Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet

by Sarat Chandra Das

The four Labrang[7] temples, built with Chinese roofs and gilded spires, are especially noticeable. They are called Labrang-shar (or “eastern”), Labrang-nub (or “western”), Labrang khung, and Khansar chenpo, and in their general arrangement they do not differ from the temples I had seen at Tashilhunpo and elsewhere.

WATERFALL BELOW PACHUNGRI, BETWEEN GERA-TANG AND METANG.

In the palmy days of the Sakya hierarchy there were four abbots under the hierarch who ruled these four Labrang. The rank was hereditary in their families, and all those abbots, the hierarch included, were allowed to marry. This system of hereditary hierarchy [[240]]was known as dun-gyu. At the present time the abbots are Tantrik lamas from Khams. I was told that neither the lamas nor the nuns of Sakya are held by the people to be exceptionally virtuous, and, to tell the truth, the laity of Sakya has a similar unsavoury reputation in Tibet.

The Emperor Kublai made the hierarch Phagpa ruler of Tibet,[8] and it was the latter’s deputy (or Panchen[9]), Kunga zangbo, who began building the Lha-khang chenpo of Sakya, which was completed by one of his successors in office, Anglen tashi. This latter proved himself an able and vigorous administrator, and annexed Tagpo to the Sakya principality. Zangpo-pal, the then reigning hierarch, sent him on a mission to the Emperor of China, Buyantu,[10] who granted to him and his heirs in perpetuity the Yamdo lake country. The Sakya Panchen have, down to the present time, been taken from this family. The last Sakya Panchen, Kunga nyingpo, died on June 20, 1882; his tomb, at the time of my visit to Sakya, was almost finished, and his wife was still wearing mourning.

It is told of the late Sakya Panchen that, some sixteen years ago, after the death of the two famous Dayan khanpo, the treasurer of the Gadan gomba of Lhasa, when his wicked spirit was causing various dire calamities to Tibet, every endeavour to expel it from the country proved abortive. So finally the Government of Lhasa, at the suggestion of the oracles, requested the Sakya Panchen to visit Lhasa to drive the fiend away. At the foot of Mount Potala he had lighted a great fire, and, by the potency of his charms, drove the evil spirit into a lay figure prepared for the occasion, whereupon it fell straight-way into the fire. Then the Panchen drove his charmed phurbu[11] [[241]]into the image, but while so doing the flames of the pyre surrounded him, and all thought he was dead; but lo! after an hour or so he came out of the flames dressed in rich satins, and with not even so much as a hair of his head scorched.

Panchen Jimed wang-gyal, or one of the other sons of the late Panchen, will succeed him as ruler of Sakya. One son is an incarnate lama and superior of the Tanag Donphug lamasery,[12] but he is obliged to reside continually at Sakya on account of a rule which prescribes that when the re-embodiment of a lama takes place in Sakya, the reincarnation cannot return to the locality he occupied in his preceding existence. The names of the four other sons of the deceased Panchen will shortly be sent to Lhasa, and the Nachung oracle will decide who shall become the ruler of the principality.

These princely lamas wear long hair, ordinarily plaited in two queues hanging down their backs and tied at the ends with white cotton handkerchiefs. Over their ears they wear covers of gold studded with turquoises and emeralds, and almost reaching to their shoulders. To the lower part of these are appended earrings.[13]

In the Lhakhang chenpo (or great temple) are five seats of equal height, on which the princes take their places when conducting religious services; the one reserved to the hierarch remains vacant so long as the successor to the title has not been chosen.

Under the hierarch there is a Shape, or minister, who attends to all the temporal affairs of Sakya. The monks are divided into two orders, according to the locality of their birth; those from Tibet proper forming one set ruled by a Gekor, and having their cells near the great temple, and those from Khams (or Eastern Tibet), also with a Gekor over them, who live in the town.