they are chiefly dangerous because they attack
children.*
These pixies really represent to the common Tibetan
peasant all the religious influences that he knows, and
for him the elaborate structure of Lamaism is only a
shield and defence against a very real terror which waits
for him a hundred times a day beside his path and about
his bed. For the lamas, on the other hand, there is
much in the ritual of their church, and if they do not
actually disbelieve in the existence of these malignant
spirits, they feel perfectly secure behind the protection
afforded by their rites and ceremonies. But for them
an entirely different set of emotions and motives comes
into play. The attitude of the lamas is in its way not
less credulous and untaught than is that of the poorer
people, but the spur which drives them to religious
observances is not the fear of earthly mischief, by whomsoever
caused; it is a very different and a very interesting
goad of their own making '¿-.a blind horror of the consequences
of that reincarnation upon which the whole
fabric of Lamaism is built. This is a most interesting
question.
It is difficult for a Christian to realise how terrible a
weapon this article of faith can become. For him this
world, good or bad, is at least the last existence in which
things earthly will affect him. Of the next he knows
only by the eye of faith, and the terror inspired by
* Children are very well treated in Tibet. Of course they are left unwashed, and if
they have any kind of disease they are left to grow out of it if it is so ordained. The
result of these two customs is that skin disease among the children is unpleasantly common.
But they are well-fed, never ill-treated, and have, on the whole, a very good
tirhe. From the very beginning they were never afraid of our troops, and the first word
of Hindustani that was learned by the Tibetans as a whole was the “ salaam ” which the
three-year old mites ran beside us and squeaked continually. Afterwards “ salaam”
was a well-recognised form, for exchanging salutations among their seniors.
the most material conception of hell is unquestionably
mitigated by the fact that a very earnest Christian
believer cannot really know what it is that awaits the
wicked after death.* Indeed, if it were not so, if
there were no such modifying circumstance attached to
the formulae of Christianity, life for a devout man could'
hardly fail to be— if not on his own behalf perhaps,
certainly on that of his friends— an agony of pain. This,
I fancy, it rarely is— at least, on this account. There is
another distinction to be remembered. The human
mind is notoriously incapable of conceiving the notion
of eternity. But the Oriental can throw his conceptions
forward in a vastly greater degree than the European.
Whether we deny it or not, our conception of
time is dominated by our habitual method of measurement.
For us a year is not merely a convenient form of
expression, it is a hampering unit from which we cannot
shake ourselves free. For a Tibetan the life is the unit
. of repetition, and it must be remembered that a lifetime
is an infinitely longer time for a man than are his-seventy
years. A lama’s conception of eternity is, therefore,
of a terrible depth compared with ours, and, what is far
more, he believes from his earliest days that failure on
his part to acquire merit in this world will result not in an
instantaneous and irrevocable judgment, after which at
least no action of his own can do him good, but in a
never-ending repetition in some form of fife in this world
of the very same Struggle that he is now enduring. And
the ingenuity with which the lamas have conceived
the lowest,, filthiest and most obscene envelopes in
* I am aware of the Roman article “ Ignis Inferni est corporeus et ejusdem speciei cum
hoc nostro elementari. ” But this statement is so much qualified by the many supernatural
properties claimed for the flame that even a Roman Catholic cannot clearly fix his
conception of the means of punishment.