Golden Age, May 19, 1926
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Labob and Economics
Getting Pictures at the Front......
The Sixty-Cent Dollar . . ........
Buying on Time ...........
Social and Educational
Radio Programs . . . . . , On American Shores ....
Liberty Does not Mean License Do Not Want Militarism Taught Prodigies are Diseased .. .
Let Thebe Be Light ....
Finance—Commerce—Transportation
First National Not Suffering ........ . .
' Prosperity Benefits Some Farmers
New York Telephone Books...........
’ Louisiana Sulphur Deposits......... .
: Wide Use of Artificial Leather ..........
Gold is Getting Cheaper............
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. 535
‘ Political—Domestic and Foreign
i Four States Will Advertise..........
Nine-Year-Old Lies Disowned . ........
Eeligion
The Yellow Pope .......
The Thibetan Vatican.....
Lhassa—The Rome of the East . .
’ What Superstition Does to a Country ’ Origin of Holy Candles ..... ! The Effect of Clergy Rule . . .
! Like Two Peas in a Pod ....
! Spiritism, East and West ....
। Buddhism in Politics .....
■ Fruits of Demonism......
; A Virulent Spiritual Pestilence . , Satan Would Forestall Christ . . Annie Besant’s New Christ . . .
The Downward Trend .....
Review oi' “Comfort fob the Jews” Comfort fob the Jews.....
Studies in “The Harp of God” . .
and Philosophy
, 515 .. 516 . 516 - 518 . 519 . 520 . 525 . 527 . 528 . 530 . 531 . 532 . 534 . 536 . 537 . 539 . 543
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<Jhe Golden Age
Volume VII Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, May 19, 1926 Number 174
The Yellow Pope By 0. L. Rosenkrans, Jr.
Ills own ministers smile at—and to acclaim him demi-god and Mahatma, one of the super-per-Bonalities who secretly direct the course of planetary evolution.
J&ys and Sorrows of Infallibility
TprifNlDREDS of letters arrive from these Occidental admirers, in disregard of the fact that Thibet is not a member of the Postal Union, which makes problematical their transference from the British post-office at Gyang-tse. The -pontiff is reported to be indifferent to these communications, never answering them, but delivering them to his secretaries to be filed away among the state archives. Mahatmashipg are useful in their way; but his mind is of a practical bend, and his preoccupation is rather with temporal matters, finance and politics at home, than with superintending the endowment of humanity at large with extra-human faculties through the abnormal development of the pineal gland.
In spite of the adulation of his subjects, this spiritual sovereign realizes acutely the actual insecurity of his tenure, menaced as it is on the one hand by the intrigues of his Shigatse rival (the lesser pope, known as Tesho Lama) with Peking, and exposed on the other to the resentment of the turbulent Drepung dok-clokpa, over his own overtures to Delhi. '
Moreover, the Four Great Monasteries plot incessantly to regain their, immemorial monopoly of the Regency; so a sly dose of aconite in his butter-tea is a contingency always to be borne in mind. The present incumbent, in fact, is the first among the long line of Dalai Lamas to have survived his majority, all his predecessors falling victims to priestly machinations before the age of 18.
Worst of all is the growing estrangement of the hierarchy as a body in consequence of his modernizing tendencies — the local telegraph line and other foreign abominations which s®.
815 '
WE ALL know that Pius XI claims to be, as vicegerent of God, the legitimate spiritual head of Christendom; but not everyone is aware that he has an Asiatic counterpart who receives homage from more millions of devout adherents than does he whose insignia are the keys of Peter. We allude to the supreme pontiff of northern Buddhadom, whose title “Ocean Priest” arrogates an authority as “wide as the ocean”.
Indeed, he is held in the profoundest reverence by the adoring laity, especially in Thibet and Mongolia, who credit him with godlike attributes of omnipotence and. omniscience. They imagine that nothing transpires the world over without his cognizance, and that the regular processes of nature may be abrogated at his behest, so that rivers may be caused to run upstream and barren hills become suddenly en~ forested. This is a more ambitious tax on secular credulity than even the Roman pope’s pretensions to infallibility'
Of course the more sophisticated Buddhist priesthood are discreetly skeptical of these preposterous assumptions, cherishing no such grandiose illusions concerning their pontiff; but they are careful not to disabuse the lay mind of its fallacies lest they weaken their own prestige. The Dalai Lama docs not claim to exercise his authority as God's vicegerent; for Buddhism concurs with Western Modernism in discerning no particular necessity for a divine creator, establishing its cosmology on evolution.
Still, though abjuring God, Buddhism is prolific in gods; so it proclaims its pope a god, a veritable incarnation of the Buddh, or, more specifically, of Amitabha, his Ethereal Substance, of whom more anon. Strange to relate, in supposedly enlightened Christian Europe and America, the “Yellow Pope" has scores of ardent proselytes, enthusiastically eager to concede his most extravagant pretensions—which
duced his admiration during his exile in India, and which he has been trying to introduce into Thibet since his reinstatement by the president of China in 1912. Innovations of all kinds are looked on with askance in this land of Living Buddhas and reincarnated saints.
The Thibetan Vatican
THE official residence of the Dalai Lama is the -*■ Potala, or Citadel of Lhassa, a truly imposing edifice with lofty walls and grand architectural lines, bold in outline and design; standing upon a hill west of the city, which it dominates together with the surrounding countryside. It is admittedly striking in appearance; its towering gray-white buttressed walls being pierced by innumerable windows; immense flights of steps ascending to the narrow doorways, dotted with the figures of lamas in dark red robes, going up and down. In contrast with the whitish general structure is the central temple-portion, madder red in hue.
The interior is at variance with the outward sublimity, consisting of a labyrinth of tortuous, dimly-lighted passages and halls, narrow stairways and rows of diminutive cells, with only a fewT spacious domed chambers, the sepulchers of defunct pontiffs whose images stand herein. The vaults are reputed to be the repository of incalculable treasures in golden, silver and brass images of the Buddhs, besides great stores of golden butter-lamps.
The Potala is an ominous, awe-inspiring place within whose precincts lurk impenetrable mysteries. It is a nest of plots and counterplots, a spider’s lair for unsuspecting prey to' occult practices; a tomb for living dead, the scene of nameless crimes and hideous cruelties.
One might designate the Potala the Vatican of Lamaism, within 'whose red temple-portion is situated the official residence of the pontiff; though lie has, in addition, a. private palace, the Norbulinga, one mile farther west. His favorite promenade is on the flat roof, ornamented with golden spires, whence he may enjoy a panorama of the park-like landscape of groves and meadows encircled by the snow-peaked mountain chains.
