  Among the SarÖ YÖgurs. At dawn on December 13th 1907, we started upon our expedition, and we soon left behind us the pleasant little Chinese town Chin-t'a, with its halfrounded, irregular clay walls, so unlike the strictly symmetrical Chinese type, its narrow, winding alleys, its temple courts shaded by ancient gnarled trees, and its towers with their innumerable bells all tinkling in the wind. Our road led in a SE direction, past a temple with a high conical tower which except for the missing gilding still gave reason for the town's name, (chin 'gold', t'a 'tower'; Chint'a 'the golden tower') and we over the ruins of a wall, which formerly enclosed this oasis — one of the most northerly outposts of Chinese civilisation, in the sand and gravel ocean of the Gobi Desert. Beyond the wall extended a sandy, sterile stretch of ground, which, at first thickly bestrewn with Chinese tombstones, rose gradually towards a low chain of hills lying in a ESE-WNW direction. In character, these resembled a number of narrow gravel ridges, some of which formed a crest, others rising in terraces. A slight pass which we rode through at about twelve kilometres from the town was the highest point reached that day, and the descent southwards was even less perceptible than our ascent. The only vegetation to be seen was some insignificant creeping brush, growing in tufts at lengthy intervals. About nine kilometres from the pass the belt of gravel merged into a sandy formation, dotted thickly with knolls on which grew more of the same creeping brush, though of somewhat larger growth. Some few kilometres further, reeds appeared, and these soon gave place to a typical porous soil with a strong salty deposit. As far as the eye could see, the same inhospitable kind of country extended, sparsely covered by grass towards the south, where it merged into the Nan-shan mountains, the outlines ol which could be discerned in the misty distance. The great high road — joining K'ou-li (the territory inside the Great Wall) and K'ou-wai (the territory outside) has in North Kansu an E-W direction and at Shuang-t'ingtzu, twenty-seven kilometres from Chint'a, we crossed one of the innumerable etape stations which faithfully follow its course all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the distant plains of Russia and India. Some seven or eight kilometres south of the road, we rode past the first of the scattered dwellings of the YÖgur village of Ma-chuang-tzu. I dismounted to get a nearer view of three women who were busy in the yard of the house. They wore a strange costume such as I had never seen before. The eldest, a woman of fifty, with a Roman nose and a generally dignified appearance, was very talkative. She offered us tea, and told us they were SarÖ YÖgurs — a name which she repeated proudly several times. The other two women had prominent cheek bones, small eyes, thick ugly noses, and were of a common appearance. My camera, which I brought out carelessly, changed however the mental atmosphere at a stroke. There was a sudden end to confidences and there remained nothing for us but to continue our way to the village temple, distant 12-13 km to the south. Built near the remains of a small ruin, the plain temple buildings soon rose before us, surrounded by a small group of wooden huts occupied by the lamas. None of the lamas were at home but the Chinese officer in command of the Shuangt'ingtzu mounted guard gave unhesitatingly orders that my things should be carried into the cleanest of the houses. All was arranged in a moment and the house looked as if we had always lived there. Hashim was busily washing rice, cleaning carrots and preparing the mutton for the ever-appetising palao, with which he had delighted us for the last seventeen months, Chou, my seventeen-year-old interpreter arranging the meteorological instruments, Lukanin, the Cossack of the expedition, and Hsu, a retired Chinese Colonel, now in my service, saw to the horses and equipments, while at the scanty kitchen fire, I tried to thaw my fingers, stiff from the cold December breeze, to start work on notebooks and maps. The lamas, on their arrival, appeared somewhat surprised at our intrusion but though the first meeting was rather cool, the ice soon was broken, and my host, in particular, grew both hospitable and talkative. Machuangtzu is a village of about forty houses spread over a wide area, occupied by people who call themselves SarÖ YÖgur ('yellow YÖgurs') and called by the Chinese Huang Fantzu (huang 'yellow', fan 'barbarian'; 'the yellow barbarians') to distinguish them from the Tangutans, who are called Hei Fantzu (hei 'black'). A legend, imparted from father to son, says that more than a thousand years ago, their forefathers came from the west, where they had inhabited a city, bearing the name Shiche-Hache, called by the Chinese Chenfu tun. It lay, they said, a forty-five days' march to the west or southwest, on the shores of a river and was surrounded by high mountains. In Shiche-Hache, a temple had been built with many excavated caves in the mountain. — According to another