The population of the Mongolian part of Urga is chiefly composed of lamas,—i.e. of the clergy. At Bogdo-Kuren they number as many as 10,000. This statement may appear an exaggeration, but if the reader take into consideration the fact that a third of the whole male population of Mongolia belongs to the lama class, he will not doubt its accuracy. There is a large training-school at Urga for boys destined to become lamas; it is divided into three faculties, viz. Divinity, Medicine, and Astrology.
Urga ranks in the estimation of the Mongols next to Lhassa,[1] in Tibet, for sanctity.
In these two towns the principal religious dignitaries of the Buddhist world reside. In Lhassa, the Dalai Lama, with his assistant Pan-tsin-Erdeni;[2] in Urga, the Kutukhtu, or third person in the Tibetan patriarchate.
According to the Lama doctrine these dignitaries are the terrestrial impersonations of the Godhead, and never die, but are renewed by death. They believe that after death their souls pass into the bodies of newly-born boys, and thus re-appear to men under fresher and more youthful forms. Search is made in Tibet for the new-born Dalai Lama,
- ↑ Lhassa, the capital of Tibet, is called by the Mongols Munhu-tsu (the ever sacred).
- ↑ Pan-tsin-Erdeni does not reside in Lhassa itself, but at the monastery of Chesi-Lumbo [i.e. at the place which is variously called in our maps Teshu-lumbo, Jachi-lunpo, and Shiggatzi, at least 120 miles from Lhassa. It is scarcely correct to call the Panjan Irdeni or Panjan Rimbochi, the personage whom Lieut. Samuel Turner visited as envoy from Warren Hastings in 1783, and whom he calls the Teshoo Lama, the 'assistant' of the Dalai-Lama.—Y.].