To the southward winds and twists the manychanneled Kyi-chhu, the “River of Delight”, amid groves of willow and poplar. Spanning an ancient dry-bed of this stream is the Yutok Sampa, or “Torquoise Bridge”, an appellation allusive of its roof of blue-green tiles.
To the east is the city of Lhassa, a huddle ofi flat-roofed, two-storied houses, built around court-yards and narrow, filthy lanes. Egress to the city is gained from the west through the Pargo-Kaling, a picturesque chorten, or relic shrine, with a gateway in its base. These names fall flat on Western ears, but to the visitor from TJrga or Tali-fu they are as replete in sacred historic associations and as suggestive of sanctity as St. Angelo or the yellow Tiber to the Jubilee Centennial pilgrim.
Lhassa— The Rome of the East
LHASSA is mediaeval in its plan, with only two wide streets, one of vdiich environs the outskirts, the other, the Parkor-ling, or “Sacred Road”, enclosing the “Holy Square”, the civic center, ■wherein are situated the offices of the chdl government and also the renowned Jo-Khang Cathedral, the St. Peter’s of Lhassa, a mecca of pilgrimage from all over Northern Buddhadom.
The pilgrims perform a daily circumambula-tion of the Sacred Road, hoping thereby to insure themselves a felicitous transmigration and to escape the progressive sequences of hells through which the most sinful souls must pass.
Some in expiation of extraordinary flagitiousness cover the entire journey from their homes by what is termed “prostration-walking”, i. e., by alternate standing and lying-down, thus measuring the entire distance with their bodies. Lucidly there is no motor-traffic on Thibetan highways! ’
The circumambulation is a cheerful rite, accompanied by dancing and the jingling of strings of bells, with frequent pauses to touch off fire-crackers. Reminiscent of repulsive accessories of the Catholic shrines are the swarms of cripples and beggars, and jostling venders ofi relics and charms, hanging about the stalls' which deal in sacred wares.
Looking westward the pontiff may direct his gaze toward Drepung Monastery, the most considerable gompo in Thibet, housing 10,000 inmates, the implacable rival of Sera, to the north, between whose ruffianly bands of “Temple Guardians”—illiterate monks who fail to pass their examinations—pitched battles sometimes take place.
During the Log-g-Ssar, the New Year Festival—one of the three principal ones—which symbolizes both the annual solar victory over winter and the polemical triumph of Sakiyamuni over six heretic teachers, monks from adjacent gom-pos crowd into Lhassa to mingle with the great throng of pilgrims, and aggravate the confusion by their drunken brawls. Monastic discipline is relaxed for the occasion, and no restrictions are placed on the sale of beer and arrack; so lawlessness is rife.
A Paradise for Priests
THOUGH Lhassa has neither police nor street-lighting, it has a curfew at 8:30 o’clock wliich is announced by exploding a giant fire-cracker at each corner of the Holy Square. On February 16th each year the two civil mayorjudges ceremoniously abnegate their authority to ecclesiastical ‘‘lords of misrule” for two weeks. The festival is a time of spiritual and spiritous exaltation and of public rejoicing, and is the harvest season for the townspeople, when business is brisk.
The Pakor-ling is sprinkled with sand to protect pious soles from pollution, and is traversed daily by pageants and processions. The normal population of the capital is quintupled for the nonce by the host of devotees and of sanctimonious holiness-fakirs who come to prey on them. There are many other centers of pilgrimage in Thibet, besides the Holy City, to shrines of departed saints and localities venerated as the abodes of Bodhisattvas in antiquity.
There is no preaching in Buddhadom, for public expounding of their doctrine is foreign to Buddhist notions; indeed, the Dalai Lama enjoys the unique distinction of being the only preacher in Thibet ; but it is not an onerous duty considering that he preaches only one annual sermon from a pulpit in Lhassa, which is the sole one in his domain.
The pontiff’s, elevated promenade is doubtless a splendid post of observation to appraise the flow of travel to and from his capital. He notes caravans from Mongolia, strings of hairy, two-humped camels with their swaying loads and sheep skin-clad drivers; or long pack-trains of yaks and sheep laden with wool and borax, in which the great religious houses habitually traffic. Soldiers, travelers and couriers, are intermittently arriving and departing.
Two miles off in the southwest is a hill crowned with a gigantic urn, in which devotees of means acquire merit by burning incense. This is an act of devotion performed vicariously; for coolies are sent to make the arduous climb, while their masters recline at ease and reap the spiritual profit.
On the east side of the capital, along the encircling outer-street, are rude hovels, constructed of horns and mud; the accursed habitations of despised outcasts, corpse-cutters and thieves, who retaliate on their contemners by criminal predaciousness. The profession of corpse-cutting is a necessity in Thibet, where the dead are not interred, being cremated by the wealthy but exposed by common people to the dogs and ravens. The corpse must be dismembered to facilitate a speedy disposal of it by the carrion-creatures. In the rarified atmosphere the custom is not so unhygienic as it would be in more humid climes.
A Forbidden and Forbidding Land
FROM his lofty perch it must almost seem to the pontiff that he is esconced on the roof of the Avorld. However, the Lhassa plain is not the highest part of the plateau, being only some 12,000 feet in altitude, whereas the Chang-tang basin is 17,000 feet and the spacious Kampa plain 15,000. But Thibet itself constitutes the most extensive elevated area in Asia—the greatest land mass on the globe—and is intersected by towering mountain ranges whose peaks not infrequently exceed 20,000 feet.
Thibet is a country difficult of access and vexatious to traverse, consisting of flat-bottomed basins of varying altitudes, separated by steep mountain walls which the traveler- is continually climbing up and down. It is rendered virtually impenetrable on the south by the dizzy Himalayas, and isolated from contact with the west and north by vast reaches of steppe and desert.
These natural barriers have conduced to discourage outside intrusion, and have been reinforced by barriers of religious prejudice; accordingly, for ages Thibet has deserved its epithet of the “Forbidden Land”, a region enveloped in mystery and fabled enchantments, where gods are a corporeal reality and the miracles performed by holy men are familiar in current life; a country whose inhabitants, obsessed with an inoppugnable conviction of their superior xnctity, are supremely indifferent to> the world outside, and rigorous in their exclusion of foreigners. They have shunned all intercourse with strangers who were not co-re-Hgionists, and few of the latter have had the temerity to test their reputation for inhospitality, and expose themselves to the risk of diabolical tortures.
