THE LAMA OF THE WEST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3254, 26 July 1916, Page 66

THE LAMA OF THE WEST.

By Jessie Mackat.

Nothing shows the hollowness of current diplomacy more than the facility with which the religious susceptibilities of small or ignorant races are pdayed upon by* astute bureaucrats. Turkey, in the years of her .military decline, could not have held her place in Europe save for the fierce dissensions of Catholics and Greek churchmen in the Balkans, dissensions which the kinglets for the most part used for their own advantage, instead of trying to bring at least the rudiments of 'a Christian Balkan League out of chaos. If the present war has any humorous aspect, that aspect certainly is the body of German machination around the Levant which gives point to the title “Hadji Wilhelm,’ ironically bestowed upon the Kaiser. For 20 years Germany has been assiduously courting the Sultan, as the Caliph or spiritual head of Islam, and if Germany’s hopes in Asia Minor had not withered with the advance of the Russian armies through Armenia, the recent secession of the Arab potentates who held the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina would have blown upon them like a simoom. Without their homage the Sultan is—Caliph no more, and the Hadji Wilhelm has no claim to be the protector of Islam. A bishop, we hear, vouches for the laughable tale that depicts the Kaiser furbishing up) a new pedigree that derives the Hohenzollern line on one side from Mahomet’s sister. It has the true ring of Potsdam versatility about it, and seems well found for consumption in Tripoli and Anatolia. The shade of Luther, returning now, would feel that he had mistaken his century as the mentor of German princes. A curious .article in a Chicago paper, reprinted from a work on Tibet by a writer with the Japanese-sounding name of Ekai Kawaguchi, carries on this analogy of princely Proteanism in a very credible manner. The large book of travel from which this chapiter was borrowed was published six or seven years ago by the Theosopihist Office at Adyar, Madras—an interesting and rather surprising fact, since the writer, speaking of impressions formed about 1900 or 1901, seemed to regard Tibet, its rulers and people, through anything but the rosy spectacles affected by Madame Bl'avatsky and her successors when dealing with the Land of the Mahatmas. It is true that Sven Hedin, no follower of the Adyar prophets and prophetesses, professed to find a halo of deepest sanctity round the Dalai Lama and his, singularly unlovely people (to the eye of Western aestheticism). Some of us were nt considerable trouble to reconcile this heavenly vision of the Swedish explorer with the downright statements and creepy experiences of our own explorers—-Mr E. P. Knight and Mr Henry Landov. ' Since then we have read Sven Hedin’s apotheosis of the German Imperial Family, and do not wonder further that lie should feel himself hedged with divinities amid the soapless devotees of the Ncn-Buddhispi that has added so ranch cruelty to the gonlle, niistv. mournful creed of Gautama. Kawaguchi, on the contrary, found the Tibetans one of the most selfish and, at the same time, most, credulous of people, who had achieved their deserts in a set of priestly bureaucrats whose sails were ret (o catch any wind of personal advantage in foreign relation?, without the least idea of weighing the consequences to the State. Tibet, in fact, was at that time a hierarchy which admitted of no criticism on pain of death, and which ruled a people go intellectually lazy and unspiritual that

