi to Kashgar. Here it joins the western terminal half of the Lop-nor route, which now survives chiefly as an internal trade route, not communicating with China but running from Lop-nor along the foot of the Kunlun and Karakorum, through Keriya, Khotan, and Yarkand to Kashgar.

These two roads link together the oases of the agricultural eastern Central Asian Turks — the Turki, called by the Chinese Ch'an-t'ou or Turbaned Heads. Among the Turki are also found (chieflv in the cities) a Chinese population; the T'ung-kan or Dun- gan, a settled Moslem people probably of mixed Chinese and Turk- ish blood : and a few minor peoples, such as the Dulani and the Lopliks. In the mountains back of the trade routes are found such peoples as the Kazaks (nomadic Central Asian Turks) in the Kar- lik Tagh, a part of the T'ien-shan, north of Hami ; the Mongols, north of Karashar in the Yulduz region of the central T'ien-shan ; and the Kirghiz (another division of nomadic Central Asian Turks) in the western T'ien-shan and in the Karakorum and Kunlun. In the mountains south of Kashgar there are also the Sarikolis, a sedentary people, related to the Tajiks of the highlands of Rus- sian Central Asia.

The chief center of Chinese population is Urumchi, capital and nodal point of the province. The Chinese diminish rapidly in num- bers along the road to Kashgar, but are fairly numerous in the Hi region. As agricultural settlers they are most important in the lat- ter, but they are also found in some of the oases between Urum- chi and Hi, and around Chuguchak. For the most part, however, they are city dwellers ; large traders handling the long-distance cara- van trade, jietty traders retailing imports from China, members of the government services, and military officers. As private soldiers the Chinese are the poorest material in the province ; they are very consciously the ruling race, and it is so easy for a man of any industry and intelligence to make a good living that as a class they feel themselves above the bad pay of the soldier. As a rule, there- fore, it is only the worthless and incompetent am(ing the Chinese

CHINESE TURKISTAN

103

URUMCHI FROM A TEMPLE ON THE HILL Photograph by Owen Lattimore

who enlist ; the best troops in the province are Mongols, largely under their own officers, and Moslems under Chinese officers.

While southern Chinese Turkistan is the classical land of the great silk trade routes, northern Chinese Turkistan, or Jungaria, is the land of the migration routes. It is known to the Chinese as T'ien-shan Pei Lu, the Road North of the Heavenly Mountains, because of the main route which, diverging from the South Road at Urumchi, runs westward into Russian Central Asia. This route divides at Hsihu, about halfway to the Russian frontier, into two branches ; one which enters Russian Turkistan by the Hi Valley, and one which enters southern Siberia by Chuguchak, in the Emil Valley.

Jungaria is named from the Jungar, the Left or East Wing of the great confederation of Western Mongols, who in the seven- teenth century came very near to winning the mastery over all Mongolia, and would in that case have seriously challenged the Manchus in the conquest of China. Owing to disagreements among the Western Mongols themselves, a large body broke away, mi- grating through Russian Central Asia to the A olga. Some seventy

104 THE OPEN COURl

years later most of these migrated Mongols returned to Chinese Tnrkistan, by arrangement with the Alanchiis ; those who remained on the \'olga are the Russian Kalmuks of the present day. This double migration is important in history because it is the last of the great Mongol migrations, involving really large numbers and really great distances. It is also important because it reveals how the Manchu dominion in Chinese Turkistan, which was later claimed as a direct conquest, was founded actually on diplomatic manipula- tion of the different racial and tribal groups, after the Mongols had already overrun the whole country and then quarreled among themselves.

The geographical structure of the communities along the North Road is comparable to that of the South Road. There is the same string of oases, with its background of mountains. There is, how- ever, one cardinal difference, in that the string of oases is dominated by a line of country suitable for uninterrupted nomadic migration. The power of the nomads is reinforced by a route running along the flanks of the x'Mtai, north of the Jtmgarian desert and converg- ing on the North Road ; it forms a corridor from Mongolia, through the Tarbagatai region and the Emil A^alley, into Russian Central Asia and southern Siberia.

Because it lay open to nomad incursions, the social-economic oasis-structure of the North Road was periodically overwhelmed by invasions, and the growth of society and civilization was much less continuous. For this reason the archaeological remains of the North Road are not so rich as those of the southern oases — apart alto- gether from the greater dryness of the south, which is comparable to that of Egypt in favoring the preservation of ruins and the objects in them. Conquests of the southern oases must normally have been effected by indirect approach from the North Road. Who- ever holds the North Road has comparatively free scope of move- ment, and by striking across the passes of the T'ien-shan can mas- ter separately the oases of the South Road ; which though to a high degree uniform in race, language, religion, and culture, have no political cohesion and no sense of united nationality. They are is- lands, which know of each other but do not belong to each other. These i^henomena continue to be of importance in our own day, be- cause the North Road lies open to access from Siberia and Russian Central Asia, while the approach from China is exceedingly long and as difficult as it is long.

CHINESE TURKISTAN 105

Freedom of movement and large-scale migration along the North Road have blurred the local historical outlines. In each oasis "pocket" of southern Chinese Turkistan the po]iulation tends to be stable. Each oasis has seen many conquests ; but the conquerors came in small detachments and imposed only a small ruling class on top of the local population. Even in the most flourishing ages of the Silk Route there do not seem to have been sweeping movements of population. Communities of merchants from all over Asia had their separate quarters in the prosperous towns ; they brought their languages and their religions, but they did not, on the whole, dis- place what they found ; they added to it. Even the Chinese, in the long period of their modern influence, which began in the seven- teenth century (under the Manchus), displaced but little. They represent one more addition ; and both in cjuantity and quality that addition is remarkably small, west of Hami and Turfan.

Along the North Road, on the other hand, racial and cultural history tends to be disconnected and confused. It is a succession of catastrophes and sweeping replacements. In times of strong govern- ment, settled populations grow up in the oases ; in times of war, they are obHterated. Sometimes they are replaced immediately by the conquerors, sometimes they are left desolate for years. Some- times, even, the remnants of the oasis-people turn nomad. This is a type of historical change that is too little appreciated, because of the emphasis given to the changes that take place when nomadic peoples invade civilized regions and are absorbed in them. Yet the region north of the Great Wall of China has frequently seen the conversion of settled people into pastoral nomads.

The Hi Valley, the "promised land" of Chinese Central Asia, is enclosed between two arms of the T'ien-shan, and opens into what is now the Kazakistan Soviet Socialist Republic of Russian Central Asia. It is the richest part of the dominion, but the least developed. Forests, mines, rich mountain pastures, and fertile arable lands lie close to one another, but the land has never enjoyed long-continued development. Cities have been founded only to be destroyed. The great valley forms a bay into which have eddied racial elements from each of the migrations that has swept along the Nomads' High- way between Mongolia and Russian Central Asia. Here are found Mongols, Kazaks, and Kirghiz ; Taranchis — immigrant settlers from the Kashgar region ; Solons, Sibos, and Chinese. The Solons and Sibos came from northern ^vlanchuria, from the region historicallv

THE OPEN COURT

A I-L.\ZAK FAMILY GROLT Photograph by Owen Lattimore

equivalent to Outer Mongolia, and were "planted" as Manchu mili- tary colonists. They still preserve their Manchu dialects better than the Manchu language is preserved in Manchuria. The Sairam Nor approach to the Tli Valley is held by Chahar Mongols in the Bore- tala Valley. They migrated from the Chahar region of Mongolia, some 2,000 miles away, under Manchu orders.

Hi at the present time is the most desired goal of immigrants from China, because its lack of development gives them the maxi- mum of op])Ortunity. l^v long tradition, however, it is politically violent and rnstable. Here occurred almost the only massacres of the town Manchu s and severe fighting during the Chinese revolu- tion. Frontier conditions are still more uncertain than in any other part of the province. The political frontier does not accord with the needs of the nomads. Across the frontier are those of the Ka- zaks who arc under Russian rule. The Kazaks, although thus politi- calK (lixidcd and further sul)dividcd into many tribes, are culturally one nation. It has long been their practice to migrate across the political boundary at their own discretion ; a practice which their overlords have always ])rcvented if thc\- could. When they find

CHINESE TURKISTAN 107

Chinese rule lighter than Russian, there is an inevitahle tendency to move into Chinese territory, moving back again when conditions change. During the period of rapid Russian colonization, just be- fore 1914, and again during the Russian revolution, the migration was from Russian into Chinese territory. At the present time there is attempted migration in both directions. Tribesmen who are not reconciled to the Soviet order try to escape into Chinese territory : while others, from the Chinese side, dissatisfied with Chinese rule and attracted by the growing prestige of Russia, attempt to enter Russian territory. Russian Kazaks are allowed to carry arms, while the Chinese do everything in their ])ower to prevent the tribes under their rule from acquiring modern arms. The frontier is con- tinually disturbed by surreptitious, forbidden fiittings, and also by bold thieving raids on the horse-herds, in which the well-armed tribesmen from the Russian side usually get the better of it.

Finally, there is the Tarbagatai-Altai region, which forms a sort of outer northwest ward of Chinese territory. A large part of it, administered from Sharasume (called by the Chinese Ch'eng-hua- se) is geographically and ethnically part of the Altai region of ^lon- golia. It was so administered until the Chinese revolution, when Outer Mongolia declared for and achieved a measure of autonomy. Many of the Mongols of this region, however, are related to those established in the T'ien-shan, and under the influence of one of their princes they adhered to the province of Sin-kiang in prefer- ence to remaining with Alongolia.

It is precisely in this region that the Altai migration-corridor converges on the North Road, so that strategically the region is of the greatest importance. The population, although predominantly Mongol, contains also a number of Kazaks, of the Altai division of that group of tribes, and a number of Altai-Urianghai, of a I\Ion- golized Turkish stock. The Sharasume frontier is a matter of much concern to the Chinese authorities, who are always afraid that the influence of Outer Mongolia will cause a rising there, the more so since the Mongols under Chinese rule in Turkistan have gradual- ly but obviously been growing less contented with the treatment they receive.