So Thibet has remained to the outside world an unknown quantity, being too poor to tempt any serious interruption of its holy serenity by rapacious neighbors, and no rumors percolating out of “lodes” to incite a headlong rush of gold-seekers. But to the natives and to Buddhadom at large the country’s fame transcends such carnal considerations; for it is esteemed a holy land, hallowed by manifold saintly memories, a superlatively precious soil which it were profanation for the feet of unbelievers to tread upon. Is it not, moreover, the roof to Agharti, the subterranean realm of Brahytma, unsuspected arch-king of the nations, who regulates all their public affairs through occult influence over their leaders?
Dreary Wind-Swept Solitudes
Topographically, Thibet has little to attract the tourist, accustomed to viewing cheerful and inspiring scenery without sacrificing modern comforts and luxuries. Its general aspect is barrenness, mostly devoid of trees, much of it semi-arid, and the remainder sheer desert.
On account of the high altitude, combined with a sub-tropical latitude, the extremes of temperature are sudden and severe, alternating frigid nights with sweltering days. Especially is this noticeable in winter, when the daily variation is sometimes as much as 150°. The thin air precludes heat radiation, so that at midday when the naked skin blisters under the vertical solar rays, tea will freeze into blocks of ice indoors, in the sparingly heated houses.
The Ocean Lama’s domain is characterized by tremendous solitudes, swept by piercing winds which from some yet undetermined cause rise with clock-like regularity in the afternoon and subside toward evening; and by appalling loneliness, the vast untenanted spaces only revealing at rare intervals the existence of human life, where little groups of stone huts, unsheltered by groves or orchards from the bitter blasts, afford refuge to separated communities.
In winter even these hamlets are hidden under a blanket of snow which virtually cuts off outside communications from the benumbed, fever-racked denizens who, cowering over their meagre fires of yak’s dung, have their natural fears and worries aggravated by superstition. But their summers are more cheerful and less constrained; for they can then exchange their hut-life for golvngchas, black waterproof tents woven of yak’s hair, while they range about with their flocks and herds.
What Superstition Does to a Country .
THE larger towns are very few in number;
though in past times the country must have supported a much heavier population, as evinced in the numerous ruins of ancient cities and fort-alices. Every indication is that Thibet is both moribund and dcssicating, and must formerly have been more fertile and capable of furnishing sustenance to a denser population. The network of dry water-courses ’which intersect the plains proves tins; it is evident likewise in the steady recession of beaches of the treeless-margined lakes. It is a dying land, haunted by the specters of impending drought and depopulation..
As is to be expected in a thinly-settled territory, game abounds; cranes,' ducks, and other wild fowl, wild yaks, both white and black; and the vicious kiangs, or wild ponies that treacherously slink down on travelers to suddenly attack them with their teeth. Packs of ferocious half-domesticated dogs hang about the settlements to prey upon exposed corpses. The natives are debarred by religious scruples from using game for food, consequently the wild creatures multiply unmolested. The fresh-water lakes swarm with fishes, so wormy as to be inedible, according to some, reports; though they were an article of diet until prohibited by an edict of the present Dalai Lama—not on hygienic but on religious grounds!
Some of the villagers keep poultry, ostensibly to exercise the virtue of benevolence in caring for them; but the flesh is abhorred by the Buddhist as indescribably filthy, and to eat an egg is tantamount to sacrilege, and liable to frustrate the reincarnation of a Buddh. Still, it is said that the natives risk their salvation now and then, by slyly eating an egg!
. Inconsistently enough the Thibetans, who regard milk as excreta, undrinkable except for medicinal purposes, discern no impropriety in gorging themselves to repletion on beef and mutton. Nor have the lamas any repugnance to human blood, which they drink as a tonic. The lamas are even accused of ghoulishly devouring the putrid carcasses of victims of loathsome diseases which even the carrion birds and beasts possess discrimination enough to reject.
The Origin of Holy Candles
dp'HE natives are fond of frozen raw meat, but •i- their staple provisions are tsamba of'barley-meal and butter-tea! Tea is consumed in inordinate quantities, one consequence being the national peculiarity, coated tongues. It is not drunk from cups as a beverage, but mixed with tsa&iba and butter into a gruel; and it is etiquette to conclude by licking the bowl clean! Brick-tea is the variety in general use.
Sugar is a rare luxury, even among the opulent ; no sweets of any kind being partaken of to any appreciable extent; but the native partiality for butter is pronounced; and old, rancid butter is a delicacy reserved for the guest of' honor.
Butter is esteemed not simply as a viand; it has a superior sacerdotal function as the only fuel permissable in shrine-illmninations. Pious people donate sums of money to the temples to keep the butter-lamps aglow, and during festivals thousands of extra ones are lit before the images. In secular life the populace rises and retires with the sun, without lucernal aid; preparing their meals over fires of dried yak’s dung, which imparts a pungent flavor to the food. But prodigious sums are squandered by the wealthy on butter-lamp illuminations for the temples—as much, sometime’s, as $5,000 for a single night’s display! Sacred edifices suffer dilapidation for want of repairs, while the departed saints are being entertained sumptuously.
This lavish expenditure for lucernal exhibitions parallels the Romanist candles; but the latter are unsuitable for Lamaist worship, butter alone being sanctioned as canonical, both for lighting and for decorative purposes in the temples. As decorations colored butter is moulded into the form of flowers and bas-reliefs, called forma. Imported candles are utilized in secular life by the wealthy, but never for sacred purposes ; tills were equivalent to blasphemy!
The Curse of a False Religion
OULD their illustrious potentate, as his subjects never doubt, dispatch his astral body on reconnoitering excursions, what an indictment of the system personified in himself must the invisible presence witness as it journeys about the realm, in the ubiquitous signs of national decadence! Here, as perhaps never elsewhere on the earth, has ecclesiasticism been granted full scope to experiment with human welfare and justify, if possible, its own existence.
Here for uncounted generations a devout and docile race has surrendered its will to clerical spiritual guides; and the sequel to it, instead of prosperity and enlightenment, is to convert the central table-land of Asia into a vast sepulchre of dead communities; an infirmary, psychopathic ward, and pauper asylum for the steadily diminishing survivors.
Throughout Thibet and Mongolia are spread the comeornitants of superstition, which are ignorance, depravity, squalor and disease. Even the livestock are said to be infected with anthrax and other diseases communicable to man, making their flesh unfit for human consumption; but there are no state veterinarians in Thibet to condemn diseased herds.