YÖgur version, they had moved to their present dwelling places during the reign of the Emperor K'ang-hsi, to escape a contagious disease, the name of which my interpreter gave as cholera. Some of the tribe had settled in the mountains S and SE of Hsuchow, the remainder on the plain. Those who had settled nearest Hsuchow had become amalgamated with the Chinese, the others still retained their language. The ruin near the present temple had belonged to a race of people, having tails, whom the Chinese call Kuzurkei. About forty kilometres eastward from Machuangtzu lies a village, called Tung-heitzu, also consisting of forty or fifty homesteads, with a temple, — and about thirty kilometres south of the town Kaot'aj there is still another called Yumashan Huang Fantzu, where the same language is spoken. Further south, at Bayakhtag and in the mountains south of Kanchow, there are also Huang Fantzu living, but they speak another language which resembles Mongolian, while the language spoken by those mentioned first, has a great resemblance to Khirgis and to the Turkish spoken by the Sarts. No YÖgur written language has ever been heard of, neither could they tell me anything about their early history, of wars they had taken part in, or the names of their Princes or chiefs. I was also unable to gather any old songs or legends. They told me there were none, but it is possible that their suspicious nature, or the incompetence of my interpreter or other reasons, may have been the cause of their unwillingness to reveal them to me. The temple at Machuangtzu is small and poor, and it was evident that it was seldom used. Three large rude paintings, brought from Sining, representing Shykshatva enthroned between Tshulma and Shtsha-ryzyk, decorate the principal wall, and old dirty, smoky Buddha pictures, in the form of banners, cover part of the side walls. Some of them were said to have been brought from the north and were probably of Mongolian origin. There were seven or eight lamas, each living in his own clean little wooden house of two or three rooms, built and furnished in Chinese style. They told me they earned their living by keeping cattle, and by cutting wood. The contributions of the villagers, contrary to what is the custom in other Buddhist communities which I visited, are very insignificant. A number of boys, distributed about the lamas' houses, were being educated by them for the priestly office. The lamas alone can read and write, but the written language is Tangutan. A document written in a beatiful text-hand from the renowned lama monastery of Gumbum, these men could not decipher. They declared there are two Tibetan written languages of which they knew only one. The local administration lies in the hands of a pykh and his assistant yarkatshe. The villages of Machuangtzu, Tungheitzu and Yumashan pay a yearly tax of thirteen horses to the Chinese government which is collected by the brigadier-general in Hsuchow, through an officer stationed at Khunkeitzu (about fifty km south of Machuangtzu). All the houses I visited were fairly clean, and were built in Chinese style, only a few could be considered poor, taking into consideration the general circumstances. The chief room in the house was provided with the traditional Chinese sleeping stove, k'ang, covered with a straw matting, and heated from outside. Opposite the door, stood a small Buddhist altar, sometimes decorated with a small banner, blackened by smoke and dirt. Another room contained a brick fireplace in which two or three shallow Chinese kettles were immured, for the preparation of tea, in the Mongolian way, with salt and butter. A pot was moved into the centre of the room, where it was placed on three unburnt bricks, while all the company present sat around upon the floor, using their own legs and heels as seats. All the household utensils I saw were of Chinese origin, with the exception of some turned Mongolian wooden cups, with wide flat bottoms. In the yards you often saw white flags, covered with Buddhist prayers — a certain remedy against sickness and other misfortunes. More expensive articles, such as bronze statues of Buddha, I only saw in the house of a lama, and in another the traditional prayer-cylinder. The clothes were cut in Chinese fashion but usually made of home-spun material. The men wear a Chinese cap with a button, or a Mongolian felt cap, a long coat, or fur coat, bound round the waist with a long narrow home-woven scarf in grey, reddish-lilac, or blue, also a pair of half-loose trousers of coarse home-spun cotton, or skin, bound round the legs at the bottom by a broad, home spun bandage-like fastening. They wear coarse woollen stockings knitted in the Chinese way and Chinese shoes often garnished with a loose legging of blue cotton material. Neither shirts nor drawers are worn. The women's dresses resemble those of the men, but their summer costume is fashioned like that of the Chinese women, though somewhat shorter. The fur coat worn by both men and women is usually bordered with fur as the Khirgis and Mongolians wear it, and was of better quality