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It wuz a little prayer-wheel designed for written prayers to be put in and turned with a crank, or it could be hitched to water power or a wind-mill or anything, and the owner could truly pray without ceasing. Oh how I felt as he explained! I felt that indeed the last straw wuz bein' packed onto my back, but Josiah kep' on with his apoligizin'.
He was busily revolving his prayer-wheel from left to right, repeating, in a mechanical way, the usual Omne mani padme hun, words which come from the Sanscrit, and refer to the reincarnation of Buddha from a lotus flower, meaning literally, "O God, the gem emerging from a lotus flower."
At night, in the camps on the way up, what I had mistaken for some Buddhist evening prayer, when the soldiers tramped round like a human prayer-wheel, was, I subsequently discovered, the chanting of a war-song which had been composed by General Fukushima himself.
To the disappointment of my Tibetan guide I declined to visit it, preferring a leisurely cold lunch on the bank of a rushing stream which was vigorously turning a large prayer-wheel, a cylinder of wood inscribed many times over with the mystic words of the Buddhist prayer, "Om mani padme hum," oftenest repeated perhaps of all prayers.
I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of the morning there, watching the swarthy strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were represented, and the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of the Thibetans made them look a good deal like Chinamen. The prayer-wheel was a frequent feature.
The bandits rode ponies, and obeyed their leader smartly when, in a hoarse voice, and never ceasing to turn his prayer-wheel, he muttered orders. They went briskly along, women and men riding their ponies astride. The men had matchlocks and swords. Each pony carried, besides its rider, bags of food slung behind the saddle.
Gergan came over the Kharzong glacier on purpose to bring me a prayer-wheel; Lob-sang and Tse-ring-don-drub, the hospital assistants, made me a tent carpet of yak's hair cloth, singing as they sewed; and Joldan helped to secure transport for the twenty-two days' journey to Kylang. Leh has few of what Europeans regard as travelling necessaries.
Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens.
I asked, rising from my seat, for I saw that my interesting interlocutor evidenced fatigue, and had just given a twirl to his prayer-wheel, as if to hint the closing of the conversation.
As to the very ceremonies of the funeral, they are now only the regular way of getting money, an official routine, a prayer-wheel which is turned mechanically without thought of it.
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