Part 10
The “Wooden Combs” are ancestor worshippers like the Chinese, and we had the good fortune to be given three of their “dooteepoussas” (I do not know how this word should be spelt, but have written it phonetically), namely sections of bamboo, each containing “a soul,” wrapped in cotton wool and fastened with a thread. A wooden pin runs crosswise through the bamboo, which prevents the “soul” being drawn out by a tiny bunch of grass, which protrudes from the top of the soul-carrier. As will be seen by the illustration, these are exactly in the shape of crosses and they have little cuts on the bamboo varying in number, which refer to the deceased. The Lolos also have these soul-carriers. In Yünnan Province the shape of these soul-carriers approximates to the Chinese ancestral tablets and Clarke gives another form of them which he calls a spirit hamper. The name “lolo” given to these tribes by the Chinese is said to come from this fact, lolo meaning a basket. The Lolos consider the name to be a term of terrible reproach, but do not object to be called Nosu or I-chia. They keep these spirits in their houses, or a tree, or hidden in a rock. The ones I possess are kept in a long box fastened against the outer wall of a house, with a shelter over it like a shrine: sometimes more than one family keeps their soul-carriers in the same box. The funeral rites of these people are very elaborate and extend over a whole year. Dr. A. Henry has kindly given me permission to quote his account of these people and their language from the _Journal of the Anthropological Society_ for 1903. He spent much time studying their habits and language in Yünnan, and brought back from there large quantities of MSS., ancestral tablets and dresses.
“The ceremonies and rituals in case of death and burial are numerous and complicated. After death a hole is made with a pole in the roof of the house to enable the breath or soul to escape. A cow is brought to the door of the house, and from its head is extended a white cord, which is fastened to the hand of the corpse lying inside the coffin, and a ritual called Su-pu is read. If the death is unclean (all cases of death by accident, childbirth, suicide, etc., are impure, also a death is considered impure unless some one has been present when it occurred), a preliminary purificatory ritual is necessary, after which the usual rituals can be recited. On the second and third days after death two important rituals, the meh-cha and wu-cha, are read. When the coffin is being carried out for burial, a paper effigy is placed on it, which represents clothes for the soul of the dead man. At this time also the priest recites the “Jo-mo” or road ritual, and he accompanies the coffin a hundred paces from the house. The ritual begins by stating that as in life the father teaches the son, and the husband the wife, it is only the priest who can teach the dead man the road that his soul must travel after death. The threshold of the house is first mentioned, then the various places on the road to the grave, and beyond that all the towns and rivers and mountains that must be traversed by the soul till it reaches the Taliang Mountain, the home of the Lolo race. (The Lolos come mainly from Szechwan and the borders of Tibet.) Here the priest says that he himself must return, and entreats the dead man to pursue his way beyond the grave alone. The dead man then enters Hades, and stands beside the Thought Tree and the Tree of Talk, and there he thinks of the dear ones left behind and weeps bitterly. After this ritual is read, the priest returns to the house, and the coffin goes on to the grave.
The Lolos believe that for each person on earth there is a corresponding star in the sky. So when a man is ill, a sacrifice is often made of wine in cups to his star, and four-and-twenty lamps are lighted outside his room. On the day after a funeral a hole is dug in the death-chamber at a spot indicated by rolling an egg on the ground till it stops. A ritual is recited praying the star of the dead man to descend and be buried in this hole. If this were not done the star would fall and possibly hurt some one.
The ancestral tablet is made on the second day after the funeral and erected in the central room of the house on the ninth day, with an appropriate ritual. It is worshipped on certain dates and on all important occasions in life. It is called I-pu (= ancestor). It consists of a structure of wooden pieces, made out of the Pieris tree, the log of which was the ark of the Lolo deluge. A transverse bundle of grass is made of the same grass as is used for thatch. Two pieces of bamboo root represent the deceased father and mother, one having nine, the other seven joints. The inscription reads: “The dwelling place of so-and-so (giving the name), the pair, man and woman, our ancestors.” It is written by the priest with ink, the water of which is brought by the son of the house from a secret spring in the forest, from a locality only known to the family of the deceased.”
