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Updated: June 9, 2025
Each revolution of a wheel is supposed to say all the prayers enclosed in it. Many prayer-wheels, each with appropriate prayers, are mounted on axles and placed convenient to frequented paths so that they may be whirled around by those who pass by. Others provided with suitable fans are placed where they may be revolved by the wind.
I passed the night at Saspoula and certainly did not forget to visit the cloisters, seeing there for the tenth time the omnipresent dust-covered images of Buddha; the flags and banners heaped in a corner; ugly masks on the floor; books and papyrus rolls heaped together without order or care, and the inevitable abundance of prayer-wheels.
In front on a table or altar were seven small lamps, burning apricot oil, and twenty small brass cups, containing minute offerings of rice and other things, changed daily. There were prayer-wheels, cymbals, horns and drums, and a prayer-cylinder six feet high, which it took the strength of two men to turn.
It was indeed a most satisfying and absorbing twenty-four hours' visit, as I had also time, under the guidance of an official friend, to visit the picturesque weekly market or bazaar, where natives from Sikkim, Nepal, Butan and Tibet may be seen in all their dirt and strangeness. Also the quite beautiful Botanic Gardens, the Club House, the prayer-wheels, etc.
The Lahore Museum was larger, but here were more wonders ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks of overnight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes from Japan of all places in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical work; Persian water-jugs for the hands after meals; dull copper incense-burners neither Chinese nor Persian, with friezes of fantastic devils running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table, where Lurgan Sahib worked.
We may venture the guess that the learned professor said more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!" Prayer-wheels These priestly empires exist in the world today.
The houses of the settled inhabitants are two stories high, their fronts whitewashed, and their window-sashes painted with lively colors. The flat roof forms a terrace which is decorated with wild flowers, and here, during good weather, the inhabitants spend much of their time contemplating nature, or turning their prayer-wheels.
We crossed the court and climbed a staircase obstructed with prayer-wheels, as usual passed two rooms where there were many images of gods, and came out upon the terrace, where I seated myself upon a bench opposite the venerable lama, whose eyes sparkled with spirit.
The walls were garnished with little statues of Buddha, books and prayer-wheels. The loquacious lamas began explaining to me the significance of each object. "And those books?" I asked them; "they, no doubt, have reference to religion." "Yes, sir. These are a few religious volumes which deal with the primary and principal rites of the life common to all.
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