THE MAN OF MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2996, 16 August 1911, Page 83

THE MAN OF MYSTERY.

INTERVIEWING THE ,D. I LAMA. The most mysterious, and therefore the most interesting, monarch in the world is undeniably the Dalai Lama, sovereign, and divmity of Tibet. He ranks with two other potentates a® the only humans seriouely regarded as divinities, the Emperor ol Japan and Abbas Effendi, the “Messiah of tho Behais ta.” This veiled in on* arch has at last, however, allowed tha veil to be drawn; in fast he even seems willing to dispense with it altogether t for Mr W. T. Ellis, of the Continent (Chicago), has had the honour of a personal interview. We give some extracts from his most interesting letter which is quoted in the Literary Digest. —Un-Orientally Clean.—

_ The Lama seems even younger than his 37 years. Ho wears his hair clo&?_ cropped. His complexion is a light yellow., and his features are not pronouncedly , Mongolian. His face is thoroughly pock- ' marked, but not deeply. The ears, which are large and noticeably pointed at tho top —quite as cartoonists are fond of representing another personage who is never called “his holiness”—are his most noticeable feature, although his teeth are largo and white and show fully when he smiles, as he does frequently and rather winsomely. His small black moustache ia waxed horizontally, and his under lip bears a few hairs. heme of the men of hia retinue have enough hair on the chin to plait into tiny pigtails. The shape of tho Dalai Lama’s head argues against intellectuality ; in a lesser personage it would be called bullet-shaped. "His face gives the impression, of craft rather than of mental alertness, although this is redeemed by real geniality. Those who know say that he is very considerate, of his followers, and loved as well as reverenced by them. The current tales as to his never washing his face are patently false; I have means of knowing that his personal habits are quite un-Orientally clean. Ho sleeps every night between spotless satin sheets; and he eats from a golden bowl and drinks from a golden cup. When the Chinese Government tried to depose tho present Dalai Lama, it accused him, in terms that madia the reader gasp, of all kinds of gross immorality, practised during his long wanderings about the Chinese Empire, succeeding the invasion of Lass-a, his never-before-violated capital, by British troops. But h’s face is not that of a dissolute man, and from two persons in Darjeeling, excellently situated to know, I have learned that his private character If above reproach. The charges were but a, bit of Chinese politics; and they seem! to have failed, for the Tibetans would not bear of another Lama, and only the peaceful orders of this man kept them from waging war to the death upon the Chinese troops. •—A Remarkable Statement. —

His holiness volunteered the remarkable (statement that it had been (has plan, on his return to Tibet after h:s long wanderings consequent upon the invasion of the sacred city by the Younghusband expedition, to follow the Chinese example, and send his young men to America for a Western education. He also designed that Tibet, and even Lassa itself, should depart from its immemorial policy of seclusion, and open its doors to foreign trade and travel. That plan had been prevented of fulfilment by Chinese efforts to dethrone him and by his present exile, but when be returns he purposes to put. this policy of modern enlightenment into operation. Such a statement, from such a source, is perhaps the best possible illustration of the universality of the tides of change and unrest that are sweeping over the earth. If the Dalai Lama, the personification of mysterious, romantic aloofness and seclusion, is desirous of dinging wide open the doors of the last and most conservative of the hermit nations, then indeed is the world awake in its remotest pulsaxion.

—Paragon of Religious Wisdom. — '• He broke the precedent concerning the early mortality of the earthly incarnations of Buddha. So when the Chinese tried to have another drawing of infant names from the golden urn, the people and ,the monks —Tibet is a monk-ridden land—objected, and no successor to the absent Lama has been chosen. Moreover, tin’s Lama is regarded as of especially supernatural origin. When but a little babe he picked out the uncle of the previous Lama as ‘‘my uncle, thus showing his consciousness of his previous incarnation. He is said to be a paragon of religious w’.sd'om. In debates with the learned monks upon abstruse matters of the law he has always been able to confound them, and the discussions end with their falling down and worshipping him. Still further —of course I am quoting current Tibetan report and belief —he has attained to the highest degree of epiritujality. There are 10 stages of religious progress in this life. Even the learned and° pious rarely get beyond tins fifth. But this Dalai Lama has ' reached the tenth. " —Peace or War ? Aside from a merely curious and intellectual interest, \ Christendom is conjeernsd in this young man chiefly because he may have the deciding voice as to peace or war in this remote yet strategic corner of the earth, where the war clouds seem to be gathering even as the clouds gradually envelop the crowns of the mighty Himalayas. Other minor matters we discussed, ere I bade farewell to this eager young man, so zestful of life yet doomed to the awful isolation of the most venerated throne that ever mortal sat dpon. I did not dare to show the pity 1 £e),t for him, as, a ceremonial shawl oi ' greeting having been thrown over my (

shoulder* ;is a glib, I bowed myself out backward.