Page:1903 Lhasa and Central Tibet by G. Ts. Tsybikoff.pdf/12

 important business place, as well as the connecting link in the commerce between India and northern Tibet and China with the East.

The market place is located around the central or temple section, where all the ground floors of buildings and open spaces in the streets are occupied by stores and small exhibits of merchandise. Women are preeminently the sales people, although in the stores of the Kashmiris and Nepalese men do the selling.

About the town stand the principal monasteries of Tibet, Sera, Brebung, and Galdan, known under the common name Serbre yesum. Brebung, the largest, is about 7 miles northwest of Lhasa; next comes Sera, about 2 miles north of the city, and last, Galdan, about 20 miles distant to the left of the river U-chu, on the incline of the steep mountain Brog-ri. They belong to one ruling sect of Tsongkapa and were organized during his lifetime, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Dalai Lama is regarded as the head of them all. There are 15,000 to 16,000 monks in all, of which 8,000 to 8,500 are in Brebung, 5,000 in Sera, and 2,000 to 2,600 in Galdan. In the Galdan monastery there is a vice-Tsongkapa, under the name, the "Galdan golden throne," a position established immediately after the death of the organizer, at the suggestion of his pupils and disciples. In olden times that office was filled by the choice of the Galdan monks, but on account of the confusion that followed elections the present method of installation was instituted, and the position is now filled in six-year terms by two Lamas, or, more correctly, wandering ecclesiastics, "Chzhuds," in the order of their service in the higher positions of their temple. The present incumbent is the eighty-fifth superior since Tsongkapa, or the eighty-sixth superior of Galdan, counting the reformer as the first.

Each of the monasteries has its laws and its own land, and they are thus independent of one another. The Brebung monastery is the most influential, because of its wealth and numbers, which are both the cause and the effect. Much of this superiority is also due to the fact that Brebung monks were elevated to Dalai Lamas, to whose lot it soon fell to be at the head of the spiritual and civil government of Central Tibet. The lamaiste monasteries are now not so much places of refuge for ascetics, as schools for the clergy, beginning with the alphabet and reaching to the highest theological knowledge.

It is true that the public school begins the instruction in religion, but the elementaries as well as the domestic occupations of adults are taught by private teachers chosen by the pupil. Nevertheless, every one, be he a boy five or six years old or a mature and even old person, is regarded as a member of the congregation and receives maintenance by becoming subject to the monastery laws. The principal subject taught is theological philosophy, which consists of five