than is usually to be bought in Chinese bazars. The women's head dresses were very peculiar. To each of the plaits hanging over the breast, a long, narrow strip of cloth is fastened. This is decorated with small pieces of coral and glass beads in various tints of violet. Below this hang a whole series of copper rings, used by the Chinese as thimbles, and the whole is finished off by a large metal ornament, from which a tassel hangs. This long head-dress reaches to the ground. Below this is fastened a bunch of small pockets, embroidered by the women in Chinese patterns. A long narrow piece of cloth hangs down the back on which a row of big white bone buttons is sewn. The head is usually covered by a Mongolian fur or felt cap. This curious head dress is only used by the married woman, but having once adopted it, she wears it till her death. Even in the grave it is not all removed, only the strips of embroidered cloth silver ornaments and bone buttons, she being allowed to retain her copper rings. The SarÖ YÖgur has not much in the way of clothes. There is no holiday attire, not even a change of every-day clothes. Nothing new is bought till the old is falling to tatters. It is particularly difficult during the cold season to make purchases for an ethnographic collection, for if a YÖgur sells a piece of clothing, he has nothing with which to replace it. On visiting any of the YÖgur homesteads, you are almost sure to find the men at home, the women being busy out of doors, looking after the cattle, carrying water etc. There is nothing in the way of handicrafts or home-industries, except weaving, basket-making and the knitting of stockings. The two latter, hardly to be called masculine occupations, are performed by the men. The coarse stems of a species of grass are used as knitting needles. The basket-work is very rude and primitive and greatly inferior to Chinese work. Cloth is woven by the women in long narrow strips which in quality as well as in the style of weaving closely resembles the work of Khirgis women. Their primitive looms stand in the yard, where the warp is fastened to two sticks driven into the ground while the finished material is wound round a third. The materials were coarse, but like that of the Khirgis, of good quality. It is almost the only saleable article possessed by them, and is sold in Hsuchow and Kanchow for 70 tshokh (900 tshokh = 1 lan = 1 r. 60 kop.) per Chin, ch'ih (0,33 m). There is no forging of iron. Not even blankets, those very necessary articles in an Asiatic household are made by the SarÖ YÖgurs, who get what they require from the Chinaman. There is no agriculture, the grazing of cattle is their only means of livelihood — and the SarÖ YÖgurs are purely a pastoral people though they have fixed abodes. Much of the live stock, which one sees in their care, belongs however to Chinamen in neighbouring villages and the SarÖ YÖgurs receive wool and some flour as payment for herding them. Their chief articles of food are flour and various kinds of cereals. Tea is made with salt and butter, and milk and cream when it can be obtained. Roasted wheaten flour is often mixed with tea. They also make a paste out of flour and water, which is rolled out and cut up into long strips and eaten in boiling water as soup. Rice is made into porridge. Meat is a rarity. A sheep is only killed on specially festive occasions, and these are not reputed to be very gay. They have no musical instruments, no dancing and very seldom any chorus singing. Now and again, you hear a monotonous song sung in the fields, but when I offered to have a sheep killed, and arrange a feast (tomashÁ) the lamas could not get the necessary people to sing. One of the lamas, who was supposed to have a good voice, sang at my request a monotonous melody, in which oor ("he or she has come") occured innumerable times. He assured me they had no songs, a tune being sung to any words which the occasion offered. In general, the people gave an impression of being in straightened circumstances and readily complained of money difficulties. The grass on their pasture land was coarse, almost reedy, they had not much live stock, and their economic condition was undeniably low, but in comparison with the really terrible poverty so often seen in Central Asia, their condition cannot be considered very bad. The richest man among them had only six or seven horses, ten cows, and a hundred sheep, but as an appended table shows, out of the nineteen homesteads that I visited there was only one where no livestock at all was owned, and though another was in much the same condition, even they could make a living by herding the cattle belonging to the Chinese of the neighbouring village. It seemed to me that there was a great lack of energy and one was surprised at the want of manliness, especially among the young men. There is no kind of sport, no races, no wrestling, even none of the games on horseback which are so usual in Central Asia. In many houses you see guns of the antediluvian type characteristic of the whole of Central Asia but you never hear of any