From the earliest traveller to the court of the Grand Khan, to the last vice-regal aide-de-camp whose arduous duties have led him up the Sutlej to the pleasant slopes of Cheenee in Kunawur, whence Ramsay of Dalwolsie dealeth law to the millions of India from under the ripening grapes, all witnesses of the Lamaitic worship have been struck with the extraordinary resemblance of many features of the ecclesiastical system and ritual to those of the Roman Catholic Church. Rubruquis, who travelled in the thirteenth century, mentions a Mongolian people called Jugurs, (probably the Chakars of M. Huc,) whom he brands as rank idolaters, but at the same time admits that it is most difficult to distinguish many of their observances from those of the Catholic Church. They had holy candles, rosaries, and conventual celibacy. The further description of these Jugurs identifies them as Buddhists. "They placed their ideas of perfection in the silent and abstracted contemplation of the Divinity. They sit in the temples on two long forms, opposite to each other, repeating mentally the words, Om mam hactami, but without uttering a word." The missionaries of after days are struck by the same resemblances. Father Grueber, in 1661, states that at Lhassa there are two kings—one civil, the other sacred. "They regard the latter as the true and living God, the eternal and celestial Father. Those who approach prostrate themselves before him and kiss his feet, exactly as is done to his holiness the Pope; so showing the manifest deceits of the devil, who has transferred the veneration due to the sole Vicar of Christ to the superstitious worship of barbarous nations, as he has also, in his innate malignity, abused the other mysteries of the Christian faith." Father Desideri, without directly making such comparisons, indicates more marvellous coincidences than any one else; in fact, he drew some aid from a lively imagination when he deduced that the people of Ladakh had some idea of the Trinity, because they sometimes used the singular and sometimes the plural in speaking of the Deity, and from the form of the sacred symbol constantly in their mouths, which he simplifies into Om ha hum! "They adore," he goes on to say, "one Urghien(?), who was born seven hundred years ago. If you ask them if he was God or man, they will answer sometimes that he is both God and man, and that he had neither father nor mother, but was born of a flower. Nevertheless, they have images representing a woman with a flower in her hand, and this, I was told, was the mother of Urghien. They adore several other persons, whom they regard as saints. In their churches you see an altar covered with an altar-cloth; on the middle of the altar is a sort of tabernacle, where, according to them, Urghien resides, although at other times they will assure you that he is in heaven." Turner and Moorcroft, Protestant laymen, were as much struck by the resemblance of the choral service to the mass as the Roman priests, and none testify to it more frequently than our latest travellers, Huc and Gabet. "The crosier, the mitre, the Dalmatica, the cope or pluvial which the Grand Lamas wear in travelling, the double-choired liturgy, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer swung by five chains, and opening and shutting at will; the benedictions given by the Lama, in stretching his right hand over the head of the faithful; the rosary, the ecclesiastical celibate, the spiritual retreats, the worship of the saints; fasts, processions, holy water," (and they might have added, the tonsure, the ringing of bells during service, the conclave assembled in a temple to elect a pontiff, and the appellation of Eternal Sanctuary applied to Lhassa, the Rome of their faith, by the Tartars,) "in all these numerous particulars do the Buddhists coincide with us." The matter-of-fact Moorcroft describes a Lama of Ladakh as dressed almost like a cardinal. Allowing for some accidental and some exaggerated similarities, more analogy remains than can well be explained, without supposing that the Lamas may have borrowed and adapted parts of the Church ritual from the Nestorians, who were early diffused over Asia; or perhaps that the churches of the latter, sinking in corruption and ignorance, had merged in the sea of superstition which surrounded them, leaving only some corrupted relics of external rites floating on the surface to mark that a church of Christ had once existed there.
