Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

A high lama dignitary on his travels, free from the gaze of the curious, and escorted by mounted lamas of the middle class

From time to time the immense crowded gathering stops to eat and drink, still squatted in their places, from bowls of tea and of some such grain as millet, which are passed around among them. This is “holy food,” and the young lower-class lamas who bring it growl protests if the stranger comes too near them while they are carrying it. Then the intonations begin again and go on hour after hour, as tediously as such things can go only in the East, until at last “school” is dismissed and red lamas pour forth through the door and gate like wine from a punctured wine-skin, pausing a moment to take advantage of their first escape into the open air in many hours, then stalking away in their heavy oversize boots with that peculiar ball-and-chain gait of the walking Mongol.

Nowhere on earth probably, unless it be in Tibet, is so great a proportion of the population exclusively engaged in the unproductive nonsense of saving its souls. Every first son becomes a lama; if a boy recovers from any serious illness, the parents usually take the vow that he, too, shall don the red or yellow robe; there are many other reasons, among them the dread of labor, fear of hunger, hope of more promiscuous favors from the weaker sex, which add to the crowded ranks of lamas. No census is available, but in Urga almost every other person one meets displays the clipped head and collarless gown, while conservative estimators reckon that fully two fifths of the population of all Mongolia live, in the name of religion, on the exertions of the rest. Nor is it possible to conceive of a priesthood—to use the word loosely—more deeply sunk in degradation. Not merely do the lamas live in filth and sloth, engaged only in the pursuit of their own salvation, in no way serving their fellow-men, but they are notorious libertines, moralless panderers, in many cases beggars of the lowest type. The first lamas I ever saw were a pair who accosted us at a halt during our climb out of Kalgan, powerful fellows big and sturdy enough to have laughed at the most arduous labor, yet who begged even the sweepings of our wayside lunch and picked up the cigar-butt I tossed away. In Urga lamas bedraggled to the nth degree squatted day after day on busy street-corners telling their beads and monotoning a brief prayer incessantly from dawn to dusk for a few stray coppers and scraps of food.

However, there are lamas of high as well as of low degree—Jenghiz Khan himself, you may recall, was one. Several of the ministers in the Mongolian cabinet were lamas; some are princes as well, holding vast tracts of land and hundreds of slave-like subjects; among a number who called upon my departing host during my stay I recall a magnificent specimen of manhood who came to buy for his own use all the best furnishings of the house, and a strong-featured older man who brought a thousand silver dollars to make good the debt of a scamp for whom he had gone surety out of mere friendship. Such strict honesty is not customary among the Mongols, though they have something like the Chinaman’s way of keeping promises; hence there was not even the pressure of public opinion, certainly no fear of legal action, to cause him to yield up for no value received what was perhaps a considerable portion of his fortune.

Some of the lower orders of lamas engage in worldly occupations, at least intermittently, to keep the wolf from the door; and those who do not live in monasteries may enter into a sort of left-handed marriage, though their wives are always known as “girls.” The higher ranks are in theory celibates, but no such rule actually cramps their personal desires, and the “Living Buddha” himself has led anything but a life of lonely bachelorhood. Among the rank and file of red-robed roughnecks much the same standard of sexual morals seems to prevail as that reached by the lecherous touts of our large cities. It is said to be almost the general practice to reward a lama who has “cured” a young woman by means of his incanted gibberish by granting him the temporary boon of her affections, and foreigners have had experiences in Mongolia which indicate about the same indifference to lack of privacy in the amorous adventures of wearers of the red or yellow robe that prevails in some of their other personal habits.

There are no real schools in Mongolia except these choral gatherings of lamas. In them they learn to read and write, not Mongolian but Tibetan, the Latin of lamaism. The laymen boys of better-class families get their education, if at all, from private instructors, and in rare cases reach universities over the Russian border. Women have, of course, no need for other teaching than what their parents and husbands can give them, though now and then a prince or a wealthy saint hires tutors for his daughters.