The province of Sin-kiang and its heterogeneous peoples are governed, as has already been described, by a small alien minority, the Chinese, under the fiction that the Chinese are conquerors who are in a position to vindicate their rule by force and to hold the

108 THE OPEN COURT

province against any insurrection from within or invasion from without. This fiction has worked admirahly. The government com- bines local corruption w^ith admirable general efficiency. Its cur- rency is worthless, yet its economic condition is remarkably steady, compared not only with China proper but with almost any country in the world. It is politically, economically, and socially backward, but probably more stable and contented, at least until very recently, than any region of equal area in the world. It has dealt success- fully with the danger of invasion, and handled well a numerous in- cursion of armed men thrown out of Russia by the revolution. Its record for civil war during the twenty-one years of the Chinese republic has been astonishing ; one or two factional crises among the ruling Chinese and a very few risings among subject peoples brought about by excessive assertion of authority.

The final paradox is that the government, although nominally it represents the power of China over a colonial dominion, exhibits the utmost caution in dealing with the Central Government, and avoids altogether any implication in the politics of China. It con- ducts its own foreign relations with Russia and India, and fears intervention from China at least as much as it fears either foreign aggression or native rebellion.

Chinese Turkistan is divided from China by great distances and formidable deserts. There is one great cart-road approach, through Kansu. The first Republican governor of the province used to refer to the eighteen stages of desert travel just beyond his border as his eighteen ten-thousands of loyal troops, protecting him from Chinese civil wars. Apart from its natural difficulties the cart-road is frequently closed bv civil war, banditry, or conflict be- tween the Aloslem and Chinese elements in Kansu. There is one other main line of approach ; that by the Mongolian caravan routes. The two or three original caravan routes have been reduced to one since the secession of Outer Mongolia from China, and the one remaining route, being accessible at one point from Kansu, has been almost put out of commission by the extortions of the Kansu tax-gatherers.

With the trade between the i)ro\ince and China thus reduced, Soviet Russia has for some years enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the foreign trade of Chinese Turkistan. The prosperity of foreign trade is essential to Chinese rule, for so long as their subjects are prosperous, they arc much less likely to rebel. The importance of

CHINESE TURKTSTAN 109

Russian trade means that the Soviet (Government can exercise great pressure on the local authorities. I'or this reason, the province in- dependently opened relations with Russia in 1925, and since then the Russian consulates have remained open in Turkistan, although they have heen withdrawn from China proper.

Russian interests also succeeded in opening an experimental mo- tor traffic between the frontier at Chuguchak and the capital at Urumchi, in spite of Chinese reluctance. The conservative Chinese opinion has always been that traffic ought to pass freely within the province, for the sake of trade ; but not rapidly, because rapid trans- port would increase the danger of spread of any local insurrection, and also would benefit Russia more than Turkistan in the event of conflict. The peculiar attitude of the Chinese toward motor trans- port is illustrated by the fact that when it was first discussed, no Chinese were trained as drivers and mechanics. Only "natives" were to be employed. It was feared that if Chinese were employed, they might be tempted to meddle in politics, since control of the motor transport would be of grave importance in the event of a political crisis. Since then the attitude toward motor services has been modified by the desire to revive trade with China at least enough to break down the Russian economic domination. Attempts are now being made to develop a motor route through Inner Mongolia, but they are much hampered by political difficulties and sandy deserts.

The difficulties of Chinese traders at present are acute. Being almost cut ofif from markets in China, they become little more than middlemen between the natives and the Russians. In Turkistan, as elsewhere, the Russians prefer to work through monopoly firms. As each firm has no competitor in its area, the Chinese and native merchants dealing with Russia have to take what is ofifered for their exports and pay what is demanded for their imports. It is for this reason that Russian political influence, which is strong in Outer Mongolia and intermittently evident in Manchuria, is nor- mally suspended in Turkistan. The Russians can buy and sell in what is practically a closed market, which is of the highest impor- tance to them, since Russia is in need of foreign trade, but can only trade in an open market at the cost of great sacrifice.

In Kashgar, Yarkand. and Khotan there is a limited trade with India. It is, however, hardly likely to expand to any important ex- tent, because of the enormous physical difficulties of crossing the mountain barriers. There is, however, a certain amount of cultural

110 THE OPEN COURT

influence from India and an important pilgrim traffic. Pilgrims to Mecca, who used to go chiefly through Russian Turkistan, now go through India. In actual trade, however, conditions are so awk- ward that Indian traders invest a great part of their profits in money-lending : with the result that probably the most important function of the British consular officials in Turkistan — with the exception of the diplomatic benefits of proximity to their Russian colleagues — is to attend to friction arising out of lawsuits between Indian money-lenders and Chinese subjects.

The financial arrangements of Chinese Turkistan are extraor- dinary. It has long been the practice in China for the provincial authorities, usually under the control of the military, to debase the currency by demanding good money in payment of taxes and is- suing fiduciary currency, which rapidly depreciates, in paying troops and settling other obligations. This is possible largely because of banking arrangements which allow the officials to remit their profits to safe places in Shanghai and the foreign concessions. This is not possible in Sin-kiang, because the province has no banks, no banking connection with China proper, and no money in use that passes current in China. The only way in which either officials or private individuals can transfer any important sum to China is to export goods and bank the proceeds of the sale. For this reason, most of- ficials are interested in trading firms and therefore in the pros- perity of trade generally. Even within the province 'several dift'erent regional currencies are in use. and this tends to stabilize political conditions ; for it is almost impossible to accumulate sufficient cash funds in any one place to finance a political venture, without detection.

The progress of "sinization" has been and still is extremely slow. Higher culture, it is true, and such higher technical development as exists are predominantly Chinese.

''Do you smelt copper here?" "No, we don't know how, but the Chinese do." This conversation, recorded as typical by Huntington- a quarter of a century ago, is still typical. "The people do not seem to care to learn to do anything new," says Huntington. "They might learn much from their Chinese masters, but no one has suf- ficient ambition." 1 luntington deals with the characters of the Cen- tral .Asian peoples in relation to their environments. There is, how- ever, 1 think, another important factor to be considered. The same

-Ellsvvorlli lluntin|:;t()n, 'J'lic I'lilsc of .Isia, Boston, 1907.

CHINESE TURKISTAN

111

indifference to "progress and civilization" as taught by the Chinese is noticeable throughout the frontier re- gions. It has, I think, part- ly an historical basis, in the privileged position so often held by the border peoples. They tend to accept the benefits made available to them as privileges to which they are entitled. Not only have people no ambition to learn ; they consider it a loss of status when they have to learn. People who wish to keep their status hire Chinese to do things for them. It needs familiar contact with the "barbar- ians" to bring out the fact that the serene Chinese contempt for the barbarian is quite equaled by the contempt of the barbarian for the Chinese.

In this connection it is illuminating to consider the attitude of these peoples to the West, to which they have never stood in a position of privilege. It is congruent with the fact that historically the importance of Chinese culture in the transfrontier region has been balanced by the strategic advantage of the frontiers over China. Historically, the spread of Chinese culture has always been as much a matter of what the barbarians felt like taking as of what the Chinese felt it necessary to impose. These same "ignorant and un- ambitious" Central Asians take to \\'estern "progress," of which Russia is the disseminator, quite readily. Railways, motor cars, and all things mechanical they regard with enthusiasm : anri tliis atti- tude I believe is to be closely related to the fact that hisroncaliv power and conquest have tended to come from the north and west.

Education, in a country living in the past, is not a matter of obvious importance until the present breaks in on the past. For both Moslems and Mongols, generally speaking, education means

KIRGHIZ WEAMNG. NEAR SANJU Photograph by Owen Lattimore

112 THE OPEN COURT

only religious education. The Chinese have their own schoofs, but "higher education" has gained ground very slowly, though the num- ber of men in the government services who have been educated in modern schools and universities in China, or even abroad, is gradually increasing.

The Chinese also maintain schools, of no very high quality, for educating "natives"' on Chinese lines. It is a regular characteristic of the Chinese that petty merchants learn the languages of the sub- ject peoples, while officials do not. Thus, on the whole, the Chinese practice is the reverse of that of Western nations which rule in the Orient. The Chinese administrator knows and cares little about the language, life, customs, and point of view of the people he governs. He works through a "native" interpreter who can speak Chinese. This leads to a great deal of corruption, but is not al- together to the disadvantage of the Chinese. Local resentment is likely to be directed first against the interpreters and headmen who are in immediate contact, and can often be mollified by punishment of an underling. On the other hand it damages Chinese prestige in one important respect. It is the common opinion of the "natives" that "the Chinese books are full of all wisdom, and the way to get rich and powerful is to model yourself on the Chinese ; but also the Chinese must be the most corrupt people in the world, for all who have anything to do with them become oppressors, thieves, and liars." This does not matter so much as long as Chinese prestige remains high. The Central Asian peoples tend to think that op- pression is the chief function of any ruler, native or alien ; but when another power begins to rise in prestige, resentment against the Chinese can easily be exploited.

Chinese Turkistan, then, is a country in which the geographical distribution of peoples and types of economy, the relation of settled oasis populations to nomads, and of the Chinese culture to the patchwork of the native cultures, as inherited from a long history of slow development but strongly established pattern, are plainly reflected in the asjiect of the present. The influence of inherited relationshi])s and antagonisms remains important largely because isolation, distance, and imperfect communications deaden the impact of new forces and ideas. The bitterest hostilities and local wars, when they break out, are not yet related to the clash between new civilization and old, as they are so generally in the rest of the Rast, but are still generated primarily by ancient incompatibilities

CHINESE TURKISTAN 113

between nomad and peasant, between Moslem and non-Moslem, and between one Moslem sect and another.

Chinese rule, though successful as an expedient, has not been able to free itself from the cycle of Central Asian history. Its own sta- bility and success are now gradually producing a tension that must break down in war and rebellion. Its most important phenomenon is one that must often have been seen in the past — expansion from the South Road oases into the regions of the North Road. Such an expansion is inevitably produced by a long period of tranquil government, especially when it represents the power of the "civi- lized" over the "uncivilized." Agriculture creates a denser popula- tion and a larger and more easily collected tax-revenue ; and the government always knows where the people are. A nomadic popu- lation always tends toward tribal loyalties, and the tribal leaders are less easily supervised than village headmen.

The lack of a free supply of colonists from the outside (from China) reduces colonization to a shifting of population within the province. A few Chinese come in from Kansu, but most of the colonists are T'ung-kan from the Urumchi-Manas region moving farther west, or Turki cultivators crossing over from the oases of the South Road. Some of the colonization is directed toward oases that have been depopulated since the Moslem insurrections of the late nineteenth century ; but the nomads are also affected, and are decidedly resentful.