As the Christian world is divided into Papist and Protestant, and the body of Islam into Soonnee and Sheea, so also the Lamas have their two great sects, the Gelook-pa and Dok-pa, distinguished by the colour of their caps—yellow being adopted by the former, red by the latter.[15] Celibacy is binding only on the Gelook-pa, but all who aspire to superior sanctity profess it. They all abstain from taking animal life, and some of especial austerity will not even take vegetable life, deeming it unlawful to cut down a tree unless it be withered, or to gather fruit unless it be ripe. Strong drink is forbidden to all the sects. The reform which originated the sect of the Gelook-pa, now predominant over Tibet and Mongolia, and claiming the Emperor himself as one of its adherents, was the work of Tsongkhapa, a celebrated Tibetan teacher of the fourteenth century. He is traditionally stated to have derived his doctrine from a mysterious western stranger, endowed with great learning and Slawkenbergian nose. To the innovations in the Lamaitic worship introduced by Tsongkhapa, the missionaries ascribe many of the more striking resemblances to Roman ritual, and they feel inclined to believe that the mysterious stranger from the West may have been a Catholic missionary, whose teaching was imperfectly received or apprehended. The large nose they conceive may only be an indication of the European physiognomy from the Mongolian point of view. We have a counterpart portrait of the Mongolian from a Caucasian pencil, in Benjamin of Tudela, who speaks of the "Copperal Turks" as having no noses, but only two holes in the face through which they breathe. So also Rubruquis, when he was presented to the wife of Scacatai, a Tartar Khan, verily thought she had cut and pared her nose till she had left herself none at all!
Among other Romanising rites we find something analogous to masses for the dead. In a temple at Ladakh, Moorcroft witnessed the consecration of food for the use of the souls of those condemned to hell, without which, it was believed, they would starve. The chief Lama consecrated barley and water, and poured them from a silver saucer into a brass basin, occasionally striking two cymbals together, and chaunting prayers, to which an inferior Lama from time to time uttered responses aloud, accompanied by the rest in an under-tone. Somewhat different appears to have been the annual festival in honour of the dead, or "All Souls," of which Turner gives a striking description. As soon as it became dark, a general illumination was displayed on the summits of all the buildings of the monastery; the tops of the houses on the plain, and of the distant villages, were also lighted, exhibiting altogether a brilliant spectacle. Though accustomed to esteem illuminations the strongest expressions of public joy, Turner now saw them exhibited as a solemn token of melancholy remembrance—an awful tribute of respect to the innumerable generations of the dead. Darkness, silence, interrupted occasionally by the deep slow tones of the kettle-drum, trumpet, gong, and cymbal; at different intervals, the tolling of bells, and loud monotonous repetition of sentences of prayer, sometimes heard when the instruments were silent, all united to produce an impression of seriousness and awe. Remarkably similar is the description given by the Frenchmen of the nocturnal litanies which they witnessed when resident in the convent of Koonboom.[16] Another impressive devotional practice is mentioned by the last travellers, and one which is the more pleasing, as not being confined to the clergy. "They have at Lhassa a touching custom, which we were almost jealous of meeting among unbelievers. In the evening, as the daylight is passing into twilight, all the Tibetans suspend their occupation, and meet in groups, according to sex and age, in the public places of the town. As soon as the parties are formed, all sit down on the ground, and begin to chaunt prayers in a slow and subdued tone. The aggregation of the sound of prayer, rising all over the city, produces a vast and solemn hum of harmony, which strangely moves the spirit."
The Buddhistic, symbol, or mystic form of concentrated prayer, Om mani padme hom, is not only heard from every mouth, or silently repeated on the rosary, but is to be seen written everywhere—in streets, public places, walls of apartments, on the fringes of the ceremonial scarf, on the flags that wave from the house-tops, and from cairns on the mountains; engraven on the rocks, carved on monuments by the way, or formed with stones, in gigantic spelling, on the hill-side, so as to be legible at considerable distances. Rich Buddhists maintain travelling Lamas, to go about, like Old Mortality, with hammer and chisel, multiplying the sacred sentences on the faces of the cliffs, and on stones by the highway. The words are Sanscrit, and came from India with the Buddhist faith in the seventh century. The Lamas say that these sacred words include an infinity of doctrine, which the life of man suffices not to survey, but their infinitesimal amount of meaning to the uninitiated is said to be—"Oh, the precious lotus.—Amen!"
