Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/34

 Phurchung, whom I had sent to Nambura to buy provisions; but, as he had not appeared by noon, we had to give up all thoughts of travelling that day. In the afternoon he made his appearance, loaded with rice, maize, murwa, eggs, vegetables, etc., and leading a ewe, which he said had cost him Rs. 4. He was very drunk, but conscious of his condition. He begged to be excused, and, after numerous salams and lollings of the tongue after the Tibetan fashion, he vanished from our sight.

We were asked by the Limbus to exchange salt, of which they stood much in need, for tsuo a dyeing creeper which grows here in abundance, and of which they had collected many large bundles; but again we had to refuse.

Phurchung much regretted that one of his best friends among the Limbus of this place had gone to a distant village to attend a marriage, for he might have rendered great assistance in many ways.

The marriage customs of this people are very curious and interesting. Some among them at the time of marriage consult astrologers. When a man and a girl think of marrying, they meet, without consulting their parents, at some place—a market, if there be one near—in order to sing witty songs, in which test the man is required to excel his fair rival. If he is beaten in this contest by the maiden whose hand he covets, he runs away in deep shame at his defeat; but if he wins, he seizes her by the hand and takes her to his home without further ceremony, but usually accompanied by a female companion. If the man has had some previous knowledge of the girl's superior attainment in singing, he sometimes bribes the maiden's companion to declare him the winner in the singing competition.

Another means of wife-winning is by courting her in the house of her parents, to which free access is readily gained by presenting the girl's nearest relative living in the house with a pig's carcass, a present called in their language phudang. When the marriage ceremony takes place, the bridegroom, if rich enough, kills a buffalo or a pig, which is presented to the bride's parents, a native coin fixed on its forehead. Among the lower people, the parents of the bride seldom know anything about the marriage till the return of the girl from her captor's house. Then the marriage ceremony takes place. The