Page:Folk Tales from Tibet (1906).djvu/158

Rh was once an old Lama who lived in a small house at the very top of a hill in a lonely part of Tibet. He was a very holy man and spent his time entirely in religious contemplation, and the only person whom he allowed about his house was a certain young man of low birth, who acted as his Servant and used to cook his meals and perform other household duties. This man was a great character in his way. He was an amusing fellow and very fond of his joke, but was quite unreliable and incapable of performing any regular work.

Now the old Lama's diet, in accordance with the tenets of his religion, was a very small one, and he refrained entirely from taking the life of any living creature. So his food consisted chiefly of barley-flour, butter, and so on, and he abstained from meat of any kind. This mode of life, however, was not at all pleasing to the Servant, Rin-dzin, who had a healthy appetite and greatly missed his daily dish of meat, and he was constantly trying to persuade the Lama to allow him to kill a sheep or a goat in order that he