It is commonly said of colonization at the expense of nomads that they have plenty of spare land. In Central Asia and in many parts of Mongolia, this is not true. The severity of the climate makes prosperous nomadic life possible only if good, sheltered win- tering-grounds are available. This is responsible for a remarkable difference in the summer and winter relations between nomadic tribes ; notably between the Kazaks as one main group and the ]\Ion- gols as another. In summer they scatter out over wide grazing grounds, and raid each others' herds. In winter, the lack of good quarters drives them in close to each other ; a tacit truce is declared, and they spend the winter in comparative amity.

Not only Chinese officials going out to survey land for coloniza- tion grants, but foreign travelers also, usually visit the nomads in summer. Thus, the universal report is of vast ranges of pasture with a very thin population. The scarcity of good winter quarters is not given proper attention. Now it is these very winter-quarter

114

THE OPEN COURT

CARAXAN MASTER AND CAMELS IN SNOW Photograph by Owen Lattimore

valleys, because they are sheltered, that first attract the colonist. The nomads, therefore, feel pinched in and oppressed much earlier than is generally supposed.

Then again, many enthusiasts of colonization would like to see settlement from the outside reinforced by conversion of the nomads themselves to agricultural life. Popular theory argues that agricul- tural economy is a "higher form of civilization" than nomadic life, and innocently assumes that the nomads will be "attracted by the opportunities of progress." This, so far as Chinese colonization is concerned, is a complete fallacy. The central characteristic of all the nomad peoples in contact with China is that, far from looking up to China, they look down on the Chinese. This historic truth has been unduly obscured by the standard histories, which dwell on the sinization of the l)arbarian invaders of China and neglect the fact that throughcnU histnry real j^ower tended to reside in the hands of those barbarians who remained outside the Great Wall, to breed fresh contingents of conquerors.

The traditional attitude remains strong; even in periods like the present when, owing solely to the accident that the Chinese have

CHINESE TURKISTAN 115

more modern arms than the nomads, the nomads are weak in rela- tion to China. They still prefer to avoid the Chinese, not to "raise themselves to the Chinese level." This is proved conclusively by the fact that wherever nomads, in contact with the Chinese, settle down to agriculture and the Chinese way of life, it is always and only the feckless and unenterprising, or the helpless, who settle down ; and in so doing they earn the contempt, not the respect or admiration, of their fellows. It is not the rich, the socially superior, those best able to "appreciate the advantages of the higher civili- zation," who embrace the chance of "progress." These, on the contrary, are the people who keep up most doggedly their pride in the ancient wav of life, who refuse to the last possible moment to compromise, and who form the backbone of those last bitter re- bellions that either turn back the process of colonization or end in the extinction of the nomads. Another little-known proof of the high standing of the nomadic life is the fact that a certain number of the immigrants, notably among the Turki, abandon the settled life in favor of the nomad life.

It is the eternal tragedy of China that all the peoples of the barrier-regions of the northern and northwestern frontiers face inward on China. The rhythm of their history has been determined from of old as an alternation of advance and retreat, with their faces toward China. It is virtually impossible to convert them to face about and take part in Chinese expansion. The complementary as- pect of this historical bias is that Mongols and Central Asian peoples ■ have always tended to accord prestige and admiration more readily to Russia than to China. It is demonstrably true that the Rus- sians are more successful even in converting nomads to agricul- ture than are the Chinese. This has been true even in the past, al- though the Russian expansion in Siberia was marked by bitter con- flicts with different tribes ; it is more true in the present, because even the small degree of mechanization in Russian farming gives an appeal that China cannot offer.

Above all, the radical difference in character between Russian and Chinese agriculture is important. The wooden plow and in- tensive cultivation of the Chinese have never been regarded as any- thing but the marks of slaves and subject peoples ; but it is possible to accept the superior plows and extensive cultivation of the Russians as worthy of free men. The intensive Chinese agricul- ture is bound ud with a social order which is never successful with-

116 THE OPEN COURT

out close settlement, crowded villages, and frequent towns. The extensive Russian agriculture is possible in isolated wilderness settlements with mixed pastoral and agricultural economy, which makes much easier the transition from nomadic life. In Chinese Turkistan, the very regions where a long period of peaceful Chinese rule has brought out the old opposition between oasis and free pasture are the regions which lie more open to Russia than to China, and the peoples afifected are related in blood, language, and religion to peoples who, under Russian rule, have been granted re- publics of their own and encouraged (perhaps as a distraction from the drawbacks of rigid economic control) to take pride in strong local nationalism.

The immemorial Chinese practice in dealing with "natives" is to work through their chiefs. In times of barbarian ascendancy the best way of minimizing the impact is to bargain with separate chiefs. In times of Chinese ascendancy the best method of preventing barbarian unity is to favor the chiefs against one another in rotation. In recent years, however, the lack of obvious resistance and the success in maintaining the continuity of Chinese rule at the time of the revolution and again after the murder of Governor Yang a few years ago — both obvious occasions for native insurrection — have encouraged the feeling that the natives are no longer dangerous.

Success in Chinese colonization, notably in Mongolia and Alan- churia, gave rise to a conviction that the day of the barbarian was finally over. The Kuomintang urged that the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out. The Kuomintang has but little political powder in Chinese Turkistan, because the ruling Chinese faction, as has been pointed out, can only maintain itself by keeping free of commitments to political factions in China. Nevertheless, the general cast of thought which the Kuomintang represents has been spreading.

During the long period of strong rule, the privileges and sub- sidies of the native Turki "princes," who had once been at the head of "native states" in a number of the southern oases, had been either cut down or abolished. Even on the Xnrth Road the powers of the K'nzak chiefs and Mongi)! ])rinces were being ])rogressivcly curtailed. The only im])orlant surviving "native state" in the south was that of Ilanii (Koniun. In l')20 it was decided to discontinue the "native state" administration and substitute the ordinary form of Chinese administration. It is ])rol)able that the \-ear 1*^2*^ marks

CHINESE TURKISTAN 117

the peak of Chinese expansion in Manchuria, Mongolia, Central Asia, and Tibet.

When an attempt was made to remeasure lands for taxation pur- poses, a rebellion broke out among- the mountaineers who are the outlying subjects of the ITami {principality. It rapidly became so serious that Chinese authority throughout the province was im- periled. There was a danger of risings all over the province. The very inferior troops of the standing army were incapable of putting down the insurrection, and for the first time the practice of using Mongols against Moslems was inadequate. The Chinese met the situation by an application extraordinary of the old principle of using one subject race to hold down another. They enlisted "White" Russians — non-Soviet exiles and refugees — in the Hi region, turned over to them the arms of the regular troops, transported them to Hami, and with them put down the uprising: though it still smolders in the mountains.

With the outbreak of the Hami trouble, the present regime in Chinese Turkistan passed its peak. There is now more banditry — in a province notalily free of banditry — than ever before, and it is closely associated with racial trouble. Increased efforts are now be- ing made to renew contact with China, in spite of the known dan- ger of implication in civil wars, and this weakening of the old con- fident isolation probably means a loss of conviction in their own sufficiency among the ruling minority.

What, then, is the present state of Chinese Turkistan? The Chinese, after prolonged contact, have not amalgamated with the native population. Nor has Chinese culture penetrated deeply. It remains an alien veneer, affecting onlv a limited number of activi- ties and a small proportion of the people. Chinese political and military supremacy, long a fiction, but a fiction handled with emi- nent skill and functioning well as a working theory, is in danger of collapse. The province is an insecure salient in the line of the frontier; and China itself, in the eyes of many of the subject peoples, appears to be crumbling inward on its own center.

The position of Chinese Central Asia can hardly be clarified without catastrophe. For more than a generation it has been com- pletely occupied in a cycle of its own history of the immemorial cast ; controled by an outside power, under title of conquest, but actually ruled by manipulation of one native element against an- other. In the days of the Silk Route, the Han dynasty asserted

118 THE OPEN COURT

its power chiefly by negotiation among the petty Central Asian states, while the silk trade, passing through, was more an affair of resident alien trading communities than of the desert-isolated oasis-dwellers themselves. Religions from India and the Near East were later imported ; the costumes and languages of many lands and nations became familiar, but the basic forms of life altered little. The rhythm of history grew out of the relation of oasis to desert and mountain, of caravan route to migration route, and through it ran also the ebb and flow of the power of the Border over China, and of China over the Border.

So, in our own time, the affairs of nations have passed over the heads of nomads and oasis-dwellers. For them the great affairs of the world have been the creeping extension of Chinese control, re- flected in the decline of native princes and rulers, the spread of oasis-life into the traditional domain of the nomads, the balance between ^Moslem and Mongol, and the rivalries of the sects which forever rend the ^Moslem world internally. They have said, in ef- fect, of the alien civilization of China, "It is true, there are such things" ; of India, "Alen have been there, and returned" •. of Russia, "Men speak of wonders."

Yet all the while the relative position of this Inner Asian world has been altering. Alien forces have been crowding closer to it. They have artificially been held back, and therefore, when they do break in, the effect of the shock will be all the more like the foundering of one world and the creation, in agony, of another. The apprehensive efforts of the Chinese in Sin-kiang to renew^ con- tact with China, and the important modern movement in China it- self to stimulate expansion into the northwest, appear to be only echoes of the probably more important fact that real Chinese power on the frontier is more unstable than at any time since the revolu- tion. Political, financial, and physical difficulties impede the exten- sion of railway approach toward Chinese Central .\sia. A turbu- lent Moslem population in Kansu stands like an "Inner Mongolia" between China and the "Outer Mongolia" of Chinese Turkistan. Xor can the Chinese in Sin-kiang ol^tain a free supply of the modern arms which might refresh their title to rule. To attempt to import tlu-m from China would be to ])rc'scnt them to some mili- tarist on the way ; nor could they be imported through Russia or India without some compensation of the kind that one government considers appropriate from another.

