Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/371

Rh "Bulletin Hist. Phil. de l'Ac. des Sciences de S. Petersburg," iv. No. 22) an interesting account of the bargain he struck with certain Mongolian priests at Kiakhtu, on the Russo-Chinese frontier. It was their great aim to multiply this ejaculation a hundred million times, a feat they had never been able to accomplish. They showed him a sheet which was the utmost reach of their efforts, but the sum total of which was only 250. The Baron sent to St. Petersburg and had a sheet printed, in which the words were repeated seventy times one way and forty-one times the other, giving 2870 times, but being printed in red they counted for 25 times as many, or 71,750; then he had twenty-four such sheets rolled together, making 1,793,750, so that about seventy revolutions of the barrel would give the required number. In return for this help the Mongolian Lama gave him a complete collection of the sacred writings in the Tibetian language; Tibetian being the educated, or at least the sacred, language of Mongolia.

Concerning the meaning of this ejaculation, Abbé Huc has the following:—"According to the opinion of the celebrated Orientalist Klaproth, the Om mani padme houm is merely the Tibetian transcription of a Sanskrit formula brought from India to Tibet with the introduction of Buddhism and letters This formula has in the Sanskrit a distinct and complete meaning which cannot be traced in the Tibetian idiom. Om is among the Hindoos, the mystic name of the Divinity, and all their prayers begin with it. It is composed of A, standing for Vishnu, O, for Siva, and M, for Brahma. This mystic particle is also equivalent to the interjection O! It expresses a profound religious conviction, and is a sort of act of faith; mani signifies a gem, a precious thing; padma, the lotus, padme, vocative case. Lastly, houm is a particle expressing a wish, and is equivalent to the use of the word Amen. The literal sense then of this phrase is

"Om mani padme houm." O the gem in the lotus. Amen.

In the Ramajana, where Vasichta destroys the sons of Visvamitra he is said to do so by his hungkara, his breathing forth of his desire of vengeance, but literally by his breathing the interjection 'hum.'

"The Buddhists of Tibet and Mongolia, however, have tortured their imagination to find a mystic interpretation of each of these six syllables. They say the doctrine contained in them is so immense that a life is