My three soul-carriers contain the souls of the men of three generations—son, father, grandfather. The Lolos have a Book of the Dead which Dr. Henry considers to be not unlike that of the ancient Egyptians.
There are a great many Lolo tribes, and the one which we came in contact with at Ta-ting is of great antiquity, showing virile and intellectual qualities that promise well for future development, should they leave their old isolation and get drawn into the stream of present-day Chinese progress. They are tall and well built, quite unlike the Chinese in appearance and carriage. Naturally the open-air life of all these tribesmen gives them a freer gait, and the absence of etiquette and formality shows itself in all their movements. The shape of their faces is oval, unlike the broad Miao type; their eyes are large and level; their cheekbones prominent and the contour of the face rounded; their noses long, arched and rather broad; their chins pointed. Their faces are apt to grow very wrinkled. The poise of the head of all these men struck me as indicative of an independent spirit.
All the tribes are practically autonomous, although nominally under Chinese rule: they have their own rulers, but these are responsible to, and many of them nominated by, the Chinese authorities. They frequently rent lands from them for cultivation, and law suits are very common among the I-chia about land and about daughters-in-law. Since the recrudescence of opium-poppy growing they have been compelled to use a certain proportion of land for its cultivation. They are not addicted to opium-smoking, and the Christians object to it on moral grounds: they have in consequence suffered considerable persecution and have even been evicted from the lands they had previously cultivated. They are terribly poor, and when the crops fail many of them die of starvation; this has happened during the last two years, which has been a period of great scarcity.
I quote in full Dr. Henry’s extremely interesting account of their language. “The Lolo language is of extreme simplicity, both as regards its phonology and syntax, and its manner of making new words. It belongs to the monosyllabic class of languages, of which Chinese is the most highly developed member. Attempts have been made to deny the primitive monosyllabic nature of the Chinese language, and to consider it as broken down from some pre-existent polysyllabic agglutinative tongue. I am of opinion that a comparative study of Chinese, Lolo, Miao, etc., will establish that this tonal monosyllabic class is primitive, and that we have the vocabularies of these languages’ original roots unchanged.
“To illustrate the simplicity of Lolo phonology, I may state that all words are monosyllables, composed of either a vowel or of a consonant followed by a vowel, as A, O, BA, BO, BI, BU. Such combinations as AB, ARD, STO, STAR are impossible. The initial consonants may all be considered simple, though such varieties occur as T and aspirated T, and four sibilants, as S, Z, TS and DZ. There is one apparent exception, namely SL, in SLA, SLO, SLU; but I found that this occurred in another district as THL, showing a certain instability of sound; and further research established that the original sound, still kept in Lolodom, is an aspirated L, so that we have L’O, L’A, L’U. Similar aspirations occur in connexion with T, P, CH, K and NG.
“Tones in Lolo are three or four, according to locality. There are no inflections whatsoever, the simple roots being unchangeable. All the words are simple roots, but by simple addition they can be used to express new ideas, thus _gunpowder_ is now called _fire-rice_. I could only find one modification of the simple roots, occurring in four causative verbs, and they are these:
DZO, to eat. CHO, to give to eat, to feed. DA, to drink. TA, to give to drink. DU, to go out. TU, to cause to go out. DEH, to wear. TEH, to give to wear.
“The syntax is very simple, the place of words in the sentence being the most important factor. Post-positions, personal and demonstrative pronouns, interrogative words, adverbs of time, and a few auxiliary verbs occur; but relatives and conjunctions are absent. Numeral co-efficients are present, as in all the Chinese group of languages and in Malay. We cannot say _two men_, _ten trees_, but must say _man two person_, _tree ten stem_. The plural, tenses of verbs, etc., are rarely expressed, unless absolutely needed; and a Lolo sentence is very suggestive of baby talk. Thus, ‘If he comes I shall not see him,’ is expressed as ‘He come I he not see’; and ‘When he came I did not see him’ as ‘He come that time I not see.’
