the spirit of discipline learned in managing such large bodies of monks has helped the Lamaist Church in the government of the country.  Also these monasteries are universities.  Candidates for ordination study a course of theology and are not received as novices or full monks unless they pass successive examinations.  In every monastery there is a central temple in which the monks assemble several times a day to chant lengthy choral offices.  Of these there are at least five, the first before dawn and the last at 7 p.m.  Though the value of Lamas’ learning and ritual may be questioned, it is clear that many of them lead strenuous lives in the service of a religion which, if fantastic, still expresses with peculiar intensity the beliefs and emotions of the Tibetans and Mongols and has forced men of violence to believe that a power higher than their own is wielded by intellect and asceticism.

There seems to be no difference between Tibetan and Mongolian Lamaism in deities, doctrines or observances.[1068] Mongolian Lamas imitate the usages of Tibet, study there when they can and recite their services in Tibetan, although they have translations of the scriptures in their own language.  Well read priests in Peking have told me that it is better to study the canon in Tibetan than in Mongol, because complete copies in Mongol, if extant, are practically unobtainable.

The political and military decadence of the Mongols has been ascribed by some authors to Lamaism and to the substitution of priestly for warlike ideals.  But such a substitution is not likely to have taken place except in minds prepared for it by other causes and it does not appear that the Moslims of Central Asia are more virile and vigorous than the Buddhists.  The collapse of the Mongols can be easily illustrated if not explained by the fate of Turks and Tartars in the Balkan Peninsula and Russia.  Wherever the Turks are the ruling race they endeavour to assert their superiority over all Christians, often by violent methods.  But when the positions are reversed and the Christians become rulers as in Bulgaria, the Turks make no resistance but either retire or acquiesce meekly in the new regime.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1057:  See for instance the particulars given as to various branches of the Nying-ma pa sect in J.A.S.B. 1882, pp. 6-14.]

[Footnote 1058:  Urgyen-pa or Dzok-chen-pa.]

[Footnote 1059:  Or Pemayangtse.]

[Footnote 1060:  bKah-gDams-pa.]

[Footnote 1061:  Buddhism, p. 70.]

[Footnote 1062:  bKah-brGyud-pa.]

[Footnote 1063:  Sandberg, Handbook of Tibetan, p. 207.]

[Footnote 1064:  Authorities differ as to the name of the sect which owns Himis and other monasteries in Ladak.]

[Footnote 1065:  See for some account of him and specimens of his poems, Sandberg, Tibet and the Tibetans, chap.  XIII.]