An Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet - Prajna Quest

320 TIBET.Hence we find no paident traveller ever attempting to undertake ajourney, without previously appealing to this authority, and endeavouringto obtain an auspicious presage. The same signal of favourisdeemed indispensably requisite in every important enterprise, andthe same wary circumspection enters equally into allthe more minuteconcerns of domestic life. The union of the sexes, and the givingnames to infants, are neither of them events to be accomplished withouta regular appeal to the same decisive oracle.Among that order of men, to whom the due performance of everyceremony connected with their religion is committed, some ai"efoundwho are peculiarly skilled in this obscure science ;and the declarationof itsdecisions belongs, of course, to the discreet, initiated Gylong.I cannot here enumerate the various modes of seeking out somedecisive presage, which they usually practice.Tlie sortes sanctorumis a pious and venerated appeal : in trivial affairs, the mind is oftengoverned by a casual cast of the die; and hence, dice are almostalways found to constitute an appendage to a Tartar dress.The custom of these regions obliged me, sometimes, to have recourseto the oracular denunciations of my attendant Gylong ;which indeedI had little difficulty in doing, as I found he had the considerationseldom to suffer his decisions to oppose my wishes. I consequentlythought it prudent to travel as he directed, and never commenced ajourney without his previous concurrence. I soon learned to confidein his discretion, and he never failed to calculate for me, both everyauspicious and inauspicious presage.The same superstition that influences their view of the affairs of