At Urga, a new Taranath Grand Lama, the third in
importance in the Buddhist world, was, on one occasion,
peremptorily disqualified by his majesty on the grounds
that his immediate predecessor had been a turbulent
and seditious fellow, and that there was no good ground
for supposing that he had been reincarnated in any
human being. Against this, the good people of Mongolia
entered a violent protest. They said that such a contention
cut at the root of their religion, and so much
trouble did they give that eventually the Emperor compromised
; he said that as the monks of Urga had chosen
a Mongolian to be their chief he would allow the election
to stand, but that on no account thenceforward was a
reincarnation to take place in the body of a Tibetan.
The descent of the spirit is thus regulated to-day. Again
it is necessary to remind the European reader with a
sense of humour that these apparent absurdities are
the source of very real and often very bitter political
feeling in the Far East, and that the application of
European habits of thought to these circumstances can
only result in a total misapprehension of the whole
situation. The Tibetans see no absurdity in situations
thus created at a time when in other ways their national
aspirations were shaping a shrewd and Occidental
policy.
The leader of the party died indeed before achieving
success, but it is worth notice that in the election
of the present Dalai Lama, in 1874, a change, directly
attributable to the dead reformer’s personality, was
made in the devolution of the spirit of Avalokiteswara.
In the old days the names of all babies born at the
time of the assassination of the previous Dalai Lama
were written on slips and put into a golden urn, which,
it is reported, levitated itself and thrice cast forth
the slip of paper bearing the name of the chosen child.
This miracle is supposed to have been somewhat assisted
by the writing of the same name upon every slip, and it
was to guard against any such political manipulation of
this all-important choice that a new plan of selection
was then adopted. Acting upon the counsels of the
chief magician of Nachung choskyong, the discovery
of the new Dalai Lama was entrusted to the pious
clairvoyance of the Shar-tse Abbot of Gaden. This
man, acting upon instructions, went to the Chos-kor
Plain, to the east of Lhasa, and there on the surface
of the Muli-ding-ki lake the new reincarnation was
seen in his mother’s lap upon a lotus flower. After
a brief search for mother and child, Tubdan Gyatso,
the present pontiff, was found at Paru-chude in the
district of Tag-po. This method of choosing a successor
to the divine authority checkmated the ordinary
intrigues by which family influence as well as official
guardianship secured to the Chinese suzerain no
small voice in the acts of the doomed child’s government.
The last regent, as has been said, was chosen
from Gaden though he also had some connection with
the Kun-de-ling in Lhasa.*
Eighteen years afterwards, when, under other circumstances,
his life would have been brought to a sudden
conclusion, Tubdan Gyatso was spared. This has been
attributed by some to the unrest prevailing during our
troubles with India at that time ; the treaty was then
actually in process of construction in Calcutta, and it is
very likely that the recent war with ourselves had sug-
It is impossible to obtain very accurate information upon a point like this. A
Tibetan has his £ La-lis ’ out of his mouth before a name is even mentioned.
V O L . I I . I * -