shooting. Involuntarily one asks oneself if the laziness and lack of energy of the people has been caused by the difficult conditions, or if the contrary is not nearer the truth. The majority of the SarÖ YÖgurs whom I met, did not appear shy, and my host particularly was very frank in his opinions and informations. Or perhaps they appeared relatively less shy and reserved, because I was on this occasion without my craniometer — which always had the effect of depriving even the boldest among them of all courage. The greater part of my equipment, among other things my instruments for anthropological measurements, had followed the main high road, by some mistake, passed me and was probably awaiting me in Kanchow. This circumstance forces me to content myself with describing the appearance of these tribes without being able to give the far more reliable measurements. The cheek bones are, in most cases, decidedly, if not excessively prominent, though I saw several with an oval shape of face, without any strikingly prominent cheek bones, but in general the type of face was short and somewhat broad. A true Finnish turned up nose, with an insignificant bridge was to be seen in many faces, and some of the women had thick potatow-noses, but in general they were straight. The mouth was normal, with neither very thin nor thick lips, the eyes small and the distance between also normal. The corners of the eyes were open, and not overgrown by the eyelid. Their hair and their thin beards were black. They were of average height and we saw no corpulent people. Their movements were slow and sluggish except when there was an opportunity of buying or selling. If a few tshokh can be earned, the SarÖ YÖgur becomes lively and the interest is general, nearly as great in the on-lookers as in the purchaser. The short time at my disposal did not give me much opportunity for a thorough study of their customs. The little I was able to note, follows here: In cases of death, a lama is called upon to read prayers. The body is burnt naked, in summer within three days, in winter within seven to ten days, on a bier made of faggots. No oil is used, but a kind of spirit as a means of ignition. The corpse is placed in a lying position, with its head towards the south. Nothing in the way of food, ornaments, etc. is burnt with it. The ashes are gathered together and covered with a small heap of earth. A young man or maiden dying after a short illnes is simply buried and the place marked by a mound of earth. Visitors and those present at the burial are entertained in the home of the deceased according to his means, and the lama is paid for his services by gifts, without having any right, as in certain other tribes, to a share in the household goods. The property is inherited by the wife, who in case she marries again must yield it to the male heirs. Daughters inherit no rights. Cousins are forbidden to marry, neither is marriage allowed between a niece and uncle, or nephew and aunt; sisters and brothers-in-law may not marry, nor stepchildren with stepfather or mother. The wife is bought, the decision being taken by the parents without consulting the young people. The final arrangements are usually made by some elderly woman who has been sent for this purpose to the parents of the girl. No festivities take place during these proceedings. The price which has been agreed upon for the girl is either paid at once or by instalments. These agreements are often entered upon while the bride and bridegroom are still children. Men marry between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and women at about sixteen years of age. A younger brother steps into his elder brother's place, in case of the death of the latter, despite the difference of age, but if the marriage has already taken place he cannot afterwards marry his sister-in-law. The bride and bridegroom are not allowed to see each other before marriage. The bride is given a dowry, according to the wealth of her parents and the sum which has been paid for her. On the wedding day the lama is called upon to read prayers, in the homes of both bride and bridegroom. Relatives and friends gather in the home of the bride and, after the wedding feast, accompany her, as she rides away — with her dowry in her hand, and her hair plaited and decorated for the first time, — to her new home. The parents of the bridegroom take no part in the festivities at the bride's house, nor do the bride's parents accompany their daughter, when she leaves her home. On arrival, the bride is received by a number of women, who lead her to a tent raised for the occasion and all the company present are lavishly entertained by the parents of the bridegroom. When the lama finds a propitious moment, he leads the bridal pair to the house, where they first kneel before the altar and then to all the older people present. For the wedding feast, which does not last more than one day, a sheep is killed and Chinese gin is drunk. The men gladly take this opportunity of getting drunk, the women, on the contrarys, very seldom, chiefly, it was told me, because the