DARJEELING TO THE BORDERS OF BHOTAN. 169 
in his favour. Boodhism, Mr. Hodgson tells me, is spreading fast 
amongst these mountaineers, through the influence of the Bhotea 
Lamas, who have many temples, and some convents, on this side the 
snow. The Lepchas profess no religion of their own, though they 
uniformly acknowledge the existence of good and bad spirits. To the 
good, they pay no heed: why should we? they say, the good spirits 
do us no harm ;—the evil spirits, who dwell in every rock, grove, and 
mountain, are constantly at mischief, and to them we must pray, lest 
they hurt us. Every tribe has a priest-doctor: he neither knows nor 
attempts to practise the healing art, but is a pure exorcist : all bodily ail- 
ments are deemed to be the operation of devils, who are cast out by the 
prayers and invocations of the priest-doctors. Still they acknowledge 
the Lamas to be very holy men, whose religion is good, and, were the 
latter only moderately active, they would soon convert all the Lepchas. 
As it is, the Rev. Mr. Start, a German missionary at Darjeeling, has made 
several proselytes to Christianity ; but with a wandering people, who 
have no fixed location even within the narrow bounds of Sikkim, and 
who never see their spiritual head except at Darjeeling, the task of 
conversion is not easy. 
Totally destitute of sacred edifices, or of skill and materials to 
“make him either a temple or a god,” the rude Boodhist of these parts, 
in the absence of any visible object of adoration, sets up such banners 
as I observed at Ging, in honour of Sunga, the third member of his god- 
head. The inscriptions on the flags are the mystical and long-disputed 
sentence, “ Om Mani Padmi hom ;” or, “ I salute him of the Lotus and 
Jewel ;” for such is the interpretation of this much-contested invocation, 
which has puzzled orientalists, who have known it as the common 
invocation of the Boodhists, for full 200 years. I am indebted to 
Hodgson for the translation ; its correctness is acknowledged: Sunga, 
or Pudma Panee, is always represented with a Lotus and Jewel. 
The Lepcha houses are tolerably large, framed of bamboo, raised on 
a stage, and thatched with split bamboos, so as to be quite water-tight : 
this roofing is very good, and generally adopted by the English. - 
Beyond one gable, the stage is prolonged into a sort of perch, wkereon 
the family are often seen assembled. Inside there are one, two, or more 
rooms, but containing little furniture. Underneath the house a goodly 
lot of pigs grunt, and a very fine race of cattle is herded, the latter 
generally black and white, of the size and somewhat the look of our _ 
VOL. II. Z oin 
