Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/150

 at length themselves believe in their own supernatural powers.

The Mongols expose the bodies of their dead to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey, their lamas deciding in which direction the head should lie. Princes, gigens, and lamas of importance are interred or burnt after death. Masses are said for the departed for forty days on payment of a sum of money. The poor who cannot afford to pay are deprived of this honour, but the rich distribute cattle among the different temples where masses are said for their deceased relatives for the space of two or three years.

A Mongol, who might claim, apart from inevitable defects in intelligence and morality, to be called a good and religious man, will show himself to be a true barbarian in giving vent to his passions. It is only necessary to see the savage way in which they behave to the Dungans. The very man who would scruple to kill a lamb, because he considered it wrong, will cut off the head of his prisoner with the utmost sangfroid. Neither sex nor age is respected; the captives are slaughtered indiscriminately. The Dungans certainly retaliate in like manner; but I only mention this to prove how powerless is religion alone, without other civilising influences, to soften and transform the barbarous instincts of a nation. Buddhism inculcates principles of lofty morality, but it has not taught the Mongol to look upon every man as his brother and respect even an enemy.