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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
which, being of clay, were broken by the fall, amidst, he says, the laughter of the bystanders. He resided several weeks in the monastery of Teen-tsung near Ningpo, where he constantly distributed Christian tracts in Chinese, without any hindrance or molestation.
The late Mr. Gützlaff, in a paper in our Journal now in course of printing', agrees entirely in the description given by Bishop Smith of the ignorance of the Buddhist priesthood, of the low estimation in which the priests are held, and the absence of all really religious feeling in the people.
It is in the north and north-west of China, extending thence through Mongolia and Eastern Tibet to Lhassa, that the chief seats of Buddhism are to be found, as we learn from the travels of the French missionaries, Messieur's Huc and Gabet, who traversed the whole interval. Throughout their entire route they met with, or heard of, what they term Lamaserais, that is, Viháras, or monasteries connected with temples, inhabited by numerous resident Lamas, as well as having attached to them a number of itinerant mendicant brethren. At a monastery, at a place called Chor-chi, there were two thousand resident Lamas. At a city, which they translate Blue-town, there were twenty establishments, large and small, inhabited by at least twenty thousand Lamas. At the monastery of Kunlun, where they were allowed to take up their residence for several months, there were four thousand resident Lamas. At the chief monastery of Tartary, that of
1 Vol. XVI, p. 73.
