Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/520

500 LHASA

at the west of the city; the Kontyaling, about a mile west of the city, at the foot of a low isolated laill called Chapochi. Three miles south, beyond the river, is the Chochuling. These four convents are known as "The Four Ling."

Leaving the city by the side of the Ramoch'hé, we see on our left the famous Potala with its many edifices crowning and seeming to grow out of a rocky hill, which rises like an island from the plain. It forms altogether a majestic mountain of building. At the south base of the rock is a large space inclosed by walls and gates, with great porticoes on the inner side. This swarms with lamas, its nooks with beggars basking in the sun. A series of tolerably easy staircases, broken by intervals of gentle ascent, leads to the summit of the rock. The whole width of this is occupied by the palace. The central part of this group of buildings rises in a vast quadrangular mass, in four stories, to a great height, terminating in a gilt canopy similar, it would seem, to that on the Labrang. Here on the lofty terrace is the Grand Lama's hall of audience, and from this great height he looks down upon the crowds of his votaries far below, thronging the plain, and streaming to kneel before the sacred hill. The monastic buildings attached to the palace temple are said to contain cells for ten thousand monks. Other palatial buildings, towers, chapels, chodtens (chaityas), pavilions, gleaming with gold and silver, Buddhas and other idols, cluster round and crown the three peaks of Potala. The palace itself is said to be painted externally with red and white stripes. The walls and ceilings of all the chief apartments and temples are covered with rich silks. We give an engraving of it (fig. 4), extracted from a Chinese view of Lhasa, published by Klaproth in the work quoted at the end. The Potala has every appearance of having been drawn from the reality. Two avenues bordered with trees of considerable size lead from the city to the foot of Potala. "You see there constantly," says Huc, "a great number of foreign pilgrims, passing between their fingers the beads of their long Buddhist rosaries, with lamas of the court splendidly attired, and mounted on richly caparisoned horses. There reigns in the neighbourhood of the Potala great and incessant movement; but for the most part everybody is grave and silent; religious thoughts appear to occupy the minds of all." It would seem that between the palace and the city runs a stream which is crossed by a bridge called "The Bridge of Glazed Tiles."

Fig. 4. – Potala, the Palace-Temple of the Grand Lama.

On the north side of the rock a wide and easy road descends winding. By this, which has a parapet along the edge, it is lawful to ride. Not far from the base is a garden-palace in the middle of a lake which is surrounded by trees and shrubberies. This palace, called Lu-khang, is described by Desideri as of attractive style, and circular in form, with a loggia or portico running all round, and adorned with paintings. Here the dissolute Lama who built it, at the end of the 17th century, used to give himself up to dissipation with the women of Lhasa. Several other villas or gardens of the Tibetan pope are mentioned; in one of them the Panch'hen-Rinpoch'he (or Teshu Lama) is received when he visits Lhasa, and the two living Buddhas drink tea together there. It is in the numerous gardens round the town that those large trees grow of which Huc speaks as giving Lhasa such a green girdle of foliage. There is no natural wood.

No country in the world – not even Spain or Italy in the last century – has so abounded in convents and monks as Tibet. The district of Lhasa alone is said to contain thirty great convents, besides many smaller establishments, and a notice of Lhasa would be incomplete without some mention at least of the great monastic establishments which stand within a few miles of the city, and constitute an essential element in its existence. These are not single masses of building like the great convents of Europe. The temple (Lha-khang) is the focus of the whole. Bound this are gathered numerous houses detached from one another, though not far apart, and generally three stories in height. In each of these are various apartments, each assigned to a monk of some authority and dignity, with several younger members or novices under his immediate direction. Each house has a little garden, and a quantity of vases in which plants are grown. Library, storehouse, hostel, occupy other buildings, and a varying multitude of the peculiar Buddhist objects of adoration which we know as dagobas or chaityas, as well as of masts with sacred nags and streamers. The whole is usually enclosed in a lofty and solid wall. These establishments have undoubtedly a vast population, though we can hardly accept specific figures, in which indeed authorities do not agree. Huc says the inmates of each of the three great convents which we are about to name amounted to