take him into the temple itself. He enters at the side
of the great cloistered courtyard and passes through a
double-pillared corridor ornamented with armour and
weapons of strange make, and out again into the sunlight
of the quadrangle. In the middle of the court, in front
of him now, as he turns to the left, are the main
entrances of the temple behind the many-pillared
arcade ; they are screened by heavy yak-hair curtains
through which one can catch a glimpse of a gaudy
wealth of colour on wall and pillar and ceiling, and of
the five or six great doors, scarlet and cardinal and flesh
colour. In the middle of the courtyard, immediately
in front of him, is a little tree growing in a perforated
square-stone lattice, within which, all around its stem,
is a proud bank of English hollyhocks and a few vivid
nasturtiums tumbling carelessly through the lower
interstices of the trellis. Beside it is a pillar about eight
feet high, with a tiny little roof of gold atop. Just over
the edge of the temple entrance appears, high up against
the blue, the great golden roof, and standing guard by
it many gyan-tsen, gilded and fluttering with overlapping
flounces of silk, salmon and olive and rose-madder.
The presiding deity of this temple has long fled
away with his master, the Dalai Lama, but the services
go on and the temple is lovingly cared for in his absence.
So far as one may make a guess at the character of a
man from his house, it is easy to see that the Chief
Magician of Lhasa is of an unusually refined and dainty
taste ; the care which is visible in every corner of this
temple we had not found even suggested in any other
building in the country. It looked as though a housemaid
had been round with a duster an hour before our
arrival. The abbot of the monastery received us very
The Chief Magician’s Temple at Lhasa.
THERE IS A RANGE OF COLOUR HERE TO WHICH ATTENTION
HAS BEEN DRAWN IN THE TEXT. THE HANGING STREAMERS
a r e p r a y e r - f l a g s . See the text.