The Oregon daily journal., February 16, 1908, Page 31, Image 31

: THE. OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL. : PORTLAND. . SUNDAY ; ; HORNING.' : KSkJARY lV , ; '
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. f AT YSTERIOUS Tibet is at last
lyl doomed to give up its secrets.
The last of the world's great
lands of mystery is about to be opened per
manently to the march of modernization.
Lhassa, the secret and inscrutable, is
to be invaded by hordes of tradesmen from
the, four corners of the earth, and white
men for the first time in the history of the
world will be permitted freely to invade the
land where the dalia lama rules in a
wonder palace, surrounded by the glamour
of the mysterious and supernatural.
Soon the click of the telegraph will be
heard in the glittering Portala, the palace
of the lama, and telephone bells will ring
throughout the city and the land. A tele
graph line is to extend from Lhassa to Pe
kin. Telephone lines will be put up, and
funds have been appropriated for the build
ing of hospitals and schools in Tibet. Ar
rangements are being made for a mail
service, and newspapers will be published
throughout the recently "forbidden land."
TheSe remarkable innovations in the
land of the lama can be traced directly to
the British Younghusband expedition in
1004. Since the expedition the Chinese
resident, a progressive and enlightened Ori
cntal,has effected many reforms; and it was
he who recommended the construction of
the telegraph and telephone.
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they were drawn into the "Essential Life"; but
tho profane credited their passing to assassina
tion. Thepresent and thirteenth lama , is said
to be between 20 and 30 years pf age. '-' '
The people of Tibet are extremely dirty.
They have" reversed the practioe of jwlygamy.
A woman may marry as many husbands as she
wishes, so long as they are brothers and at
many as a dozen men are sometimes married
to one woman. A great deal of meat U eaten
by the inhabitants of the cities, the favorite
f oqds being yak, goat and beef, he chief
drin!' w ten. . v
Smallpox periodically decimates the coun
try. Bo'Jics of the dead are either fed to dogs
or placed upon trees to serve as food for bald
beaHcd eagle. The people are extravagantly
fond of jewels, and spend most of their time ia
the temples. " N
For 4ho first time in its history the Temple
Jo-Kang was visited by unbelievers during the
visit of tho British. This temple is tho "Holy
of Holies" of Buddhism.
It happened that during the visit of tho
British tho doors of the temple wero slammed
shut in tho face of the viceroy, who had gone to
the Jo-Kang in state to offer prayer on the 00
easion ef the Chinese emperor's birthday. To
ge even, the amban, or Chinese resident, who
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T WEEING, in much of its territory,
near the clouds, Tibet has remained
in forbidding isolation for centuries.
"Koof of the world," it has been
called, its most remarkable physical distinction
being the Himalayas, the highest mountains in
the world. A "great white plateau" is Tibet;
rather a series of plateaux, ranging in altitude
from 10,000 to 17,000 feet above the level of
the 6ea.
Lhassa, its capital, is 6even miles in cir
cumference and formed in a great oval. It
lies at an altitude of 11,500 feet above the level
of the sea. The population numbers between
70,000 and 100,000.
One can imagine the difficulties which con
front a traveler in Tibet when he thinks of the
immensity of the country, exceeding 700,000
square miles. The population is said to number
6,000,000. Indescribably poor, for the most
part, these people bupport more than 433,000
priests.
Mecca of Buddhists, the temples of Lhassa
In his book, "The i Unveiling of Lhasa,w
Edmund Candler, a member of the Younghus
band expedition, describes the city:
"The Portala is superbly detached. It is not
a palace on a hill, but a hill that is also a pal
ace. Its massive walls, its terraces and bastions,
stretch upward from the plain to the crest, as
if the great bluff rock were merely a foundation
stone planted there at the 'divinity's' nod.
"The 'divinity dwells in the palace, and
underneath, at a distance of a furlong or two,
humanity is huddled abjectly in squalid smut
begrimed houses.
"Lhassa itself is squalid and filthy, un
drained, unpaved. Not a single house looks
clean or cared for. The streets after rain are
nothing but pools of stagnant water, frequented
by pigs and dogs searching for refuse.
"The place has not changed since Manning
-visited it ninety years ago. lie wrote then:
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are said to contain the stored wisdom of ages.
Mystery spreads her brooding wings over the
temples and monasteries. 5 At the Brebyn Tem
ple, in the mysterious city, there are 7700
priests and students; at the Temple of Sera,
6000, and at the Goden Temple, 3300.
