80 Gaur Das Bysack — Notes on a Buddhist Monastery [No. 1> 
“ terms as the Lama should dictate, or if the Lama thought, it would 
“ be more effectual towards establishing the friendship, he wished that 
“ the letter should be in readiness when the Lama took his departure 
“from China, and that he should take it with him, and have the care 
“ of forwarding it, in such manner as ho thought best, to the Governor 
“ of Hindustan. The latter mode the Lama made choice of, and expres- 
“ sed much satisfaction.” 
It was destined, however, that all this friendly endeavour on the 
very eve of bearing fruit should be frustrated, for the Lama was seized, 
as elsewhere statod, with small-pox, about which he had forebodings 
before he left Taslii Lhunpo, and in fact had written to the Emperor as 
one of his apprehensions which disinclined him to go to China. Of this 
disoase the Lama died on the evening of the 12th November 1780 as he 
sat at prayer. Puran Gir, whom the Lama in his dying hour had sent for 
and conversed with, describes his death “ to have been remarkably 
tranquil.” 
The Emperor who, on receipt of the sad nows, had come to see the 
dead body still remaining in a sitting posture through the help of 
pillows, was moved to tears. 1 In that position it was put into a coffin, 
then into a largo temple-shaped receptaclo of pure gold, with an outer 
covering of copper, and was sent in great procession to Tashi Lhunpo, 
under the charge of the departed Lama’s brother, to whom the Emperor 
said that “ he trusted to the Almighty soon to hear of his arrival there, 
“ but above all other things he would impatiently long to hear of the 
“ Lama' 8 regenerat ion," which it was his special request strictly to in- 
form him of. 
Puran Gir accompanied this procession, and saw the gold cased 
earthly tenement of the Lama deposited in a mausoleum in Tashi 
Lhunpo, while the Buddha world in the north remained expectant for the 
appearance of an infant, vivified by the departed spirit of the Tashi 
Lama to be elected his successor. 
The Chinese Emperor Kuen-lung’s proceedings with reference to 
the Lama closed with a letter which he addressed to the Dalai Lama, 
informing him of his death, and touchingly alluding to the foreboding 
which had at first disinclined him to visit China.* 
1 The affecting scene described by Puran Gir, when the Chinese Emperor was 
shedding tears at the bedside of the dying Tashi Lama, bears some resemblance 
to the great Akbar repairing with his Hakim to the house of his favourite Faizi 
the celebrated poet and scholar, when he found him breathing his last, throwing 
away his head gear as a mark of great sorrow and bitterly uttering an extemporised 
mourning verse. 
8 A translation of this letter by M. Amiot, a missionary, is also published in 
the Or. Hep. vii, p. 273. Mr. Amiot had previously communicated information to 
