LAMA ISM AND THE KUTUKHTU. л 



The population of the MongoHan part of Urga 

 is chiefly composed of lamas, — i.e. of the clergy. At 

 Bogdo-Kuren they number as many as 10,000. This 

 statement may appear an exaggeration, but if the 

 reader take into consideration the fact that a third 

 of the whole male population of Mongolia belongs 

 to the lama class, he will not doubt its accuracy. 

 There is a large training-school at Urga for boys 

 destined to become lamas ; it is divided into three 

 faculties, viz. Divinity, Medicine, and Astrology. 



Urga ranks in the estimation of the Mongols 

 next to Lhassa,^ in Tibet, for sanctity. 



In these two towns the principal religious digni- 

 taries of the Buddhist world reside. In Lhassa, the 

 Dalai Lama, Avith his assistant Pan-tsin-Erdeni ; ^ in 

 Urga, the Kutukhtu, or third person in the Tibetan 

 patriarchate. 



According to the Lama doctrine these digni- 

 taries are the terrestrial impersonations of the God- 

 head, and never die, but are renewed by death. 

 They believe that after death their souls pass into 

 the bodies of newly-born boys, and thus re-appear to 

 men under fresher and more youthful forms. Search 

 is made in Tibet for the new-born Dalai Lama, 



' Lhassa, the capital of Tibet, is called by the Mongols Munhu- 

 tsu Cthe ever sacred). 



''■ Pan-tsin-Erdeni does not reside in Lhassa itself, but at the 

 monastery of Chesi-Lumbo [i.e. at the place which is variously called 

 in our maps Teshu-lumbo, Jachi-lunpo, and Shiggatzi, at least 120 

 miles from Lhassa. It is scarcely correct to call the Panjan Irdeni 

 or Panjan Rimbochi, the personage whom Lieut. Samuel Turner 

 visited as envoy from Warren Hastings in 1783, and whom he calls 

 the Teshoo Lama, the 'assistant ' of the Dalai-Lama. — ^Y.]. 



