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Updated: May 12, 2025
Many Mongolians betake themselves annually in large armed caravans to the holy city to pay homage to the Dalai Lama, and obtain a blessing from him and the Tashi Lama. Perhaps it was wrong of me to give myself out for a Lamaist pilgrim, but there seemed no other means of getting to the forbidden city. We left the main camp on July 27, and those we left behind did not expect ever to see us again.
According to Chinese reasoning it is the sound of these drums, and not the lightning, which causes death. A. Gruenwedel, in his Guide to the Lamaist Collection of Prince Uchtomsky, p. 161, states that the Chino-Japanese God of Thunder, Lei Kung, has the shape of the Indian divine bird Garuda. Are we to suppose, then, that the Chinese Lei Kung is of Indian origin?
Such admixture however was not absent and a series of reformers endeavoured to bring the church back to what they considered the true standard. The first introduction is said to have occurred in 630 but probably the arrival of Padma Sambhava from India in 747 marks the real foundation of the Lamaist church.
Then the Lama rubbed fat, soot, and brown colouring-matter into the skin, and when I looked in a small hand-glass I could hardly recognise myself; but I seemed to have a certain resemblance to my two Lamaist retainers. In the afternoon a storm broke out from the north, and we crept early into our little thin tent and slept quietly.
In this and many other cases the later developments of Buddhism are due to Chinese fancy and have no connection with Indian tradition. Târâ is a goddess of north India, Nepal and the Lamaist Church and almost unknown in China and Japan. Her name means she who causes to cross, that is who saves, life and its troubles being by a common metaphor described as a sea.
After the fourth century many of these religious journeys were made by sea and it was thus that Bodhidharma landed at Canton in 520 . A third stream of Buddhism, namely Lamaism, came into China from Tibet under the Mongol dynasty . Khubilai considered this the best religion for his Mongols and numerous Lamaist temples and convents were established and still exist in northern China.
Târâ is an Indian and Lamaist goddess associated with Avalokita and in origin analogous to the Saktis of Tantrism. Kuan-yin is a female form of Avalokita who can assume all shapes. The original Kuan-yin was a male deity: male Kuan-yins are not unknown in China and are said to be the rule in Korea. Several Chinese deities appear to be of uncertain or varying sex.
Lamaism has not perhaps been a great religious or intellectual force there, but its political importance was considerable, for the Ming and Manchu dynasties who wished to assert their rule over the Tibetans and Mongols by peaceful methods, consistently strove to win the goodwill of the Lamaist clergy.
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