Indian Antiquary Vol 45

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 44

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1916
Khâns and the acquiescence of the Ming dynasty of China, he was proclaimed Vajra Dalai Lama in 1576, and was thus the first to use a title afterwards to become of great renown. At the same time the Mongols interfered actively in the civil government. Later on, baey were paid to withdraw, and the first Manchu Emperor (1644-1661) was applied to for help. This caused the Mongols to return, subjugate the whole country, and in 1645 to make the fifth Dalai Lama monarch of all Tibet, in which position he was confirmed by the Chinese Government in 1653. In 1706 and 1717 there was further interference by the Mongol Khâns in the affairs of Tibet, but the Chinese finally. conquered the Country in 1720 and established the present temporal power of the Dalai Lamas under the supervision of Chinese ambans (residents), with its sacerdotally-inspired isolation from the outer world, which possibly has been encouraged by the Chinese with the idea of creating a buffer State between themselves and European aggression from India and Central Asia.
After 1872 there was some rivalry between the British and Russian governments as to relations, chiefly commercial, with Tibet, in which the Dalai Lama played a part unsatisfactory to the former, leading eventually in 1904 to the occupation of Lhasa by & British force, the flight of the Dalai Lama, and a commercial treaty. This was followed by an Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907, recognizing the Chinese suzerainty and maintaining the isolation of the country. The Dalai Lama was restored in 1908, but was soon in trouble with the Chinese, and was deposed in 1910 ; but he returned in 1912, when the British Government secured the territorial and administrative integrity of the native rulers.
Tibet is necessarily, in the political conditions above indioated, the most priest-ridden country in the world, and not only that, the influence of its priesthood is spread far beyond its northern and eastern borders. No account, therefore, of the country can pass over its religious organization. Fundamentally, for all his Buddhism and the wide ascendancy of his sacerdotal heirarchy over a large part of Asia, the Tibetan has nover depariod from the primitive Animism, which his remote ancestors brought with them from the Western Chinese highlands. It has saturated even the highly debased and animistic form of Buddhism he received in the seventh century from Northern India, until nowadays his religion may be said to have largely reverted back to that original dread of spirits which is the basis of all Animism.
Curiously enough, Srongtoan Gampo began the introduction of North Indian Buddhism in 622, the year of the traditional rise of Islâm, with the help of his minister, Thonmi Sambhota, and of his queens, now all regarded as divine incarnations, a doctrine borrowed from the Vaishnava Hindus by Northern Buddhism before it was adopted by the Tibetans. Later on his descendant, Khri-srong Ldetsan (743-789), actively encouraged it, and had the enormous collection of the Kanjur scriptures compiled. The arrival of Atisa in 1208 greatly raised the position of the monastic priesthood, and then for two hundred years civil strife weakened the power of the king and his barons, while the power of the abbots steadily increased. So that when Kublai Khân (1216-1294), on his con version, sat up in 1270 the Sakyapa Lê ma abbot as civil and ecclesiastical monarch of the whole country, the times were ripe for the temporal sovereignty of the Lâmas of Tibet--for that LÂmâism which is of such interest to Europeans, owing to the instructive parallel its history presents to that of the Church of Rome and the temporal power of the Popes. In 1390 arose the reformer, Tsongkapa (1357-1419), with a strong attempt at a return to original simplicity and purity of religion. His preaching had a considerable effect, still to be seen in the ceremonials and yellow robes of his