To travel in Thibet is to turn hack the pages of history a few centuries; to witness in our age of public schools, laboratories, gas and electricity, .the culture which obtained in Europe when “Mother Church” reigned supreme, which Mark Twain, epitomized in his “Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”.
Thibet is still in the feudal-castle age, and the djongs of military chieftains stand out in bold prominence on rocky eminences. A.haughty aristocracy lords it over an abject peasantry, and is abetted in its oppression by the church. The civil government is bankrupt and fain to recruit its finances by debasement of the currency. Officials embezzle public fluids and neglect public works. The only roads are prairie trails; one solitary wheeled-vehicle is to be found in all Thibet—a cart for parading idols in Lhassa!
Ecclesiasticism Gone to Seed
THE impoverished masses support a horde of unproductive priestly parasites in idleness, while themselves receiving scant proteo-tien from the government from organized brigandage, even the monks occasionally turning da ;oit and plundering lonely villages. Crip-plejj, .nd beggars swarm on every hand. Illiteracy is the rule, even among the majority of the clergy, very few of whom have any real acquaintance with their own sacred literature. All learning is monastic, and much of this ritualistic or occult lore. Inhuman tortures are a regular adjunct of judicial procedure in this holy land.
The traveling noble helps himself without remuneration to saddle or pack-animals from the peasants’ herds, and the latter have no redress when their property is lost or worked to death. He is counseled by his “ghostly comforters” to bear the loss with resignation; his reward will be hereafter in a reincarnation. Lamaism has hardly proved a beneficent institution; rather it has acted like a cancerous growth, eating out national vitality, substituting retrogression for progress, steeping the national spirit in a stupor of discouragement and apathy.
The Thibetan native bears in himself eloquent testimony to the baneful effects of untrammeled ecclesiastical rule. His bodily uncleanliness is proverbial, though palliated on the score of climate; because bathing is inexpedient in such a high altitude, and a greasy skin affords the only positive resistant to the searching winds. Poverty is a factor in unchanged garments emanating an “ancient and fishlike odor”, not agreeable to foreign nostrils.
Filth is a culture for disease; hence poor health is chronic, with every symptom of racial degeneration and corrupted blood manifesting itself in old and young.
Racial degeneracy betrays itself in native abnormalities, such as supernumerary fingers and toes (accounted for by Lamaist theurgies as demoniac gestatory experiments), hare-lips, webbed-toes, spinal curvature, displaced shoulder-blades, crooked legs, humpbacks, club-feet and malformed skulls. The toxin-laden blood of the natives shows itself in facial eruptions, contracted pupils and loose teeth; while the frequent cases of epilepsy and St. Vitus dance proclaim undisguisedly an almost universal syphilitic pollution. Rheumatism is a common complaint, and goitre likewise, owing to the distance inland from the sea.
The Effect .of Clergy Rule
AMAITE medical practice represents approximately the same rudimentary stage as mediaeval therapeutics. Silver caps are hammered over decayed teeth, without any attempt made to clean out the cavities. In amputations no bones are sawed or arteries tied, but the limb is simply and rudely hacked off; and ordinarily the patient succumbs. Victims of hernia have no relief except from coarse belts which fail to prevent swellings.
The unfailing panacea for illness is exorcism. On the principle that demons enter human beings to assuage a craving for blood, the lamas repeat incantations to entice the pestilent spirit out of the sick person and into some other creature, usually a dog or cat, which is tied nearby. The unfortunate victim of this barbaric superstition is then buried alive at a crossroads, or if none is convenient, a small cross of sticks is erected over it.
How reminiscent this is of raw-rat. poultices for the plague in 14th Century Europe, or of the mediaeval practice of hanging a patient up by one leg and putting out an eye to let the fever drain out of him I The lamas treat cases of convulsions with hot irons, much as ill-informed veterinarians used to “fire” a horse for weak tendons.
For certain of the people’s infirmities their vices are directly responsible, and the latter are attributable to the practice of polyandry. The population is disproportionately male, the ratio being about 15 to T. The probable explanation is that femininedom, aware of the enhancement of its own prestige by polyandry, exerts less care to preserve its female than Its male offspring.
The tragic consequence is to condemn a large percentage of the men to involuntary wifelessness, provoking solitary vices among them, with debilitating reactions of nervous depression and timorousness amounting to pusillanimity. Their uneasiness in the presence of a stranger is extreme; they will scurry awmy from a chance encounter, or stand trembling and stammering, with jerking limbs and twitching features, avoiding his gaze. On the other hand, when they imagine they have the advantage, they are prompt to bully and bluster; but quickly subside into abjectness before a firm demeanor.
The national pooja, or obeisance to a superior, outwardly manifests the inward abasement of spirit; it is a prostration on all fours with, the tongue distended full length. The women are bolder and are more independent than the men; but themselves, owing to abuse of the marital relation, are prone to melancholia which often drives them to suicide.
A Hopeless Sex Muddle
J NEWT ABLY a people in the thrall of hunger, fear, and misery will be morally of inferior calibre; accordingly mendacity, dishonesty, treachery, cowardice and cruelty are salient defects in Thibetan character. Redeeming traits are habitual cheerfulness and a congenital obtuseness to suffering, which in a measure extenuates their unsympathetic natures.
The women doubtless owe their superior reputation over the men for frankness and courage to the quite unusual consideration they receive from Asiatics. Here there is no fernale seclusion or slavish concession of male preeminence; the women appreciates her own value and exacts male homage; she participates freely in public life and has her own way to a marked extent. She is not the weaker sex in Thibet; neither is she prepossessing from a. European standpoint, and exaggerates her natural uncomeliness by smearing black ointment on her countenance to avert skin-cracking in the rar-ifted air.
The national dark complexions are said to be really artificial and due to the life-long innocence of facial ablutions; when subjected-to soap and water a startling transformation ensues into almost European paleness. Similarly the Middle Ages held personal cleanliness in low esteem as an outlandish un-Christian custom, a snare of the arch-fiend, peculiar to followers of the Black Mahound.
Polyandry is a legal institution endorsed by the Thibetan church. It is a logical sequence to the Lamaite conviction that celibacy is the pure, godly condition, and that matrimony is intrinsically disreputable, representing a base surrendsr to the carnal appetite. So, likewise, Roman monachicism deplored this indulgence of human frailty. In effect, polyandry is a species of communal marriage whereby the bride, within certain limitations, espouses all her brothers-in-law.
The custom is regulated by a complicated code which tends to hedge in marriage with many vexatious and arbitrary restrictions, bringing it completely under clerical control. Obviously, idealization of the sex-relationship which monogamy fosters is absent in Thibet, 'True love” being scandalous fallacy from the lamas’ viewpoint, and marriage only tolerated as a regrettable necessity in order to provide a perennial crop of neophytes.
