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46
Pig.
18. TIHETAN AMUIET.
EAST ASIA.
sole of it
purpose having inscribed in krge characters on the hillside, so that the
traveller galloping by on horseback may read the words of salvation.
Everybody wears on his clothes, arms, or neck gold, silver, or other metal
amulets, containing, besides the all-powerful prayer, little idols or relics, the teeth,
hair, or nails of canonised lamas. The korlo, khorten, or prayer-mills, employed in
all Buddhist lands except Japan, are most universal in Tibet. The very forces of
nature, wind and water, are utilised to turn these cylinders, each revolution of which
shows to the all-seeing heavens the magic words regulating human destinies. Like
the Kirghiz,
the Buriats, Tunguses, and other Central Asiatic peoples,
the Tibetans
are accustomed to set up on the hill-tops poles with banners containing the same
formula, which is thus, so to say,
repeated with every puff
of air.
One of these lapchas, as they are
called, has been planted on Mount
Gunshakar, over 20,000 feet high.
The Buddhist pilgrims also take
ammonites to the highest peaks of
the ranges, and, to conjure
the evil
spirits, near these fossils they place
as offerings the bones and skulls of
the great wild sheep,
ammon.
or Ori*
Most of the gilded images in the
temples are simple reproductions,
copied for some thousand years, of
the idols seen in India ; hence in
their expression they bear no re-
semblance to the Tibetan type.
Every trait or special form having
a symbolic meaning, nothing can be
changed. The other images of
native type represent the gods
only of an inferior order, and are
reproduced especially
in the coloured
butter statuettes, in making which the lamas excel. But while the greater
deities are Hindus, one might almost fancy that the general ritual is of Roman
Catholic origin. The extreme analogy has. long been remarked between the
Buddhist and Catholic rites, and most of the missionaries have explained this
identity of outward worship as an artifice of the devil trying to ape the God of the
Christians. Others have endeavoured to show that the Buddhist priests, after
abandoning their old practices, simply adopted
the ceremonial of the Christians in
India, with whom they had established relations. We now know what a large
share both of these relatively modern religions have had in the inheritance of the
primitive Asiatic cults, and how the same ceremonies have been transmitted from