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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
was brought to perfection by the third. In the first instance, the heads of the communities were elected by the associates, on account of their superior age and learning; but other motives, no doubt, soon came to influence the choice, and in time new principles were introduced, which were not originally recognized, although not wholly foreign to the spirit of the system, particularly the notion that guides the election of a successor to a deceased Dalai Lama of Lhassa, or a Tashi Lama of Tashilumbo, the selection of a child in whose person the soul of the deceased is supposed to have become regenerate, being in fact that of a Buddha on his way to perfection. This notion is now, at least, no longer confined to Tashilumbo, or to Lhassa; but is spread very generally through Tartary, according to the French missionaries; and every monastery of note seeks, upon the demise of its Superior, for a child to succeed him, sending usually to western Tibet to discover him, and detecting liiin by placing before the boy a variety of articles, from which he picks out such as had belonged to the deceased, and which he is supposed to recognize as having been his property in a prior existence. This, if true, may no doubt be easily managed by a little dexterity, but Messrs. Huc and Gabet suspect that Satan is at the child's elbow, and prompts the verification of the articles. The notion however is admitted to be of comparatively modern introduction, as late as the thirteenth or fourteenth century *
* [Koeppen, 1. 1., II, 120 - 31.]
