I wait with longing for the morning star
To rise, the witness of that moment high
When His Illumination gained the Lord
The Perfect Buddha, Perfect Teacher Great.
THE AUTHOR MEDITATING UNDER THE BODHI-TREE.
After a few days’ stay in Buḍḍhagayā, I took the railway-train for Nepāl, and a ride of a day and a night brought me to Sagauli, on the morning of January 23. Sagauli is a station at a distance of two days’ journey from the Nepālese border. Here one boundary of the linguistic territory of English was reached, and beyond neither that language nor the Tibetan tongue was of any use—one had to speak either Hinḍūsṭāni or Nepālese to be understood, and I knew neither. So it became a necessary part of my Tibetan adventure to stop a while at Sagauli, and make myself master of working Nepālese. It was like forging the chain after catching a criminal. But up to then, my time had been all taken up in learning Tibetan, and I had had no moment to spare for anything else. By good fortune, however, my stay there was not to be a long one. I found the postmaster of Sagauli, a Bengālī, to be proficient both in English and Nepālese. As the thing had to be done in the most expeditious way possible, I started my work by noting down every Nepālese word the postmaster would teach me. The next day after my arrival at Sagauli, while I was out on a walk near the station with my note-book in hand, I noticed, among those who got off a train, a company of three men, one of whom was a gentleman, apparently of forty years of age and dressed in a Tibetan costume, another a priest about fifty years old, and the third unmistakably their servant. Thereupon a thought flashed on me that it would be a good thing for me if I could travel with these Tibetans, as I took them to be, and I immediately made bold to go up to them and ask whither they were going. I was told that their destination was Nepāl, that they had not just then come from Tibet, but that one of them was a Tibetan. It then became their turn to question me, their opening enquiry being as to what country I belonged. I replied that I was a Chinese. “Which direction did you come from then?—did you travel by land or by sea?” was the rejoinder sharply put to me next. That was a question I had to answer with caution. For the rule then in force in Tibet was to admit into that country no Chinaman coming by the sea. So I answered: “By land.” As we conversed, so we walked, and presently we came in front of where I was lodging. In that part of the world there is no such smart thing as a hotel or an inn; all the accommodation one can get in this respect is a shanty of a rather primitive type, with bamboo posts and a straw roof. There are a number of these simple structures there, standing on the roadside and intended only for travellers, who have, however, nothing to pay for lodging in them—they only pay the price of eatables and fuel, should they procure any. It was in one of these shanties that I was stopping, and when I excused myself from the company of my newly made acquaintances, the latter betook themselves into another on the opposite side of the street. After a while the gentleman and the priest came out of their shanty and called on me, evidently bent on finding out who, or rather what, I was. For the first question with which they challenged me was to what part of China I belonged. “To Fooshee,” I replied, realising full well that I was to go through the ordeal of an inquisition. “You speak Chinese, of course?” then asked the gentleman. My reply in the affirmative caused him at once to talk to me in quite fluent Chinese, which put me in no little consternation in secret. Compelled by necessity, I ventured calmly: “You must be talking in the official Peking dialect, while I can talk only in the common Fooshee tongue, and I do not understand you at all.” He was not to let me off yet. Says he next: “You can write in Chinese, I suppose.” Yes, I could, and I wrote. Some of my characters were intelligible enough to my guests, and some not, and after all it was agreed that it was best to confine ourselves to Tibetan. As our conversation progressed, my principal guest came to the crucial part of the inquisition and asked: “You say you have come from the landward side: well, from what part of Tibet have you come?” “In sooth, from Lhasa, sir; I have been on a pilgrimage through Darjeeling to Buḍḍhagayā, and from thence here,” I replied. I was requested to say, then, in what part of the city of Lhasa I lived. Being informed that I was in the grand Sera monastery, he wanted to know if I was acquainted with an old priest who was the Tatsang Kenpo (grand teacher) of that institution. I was bold enough to say that I was not a perfect stranger to the priest in question, and made a right good use of what I had learned from Lama Shabdung at Darjeeling. So far I managed to keep up my disguise, but each moment that passed only added to my fear of being trapped, and compelled to give myself away. To avoid this danger, I felt it important to head off my inquisitorial visitors by dispelling their suspicion, if they entertained any, about me. I was remarkably successful in this, the information obtained from Lama Shabdung again doing me excellent service. For, when I told my guests, in a most knowing way, all about Shabbe Shata’s intrigue against the Tangye-ling, which was designed to increase his own power, and the secret of which affair was not then generally known, the recital seemed to make a great impression on them, and to have had the effect of convincing them that I was the person I pretended to be. So my ordeal was at an end; but there was yet in store for me the most unexpected discovery I was to make about these men.
No longer curious as to my antecedents, my gentleman guest now asked me: “You say you are going to Nepāl: may I ask you who is the person you are directed to, and if you have ever been in that country?” I had never been there before, but I had a letter of introduction with me. From whom, to whom, could that be? The letters, I said—for I had had two given me—were written in favor of me by Mr. Jibbahaḍur, an official of the Nepālese Government, then residing in Calcutta, and addressed to the Lama of the Great Tower of Mahāboḍha in Nepāl, whose name, though I just happened to forget it, was on the letters. This piece of information seemed greatly to interest the gentleman, who could not help saying: “Why, that is strange! Mr. Jibbahaḍur is a friend of mine: I wonder who can be the person to whom the letters are addressed; will you permit me to look at them?” And the climax came when I, in all willingness, took out the letters and showed them to my guest, for he ejaculated: “Well, whoever would have thought it? These are for me!”
I may here observe that in Nepāl, as I found out afterwards, the word friend conveys a much deeper meaning, probably, than in any other country. To be a friend there means practically the same thing as being a brother, and the natives have a curious custom of observing a special ceremony when any two of them tie the knot of friendship between them. The ceremony resembles very much that of marriage, and its celebration is made an occasion for a great festival, in which the relatives and connexions of the parties concerned take part. To be brief, the ceremony generally takes the form of exchanging glasses of the native drink between the mutually chosen two, and they each have to extend their liberalities even to their servants in honor of the occasion. It is only after the observance of these formalities—which signify a great deal to the natives—that any two Nepālese may each call themselves the friend of the other.