Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/41

Rh especially that of the so-called 'incarnate Buddhas.' Prejevalsky's allusions to the subject are somewhat crude and loose, insomuch that, hard matter as it is to grasp, and especially to put briefly, I must make the attempt, by aid of Koeppen's admirable book.

'Lamaism,' says Koeppen, 'is the Romanism of the Buddhist Church. The thorough-going development of the priestly power, both in itself and in its relations towards the laity, and, closely bound up with that, the erection of an outward, visible, and sovereign Church and ecclesiastical State, exercising rule over people and provinces;—these form the essential character by which Romanism is distinguished from the older Christianity, and by which Lamaism is distinguished from the old Buddhism of India. Wherever these have in other respects departed from the earlier forms, whether in religious practice, in discipline, or in worship, these departures have been, in the one case as in the other, but as means to an end.'

The similarities between Lamaism and Roman Catholicism, moreover, extend so far beyond general characteristics of this kind, run into so many particulars, are often so striking, and sometimes so grotesque, that they have been contemplated with some dismay and perplexity by zealous missionaries of the Roman Church, from the Middle Ages downwards to our own. Indeed, it has been alleged,—but, be it said, it is an allegation which I have endeavoured to verify without success,—that Père Huc himself, who had noted some of the superficial resemblances with his usual neatness of expression, was, on his return to Europe, astonished to find his book in consequence registered in the Index Prohibitorum of an ungrateful Congregation. The details of resemblance between those peculiarities of Roman Catholicism which seem to persons outside of its pale to have so little in common with the spirit of the New Testament, and the peculiarities of this other system, which, perhaps under analogous influences,

VOL. I.