Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/523

 L H O L H 503 fathers, Albert D Orville and John Grucber, started from Poking, and, by the way of Siningfu and the Koko-nur, reached Lhasa, where they stayed a month, and then went on through Nepal to India. The extracts from Grueber s narrative, given by Athanasius Kircher in his China Illustrate/, (Amst., 1667), are accompanied by a drawing of Potala which, though meagre, appears to be genuine, and is the only European representation in existence of that Tibetan Vatican. The founder of Potala died in 1682, and his death was followed by events which brought on a time of trouble. He had appointed as &quot; regent &quot; or civil administrator (Tiari, or Delia), one supposed to be his own natural son. This remarkable personage, Sangje Gyamtso, of great ambition and accomplishment, still renowned in Tibet as the author of some of the most valued works of the native literature, concealed the death of his master, asserting that the latter had retired, in mystic meditation or trance, to the upper chambers of the palace. The government continued to be carried on in the Lama s name by the regent, who leagued with Galdan Khan of Dzungaria against the Chinese (Mariclm) power. It was not till the great emperor Kang-hi was marching on Tibet that the death of the Lama, sixteen years before, was admitted. A solemn funeral was then performed, at which 108, 000 lamas assisted, and a new incarnation was set up in the person of a youth of fifteen. This young man was the scandal of the Lamaite Church in every kind of evil living and debauchery. But it was under him and the regent Sangje Gyamtso that the Potala palace attained its present scale of grandeur, and that most of the other great buildings of Lhasa were extended and embellished. In 1705-6 a Calmuck prince, Latsan Khan, great grandson of Gushi Khan, taking the renowned name of Jenghiz Khan, made himself master of Tibet, and put to death both the crafty regent and the dissolute lama whom he had set up. The Dzungarians crossed the northern desert in 1717, and stormed Lhasa, but were in turn driven out by the army of Kang-hi in 1720, and from that time the Chinese power, though, as elsewhere, it has been at times severely shaken, has never quite lost its hold of Tibet. It was in the midst of these troubled times (1708) that a Capuchin mission entered Lhasa. It was unfortunate in the death of its successive heads, and from about 1712 it was abandoned for several years, but after an interval the Capuchins reappeared, twelve in number, reaching Lhasa by Nepal in 1720. Nothing almost was heard of them till the head of the mission, P. Orazio della Penna, appeared at Rome in 1735 to report that nine were dead, and to ask reinforcement. He returned with nine more, carrying presents to the Grand Lama and the so-called &quot;king of Tibet.&quot; In 1742 he reported his safe arrival, and that the presents were well received. Called to Nepal, where there was a branch of the mission, he died there in 1747. We possess some of the results collected by this mission in an excellent short treatise on Tibet by P. Orazio himself, as well as in the extraordinary hodge-podge of crude philo logy, rubbish, and valuable facts (like fossils imbedded in a bank of mud), the Alphabctum Tibctanum of the Augustine monk Ant. Giorgi (Roiiic, 1762). The mission seems to have been expelled from Tibet in 1754, and found refuge for a time in Nepal. Some fifty volumes, the relics of the mission library, were in 1847 recovered from Lhasa by Mr Bryan Hodgson, through the courtesy of the Grand Lama himself, and were transmitted as an offering to Pope Pius IX., then in the first bloom of reputation. In 1716, moreover, two Jesuits, P. Ipolito Desideri of Pistoia, and P. Freyre. a Portuguese, reached Lhasa by way of Kashmir, Ladak, and the enormous journey from Ladak by the holy lakes and the valley of the Tsanpu. Desideri remained at Lhasa till April 1721, witnessing the capture of Lhasa successively by Dzungar and Chinese. Of the moderation of the latter, and their abstinence from all out rage or plunder, he speaks highly. His departure was due to con troversies between the Jesuits and Capuchins at Rome, which caused an order to be issued for his retirement from Tibet. An interesting letter from him, dated April 10, 1716, is printed in the Lcttrcs tidi- fiantfs, lien. xv. , but a large MS. volume of his observations dur ing his residence in Tibet is still unpublished. The next European visitor w.is Samuel Van do Putte of Flushing, an LL. D. of Leyden, whose thirst for travel carried him through India to Lhasa, where lie is said to have resided a long time, to have acquired the language, and to have become intimate with some of the lamas. After travelling from Lhasa to Peking with a lama mission he returned, again by Lhasa, to India, and was an eye-witness of the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1737. Unhappily he ordered his papers to be burnt after his death, and the knowledge that such a traveller must have accumulated died with him. We pass on to 1811-12 when the first (and last) English visit to Lhasa occurred. The traveller was Thomas Manning, a Cambridge man of Caius College, who had been long devoted to Chinese studies, the &quot; friend M.