HIMALAYAN STATE OF SIKHIM. 
553 
MODERN HISTORY. 
Legends inform us that three monks of the red-hat part/, flying 
from persecution in Tibet, met in one of the lonely Sikhim Valleys. 
They sent for an influential Tibetan to represent the civil power, and 
set about the conversion of the Lepchas. Success attended them, and 
their friend became Itaja of the whole country. Monasteries and 
churches rose to preserve the memory of the missionary monks, and 
the descendants of the Tibetan settlers are recognised to this 
day as the rightful rulers of the country. The external policy of 
the petty princedom thus formed was determined by the manner of 
its creation. In the East religion is still a power, and all things 
take their colouring from the faith of the ruler. The chief of a 
barbarous tribe raised to power by the ingenuity of Tibetan monks 
must needs, in default of stronger influence, acknowledge the religious 
and political predominance of the rulers of Tibet. As the craving 
for ritual revived, and the hostility between the rival sects showed 
signs of abating, the religious and political bonds linking Sikhim with 
Tibet began to be drawn tighter. Doubtful questions of discipline 
and procedure were referred to Lhassa for the decision of the 
Dalai Lama, and his mandate was virtually, if not statedly, 
admitted to bo the final appellate authority for Sikhim Buddhists. 
Wool, tea, silk, all the comforts and ornaments of life, came to them 
from Tibet, while intercourse with other countries was difficult. Small 
wonder, then, that their continual effort was to show themselves to be 
thorough Tibetans, that the Tibetan language came into use as their 
Court speech, and that their chief advisers were drawn from Tibetan 
monasteries. In course of time this connection grew to be closer, and 
the last three Rajas have married Tibetan wives, and have held landed 
property and owned herds of cattle in Tibet. Such marriage intro- 
duced a new and important factor into Sikhim politics. Women 
brought up iu the dry, keen air of Tibet could not stand the moist 
warmth of the lower Sikhim hills, drenched by the immoderate rain- 
fall which prevails on the southern slopes of the eastern Himalayas. 
Their influence, coupled with the Tibetan proclivities of their husbands, 
induced the Rajas to transfer the head-quarters of their government 
to the valley of Chumbi, one march on the Tibetan side of the Jelap 
Pass. The prolonged residence of the chief in Tibetan territory had 
the worst possible effect oil the internal administration of the State. 
Abuses of all kind’s sprung up, while redress was hard to obtain. 
Lepcha interests were neglected, and Chumbi became the Hanover of 
Sikhim. 
Meanwhile a still greater power was being compelled, in spite of 
itself, to enter the field of East Himalayan politics. For thirty years 
the bigoted and warlike Groorkhas of Nepal had been harrying their 
peaceful Buddhist neighbours with cattle-lifting and slave-taking 
incursions. Before the year 1814 they had conquered and annexed 
the foot hills or Terai, now covered by the valuable tea-gardens of 
Darjeeling. But for our intervention they would probably have 
permanently turned the whole of Sikhim and the hills south and west 
of the Tista into a province of Nepal. Peace had to be kept on the 
frontier, and the Grovernment of India was the only power willing or 
able to keep it. At the close, therefore, of the Groorkha war, in 1817, 
