Now the Tashi Lama rises and slowly retires from the scene of the festival, followed by his retinue. After his departure the pilgrims withdraw in perfect order, quietly and without crushing, and take their way down to Shigatse in a black stream of humanity. When the last have disappeared, we look for our horses, accompanied by our new friends.

The jugglery we had witnessed was in every respect brilliant, gorgeous, and splendid, and it is easy to imagine the feelings of humility such a performance must inspire in the mind of the simple pilgrim from the desolate mountains or the peaceful valleys. While the original signification of these dramatic masquerades and these mystic plays is the exorcising and expelling of inimical demons, they are in the hands of the clergy a means of retaining the credulous masses in the net of the Church, and this is a condition of the existence both of the Church and of the priests. Nothing imposes on ignorance so thoroughly as fearful scenes from the demon world, and therefore devils and monsters play a prominent part in the public masquerades of the monasteries. With their help and by representations of the King of Death, Yama, and of restless wandering souls vainly seeking new forms of existence in the sequence of transmigrations, the monks terrify the multitude and render them meek and subservient, and show many a poor sinner what obstacles and what trials await him on the rough road to Nirvana through the valley of the shadow of death.

On our way back we returned the visit of my friend Ma. His yamen was built in the usual Chinese style and was surrounded by a wall. I was invited to take my place on the seat of honour beside a small table, on which attentive servants placed tea, sweetmeats, and cigarettes. The whole room was full of Chinamen, but Ma was as amiable as before.

Lobsang Tsering and Tsaktserkan were waiting in my garden. They had brought a whole caravan of mules laden with tsamba, rice, meal, dried fruit, and barley for our horses—supplies sufficient for our whole party for a full month. They also handed me 46 silver tengas (barely 20 shillings) wrapped in paper, with which, they believed, we should buy meat, for the Tashi Lama must have no hand in anything which involved the extinction of the vital spark. The envoys also said that His Holiness expected me at nine o’clock the following morning, and that they would come to fetch me. But I was not to tell Ma or any one else that the Tashi Lama was going to receive me. For the rest, I had only to say a word and all my wishes would be fulfilled. Later in the evening a subordinate official presented himself with the information that no one would fetch me; I was to be at the great portal at nine o’clock—for the Chinese might become suspicious. At night I took out of Burroughs and Wellcome’s large medicine chest all the drugs which I thought we might want, and we packed them in labelled bags. The chest itself, of aluminium, and all its elegant tabloid boxes, bottles, cases, bandages, and instruments were rubbed and polished up till they shone like silver, and then wrapped in a large piece of yellow silk which Muhamed Isa had picked up in the bazaar, for it was next day to be my friendship’s offering to the Panchen Rinpoche.

121. The Labrang, the Palace of the Tashi Lama, to the Right.
In the foreground, a part of the Court of Ceremonies.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TASHI LAMA

The 12th of February came, the day on which I was to be received by the holiest man in Tibet. I therefore made myself as spruce as I had ever done for a ball in a British Government House, and then, accompanied by the same men as to the performance, rode up to the main entrance to Tashi-lunpo, where Tsaktserkan, Lobsang Tsering, and some monks awaited us. In their company we ascended to the higher regions, through a labyrinth of gloomy lanes and dark narrow cloisters, to the Labrang, where the Tashi Lama lives—the Vatican, with its white façade, its large quaint windows, and its solid balconies standing high above this town of temple buildings (Illustration 121). Our conductor leads us into cold dark rooms, up unusually steep staircases. The steps, in which the soles of the monks have worn deep hollows, are edged with iron, and the round bars of the balustrade are polished by innumerable hands. The steps are dark, and our friends warn us to mount slowly and cautiously. Then there is light, and we are taken out on to a gallery, a roof, but only to plunge again into a maze of dark passages and flights of steps. I am asked to wait in a room with red cushions on the floor. Before long we are informed that the man next in rank to the Tashi Lama, the honourable fat little lama, who holds the post of a minister of state, is ready to receive us. His audience chamber, or rather his private cell, is quite a small room, but from its single window he enjoys a beautiful view over the sacred town of Shigatse and the rocky mountains of the neighbourhood. The room is fitted up with solid, unpretentious, and genuine Lamaist luxury. Red carpets lie on the floor, and the ceiling and walls are also red, that is, all that can be seen of them, for most of the walls are hidden by artistically carved cabinets with red lacquer, and decorated in colours and inlaid metal work. On these stand large silver gaos containing images of the gods, and before them smaller ones of solid gold, between bowls with offerings or wicks burning with a dull flame in butter. Other objects may be seen which the monks use in their services: bells, cymbals, holy water vessels, and a dorche, the thunderbolt, emblem of power, which resembles a sceptre. To the left, in a window niche, hangs a flag-like picture (tanka) of the first Tashi Lama, and to the right a similar portrait of the ecclesiastical prince Sakya Pandita.