modest supply of liquor seldom sufficed for all. Next day a visit to the bride's parents is paid by the young married couple, taking with them some insignificant present, such as a piece of cloth, a bottle of Chiu (Chinese gin) or something of the kind. — Only monogamy exists — even if the marriage is childless. Divorce is sometimes permitted. They do not marry Chinese or Tangutans. Weddings are almost the only festive occasions observed by the SarÖ YÖgurs. On New Year's Day there may be somewhat more food prepared, the richest peasants kill a sheep, but there is no visiting. They do not have any gatherings to celebrate Buddha ceremonies or sacrifices, and the lamas only read prayers on the 1st and the 15th of every month, as they say themselves that no one ever attends the services. The lamas have no knowledge of medicine. In case of serious illness they are only called upon to pray. Sometimes the lama walks round the bed burning paper as a kind of invocation. In childbirth, the women kneel, and are assisted by women only, the husband not being present. The navel string is severed with a pair of scissors by an old woman, often the grandmother of the child. The child is washed in warm water and rubbed with butter, and this is repeated a week later. The hair is cut or shaved later. Before the birth of the child, the lama reads prayers over the mother, but he takes no notice of the newly born. There are no festivities, no christening, whether the child be boy or girl, — but the parents are visited by their nearest friends, who bring small presents of food. After a month's separation the joint bed is again resumed. The words which I have noted and phonetically transcribed as heard among the SarÖ YÖgurs and Shera YÖgurs, are to be found in a table at the end of this brochure. It is worthy of note, that a number of words, such as boot, bear, window, baskets, and others, are not to be found in the SarÖ YÖgur language, where they substitute the Chinese word — but they are to be found among the Shera YÖgurs. The number of births and deaths during the last ten years, in the nineteen homesteads we visited, and the number of live stock possessed by each family is shown in the following table: births, deaths, cattle, horses, sheep, donkeys. N:o 1 2 — 4 2 60 1 It must be pointed out that these very primitive statistics stand in manifest opposition to the general information which they gave me, according to which the tribe on its arrival in those parts had been far more numerous, their constant struggle against unfavourable pecuniary and hygienic conditions having decimated them till there only remained the handful of SarÖ YÖgur families who inhabit the above mentioned villages. The number of deaths still outnumber the births. It is however possible that the statistical account which, especially in regard to their livestock, is always collected with difficulty, may have been intentionally falsified, but, on the other hand, vague statements are often liable to be unintentionally wrong. On the morning of the 16th I said farewell to my hospitable host and with my men and two packhorses started in a ENE direction to the village Yench'i from where I intended to follow the great high road to Kanchow. From Kanchow I wished to make an excursion and visit the Shera YÖgur Prince, whose home in the Nanshan mountains had been described to me by my friends, the lamas. My host, the lama KuÁ was polite enough to wish to accompany me all the way to Yench'i. He rode a small pony which more resembled a rat than a horse. It was no bigger than the donkey on whose back my friend, the Chinese officer commanding Shuangt'ingtzu's mounted guard station, balanced himself. However it walked so quickly that my big horse, which during seventeen months of travel had every opportunity of developing its stride, could with difficulty keep pace with it. A few cows were seen, in the early morning, standing about the farmsteads. They were thin and small. Our road led us over the same porous, salty ground and the lama complained of the poor soil and the coarse grass. It must be confessed that it resembled reeds more than grass and seemed better fit to be used as knitting needles than as food for cattle. It was a beautiful clear morning, not a breath stirring and we thoroughly enjoyed the splendid day. I asked KuÁ to sing us a song, as we rode along, but he was only capable of rendering the same oor in an indescribably dull and dreary tone. Time after time, he asked for my matches, dismounted and making up a bundle of dry grass, lighted it and croached over it for a moment, warming himself, then remounting and hurriedly catching up with our party. I am sure any of the YÖgur women would have shown more power of endurance than this young man of twenty-eight — and at the moment of parting with him, it appeared clearer than ever to me that this little, lost, Turkish tribe, living at the foot of the Nanshan mountains, with its stocking-knitting men, void of all energy and manliness, was on its way to certain annihilation. |
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