ple. At any time, a description of the state of this ruler—a state which is also connected in many ways with historical associations of great importance both to India and China—could scarcely fail to be interesting; but, as our readers will doubtless remember, a clause in our last treaty with the Chinese attaches a significance to the subject at the present time which it has not enjoyed since the days of Warren Hastings. This is, therefore, a doubly opportune moment, when a new ruler has been chosen, and when our own relations towards the State have undergone some modification, for the consideration of the past history of Tibet itself.
The remote history of Tibet, like that of all the countries bordering upon China, is intertwined so closely with that of the dominant power, that it is not easy, with the meagre authorities at our service, to separate them from each other. Nor would it be of much use to attempt to unravel the idle, although extremely poetical, legends that cluster round "Bod" land, in the years previous to the appearance of the great priest and reformer, Tsong Khapa. The Tibetan Luther was born in or about the year 1417, at Sining, and his parents, who were poor people, were only too glad when he displayed at an early age a preference for a religious career. There is another legend of his origin, which attributes it to a supernatural occurrence, and which asserts that his mother, who had long been barren, had conceived him by falling on a stone tablet on which were graven characters in honor of Sakya Muni. The foundation for this version may very possibly have been that he had been educated in the great monastery dedicated to Sakya Muni. Here he grew up in the very midst of the corruption and vice which were eating into the existence of the whole fabric of lamaism; but instead of becoming vitiated by his surroundings, his strong moral convictions enabled him to triumph over all the temptations of worldly pleasure and of secular power. Up to his age, the scarlet robe had been the peculiar dress of all lamas, but so thorough was Tsong Khapa's resolve to effect a complete reform, that he discarded as a pollution the sacred color. To demonstrate beyond all cavil the radical measures which he intended, he adopted a yellow costume. Then ensued the bitter contest that always has attended rivalry amongst priestly disputants, but at last the controversy between Reds and Yellows was closed by the triumph of the latter, and the gradual reformation of the former. The Red faction is still, or was in the days of the Abbé Huc, existent in Tibet, but the descendants of Tsong Khapa and his disciples are supreme. The reforms introduced by Tsong Khapa gave increased vitality not only to the Buddhist religion, but also to the priestly order of Tibet; and when he died, in 1478, he left Tibet in a state of general prosperity and of tranquillity both within and without. On his death-bed he summoned his two principal disciples, Lo-lum Ghiamdzo and Kojuni Machortse, to him, and told them that they were to carry on the good work which he had commenced. The former became the first Dalai Lama, the latter the first Teshu or Panshen Lama; and from that time to the present the spirits of those two personages have be en never-dying on earth, and except the brief intervals required for the discovery of the person into whom the spirit had passed, those offices have never been vacant. Although the presence of the Chinese in the country, as more or less de facto rulers, since the time of the first Mantchoo emperor, Chuntche, has effaced the secular power of the lamas to a great extent, the Dalai has always been more concerned in the public administration than the Teshu. The latter, who resides at the lamasery of Teshu Lumbo, near the town of Shigatze, on the Sanpu, is the great theological authority in Tibet, and is styled the "Gem of Learning;" whereas, the: former's designation is "the Gem of Majesty." But since the days when Chinese armies had to be summoned in to defend Lhasa from marauding Ghoorkas, the independence of the Dalai and his subordinates has grown more and more doubtful, until at last their authority has become almost "the shadow of a name." But while their worldly power has been waning before the encroachments of the Ambans, their influence and reputation, both among Tibetans and the Chinese people, have been as steadily increasing, until the Tibetan lamas are now almost as potent as they were in the ancient days of the Mongols, when Kublai Khan entreated their aid for the construction of an alphabet for his ignorant people. There are many who assert that there is a religious, as well as a national, revival going on amongst the Chinese, and in the former of these movements the most active agent would undoubtedly be the religious fervor which is to be found among the lamas of Tibet.
The relations between ourselves and the Tibetans have been very slight; in fact,
