The Gonpos Contain From Two Up To Three
Hundred Lamas.
These are not cloistered, and their duties take them
freely among the people, with whom they are closely linked, a younger
son in every family being a monk.
Every act in trade, agriculture,
and social life needs the sanction of sacerdotalism, whatever exists
of wealth is in the gonpos, which also have a monopoly of learning,
and 11,000 monks, linked with the people, yet ruling all affairs of
life and death and beyond death, are connected closely by education,
tradition, and authority with Lhassa.
Passing along faces of precipices and over waterless plateaux of
blazing red gravel - 'waste places,' truly - the journey was cheered by
the meeting of red and yellow lamas in companies, each lama twirling
his prayer-cylinder, abbots, and skushoks (the latter believed to be
incarnations of Buddha) with many retainers, or gay groups of
priestly students, intoning in harsh and high-pitched monotones, Aum
mani padne hun. And so past fascinating monastic buildings, through
crystal torrents rushing over red rock, through flaming ravines, on
rock ledges by scaffolded paths, camping in the afternoons near
friendly villages on oases of irrigated alluvium, and down the Wanla
water by the steepest and narrowest cleft ever used for traffic, I
reached the Indus, crossed it by a wooden bridge where its broad,
fierce current is narrowed by rocks to a width of sixty-five feet,
and entered Ladak proper. A picturesque fort guards the bridge, and
there travellers inscribe their names and are reported to Leh.
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