Members of the Younghusband expedition,
which formally Opened Tibet, declare that the
people are priest-ridden; that the religion is
nothing but the crudest superstition,
Until the British expedition Tibet was little
known. With a force of 2000 to 3000 men
Colonel Younghusband arrived at the "Seat of
the Gods" in the spring of 1904. Although they
were met by government officials and the treaty
was signed, they were tolrLhat the "thirteenth
incarnation of Buddha," the dalai lama, had
fled. They were compelled to leave without
seeing the "god-king."
i Lhassa itself, according to visitors, is disap
pointing. It possesses one of the most mar
velous palaces in the world, the Portala, and the
V m08t qaal.ld bou8es- Like a golden
fcn aggregation of several temples, glows as a
wondrous setting of jewels.
nflfn.0611 " th "KeA Palace," which
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was permitted to enter the temple on the fol
lowing day, took occasion to invite two mem
bers of tho British party to accompany him.
Passing through various courts, where hol
lyhocks and snapdragons grew in abundance, the
visitors entered a shrine located in a cave. A
light burned in a pyramid of "butter. The walls,
the stone deities, the doors, the floor were slimy
with the deposited grease of centuries. The air
was fetid. Many such shrines were visited be
fore they arrived at last at the shrine of the Jo,
the most famed and most revered image in tho
world.
It-was a great pillared temple, heavy with
smoke and almost shrouded in gloom. Beyond,
a great sanctuary, where hundreds of gold lamps,
containing butter, cast a pale yellowish light
on an immense golden idol, a great idol with tho
face of a boy, smooth, placid and pleasant. It
s Gautama in his boyhood, before ho had learned
of the futility of earthly things and his face had
assumed its later look of sadness.
Given to the Chinese emperor by the king
of Magadha in acknowledgment of his assistance
when the Yavanas were overrunning the plains
of India, it was brought from Pekin in the
Im. clad in ffnW . T" tue ?ranl
7 j i on a throne
aupported by carved lions, was wont to receive
pious pilgruns. The palace is surmounted by
a dome covered entirely with nU. t . 3
gold,: that, blare intolerably in the suSt
There, (ongreat festivals, the sacred lama aur
Ttys the priests aa they; dance in their hideous
costumes., ; ;
There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing in
its appearance. The habitations are begrimed
with smut and dirt. Tho avenues are full of
dogs, some growling and gnawing bits pf hide
that lie about in profusion and emit a charnel
house smell; others limping and looking livid;
others ulcerated and others starved and dying
and pecked at by ravens; some dead and preyed
upon.'" ' '
Before its annexation to the Chinese em
pire more than a century ago Tibet had an in
dependent history. It was the cradle of
Buddhism. Assuming temporal power - in the
middle of the seventeenth century, the dalai
lamas since then have - wielded a power more
absolute than ever exerted by any other ruler.
The history .of the hierarchy has been one
of bloodshed. A most unscrupulous ruler, the
fifth grand lams attained rule by inciting the
Mongols to invade Tibet, and established his.
. claim to the "godhead" , by doctoring the Bud
dhist books. His successor was executed be-
. cause of his profligate life, while the seventh
"incarnation" was deposed because he had con
spired to kill the regent. :
After that it became customary for the re
gents to kill their successors, and the ninth,
tenth, eleventh ajid twelfth "incarnations"
, passed into the "Everlasting All" when mere
children. . They were so holy, it was said, that
seventh century as the dowry of Princess Konjo.
The crown, which contains the largest turquoise
i:i the world six inches long and three inches
wide is said to have been given by Tsong-kapa
in the early part of the fifteenth century.
About the neck of the statue are innumerable
necklaces set with the most precious jewels. The
throne is of gold and jewels, the canopy over
head is of gold incrusted with jewels.
On the second floor of the temple is the
shrine of the guardian goddess, Palden-Lhamo, a
three-eyed divinity crowned with human skulls.
Explorers for many years have turned their f
eyes to Tibet. Henry Savage Landor's experi
ence will be recalled; he got no farther than the
t outskirts of Lhassa, when he was seized by
priests and frightfully tortured. '
In 1811 Walter Manning, an Englishman,
disguised as a monk, made a trip to Lhassa, but
his accounts were unsatisfactory. In 1846 twe
French missionary priests, Hue and Gabet,
passed inside the gates with pilgrims and es
caped undetected.
Pundit Nain Sing, an Indian survey ex-"
plorer, entered Lhassa in 1866 and 1873, and in
1882 Chandra Das, a member of the Indian
Educational Department, tarried back to India
a good description of the city.
Consul General William H. Michael, of Cal
cutta, recently reported that traders are now
freely passing between the Forbidden 43ity and
Calcutta. 'A great deal of labor and time will
be necessary before a road can be laid between
Lhassa and Darjiling, the railway terminal at
the southern side of the Himalayas.'