Rangoon, though in every aspect of construction, ornamentation
and surrounding it would be hard to imagine
two buildings more entirely different in every detail than
these two greatest erections of modern Buddhism.
The utter disproportion between the palace and the
town remains a wonder, but a wonder devoid of a trace
of falsity or ostentation, rather a wonder full of a deeper
meaning. The petty town which lies a mile away beyond
the trees helps, by its very insignificance, to emphasize
the tremendous gulf that in Tibet yawns between the
people and their priests. In that town there was indeed
the true sanctuary of the faith ; in that town there was
the idol which the largest faith of all the world holds
sacred beyond all earthly things, and underneath those
far distant golden roofs of the Jo-kang the wealth and
tradition of the whole creed lay enshrined. Moreover,
there is nothing inside the Potala particularly sacred,
particularly rich, or particularly beautiful. But unconsciously
it thus symbolises all the more the vast erection
of power and pride which separates the priestly caste of
Tibet from the real truths of the religion they have prostituted.
The fearful sanctity which hedges about the
person of their divine ruler is here in Lhasa demonstrated
in a manner that must impress the dullest pilgrim. That
double-edged weapon seclusion, which the Pope, in magnificent
retirement in the Vatican, is now using with doubtful
success at Rome, has long been in the armoury of the
Grand Lama of Tibet. The Tibetan policy of isolation
receives here its only possible justification by a success
that is startling in its sufficiency, and one can well
understand that a visit to Lhasa “ satisfies the soul ” of
the most recalcitrant subject of His Holiness. I have
said much in these volumes to the discredit of Lamaism,
and I have said it with deliberation and conviction ;
but this panorama of Lhasa batters down helplessly the
prejudices of a quieter hour. Lamaism may be an engine
of oppression, but its victims do not protest \ and there
before one’s eyes at last is Lhasa. It may be a barrier
to all human improvement; it may be a living type of
all that we in the West have fought against and at last
overcome, of bigotry, cruelty and slavery ; but under
the fierce sun of that day and the white gauze of the
almost unclouded sky of Lhasa, it was not easy to find
fault with the creed, however narrow and merciless,
which built the Potala palace and laid out the green
spaces at its foot. In this paradise of cool water and
green leaves, hidden away among the encircling snows
of the highest mountain ranges of the world, Lamaism
has upraised the stones and gold of Lhasa, and nothing
but Lamaism could have done this thing. To Lamaism
alone we owe it that when at last the sight of the
farthest goal of all travel burst upon our eyes, it was
worthy, full worthy, of all the rumour and glamour and
romance with which in the imaginings of man it has been
invested for so many years.
If you will tear your gaze away from the Potala you
may see the Ling-kor lying below you like a thread,
betrayed here and there by a gap in the leafage of the
gardens. Before you in the distance the turquoise
Kyi chu, “ river of delight,” moves lazily between its
wide white dunes, here elbowed out of its course by a
spur of the hills, there shorn and parcelled by a heavy
outcrop of water-worn stones and the miniature cliffs of
a dazzling sand-bank. Across the mile-wide bed of the
river cultivation begins again, and you may see planta