Three Years in Tibet. Ekai Kawaguchi

the Tibetan language.” I knew that my good host meant all that he said; but I could not allow myself to be prevailed upon. Instead, I utilised the occasion in telling him that further tutelage under Lama Serab was not to my mind, because the aged priest was more anxious to teach me the Tibetan Buḍḍhism than the Tibetan language. I asked Rai Saraṭ to kindly devise for me some way, by which I might acquire the vernacular Tibetan language. Finding me resolute in my purpose, Rai Saraṭ, with his unswerving kindness, cheerfully agreed to my request, and arranged for me that I should have a new private teacher, besides a regular schooling. It was in this way. Just below Rai Saraṭ’s mansion was a residence which consisted of two small but pretty buildings. The residence belonged to a Lama called Shabdung, who just then happened not to live there, but in a house in the business quarters of Darjeeling. Rai Saraṭ sent for this Lama and asked him to teach the “Japan Lama” the Tibetan language, the Lama returning to his residence just mentioned with his entire household. Lama Shabdung was only too pleased to do as was requested, and I was forthwith installed a member of his household, that I might have ample opportunity of learning the popular Tibetan language. On the other hand, I at the same time matriculated into the Government School of Darjeeling, and was there given systematic lessons in the same language by Prof. Tumi Onden, the Head Teacher of the language department of Tibetans in that School. I should not forget to mention here that, while I paid out of my own pocket all the tuition fees and school expenses, as it was quite proper that I should, I was made a beneficiary of my friend Rai Saraṭ so far as my board was concerned, that good man insisting that to do a little kindness in favor of such a “pure and noble-hearted man as you are”—as he said—was to increase his own happiness. Not too well stocked with the wherewithal as I was, I gratefully allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept his generosity. Indeed, I had only three hundred yen with me when I arrived at Darjeeling; but, as it was, that amount supported me for the seventeen months of my stay there. Had I had to pay my own board, I would have had to cut down my stay there to half the length of time.

      At Lama Shabdung’s I lived as though back in my boyhood, attending the school in the morning, and doing my lessons at home in the company of the children of the family in the afternoon. It is a well known thing that the best way to learn a foreign language is to live among the people who speak it, but a discovery—as it was to me—that I made while at Shabdung’s was that the best teachers of everyday language are children. As a foreigner you ask them to teach you their language; and you find that, led on by their instinctive curiosity and kindness, not unmingled with a sense of pride, they are always the most anxious and untiring teachers, and also that in their innocence they are the most exacting and intolerant teachers, as they will brook no mis-pronunciation or mis-accent, even the slightest errors. Next to children, women are, I think, the best language teachers. At least such are the conclusions I arrived at from the experiences of my ‘schooling days’ in Darjeeling. For in six or seven months after my instalment in the Shabdung household, I had become able to carry on all ordinary conversation in the Tibetan tongue, with more ease than in my English of two years’ hard learning, and I regard Tibetan as a more difficult language than English. True, I made myself a most willing and zealous pupil all through the tutelage; withal, I consider the progress I made in that short space of time as quite remarkable, and that progress was the gift of my female and juvenile teachers in the Shabdung family. The more progress I made in my linguistic acquirement, the more eager student I became in things Tibetan, and I found in my host a truly charming conversationalist, himself fond of talking. Evening after evening I sat, an absorbed listener to Lama Shabdung’s flowing and inexhaustible store of narratives about Tibet.

CHAPTER III.

       A foretaste of Tibetan barbarism.

       Table of Contents

      To give one of Lama Shabdung’s favourite recitals about Tibet: my host, while there, studied Buḍḍhism under a high Lama of great virtues and the most profound learning, called Sengchen Dorjechan (Great-Lion Diamond-Treasury), who had been the tutor of the Secondary or Deputy Pope, so to say, of Tibet. No man in Tibet was held in higher esteem and deeper reverence than this holy man. It was this holy man himself who taught my friend and benefactor Rai Saraṭ, when he was in Tibet. Though Rai Saraṭ’s pupilage under the high Lama lasted only for a short time, it had the most tragical consequences. For, after his return to India, the Tibetan Government discovered to its own mortification that Rai Saraṭ was an emissary of the British Government, and the parties who had become in any way connected with his visit, more particularly the man who had secretly furnished him with a pass, another in whose house he had lodged and boarded, and the high Lama, were all thrown into prison, the last named having afterward had to pay with his life for his innocent crime.

      LAMA SENGCHEN DORJECHAN.

      Many are the reminiscences of this holy Lama, which show that he was indeed a person very firm and enlightened in the Buḍḍhist faith, and to that degree was the most lovable and adorable of men. But more especially affecting, even sublimely beautiful, are the episodes immediately preceding and surrounding his death, for the truth of which I depend not on the narrative of Lama Shabdung alone, but largely also upon what I was able to learn from persons of unquestionable reliability, during my disguised stay in the capital of Tibet. To mention a few of these: when an unpleasant rumor had just begun to be circulated, soon after Rai Saraṭ’s departure from Tibet, about his secret mission, the high Lama Sengchen knew at once that death was at his door, but was not afraid. For, when it was hinted at by his friends that he would become involved in a serious predicament, owing to his acquaintance with Rai Saraṭ, he replied that he had always considered it his heaven-ordained work to try to propagate and to perpetuate Buḍḍhism, not among his own countrymen only, but among the whole human race; that whether or not Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās was a man who had entered Tibet with the object of “stealing away Buḍḍhism,” or to play the part of a spy, was not his concern—the question had in any case never occurred to him—and that if he were to suffer death for having done what he had regarded it as his duty to do, he could not help it. That this holy Lama was an advocate of active propagandism may be gathered from the fact that, besides sending various Buḍḍhistic images and ritualistic utensils to India, he had caused several persons to go out there as missionaries, my teacher, the Manchurian Lama Serab Gyamtso, in the Ghoompahl Temple of Darjeeling, being one of these. Unfortunately, this undertaking did not prove a success, but none the less it shows the lofty aspirations which actuated the high Lama, who, as I was told, had deeply lamented the decadence, or rather the almost entire disappearance, of Buḍḍhism in the land of its origin, and was sincerely anxious to revive it there. It is nothing uncommon in Japan to meet with Buḍḍhist priests interested in the work or idea of foreign propagandism; but a person so minded is an extreme rarity in that hermit-country Tibet, and that Lama Sengchen was such a one indicates the greatness of his character, and that he was a man above sectarian differences and international prejudices, solely given to the noble idea of universal brotherhood under Buḍḍhism. Being the man he was, he had many enemies among the high officials of the hierarchical Government, who were in constant watch for an opportunity to bring about his downfall. To these, his enemies, the rumor about Prof. Saraṭ was a welcome one, which they lost no time in turning to account. In all haste they despatched men to Darjeeling, and ascertained that, in truth, Rai Saraṭ had smuggled himself into and out of Tibet, and that, as the fact was, he had done so at the request of the British Government of India. Then followed the incarceration, already mentioned, of all those who had had anything to do with Rai Saraṭ, the final upshot of which was sentence of death upon the high Lama Sengchen Dorjechan, on the ground that the latter had harbored in his temple, and divulged national secrets to, a foreign emissary. The holy man’s execution was carried out on a certain day of June, 1887, and took the form of sinking him till he became drowned in the river Konbo, which is a local name given to the great Brahmapuṭra. As I recall the scene of that occasion, as I heard it described, I see before my eyes the tear-drenched face of my friend Lama Shabdung, who, struggling with emotion, would often tell me what he witnessed on that day. Surrounded by an immense crowd of sympathising