Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/105

Rh religious belief the same place that images or pictures of saints fill in the Russian system. From the appearance, however, of many of the idols in the lamasery collection, I concluded that a burkhán might represent an evil as well as a beneficent spiritual power. The word burkhán has long been used all over Mongolia in the general sense of a sacred or supernatural being. Dr. Erman believes that "the Mongolian burkhán is identical with the Indian Buddha." The burkháns in the lamasery of Goose Lake were crowded together on the shelves of the cases as closely as possible, and apparently no attempt had been made to arrange them in any kind of order. They varied in height from two inches to a foot, and were made generally of brass, bronze, or stone. In one corner of the kumírnia, or idol-room, stood a prayer-wheel, consisting of a large cylinder mounted on a vertical axis and supposed to be filled with written prayers or devotional formulas. I did not see it used, but in the Ónonski lamasery, which we visited a few weeks later, we found an enormous prayer-wheel which had a building to itself and which was in constant use.

From the idol-room we went into the upper stories of the temple, where there were more burkháns as well as a large collection of curious Mongolian and Thibetan books. If we had not been told that the objects last named were books, we never should have recognized them. They were rectangular sheets of thin Chinese paper twelve or fourteen inches in length by about four in width, pressed together between two thin strips of wood or pasteboard, and bound round with flat silken cords or strips of bright-colored cloth. They looked a little like large, well-filled bill-files tied with ribbons or crimson braid. The leaves were printed only on one side, and the characters were arranged in vertical columns. In a few of the volumes that I examined an