CHINESE TURKISTAN 119

In Russian Central Asia, on the other hand, the drift toward Chinese Turkistan is inexorable. The political-economic and social- economic movements there demand extension into Chinese Turki- stan if they are to fulfil themselves. Certain important irrigation projects in Kazakistan cannot be undertaken unless they are based on works constructed on the Hi River in Chinese territory. The Turk-Sib railway, flanking the whole western frontier of Chinese Turkistan, has confirmed its economic orientation toward the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

Thus, when the forces of the new world do at last break in on Chinese Central Asia, it is almost inevitable that they will enter raw, strong and overwhelming from the Russian side instead of in a graduated, attenuated, and semi-Chinese form from the Chinese side. The internal history of Chinese Turkistan shows an alter- nating interaction between the oases of the south and the "land of free movement" of the north. It is likely that a period of oasis as- cendancy is ending and that the alternate period historically repre- senting nomad ascendancy will be transformed into an inrush from the North Road, comparable to the old nomad descents in form, but infused with a new and strange vigor and many unknown qualities derived from Russian Central Asia.

RUSSIAN ASIA

BY I. A. LOPATIX LIFE OF THE RUSSIAN COLONISTS AND SETTLERS

IT IS generally believed that the Russians first came into Asia in 1581 under the leadership of Yermak, a Don Cossack. This, however, is an erroneous idea. The Russian traders of Great Nov- gorod penetrated into Siberia more than two centuries earlier. They established trading posts on the lower Ob and started peaceful coloni- zation of the country. Yermak, on the contrary, had a military mis- sion. \\'ith the financial aid of Stroganov, wealthy and powerful merchant of the Ural district, he organized a military detachment and attacked Kuchum, Khan of the Siberian Kingdom bordering on Rus- sia. After Yermak's triumphal entry into Kuchum's capital, Ivan the Terrible, then czar of Russia, sent five hundred soldiers as re- inforcement, and the conquest of Siberia began in earnest. By 1630 the Lena was occupied: in 1640 Semen Dejnev rounded the north- eastern point of Asia, and in 1643 Poyarkov sailed to the mouth of the Amur. Three years later Khabarov successfully invaded the whole Amur region ; thus was the vast territory of northern Asia conquered in the course of fifty years. Xo similar feat is known to history.

The ad\ance of the Russians into Transcaucasia and Central Asia, however, was not so rapid. A part of Georgia surrendered in 1798, and by 1810 the entire province had been added to the Rus- sian empire. The remaining Transcaucasian territory was taken after the war with Turke\- in 1878, while Central Asia was con- quered by the Russians only in the nineteenth century.

As already stated, the first Russian settlers in Siberia were the fur traders of Great Novgorod. The adventurers and soldiers who formed Yermak's army or followed him as traders were also northerners of the provinces A'ologda, \'iatk;i, and Perm. These settlers establi.she(l the northern dialect of the Russian language in western and eastern Siberia. Immediately following the conquest, the Russian Government began sending colonists into Siberia. Since the native population of the country was hostile toward the con-

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querors, the first colonists to be sent to Siberia were the Cossacks. They were warlike horsemen of the steppes who had lived in con- tinuous war with Tatars and other native tribes along the boundary line of European Russia. This movement of the Cossacks into Si- beria was partly voluntary, partly compulsory. They were sent by the Government with their families, cattle, horses, and all house- hold goods and implements. Thereafter, for a number of years, the hardy pioneers had not only to establish themselves in the new territory, but were faced with the constant necessity of repelling the frequently recurring attacks of the aborigines. For this service the Russian government granted them a vast territory and certain privileges. Even at the present time the Cossacks form the most conspicuous part of the population of Siberia.

In many remote and isolated corners of Siberia, the Russian government established prison camps. Convicts and political of- fenders were sent to these places in great numbers. The territories of Yakutsk and Sakhalin Island were noted especially as places of exile. It has been pointed out by several investigators that the convicts sentenced by the civil courts did not affect the population of Siberia to any great extent. They were prisoners kept in strict isolation without families. Most of them were short-lived and left no progeny. They were feared by the colonists who aided the authorities in keeping them isolated, even killing them if they tried to escape. During the last thirty years many of these penal colonies have been abolished. Since 1905, Sakhalin Island has been cleared of the convicts and opened to free colonization. On the other hand the political exiles have had a great cultural influence upon the Si- berian population. Be'ing highly educated intellectuals (frequently men with families and being granted freedom within certain limited areas), they helped to spread education among the colonists, or- ganized libraries, theaters, museums, and other cultural institutions. They have made many great contributions to the scientific inves- tigation and exploration of Siberia. Among them were anthropolo- gists such as Bogoraz, Sternberg, Pekarsky, Seroshevsky, and sci- entists such as Chersky, Pilsudsky, and others.

A very important role in the early Siberian colonization was played by the Russian sectarians. After the reforms of the patri- arch Nikon, the Russian Orthodox Church split into two sects.

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The Starov\ers or old-believers, who did not accept the reforms of the patriarch, very soon broke up into a number of smaller sects which were severely persecuted by the official church and the govern- ment. These old-believers left their homes and went into the remote northeastern corner of European Russia and finally into Siberia. \\'hen new settlers came to their villages in Siberia, the old-believers left their homes again and moved farther east, choosing the most re- mote and isolated places, where they could live peacefully according to their old religious traditions.

It is noteworthy that the Cossacks and old-believers proved to be excellent colonists of Siberia. Their descendants represent the strongest, most daring, and most industrious people of Siberia to- dav. Because of their enterprising spirit they are called "Russian Americans" by the rest of the colonists.

After the opening of the port of Madivostok and the com- pletion of the Trans-Siberian railway colonists were sent in large numbers into Siberia. Xow they were not northerners, but peasants from the middle provinces of European Russia (Great Russians), Ukrainians, and \Miite Russians. The Great Russians colonized the unsettled prairies of western and eastern Siberia and the Amur \'alley : the Ukrainians (or Little Russians) formed numerous and large settlements in the Ussuri A'alley, while the White Russians settled several other districts of the Ear East. Each of these colo- nies speaks its own dialect and adheres to its peculiar culture. Even the names of their settlements are the same as the cities from which they came. On the Amur there are again A'oronej, Orel, Tambov, as in the central part of European Russia ; and on the Ussuri there are Chernigov, Kiyev, Poltava, and other names of well-known cities of Ukraine. Eor the colonization of the mouth of the Amur where fi.shing should be the chief occupation, the Russian govern- ment, at the close of the nineteenth centurs', transported a large group of the Ural Cossacks who were known as skilful fishermen.

In tlie history of Siberian colonization there have been several distinct jicriods centering around certain natural res(~)urces of the country. The first of these periods centered around fur trade in which sable predominated. The trader penetrated into Siberia, mov- ing along the iKirtbcrn part of the country from ])lace to place where sable was jjlentiful. The skin of this valuable animal even played the role of a unit of exchange. Sable disappeared in many places

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in western Siberia, Irat in the eastern provinces of Yakutsk, Kamchatka, and the Far East this valuable fur-bearing ani- mal is still plentiful. Other animals in order of the value of their fur are squirrel, fox, ermine, weasel, otter, bear, wolf, wildcat, and tiger (in the Far East).

Gold comes second in chronological sequence of economic develop- ment of Siberia. In European Russia gold has been mined only in the Urals in limited quantities. Gold-bearing areas occur in western and eastern Siberia and in the Far East.

Agriculture developed about fifty years after the first coloniza- tion in eastern Siberia, especially in southern Transbaikalia — in the fertile valleys of the Onon, Ingoda. Argun, and their tributaries.

A TYPICAL OLD GOLDI Photograph by I. O. Lopatin

RELATIONS OF THE RUSSIAN COLONISTS WITH NATIVE TRIBES

The primitive Finnish and Tungus tribes made little resistance to the Russian advance into Asia, but the more civilized Turkish peoples and especially the Buryat of Transbaikalia proved a seri- ous obstacle. The natives of the Amur Region, the Chukchee, and Koryak offered considerable resistance. Frequently the first Rus- sian military detachments were completely annihilated by the na- tives, who treacherously violated the treaties made with them and rebeled repeatedly. The subjugation of the natives required great effort and much military skill on the part of the Russians. On the Amur they had to contend with the well-organized and well-equipped Manchu troops who at that time (seventeenth century) were at the height of their military glory. The natives of the Caucasus, the

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Gortsy or Alountaineers; offered such strong military resistance to the Russians that the final conquest took place only after sixty years of continuous warfare. The Central Asiatic rulers also put up a stubborn resistance, and the conquest of this country cost Rus- sia heavily in both money and men. ^^lauy sanguinary battles were fought, and the final victory was due only to the greater number of the Russian troops and to the military skill of their generals.

Rebellions have broken out among the Siberian natives even in recent times, but on the whole the enmity of early days between natives and Russian colonists has disappeared. The Russian sett- lers have adopted a certain amount of native culture. First of all, almost all existing geographical names in the new country were accepted by the colonists, for instance, Ob, Irtysh, Altai, and others. Likewise, a certain type of overcoat, shoes, and mittens suitable for the climate of the country were immediately borrowed by the Russians from the natives. Even some dishes and peculiar methods of cooking were adopted, also a few words of the native languages ; thus purga designates a Siberian snowstorm, yiikola, dried fish, paiitoi'at means to hunt the wapiti.

On the other hand, natives have been greatly influenced by Rus- sian culture. The Turkish tribes of western Siberia, the Buryat, the Tungus of Transbaikalia adopted Russian types of houses and dress, and became peaceful tillers of the soil. Even the Goldi on the Amur and Ussuri who live in close proximity to the Russian settlers have learned to grow vegetables. Great cultural work has also been done by the Russian missionaries. The conversion to Christianity has changed not only their faith, but also their occupa- tion, citizenship, hair-dress, and costume. All natives at baptism receive Russian names (Christian name and family name) and after that consider themselves Russians.

The Russian peasants in .Sil)cria very seldom look down upon the natives, which leads to friendly relations between them. Tt is true that a Russian girl will never marry even a half-breed native, but a Russian man ma\' have a love affair with a native woman and does not consider it a disgrace to luarry a half-breed. The Rus- sian missionaries and ])]iilanthr()])ic societies have helped a great nian\- natives lo ac(|uire a higher education. Auioul; tlu-se educated natives of .'^iberia there are now such well-known names as Dorji Banzarov, a iUiryat, orientalist; \'alikhanov, linguist: X. Katanov,

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an Altaian Turk, professor of Persian and Turkish languages at the University of Kazan ; Tsybikov, a Buryat, formerly professor at the Oriental College of Vladivostok ; and Badmayev, also a Buryat, a noted physician in Leningrad.

