April 28.—The villagers had all assembled to bid us farewell, and the Tung-chen’s sister presented me with a “scarf for good luck” (tashi khatag). We saw as we rode along numerous flocks of cranes (tontong), and brown ducks with red necks were swimming in the river and the irrigation ditches. We stopped for the night at Pishi Mani lhakhang, where Angputti received us with the same kindness she had shown us on my former visits. Snow fell during the night, but our hostess’s servants watched over our ponies, and stabled them under the roof of the okhang,[4] or godown, on the ground floor.
We reached Dongtse at 4 p.m. on the 29th, and took up our lodgings in the Choide; but in the evening the Deba Chola came and invited us to put up at the castle, where the minister was still staying. [[124]]
The Tung-chen took an early opportunity to inform the minister that his presence was anxiously expected at Tashilhunpo, where hundreds of lamas were awaiting his return to be ordained gelong (priests). He also told him that the Mirkan Pandita, a Mongol Kutuketu who had come to Tibet for the sole purpose of studying under the minister, now intended coming to Dongtse, and had begged that arrangements might be made for his accommodation in the minister’s residence. While the minister recognized the necessity for his returning to Tashilhunpo, he said he could not leave until the services for the propitiation of the Lord of death, Dorje jig-je, to be undertaken for the recovery of the Dahpon’s wife, were finished.
May 2.—The monks of Dongtse, headed by a learned old lama named Punlo, arrived at the castle to commence reading the Kahgyur. Arrangements were made in the nyihok for the worship of Dorje jig-je. Torma offerings[5] were placed on the terrace on the top of the castle, and rugs were spread on the floor of the little glazed room (nyihok) on it for the accommodation of the lamas. In the house was a raised seat for the minister, and in a corner of the room a little chapel, with all the necessary church furniture, among which the tsegi bumba, or “bowl of life,” of Tse-pamed was conspicuous.[6] This propitiatory ceremony occupied three days.
May 8.—News arrived to-day that small-pox was raging at Lhasa and other places of Central Tibet. Several persons had also died of it at Gyantse, and three or four localities between that town and Lhasa were infected. The Lhacham was in so great dread of the disease that she confined herself to her sitting-room, refusing to see any one.
On May 9 the Lhacham left for Lhasa, after confiding to the minister’s care Ane, her third son, a boy of ten, who was destined for the Church. The Lhacham and her two other sons, Lhasre[7] and Kundi, made their devotions at the different chapels of the castle, which it took them nearly an hour to accomplish, and then returned to the fifth story of the building to receive the minister’s blessing, after which they took their leave. [[125]]
At the foot of the ladder in the courtyard a white pony, with handsome housings of embroidered cloth and a Tartar saddle, awaited the Lhacham. With her pearl-studded headdress, her gold and ruby charm-boxes, her necklaces of coral and amber, and her clothes of satin and kinkab, she looked like a heroine of romance or a goddess.
TIBETAN NOBLEMAN.
On the following day I went with the minister and the Kusho Ane, and took up my residence in the Dongtse Choide. Here I witnessed the opening ceremonies connected with the Kalachakra mandala worship. The Om-dse,[8] or high priest of the Choide, with the help of two assistants, had described with coloured tsamba a circle about 20 feet in diameter on the floor of the northern room on the third floor of the Tsug-la khang. Within this mandala were drawn the entrance, spires, doors, and domes of the Kalachakra mansion. The presiding deity was tall, many-armed, and had several heads; his attendants were of the tantrik order of deities, and all these [[126]]paintings were made in coloured powders and tsamba.[9] The minister highly praised the work, and gave as a gratuity to each of the eighty monks of the monastery half a tanka, and an entertainment of tea and tsamba.