In a short valley in the western mountains the monastery Linga-gompa is placed on the uppermost ledge of a steep flight of terraces, and is as fantastic, fascinating, and attractive as a fairy castle. Its white houses are perched like storks’ nests on mountain pinnacles; a row of manis points out the way up to where the pious, blameless saints dwell in deep silence, far above the riot and tumult of the villages and the roaring and tossing of the stream. Below the monastery stands the village Linga-kok, where our camp is pitched not far from a bridge of ten arches on eleven piers which crosses the My-chu. A crowd of Tibetans, black as Moors, dirty, ragged, capless and trouserless, watch our arrival in silent amazement (Illustration 188).
| 187. On the My-chu near Linga. |
| 188. Village and Monastery of Linga. |
Not a single tree is seen in the neighbourhood; only up at the monastery there are two. This consolation, then, is no more, and only in our memory do we hear the thick foliage of tree-tops rustling in the wind. Again we may expect the moaning of the storm on the passes of bare alpine ranges. Moreover, the spring has not set in in earnest, for in the night there were still 30 degrees of frost.
I spent all Sunday till twilight in the monastery, with Rabsang and Tundup Sonam. We mounted the acclivity past rows of well-kept manis, which had the appearance of broken-down walls, with red-painted inscriptions chiselled out of the blocks of schist and framed in red. Then we passed through a gate in the convent wall, and mounted higher and higher between forty old and more recent white houses clinging to the rock. The situation is like that of the Hemis monastery in Ladak, but there the houses are not so scattered. Several of them are unoccupied, for the custom prevails here that, when a lama dies, his relations claim possession of his house, lock the door and take away the key. His movable property reverts to the convent. If a newly-come lama takes a fancy to an empty house, he can buy it from the heirs of the former owner; a good house is worth 100 rupees (Illustration 175).
Linga has thirty monks, some of whom accompanied us on our rounds and were always pleasant and friendly, and never bold like the monks in Kum-bum, which I visited in the year 1896. The monastery is subordinate to Sekiya, and the Sekiya-Lama is its highest spiritual superior and contributes towards its maintenance. Linga-gompa also possesses lands, which, however, have not yielded much of late, for the crops have failed several years in succession. The monks are not dependent on the Tashi Lama, and have not a single statue of Tsong Kapa, whence it may be concluded that their sect is older than the reformed church. But it was, as usual, impossible to get any information about the age of the monastery. It seems to be in the interest of the monks to date back its origin to the remotest antiquity, of which no human records are extant. I was told, however, that the abbot, Yimba Tashi, knew its age, which was recorded in an old chronicle of the monastery. Unfortunately, he was not at home, having gone northwards to a district called Kumna, there to track out a band of robbers who had plundered him the year before and carried off all his caravan animals.
Down below the convent is a gorge with a black slope of schist on its side, on which the six holy characters are exhibited in fragments of white quartz, and call out to heaven the eternal truth, “Om mani padme hum,” in all kinds of wind and weather.
A staircase of flags of schist leads up to the Dopcha, an open platform paved with flagstones where the religious spectacles take place on feast days. The usual flagmast stands in the centre, but there is no breastwork of any kind, so that one dares not go there after dark, for bottomless abysses yawn round the open sides. Here the monks had laid carpets and cushions and invited me to tea. I enjoyed for a while the fine view over the valley, the confluence of the two streams, the scattered villages, and the fields like chessboards. Far to the east, behind the Bup-chu valley, the lofty mountains are seen over which we travelled on the way from the Ngangtse-tso.
On the south side of the square is the entrance to the chief temple (dukang), which in all monasteries is in a red-painted stone building. We enter, look round, and are carried away by the singular mysteriousness, though we have often seen it before with trifling variations. I sink on a divan and fancy myself in a museum crammed full of modern trophies and flags of victory, where impenetrable darkness lurks among the pillars, and rows of drums, gongs, prayer cylinders, and trombones are set up. The hall is darker than usual, but bright light falls through a skylight on to the images of the gods. They seem to be soaring from their pedestals in the darkness into the glorious light of the upper regions. The monks glide inaudibly like ghosts and shadows among them, busied with the votive bowls. A wonderfully weird scene! We have wandered into a cavern where gnomes and hobgoblins creep about.
This grotto resounds the whole time with the chant of the monks on the divans, which rises and falls in rhythmical waves, like the roar of the billows and the lapping of ripples on a strand. They sing in unison, keeping faultless time and without exerting themselves, though with astonishing rapidity. Among them are greyheaded men with cracked voices, men in the prime of life, and youths and boys with fresh young voices. The sound is like horses trotting quickly over an endless wooden bridge; all the monks clap their hands and then the horses seem to trot over a paved street, but the next moment they are on the bridge again and the consonants roll like peas out the monks’ lips. Now and then a bass voice rises above the din calling out “Laso, Laso” (an exclamation of thanksgiving). During a short pause there is tea. Then the chant goes on again. There is no excitement, no hurrying of the tempo, all goes on in the same even quick trot. The monks have no books before them; they know their liturgy by heart. But the charm of the rhythm seems to render them oblivious of time and space; they do not suffer themselves to be disturbed, but trot on over the bridge that leads to the home of the gods and to Nirvana. As we go out again we hear the chant die away like the humming in a bee-hive.