Dalai Lama

The following text written by two French missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century provides a positive impression of the home of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, despite mainly critical comments about Buddhism in general found throughout their report.

The palace of the Talé-Lama merits, in every respect, the celebrity which it enjoys throughout the world. North of the town, at the distance of about a mile, there rises a rugged mountain, of slight elevation and of conical form, which, amid the plain, resembles an islet on the bosom of a lake. This mountain is entitled Buddha-La (mountain of Buddha, divine mountain), which upon this grand pedestal, the work of nature, the Talé-Lama have raised the magnificent palace wherein their Living Divinity resides in the flesh. The palace is an aggregation of several temples; that which occupies the centre is four stories high, and overlooks the rest; it terminates in a dome, entirely covered with plates of gold, and surrounded with a peristyle, the columns of which are, in like manner, all covered in gold. It is here that the Talé-Lama has set up his abode. From the summit of this lofty sanctuary he can contemplate, at the great solemnities, his innumerable adorers advancing along the plain or prostrate at the foot of the divine mountain.

Source: Huc Evariste-Regis and Joseph Gabet. ([1851] 1987) Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844–1846. New York: Dover Publications, 171.