THE DALAI LAMA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 79

THE DALAI LAMA.

DEVIL-WORSHIP IN TIBET. In his absorbing record of Sir Frank Younghusband’s mission to Lhasa Mr Percival Landon notes that he once found a curiosity in the shape of a pebble with the imprint of the Dalai Lama’s thumb stamped upon it in vermilion. At the present moment the newspapers furnish us with pictures of this most exclusive personality in the world in the act of holding public receptions. The hidden figure of the Forbidden City has passed suddenly under the limelight of enormous publicity. We see him in s coarse, woollen robe, dusty, travel-stained, and wearing a projecting cap of light material. Again, we see him bare-headed and clothed in yellow silk set off with a red silk shawl. We know that his figure is slight and that his face is pitted with smallpox. We know that he, the Grand Lama, supposedly impenetrable to every phase of emotion, betrays the marks of jatigue, and that his smile is a kindly one. The Theory of Incarnation.— The Supreme Pontiff and former ruler of Tibet used to reside in a vast palace at Lhasa ;alled the Potala. He is in his thirty-sixth year, and is the only recent Grand Lama who has attained an age of maturity. The theory is that when a Dalai Lama passes away the spirit of the Buddha leaves him at that moment and enters the body of some new-born Tibetan infant. The priestly ministers at Lhasa forthwith instigate a search for the latest incarnation, among the children born at the moment of the Dalai Lama’s death. When they have found one satisfactory to themselves a proclamation is issued announcing that a new Dalai Lama —that is to say, a new incarnation of the Buddha —has been discovered. The Ministers, who are themselves Lamas of high position, generally take care that the choice of a successor is centred upon an obscure family, and during the child’s minority all the power of Tibet, both spiritual and temporal, by this means remains in their own hands. Usually a Grand Lama passes away at about the age of 18—at about the age when be might be expected to seize the reins of government. The present Pontiff, however, has been too subtle for his priests, and now at the comparatively advanced age of 35 he has fled to India. Like a Bronze Image.— The first Englishman to interview this Lama was Lieutenant Brooke, F.R.G.S., who was murdered near the Tibetan frontier. To this English officer the Lama appeared like one of the idols of his country : “ The Dalai Lama sat upright and cross-legged in front of us at the upper end of the room on silk cushions on a platform about 4ft high, so that his feet were about level with our faces as we talked to him. His face never showed the smallest trace of expression. He greeted us with a slight forward movement of the body, but nothing like a smile ever approached his features as we conversed. I have never seen such a hard, expressionless countenance ais that of this spiritual Father of Tibet. One could not help thinking that he must have trained his features to resemble the unsympathetic look of the bronze images of the country.” The audience of this English officer lasted for an hour, at the end of which the Dalai Lama refused to be photographed, hut allowed his lips to smile faintly as the Englishman hacked out of his presence. Devil-worship.— The Government of Tibet is in. the hands of the Lamas, but their Buddhism, unlike that of India, is merely nominal. “ In their vain repetitions and mechanical aids to self-salvation,” says the author of “ Lhasa,” who had studied them at first hand, “ in their gaudy and frequently obscene ritual, in their hells full of demon spirits and fearful semi-gods, Buddha’s simple creed has long been dead. The doctrine of reincarnation, rather implied than taught by him, is still politically useful, and therefore remains as almost the sole link which still connects the two Churches. Brushing aside the films of ritual and the untruthful suggestions of tradition, one finds in Lamaism. little but sheer animistic devil-worship.” And if devil-worship is the religion of this mysterious country, devils are everywhere at work to enforce the administration of the Lamas’ rules. “ Tibet,” writes Mr Landon, “is peopled with as many bogeys as the most terrified child in England can conjure up in the darkness of its bedroom. A natural cave, a chink beneath a boulder, a farmstead, the row of willows beside an irrigation channel or the low mill-house at the end of them, a doorway or a ehorten—every habitation of man teems with these unseen terrors. The spilling of the milk upon the hearthstone needs its special expiation, and the birth and death of men are naturally perhaps made the opportunity of secariwjs obla-

tions from the people of the land.” Against these powers of evil there is but one protection. Mere personal prayers do not avail the poor of Tibet. Prayers are only potent after they have been sanctioned by a priest. Every prayer-flag, every turning-wheel must be paid for at a fixed price. The priestly rulers, not content with all the money that they can wring from an impoverished people, dispose of its labour by the corvee system) as it flourished in ancient Egypt. Practically the whole wealth of Tibet is in the hands of this powerful and conscienceless caste. —An Intended Compliment.— The religion of the Buddha is associated with the most repugnant atrocities. “Palden-Ihamo,” writes Mr Landon, “is a dark blue lady with three eyes, who sits upon a chestnut mule drinking blood from a skull and trampling under foot the torn and mutilated bodies of men and women. Her crown is composed of skulls, her ey°-teeth are 4in long, and the bridle, girths, and crupper are living snakes kept in position by the dripping skin of a recently-flayed man. Of this atrocity the Tibetans found a reincarnation in Queen Victoria.” They did this, it is to be observed, with the intention of conveying nothing but the highest compliment to the English Queen. So terrible is the grip of the Lamas that self-immolation is among the tortures which they impose upon those in their power. Under the guidance of an abbot the author'of “Lhasa” entered a small courtyard surrounded by blank walls, one of which was shaded by the pink and white of a peach tree. Quite near the level of the ground was an opening closed from behind with a flat stone. In front of this horrible prison two basins, one at each end of a ledge about 18in wide, were set down. Then an acolyte, at Lie order of his master, tapped three times, after which the little party waited in silence. Buried Alive. — The apprehension of this waiting made the incident the, most uncanny thing that the author saw in all Tibet: “ What on earth was going to appear when _ that ston..- slab, which even then was beginning weakly to quiver, was pushed aside the wildes conjecture could not suggest. After half a minute’s pause the stone was moved, or tried to move, hut it came to rest again. Then very slowly and uncertainly it was pushed back, and a black chasm was revealed. There was again a pause of SO seconds, during which imagination ran riot; but J do not think that any other thing could have been as intensely pathetic as that which we actually saw. A hand, muffled in a tightly-wound piece of dirty cloth, for all the world like the stump of an arm, was painfully thrust up, and very weakly it felt along the slab. After a' fruitless fumbling the hand slowly quivered back again in the darkness. A few moments later there was again one ineffectual effort, and then the stone slab moved noiselessly again across the opening.” Water and a cake of unleavened flour are placed upon the slab for the prisoner once a day. He takes it at a given signal and returns to his living tomb without exchanging a single word with any human being. The cruelty of a caste can go no further. “ This memory,” says Mr Landon, “ still makes a deeper impression than one thought possible even in the first shock of the moment. Even now the silver and the flowers and the white linen and the crim-son-shaded lights of a dinner table are sometimes dimmed by a picture of the same hand that one shook so warmly as one left the monastery, now weakly fumbling with swathed fingers for food along the slab of the prison in which the abbot now is sealed up for life, for he was going into darkness very soon.” In this long tyranny of the Lama caste lies the festering secret of the Forbidden City.