A CHABERON, OR LIVING BUDDHA.

AFTER Some days' march we came to a small Lama convent, richly built, and in a picturesque and romantic situation, which we passed without stopping. But we had not gone more than a gun-shot distance before we heard a horse galloping behind us, and, turning our heads, perceived a Lama, who was coming eagerly towards us; Brothers," he cried, 66 are you in such a hurry that you cannot rest yourselves for a day, and pay your adorations to our saint?" "Yes! we are in a hurry; we are on a long journey towards the West.'

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"I knew by your faces you were not Mongols; I know you are from the West; but since you have a long journey to go, you would do well to prostrate yourselves before our saint; that will bring you good fortune."

"We do not prostrate ourselves before any man ; the true faith of the West is opposed to this practice."

"Our saint is not a mere man; you do not think, perhaps, that in our small convent we have the happiness to possess a Chaberon—a living Buddha! Two years ago, he deigned to descend from the holy mountains of Thibet, and at present he is seven years old. In one of his former lives, he was the Grand Lama of a magnificent Soumé (Lama convent) down there in the valley, but which was destroyed, the books of prayer say, in the wars of ChingKis. But, as after a few years the saint made his appearance again, we built him in haste a small Soumé. Come, brothers! Our holy one will raise his right hand above your heads, and happiness will accompany your steps."

"Men who are acquainted with the holy doctrines of the West, do not believe in the transmigrations* of the Chabe

* Transmigration (or metempsychosis), the act by which a soul is believed to enter another body.

rons. We adore only the Creator of Heaven and Earth, whose name is Jehovah. We think that the child whom you have made your superior has no power at all, and that men have nothing either to hope or to fear from him."

The Lama, after having listened to these words, stood a moment as if stupified; but by degrees his features became animated with passion, and launching at us a look full of wrath, he pulled the bridle of his horse, and turning his back on us, galloped off, muttering between his teeth some words which we did not take for a blessing.

These living Buddhas, in whose various transmigrations the Tartars have the firmest faith, are very numerous, and are always placed at the head of the principal convents. Sometimes a Chaberon begins his career modestly in a small temple, and surrounded by only a few disciples. By degrees, his reputation increases, and the temple becomes a place of pilgrimage; the neighbouring Lamas build their cells near it and bring it into fashion, and so it goes on from year to year, till it becomes perhaps the most famous in the country.

The election and enthronisation of the living Buddhas is curious enough. When a Grand Lama is gone away, that is to say, is dead, the matter is by no means made a subject of mourning in the convent. There are no tears or regrets, for every one knows that the Chaberon will soon reappear. The apparent death is only the commencement of a new existence, a new link added to a boundless and uninterrupted chain of successive lives- simply a new birth. Whilst the saint is in the chrysalis state, his disciples are in the greatest anxiety, and the grand point is to discover the place where their master has returned to life. If a rainbow appears, they consider it as a sign sent to them from their Lama, to assist them in their researches. Every one then goes to prayers, and especially the convent which has been widowed of its Buddha is incessant in its fastings and orisons, and a troop of chosen Lamas set out to consult the

Churtchun, or diviner of hidden things. They relate to him the time, place, and circumstances under which the rainbow has appeared: and he then, after reciting some prayers, opens his books of divination, and at length pronounces his oracle; while the Tartars who have come to consult him, listen on their knees with the most profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, they say, has returned to life in Thibet — at such and such a place — in such and such a family; and when the poor Mongols have heard the oracle, they return full of joy to their convent, to announce the happy news. Sometimes, according to the Mongols, the Chaberon announces himself, at an age when other infants cannot articulate a word; but whether his place of abode be found by means of the rainbow, or by this spontaneous revelation, it is always at a considerable distance, and in a country difficult of access. A grand procession is then made, headed by the king, or the greatest man in the country, to fetch the young Chaberon.

Huc.

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF INDIA.

THE central part of Asia is a table-land, believed to be, in its highest platform, ten thousand feet above the sea level. The descent of the land to the sea is variously accomplished in the different maritime countries of Asia, but nowhere more impressively than in that which belongs to us. The subsidence* of the land from 10,000 to 1000 feet above the sea is made by a steep slope, like a diversified wall with embrasures covering an area of from 90 to 120 miles in breadth, and running a line of 1,500 miles. The area of this embankment is not less than 150,000 square miles. From a time beyond record this slope has been called by the people who live below it the Abode of Cold, or of Snow — Himalaya. With them this was not a mere figure of speech; for high above the clouds, where adventurous trespassers found the air hardly fit for mortal breathing, dwells the god (not the least in a pantheon † of many millions) who is the father of the Ganges and father-in-law of Siva, the Destroyer. For many millions of years the god lived in repose, watching over his solitude, approached no nearer than by the few herdsmen who came up from either side after their goats which had browsed the slopes of thyme and marjoram too high; or by the daring traders who, with mountain sheep for their beasts of burden, threaded the passes with their woven fabrics, or with camel's hair or silky wool. But now, intrusion has become so common, the secret of the rarity of the atmosphere is so vulgarised, and our countrymen have such a propensity to live above the clouds in the hottest weather, that we need not scruple to mount to the Abode of Cold—to the very palace of the

* Subsidence, act or process of sinking.

† Pantheon, assemblage of gods; hence the name of the Roman edifice dedicated to the Pagan deities collectively (now called Rotunda).

old divinity—and use his stand-point, and borrow his eyes, for the survey of our own dominions lying below.

of

Turning first to the right, we see (with eyesight, however, many times magnified) nothing but high table-land, stretching westward beyond Persia itself a table-land fringed with the far-distant peaks of Affghanistan. Looking nearer, we see five rivers gushing from the embrasures of the Great Wall from the ravines of the mountain range. Having flowed from sacred lakes in Thibet, these rivers are holy in their way, and the territory they enclose is rich and populous in comparison with that outside. We look down on some busy scenes in the Punjaub, even three centuries ago; while the Sandy Valley through which the Indus rolls his strong body of water shows no life, except where parties of fighting men are on the way to pillage their enemies, and lay waste the villages which rise up round the wells. East of the five rivers, the Himalaya slope becomes lovely. Averaging four or five thousand feet in height, it presents now forests of the stern woodland character of the north; and now vast expanses grass and wild flowers; and then dark ravines, leading down to sunny platforms, where the solitary Englishman below would have found it hard to believe that his countrymen would hereafter set up their homes by hundreds. Clouds are floating below, tier beneath tier, and stray vapors dim the sun at any time; yet even here monkeys abound in the woods, and butterflies, measuring nine inches between the tips of their wings, light on the flowers in the pastures. There is no finer sight for the ordinary human eye than when standing up there, at sunrise or sunset, and waiting for openings in the clouds below, to survey the great plain of India, too vast for diversity of color, but stretching into the sky in one boundless expanse of purple, except where the level rays of the sun strike upon some eminence lofty enough to be thus distinguishable. Assuming the vision of the old god of the region, what do we see, as he saw it three centuries ago ?