CHINESE ARCHITECTURE. 689 



The difference between Lamaism and the ordinary form of Chinese 

 Buddhism is shown most -strongly by their discordant concej^tions of 

 Maitreya, the coming Buddha. His Chinese statuette has been de- 

 scribed above, under the name of Milo Fo, as it is placed in the vesti- 

 bule of a temple, and he is, besides, worshiped at many private 

 houses and shops, so that he is almost as popular a divinity with men 

 at Kuan Yin, the so-called '' goddess of mercy,'"' is with Chinese 

 women. In Japan Hotei, the merry monk with a hempen bag, is 

 claimed by some to be an incarnation of the Bodhisat Maitreya, and 

 is endowed there with national traits in the spirit of playful rever- 

 ence which characterizes the Japanese artist. The Lama conception 

 of Maitreya, on the contrary, is that of a dignified and colossal fig- 

 ure, robed as a prince, with the jeweled coronet of a bodhisat, tower- 

 ing above the other crests of the roofs of a lamasery, or occasionally 

 carved on the face of a cliff. There is a gigantic image of Maitreya 

 in the Yung Ho Kung, at Peking, made of wood, over 70 feet high, 

 the body of which passes through several successive stories of the 

 lofty building in which it is installed. The devout notary must 

 climb a number of winding staircases to circumambulate the sacred 

 I ffigy in the orthodox way, till he finally reaches the immense head. 

 Yung Ho Kung was the residence of the Emperor Yung Cheng be- 

 fore he came to the throne, and it was dedicated to the Lama Church, 

 in accordance with the usual custom, when he succeeded in 1722. 

 AVhen the Emperor visits the temple a lamp is lit over the head of 

 Maitreya, and a huge praying wheel on the left, which reaches u])- 

 ward as high as the image, is set in motion on the occasion. The 

 resident lamas, mostly INIongols, number some 1,500, under the rule 

 of a Gegen, or living Buddha, of Tibetan birth, who rejoices in the 

 title of Changcha-Ilutuktu Lalitavajra. An excellent })ortrait of 

 this dignitary, from a miniature on silk, is given in Prof. A. (Jrun- 

 wedel's Buddhist Art in India. 



Lamaism may be said to rank as the state church of the reigning 

 Manchu dynasty. The I^ama temple illustrated in plate xvi was built 

 by the Emperor K'ang Hsi, in the vicinity of the summer residence 

 at Jehol, outside the Great Wall of China, where Earl Macartney 

 was received by the grandson of the founder in 1703. The temple is 

 built in the style of the famous palace-temple of Potala at Lassa, the 

 residence of the Dalai Lama. But the resemblance is only super- 

 ficial ; deceptive as it may be when seen at a distance from one of the 

 pavilions in the Imperial Park, on closer inspection the apparently 

 storied walls prove to be a mere shell, with doors and windows all 

 unperforated. The temple buildings erected upon the hill behind, 

 the double roofs of which appear above the walls in the picture, are 

 SM 1904 44 



