Page:Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet (1879).djvu/49

xlviii called the Gesub Rimboché, or Nomen-khan. The death of the first Dalai Lama was concealed at Lhasa for no less than sixteen years, by an ambitious Nomen-khan, and two false Lamas were set up afterwards. In 1717 an army of Dsungarians, or Eleuths, stormed Lhasa, and the Nomen-khan was murdered; but at length, in 1720, Kang-hi, the Emperor of China, exerted his power to restore order, and the true Dalai Lama, named Lobsang Kalsang, was duly installed. Two Chinese Political Residents, or Ambas, with an adequate force, were, however, permanently established at Lhasa, at the same time.

There is another incarnate Buddhisatwa, in the person of a Grand Lama, whose influence extends over Mongolia, but whose existence has generally been ignored in English histories of Tibetan Buddhism. This is the Taranath Lama, whose succession commenced in the middle of the sixteenth century certainly, if not earlier; for a Taranath Lama, who was born in 1575, completed a work on Buddhism, in the Tibetan language, in 1608. The Taranath Lama was also known as the Je-tsun-tampa, or, according to the Abbé Huc, Guison-tamba. Huc tells us that the Guison-tamba formerly had his seat at a place called Koukou-Khotou, or "Blue Town," beyond the Great Wall of China, and near the northern bend of the Yellow River. When the Emperor Kang-hi (1662-1723) was engaged in his campaign against the Kalmuks, or Eleuths, he paid a visit to the Guison-tamba, and owing to some fancied want of respect on the part of the holy man, one of the Emperor's officers drew