TWO SMALL SHRINES, WITH NUMBERS OF PRAYER WHEELS.
As we were leaving this courtyard we met a very refined-looking and well-dressed priest. He was delighted to see Rijnhart, and inquired eagerly after his wife, how he liked living at Tankar, how long was he going to stay in Kumbum, and many other questions. This man and his elder brother are two of the richest priests in the monastery; the latter has bought the title of K'ombo, which ensures his returning as a Buddha in his next lifetime, a distinction which, according to Mina Fu-yeh, is also in store for Mr. Rijnhart, as a reward for the good work he is now doing according to his lights. We now walked round the outside of the monastery, going up the hill at the back and descending on the other side close to the village of Lusar. On the way we passed two small shrines, chiefly remarkable for the number of prayer wheels or cylinders ranged outside them. All these we carefully set in motion, and then went on our way, feeling that the day had not been wasted. Round the outskirts were a few prayer stones like one sees in Ladakh, but they were nothing like so plentiful nor of such good workmanship as they are about Leh. It is a form of devotion which does not seem to have found great favour in Eastern Tibet. The next hour was pleasantly spent in the village buying curios, such as the yellow head dresses previously mentioned, Buddhist bells, and suchlike mementos of our visit; but there were two more small temples to be seen, food to be eaten, and a ride of fifty li to be made to Sining before sunset, so we could not afford to spend much time shopping.
Returning to the house we were stopping in, we gave orders for the horses to be fed and to be got ready to start as soon as we had had our midday meal. While this was being prepared we again went and sat with our host, who produced a small atlas given him by Rijnhart, on which we showed him our route, the road to India viâ Lhassa and Darjeeling, and the way to England by the Suez Canal. At present he is very full of a plan to accompany Rijnhart next time he goes home, and very likely to go on to America. Rijnhart has taught him the English names of many countries, and he took the greatest pride in pointing these out and repeating their names. But he has learnt a great deal more of Europeans than mere parrot-like repetition of a few names. In the course of conversation he has picked up a lot of our doctrines, and discusses them freely with Rijnhart, comparing them with his own, and expressing the profoundest admiration for the great Central Figure, which is to us what Tsong K'aba is to him, the ideal to live up to. In his own way he reconciles the two religions, saying that Tsong K'aba must have been a later incarnation of Jesus Christ, and that in reality he worships the same divinity that we do, but in a different way and with different details. Before we left Mina Fu-yeh gave us each a photograph of himself, which had been taken and printed for him by Rijnhart; in return we promised to send ours, and when we asked if there was anything else he would like, he said, "Flower seeds! the queerer the shape and stranger the colour the better." These of course we promised. I hope he will be pleased when he gets them if he is still at Kumbum, for he was then thinking of making a journey either to the Eastern Mongols again or to Lhassa.[10] If only he could be persuaded to allow one to accompany him to the latter place what a chance it would be.
Food being now ready, we ate it as quickly as might be, for it was already close on two o'clock. It was no easy thing to get away, for, with true Tibetan hospitality, our host and his little disciple joined in pressing us to eat, the latter saying to Rijnhart with a great show of displeasure, "I know that when you're at home you always eat five basins of food, and here you only eat two." At last we were ready to start. Nothing delayed us except that a priest who had gone to get us a supply of sacred leaves had not yet returned; in a few moments he ran up with about a hundred of them, and received a suitable present in return. Mina Fu-yeh warned us never to put anything on top of them as they were very precious, and to do so would be sacrilege. He also assured us that they had wonderful medicinal powers, and that if ever we were ill we had only to make use of them and a prompt cure would result. Last good-byes were said, and then we left the house full of regrets that we had had to cut our stay so short.
There were still the two small temples to visit; they both lie close together, below the entrance to the big temples. The first of the two was called the Green Glazed-Tile Temple, to distinguish it from the others. One enters it by a gateway underneath a stone arch. In front of the gateway about the centre of the courtyard is a large stone to which some cash were sticking.[11] Behind this are the two other sacred trees which have sprung from the original one mentioned above; unfortunately there was no caretaker in this temple when we went in, so we could not discover the history of this stone nor any reason for the cash being put there. However, not to leave anything undone, we left our own contribution with the rest.
Inside the temple is a large figure of Sakya Muni, and on either side of him, lining the walls to the right and left, are figures of the first eighteen missionaries to China, who carried the word from India to the Far East. It seems strange, looking at these figures, and thinking of those other devout Chinese pilgrims, who made the long journey to India, to try and get the original scriptures to take back to their native land, that Buddhism should have so totally disappeared from India, while flourishing in the country of its adoption.
We had now come to the last temple on the list, the Flower Temple, or Hua Miao. The courtyard of this temple was empty, but all round the walls are painted frescoes of horrible tortures. Inside there are a number of stuffed animals, terrible caricatures, many of them quite as grotesque as the tortured figures oil the walls outside. Among them is a large tiger, which is always kept saddled and bridled, ready for the Spiritual Buddha to ride upon at any moment; it is occasionally used in ceremonies, the abbot of the monastery seating himself upon it.
During the recent rebellion, all arms destined to be used against the Mohammedans, either in defence of the monastery or otherwise, were brought to be blessed in this temple, and hither all men going out to fight brought their offerings.
Our flying visit to Kumbum and its temples was now at an end, and the feeling uppermost in our minds was, without doubt, regret we could not afford to stay at least two or three days longer. We had seen a lot, but only enough to make us feel how much more there was to see and learn. The true Buddhist religion is one of deep interest, especially in these days of Theosophy and similar cults, and a man like Mina Fu-yeh, who is not only thoroughly well versed in all its tenets and scriptures, but is also sufficiently liberal minded to converse about them, is rare indeed.