it swallowed wholesale any nostrum that did not conflict with its 'own extremely adaptable religiosity. The women in particular he found "highly selfish, and but poorly developed in the sense of public duty." Neither among them nor their men folk did he find a trace of the patriot- • ism and Jove of freedom with which mountaineers are usually credited in the West. Ihe Dalai Lama, indeed, he seemed to find of a higher stamp than his entourage, but necessarily at the mercy of his closest advisers for any real knowledge of the great world beyond. The hierarchy themselves lived in a diplomatic dell's house, and, while always melted by the present sight of gold, were incapable of constructing any continuous national policy, being scarcely a degree more discerning than the people on whose gullibility their mighty pretensions were based. Hero follows a characteristic and probably veracious tale of how Russian influence waxed great in the lofty tablelands round Lhasa, in the dav" when the suzerainty of China was shaken to its fall after the ignominious exposures of the -Japanese war. To the north-east of Tibet is a district peopled by the Buriat tribe, which for many years has owned Russia for its overlord. Russia, we are told, foresightedly treated this people as holding the'key to the all but unscalable heights fo Tibet, where she intended to establish an outpost overlooking India. To this end Russia exhibited unusual tenderness towards the Neo-Buddhistie religion of these Mongolians, to whom Tibet was a holy land. Young' Buriats were w.ont tc come as students to the Lama monasteries where the doctrines of their faith were taught. One such pilgrim, a youth named Done, some 35 years ago, became so noted for his scholarship that he was finally appointed chief tutor to the Dalai Lama, then a child. Dorje, who had been invested with the religious title of the Tsan-ni-Kenbo, or High Doctor of Divinity, as one might say, won the affection of the boy completely. When the Lama grew up the Tsan-ni-Kenbo returned to his native land, but no great while after came back to Lhasa, no more a simple scholar, but a remarkably wealthy hierarch, who resumed his old friendship with the young Dalai Lama, and won the homage of the great monasteries by his munificent gifts. Few of the 'Tibetans asked, or were encouraged to ask, the temporal source of these benefactions; it was taken for granted that the Buriats had settled great sums upon their illustrious and holy countryman. The Tsan-ni-Kenbo, if himself too sacred a person to trouble himself with the mundane routine of government, soon found a Premier to his mind. This was a certain Shata, belonging to a leading Tibetan family, . who had been exiled by some political rivals and forced to tafte refuge in British territory. Here he formed an idea of the resistless march of British rule, and came home at the first opportunity, determined to stave off the day. of Tibetan submission to that great white power. •Tsan-ni-Kenbo found the one-time exile as ready as the rest to accept Russian gold and more ready than most to entertain the idea of Russian protection against the nearer menace. With the countenance of the Dalai Lama, the priest and the Premier proceeded to Russify the trend of Tibetan sentiment, though even then with some more wary dissentients in the background. It was at this stage that the Tsan-ni-Kenbo evolved a remarkable triumph of priestcraft for the benefit of his superiors in St. Petersburg. There existed in Tibet a prophecy written long before by a Lama of presumably great sanctity. Some centuries later a mighty Buddhist prince would appear towards the north of Kashmir, and would bring the whole world to his feet and to Buddhism. This belief the Tsan-ni-Kenbo cleverly turned to account. He wrote a pamphlet showing that this country of regeneration and world-conquest was Russia, and that the Czar was the incarnation of Buddhistic divinity, the Great Lama of the West, who should be obeyed by every Tibetan as the supreme champion and head of the faith. We are told that this latter prophecy, backed by a timely shower of Russian favours, and no small importation of Russian weapons, had the desired effect, and that 15 years ago almost every devout Tibetan was, or professed to be, imbued with the idea of Holy Russia and her virtuous Czar as the coming head of all things. The story of Kamaguchi ends here. It will not be forgotten, however, that the Dalai Lama authorised some inroads into Sikhim and offered other insults to Britain, which drew forth first the peaceful, but ineffective, mission of Sir F. E. Younghusband to Lhasa, and then, in 1904.° the return under the same commander, and the military victory which ended in a treaty favourable to Britain, subsequently ratified by China as overlord. The' Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 placed the affairs of Tibet on _ a sounder footing, recognising the territorial integrity of the country and the sovereignty of China. But no concord could be'"maintained between China and her rebellious vassal, and the Dalai Lama ere Ions: was a fugitive claiming British hospitality in India. Fancy the humour of the situation, if this is a true tale. The Hadji Wilhelm stands on one peak of the world, holding in his Lutheran hand the crescent banner of the Caliphate: the Super-Lama Nicholas stands on another, uplifting with all the force of Greek Orthodoxy the tabled world-flag of Buddhism. But the plain John Smith of the Nonconformist conscience has his foot well planted on most of the intervening ground.