Divorces are difficult, though not absolutely unobtainable if the parties concerned are possessed of worldly goods. Cases of irreconcilable incompatability are then disposed of by a tripartite division of the property among the wife, husband, and monastery—the same as though our divorce courts should claim one-third of the litigants’ estate as court fees!
The Nobility and “Uppah. Clawses”
INDIAN caste does not obtain in Buddhist
Thibet, the same being repugnant to the spirit of Siddhartha’s teaching, who proclaimed that “there is no caste in blood, which runneth of one hue; nor caste in tears, which trickle salt for all!” Nevertheless, ecclesiasticism here as in Europe has contrived to conform its religion to a feudal gradation of ranks. There is an upper class of forty leading families, and a “lesser noblesse” of two hundred families, resting upon the masses of peasantry and petty traders; and beneath these is a substratum of outcasts, butchers, tanners, and corpse-cutters — occupations degrading, according to Buddhist ideas, through their association with animal bodies.
The nation is not homogenous, but differentiated provincially, with a corresponding diversity of local dialects; though the two main branches of the language, the Tsang ami U, spoken respectively in Lhassa and Shigatse, serve as a lingua franca for the country at large. A potent factor in maintaining class distinctions is the subdivision of 'these dialects into noble and ignoble terms of address; the ordinary, honorific, and high-honorific, which entails a vocabulary of three separate nouns for every single object. It is obligatory to address a superior or equal in the honorific style, and failure to do so would be an unpardonable affront; while to use anything but the high-honorific in addressing either of the two popes would ba construed as high-treason.
In this land of super-sanctity the most im« portant and respected class are, as to be expected, the clergy. Indeed, in Lamaite estimation the laity’s existence is justified primarily by reason of their furnishing a foundation for the hierarchical structure, and supplying a recruiting ground for the monastic ranks.
The clergy is likewise numerically important, being variously estimated at one-seventh to onefourth of the population. Every family is proud of the distinction of having one or more sons in holy orders. Hence, the system is firmly rooted —like the Roman Catholics—in the social units; loyalty to the church being identified in the popular mind with, parochial pride and fidelity to kindred.
Theoretically the priesthood is open to all, irrespective of rank, excluding only outcasts; and merit is the sole road to preferment. But in pr- -Vice the higher offices are monopolized by se..ons of the aristocracy, and the ambitious young cleric without a “pull” has a small chance of rising.
The state church of Thibet is the G-elugpa, or “Yellow Hat” sect of Lamaism, founded in 1357 A. D. by Tsong Kapa, an avatar of the Bodhisattva Aviiiabha. He consolidated an organization which grew out of the reforms inaugurated by the Indian priest, Alisa, who may be designated the Ignatius Loyola of Lamaism, since the Yellow Hat Reformation bears a certain affinity to the Jesuit order within the Catholic Church calculated to cheek the rising tide of Protestantism. In contradistinction to the latter, however, it. is the unregenerate Red Cap “stand-patters”, nonconformists to the reformed and purified doctrine, who in Thibet are stigmatized “heretics”, communion with whom is interdicted to good Lamaists.
Popes, Cardinals and Bishops
IKE the Church of Rome, Lamaism has an elaborately organized hierarchy with regular gradations of rank, the first degree including the two colleague popes. In theory, both popes are equal in rank and authority but, except for brief intervals, the Dalai Lama’s supremacy has always been virtually undisputed; the principal function of the Tesho Lama, whose seat of government is Shigatse, being to determine on his colleague’s demise into what avatar the spirit has flown. He does this by consulting oracles and sacred books.
• An episodical ascendency has sometimes been gained by the Tesho Lama through an alliance with the Chinese government, and indeed the Chinese policy has been to systematically favor him; but their patronage has been a detriment to him rather than an asset, inasmuch as it tended to identify the Dalai Lama with nationalism in the popular mind. The sonorous, high-sounding title of the Tesho Lama is “Right Reverend Great Teacher Jewel”. During the periods of his temporary ascendancy the division of allegiance among Lamaists is somewhat analogous to that in Christendom when there were rival popes at Rome and Avignon.
The second degree of ecclesiastics are the huiuktus, the so-called “cardinals”. These are rated as reincarnated saints, and are generally at the head of the larger monasteries. The less important gompos have abbots called kempos specially appointed for extraordinary merit by either of the two popes, from among the geshes, or Doctors of Theology. The latter is the highest rank in the five lower orders of clergy • novices, genye, gebsul, ge-long, and geshe. The ge-longs are full-fledged monks, graduates from the monastic schools, qualified to perform all the rites and eligible to office within the lamaseries. Below the abbot or gompo official is the chand-zo, or treasurer; the chinyer, or high steward; the lob-pon, or professor, who supervises education; a dean, a sacristan, and several tea dispensers. ■
Studying for the Priesthood
HE geshe, or scholarship degree (Maramba in Mongol), is aspired to by all monks, but attained by so few that the average number in all Thibet does not exceed 100. The reason assigned is that twenty years of unremitting study are required to acquire a textual knowledge sufficient to pass the examinations. This appeals to the Western mind as a prodigious misdirection of energy, since Lamaist learning is almost exclusively thedlogic, resembling in that respect the learning of the mediaeval schoolmen and as such completely out of harmony with modern thought.
Utterly unfamiliar with Western philosophy or science, Buddhism has a cosmogonic scheme conforming to its own theory of existence, whereby the orbs of day and night are conceived of as tiny lamps circling around a cylindrical earth. However, there are better prospects for scientific education from this viewpoint than from Voliva’s horizontal planes or from Kor-eshan concavities
Geshe erudition is oblivious of physiography, concerning itself with abstruse speculations over the subtleties of being and non-being, the nature of substance, and the inherence of attributes. In holy seclusion the geshe ascetics mourn over benighted, sentient human beings, fettered by desire and ignorance to the wheel of existence, revolving with it through interminable cycles of transmigration until liberated by the power of wisdom and purity.
We question not that even as the Boman clergy has always included some truly altruistic souls, so likewise among the lamas there are honest and unselfish spirits, striving with mistaken zeal to attain Nirvana by the Eight-fold Path. •
Without prejudice to their orthodoxy as loyal professors of the Yellow Faith the geshes are free to distribute their allegiance among the three main schools of Buddhist philosophy; so they devote much effort and enthusiasm to polemics. The libraries are cluttered with musty tomes, interpretive of the divergent doctrines of Sarvastivadins or ''‘Realists”, Yogacarins or ‘Idealists”, and Madhyamikas or “Transcenden-talists”. .
