everything will be finally arranged. Should the body be brought 10 Tachienlu it will entail enormous expense and trouble and on. arrival here and after the long series of Durlal rites, it will again be carried back to} the Tibetan frontier, now marked by the: Yangtze, and from there carried to Drashe! Lhumbo, the Panchen's own lamasery in Deang. "All this reminds one of the workmen who tear up Nanking Road simply to Jay it down again,. The Panchen, poor fellow, has absolutely no say in all this performance. His wish would undoubtedly be for a quiet, religious burial somewhere in the Land of the Lamas, as the last twelve years of his unfortunate life have been anything but happy. His large following, however, has to live, and. one way of living according to them, is to carry this body as long as possible across Ceniral Asia, Tai Chi-tao may have other words and other plans, so the border will patiently await his arrival. In the meantime the lamaseries in Tachienlu and along the frontier ave awaiting orders from on high when to begin their religious performances and blow their trumpets. A Panchen only' dies once in 50 years, so the lamas of Kham fare prepared to do their bit. But what of the Panchen's Incarnation? Where is he and when shall he make his appearance? The Dalai died in December, 1933, and his Incarnation remains one of the mysteries the Land of Mystery.
On December 22 it was as cold as ice outside yet the lamas and the drabas in the different local lamaseries wore blowing their trumpets from the roofs of their temples with the idea of encouraging the sun to be good and start back the next morning towards the summer solstice, December 22 was the winter solstice and for days before the lamas and drabas in the city spent hours blowing! enormous long trumpets and wasting no end. of breath. To them the winter solstice is fraught with all kinds of possibilities, one of which is that the sun might never turn back. The lama may have very little science but he has no lack of imagination. Unless the sun kindly turns back on December 23 miorning, he sees a world doomed to spend its remaining days somewhere on a high, windy, fee-cap. And the lama must have yak butter and the yak must have grass and the grass must have earth and nothing, he concludes, will grow without the friendly aid of the sun. "So, if the blowing of trumpets will make the sun behave itself and be good, then the lama is prepared to spend no end of! breath and energy. Tuden, my Tibetan teacher, is firmly convinced that the sun's. return is very largely ition the amas. blowing trumpets. If they failed ju this, no tone can say what might happen. So' the trumpets were sounded all over the city of Tachienlu, When the sun started back again the lamas no doubt were held responsible for this good work and received the credit for saving an obstreperous luminary from career of madness. But if the sun had wandered on, and fails to return, the lama would no doubt have some plausible reason. why it has done so. are other reasons. Tibet, the Root of the World, is a very cold country and sometimes the winds, coming over high snow mountains, can be very bitter. 'The lama, therefore, finds the sun and its heat indispensible to life in the Forbidden Land to maintain its religious fervour. Cow manure may be cheap and may be plentiful, but as a fuel its very existence depends on the sun and' its daily supply of life-giving energy. This much of science the woolly nomad has acquired. by experience. Again, the Tibetan, crop of barley depends on this burning deity and should he fail them, well Nirvana would only bbe on the other side of the snow mountain and Tibet, the Land of the Lamas, would once more, become the land where nothing is nothing and everything is full of emptiness,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.