"THE GLORY OF BUDDHA"
An hour after my arrival I stood outside the temple gateway watching the sun set below a wild white ocean of clouds that laved the mountain side about 2,000 feet below me and turned the summit of Mount Omei into a snow-draped island. The air rapidly grew bitterly cold, and I was glad to seek warmth indoors by the side of my charcoal fire. My dilatory escort, carrying my modest baggage, came wearily in just as it began to grow dark.
The next morning held in store a wonderful surprise. The vast ocean of white clouds had entirely disappeared, and the wide country that lay far below me was bathed in the glory of brilliant sunlight. The sun rarely reveals himself in his full splendour in Ssuch'uan—so rarely that when he does so the dogs are said to bark at him[97]—and on Omei's summit sunshine is rare even for Ssuch'uan; but by good fortune it was on one of those exceptional occasions that I spent there the whole of one memorable day.
There are several monasteries on or near the summit. The one in which I lodged for two nights is crowned with a gilded ball that scintillates on its roof. Just behind the various buildings of this monastery is the tremendous precipice from the edge of which fortunate pilgrims witness the phenomenon known as the "Glory of Buddha."[98] As mentioned in the last chapter, this is the appearance of a gleaming aureole floating horizontally on the mist a few thousand feet below the summit. This beautiful phenomenon, to which is probably due the special sanctity of Mount Omei, has not yet been quite satisfactorily explained. It has been likened to the famous Brocken Spectre, and to the Shadow of the Peak in Ceylon, but the brilliant and varied colours of "Buddha's Glory"—five colours, say the Chinese—give it a rainbow-like beauty which those appearances do not possess.[99] The pious Buddhist pilgrim firmly believes that it is a miraculous manifestation of the power and glory of the Buddha—or of his spiritual Son P'u Hsien—and is always much disappointed if he has to leave the mountain without catching a glimpse of it.[100] The necessary conditions of its appearance are said to be a clear sky above and a bank of clouds below, and as those conditions were not fulfilled for me I must sorrowfully confess that I cannot describe the spectacle from personal experience. But the circumstance that deprived me of that privilege enabled me to have a superb view of the surrounding country. Nearly 10,000 feet below me to the north and east lay the rich rolling plains of central Ssuch'uan; to the south the silver streak of the Ta Tu river and the wild mountains that enable the mysterious Lolo races to maintain their solitary independence; slightly to the south-west appeared the huge mass of the Wa mountain, with its extraordinary flat summit and its precipitous flanks; and, grandest sight of all, clear and brilliant on the western horizon stood out the mighty barrier of towering peaks appropriately known by the Chinese as the Ta Hsüeh Shan—Great Snow Mountains. Those are the peaks—some of them 20,000 feet high, and more—that keep watch and ward over the lofty Tibetan plateau on the one side and the rolling plains of China on the other: the eastern ramparts of the vast Himālayan range, whose icy fingers seem ever to grope outward into the silent abyss of space as if seeking to grasp the fringe of a mightier world than ours. Even at a distance of nearly 100 miles as the crow flies the pinnacles seemed too lofty to be real; but it was pleasant to know that a few weeks hence I should be in the midst of the great mountains, perhaps learning something of their hidden mysteries.
"JIM" ON THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT OMEI.
THE OMEI PRECIPICE
The narrow gallery behind the monastery from which one watches for a manifestation of Buddha's Glory is carefully railed, for a fall from this spot would mean a sheer drop of more than a mile down the face of a precipice which, as Baber has remarked, is perhaps the highest in the world. Many are the stories told by the monks of men and women who in moments of wild religious exaltation have hurled themselves down to win death and paradise in one glorious instant by throwing themselves into the bosom of their Lord Buddha: true stories, which have well earned for this terrible precipice the name of "The Rejection of the Body."[101] Less sinister names which have been given it are the Diamond Terrace and the Silvery Boundary,—the latter[102] perhaps because Mount Omei is regarded as the eastern buttress of the Great Snow Mountains; or perhaps the words refer to the view of those mountains on the western horizon. Near the edge of the cliff are the remains of a once famous bronze temple, which was several times struck by lightning and has never been restored since the date of the last catastrophe. Some of the castings are exceedingly fine and well worthy of preservation. A Chinese proverb says that Heaven grants compensation for what the lightning has destroyed,[103] but in this instance it seems to have failed of fulfilment.
The temple at which I stayed harbours about twenty monks and acolytes, and visitors both lay and monastic are constantly coming and going. I observed there the performance of an interesting custom, whereby the monks who come on pilgrimage from distant monasteries produce papers of identification and have them stamped with the seal of each of the monasteries they visit. As their journeys are made that they may "gain merit," not only for themselves but also for the religious communities which they represent, it is important that on their return they should be able to produce duly authenticated certificates that they have actually attained the objects of their pilgrimage. In many cases the establishment visited also grants Buddhist tracts or plans of its own buildings. One such crude plan—representing the mountain of Omei with its principal religious houses—is reproduced here on a reduced scale. The monastic seal (in red in the original) appears at the top. Some yellow-robed monks from a large monastery near Pao-ning-fu in north-eastern Ssuch'uan, and a small group of lamas from Litang, on the Tibetan border, were having their papers sealed at the time of my arrival at the Golden Summit.