&quot; of Charles Lamb, from whom &quot; Elia &quot; professes to have got that trans lation of a Chinese MS. which furnished the immortal dissertation on roast pig. After residing some years at Canton, Manning went to Calcutta, bent on reaching the interior of China through Tibet, since from the seaboard it was sealed. He actually did reach Lhasa, stayed there about iive months, and had several interviews with tlit 1 Dalai Lama, but was compelled to return to India. He never published anything regarding his journey, and the very fact of its occurrence was known to few, when his narrative was printed, through the praiseworthy zeal of Mr C. Markham, in 1876. The man had given the reins to his own eccentricities till he seemed to have lost all power of seriousness, and the account, though containing some passages of great interest, is most disappointing. The next travellers to reach Lhasa were Hue and Gabet, French Lazarist priests, who travelled from China the route followed by Grueber and by Van de Putte, via Siningfu, and reached Lhasa 29th January 1846. On the 15th of March they were sent off under escort by the rugged road to Sz -chuen. Hue s book, Souvenirs d un Voyage, &c., is probably still well known, and deserves to be so, for it is one of the most delightful among books of travel. Hue was indeed, not only without science, perhaps without accurate know ledge of any kind, but also without that geographical sense which sometimes enables a traveller to bring back valuable contributions to geographical knowledge though unable to make instrumental observations. He was, however, amazingly clever as a narrator and sketcher of character ; and, in this his first work, his ambition to shine had not gained the upper hand as it did fatally in later works. It was Ke-shen, a well-known Chinese statesman, disgraced for making peace with the English at Canton in 1841, and who was then on a special deputation to Lhasa, who ostensibly expelled them. The Tibetan regent, with his enlightened and kindly spirit, is painted by Hue in most attractive colours, and Mr Mark- ham expresses strongly the opinion that the native authorities were most Milling to receive strangers, whilst the jealousy that excluded them was Chinese only. Recent experiences of attempts to enter Tibet contradict this view. The lamas, whose rule seems to have become more and more grasping and oppressive, appear to be sen sible that their system would easily fall to pieces, and are violently opposed to the passage of Europeans across the Tibetan frontier. Our latest narrative of a visit to Lhasa is that of the late Pundit Nain Singh, trained as an explorer in the Indian survey department. He reached the city in the course of two most remarkable journeys. In the first, after an ineffectual attempt by Nepal, he travelled by the Manasarowar Lake, and the road thence eastward, parallel to the course of the Tsanpu, reaching Lhasa 10th January 1866, and leaving it 21st April 1867. On the second journey (1874) he started from Ladak, crossing the vast and elevated plateau by the Tengri-nor and other great lakes, and again reaching Lhasa 18th November. Between these two journeys Lhasa had also been visited &amp;gt;j another native explorer in 1872. l Nain Singh, by his extraordinary surveys, and by repeated observations of latitude on his first visit, has fixed for us the position of Lhasa. But he also has given an account of his journeys, and of his residence there, which, though brief, is full of intelligence and interest, and appears to be thoroughly trust worthy. This enterprising and deserving man was, on the comple tion of his journey in 1875, rewarded by the Indian Government with a pension and grant of land, and afterwards received the gold medal of the Roy. Geog. Soc. and the Companionship of the Star of India. He died early in 1882. See Koeppen, Die Lamaische Hierarchic und Kirchc (Berlin, 1859), being the 2d vol. of Die Religion des Buddha ; Giorgi, Alpha- betum Tibctanum, Rome, 1762 ; Hue, Souvenirs d tin Voyage, &c., Paris, 1850, vol. ii. ; Dcsc. du Tubct (Wei-tsang-thou-chy), edited by Klaproth, Paris, 1831; Pundit Nain Singh (Colonel Montgomerie s Report) in Journ. Roy. Gcog. Soc., vol. xxxviii. 129 sq.; Tibet (Bogle and Manning), by C. Markham, C.B. (2d cd. 1879); MS. narrative of P. Ipolito Desideri (copy in possession of Hakluyt Soc.). Also articles, by Dr A. Campbell in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xxiv. p. 215 ; by the late Wilfrid Heeley, B.C.S., in Cole. Review, vol. lix. p. 1 ; by Col. H. Yule, in JHackicood s Mag., March 1852, and in the Times, May 15, 1876 ; paper on &quot;Chinese Tea Trade with Tibet,&quot; by E. C. Baber, printed in Siqypt. to Gazette of India, November 8, 1879; &quot;The Silver Coinage of Tibet,&quot; by M. Terrien de la Couperie, in Numism. Chron., 3d ser., vol. i. (II. Y.) L HOPITAL, or I/HOSPITAL, MICHEL DE (c. 1505-1573), chancellor of France from 15GO to 15G8, was born near Aigueperse in Auvergne (now Puy-de-D6me) about the year 15U5. His father, who was physician and comptroller of accounts to the constable Charles de Bourbon, sent him to study at Toulouse, whence at the age of eighteen he was driven by the evil fortunes of the family patron, after suffering arrest and imprisonment, to Padua, in which university he studied law and letters for about six years. On the completion of his studies he joined his father at Bologna, and afterwards, the constable having died, went to Rome in the suite of Charles V. For some time he held the position of auditor of the rota at Rome, but in 1534, encouraged by the fair promises of Cardinal de 1 See Walker s Report for 1873-74.