Some modern Russian writers have become known through their novels dealing with the life of Siberian natives, as, for instance, W. Tan-Bogoras (Tungus, Yakut, and Chukchee stories), Syero- shevski (Tungus and Yakut stories), V. K. Arseniyev (Dersti Usala, a story of a Goldi), Karazin, and Mamin-Sibiryak.

Russian architecture, sculpture, painting, and decorative art have also been influenced by the native art of Russian Asia, especially that of Turkistan. The bulb-like domes of the Russian churches in Moscow resemble to a great extent the domes of Samarkand and Bukhara. Through Central Asia and the Caucasus Russian art has absorbed some elements of Arabian, Persian, and even Indian art. Among modern artists there are several like Roerich and Klementiev, who consciously absorb the beauty of the decorative art of Turks and Tungus, Goldi and Gilyak.

LIFE AND CULTURE OF THE NATIVE TRIBES

The population of Russian Asia is extremely varied in its racial and linguistic composition. In the Caucasus alone there are more than one hundred different dialects and languages spoken by the natives. Some of the Russian Asiatics belong to the civilized peoples whose culture may be traced to great antiquity, such as the Georgians, Armenians, and Tajiks. There are, however, also primitive peoples whose culture is not higher than that of most Indians of North America ; for instance, the aborigines of north- eastern Asia, such as the Chukchee, Gilyak, Tungus, and the Orochee.

The Caucasus and Turkistan are two of the most interesting an- cient centers of civilization. The natives of Turkistan may be divided into four groups: (1) the Aryans (the Tajiks, Persians, Hindus, and Gypsies, (2) the Semites (Jews, Arabs, and Afghans), (3) the Turks (Kirghiz, Tatars, Taranchi, and Sarts), and (4) the Mongols (Dungan and Sart-Kalmuk).

Turkistan was conquered by the Persians in the reign of Cyrus, and was invaded by Alexander the Great. At the end of the second century, B.C. the country was subjected to the invasions of foreign peoples, first, the Yiie-chi, and second, the White Huns in a.d. 450.

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In 550 the Turks of the Altai country defeated the White Huns and be- came masters of the country. The subju- g-ated Aryan population not only had a new lan- guage superimposed up- on its own, but under- went an admixture of Turkish blood. At the close of the seventh cen- tury, the Arabs con- quered Turkistan and forced its conversion to Islam. In 1219 Jenghis Khan ra^■aged the coun- try like a terrible hurri- cane, and at the end of the fourteenth century Timur established his rule. He chose Samar- kand as the capital of his empire and made it one of the most magnificent cities of the world. The last conquerors of Turkistan are the Russians.

Russian Trrkist?n is a corntr^• luoking back to an ancient civili- zation. Excavations at Anau ha\e proved that this place was in- habited by a peo])lc with stone-age culture a little earlier than 8000 R.c. Domestication of animals was achieved by them soon after that date. Central Asia is the ])rimary home of some of our domes- tic animals and plants. Agriculture as well as irrigation was well developed. From time immemorial the Central Asiatic peoples fostered trade between east and west and brought about culture exchanges between the Iwn. Tbc history of luirope has been deeply influenced by Central .Asia which is n hi\e of humanity. Niunerous tribes i)erio(lically swarmed wcstw;ir(l into l".nrn])c. Thus, in the fourth anrl fifth centuries, the Nuns advanced into the heart of Euro])e, while the .Avars and the llungarians invaded France. From the fourth to the tenth century the iUilgars and Khazars were very

GOLDI WOMAN WITH EARRINGS AXn NOSE RING

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active in southeastern Europe. Then the waves of the Peche- negs and Polovtsi rushed over Russia. The Mongols invaded Europe and reached eastern Germany in the thirteenth cen- tury. The Osman wave spent itself against the walls of Vienna. The Kalmuks en- tered southern Russia as late as the eighteenth century. Europe still harbors in the Magyars, the Turks, and numerous Finnish and Mon- golian tribes the remnants of the inhabitants of Central Asia.

The natives of Siberia and the Far East are of many ra- cial strains. Western Siberia is peopled by Finno-Ugrian and Turkish tribes. To the latter belong the Tatars of the Tomsk and Altai provinces. All Finns of western Siberia are reindeer breeders, even the Karagas and Soyot, who live in the southernmost corner of Siberia, the upper Yenisei and its tributaries.

Eastern Siberia and Yakutsk are peopled by three ethnic groups — the Tungrs, Mongols, and Turks. The whole of the vast area from the Yenisei in the west to the coast of the Pacific on the east and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to China in the south is po- pulated by Tungus. The Yakuts are a Turkish tribe. Transbaikalia is inhabited by the Buryat, a Mongolian tribe. It should be kept in rhind. however, that the Trngus constitute a large portion of the population in both Yakutsk and Transbaikalia.

The population of the Russian Far East is extremely hetero- geneous. The Tungus, again, as everywhere in northeastern Asia, form a considerable portion of the aborigines, and live in the Amur region. The Manchus reside in small numbers in the towns along the Manchurian boundarv line. \\'ith the exception of the civilized

A GOLDI EQUIPPED FOR WINTER HUNTING

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THE OPEN COURT

^lanchus all these tribes are primitive hunters and fisher- men. The extreme northeast of Asia and Kamchatka is in- habited by the Gilyak, Ainu, Chukchee. Koryak, Kamchadal, Yukaghir. Chuvantzi, Asiatic Eskimo, and Aleut. All these peoples are known in the modern classification as the Americanoids of Siberia. In their language, religion, cul- ture, and in bodily character- istics thev are closely related to the American Indians. It is believed by anthropologists that all these peoples reemigrated from America into Asia at the end of the last glaciation.

The culture of the natives of Siberia and the Far East is primitive. The Finnish tribes, the Tungus proper, and the Orok are reindeer breeders and to a certain extent hunters and fishermen. The Buryat at present raise cattle, horses, and camels, but this j)astoral occupation is of comparatively recent origin. Because of the cultural contact with their kindred folk, the Mongols proper, the Buryat, are the most advanced people among all the native tribes of Siberia and the Far Fast. The Yakut raise cattle and horses, and to a small extent till the soil, but their chief occupations are hunting and fishing. The .Americanoids of Siberia are fishermen and hunters. \\'ith the exception of the Buryat and a small number of the Yakut, none of the native tribes of Siberia and the Far Fast are engaged in agriculture. I'esides the Buryat nnd tlio iMnnish, Tungusian, and .Americanoid reindeer breeders the remaining tribes have no domestic animals except the dog. The latter is used for dri\ ing. Real potterv is imknown tn the tribes of Siberia and tlic I'^ar l^ast. and tluM'r uten- sils are made either of birch-bark, wood, or skin. Their diet con- sists largely of raw meat and fish. They but rarel\ use iron or

AX OROCHE EQUIPPED FOR WINTER HUNTING

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other metals, chiefly employing bone or horn, and the Americanoids even stone in making their tools and implements. None of these peoples knows the art of weaving, and their clothing is made of skins, chiefly reindeer-skins, though the pelts of all fur-bearers of the region are used for this purpose. The Tungusian tribes of the Amur region employ fish-skins for the same purpose, while the Chukchee, Aleut, and the Asiatic Eskimo even use guts of seal and walrus for certain articles of clothing. Their dwelling is generally a tent made of the bark of a tree or of felt (as the yurt of the Buryat) or of skins. The Koryak and other natives of northeastern Asia also have semi-underground dwellings.

The religion of the Siberian and Far Eastern natives embraces the belief in spirits, the cult of the dead, and primitive magic. The shamans (medicine-men) are believed to have intercourse with spirits. They conjure up spirits, cure the sick with the assistance of their spirit-protectors, foretell the future, and so on. On the whole it may be said without much exaggeration that all Finnish and Tun- gusian tribes of Siberia, and especially the Americanoids, have only recently emerged from the old stone age. Like the prehistoric man of the Paleolithic age in Europe, they too are extremely skilful in carving bone and reindeer horn, and resemble him to a great extent.

ADMINISTRATIVE, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC CHANGES IN SIBERIA BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT

A dministrathfe Changes

Great administrative changes have taken place in Russian Asia since the revolution. Under the czar's regime all Russian posses- sions in Asia were divided into eastern Siberia, western Siberia, Far East, Turkistan, and Transcaucasia. Eastern Siberia was sub- divided into four provinces : Transbaikalia, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and Yeniseisk : western Siberia, into the two provinces Tobolsk and Tomsk. The four provinces of Amur, Maritime, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka composed the Far East, and the seven provinces and the semi-independent Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara composed Turki- stan. Transcaucasia was divided into eleven districts. Thus, Asiatic Russia did not dififer much in point of administration from the European part of the empire before the revolution, except for the governors-general who were at the head of the administration of the larger units. Each governor-general controlled the governors of the provinces which formed the larger unit. This administrative

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system had the practical aim of concentrating power in the hands of the governor-general, because it was more convenient to control the remote parts of the empire through governors-general than di- rectly through governors of each province.

The official language in all Asiatic possessions of the empire was Russian, and instruction in all schools was given in this language. Only missionaries preached among the aborigines in their native tongues.

The Soviet Government has made profound changes in the ad- ministrative system of Russian Asia. Nationality has been the basis for the new divisions. All minor nationalities have been given the right to establish their own autonomous republics. The semi-inde- pendent Khanates w^ere abolished, and their territories divided on the basis of nationalities. As a result of this policy Russian Asia is now divided into the following parts :

(a) Constituent Republics: Transcaucasian, Turkoman, Uz- bekistan, and Tajikistan.

(b) Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics: Buryat-Mongol, Kazakistan, Kirghiz, Yakut.

(c) Autonomous Provinces: Kara-Kalpak and Kara-Kirghiz.

Social and Economic Changes

(I) Socialization of Agriculture

The life of the people in Siberia has undergone tremendous so- cial and economic changes under the Soviet regime. The most radi- cal change, which explains and covers all others, is socialization. The Communist government endeavors to socialize evers'thing: agri- culture, industries, trade, transportation, dwellings, even the cities themselves. Anything individual and private is considered unlaw- ful, and the government is doing everything possible to eliminate it. The process of socialization is not yet completed, but in some lines it has already advanced very fast. Thus, in agriculture in some parts of Russian Asia 60 per cent of the peasants are already so- cialized. The percentage of farms collectivized in the republic of Kazakistan was forty-two on March 20, 1930. In the basic cotton districts of the republic 80 per cent of the peasant households have been organized into collectives.

