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I inform them that I have come over seven thousand miles, and will also visit Nichiren's birthplace. "Sayo de gozarimos! Naru hodo?" I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A foreigner visiting Nichiren's birthplace! And coming seven thousand miles too! The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out their questions by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America?
Of course the Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer No to both questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. "Then he is a heathen!" says the expression on their faces. How strange that no Booddhist temples exist in the foreigner's country! Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is the religion of the foreigner's country?
This is supposed to be the largest image of Gautama, the fourth Booddh, in existence, and it is an object of the profoundest veneration to every devout Booddhist. Incremation of the dead is the custom in Siam, and while there I was present at several royal funerals, each marked by more lavish display of costly magnificence than we Americans ever see on this side the water.
But the strangest of all the palms we saw was the talipát, so called from the Bali word talipoin, a priest; and the name was originally derived from the fact that the sacred fans used by Booddhist priests in their religious ceremonies are formed of its leaves.
On the following morning we pursued a path to the bed of the river; passing a rude Booddhist monument, a pile of slate-rocks, with an attempt at the mystical hemisphere at top. A few flags or banners, and slabs of slate, were inscribed with "Om Mani Padmi om."
This fan is a prescribed item of clerical costume, and no conscientious Booddhist priest ever appears without this long-handled fan held directly in front of his face, to prevent the sacred countenance from coming in contact with anything unclean.
I watched my party crossing by boat-loads of fifteen each; the Bhotan men hung little scraps of rags on the bushes before embarking, the votive offerings of a Booddhist throughout central Asia; the Lepcha, less civilised, scooped up a little water in the palm of his hand, and scattered it about, invoking the river god of his simple creed.
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