Inspired by local stories of the “Xixiabangma Demon”—a mythical Himalayan glacier god that took the form of a bearlike or humanoid being—Captain Andrei Tarkov’s “Snow Ape Survey” was launched mid-Summer 1925 from a base camp in the Lhatse Valley with the express goal of locating and documenting the existence of the Yeti—referred to in local vernacular Tibetan as “rock bear” (གཡའ་དྲེད་) or “man-bear” (མི་དྲེད་). Funded by the Corps’ Division of Cryptobiology, the expedition hoped to establish the creature’s territorial extension, language (if any), mating habits, and interspecies realtions. In addition to Captain Tarkov, the survey team consisted of four scientists from the Commonwealth of Independent Phenomenologists (CIP), five cryptozoologists from China, and three Tibetan yak drivers.

Their first Yeti sighting occurred on August 22, 1925. The team caught sight of a single creature as it shambled slowly across a high windswept icefield. N.A. Tombazi, expedition photographer, described the sight thusly:

“Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.”

Three weeks later, Thimpu Jinpa—one of the expedition’s yak drivers—stumbled upon a gathering of the creatures while pasturing his pack animals. Returning with the expedition leader, Captain Tarkov, they slowly approached the Yetis and succeeded in capturing them on film for the first time. In his expedition diary, Tarkov writes:

“Descending the slope, I became aware of three large forms sitting quietly in a small rocky ravine just over a hillock to the south of a small stream. Approaching slowly, we were at last able to observe the creatures at close proximity, and in full: their fur was dark red-brown in color; they possessed cone-shaped heads with no visible necks. They were gathered in a small group, squatting upon wide and well-defined buttocks, with an unmistakable glint of humanity in their eyes. My very first impression was of a creature resembling a large monkey or a bear. But the distinct anatomy of the animals and their fetid odor, combined with the great absolute elevation of the place and its distance from any human habitation, led me to believe that I faced an entirely new kind of creature…”

Startled by the sound of the camera shutter, the creatures rose suddenly to their feet and fled the area. One of them ran directy past Jinpa and Tarkov, who was able to captured the fleeing animal on film. [1]

After they were certain the Yetis had left the area, Tarkov and Jinpa returned to the small moraine where the creatures had been sitting. Scattered about the ground, they were astonished to find hundred of Tibetan “pecha” book pages covered in flowing script, along with a single broken strand of red coral prayer beads. After collecting the book pages and returning to their base in Lhatse, the team was shocked to learn that the book they had found was a rare Buddhist text entitled “The Jewel Ornament of Liberation: A Treatise on Rebirth in the Human Realm.”

Monks at the local Phuntsoling Monastery were consulted. A group of novice monks thought that the Yetis might be “tertons” or “treasure finders,” gifted with the ability to locate and unearth long-hidden sacred texts. Another group found the idea laughable, arguing that they must be dharmapalas—wrathful and terrifying bodhisattvas who protect Buddhists and the Dharma. Yet another group suggested that the Yetis were reciting the Jewel Ornament text together in hopes of attaining an auspicious human rebirth. One of the senior monastic scholars—an expert in karma theory—disagreed with all of these wild speculations. He wondered aloud whether the solitary life of the reclusive “rock bear”—unknowable spans of years spent in quiet contemplation of the the natural world—might not represent a higher form of existence, one less bound by the samsaric concerns that so plagued human beings. And if so, perhaps these gentle creatures were praying to preserve their precious Yeti birth, so as not to fall back into the human realm of strife, effort, and suffering. The matter remained unsettled amongst the monks, but before Tarkov and his team left the valley, the monks asked him to return the text to the spot where it had been found—carefully collated and wrapped in yellow cloth—along with three strings of quartz prayer beads that had been blessed by the abbot.

That evening, Thinpu Jinpa—the sherpa who had first disturbed the solitude of those quiet beings—was sent back up Xixiabangma with the precious cargo. He did as he was directed—replacing the items exactly where they had been found. The next morning, after drinking some tea and packing his things, Jinpa prepared to descend the mountain. Passing by the rocky moraine where he had left the items, he noticed that everything had been quietly removed during the night. In its place was a dwarf rhododenron blossom placed atop a single pecha page filled with elegant and archaic script. With some difficulty, he read the text aloud:

Beings are swept along by the powerful current of the four rivers,

Tightly bound by the chains of their karma, so difficult to undo,

Ensnared within the iron trap of their self-grasping,

And enshrouded in the thick darkness of ignorance.

Again and yet again, they are reborn in limitless samsara,

And constantly tormented by the three forms of suffering.

This is the current condition of all your mothers from previous lives—

Contemplate their plight and generate supreme bodhichitta.

If you lack the wisdom that realizes the nature of things,

Although you might grow accustomed to renunciation and bodhichitta,

You will be incapable of cutting through conditioned existence at its root,

Exert yourself, therefore, in the methods for realizing interdependence. [2]

Upon reciting these lines, Jinpa returned to Lhatse, gave up yak herding, and took monastic vows at Phuntsoling Monastery (where, until 1976, he served as Monastic Liaison in all matters concerning Human-Yeti relations). The ancient pecha page left for him by the Yetis was subsequently donated to the CPE’s Cathedral of Eternal Wisdom—archived along with the preserved rhododendrom bloom—and for the rest of his life, Jinpa wondered to himself whether the most precious rebirth might not be human after all…

[CPE Archivist KPG]

Notes:

[1] The attached photos document this momentous event. In the first image, we see Thimpu Jinpa looking toward the small Yeti grouping with intermingled awe, fear, disgust, and wonder. The second image shows one of the creatures as it ran toward the two men, only to disappear quickly into the higher reacher of the Xixiabangma ice field. These images were first published in: Andrei Tarkov. 1925, Observation of Yeti in the Tibetan Himalayas. Cryptozoology 2:58-65.

[2] These passages were later identified as Stanzas 7-9 of Je Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa’s masterpiece, The Root Verses of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path (lam gyi gtso bo rnam gsum gyi rtsa ba bzhugs so). This version, however, was composed entirely in the now-extinct Sāṃdhyābhāṣā or “Twilight Language.”