After A Good Deal Of Difficulty I Succeeded
In Unearthing A Lama From The Village To Help Me In My Researches,
And A Strange-Looking Dignitary Of The Church He Turned Out To Be When
He Did Make His Appearance.
He was a bloated and fat old gentleman,
dressed in a yellowish red garment of no particular shape, and looked
altogether more like a moving bundle of red rags than anything else,
human or divine.
Finding that nothing was required of him more expensive than
information, he appeared delighted to show off his learning, and by
means of the sepoy, who was the only one of our party acquainted with
both Thibetan and Hindoostanee, I ascertained that the words carved
upon the stones were "Um mani panee," and meant, as far as I could
make out, "the Supreme Being." As the old gentleman repeated the
mystic syllables, he bobbed and scraped towards a strange-looking
monument close by, in an abject, deprecatory way, as if in extreme
awe of its presence.[18]
On inquiring the origin of this new structure, which was built of
stones and plaster, and decorated with red ochre, all we could get out
of him was a fresh string of "Um mani panees," and a further series
of moppings and mowings, accompanied by a sagacious expression of
his fat countenance, indicative of the most entire satisfaction at
the clearness of his explanations, and a sense of his own importance
as a Lama and an expositor of the doctrines of Buddh.
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