Free Tibetan Foothold by Dervla Murphy Page A

of the February full moon and is the great national holiday – the villages of an area sent their best team to the nearest town for the big annual competition.
    These singers and dancers were always amateurs and it was considered very bad form to turn professional; but naturally the required talents were often inherited and certain families were renowned for their ability. In such cases the father usually taught not only his own children but those other local youngsters who showed signs of talent.
    The Tibetans had songs to accompany each everyday task and in some cases to accompany the separate parts of one task – e.g. masons had special songs for laying foundations, building walls and putting on roofs. In the fourteenth or fifteenth century of our era dances were composed to go with these songs and both the dances and the costumes of the men and women differ conspicuously in the three chief provinces of Döme, Döte and Utsang: there are also many minor regional differences. Most of the songs refer to the vast beauty of the Tibetan landscape but love-songs are only sung at marriage festivals, which indicates what we would call a lack of emotional involvement in sexual relationships; it certainly does not signify any prudish traditional policy of shielding the young from temptation. A similar lack has been noted among the Buddhist Sherpas by Professor Fürer von Haimendorf, who deduced it from the absence of domestic friction which he observed in polyandric households. It certainly helps to explain that happy- go-lucky Tibetan attitude to sex – as a cross between a good meal andan exhilarating game – which results in a proliferation of warmly welcomed bastards in many refugee camps. Babies are things that will happen and no one fusses.
    The importance to the Tibetans of their dances and songs is stressed by the fact that very soon after the 1959 exodus to India the Dalai Lama asked his Cabinet to make an attempt to keep this part of the Tibetan culture alive. At first glance such a preoccupation might seem frivolous, considering the conditions under which the average refugee was then living; but, in fact, His Holiness showed commendable realism in acting so promptly. He knew that refugees need more than food and clothing and that a living art could soon die if the steady transmission of skill from generation to generation were not maintained.
    In September 1959 some of the more expert refugee dancers met in Kalimpong to tackle the enormous problem of starting a drama group without instruments, costumes, masks – or money. Indian craftsmen couldn’t make instruments which they had never seen, but eventually, through India’s Representative in Tibet, a few instruments were brought out over the border and some others were smuggled into Sikkim and Nepal, en route for Kalimpong. Meanwhile the seven founder-members of the Drama Party were collecting songs from natives of all the Tibetan provinces and sending around the camps to find children suitable for training. Soon about twenty boys and girls had joined the group and for the next six months they worked hard eight hours a day, not able to afford even a cup of tea during their long practice sessions.
    The Drama Party’s first public performance was given in 1960 at Kalimpong, and its success provided enough money for new costumes. Next they were invited to perform before the Afro-Asian Conference in Delhi, where their skill was much appreciated, and when His Holiness moved to Dharamsala he suggested that they also should make this their headquarters. By now the group’s fame had spread throughout the refugee world and many parents sent specially talented children to Dharamsala, where they received some conventional schooling as well as their specialised training.
    At the moment, apart from performing the traditional Tibetandances, the group also stages two dramas; one depicting the coming of Buddhism to Tibet and the other the coming of Communism. The first of these