- There is no exaggeration in this number. Turner speaks of 2500
monks in one Tibetan convent. Huc mentions Chorchi, north of the Great
Wall, as containing 2000; and Kunbum, where he and Gabet spent several
months, on the borders of Shensi and Tibet, had nearly 4000. The
missionary itinerary from Nepal to L'hasa given by Giorgi, speaks of a
group of convents at a place called Brephung, which formerly contained
10,000 inmates, and at the time of the journey (about 1700) still
contained 5000, including attendants. Dr. Campbell gives a list of twelve
chief convents in L'hasa and its vicinity (not including the Potala or
Residence of the Grand Lama), of which one is said to have 7500 members,
resident and itinerary. Major Montgomerie's Pandit gives the same convent
7700 Lamas. In the great monastery at L'hasa called Labrang, they show a
copper kettle holding more than 100 buckets, which was used to make tea
for the Lamas who performed the daily temple service. The monasteries are
usually, as the text says, like small towns, clustered round the great
temples. That represented at p. 224 is at Jehol, and is an imitation of
the Potala at L'hasa. (Huc's Tartary, etc., pp. 45, 208, etc.; Alph.
Tibetan, 453; J. A. S. B. XXIV. 219; J. R. G. S. XXXVIII. 168;
Koeppen, II. 338.) [La Geographie, II. 1901, pp. 242-247, has an
article by Mr. J. Deniker, La Premiere Photographie de Lhassa, with a
view of Potala, in 1901, from a photograph by M. O. Norzunov; it is
interesting to compare it with the view given by Kircher in 1670. - H. C.]
["The monasteries with numbers of monks, who, as M. Polo asserts, behaved
decently, evidently belonged to Chinese Buddhists, ho-shang; in Kublai's
time they had two monasteries in Shangtu, in the north-east and north-west
parts of the town." (Palladius, 29.) Rubruck (Rockhill's ed. p. 145)
says: "All the priests (of the idolaters) shave their heads, and are
dressed in saffron colour, and they observe chastity from the time they
shave their heads, and they live in congregations of one or two
hundred." - H. C.]
[Illustration: Monastery of Lamas.]
NOTE 14. - There were many anomalies in the older Lamaism, and it
permitted, at least in some sects of it which still subsist, the marriage
of the clergy under certain limitations and conditions. One of Giorgi's
missionaries speaks of a Lama of high hereditary rank as a spiritual
prince who marries, but separates from his wife as soon as he has a son,
who after certain trials is deemed worthy to be his successor. ["A good
number of Lamas were married, as M. Polo correctly remarks; their wives
were known amongst the Chinese, under the name of Fan-sao." (Ch'ue keng
lu, quoted by Palladius, 28.) - H. C.] One of the "reforms" of
Tsongkhapa was the absolute prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and in
this he followed the institutes of the oldest Buddhism.
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