Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/279

 into the image, but while so doing the flames of the pyre surrounded him, and all thought he was dead; but lo! after an hour or so he came out of the flames dressed in rich satins, and with not even so much as a hair of his head scorched.

Panchen Jimed wang-gyal, or one of the other sons of the late Panchen, will succeed him as ruler of Sakya. One son is an incarnate lama and superior of the Tanag Donphug lamasery, but he is obliged to reside continually at Sakya on account of a rule which prescribes that when the re-embodiment of a lama takes place in Sakya, the reincarnation cannot return to the locality he occupied in his preceding existence. The names of the four other sons of the deceased Panchen will shortly be sent to Lhasa, and the Nachung oracle will decide who shall become the ruler of the principality.

These princely lamas wear long hair, ordinarily plaited in two queues hanging down their backs and tied at the ends with white cotton handkerchiefs. Over their ears they wear covers of gold studded with turquoises and emeralds, and almost reaching to their shoulders. To the lower part of these are appended earrings.

In the Lhakhang chenpo (or great temple) are five seats of equal height, on which the princes take their places when conducting religious services; the one reserved to the hierarch remains vacant so long as the successor to the title has not been chosen.

Under the hierarch there is a Shape, or minister, who attends to all the temporal affairs of Sakya. The monks are divided into two orders, according to the locality of their birth; those from Tibet proper forming one set ruled by a Gekor, and having their cells near the great temple, and those from Khams (or Eastern Tibet), also with a Gekor over them, who live in the town.

As to the great library of Sakya, it is on shelves along the walls of the great hall of the Lhakhang chen-po. There are preserved here many volumes written in gold letters; the pages are six feet long by eighteen inches in breadth. On the margin of each page are illuminations, and the first four volumes have in them pictures of the thousand Buddhas. These books are bound with iron. They were prepared under orders of the Emperor Kublai, and presented to Phag-pa on his second visit to Peking.