Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — THE DALAI LAMA. [ARTICLE]

THE DALAI LAMA.

The OfFce Only 250 Years Old and Early Under Chinese Control. An article by Dr. L. A. Waddell on "The Grand Lamas of Tibet.” in the current number of the Roval Asiatic Society’s Journal, is full of interest at the present, time. In it he gives a translation of the decree of the Chinese Emperor Chia-ching. which is inscribed on. four stone tablets “at the left side of the door of the great JdKan temple" of Lhasa, and which is dated as late as ISOS. In this the regulations for the appointment of the Dalai Lama are set out, together with a kind of history of the institution, which leaves it clear that the institution is not earlier than 1640, and was the invention of the priest-king Lo-bzan Gya-intso. chief abbot of the Yellow-bat llamas, after he had seized the temporal sovereignty at about that date. 'The dual arrangement by which one Grand Lama reigns at Tashi-lhunpo in western Tibet as the Tashi Lama, without infringing the supremacy of the Dalai Latna of Lhasa, ai’ems to have been in the first instance, an artifice practised by the same priest Lcbzan. who appointed his tutor, the abbot of the Ghldan monastery near Lhasa, the first Tashi Lima, while reserving the real headship of the State for himself and forging, like some other parvenus, a kind of pedigree for the institution, whereby it appeared that he was the fifth Dalai Lama, instead of. as was the fact, the first.

Th? decree also makes it plain that the Chinese early interfered in the working of the election and insisted unon what was called the "Ordeal of the Golden *T*rn,” which really meant th° drawing of lots for the office in the presence of the Chinese Atnban or Resident, who manipulated the whole affair. It was time, for the second, third and fourth Dalai Lamas, seem from the decree to have been most disreputable people, while the death of the first was successfully concealed for eighteen years Dr. Waddell also tells us that the Dalai Lamas is supposed to be (be incarnation not. as is sometimes said, of Buddha himself but of Avalokita, "the Compassionate Lord" or "God of Mercy." the most popular of all the Buddhist divinities. —From the Athenoeum.