The Lamas living in community are those who compose the
third class. A Lamasery is a collection of small houses built around one or more Buddhic temples. These dwellings are more or less large and beautiful, according to the means of the proprietor. The Lamas who live thus in community, are generally more regular than the others; they pay more attention to prayer and study. They are allowed to keep a few animals; some cows to afford them milk and butter, the principal materials of their daily food; horses; and some sheep to be killed on festivals.
Generally speaking, the Lamaseries have endowments, either royal or imperial. At certain periods of the year, the revenues are distributed to the Lamas according to the station which they have obtained in the hierarchy. Those who have the reputation of being learned physicians, or able fortune-tellers, have often the opportunity of acquiring possession of the property of strangers; yet they seldom seem to become rich. A childish and heedless race, they cannot make a moderate use of the riches they acquire; their money goes as quickly as it comes. The same Lama whom you saw yesterday in dirty, torn rags, to-day rivals in the magnificence of his attire the grandeur of the highest dignitaries of the Lamasery. So soon as animals or money are placed within his disposition, he starts off to the next trading town, sells what he has to sell, and clothes himself in the richest attire he can purchase. For a month or two he plays the elegant idler, and then, his money all gone, he repairs once more to the Chinese town, this time to pawn his fine clothes for what he can get, and with the certainty that once in the Tang-Pou, he will never, except by some chance, redeem them. All the pawnbrokers shops in the Tartar Chinese towns are full of these Lama relics. The Lamas are very numerous in Tartary; we think we may affirm, without exaggeration, that they compose at least a third of the population. In almost all families, with the exception of the eldest son, who remains a layman, the male children become Lamas.
The Tartars embrace this profession compulsorily, not of their own free will; they are Lamas or laymen from their birth, according to the will of the parents. But as they grow up, they grow accustomed to this life; and, in the end, religious exaltation attaches them strongly to it.
It is said that the policy of the Mantchou dynasty is to increase the number of Lamas in Tartary; the Chinese Mandarins so assured us, and the thing seems probable enough. It is certain that the government of Peking, whilst it leaves to poverty and want the Chinese Bonzes, honours and favours Lamanism in a special degree. The secret intention of the government, in augmenting the number of the Lamas, who are bound to celibacy, is to arrest,
by this means, the progress of the population in Tartary. The recollection of the former power of the Mongols ever fills its mind; it knows that they were formerly masters of the empire,—and in the fear of a new invasion, it seeks to enfeeble them by all the means in its power. Yet, although Mongolia is scantily peopled, in comparison with its immense extent, it could, at a day’s notice, send forth a formidable army. A high Lama, the Guison-Tamba, for instance, would have but to raise his finger, and all the Mongols, from the frontiers of Siberia to the extremities of Thibet, rising as one man, would precipitate themselves like a torrent wherever their sainted leader might direct them. The profound peace which they have enjoyed for more than two centuries, might seem to have necessarily enervated their warlike character; nevertheless, you may still observe that they have not altogether lost their taste for warlike adventures. The great campaigns of Tsing-Kis-Khan, who led them to the conquest of the world, have not escaped their memory during the long period of leisure of their nomadic life; they love to talk of them, and to feed their imagination with vague projects of invasion.
During our short stay at the Blue Town we had constant conversations with the Lamas of the most celebrated Lamaseries, endeavouring to obtain fresh information on the state of Buddhism in Tartary and Thibet. All they told us only served to confirm us more and more in what we had before learnt on this subject. In the Blue Town, as at Tolon-Noor, everyone told us that the doctrine would appear more sublime and more luminous as we advanced towards the West. From what the Lamas said, who had visited Thibet, Lha-Ssa was, as it were, a great focus of light, the rays of which grew more and more feeble in proportion as they became removed from their centre.
One day we had an opportunity of talking with a Thibetian Lama for some time, and the things he told us about religion astounded us greatly. A brief explanation of the Christian doctrine, which we gave to him, seemed scarcely to surprise him; he even maintained that our views differed little from those of the Grand Lamas of Thibet. “You must not confound,” said he, “religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars, poor, simple people, prostrate themselves before whatever they see; everything with them is Borhan. Lamas, prayer books, temples, Lamaseries, stones, heaps of bones,—’tis all the same to them; down they go on their knees, crying, Borhan! Borhan!” “But the Lamas themselves admit innumerable Borhans?” “Let me explain,” said our friend, smilingly; “there is but one sole Sovereign of the universe, the Creator of all things, alike without beginning and
without end. In Dchagar (India) he bears the name of Buddha, in Thibet, that of Samtche Mitcheba (all Powerful Eternal); the Dcha-Mi (Chinese) call him Fo, and the Sok-Po-Mi (Tartars), Borhan.” “You say that Buddha is sole; in that case, who are the Talé-Lama of Lha-Ssa, the Bandchan of Djachi-Loumbo, the Tsong-Kaba of the Sifan, the Kaldan of Tolon-Noor, the Guison-Tamba of the Great Kouren, the Hobilgan of Blue Town, the Hotoktou of Peking, the Chaberon of the Tartar and Thibetian Lamaseries generally?” “They are all equally Buddha.” “Is Buddha visible?” “No, he is without a body; he is a spiritual substance.” “So, Buddha is sole, and yet there exist innumerable Buddhas; the Talé-Lama, and so on. Buddha is incorporeal; he cannot be seen, and yet the Talé-Lama, the Guison-Tamba, and the rest are visible, and have bodies like our own. How do you explain all this?” “The doctrine, I tell you, is true,” said the Lama, raising his arm, and assuming a remarkable accent of authority; “it is the doctrine of the West, but it is of unfathomable profundity. It cannot be sounded to the bottom.”
These words of the Thibetian Lama astonished us strangely; the Unity of God, the mystery of the Incarnation, the dogma of the Real Presence seemed to us enveloped in his creed; yet with ideas so sound in appearance, he admitted the metempsychosis, and a sort of pantheism of which he could give no account.