Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/146

 From this gateway a road leads south to the Kiki-naga, where the Grand Lama’s mother resides, while another runs westward to the court of the Tashi lama, or Labrang gyal-tsan tonpo.

It was dusk when we had finished our walk around the monastery, and lamps were already burning in many of the houses to bid farewell to the old year.

February 19, New Year’s Day. —The preparations for the day’s celebration commenced before dawn, and the noise of the blowing of the kitchen fires never ceased, as there were many dishes and dainties to be got ready for the dinner the minister was to give to a large party of nobles and incarnate lamas.

When the minister came back from visiting the Grand Lama, he told me that the latter had inquired about me, as he had some translation into Sanskrit which he desired I should make for him. "His holiness," the minister said, "has given me a hundred and twenty titles of chapters of a work he has written, and wishes you to put them into Sanskrit for him." The minister further said that when I had finished this work he would present me to the Grand Lama.

The next day the minister was called to Dongtse by the illness of the Dahpon Phala’s wife; his prayers, it was hoped, would restore her to health. About a week after his departure he was suddenly recalled by the Grand Lama, with whom he had, on March 3, a long conference. The Dalai lama’s Government had protested against the Tashi lama having taken the vows of monkhood from the Sakhya Pan-chen, a red-hat lama, the hierarch of the Sakhya school. The Dalai lama charged him with encouraging heresy, if not with being a heretic himself. It was for this reason that the Tashi lama had not been invited to ordain the supreme ruler of Tibet, for, belonging to the Gelugpa or yellow-hat school, the Dalai lama could have no connection with the school of which the Sakhya Pan-chen was the chief.

On March 4 the minister ordained some forty monks gelong. Formerly the Grand Lama used to perform this ceremony himself, but he has now delegated a large portion of his religious duties, including ordination, to the minister.

Two days after this the minister was again asked to go to Dongtse, as the wife of the Dahpon was still ill, and he (the Dahpon) had