The rare treasures reputed, to repose on lamasery book shelves should arouse cupidity in Western bibliophiles; here are ponderous elucidations of the G-olugpas creed and expositions of the Bed Cap heresy, works controversial, lives of the saints and Bodhisattvas; volumes in cuneiform, Sanskrit, Pali, and Mongol; works on metaphysics, magic and yogiism.
Books other than liturgical are not much in demand, so they are not kept in stock by the book shops in the Thibetan towns. When copies are desired they are printed to order at the monasteries, the purchaser furnishing his own paper. The monks hold a monopoly of the publishing business, just as they did in Europe prior to the Renaissance.
Learning Limited to the Clergy
SACRED Thibetan literature is chiefly represented by translations of ancient Sanskrit works, the originals of which have disappeared. Though they perpetrate the imposture on the undiscerning laity, few monks have any real familiarity with Sanskrit, but a smattering is sufficient to insure the reverent admiration of their auditors. The Lamaite “Bible” comprehends two collections of canons, the Kang-yur and Teng-yur. The Kang-yur comprises 108 volumes in folios of 1000 pages each. This is a record of the actual discourses of Sakiyamuni, ■with thirteen volumes dealing with the Vinaya or canon law.
The Kang-yur has seven subdivisions. The Dulba (Sanskrit, Vinaya), or “Disciplines”; Sher-phyjin (Sanskrit, Prajnaparamita), on philosophy and metaphysics; Phal-chhen (Sanskrit, Buddhavata Sangha), or doctrine of the Buddhas and theirincarnations; dKan-br-Tsegss (Sanskrit, Rhatnakuta), or “collections of precious things”; mDo-ss-De, or collection of Sutras; Mjang-’dass, (Sanskrit, Nirvana), doctrine of the liberation from earthly pains; and rGhjud (Sanskrit, Tantras), or incantations.
The Teng-yur comprises 225 volumes, and is the official Lamaite commentary and interpretation of the foregoing. It was composed by the eminent Indian philosophers, N a gar j ana, Asangha, and Vasabandhu, besides Thibetan worthies. This work was compiled during the golden age of Thibetan literary activity, between the 9th and 14th centuries A. D.
. Learning, as in Mediaeval Europe, is a prerequisite of the clergy, though the majority of its members are as crassly ignorant as the gluttonous, toping, lecherous friars of old. Indeed, even geshe erudition comprehends, as a rule, little more than a verbal knowledge of their scriptures without proper appreciation of the basic principles of Buddhist philosophy. This duplicates the ignorance of ecclesiastics in Wycliff’s time, when even bishops often were distressingly unconversant "with the G ospels and their message, but glibly proficient in the chronicles of saints.
The difficulties of acquiring an education in Thibet are aggravated by a cumbrous and arbitrary system of spelling, rather than by an un-unwieldy alphabet or vocabulary. They have only thirty letters and vowel marks; but phonetic decay has rendered silent many letters which were probably pronounced in full in the eighth century, when spelling became standardized. Thus, mkas-po is ke-po in the vernacular, and pjin-pa is chinpa.
Superstition as a Stock in Trade
’pi?r the rank and file of the clergy do not find ■*-' their educational deficiencies a serious impediment to success, the utilitarian aspects of learning appealing most to them. If they are able to patter the ritual and mumble pious objurgations in a dead tongue, the undiscriminating multitude will revere them as holy men.
As the more illiterate Catholic parishioners are apt to credit their priest with supernatural powers, so likewise the lamas enjoy a reputation among the Buddhist laity for infallibility and for being able to bring on storms at a moment’s notice, make themselves invisible, etc. This reputation arises in large measure from their practising of occult arts, whereby they amass increment by casting horoscopes, telling fortunes and detecting crimes by clairvoyance.
The Buddhist clergy are accomplished hypnotists, and reinforce the popular superstition at convenient intervals by disclosing apparitions of the Buddh to the awed gaze of solitary wayfarers. In their sacred dances they enter the cataleptic state, assuming a variety of unnatural postures. .
Of these dances, the Black Hat Dance is the most celebrated. The actqrs, grotesquely attired and hideously masked, impersonate demons; the ceremony itself symbolizing humansacrifice, but nowadays with a doll substituted for what was perhaps originally a child-victim.
A full-fledged gelong is always in request at births, marriages and funerals, and to exorcise demons in sickness; but the lower grades of monks, incompetent to perform the offices, have recourse to less reputable expedients, being inveterate beggars and haunting the places where travelers and traders congregate to importune an alms in return for their blessing, or for chanting sutras for the souls’ welfare. Monks are even accused of highway robbery and of banding together to attack villages. .
Such an aggregation of unproductive clerical parasites is a serious drain on even a prosperous country’s resources; but in poverty-stricken, moribund Thibet they are a crushing burden, a deadly blight, enfeebling national vitality, debauching the moral sense of the race, arresting progress, perpetrating stagnation. A preponderant share of the national wealth has already been garnered into the religious houses, but the insatiate clergy incessantly clutch for the rest, preying on the public in their spiritual capacity and also as usurers; for the lamaseries are the banks, and charge exorbitant rates of interest, payable monthly.
The delinquent debtor is harshly treated in Thibet, being subjected to forfeiture of his property; and if this is inadequate to meet his obligations his person is enslaved to the gompo. As the laws are based on the Buddhist scriptures, with the lamas for the sole interpreters, there is no appeal from their exaction.
Monastic tenants pay as rent one-third of their produce; and are then intimidated by the monkish collectors into purchasing charm-boxes, offering-bowls, rosaries, and other sacerdotal gimcracks made of human bones, which articles they manufacture and deal in privately. The tenants, moreover, are required to furnish gratis transport animals for the monastic wool and borax caravans.
Dodging Taxation as Usual
THE lamaseries or monasteries are exempted from taxation, and even receive state subsidies. The lamas are issued a regular food stipend from the government; slender enough, but supplemented in a variety of lucrative ways. It is customary for opulent families with a son in holy orders to apportion the harvest from a certain acreage, called the "lamas field”, to his maintenance.
Sloth and gluttony are predominant in the lamas’ lives save v7hen periodically punctuated by fasts, when the rule of silence is rigidly observed. Butter-tea is the favorite dissipation. Tobacco is eschewed as contrary to law and gospel; indeed tobacco smoking is legally a misdemeanor, even for the laity.'