“I consider that the simple phonology and primitive syntax of the Lolo language are important to study, as we there see a primitive monosyllabic tongue, composed of simple roots, the type by which all languages must have begun.”
The Miao people were invited many years ago by the missionaries to learn to write their own language in romanized script, but they refused, saying they preferred their children to learn to read and write Chinese. It is obvious that this would be far better for them from a practical point of view. A Miao who knows Chinese thus can make a good living by translating Chinese contracts or official documents for his neighbours.
The religion of all these tribes is mainly animistic, but the Lolos have priests, though not temples. The priests have tents, divided into two parts, of which one is holy and the other holier. Their sacrifices have to be of flawless creatures, cows and fowls. Their creed might be summed up as “I believe in evil spirits, necromancy, ancestor worship and a future life.” By far the most potent factor in their existence is terror of demons. All their existence is overshadowed by fear. There are all kinds of horrible demons of various colours, green and red and blue: some have dishevelled hair and some have hair standing on end. To add to the horror, although they are like men in appearance, they are invisible. They shoot arrows of disease and send bad dreams to men.
“Very softly down the glade runs a waiting, watching shade, And the whisper spreads and widens far and near: And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now— He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear.”
In Yünnan they worship a stone placed at the foot of a Dragon tree, either in a wood behind the village or close to the houses. I did not see any in Kweichow, though I sketched just such a stone in Macao, where there were offerings of incense and scarlet paper. There is a sacrifice of a pig and a fowl made twice a year at the stone. The origin of this worship is not known, but it is now supposed to be addressed to a god in the sky, who protects the people. As regards the tree, it is a curious fact that it is not of any particular species, but that every village in the province of Yünnan, whether of the Chinese or of the aborigines, has one; they have the same belief about its being inhabited by a dragon, which protects the village.
The Ya-ch’io Miao offer in sacrifice an ox to Heaven and a pig to Earth, and once every thirteen years they sacrifice buffaloes to Heaven. Their sorcerers are men who wield great power, and it is a hereditary profession. The sorcerer must wear a special kind of hat when he is engaged in divination: without it he is powerless. He has special books (of which I am fortunate enough to possess one) with movable disks, superimposed one on another, for casting horoscopes. These books are handed down from generation to generation, and used to be copied out by hand; but nowadays they are printed. Such books were brought by an I-chia, who had become a Christian, in order to have them burnt; the missionary asked leave to keep them instead, explaining their historic value. The accompanying illustration is taken from one of these priceless old MSS. describing the Creation. It is written on a brittle kind of paper, extremely worn and fragile, and the leaves are fastened together with twisted strips of paper, acting as a string. This is a peculiarly Chinese way of binding, such as you may see students practising any day in class to fasten their notes. The colour of the paper is brown, the characters black, and the illustrations are painted in several shades of yellow and brown, forming a harmonious whole. The upper circle, containing a bird, is the moon; and the lower circle, containing a beast, is the earth.
Dr. Henry brought a large number of MSS. back from Yünnan, which are now in the British Museum, but they differ in certain respects from mine. In the first place, they contain no diagrams; secondly, they are all divided up metrically into groups of five characters, or seven; mine are not all divided into groups (as may be seen from the illustration, Ancient I-chia Script), and those that are in groups vary in number, four, or five, or six. He says that the subject-matter of all the MSS. which he studied is religious ritual, genealogies, legends and song, and all are written in verse. The script is quite unique: it is pictographic in origin, not ideographic like the Chinese. Many Chinese words are compound, one part denoting sound, the other part denoting meaning: Lolo words are never compounds.
