INTRODUCTORY

The religion of Tibet and Mongolia, often called Lamaism, is probably the most singular form of Buddhism in existence and has long attracted attention in Europe on account of its connection with politics and its curious resemblance to the Roman Church in ritual as well as in statecraft.  The pontiffs and curia of Lhasa emulated the authority of the medieval papacy, so that the Mings and Manchus in China as well as the British in India had to recognize them as a considerable power.

Tibet had early relations with Kashmir, Central Asia and China which may all have contributed something to its peculiar civilization, but its religion is in the main tantric Buddhism imported from Bengal and invigorated from time to time by both native and Indian reformers.  But though almost every feature of Lamaism finds a parallel somewhere in India, yet too great insistence on its source and historical development hardly does justice to the originality of the Tibetans.  They borrowed a foreign faith wholesale, but still the relative emphasis which they laid on its different aspects was something new.  They had only a moderate aptitude for asceticism, meditation and metaphysics, although they manfully translated huge tomes of Sanskrit philosophy, but they had a genius for hierarchy, discipline and ecclesiastical polity unknown to the Hindus.  Thus taking the common Asiatic idea that great and holy men are somehow divine, they made it the principle of civil and sacerdotal government by declaring the prelates of the church to be deities incarnate.  Yet in strange contrast to these practical talents, a certain innate devilry made them exaggerate all the magical, terrifying and demoniac elements to be found in Indian Tantrism.

The extraordinary figures of raging fiends which fill Tibetan shrines suggest at first that the artists simply borrowed and made more horrible the least civilized fancies of Indian sculpture, yet the majesty of Tibetan architecture (for, judging by the photographs of Lhasa and Tashilhumpo, it deserves no less a name) gives another impression.  The simplicity of its lines and the solid, spacious walls unadorned by carving recall Egypt rather than India and harmonize not with the many-limbed demons but with the calm and dignified features of the deified priests who are also portrayed in these halls.

An atmosphere of mystery and sorcery has long hung about the mountainous regions which lie to the north of India.  Hindus and Chinese alike saw in them the home of spirits and wizards, and the grand but uncanny scenery of these high plateaux has influenced the art and ideas of the natives.  The climate made it natural that priests should congregate in roomy strongholds, able to defy the cold and contain the stores necessary for a long winter, and the massive walls seem to imitate the outline of the rocks out of which they grow.  But the strange shapes assumed by mists and clouds, often dyed many colours by the rising or setting sun, suggest to the least imaginative mind an aerial world peopled by monstrous and magical figures.  At other times, when there is no fog, distant objects seem in the still, clear atmosphere to be very near, until the discovery that they are really far away produces a strange feeling that they are unreal and unattainable.