Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/162

 do this in two days. 2. Making the three portion (cha gsum) offerings, these consisting in painted wafers of tsamba and butter. One-third is offered to the ten guardians, Gya-ljin (Indra), the god of fire, the ruler of Hades, the god of wind, etc.; another portion is offered to the spirits, and the third to the demi-gods. 3. Gyal-gsol, or propitiating certain genii to the end that the patient’s mind may be at rest and he enjoy peaceful dreams. 4. Libations to the gods or Gser-skyems. This is held to be one of the most efficacious ways of propitiating the gods. 5. "To deceive death" (hchi-slu), by offering an image of the sick person, together with some of his clothes, and food to the Lord of death, and beseeching him to accept it instead of the person it represents. This means is resorted to after all others have failed. 6. "To deceive life" (srog-slu), by saving from death animals about to be killed. This is also known as "life-saving charity." The saving of the lives of men, beasts, and particularly fishes, is calculated to insure life. When Tsing-ta proposed this to me, I at once agreed to save five hundred fish. The old doctor said he would go to the fishermen’s village, some three miles away, buy the fish, and set them free for me, if I would but lend him a pony. He came back in the evening, and reported that he had successfully accomplished this most important mission, by which much merit would come to me.

In spite of all these rites and observances, for some days my illness showed no signs of improvement, and so at last, on May 22, Tsing-ta went once more to the Dorje Phagmo, and, making her a present of five tanka and a khatag, asked her to find out by her divine knowledge if the old Amchi was the right man to attend to me. She threw dice (sho-mon), and then said that the two physicians could be depended on.

Accordingly, I sent for the physicians, gave them each a present, and begged them to prepare some new and energetic remedy for me. In the evening Jerung brought me some pills, which smelt strongly of musk, and some powders, probably those known as gurkum chusum. After having taken some of each I felt somewhat better.

By the following morning there was a marked improvement in