country of Benjamin, or cream of tartar with Crim Tartary.[1]
Somewhat in like manner we have come to call various chains of mountains in India the Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats, and so forth; and I have seen it stated in a geography-book that Ghat means mountain. But Ghât really means a Pass. The plateau above and the plain below those passes were respectively known to the Mahommedan rulers as Bâlâ-ghât and Pâyin-ghât, 'Above the passes' and 'Below the passes.' Hence the Portuguese, and after them the English, attached the idea of mountain range to the word Ghat.—[Y.]
GIGEN.
P. 12.
This is the word used by our author for those ordinary 'incarnate' Lamas whom Huc calls Chaberons. The word is Mongol, and we find it thus explained in Kovalefsky's Dictionary: 'Gheghen . . . éclat, splendeur; . . . brillant . . . personne venerable; titre honoraire d'un grave personnage' Gegen Khutuktu is one of the formal titles of the Great Lama at Urga spoken of in the text.[2]—[Y.]
- ↑ Buddhala is however older than Huc, for I see it is alluded to by I. J. Schmidt in his Forschungen, &c., 1824, p. 209.
The origin of the application of the name Potala, or Potaraka, to the palace of the Grand Lama seems a little obscure. The name is the same as that of the city in Sindh (Haidarabad), which the Greeks called Pattala. Koeppen says that, according to legend, the Sakya family, i.e. the family of Buddha, originally sprang thence. According to Buddhist stories there were two other sacred hills of this name. The first rose out of the Western Sea, and bore on its summit a celestial palace which served as a rest-house to the Bodhisatvas on their errands to earth. This is the true and heavenly Potala. Another lay in the China Sea opposite Chekiang, and is in fact the famous ecclesiastical island of Puto near Chusan. - ↑ See Koeppen, Lamaismus, 376.