However, to turn away from the retreating stream of lamas and push onward, even an enumeration of the religious structures and trappings about the great squat “university” would be wearisome. Most amusing or imbecile of them all to the Westerner, according to his mood, are the prayer-cylinders. Why these are more commonly called “prayer-wheels” is a mystery, for they are invariably cylindrical in shape, varying in size from the largest to the smallest sections of sewer-pipe. How many hundreds of these there are, not only in lama-town but everywhere in Urga, could be computed only by a man of energy and patience. Endless rows of large ones, each covered by a kind of sanctified guard-house, stretch along whole sides of the upper town; they line several of the principal streets; there must be at least one, that could better serve as outhouse, for every family in Urga. The small ones are as flies in summer. Each of these upright wooden cylinders contains thousands of prayers, all, if I am not misinformed, the repetition of the same monotonous phrase, written in Tibetan characters on scraps of tissue-paper,—Om mani padme hun, “The Jewel is in the Lotus,” whatever that means. A kind of capstan furnishes half a dozen protruding bars by which to turn the contrivance, and every turn is equivalent to saying as many thousand prayers as the cylinder contains. Every pious passer-by pauses to revolve one here and there; pilgrims, or residents who have sallied forth especially for that purpose, turn them all, one after the other, along the whole row or, as far as is physically possible, throughout the whole town. Thus the creak of prayer-cylinders is seldom silent, though they furnish a great market for axle-grease. Around the lower massive stone walls of Ganden shrine something like a hundred smaller cylinders are so arranged that by a simple twist of the wrist all of them are turned at once, releasing literally millions of prayers—a labor-saving device compared to which the proudest invention of our industrial world is but clumsy and wasteful.

Unlike the disciples of the truer and more kindly Buddhism to the east and west, the surly lamas of Urga resent visits by strangers to their sanctuaries, and prevent them entirely to the more holy ones. But there happened to be no higher official to forbid it when I stepped through the deep stone door of towering Ganden into a cluttered and musty interior, and the half-dozen young lamas of the garden variety who at first moved toward me in a mass, with a manner almost as threatening as might meet the intruder into a Mohammedan mosque, were softened by a gesture which implied the eventual bestowal of a silver ruble. Closely trailed by them I was permitted to make the circuit of the ground floor, and study from feet to knees the colossal figure of a standing Buddha which takes up almost all the space within Urga’s most lofty building. Then they urged me toward the door, but as I refused to part with the coveted coin for any such slight view they conferred together for some time in hoarse whispers. Finally one was sent to the outer entrance to make sure that none of the higher lamas was likely to drop in unexpectedly, and while two clambered before and three behind me I climbed a steep crude wooden stairway to the second story. This brought me about to the hips of the statue. In the semi-darkness of the building, filled to overflowing with hundreds of small Buddhas, with silk banners and streamers in many colors, with strings of paper prayers, with tawdry freaks of an unclean imagination and all the drab and indecent mummeries of a religion of fear, it was impossible to make out more than that the figure was of slight artistic merit, and that it was completely covered with what had every appearance of being real gold of considerable thickness. A third story on a level with its chest had low doorways at the four corners which opened upon a gallery overhung by one of the massive roofs and gave a far-reaching view of all Urga and its vicinity. Here one might have touched the massive ornamental lanterns, covered with gold, as were parts of the cornices and many of the smaller decorations. Still another half-perpendicular, makeshift stairway led to a higher gallery, carpeted with the droppings of birds and admitting light enough to show that the contents of the building were as soiled and unlaundered as the gowns of my suspicious and worried companions. This was at the level of the Buddha’s face, which resembled nothing so much as a very young “flapper” given to overindulgence in rouge, almost a babyish face, with bright crimson lips a yard long and an immature, affectionate expression that did not in the least befit a being presiding over the sullen and repulsive religion of Mongolia. Two sets of arms, one raised and the other extended in a familiar Buddhist fashion, could be made out in the gloom. Of the weight of actual gold covering the figure from sandals to coiled-snake coiffure there was no means of judging, but I would have been prompt to accept it in lieu of any income I could acquire in the course of a natural lifetime. One of the lamas wished to know whether we had anything in the outside world from which I came comparable to their four-story Buddha. Having in mind only ecclesiastical constructions, I could think of nothing that might be mentioned as a rival; but I might have told them of a statue on an island in the harbor of our principal city which just about equals this one in stature, without bringing in the fact that it is of tarnished bronze instead of gleaming gold.

It is easier to believe the tales of the old Spanish conquistadores after seeing Urga. If the capital of the Inca empire had half as many “golden roofs and cornices scintillating in the sunshine,” it would have been enough to arouse the cupidity of more saintly men than the followers of Pizarro. Gaze across the holy city of Mongolia in almost any direction, and a golden superstructure is almost certain to strike the eye. The lower story is in every case made of materials less tempting to the light-fingered, and palisades shut them in. But what burglar would not give all the rest of his earthly chances for one short half-hour of feverish, unmolested activity at any of those glittering second stories? That of the holy of holies in the monasterial section to the east of the official yamens, in particular, is of an elaborate massiveness which suggests some unlimited source of the precious yellow metal, and when the unclouded sun shines full upon it the eye can literally not endure the sight. Gold, filth, and superstition—after we have seen Urga even the least bigoted of us can understand more fully, if not completely condone, the high-handedness of a Cortez in overthrowing the heathen idols and burning the unholy temples of conquered “Gentiles.”