Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/56

Rh seated, with the right hand resting on the knee, the left on the lap and holding the alms dish, the body painted yellow, or gilt, and the hair short and curly, and painted blue. They are of all sizes, and there are other images of beings connected with Buddhistic ideas.

The services consist of recitations and chanting of the Sutras or precepts, and rules of discipline, to the sound of musical instruments, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and charik shells. The tunes are impressive and solemn, incense is burnt during the services, and there are offerings of fruits and grain to Buddha and to the Buddhisatwas, especially to Avalokiteswara, who is incarnate in the Dalai Lama. Mystical sentences and titles of Buddha are also recited. The bell is used during the performance of service; and the prayer wheels — metal cylinders, containing printed prayers in rolls with the axes prolonged to form handles — are in constant use, not only during the service, but on every occasion, being fixed in rows on the walls of temples, near villages, and in streams to be turned by water. The prayer wheels have been in use for more than a thousand years, for they are mentioned by the pilgrim Fa-Hian.

The Tibetans possess a vast literature, including all the Buddhist canon of Scripture translated from the Sanscrit, the 'Tripitaka,' or three baskets of precepts, and other works, one list of which has been given by Csoma de Körös. For many centuries they have known the art of printing, by means of engraved stereotyped wooden blocks, which last for a century. Thus not only prayers and invocations are printed on sheets of Tibetan paper made from the Daphne cannabina, and on