The conversation now turned to the question of trade. The Tashi Lama said that, owing to the recent wars in Nepal and Bhutan, trade between Bengal and Tibet was not flourishing, but that, as for himself, he gave encouragement to merchants, and in Tibet they were free and secure. He enumerated the different articles which went from Tibet to Bengal—"gold, musk, cow-tails (yak-tails), and coarse woollen clothes"—but he said the Tibetans were afraid to go to Bengal on account of the heat. In the previous year he had sent four people to worship at Benares, but three had died. In former times great numbers used to resort to Hindustan. The Lamas had temples in Benares, Gaya, and several other places; their priests used to travel thither to study the sacred books and the religion of the Hindus, and after remaining there ten, twenty, or thirty years, return to Tibet and communicate their knowledge to their countrymen; but since the Mohammedan conquest of India the inhabitants of Tibet had had little connection with Bengal or the southern countries.
Bogle assured him that times were now altered, that under the Company in Bengal—and it must be remembered that when he was speaking our rule did not extend beyond Bengal on that side of India—every person’s property was secure, and everyone was at liberty to follow his own religion.
The Lama said he was informed that under the Fringies the country was very quiet, and that he would be ashamed if Bogle were to return with a fruitless errand. He would therefore consult his officers and some men from Lhasa, as well as some of the chief merchants, and after informing them of the Governor’s desire to encourage trade, and of the encouragement and protection which the Company afforded to traders in Bengal, “discuss the most proper method of carrying it on and extending it.”
The following day the Lama told Bogle that he “had written to Lhasa on the subject of opening a free commercial communication between his country and Bengal.” “But,” says Bogle, “although he spoke with all the zeal in the world, I confess I did not much like the thoughts of referring my business to Lhasa, where I was not present, where I was unacquainted, and where I had reason to think the Ministers had entertained no favourable idea of me and my commission.”