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498 and would bring the whole world under his sway, and under the domination of the Buḍḍhist faith. Now Kashmīr and the places near it are districts of great natural beauty and delightful situation, and Buḍḍhism once attained a high prosperity in them, before they were subdued by the Muhammadan conquerors. This would-be "prophet" must have concluded a priori that as the faith had once prevailed there, therefore it must one day recover its original prosperity. Starting from this peculiar surmise the prophet jumped to the conclusion that the place, from its advantageous natural position, must in some remote future make its power felt through the world, and that this would be achieved by some powerful prince.

This announcement alone was not sufficiently attractive to awake the interest of the Tibetans, and so the unborn prince was represented as a holy incarnation of the founder of the national religion of Tibet, Tsong-kha-pa, and his Ministers were to be incarnations of his principal disciples, as Jam yan Choeje, Chamba Choeje and Gendun Tub. The prophet went into further details and gave the name of the future great country as "Chang Shambhala;" Chang denoting "northward" and "Shambhala" the name of a certain city or place, if I remember rightly, to the north of Kashmir. With a precision worthy of Swift's pen, the prophet located the new Buḍḍhist empire of the future at a distance some three thousand miles north-west of Buḍḍhagayā in Hinḍūsṭān, and he even described at some length the route to be taken in reaching the imaginary country. This Utopian account has obtained belief from a section of the Tibetan priest-class, and some of them are said to have undertaken a quest for this future empire, so that they might at least have the satisfaction of inspecting its cradle. Now the Tibetan prophet bequeathed us this important forecast with the idea that when the Tibetan religion