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Updated: June 3, 2025
The leading lama walks first, then come men with flags, followed by the blacksmith with the drum, and next the corpse, with another man beating a drum behind it. Meanwhile, the lamas are praying for the repose and quieting of the soul, which is hovering about, desiring to return.
Two lamas, high dignitaries of the church, were the inspection committee. They agreed that it looked all right, but the question was, how did it feel? Mr. Lucander waxed eloquent on the "springiness" of the springs, and assured them that no bed could be better; that this was the bed par excellence of all the beds in China.
As the winter is the busiest season in mission work, so it is the great time in which the lamas make house-to-house peregrinations and attend at festivals. Then also there is much spinning and weaving by both sexes, and tobogganing and other games, and much drinking of chang by priests and people. The cattle remain out till nearly Christmas, and are then taken into the houses.
According to their attainment of these truths, the Aryas, or followers of Buddha, are distinguished into four classes, Srotapannas, Sakridagamins, Anagamins, and Arhats. E. H., p. 14. Adopted by Buddhists of Central Asia, it was made to signify the priests of the older ritual, in distinction from the Lamas. But it is now popularly applied to all Buddhist monks.
The gonpos contain from two up to three hundred lamas. These are not cloistered, and their duties take them freely among the people, with whom they are closely linked, a younger son in every family being a monk.
On my return to Pemiongchi I spent the remainder of the day sketching in the great temple, gossiping with the Lamas, and drinking salted and buttered tea-soup, which I had begun to like, when the butter was not rancid.
But the long peace and the destruction of the Eleuth power had led the Tibetans to think less of the advantage of Chinese protection, and to pine for complete independence. The lamas also bitterly resented the assumption by the ambans of all practical authority.
Beyond the fact that the people about there are Mongols rather than Chinese, and that such religion as they have is that of Thibet rather than China, for their priests are called lamas, I know nothing except that the caravan route from Kiakhta to Pekin is somewhere about a thousand miles, and that the camels do it in about thirty-five days."
The leg soon began to swell and ache. At sunset I made out the first Russian and Chinese buildings and later the monastery at Zain. We dropped into the valley of a small stream which flowed along a mountain on whose peak were set white rocks forming the words of a Tibetan prayer. At the bottom of this mountain was a cemetery for the Lamas, that is, piles of bones and a pack of dogs.
Some of the ceilings were beautifully decorated, and must have cost a good deal of money in their day, but they were now rapidly falling into decay. During the day we had a good opportunity of seeing the Lamas go through their private devotions. The operation appeared simple enough.
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