RULER OF 400 MONKS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

RULER OF 400 MONKS

REMARKABLE PERSONAGE "QUEEN OF BUDDHISTS" VISIT TO BRITISH MUSEUM A story of " the most amazing woman in London," Mile. Suzanne Karpeles, the French principal of an institute of 400 Buddhist monks, and the only woman in this Asiatic monastery, is related by Winifred Loraine in tho Daily Express. The writer says: —She is thirty, and the uncrowned Queen of Cambodia, the southern portion of French Indo-China, for the priests of all pagodas and the heads of all monasteries throughout the country marched to Pnom-Penh, the capital, to receive tho Triptika, or Buddhist Bible, in its first printed version, from her hands. She had had it printed. Let her speak to you as she spoke to me, after I had tracked her across the hall of the British Museum, astonished to see a classic-featured young woman between two Buddhist monks, both saffronrobed and shaven-headed. " You have been the first to speak to us, though all have smiled," said Mile. Karpeles, introducing "My secretaries." The monks inclined pale yellow-skinned heads and impersonal eyes, and shivered with the cold. One was bent, blanketed, and old. The other was Btalwart, wore glasses, and seemed under forty.

We jumped into a taxicab, and in an hotel we drew the curtains of mademoiselle's sitting room quickly to 6hut out the grey sky. The monk's went to the fire to warm. " We leave to-night," said mademoiselle, and over the faces of the two Cambodians flickered a faint smile. "We have seen the manuscripts we wanted at the British Museum, and now we go home—sooo miles. " I went to Hanoi, in North CochinChina, from Paris to teach French in 1922," said mademoiselle. " and spent a holiday at Pnom-Penh, in the south, in 1924, to bo instructed in the Buddhist creed. I am, of course, a Buddhist. Buddhist nuns shave their heads. I do not —but then I am not a nun, though I am the principal of a monastery. And I am the principal because I saw the necessity of reorganising 'Cambodian national life. " Cambodia has an old civilisation, and for years had been looted by neighbouring jiowers till it was deprived of its riches and of all its palm manuscripts, save those the king guarded in his palace. Consequently young Cambodians had to go to Bangkok, in Siam, to be educated. " I altered this—first by sending a round letter to the monasteries urging

them to preach that each Cambodian should make his life a safeguard for the king's library if this were given to the nation, and also that each villager who had a palmscript in his possession should be honoured by the priest if ho gave it to the temple. " Two thousand monks marched to Pnom-Penh with the gifts of the provinces, the king sent over his library, my monks set to copying, and now Cambodia is educated on lines laid down by my monastery. Each boy passes his period of meditation, or enforced novitiate before he comes of age, in our monastery." " And you are the only woman in the monastery ? " the writer ask,ed. " Ytys, but that never occurs to me," said mademoiselle. " I have a mission. My rooms are separate, no monk may enter them unless accompanied by another monk. Also none may hand anything to me. They lay it near, and I take it up." " She is the re-incarnation of PnomPenh, holy priestess of Buddha, who founded our capital 700 years ago," said the monks, rustling after her into the passage. She nodded and agreed. " Cambodia is my home," she said.