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Sarat Chandra Das — Contributions on Tibet. 
[No. 3, 
walls. His ministers and flatterers, in order to please him, painted those 
walls with abominable pictures illustrative of the drunken and lustful 
moods of human depravity. When Landarma was thus engaged in over¬ 
throwing the sacred religion as well as its relics, the saint Lhalun-pal 
Dorje, while sitting in deep contemplation in the cavern of Yarpa-lhari 
mountain, saw a vision. The goddess Paldan Lhamo descending from 
heaven appeared before him and exhorted him in the following terms : 
“ Oh saint, in these days there are none so powerful as thou. Wouldst 
thou deliver the country from the hands of that sinful tyrant Landarma ?” 
In the morning the saint inquired of his servant the condition of Tibet, 
upon which he was told the cruelties practised by Landarma. He then 
mounted his white charger whose body he had besmeared with charcoal, and 
dressing himself in a black robe with white lining, with no other weapons 
than an arrow and a bow in his hands, he arrived at Lhasa. 45 While the 
king was reading the inscription on the stone obelisk called Dorin, the 
saint, as he was making his salutations, shot an arrow at the king’s back, 
which pierced right through his body ; then exclaiming, “ I am the demon 
Ya-sher, and this is the way of killing a sinful king,” he sped away on his 
horse. As soon as the king fell, his ministers and attendants cried, “ the 
king is dead, the king is dead,” and the mob ran after the assassin, but the 
saint, urging his fleet companion, shot oft like a meteor. In crossing 
a river the coal-black colour of the horse was washed away, and it became 
white as snow. He then turning his robe inside out so as to show the 
white, flew as the god Nam-theo-Karpo and escaped, leaving his pursuers 
far behind. 
The king pulled the reeking arrow out with both his hands, and in 
the agonies of death, when his proud heart was subdued with anguish, ex¬ 
claimed—“ Why was I not killed three years back that I might not have 
committed so much sin and mischief, or three years hence, to enable me 
to root out Buddhism from the country,” and died. 
With Landarma ended the monarchy of Tibet founded by Nah 
Thi tsanpo, and his descendents henceforth ceased to exercise universal 
authority over the whole of Tibet. The sun of royalty was set, and there 
rose numerous petty princes to shine with faded lustre in the pale realm 
of snowy Tibet. 
45 The sleeves of the assassin saint were unusually broad to make room for the how 
and arrow. The king- stood encircled by his ministers when the saint arrived, dancing in 
frantic jumps. They all ran to witness his curious dance. The king called to him to 
come near. The saint approaching prostrated himself to salute the monarch. In the 
first prostration he set the arrow and how right, in the second he fixed the arrow to 
the how, and in the third killed the king with it. Hence the origin of the Lama 
war dance and the use of broad-sleeved robes by the Tibetan Lamas. 
