The High Road to China by Kate Teltscher

Author:Kate Teltscher
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2006-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

The last week was occupied by endless leave-takings. A constant stream of monks came to Bogle’s apartment to wish him well ‘with Pots of Tea, little Presents, kind Looks, and kind Expressions’.14 The members of the Panchen Lama’s family were also packing up and returning to their various homes. Dorje Phagmo had already left for her monastery near Yamdrok Lake, and the Pung Cushos were to escort their mother and two sisters back to Tashitzay. ‘I this day took Leave of Chum Coosho and the two Nuns,’ wrote Bogle in his journal, ‘not without many Blessings and advices from the old woman, and many promises to the Nuns of writing them and sending them Lories [parrots with bright plumage] and Looking glasses.’15 The final meeting with the Pung Cushos was more affecting. ‘My parting with the Pung Cooshos was a harder Task. I never could reconcile myself to the thoughts of a last farewell, and however anxious I was to return to Bengal and to the world, I could not take leave of my Thibetian Friends with Indifference, and would now find little Satisfaction in repeating the Circumstances of it.’16

Bogle’s farewells to the Panchen Lama lasted the entire week. A ceremonial leave-taking was followed by daily meetings in private where the two men discussed the details of their plans and agreements. Last-minute requests for curiosities were made on both sides. Could Bogle send the Lama a telescope, the skins of two lions and a crocodile? Would the Lama procure Bogle a list of all the comets recorded by the Chinese? Could some musk deer and shawl goats be reared in captivity and then dispatched to Calcutta during the cold season? (Most of the animals sent in a previous convoy to Hastings’s menagerie had died en route.) The Lama had never heard English spoken, would Bogle oblige? Bogle recited some verses of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. For the Lama, the choice of poem was immaterial, but it may have held some significance for Bogle. A lament for lost rural simplicity, Gray’s Elegy memorialised life led ‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife’. The pastoral innocence of the poem, although offered as an emblem of Englishness, was a world away from the commercial realities of the East India Company; indeed, it was much closer to Bogle’s idealised vision of Tibet.

‘As the time of my Departure draws near,’ Bogle wrote to Elizabeth, ‘I find that I shall not be able to bid adieu to the Lama without a heavy Heart. The kind and hospitable Reception he has given me and the amiable Dispositions which he possesses, I must confess, have attached me to him, and I shall feel a hearty Regret at parting.’17 Bogle detailed the Lama’s many ‘amiable Dispositions’ in a letter to Hastings:

Of a cheerful and affable Temper, of great Curiosity, and very intelligent. He is entirely Master of his own Affairs; his Views are liberal and enlarged; and he wishes, as every great Man wishes, to extend his Consequence.

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