Amitābha, who occupies the higher place in the mythology of the Great Vehicle, would be superior to the latter, as the spiritual representative of Avalokiteśvara. But practically the Dalai Lāma, owing to his position in the capital,[1] has the political supremacy, and is actually called the Gyalpo Rinpotshe, “the glorious king”—his companion being content with the title Pantshen Rinpotshe, “the glorious teacher.” When either of them dies it is necessary for the other to ascertain in whose body the celestial being whose outward form has been dissolved has been pleased again to incarnate himself. For that purpose the names of all male children born just after the death of the deceased Great Lāma are laid before his survivor. He chooses three out of the whole number; their names are thrown into a golden casket provided for that purpose by a former emperor of China. The Chutuktus, or abbots of the great monasteries, then assemble, and after a week of prayer, the lots are drawn in their presence and in presence of the surviving Great Lāma and of the Chinese political resident. The child whose name is first drawn is the future Great Lāma; the other two receive each of them 500 pieces of silver. The Chutuktus just mentioned correspond in many respects to the Roman cardinals. Like the Great Lāmas, they bear the title of Rinpotshe or Glorious, and are looked upon as incarnations of one or other of the celestial Bodhisats of the Great Vehicle mythology. Their number varies from ten to a hundred; and it is uncertain whether the honour is inherent in the abbacy of certain of the greatest cloisters, or whether the Dalai Lāma exercises the right of choosing them. Under these high officials of the Tibetan hierarchy there come the Chubil Khāns, who fill the post of abbot to the lesser monasteries, and are also incarnations. Their number is very large; there are few monasteries in Tibet or in Mongolia which do not claim to possess one of these living Buddhas. Besides these mystical persons there are in the Tibetan church other ranks and degrees, corresponding to the deacon, full priest, dean and doctor of divinity in the West. At the great yearly festival at Lhasa they make in the cathedral an imposing array, not much less magnificent than that of the clergy in Rome; for the ancient simplicity of dress has disappeared in the growing differences of rank, and each division of the spiritual army is distinguished in Tibet, as in the West, by a special uniform. The political authority of the Dalai Lāma is confined to Tibet itself, but he is the acknowledged head also of the Buddhist church throughout Mongolia and China. He has no supremacy over his co-religionists in Japan, and even in China there are many Buddhists who are not practically under his control or influence.
The best work on Lāmāism is still Köppen’s Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche (Berlin, 1859). See also Bushell, “The Early History of Tibet,” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1879–1880, vol. xii.; Sanang Setzen’s History of the East Mongols (in Mongolian, translated into German by J. Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen); “Analyse du Kandjur,” by M. Léon Feer, in Annales du Musée Gaimet (1881); Schott, Ueber den Buddhismus in Hoch-Asien; Gutzlaff, Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches; Hue and Gabet, Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Tibet, et la Chine (Paris, 1858); Pallas’s Sammlung historischer Nachrichten über die Mongolischen Völkerschaften; Bābu Sarat Chunder Das’s “Contributions on the Religion and History of Tibet,” in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, 1881; L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895); A. H. Francke, History of Western Tibet (London, 1907); A. Grünwedel, Mythologie des Buddhismus in Tibet und der Mongolei (Berlin, 1900). (T. W. R. D.)
LAMALOU-LES-BAINS, a watering-place of southern France
in the department of Hérault, 5312 m. W. of Montpellier by rail,
in a valley of the southern Cévennes. Pop. (1906) 720. The
waters, which are both hot and cold, are used in cases of rheumatism,
sciatica, locomotor ataxy and nervous maladies.
LAMA-MIAO, or Dolon-nor, a city of the province of Chih-li,
China, 150 m. N. of Peking, in a barren sandy plain watered by
the Urtingol, a tributary of the Shang-tu-ko. The town proper,
almost exclusively occupied by Chinese, is about a mile in length
by half a mile in breadth, has narrow and dirty streets, and contains
a population of about 26,000. Unlike the ordinary Chinese
town of the same rank, it is not walled. A busy trade is carried
on between the Chinese and the Mongolians, who bring in their
cattle, sheep, camels, hides and wool to barter for tea, tobacco,
cotton and silk. At some distance from the Chinese town lies the
Mongolian quarter, with two groups of lama temples and villages
occupied by about 2300 priests. Dr Williamson (Journeys in
North China, 1870) described the chief temple as a huge oblong
building with an interior not unlike a Gothic church. Lama-miao
is the seat of a manufactory of bronze idols and other
articles of ritual, which find their way to all parts of Mongolia
and Tibet. The craftsmen work in their own houses.
LAMAR, LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS (1825–1893), American statesman and judge, was born at the old “Lamar Homestead,” in Putnam county, Georgia, on the 17th of September 1825. His father, Lucius Q. C. Lamar (1797–1834), was an able lawyer, a judge of the superior court of Georgia, and the compiler of the Laws of Georgia from 1810 to 1819 (1821). In 1845 young Lamar graduated from Emory College (Oxford, Ga.), and in 1847 was admitted to the bar. In 1849 he removed to Oxford, Mississippi, and in 1850–1852 was adjunct professor of mathematics in the state university. In 1852 he removed to Covington, Ga., to practise law, and in 1853 was elected a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. In 1855 he returned to Mississippi, and two years later became a member of the National House of Representatives, where he served until December 1860, when he withdrew to become a candidate for election to the “secession” convention of Mississippi. He was elected to the convention, and drafted for it the Mississippi ordinance of secession. In the summer of 1860 he had accepted an appointment to the chair of ethics and metaphysics in the university of Mississippi, but, having been appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Army in the spring of 1861, he resigned his professorship. The colonel of his regiment (Nineteenth Mississippi) was killed early in the battle of Williamsburg, on the 5th of May 1862, and the command then fell to Lamar, but in October he resigned from the army. In November 1862 he was appointed by President Jefferson Davis special commissioner of the Confederacy to Russia; but he did not proceed farther than Paris, and his mission was soon terminated by the refusal of the Confederate Senate to confirm his appointment. In 1866 he was again appointed to the chair of ethics and metaphysics in the university of Mississippi, and in the next year was transferred to the chair of law, but in 1870, Republicans having become trustees of the university upon the readmission of the state into the Union, he resigned. From 1873 to 1877 he was again a Democratic representative in Congress; from 1877 to 1885 he was a United States senator; from 1885 to January 1888 he was secretary of the interior; and from 1888 until his death at Macon, Ga., on the 23rd of January 1893, he was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Congress Lamar fought the silver and greenback craze and argued forcibly against the protective tariff; in the department of the interior he introduced various reforms; and on the Supreme Court bench his dissenting opinion in the Neagle Case (based upon a denial that certain powers belonging to Congress, but not exercised, were by implication vested in the department of justice) is famous. But he is perhaps best known for the part he took after the Civil War in helping to effect a reconciliation between the North and the South. During the early secession movement he strove to arouse the white people of the South from their indifference, declaring that secession alone could save them from a doom similar to that of the former whites of San Domingo. He probably never changed his convictions as to the righteousness of the “lost cause”; but he accepted the result of the war as a final settlement of the differences leading to it, and strove to restore the South in the Union, and to effect the reunion of the nation in feeling as well as in government. This is in part seen from such speeches as his eulogy on Charles Sumner (27th of April 1874), his leadership in reorganizing the Democratic
