Living Beings Have, According To The Class To Which They Belong, Particular Means Of Sanctifying Themselves, Of Rising To A Superior Class, Of Obtaining Perfection, And Of Arriving In Process Of Time At The Period Of Their Absorption.

Men who repeat very frequently and devotedly 'Om mani padme houm,' escape falling after death into the six classes of animate creatures, corresponding to the six syllables of the formula, and obtain the plenitude of being, by their absorption into the eternal and universal soul of Buddha."

One traveller only I have been able to find who mentions the sentence as I have done. M. Jacquemont writes, in his "Letters from Cashmere and Thibet," in 1830: - "I am returned from afar; I have often been very cold; I have had a hundred and eighteen very bad dinners: but I think myself amply recompensed for these trans-Himalayan miseries by the interesting observations and vast collections which I have been able to make in a country perfectly new. The Tartars are a very good sort of people. It is true that to please them I made myself a little heathen after their fashion, and joined without scruple in the national chorus, 'Houm mani pani houm.' "

Judging by the system of spelling he has adopted in other instances in his letters, this would be nearly - as regards the two main words - the same pronunciation as I have given. He however, in another part, follows it still more closely, and at the same time shows that he is aware of a translation which, although probably the true one, has no connexion whatever with the words as he himself actually represents them.

He says - "In Thibet they sing a good deal also - that is, one or two inhabitants per square league - but only a single song of three words - 'Oum mani pani;' which means, in the learned language, 'Oh, diamond water-lily!' and leads the singers direct into Buddha's paradise.

"But, though composed of three Thibetian words, it is evidently of Indian origin, and I have proved it BOTANICALLY. The lotus is a plant peculiar to the lukewarm and temperate waters of India and Egypt. There is not one of its genus, or even of its family, in Thibet."

The words, however, are not, as M. Jacquemont says, Thibetian, but Sanscrit; and, although one of the characters in which they are clothed is the current Thibetian, it would appear that neither their true pronunciation nor actual meaning is known to the people who thus make such frequent use of them.

The sentence itself is in the mouths of all. In the monastery of Hemis alone, probably as many as a hundred wheels are in continual motion, bearing it within their folds not less than 1,700,000 times. The very stones by the wayside present its well-known characters in countless numbers, and the hills repeat it, and yet to those into whose daily religious observances it thus so largely enters, it comes but as a vain and empty sound, without either sense or signification.

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