The characters, as will be seen from the illustration, are decidedly simpler than Chinese. I had the good fortune to submit my MSS. when I was at Swatow (a couple of months later) to a learned Chinese scholar, who seemed greatly interested in them. He took them into his hands with devout reverence and care, as if they were of priceless value. He said that he had indeed seen such MSS. before, but that it was extremely rare: he at once said that it came from no Chinese source, but from aborigines in the north of Kweichow. When I asked if it were some hundreds of years old, he replied, “Oh! much older than that,” and stated that the numerals and certain other characters were the same as the Chinese script of three thousand years ago. One of the characters which he pointed out was that for the moon:
My MS. gives [Illustration] Dr. Henry’s [Illustration] Chinese [Illustration]
I have also compared my MS. with pages of Lolo writing published by Colborne Baber in the Geographical Society’s Supplementary Paper, 1882, and can find no exact correspondence between them. Surely it would be a most interesting study for some one to undertake, the more so that there is already a wealth of material lying ready to hand at the British Museum. The Lolo writing is also different from Chinese in that it is read in columns from left to right and the book begins at the same end as ours. It corresponds with the later Syriac mode of writing, and Dr. Henry suggests it may have had some connexion with the Nestorians, who were to be found in all parts of China from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. S. R. Clarke mentions a spirit who controls the crops, and is called by the Lolos Je-so: the Christians suggested that this name be the one adopted for Jesus Christ, but it was not done.
The above-mentioned theory would account for some of the Lolo practices and beliefs, which are otherwise very difficult to account for, such as their keeping the Sabbath every sixth day, when no ploughing is allowed to be done, and the women are not even allowed to sew or wash clothes on that day. Of course this does not apply to all Lolos, but only to some in Yünnan. They have also the remarkable crosses (as seen in the soul-carriers), and they believe in patriarchs who lived to abnormal ages, such as six hundred and sixty or nine hundred and ninety years, as in the Old Testament records, not to mention the stories of the creation and the deluge. Their name for Adam has the two consonants d and m, it is Du-mu. The patriarchs are supposed to live in the sky: the chief of them is called Tse-gu-dzih, and this patriarch is also a deity who opened the box containing the seeds of death; he thus gave suffering humanity the boon of death. He also caused the deluge.
“The legend of the deluge,” says Dr. Henry, “runs that the people were wicked, and Tse-gu-dzih to try them sent a messenger to earth, asking for some blood and flesh from a mortal. All refused but Du-mu. Tse-gu-dzih then locked the rain gates, and the water mounted to the sky. Du-mu (? Adam) was saved with his four sons in a log hollowed out of the Pieris tree; and there were also saved otters, wild ducks and lampreys. From his sons are descended civilized people who can write, as the Chinese and Lolos. The ignorant races descend from men that were made by Du-mu out of pieces of wood. Du-mu is worshipped as the ancestor of the Lolos, and nearly all legends begin with some reference (like our ‘once upon a time’) to Du-mu or the Deluge. Du-mu and precedent men had their eyes placed vertically in their sockets; after him came the present race of men, who have their eyes placed horizontally. This quaint idea may have some reference to the encroachment of the oblique-eyed Mongolians, who have horizontal eyes, as it were, i.e. eyes narrow in height, whereas Europeans and other races have eyes that may be called vertical, i.e. wide from above downwards.
“The Lolos have a cosmogony. Their account of the Creation is that there were two Spirits, A-chi and A-li. A-chi made the sky, and made it evenly and well. A-li slept, and on awakening saw that the sky was completed. In his hurry to do his work, he dumped hurriedly earth here and there. This accounts for the inequalities of the earth’s surface. When the sky was first created the sun and moon were dull, and did not shine properly. They were washed by two sky-maidens, and have remained clean and bright ever since.”