The clergy are celibate, and not permitted to return to secular life after a term of years, as are the Purist bonzes of Ceylon and Burmah. Southern Buddhism has a looser organization, differentiating from Lamaism much as the Greek Church, -which allows its priesthood to marry, does from the Roman.
Both monks and nuns bear a reputation for gross immorality, since no canonical penalties are provided for infraction of the vow of chastity; the apprehension of an infelicitous reincarnation being presumed to be an ample deterrent. Travelers in Thibet stigmatize the lamas as a bestial, degraded lot, superior in average intelligence to the laity, but nevertheless mendacious, dishonorable and barbarously cruel. No moral test of eligibility is required of candidates for holy orders—swindlers, thieves and murderers being eagerly gathered into the ecclesiastical fold.
The nuns are domiciled in separate convents, but are not debarred from promiscuous relations with the opposite sex; and with both lay and clergy they are said to be guilty of the loosest relations. They are described as lewd, cruel, and practisers of witchcraft and magic. All Buddhist nuns shave their heads, and then disguise their baldness under enormous wigs of red-wool, which give them a tousle-headed appearance. They are generally dirty and offensive from an olfactory point of view.
Like Two Peas in a Pod
STRIKING analogy has been remarked between Kanishkan Buddhistic observance and Roman Catholic, in the retort once made to a Romanist Father by a sought-after Buddhist convert, who said that both religions were essentially alike, differing only in one particular —the Buddhists worship a man and the Catholics a woman.
Howbeit, Chinese votaries bum punk-sticks before P’u Sa, the Goddess of Mercy, whose veiled image with the infant Foh in her arms is enshrined in the yellow-roofed temples among those of the past, present, and future Buddhs. The comparison has evoked mutual recriminations; the Buddhists accusing the Catholics of plagiarism, and the Jesuits denouncing Buddhism as a Satanic counterfeit of true religion, directly calculated to ensnare sinners to their eternal perdition.
The chief points of. correspondence between Buddhism and Catholicism that may be cited are: (1) The trinity, (2) the virgin and child, (3) a celibate priesthood, (4) prayers in an unknown tongue (Sanskrit), (5) self-imposed austerities and macerations, (6) formal daily services, (7) chants, (8) fasts and feast days, (9) confessional, (10) candles (butter-lamps), (11) holy water, (12) religious processions, (13) sacred images and pictures, (14) miracles and legends, (15) bells, (16) relics, (17) works of merit and supererogation, (18) prayers for the 'dead, (19) intercession of saints, and (20) mutual dependence on purgatory as an adjunct to ecclesiastical finance.
Lamaism, however, is more merciful than Romanism in one respect—it has no abode for the irrevocably damned. All its infernos, 136 in number, are places of probation for sinners, with definite sentences for incarceration, the least of which is 10,000,000 years. These sentences may be curtailed and the sufferer’s pangs alleviated by works of merit on his behalf by the living, such as paying for religious services.
Lamaism has icy hells and fiery hells located like the mediaeval papal inferno, in the bowels of the earth, reserved for the most flagrant sinners, whose Karma does not entitle them to make amends for their misdeeds by rebirth as a woman, animal, plant, or piece of inanimate matter. Souls who have passed lives of exalted virtue are rewarded by blissful celestial existence in one of the many heavens, lingering there for 10,000,000,000 years before a new reincarnation.
Where the Holy Bells Came From
OF COURSE, exact uniformity cannot be expected between two systems, one of which was adapted to a primitive European idolatry, and the other to an Asiatic; but the parallel is close enough to excite amazement and suggest common origin. For instance, the bell feature is mutally prominent in both rituals. Thrice daily the lamas are summoned to divine services by the tolling of the big convent bells. Bell foundries are an important industry in Buddhist lands. Some bells are of colossal proportions, as large as houses, and being immovable, serve a commemorative rather than a utilitarian end. During the Southern Sung period in China so much copper was devoted to bell-making and other sacerdotal uses that the metallic base of the currency, which was copper, was undermined; and the government eventually wrent bankrupt, swamped under a flood of inconvertible paper.
The Buddhist services consist chiefly in the intonation of hymns, with a discordant accompaniment of gongs, cane flutes, tinkhng handbells, and the banging of double-headed drums fashioned of human skulls. An inharmonious jangling is more grateful to Asiatic tympana than the peals of solemn organ melodies, and inferentially to their departed saints and gods.
Every Buddhist temple has collection boxes ensconced at points of vantage to mutely invite donations; and holy water amphorae, wherein the afflicted may dip veils to be worn as specifics for certain ailments. Katas, or ceremonial scarfs, bought from the larnas, accompany every gift in public or private life, suggestive of priest-blessed crucifixes and the like, worn by Catholic devotees. Rosaries are carried both for orisons and for casting accounts; so the pious abstraction of the holy Buddhist fingering his lieads may camouflage a quite carnal employment.
Sacraments and Hermitages
T AMAISM, like Romanism,-has seven sacra-meats, with baptism and confirmation rated as the most indisponsible. Confession is confined to the clergy, the laity being exempted from this duty. Pilgrimages to the shrines of saints and to sacred mountains and lakes keep thousands annually in a state of peregrination.
Lough Derg in Ireland has its counterpart in Lake Mansarowar, adjacent to the sacred red Kolas mountain, which long ago the demon Rakas strove unavailingly to pull down. Mt. Chanial-hari is the residence of the goddess of that name; and the surrounding peaks, of her attendant maidens. Cliortens, or relic shrines, decorate the landscape at not infrequent intervals, • some containing large barrel-like prayer-wheels which every passer-by gives a turn.
When Chosroes Parveez and his fire-worshiping Persians captured Jerusalem they are said to have carried off and burned the “True Cross”, to their own jubilant satisfaction and the discomfiture and distress of Christendom; nevertheless “Holy Church” contrived to preserve divers “true” splinters therefrom, which, it now displays among its most precious relics.
Buddhism cannot duplicate these treasures, though Lhassa proudly boasts of an ancient willow tree which sprang from a veritable hair of Gautama. It stands in proximity to a monolith commemorating a treaty between a Thibetan king of old time and a Chinese emperor.
Hermitages are sprinkled throughout the country; some on hill-tops, some on islets in the lakes. The latter offer unsurpassed opportunities for a life of seclusion and holy med-
Baaoxint, N. I, itation,- as they are only accessible in 'winter across the ice. The Thibetans possess no boats, though round coracles of hide .similar to the ‘'''bull boats” in use among the Sioux a century ago, are employed in fording rivers. One monastic anchorite, perched upon a dizzy crag, deprecated the suggestion of loneliness, explaining that his astral body made neighborly calls and that noctural spirit visitors banqueted on his flesh; the latter, however, being miraculously restored at daybreak.