The socialization of agriculture was undertaken by the Soviet Covernmcnt in the very first years of its existence. This enterprise has been taken over on a large scale by the Five- Year Plan. First

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experiments in socialization were made on the nationalized estates of former landlords. Large and well-organized estates were taken over by the government and became sovhos or state farms at that time. The individual peasant farms were not touched by this policy. Only in 1929 did the government start to socialize them, com- bining a number of small individual peasant farms into one large- scale collective farm. Making a collective farm, the peasants elimi- nate all boundaries dividing the land allotments of the members of this collective. All means of production are also to be socialized, such as agricultural machinery, working animals, seed reserves, cattle fodder necessary for the socialized live-stock, farm buildings necessary for the operation of the collective. All work on the col- lective farm is carried on by its members in accordance with the rules and regulations adopted by the general assembly. The distribu- tion of labor in the collective is carried out by the administration, and no member of the collective may refuse work that he has been commissioned to do. Disciplinary measures may be taken, and a penalty may be imposed on the oiifender in case of failure to ap- pear for work.

In order to accelerate the influx of individual farmers into col- lectives the government took a number of suggestive measures. The collective farms from the very beginning of their existence were partially or entirely exempted from various all-union, republican, and local taxes and assessments. The State Bank instructed its branches to grant short-term credits to collective farms, and in- structors in agriculture were sent out to assist the collective farms in starting their work. However, such a collective farm is not a commune, and the members of it may retain their houses, small gar- dens, clothing, and other small personal property. If in addition to completely socializing the means of production the collective farm also creates enterprises to take care of the individual needs of its members, such a collective becomes a commune. The latter is the final aim of the Soviet Government. In a commune all property of the member is in common use. They live in a common house, have one common kitchen and common food ; they eat in one large din- ing room; their children are cared for by special trained nurses. Thus, at present there are three degrees of socialization of agri- culture in Russian Asia : state farm, collective farm, and commune.

One of the most important developments in the socialization movement was the creation of machine-tractor stations. In a cen-

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tral village among the collective farms such a machine-tractor sta- tion is organized with all kinds of up-to-date agricultural machinery for common use and with shops for repairing, mending, and re- modeling it.

Socialization of agriculture is progressing so rapidly that the government itself did not expect such great results. It was sup- posed by the government that there would be over a hundred farms in Siberia in 1931, employing 100,000 workers. It was believed that they would cover over three million hectares of arable land. During 1*^31 thirteen of these farms were supposed to plant 488,000 hectares with grain, or an area 314 times greater than that of 1930, and to use 3,000 tractors and 79 combines. It is believed that by the end of the Five-Year Plan period (1933) Siberia will have over 5,300,000 hectares under state farms. On August 1, 1931 there were 93 state animal husbandry farms in Kazakistan with 1.500,000 head of cattle, 596 collective dairy farms, and 108 machine-haying sta- tions. The state livestock farms had 2,200,000 head of cattle by the end of 1931. Nine state fruit-growing farms are to be organized in Kazakistan with a total area of 45,000 hectares during 1932. By the decision of the government thirty state farms for animal breeding are to be organized in Central Aisia. The combined pasturage of these farms will amount to 5,500,000 hectares. The two largest of these farms, which will have a capacity of 77,000 head of sheep, will be located near Samarkand and in the Zerovshansk district. The question of animal husbandry is now the chief center of at- tention in the reorganization of agriculture in Russian Asia. The large state farms serve both as model farms and experimental stations.

In connection with socialization of agriculture and development of large-scale farming a number of large irrigation projects are be- ing developed in Central Asia. Two hundred large excavators were ordered for 1932. The l"^nited Construction Equipment Industry is now building a factory in Tashkent for the manufacture of irri- gation c(|uipm(Mit of the simpler types, which will have an animal out])Ut valued at four million rubles. An excavator plant, now un- der construction in the Urals, which is scheduled to begin opera- tions at tile end of ]'^?i2, will su])ply excaxating machinery for Turkistan. A CDUiprehcnsive irrigation development is being car- ried through with the help of a niunbcr of prominent American engineers in this field, including .\. P. Davis, formerly head of the

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U. S. Reclamation Service and past president of the American So- ciety of Civil Engineers. For the year 1932 a sum of $120,000,000 has been appropriated for irrigation work in Tnrkistan.

Agriculture is being organized by the Soviet Government as a large-scale industry. Thus the cultivation of grain and grain trade were organized in 1928 into the powerful Zernotrest (the State Grain Trust). This organization is in charge of gathering, storing, and selling all the grain in Russia. Similar to this are the Ovtsevod (Sheep-Breeding Trust), Sakharotrest (State Sugar Trust), Soyuz- moloko (State Dairy Products Trust), and others. The State Rice Trust, which has been organized by a decision of the government in 1929, will combine all organizations connected with the cultivation of rice. Before the revolution rice cultivation was in an embryonic state, but the Soviet Government is developing this branch of agri- culture very successfully. Rice-planting is now concentrated chiefly in Turkistan, Transcaucasia, and in the Far East. The Rice Trust has been commissioned to organize large state farms in these sec- tions. The program of rice-sowing for 1932 provided for an in- crease in the sown area to 250,000 hectares (617,500 acres), of which the Grain Trust will sow 50,000 hectares, the collectives 175,000, and individual peasants 25,000 hectares.

The further development of the Soviet dairy industry in Rus- sian Asia is planned also largely along the lines of the organization of large collective and state dairy farms. There are dairies with as many as a thousand or two thousand cows on a single farm. So^oizmoloko (United Dairy Industry), a powerful organization which is in charge of storing and distributing milk in all Soviet Russia, invested in new constructions and reequipment of exist- ing dairy enterprises a total of 17,300,000 rubles in 1930. A large factory for the production of condensed milk is being built in the Novo-Sibirsk district (formerly Xovo-Xikolayevsk) in western Siberia, which will produce three thousand tons of condensed milk annually. Refrigerating plants are being scheduled for construction in Siberia and Kazakistan.

The cultivation of cotton in Soviet Russia has also been given a new impetus. It is a well-known fact that Russian textile in- dustry for a long time depended almost entirely on imported cot- ton. Then the czar's government started to develop cotton cultiva- tion in Russian Turkistan where it had been a native occupation from ancient times. In 1913 the Russian factories had already

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two thirds of their demand in domestic cotton. But during the Revolution the production of cotton fell off. Thus, in 1913 the area culti\ated with cotton in Russia totaled 512,984 desiatin, in 1919 only 50,C00 desiatin, and in 1920 it fell to a miserable 30,000 desiatin. The Soviet Government has endeavored to increase the cultivation of cotton, and in 1931 the area sown to cotton totaled 2,137,000 hectares (5,280,000 acres), an increase of 31 per cent above 1930, more than double the 1929 area, and over three times that of 1913. Russian Central Asia is the chief cotton-growing region, accounting for about 60 per cent of the total acreage ; Trans- caucasia (especially Azerbaidjan) is second accounting for 10 per cent. The remaining cotton-growing areas are Ukraine, Crimea, the northern Caucasus, and the lower A'olga. State and collective famis have taken a large share in cultivation of cotton and ac- counted for nearly 75 per cent of the area under cotton in 1931, as compared with 43 per cent in 1930 and only 7 per cent in 1929. One of the largest cotton state farms in Russia, known as Pakhta Aral (Cotton Island), is located in Kazakistan. Its sown area in 1931 totaled 25,000 hectares (over 60,000 acres), and the Soviet Government expects that by 1933 it will have from 55,000 to 65,000 hectares of irrigated land under cotton. This farm is situated where formerly there was only a sandy waste. The farm is being equipped with an experimental laboratory, a meteorological station, and its own cotton gin. Another large state cotton plantation is the Vakhsh state farm in Tajikistan.

All state and collective cotton farms are equipped with up-to- date machinery. There are 9,600 tractors for all districts of cot- ton cultivation, and harvesting is done by mechanical pickers. The first factory designed especially for the manufacture of equip- ment and machinery for cotton plantations has been established at Tashkent. Chemical fertilizers are used extensively. Modern tech- nique is also being introduced as regards the ginning of cotton. The numerous small, poorly equipped mills existing prior to the war have been replaced by a lesser number of large up-to-date plants, with a combined capacity over four times that of the pre- war plants.

Similar achievements have been made in the silk industry. Turki- stan and Transcaucasia constitute the chief regions for silkworm breeding, the former accounting for 60 ]ier cent and the latter for 36 per cent of the total output of cocoons. The North Caucasus, the

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Ukraine, and the maritime districts of the Far Eastern region con- tribute a small share (4 per cent). A dozen new silk-reeling fac- tories have been built near the sources of raw material — more than half of them in Central Asia, where there was none at all before the war. Among the largest are those at Margelan, in Uzbekistan, with 480 basins and at Nukha in Azerbaidjan, with 600 basins. The government endeavors to organize state and collective silk-worm- breeding farms and to introduce scientific methods in all phases of the industry. In 1931 the output of raw silk in Soviet Russia amounted to 860 metric tons, more than double the pre-war figure.

A start has been made toward the development of the tea in- dustry in Transcaucasia. The State Agricultural Academy has or- ganized an institute for scientific research in the tea industry in Tiflis with a number of experimental stations.

It is interesting to note that entirely new crops have been introduced into Russian Asia. A special committee (the Commis- sariat for Agriculture) has worked out measures for the introduc- tion of such crops on a large scale. Special attention is being given to the development of kendyr and kenaf cultivation. Kendyr is a fiber plant which may serve as a partial substitute for cotton in the production of cloth and for jute in the manufacture of rope and twine. Kendyr has been shown by scientific research to be more valuable than cotton for certain kinds of cloth. It is a hardy per- ennial plant which grows wild over large areas in the valleys of almost all rivers in Russian Central Asia and also in the North Caucasus, Dagestan, and along the lower courses of the Volga and Dniepr Rivers. The cultivation of kendyr may be carried on with- out extensive irrigation. The government plans to establish a num- ber of large kendyr farms and to spread the cultivation of this useful plant on a large scale. Kenaf is also a fiber plant, and grows almost in the same districts as kendyr. Kenaf may be a good sub- stitute for jute. In order to eliminate gradually the import of the latter, the Commissariat of Trade increased the cultivation of kenaf to 67,000 hectares in 1930. A special organization — the State Kenaf Company — was created to carry on the cultivation of this new in- dustrial crop.