The great difference between the Tibetan lama-serais and the convents of Romanised Europe appears to be, that the members of the former, though subjected to the same rule, and under one superior, cannot be said to live in common, the various gradations of wealth and poverty being as distinctly marked among them as among the laity. Lamas in rags may sometimes be seen begging of their wealthy brethren in the same convent. The revenue of the convent foundation, if it has one, is distributed at intervals in the form of a scanty supply of meal, in rations proportioned to rank in the hierarchy. Occasionally donations from pilgrims also fall to be divided. Sometimes a pilgrim "stands" tea to the whole convent—no small expense, when it numbers several thousand members. Many Lamas augment their means by practising as physicians, fortune-tellers, or exorcists; by various handicrafts, or by keeping retail-shops for the benefit of their brethren. Others are occupied in printing or transcribing religious books. The character is alphabetic, being a modification of the Nagari or Sanscrit letters introduced by Tongmi Sambodha, one of the first missionaries of Buddhism; but printing is, of course, conducted on the Chinese block system. The leaves are loose, printed on both sides, placed between two wooden boards, and tied with a yellow band. The character used in correspondence differs greatly from that of the printed books and literary MSS., being much more rounded and fluent. It is, however, perhaps, like our own writing, only a modification of the other adapted to a current hand.
The classic Tibetan literature appears to consist in two or three great collections, or cyclopædias, in many volumes, the greater part translated in remote times from ancient Sanscrit works. From the abstracts given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, by the one European who has mastered the subject, Alexander Csoma de Körös,[17] these books appear to be a dreary wilderness of puerile metaphysics and misplaced labour.
According to M. Huc, the Lama physicians reckon 440 maladies affecting the human frame, neither more nor less. Their medical books, which the students of the faculty have to learn by heart, consist of a mass of aphorisms, more or less obscure, and a number of recipes. Most of their medicines are vegetable simples, generally mild and inoffensive. The number of their "simples," however, includes "laudamy and calamy." At least, they have the art of preparing mercury, and use it as a specific, producing salivation. This result they promote by gagging the patient with a stick. Their diagnosis they derive principally from the pulse, professing to discover the seat of disease from its peculiar vibratory motion rather than its frequency. They have not the Chinese horror of bleeding, and practise cupping by help of a cowhorn and oral suction. Small-pox is held in great dread; indeed, they scarcely attempt to treat it, but endeavour to save the uninfected by cutting off all communication at the risk of starving the sufferers. The infected house or village is often razed to the ground.
Some of the baser class of the Lamas seek notoriety and lucre by juggling and disgusting feats, professing to rip open their stomachs, to lick red-hot iron bars, &c. &c., and to perform other such exploits. Messrs Huc and Gabet knew a Lama who was generally reputed able at will to fill a vessel of water by means of a certain form of prayer. They never could get him to perform in their presence, however. He said that, as they had not the same faith, the attempt would be unsuccessful, and perhaps dangerous. He obliged them by reciting his charm, which, it must be confessed, reads so like a Dr Faustus contract, that one cannot but suppose that the preconceived ideas of the good missionaries have lent it a little colouring. The Lama was, perhaps, after all, only an electro-biologist. Respectable Lamas affect to frown on such displays, but wink at them occasionally, for profit's sake.
Lamas of an ascetic spirit, not content with the duties of the convent, sometimes seek the seclusion which the desolate wilds of their country offer so plentifully, dwelling in eyries on the pinnacles of hills, either cut in the rock, or formed of timber attached to the cliff like swallows' nests. Sometimes these eremites, like Simon of the pillar, renounce all intercourse with the world—depending for their sustenance on the gifts of the devout dropt into a sack, which is let down from the inaccessible cell by a long cord.
Convents of nuns also exist, both in Tibet Proper and in Ladakh; they do not, however, appear to have been visited by any traveller, and the French fathers make no mention of them.