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Updated: June 26, 2025
The Pombo, the Lamas, and officers held another consultation, at the end of which, toward sunset, several soldiers came and loosed my legs from the stretching log. My hands, though still manacled, were lowered from the pillar behind. As the ropes round my ankles were unwound from the deep channels they had cut into my flesh, large patches of skin came away with them.
And he went on carving again at his idol of jasper for the king who was weary of Wosh; and Pombo thanked him and went singing away, for in his vernacular mind he thought that "he had the gods."
In the mean time a gong summoned the Lamas from the monastery and, a few minutes later, a procession of them came down and took their places inside the tent. The Pombo, in his yellow coat and trousers and four-pointed hat, sat on a high-backed chair in the centre of the tent. By his side stood the two Lamas who had first entered with him. The Pombo was beyond doubt in a hypnotic trance.
When Pombo heard this he wept and made bitter outcry, and cursed the gods of ivory and the gods of jade, and the hand of Man that made them, but most of all he cursed their etiquette that had undone, as he said, an innocent man; so that at last that arch-idolater, who made idols of his own, stopped in his work upon an idol of jasper for a king that was weary of Wosh, and took compassion on Pombo, and told him that though no idol in the world would listen to his prayer, yet only a little way over the edge of it a certain disreputable idol sat who knew nothing of etiquette, and granted prayers that no respectable god would ever consent to hear.
The Pombo, who had placed something in his mouth in order to produce artificial foaming at the lips, and thus show his fury, worked himself into a frenzy. The Pombo seized it by the handle. "Ngaghi kiu meh taxon!" The Pombo strode up to me, brandishing the ghastly implement. He seemed reluctant, but the Lamas around him urged him on, lifting the man's arm toward me.
"You can kill the Plenki," the spirit was reported to have said, "and no one will punish you if you do. The Plenkis are afraid to fight the Tibetans." Among the Lamas no important step is taken without incantations and reference to occult science. The Pombo ordered a Lama to cut off a lock of my hair.
While he was in this position, the bystanders went one by one to touch his feet and make low prostrations and salutations. At last the hypnotizer, seizing the Pombo's head between his hands, stared in his eyes, rubbed his forehead, and woke him from the trance. The Pombo was pale and exhausted. When he lay back on the chair his hat fell off.
Apart from the question whether there was much charm or not in my life in Tibet, there is no doubt that this trifling superstition did much toward hastening the Pombo's decision as to what was to be our fate. The Pombo ordered that my life should be spared, and that I should on that very day start on my return journey toward the Indian frontier.
The Pombo, who had been, during the greater part of the afternoon, looking at me with an air of mingled pity and respect, as though he had been forced against his will to treat me so brutally, could not help joining in my laughter at the Lama's sorrowful plight.
Certain exorcisms were pronounced by the hypnotizer. The Pombo began most extraordinary snake-like contortions, moving and twisting his arms, head, body, and legs. He worked himself, or rather was worked, into a frenzy that lasted some time. The crowd of devotees drew nearer and nearer to him, praying fervently.
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