| 171. Major W. F. O’Connor, British Trade Agent in Gyangtse, now Consul in Seistan. | 172. Captain C. G. Rawling. |
For my part, I thought of the singular fate of the man whose life had come to an end the day before. As a novice he had left for ever in childhood the free existence among the black tents and grazing herds, said farewell to the world and its vanities, and was received into a community of monks, of whom none now remained alive. He saw his elders die one after another, the young ones grow up to manhood, and new recruits come in. They wandered for a season through the temple halls, lighted the candles, and filled the water-bowls before the statues of the gods, and then passed on to other scenes on the endless road to Nirvana. Seventy-five years he had been an inmate of the monastery, and had lived in the cell in which his body now lay. How many soles must he have worn out on the same stone floor! For seventy-five years he had searched the holy scriptures and had pondered over an easier existence beyond the funeral pyre; for seventy-five years he had seen the westerly storms driving the sand along the Brahmaputra valley. Only yesterday, at the point of expiring, he had listened to the sound of the temple bells, which, with their clappers bound with large falcon’s feathers, had rung in his passage to the world beyond. And then with tottering steps he had followed the uncertain track of the brethren who had passed away before him.
Such a life seems hopelessly sad and gloomy. And yet a man who will venture to shut himself day and night within the walls of a dim convent must possess faith, conviction, and patience, for it is a prison which he in the tumult of his mind has chosen of his own free will. He has renounced the world when he allows himself to be walled in alive in the dark courts of Tarting; and when the smoke of his pyre ascends, it must, if equal justice be meted out to all, be a pleasant savour before the eternal throne.
But evening was coming on, and we must set out again. Below in a field a woman was ploughing with two oxen. She was singing loudly and cheerily to lighten her work. We rode on between low mountains, leaving Tanka-gompa on our left. When we came down to the plain the darkness was impenetrable, being made denser by thick clouds. A violent north wind arose, bringing cold air from the Chang-tang. At length we caught sight of comet tails of shooting sparks—our camp-fire in the Ye, where we had halted for a night’s rest two months before.
We remained two days in the Ye or Yeshung, and here took some liberties which were not in accordance with the terms of our passport, but the escort made no protest. On the first day we rode to Tugden-gompa, a row of cubical, two-storeyed houses painted dark greyish-blue with vertical white and red stripes. The monastery is said to be of the same colour as the famous Sekiya, south-west of Tashi-lunpo, and also belongs to the sect which allows lamas to marry under certain conditions. The convent has thirty monks, and is directly under the Labrang (Tashi-lunpo). I will not enter into a full description, but will only say that the tsokang, the assembly saloon and reading-room of the lamas, had four red pillars, divans in the nave, and handsome banners on the walls of the side aisles, which were painted on Chinese silk, some with dragons on the lower border, some without. The statues for the most part represent monks of high rank (Lama-kunchuk, i.e. divine lamas or incarnations). Before the portal stands a huge bundle of rods with streamers in all the colours of the rainbow, which are already torn by the wind. In an upper hall is enthroned a figure of Hlobun-Lama, a regular bishop, with mitre, cassock, and crozier. Some of these statues are very comical—fat, jolly old boys with a divinely gentle smile on their rosy lips, wide-opened eyes, and chubby cheeks, sometimes with moustaches and imperials. The likeness is probably more than doubtful, but at any rate they are very unlike one another. Most of them are wrapped in silken mantles. The Labrang here was closed, for the head lama of Tugden was gone to the tent of a dying nomad to the north. We visited a monk’s cell instead. It had a yard, a stall for the monk’s horse, a small dark closet for a kitchen, where a cat kept company with two pots, and a large lumber-room crammed with clothes, rags, images of Buddha, books, and tools, in which a novice, the pupil of the monk, lodged.
Immediately to the south-east of Tugden a small poor nunnery, Ganden-chöding, lies buried among hills. The dukang, a dark crypt with red pillars and neatly carved capitals, is reached through an unpretending portal in the middle of the façade. Beggarly offerings, scraps of iron and other rubbish, are hung on nails driven into the pillars. The serku-lhakang, the holy of holies, receives its light from the larger hall, and as this is dark, it must be pitch dark in the inner shrine. The statues of Chenresi (Avalokiteswara) and of the Tsepagmed (Amitayus) can only be seen with a lamp.
| 173, 174. Tarting-gompa.
175. Linga-gompa.
176. Lung-Ganden-gompa near Tong.
177. Inscription and Figure of Buddha carved in
Granite near the Village of Lingö. Sketches by the Author. |
The sixteen nuns of the convent are under the control of Tashi-lunpo, and the Tashi Lama provides them with tea once a day; the rest of their food they must beg in the houses and tents, so that some of them are always on the road. Now there were only five sisters at home, all dirty, with short hair, and poorly clad. Two were young and shy, the others were old wrinkled women with silvery-grey bristles, and in clothes which had been red once, but were now black with dirt, partly soot from the kitchen—a miserable hole, where they spend most of the day. I asked them whether they had attended the festival in Tashi-lunpo, but they replied that their means would not allow them except when a charitable person gave them travelling money. I always left a few rupees in the convents I visited, and the inmates were never too holy to take the valuable metal from the hands of an unbeliever.
The whole broad valley at Ye is begirt by a circle of monasteries. Our Chinamen had given notice of my visit on April 2 to Tashi-gembe, a large convent of 200 monks, who belong to the same colour as the monks of Tashi-lunpo. We had an hour’s ride to this town of white sanctuaries, which are erected at the foot of a mountain spur. About 100 brethren gave me a civil greeting at the entrance, and led me to the paved court of ceremonies, which has the same appearance as the one in Tashi-lunpo, is surrounded by pillared galleries, has numerous pictures of Buddha painted in fresco on the walls, and a throne for the Tashi Lama, who celebrates a mass here once a year. By a staircase of wood and stone, between two pillars of the entrance hall, where the four spiritual kings keep watch on the walls, we enter into a dukang, with the usual pillars and divans. On two of these pillars hang complete suits of armour with shirts of mail, casques and tasses of iron scales fastened together with iron rings, maces, spears, tridents, and lances; on one of these lances hangs a white pennant with a brown border; on the pennant are written characters, and on the point of the lance a skull is placed. Among the harness tankas are suspended, which, surrounded by silken cloths, look like escutcheons. Amid this harness and weapons, which are worn by divine powers when contending with devils, one may fancy oneself suddenly transplanted into an ancient Asiatic castle.
A gallery runs round three sides, and standards and banners hang down from it, all in fresh colours, tasteful and handsome. In the middle of the altar rank is enthroned Sakya-tubpa, the Buddha, and before the statues stands a row of polished brass bowls with lights which, mingling with the daylight, cast a magic gleam over the dusky hall. Some are filled with crystal-clear water, the nectar of the gods.