A hitherto unknown rubber plant was discovered by an expedi- tion of the Institute of Central Asia in the Samarkand district in Uzbekistan, in 1930. This plant contains about 8 per cent of rub- ber, and is found in large quantities in various regions of the re-

136 THE OPEN COURT ^

public. Ill the same year a botanical expedition of the Academy of Sciences discovered a number of rubber-bearing plants and others containing volatile oils in the Altai Mountains, near the town of I'st-Kamenogorsk. In the following year the newly organized trust for the development of rubber plantations began work in the Kuyuk Mountains in Kazakistan. The yield of that year (1913) was about 200 tons, and that for the next year is expected to be 2,500 tons. A new experimental factory for the extraction of rubber from rub- ber plants is being erected in the Kara-Tau Mountains.

Scientific experiments are being made in planting varieties of sugar cane and other tropical and subtropical plants near Sukhum, in Transcaucasia. The Leningrad Agricultural Academy is to or- ganize a special station for growing winter vegetables near Su- khum also. Some of the southern regions of Central Asia and Trans- caucasia are using sweet potatoes — a new crop here — instead of potatoes. The Soy-bean and Corn Institute is to prepare a special regional plan for growing various kinds of beans and corn. Special studies are to be made of the use of various feed mixtures for the state and collective stock-breeding farms.

(2) Socialization and Development of Industry

All industries were socialized in the beginning of the Soviet Revolution, and at present there is no private enterprise or private capital invested in mining, textile, or any other basic industry. With the excejition of very few concessions, all mines and factories are run l)y the government. All individual industries are organized as trusts and syndicates, such as Sakharotrest (the State Sugar Trust), Neftye-syndicate (the .State Oil Syndicate), and so on.

Since the Revolution all industries underwent the same changes as agriculture. In the first years of the Soviet Revolution the out- put of products fell to an extremely low level, the worst year" being 1920-21. Then with the Xew Economic Policy (NEP) the output started to rise, and in the Five-Year Plan period it has reached the highest level. In some industries the output has already reached and e\'en surpassed the pre-war level, but in others it still remains below it.

The most interesting enlerprise of the .So\ict Coxernment in Si- beria is the Kuznetsk Steel Plant. Although the opening of such a i)lant was already decided by the czar's government in 1916, nothing was done until 1929. The Kuznetzk steel plant will have

RUSSIAN ASIA 137

initially four blast furnaces averaging 505,000 tons a year. It is noteworthy that the Ural Mountains contain a high grade iron ore, but have no coal good enough for the production of coke. All steel plants in the Urals have worked not with coke, but with charcoal. The Kuznetsk basin, on the contrary, possesses enormous deposits of high quality coal, which has already been worked for thirty years. The Soviet Government, therefore, decided to unite the Urals and Kuznetsk into one Industrial Combine. The iron ore will be shipped from the Urals to Kuznetsk, and the coke in turn will be trans- ported in the same cars from the Kuznetsk to the Urals over a dis- tance of more than 1,500 miles. How profitable such an enterprise is only the future will show. The Ural-Kuznetsk Combine is going to be an enormous undertaking. According to the program of the State Planning Commission for 1933, the output of pig iron of the combine is expected to be 6,500,000 tons. Large power plants and all the auxiliaries required of a modern steel plant were already built, and operations started on July 27, 1931.

Another great enterprise in the mining industry is the huge cop- per plant of Almalik in Kazakistan, which is to be built during the course of the next three years. Since it is only thirty-seven miles from Tashkent, the transportation difficulties are not great. At present a railway line is under construction between Tashkent and Melnikova.

■A still larger copper mining and smelting plant with an annual capacity of 175,000 metric tons of copper is to be built at Bertiss, at the western end of Lake Balkhash, in Kazakistan. The cost of construction is estimated at 450 million rubles, of which 100 mil- lion rubles were allotted in 1931. The plant is scheduled to be com- pleted and in full operation in 1935. A section of a railroad which will connect the Trans-Siberian railroad at Petropavovsk and the Turkistan-Siberian at Lake Balkhash was completed in 1931.

A huge lead mining and smelting plant (combine) is to be built in Central Asia. The centers of this combine are Chimkent and Turlan in Kazakistan. Capital investments are set at 25-30 million rubles, of which 14 million rubles were to be expended in 1931.

The machine-building industry is also being developed in Rus- sian Asia. Thus in August, 1932, construction work on a huge loco- motive plant was begun at Verkhne-udinsk, in Transbaikalia. The plant is scheduled to be finished in December of 1933. Another large locomotive-building plant is under construction on the banks of

138 THE OPEN COURT

the Tom River, nine miles from the Stahnsk Steel plant in western Siberia. It will cost $77,000,000. The construction is expected to be completed within a year. A large harvester-thresher plant is to be erected in Xovo-Sibirsk at a cost of 60,000,000 rubles. Another large plant is under construction in the same city, which will pro- duce coal-mining equipment for the Kuznetsk Basin coal fields.

In meat-packing and canning industry the Soviet Government endeavors to organize large factories with up-to-date equipment and machinery. All such enterprises are, of course, socialized. Among the recently completed plants are those at Omsk in western Siberia and at Frunze in the Kirghiz Republic. Besides, seventeen bacon factories have also been constructed, the largest of which is lo- cated at Biisk in western Siberia. The Five-Year Plan provides for the construction of fifty-seven packing plants for all Russia by 1933, and one will be built in Semipalatinsk, in the center of the livestock production in Kazakistan. Its daily killing capacity, work- ing in two shifts, will be 1,200 cattle, 2,400 hogs, and 4.800 sheep. The canning department will produce daily 300,000 cans, working in three shifts. A large fruit and vegetable cannery is to be built at Sardar-Abad in Armenia. It will cost about ten million rubles. The plant is scheduled to begin operations in 1934. Raw material for the cannery will be supplied by a state farm in the vicinity, which controls 5,900 acres of orchards, vineyards, and truck-gar- dens. A large condensed milk cannery was recently completed in the Sokolsk district of the Northern Region. The annual capacity of the cannery will be ten million cans.

Since the industrialization of East Siberia is dependent to a large extent upon electric power, the Soviet Government has de- cided to build large power stations on the Baikal, near the city of Irkutsk. The first is to be built at the Cheremkhovo coal mine by 1934, then the Irkut River dam will be built in 1937, and the Barkhatovo and Baikal dams on the Angara in 1938 and 1941, re- spectively. In November, 1930, the foundation was laid for the first regional power and heating station in Kemerovo, in western Siberia.

Even fur industry is being socialized. The government organ- izes hunting camps, fur-animal-breeding farms, and fur factories. In 1930 there were 1,358 animals on seven of the larger farms, in- cluding 738 silver foxes, 258 blue foxes, 82 other foxes, 95 sables, 59 martens, and 131 miscellaneous species. More than sixty differ-

RUSSIAN ASIA 139

ent kinds of pelts are exported. vSoviet Russia supplies about 25 per cent of the world fur output. The bulk of the furs comes from Asiatic Russia.

(3) Development of Transportation

One of the first great achievements of the Five-Year Plan was the completion of the Turkistan-Siberian Railway. It should be kept in mind, however, that the project of building a railway to con- nect Siberia with Turkistan was by no means new. The question was raised in 1878, and some preparatory work was done at that time. The entire line of the Turk-Sib (the abbreviated name of the road) is 1,445 kilometers. The economic significance of the railroad cannot be overestimated ; it connects cotton and fruit grow- ing Turkistan with grain and lumber producing Siberia. At the same time the Turk-Sib makes possible the development of the rich natural resources of Kazakistan. The cultural significance of the railroad is undoubtedly enormous : it marks the beginning of an industrial revolution for the peoples of Central Asia.

(4) Socialization of Cities

In its efiforts to socialize all sides of life the Soviet Government does not hesitate to socialize the dwellings and the cities themselves. Every endeavor is made to adapt old cities to modern life. All larger buildings and apartment houses were confiscated in the very beginning of the Soviet Revolution. Only small houses have been left in the possession of their owners. At present the Soviet Government is erecting a large number of buildings throughout Russia as homes for the workers. All such houses are social dwell- ings, extremely modern in their construction, with up-to-date con- veniences. It is supposed that the inhabitants of such a social house form a commune. Private property is reduced to an insignificant minimum. In an ideal case even food is in common use. Special cooks prepare the food for all the members of the commune, and trained nurses take care of all the children. Particular attention is being paid to new cities and towns which spring up in new in- dustrial centers and new industrial projects. Such cities in Siberia are Novo-Sibirsk (formerly Novo-Nikolayevsk), the port of Igarka, towns at the Kuznetsk Steel Plant, Kounrad near Lake Balkhash, and Karaganda in Kazakistan. Forty million rubles have been appropriated for the building of these new cities. The most inter- esting of them is Novo-Sibirsk, now the capital of Siberia and one

140 THE OPEN COURT

of the fastest growing of the pioneer cities in Russia. In the past five years its population has increased about 75 per cent, and is now estimated at 210,000 inhabitants. Novo-Sibirsk is the cen- ter of a large and prosperous agricultural district and also the cen- ter of the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine.

.\ broad extension of the network of entertainment has been made in order to satisfy the cultural needs of the workers. At present a large number of new theaters, talking picture houses, workers' clubs, and libraries are being bnilt in various cities throughout the country. One of the most striking of such new structures is the theater of Novo-Sibirsk. It seats three thousand, and has been de- signed along the most modern lines. The stage is placed in the cen- ter of the theater with the seats surrounding it. The stage is large enotigh for trains, tractors, and automobiles to move on it easily.

(5) The Far North

In recent years a development has taken place in the Far North. In Igarka and in the Yartsev and Kirensk regions a few vegetable and dairv state farms have been organized. Several collective farms are also to be established. A state reindeer-breeding farm is being established in the tundras on the Yenisei River. According to the Government's plan, it will have 20,000 head. A newly organized Deer-Breeding Trust is expected to place the farm on a scientific basis and enlarge the number of farms to such an extent that it might take care of the entire reindeer-breeding industry. The num- ber of deer in the herds raised by the natives of the northern re- gions of Soviet Russia is estimated at two million. It is expected by the Government that by 1933 the number of animals w'ill be increased to 3.500,000, with 800,000 on state farms, one million on collective farms, and the rest raised by individuals.

