1881.] 
Sarat Chandra Das —Contributions on Tibet. 
229 
ministers, two ruffians who had an old grudge against the king assassinated 
him by twisting his face towards the back, at the instigation of his brother. 
This was Lahdarma, whose claims to the throne were set aside by the “ pious ” 
ministers, and who is said to have been at the bottom of this foul plot. 
After the assassination of Ralpachan at the age of forty eight, between 908 
and 914 A. D., Landarma ascended the throne. The celebrated historio¬ 
grapher Buton assigns this event to the first part of the ninth century, in 
his chronology. 
Landaema. 
The last and perhaps the worst of the Tibetan monarchs, Landarma, 
commenced his reign by persecuting the Buddhists whom he considered his 
mortal enemies. He was joined in his wdcked plans of persecution by 
his prime minister Batagna (sBas-stag-snas.) He reviled the first Chinese 
Princess Hunshin-Kunju 44 as an evil goblin (a yakshini) who had brought 
the image of S'akya Muni into Tibet. “ It was for that inauspicious 
image”, said he, “ that the Tibetan kings were short-lived, the country 
infested with maladies, subjected to unusual hoar-frost and hail storms, 
and often visited by famines and wars”. “When this image”, continued 
he, “ was being brought from the top of Rirab (Sumeru mountain), the gods 
were vanquished in a war with the demons. S'akya’s accession to power, first 
in India and afterwards in China, made the people unhappy and poor, by the 
demoralizing effect of his wicked teachings”. To slander Buddha in such 
blasphemous language was his great delight, and in no discourse did he 
indulge himself so much as in reviling that holiest of holies. To 
avoid disgrace, the Pandits and Lochava fled from Tibet. Those who 
failed to run away were robbed and oppressed. He obliged some of the monks 
to be householders, others he sent to the hills to hunt wild animals for him. 
He destroyed most of the Buddhist works. Some he threw into water, some 
he burnt, and some he hid under rocks. Not satisfied with demolishing the 
temples and monasteries of the country, he w 7 reaked vengeance even on the 
sacred shrines of Akshobhya and S'akya. He tried to throw those two images 
into water, but some of his “pious” ministers having represented to him the 
difficulty of lifting those heavy things, he contented himself by sinking them 
in sand. When he was told that the image of Maitreya was very sacred, 
he broke into loud laughter. When he was just going to break dowm 
Lhasa (the temple of S'akya), Rimochhe (temple of Akshobhya) and 
Samye, he was told that the guardian demons of those places would 
send plague and ruin upon him if he destroyed the temples. Being 
afraid of exciting the wrath of those dreaded spirits, he spared their 
charges, and contented himself with closing up their doors, by erecting mud 
44 Wife of King Sron-tsan-Gampo. 
