Yaks. When people think of the animals of Tibet, a yak has to be among the first they think of. Eighty-five percent (or about 10 million) of the world's yaks live on the Tibetan Plateau. A yak is built to survive tough environments. Yaks have three times more red blood cells than normal cows so they are able to live without any problems on the high elevation grasslands of Tibet. Their long, thick hair insulates their bodies from winter temperatures that can get to -30C (-22F) or colder. Most yaks are black, but it is not uncommon to see white or gray ones especially on the grasslands of northern Amdo (modern day Qinghai province).

Tibetans have a long history of using yaks. Experts believe that yaks were first domesticated in Tibet at least 3000 years ago. They are sturdy, sure-footed and perfect for using as pack animals to cross high mountain passes. They can easily carry loads of 70kg (154lb) along rough and steep mountain trails. For centuries yaks have been used to carry salt from the Changtang (northern Plateau) to towns across Tibet and even across the Himalaya into the Dolpo region of Nepal. Yaks can begin being used as pack animals at age 2 and can often live to be over 20 years old.

Yaks are the most important animals to the Tibetan people. Nomads keep yaks in herds between 20 and 100. Most of Tibet is treeless, so dried yak dung is used as fuel for fires. Yak hair is woven into yarn and used to make tents and rope. Yak hide is used to make boots and boats. Yak meat is eaten by nearly every Tibetan family. It is high in protein with only one-sixth the fat of regular beef. In the summer months it is dried, but in winter it is often eaten raw. Yak milk is high in fat and is usually made into butter, yogurt and cheese. Yaks are always given names, but their names are different from the names given to people.

Wild yaks, called "drong" in Tibetan, once roamed all across Tibet. They were hunted to near extinction and now number less than 1000. Males can measure up to 2m (6ft 6in) at the shoulder and weigh up to 1000kg (2200lb). Most of the wild yaks of Tibet now live in the Kekexili Nature Preserve located in southwest Qinghai and northeast Tibet Autonomous Region. Inside Kekexili they are protected from hunters. China government officials are spending a lot of money in hopes of multiplying the number of wild yak in Tibet.

 In nomadic areas, yaks are still used as a mode of transportation. Yaks are either fitted with a saddle or are ridden bareback. It is not uncommon to see children riding a yak while out grazing the yaks. Many towns across Tibet hold annual summer horse festivals. Nearly every horse festival will hold a yak race which adds to the fun of the festival.

Obviously, tibetan life still revolves around the yak, which the people have herded and placed at the center of their culture for at least two thousand years. Tibetans are warmed by yak-dung fires and lit by yak-butter lamps; they eat yak meat and yak blood, butter, cheese, and yoghurt; they use yaks for transport and weave clothing, blankets, shelters, and even boats out of yak hair. Their staple dish is tsampa, made of salted tea pounded together with yak butter, to which toasted barley flour is added and mixed by hand before eating. The dependence in so many ways upon their particular animal herd is typical of pastoralists, the original "buttercaters," the world over.

In the city, yak butter has an important use in ceremonies, as a fuel for butter lamps. In particular, the 15th day of the first month is a the high point of the Great Prayer Festival (Smom-lam), and the day of the fabulous "Butter lamp day." This festival was started by Tsong kha-pa in the first Smom-lam in 1409. In his dream, all beautiful flowers and trees appeared in front of Buddha. He commissioned monks to make flowers and trees with colored butter. Tibetan monks have made intricate, colored butter sculptures as part of a tradition that is as old as Buddhism. In Lhasa, they continue to carve fantastic flowers, animals, birds and plants for December’s Butter Lamp Festival, and place them on a street lit with hundreds of lamps that burn butter. One sculpture takes up to six months to complete, as it is part of the path to enlightenment, upon which the monks create a positive collective world karma to overcome epidemics, hunger, and war.

The Festival of the Butter Gods

In 1942, one of the last descriptions was made of the Festival of the Butter Gods in Tibet. What Harrison Forman, writing for the Canadian Geographic, saw was one of the world's most magnificent religious celebrations, a particularly splendid example of which took place annually at the monastery he visited, Kumbum Gomba. The festival drew participants from all across Asia, and continued for many days, with songs and dancing, masked theatre, a huge market, the Questioning of the Lamas, chanted prayers, and music accompanied by cymbals, drums, gongs, flutes, oboes, and brass trumpets up to twenty feet long. The climax of the whole celebration was the night-long display of the Butter Gods.

Immense panels of bas-reliefs representing Buddhist deities and mythical subjects had been carved in yak butter by scores of lamas, supervised by a guild of artists acclaimed as among the finest in the Buddhist world. They had taken months to make the figures, which were multicolored, as much as three meters (10 ft.) tall, and amazingly intricate, with every hair, even' realistic detail of the design on their "silken" clothes, every bead in their elaborate jewelry meticulously carved and molded in butter. Some of the tableaux included hundreds of lively figures in action. The monks had had to work in the cold, and often suffered from frozen hands and feet during the winter weeks of work. Every year the sculptures were entirely different.

The crowd surged forward to gaze at the butter figures in the flickering light of thousands of yak-butter lamps. As the night passed the butter began to melt in the heat. By dawn it was all over: the temporary is intrinsic to the nature of festivals. The sacred occasion had passed, and the special manifestation of the gods was finished for that year.

Keeping warm and oiled

Fat discourages insects and fat keeps you warm. Many travelers who have lived among pastoral societies in cold climates, like the Mongols and Tibetans, have described how these people spent their lives coated in grease, usually butter, which might turn black and rancid before anyone seemed to mind. People have always enjoyed oiling their bodies, and hot water for washing was not commonly available until very recently. Our own fanatical obsession with washing is mostly new and largely a matter of our own self-esteem: it is a habit which would have astounded most of our ancestors, including the fastidious and supercilious Greeks.

According to the Chinese Buddhist teacher T’ien-t’ai, who was active about the year 600, the dharma, or teachings, could be understood in terms of successive stages of refinement analogous to the stages by which ghee (clarified butter, or literally, “liberation”) is derived from milk. Just as milk comes from a cow, cream comes from milk, butter comes from cream, melted butter comes from butter, and ghee is liberated from melted butter, the 12 divisions of the canon come from the Buddha.

In Tang China, kumyss, clotted cream, and clarified butter were three stages in a hierarchy of products derived from milk. In Buddhist religious imagery, each of them symbolized a stage in the transformation of the soul. Clarified butter represented the ultimate development of the Buddha spirit.

http://www.webexhibits.org/butter/countries-tibet.html

http://kekexili.typepad.com/life_on_the_tibetan_plate/2006/10/yaks.html