RULER OF TIBET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 22 July 1937, Page 9

RULER OF TIBET

A SUCCESSOR FOUND. DALAI LAMA’S INSTRUCTIONS. REINCARNATION CLAIM. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received July 22, 11.30 a.m. NANKING, July 21. In accordance with custom, the Dalai Lama, who was pro-British, described when dying at Lhassa in 1933 the face, the date and the circumstances of the birth of the child destined to succeed him as his reincarnated self. The priests .prosecuted a search and found the two-year-old son of a wealthy pastoralist on the Kokonor Plateau answering to the description.

The discovery of this holy child greatly strengthens the Dalai Lama’s party against the adherents of the pro-Chinese Taslii Lama, Tibet’s temporal secondary ruler, who is in exile in China. Nevertheless, he is going to Tibet to examine the situation.

The Dalai Lama is not only a personage of high spiritual repute, but has political governance of the country. When the Dalai Lama dies, or, as Tibetans would express it, wishes to exchange his existing body, his adherents look about for anew body into which he must huve transferred his spirit—or transferred himself. They therefore look about for babies born about the time he died for one whose body bears the recognised marks of Buddhahood. Before him they lay an assortment of rosaries and thunderbolts and mitres and other ecclesiastical paraphernalia, among which are the trappings of the late Living Buddha. If the . child has, indeed, the latter’s spirit, he will unerringly pick out the property was formerly his, and thus prove his claim to be, indeed, the new incarnation of the Living Buddha who for a time had passed away. In the case of the Dalai Lama, who wields such enormous power, being both spiritual and political sovereign of Tibet, it, has been found in practico that much trouble results from a youth of 18 —an ago in which a new incarnation comes into full powers—having such absolute authority in his hands. In many instances, therefore, the regent in whose hands has been the authority during the child’s minority has taken measures to ensure that tlieincarnation again changes its body. The average age of the Dalai Lamas is very low. . The former Dalai Lama, IBs Holiness Nwagang Lossang Thusten Gyatsho, was the 13th to occupy the position of. temporal and spiritual ruler of Tibet. Nwagang Lossang began his long period of 42 years’ actual power at the age of 18. under the influence of Russian advisers he ignored his treaty obligations with Brittain and an armed foreo was sent to the Forbidden City, forcing him to sign a new treaty. .Later ho spent three years at Darjeeling, and bis dislike and suspicion of Britain was changed to marked friendliness. Previously ho had spent some years in exile in China.