Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/230

 resorting to these means, they beat him or use any kind of violence on him, they forfeit all claims upon him.

If after buying an article the purchaser wishes to return it on the same day, he must forfeit one-tenth of the price. If he return it on the following day he forfeits one-fifth; on the second, one-half; and if he keeps it beyond the third day it is not returnable. If a householder cheat a merchant lodger, he is required to pay compensation at the rate of five srang for every srang's worth stolen. If a trader deceive his customers by using false weights and measures, or by selling adulterated goods, imitation gems or jewels, or by circulating counterfeit coin, he must be immediately handed over to the police, and committed for trial. If the merchant convicted be a Tibetan subject, all his goods are confiscated, and he is sentenced to penal servitude for a certain number of years. If he be a subject of some foreign Government, such as China, Mongolia, Kashmir, or Nepal, such fine, as is prescribed by law, is exacted from him. His goods are seized, examined, taken stock of, and after being securely packed, are sent with the owner in charge of the police to his own Government, together with a document complaining of his conduct, and stating the amount of the fine exacted from him.

The jealousy of the Tibetans towards Europeans is supposed to date from 1791–92, when English soldiers were believed to have taken part in the war which followed the incursion of the Gorkhas into Tibet; and as the English Government, then in its infancy in India, took no steps to cultivate the friendship of the Tibetans, that feeling took a lasting hold on their minds. The shock which China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim have received from their reverses when at war with the British power, has also extended to the peace-loving Tibetans.

Throughout the nineteenth century the Tibetans have followed the Chinese policy of exclusiveness, not from fear of annexation, but because they had been shortly before nearly conquered, and were entirely under Chinese influence. This fear has been sedulously encouraged by an ex-minister of the Bajah of Sikkim, the Dewan Namgyal, who was expelled from that country for his treatment of Drs. Hooker and Campbell, and subsequently obtained from the