Some of the Lolo tribes have the story of the Creation, but not all of them, whereas the story of the Deluge is universal, though not always the same. In some cases Noah has three sons, and in some no animals are mentioned. The Black Miao story is told thus by S. R. Clarke, to whom it was dictated:
“Who made Heaven and Earth? Who made insects? Who made men? Made male and made female? I who speak don’t know.
Vang-vai (Heavenly King) made Heaven and Earth, Ziene made insects. Ziene made men and demons, Made male and made female. How is it you don’t know?
Heavenly King is (or was) intelligent. Spat a lot of spittle into his hand, Clapped his hands with a noise, Produced heaven and earth.
Tall wild grass made insects. Stones made men and demons. Made male and made female. How is it you don’t know?
Made heaven in what way? Made earth in what way? Thus by rote I sing, But don’t understand.
Made heaven like a sun-hat. Made earth like a dust-pan. Why don’t you understand? Made heaven a single lump, Made earth a single lump.”[25]
This is just a sample of their ideas; now I will give a sample of their habits. They have big carouses on the open mountain slopes. A man desirous to enter into relationship with a girl will watch his opportunity for seeing her alone, and give as a signal a wide sweeping movement of the arm: if she acquiesces she will go to the carouse. These do not take place at stated intervals, but a party of young men will go off with girls in groups of twenty or thirty and sit round a big fire, singing their amorous ditties. These are mostly of a coarse nature not suited for publication, but Dr. Henry has translated the following song by girls working in the fields addressed to boys:
“We girls three The black earth’s silver bridge, Together with you youths, we have crossed it; The white sky’s golden hat, With you we have worn it; The golden fan of the sun and moon, Together we have seen it wave. We girls and boys to-night have met. Singing and playing comes from the hearts of boys and girls; Silver comes from China; Silk from the capital; The rice from the plain; The wheat from the mountain, But courting-talk comes from the mouths of boys.”
While the “courting-talk” goes on round the fire, there is a goodly store of weapons lying behind the singers. Any moment they may be attacked by the parents, brothers or friends of the girls. When this happens and the attack proves successful the luckless revellers are stripped naked.
The custom of the Little Flowery Miao is somewhat similar. Twice a year the men make music outside the houses where the girls live, and those who please go off with them to the hills for a carouse. Once a year the men choose their girls, and the other time the girls choose their men! The girls usually marry about fifteen or sixteen, and if they happen to be poor they go to the mother-in-law’s house very young. Among the tribes there are go-betweens to arrange marriages, but undoubtedly the young people have a better chance of selection by mutual liking than have the Chinese.
The music of the people is mostly produced from pipes, and has a certain charm; it is flute-like in sound, and some we heard was not unlike that of bagpipes without the drone. The I-chia are all fond of music and dancing. They were rather shamefacedly persuaded to dance for us, while one of them played. The steps were rather slow and stealthy, alternating with rapid pirouetting. They sank almost to the ground on one bent leg, while the other leg shot out in front to its furthest limit.
Witchcraft is firmly believed in by all the tribes. The witch-doctor has a great hold over them, and trades on their superstition shamelessly, getting wine, tobacco, or corn by means of what is called his “daemon,” without apparently stealing the things himself. The witch-doctor uses snake-poison to injure or kill people, and only he can make them well again! He also induces madness, so that the madman may fling off his clothes, which the doctor then picks up and carries off!
A curious story was told by an eye-witness to my friends in Ta-ting. He was present at the building of a house in the country by two stonemasons. They began quarrelling, and finally one went off in a great rage, refusing to finish his job. The other remarked confidently, “It does not matter; I shall get him back before evening”; but the onlookers did not believe it. The narrator of the story saw him go off to the hill-side and gather a bunch of grass and straw. He fashioned these into the figure of a man and cast spells upon it, after which he returned to his job and went on as if nothing had happened. Before he had finished the day’s work, the other man returned in great haste, dripping with perspiration; he apologized for his conduct and resumed work. He explained that after he had left in the morning he became very ill and suffered such agonies of pain that he felt sure he would die if he did not return at once.