Substitutes for Beads and Glass Windows
rpiIE lamas possess liturgic manuals, but J- mechanical praying is their main reliance in their devotional ■ exercises. Several contrivances are in use, the ubiquitous prayer-wheel being the most common. Every devotee carries one of these revolving apparatuses, which has a roll of paper inside- inscribed with the sacred formula, “Omi Mani -padme Ham!”
Diminutive prayer-cylinders are so arranged as to be rotated by the hot air ascending from butter-lamps—an ingenious application of the conservation of energy principle worthy of a better .cause! Enormous prayer-barrels, receptacles for the entire prayer book written in nute characters, are kept in motion by running water. On the principle that motion renders prayer efficacious, even the winds are made instruments ; and flapping flag-prayers are a characteristic spectacle in Thibetan scenery—strung from house to house, like washing on a line, or stretched across the channels of the rivers. Even mountain passes have their flag-prayers fluttering from tall poles.
While the Catholic of substance signalizes his devotion by presenting to his cathedral a stained glass window or a pair of silver candlesticks for its altar, the Thibetan nobleman erects a prayer-wall embellished with bas-reliefs of the Buddhs and Bodhisattvas and inscribed with sacred texts. These prayer-walls are supposed to communicate merit to the passer-by without any special effort on his part. They vary from a few rods to a mile in length, and are usually set in the middle of the road so as to benefit traffic from both directions; but to pass them on the right hand, even inadvertently, is deemed most sacrilegious.
Buddhist prayer-wheels must always be revolved in clock-wise fashion. Extraordinary emphasis is ever placed on formal observances in worship, in both the Roman and the Lamaist systems; indeed, they become logically of stupendous importance in a religion which ignores an overruling Providence, staking personal salvation on the concatenation of cause and effect.
Super-Holy “Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moes”
THE same reliance which Roman Catholics put in “Ave Marias!” the Thibetan Buddhist reposes in the six-syllabled charm, “Om! Mani padme Hum!” reiterated interminably in this land of ineffable holiness. The literal translation is, “Hail! Jewel in the Lotus,” symbolizing the act of parturition which blessed the world with a Buddh. The initial word, “Om,” is the name of the first Goro or arch-priest of Agharti (from the Sivaist guru or teacher), and is said to correspond to the Hebrew Jah.
Om is a word of incalculable potentialities; continued repetition of it and meditation on its meaning develops mental concentration and increases introspection, conducing to dyamma, or ecstatic trance, so instrumental in divesting the soul of desire, preliminary to Nirvana. Om is termed the primordial sound, whose components, A. U. M., represent the whole phenomena of sound-producing. Hinduism has incorporated this word into its doctrine as the manifesting sound of Brahm, the Creator.
The profound significance of this “Hail! Jewel” incantation eludes the Western mind, until it is understood that the six syllables correspond to colors in the six-hued realm of space; that each syllable has the quality of excluding the believer from its particular sphere. The goal of the seeker is to escape from the spatial universe altogether!
The esoteric core-philosophy, of which both Buddhism and Hinduism constitute mere exoteric superficialities, claims to rest on a mysterious super-science, immeasurably vaster in scope than Western material science, and indeed comprehending all the principles of the latter. The West, the Buddhist contends, is just commencing dimly to grasp the rudiments of this all-embracing super-science and to apply laws and forces of nature known to the adept in occultism for ages past, but jealously guarded from popular knowledge lest they be disastrously abusea by the ignorant and irresponsible.
Spiritism East and West
TN SUBSTANTIATION of their claims the
Buddhist mystics call attention to those invisible light rays, the ultra-violet and infra-red, and the inaudible sound or radio waves whose existence was quite unsuspected in the Occident until the last two decades, though now generally recognized and practically applied to some extent. They point out that at least forty years ago works ■were published which show that the occult fraternity then distinguished fourteen rays instead of merely the seven common-colors of the spectrum, and that they had detected a correspondingly extended scale of notes in music.
Their magic, these priests declare, is not accomplished through the spoken word (which is simply mummery to deceive the vulgar) but through the correlations of the vibrations of these inaudible notes and invisible light-rays, whereby the adept commands the agency of semi-intelligent forces, the “Elementals”, the consciousness of inanimate substance. In other words, they apply kinetic force. No new substance is or can be created; material is merely reconstructed in ancient forms. Nature does this without ostentation when it fertilizes the crops with dead men’s bones. Here is an enlargement of the ectoplasm theory.
In accentuation of formalism and creatureworship, the two systems, Romanism and Lamaism, are undisguisably in accord. To the average Thibetan, religion signifies primarily adoration of the saints. He nothing doubts but that religious services are effectual to control the forces of the universe, and that all nature is suspended when Brahytma communes 'with the saints.
In like manner, the Roman Catholic peasant is confident that “Te Deumshave power to abate floods and halt lava flows. Austerities are esteemed in both religions; to mortify the flesh is the way to Nirvana, as well as to heaven. So the ascetic testifies to his abstraction from mundane affairs by eating indiscriminately of ordure and carrion when proffered him in lieu of food. This is a Sivaish feature.
In Lamaism, certain elements of the worship of the double-natured god have been amalgamated with the philosophy of Sakiyamum; among them yogiism; accordingly, the practice of suppressing and arbitrarily regulating res piration as a factor in acquiring the six superhuman faculties to which all yogis aspire is resorted to by the lamas.
Sects in Buddhism
THIBETAN Buddhism is as divergent from the idealistic philosophy promulgated by Siddhartha as the Nicene creed is from the true apostolic faith. Each is a debased departure by transfusions of extraneous ideas; the latter from its antecedent paganry, the former a fusion with Scythian Shamanism and Hindu Siva-worship. In both instances the falling away had a political aspect. The Constantine of Buddhism was Kanishka, the puissant Kushan monarch of Kabul, whose widespread dominions embraced Kashmir, the Punjaub, eastern Iran and great tracts in Central Asia.
In A. D. 78, King Kanishka summoned the fourth great (Ecumencial council of Buddhism to meet at his capital Takka-sila (Taxila of the ' Greeks), where under his auspices a new orthodoxy was formulated, calculated to appease the ' prejudices of the majority of his subjects, but destined to estrange from Buddhism the great mass of the people of India and turn them to Hinduism. This was two hundred and fortyseven years before Constantine dictated the Nicene Creed for Romanists.
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