Even grain cultivation has been given a chance for greater de- velopment in the Far North. A state grain farm of 30,000 hectares (74.000 acres) w^as recently organized by the State Grain Trust in the Amginsk Valley in Yakutsk. The farm will be mechanized to a large extent. Forty- four tractors have already been delivered there as well as tractor-drawn machinery and automobiles.

The most important feature of the Far North is the rapid de- velopment of the Northern Sea Route leading through the Kara Sea to the nionlb nf tlic ( )b River in western Sil)eria and the Yenisei in eastern Siberia, b'irst e.\j)crinH'nts in the navigation of this route

RUSSIAN ASIA 141

were begun by Xordenskiold as early as 1875 ; then Russian navi- gators (General \'ilkitsky among them) tried to establish regular communication between their European and Asiatic ports and at last Xansen made his expedition in 1913. But commercial develop- ment did not begin until 1921, when the Komsevput (Northern Commercial Route Company) was organized. The increase of ship- ping via this route is already remarkable: from five ships carrying 8,317 tons of freight in 1921 to forty-six vessels carrying 195,(X)0 tons in 1930. Igarka, a new river port on the Yenisei, is being rapid- ly developed. Three large lumber mills are already in operation there. The town is growing very rapidly : the population in 1931 was more than six times as large as that in 1930. During the long polar nights the port is constantly illuminated by electricity. At Ust, another port on the Yenisei (400 kilometers below Igarka), a large canning factory began operations in 1931.

In 1930 Komsevput started fisheries on the lower Yenisei River and the hunting of fur-bearing animals. The first fur factory was built in the same year at the Bay of Nydoyamsl. Mineral resources of the Far North are also exploited, especially the graphite of Kureika, which is being used successfully in different industries. The development of aviation, radio, meteorological and ice-breaking serv- ices has greatly aided in the development of the northern sea route. Changes in the Culture of the Natives

The Soviet regime has brought about great changes in the culture of the natives of Russian Asia. Most important are those which have afTected education, position of women, hygiene, and public health. Before the Soviet revolution instruction in public schools was given in Russian, and because of lack of schools and teachers illiteracy was widely prevalent among the natives. The Soviet Government substituted Russian for the native tongues, and since 1930 has introduced universal compulsory education which will reach Georgia and Armenia in 1933 and Azerbaidjan in 1934. Some tribes comparatively advanced in culture, such as the Abkhazians and the Ossets, had no alphabet before the revolution. Almost all the Finn- ish and Tungus tribes also were illiterate. A few Turkish tribes used the Turkish or Arabic alphabets, but the majority of them had none. The Soviet Government introduced alphabets among some of these peoples. Especially great success has been achieved in the Caucasus. Publication of newspapers and books is rapidly increasing there. There were six newspapers in Transcaucasia prior to the revolu-

142 THE OPEN COURT

tion, with a circulation of 80,000. But in 1932 ninety-seven news- papers were published in fourteen languages, with a circulation of 1,200,000. In pre-revolutionary days there was one publishing house in all Transcaucasia, but in 1931 there were twenty. Success is not so great, however, in Turkistan, and as to Siberia and the Far East, the natives of these countries still remain in the darkness of illiter- acy. Education in these countries is even worse than before the revolution : then, there were missionary schools there, but now they are not functioning, and no substitute has been introduced.

Among the natives of Russian Asia the position of women in so- cial and economic life is very low. The veil of Mohammedan women practically imposes slavery upon them. The educational and politi- cal campaign under the Soviet Government has resulted in much freedom for the Asiatic women. During the election campaign of 1928-29. a great demonstration of freedom for women was held in Baku during which 30,000 Mohammedan women cast ofif their veils, trampled them under their feet, and burned them in huge bonfires. A.nother custom, which lowers the social position of women, is the kidnapping of a woman for the purpose of a mar- riage. This custom is wide-spread among the natives of Russian Asia. The Soviet Government has taken measures to abolish it. Thus, laws were entered on the statute books of Georgia in 1929 making kidnapping punishable by a maximum imprisonment of five years.

Native women are engaged in all kinds of industry. In 1931 there were seven thousand women in the oil industry in Azerbaidjan, where formerely no woman worked. A number of these women now hold responsible posts, such as managers of factories, engi- neers, or superintendents of schools. A number of women have been elected to the village Soviets and other governing, bodies.

March 8 has been selected as International Women's Day. Every year on this day great demonstrations take place, and mass meet- ings are held to celebrate women's achievement of complete equality.

In order to combat backwardness in hygiene and public health among the natives, the government establishes hospitals, ambula- toria, clinics, and dispensaries with special attention to the care of mothers and children.

A Jeunsh Home in the Far East

One of the most interesting features of new Russian Asia is the Jewish colonization in the Far East. The plan for settling Jews on laud was conceived in 1924 when the Soviet Government had

RUSSIAN ASIA 143

difficulty with the Jews who had been pushed out of the capitalist class and middle class of traders after the elimination of private trade. Bolshevism then was exterminating the last remnants of the Jewish bourgeoisie. The Jewish merchants and traders enjoyed no rights. Jewish agricultural colonization came as a solution of this problem. The mere transfer from the city to the agricultural colony made the Jewish merchant a full-fledged citizen. In several places in Ukraine, Crimea, and southern Russia, Jewish national districts have been formed. The expenditures of the Soviet Govern- ment for Jewish colonization from 1924 to 1930 amounted to 9,500,000 rubles. Aside from that, Soviet and foreign public or- ganizations spent 21,000,000 rubles. The Soviet Government has also met 70 per cent of the transportation cost, has given certain privileges in regard to taxation, and has permitted imports of equip- ment duty free. An enormous area of about ten million acres of land has been allotted to Jews in Biro-Bidjan, in the Far East. Biro- Bidjan has rich natural resources in iron, graphite, coal, gold, build- ing materials, and lumber. The Jewish agricultural population in this colony amounts to 1,500 persons. According to the Five- Year Plan, 48,000 Jewish families were to be transferred to agricultural work by 1933, and 60,000 by 1935. Preparations have been made to organize this colony into an autonomous Jewish administrative territorial unit, in which Yiddish will be the official language.

Nevertheless the Jews are not willing to go to Biro-Bidjan be- cause the industrial development of the Five- Year Plan period has opened the doors of the factories to them. The former Jewish trader prefers to be a wage-earner rather than a plowman in Biro- Bidjan. Taking this into consideration, the Soviet Government has opened Biro-Bidjan to Jewish workers from outside Soviet Rus- sia. But foreign Jews are not much inclined to settle at Biro-Bid- jan. Zionists look upon this colony as a competitor to Palestine, and non-nationalist Jews, on the other hand, are suspicious of the elements of Jewish nationalism in it. Many a Jew is discouraged by the fact that Biro-Bidjan is far away from the centers of Jewish population and that it is a wild, uninhabited, and undeveloped coun- try. The Soviet Government, however, endeavors to do everything to attract the Jews to Biro-Bidjan.

OUTLOOK OF RUSSIAN ASIA FOR THE FUTURE

The future of Russian Asia depends upon the development (1) of transportation, (2) colonization, and (3) better organization of

144 THE OPEN COURT

industries. Although some parts of Siberia are now densely popu- lated, vet in the greater part of the country the population is sparse. Under such conditions neither economic nor cultural development is possible. The government, therefore, should encourage the in- flux of colonists into Siberia, especially into countries as rich in natural resources as eastern Siberia, the northern part of western Siberia, and the Far East. Even Kazakistan needs new settlers and colonists. But all these countries are isolated and in many cases al- most inaccessible. The first measure to be taken therefore is to build new roads and railways and to improve maritime transporta- tion. Without better transportation no colonization is possible. When these three needs are satisfied, Russian Asia may be a very prosperous country. Western Siberia, Transbaikalia, and the Amur region will form an immense granary not only for Russia, but also for countries abroad. The output of dairy products, meat, and wool will also be very large. Turkistan and Transcaucasia will "easily be great producers of cotton, silk, and fruit, provided irriga- tion is well organized. The Altai, Transbaikalia, and the Far East may greatly increase the output of gold, copper, lead, silver, coal, and other minerals. The northern part of Siberia and the Far East may easily develop fishing and lumber industry.

As to its political aspect, I should mention that there has been a tendency toward the independence of Siberia, sponsored by Yad- rintsev and Potanin in the past and at present by a group of Rus- sian intellectuals abroad. A magazine is being published, and even a flag has been originated. But from a geographical point of view Siberia is not a separate country ; there is no natural boundary line between European Russia and Siberia (the Ural IMountains are in- significant), and Siberia is a natural extension of European Rus- sia. It is the same country, predominantly with the same population, language, and traditions.

GOETHE CENTENARY PAPERS

Read in Observance of The One Hundredth Anniversary

of Goethe's Death, March 22, 1932

At the University of Chicago, March 8 and 9, 1932

Edited By PROFESSOR MARTIN SCHUTZE

Goethe's universal significance, as a person and man of letters is pre- sented in a well-rounded, imaginative, and instructive manner. These papers, by well-known scholars and men of letters, will be valuable for school and college use, and at the same time of comprehensive general interest.

CONTENTS

Address of Welcome President Robert M. Hutchins, the University of Chicago

Goethe and the German Spirit Dr. H. F. Simon, German Consul General, Chicago

Goethe in English Literature Professor Robert Morss Lovett, the University of Chicago

Goethe's Language Professor George O. Curme, Northwestern University

Goethe and France Professor E. P. Dargan, the University of Chicago

On Re-Reading Three Thwarted Romances: La Nouvelle Heloise, Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, Jacopo Ortis

Professor Walter L. Bullock, the University of Chicago

Goethe and Older German Literature

Professor Gustave Arlt, the University of Indiana

Goethe and Present-Day German Writers

Professor Albert W. Aron, the University of Illinois

Emerson's Goethe Professor Peter Hagboldt, the University of Chicago

Goethe in Chicago

Miss Rose Seitz, Tilden High School, Chicago

Goethe's Relations to Philosophy Professor Edward L. Schaub, Northwestern University

Goethe as a Lyrical Poet

Professor Martin Schiitze, the University of Chicago

Price $1.25 For Students and Literary Groups, 10 copies $7.50

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