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Show Tibet Holds Hunting Is a Crime; Law Is Discreetly Evaded in One Province the forests are taken goral, serow, musk-deer, bear and wild pig. Traps, dogs and guns are all used. The guns are mostly long-barreled prong-guns prong-guns of great age. The prong, which is made of the two horns of a deer, is hinged to the barrel of the gun close to the muzzle; normally It projects beyond the muzzle and looks like a pitchfork, but when the moment for action arrives it is turned down and stuck in the ground forming a rest for the gun. A slow match is applied, and, after some 15 minutes of waiting, the gun may or may not go off. Its use is clearly limited. Descendants of former criminals, the present Zayulis (of Zayul province, prov-ince, Tibet) seem to have inherited a cheerful disregard for the law. Hunting is one of the greatest crimes in Tibet; for Buddhist doctrine forbids for-bids the taking of life in any form. Inevitably a certain compromise has been made, and in most monasteries monas-teries you will find that meat is eaten, eat-en, but only the meat of domestic animals, which, it is thought, are clearly expiating some past sin in a former human existence by their present enslavement, writes John Hanbury-Tracy in Asia Magazine. Wild animals are considered to belong to a higher form of bfe, and killing them is severely penalized in most parts of Tibet; I have seen a man given 300 lashes with rawhide whips for killing a hare. The result re-sult is that wild creatures are extraordinarily ex-traordinarily tame: it is delightful in some parts of southeastern Tibet to see hares, marmots, partridges, white pheasants, wild ducks and geese completely unmoved when one approaches to within a dozen feet of them. But in Zayul the law is discreetly evaded, and the people are excellent hunters over difficult ground. In |
