at Blwt Bagan in Howrah: 
85 
1890.] 
his recreation, attended by the Regent, his parents and others. Here 
he made his prostration, and showed other marks of veneration. The 
despatches were broken open by the Lama, who examined every article 
of the present brought to him, and regarded the Gosain with a very 
kind and significant look, talked to him in the Tibetan language, and 
gave his dismissal by laying his hand upon his head which he had 
previously uncovered for the purpose. 
Puran Gir witnessed one of the grandest and most imposing cere- 
monies in Tibet, which was the removal of the child Lama from the 
Tharpaling monastery to that of Taslii Lhunpo, and his installation there 
on the throne of his predecessors. Here he saw ambassadors from 
China, the Dalai Lama himself from Lhasa, and deputies from many 
other countries, accompanied by numerous trains of attendants and 
officers, swelled by an unprecedented crowd of people whose devotion 
or the pleasure of sight-seeing had drawn thither, and he beheld with 
wonderment arrangements which were conducive to pomp and parade, 
grandeur and magnificence. 
The Gosain had frequent interviews with the Regent and the 
Tibetan authorities at Tashi Lhunpo, who all assured him of their desire 
to encourage the commercial intercourse established under the auspices 
of the late Governor-General, and of the respect they entertained for 
the integrity of the character of the English nation, of which they 
had been convinced by intercourse with the agents of Warren Hastings, 
specially as the Regent said that “the views of the English tended to 
“ no scheme of ambition, but were confined merely to objects of utility 
“ and curiosity.” 
With Puran Gir’s mission in 1785 ended the statesmanly and most 
wisely concerted proceedings of the first Governor- General of India, 
to open friendly and commercial relations between the Tibetan, Bhutan- 
ese and other Himalayan states and Central Asian regions on the one 
side, and the British Government and its subjects on the other — relations 
which received a rude shock undor the Government of Lord Cornwallis, 
when he failed to realise the importance of promptitude of action in 
protecting the Tashi Lama’s realm from the unprovoked and wanton 
invasion by the Gurkhfili dynasty of Nepal, in 1792. The tardy 
measures which led to “the despatch of Captain Kirkpatrick, followed 
too late after the Chinese General Sund Po had vindicated the honour of 
the Tashi Lama, and curbed the ambitious chief of Nepal by a crushing 
defeat of his army.” 
It will now be seen that while the establishment of Bhot Bagan 
and the despatch of the Tibet missions owe their origin remotely to the 
Gurkha invasion of Sikkim, followed by the Bhutanese invasion of 
