Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/44

xxxvi known to us, by a Mongol term, signifying 'The Ocean;' the other at Tashilunpo ('The Hill of Grace') or Digarchi, styled in Tibetan the Panchhan Rinbochhi, or 'Most Excellent Jewel.' In rank, sanctity, and spiritual dignity these may be regarded as equal; but in extent of temporal dominion the Lhassa Pontiff vastly surpasses his colleague.

These two Princes of the Church are in a manner indefeasible. Whenever one or other shuffles off this mortal coil he proceeds to resume it again under the form of a child born to succeed to the dignity, and indicated by miraculous signs as the reincarnation of the departed Pontiff. This is the system of supernatural succession of those reborn saints whom the Mongols term Khubilghân.

The history of its institution is buried in obscurity; but the old Red-cap hierarchy, at least in some of its sects, had established the hereditary character of the higher ecclesiastical dignities. To preserve this was impossible under the celibate enforced by Tsongkaba; and the system of succession by pretended reincarnation may have been a scheme artfully devised to preserve union among the Yellow sect, who might easily have been split by the discords and intrigues of an elective papacy, as those causes again and again split the Catholic world, until it came under the compressive force exercised upon it by the existence of seceding Churches. However that may be, it came to pass, sooner or later, that not only those two chief pontiffs, but also the secondary and tertiary dignitaries of the hierarchy came to hand on their succession in the same supernatural manner.

The transmigration of souls, or what is most simply described by that expression, is well known to be a prominent doctrine of all Buddhism. Among the northern Buddhists also, after many centuries, had arisen a doctrine (derived probably from the Hindu Avatâras) which represented the Bodhisatvas (i.e. potential or designate Buddhas, awaiting in a celestial repose the time of their accomplished Buddhahood) as occasionally and voluntarily assuming human form. Thence by a third step Lamaism evolved its