国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

partly overgrown dune forty meters in height. It took them no less than forty minutes to cross this barrier with the camels. The last bit of the march was simply a retracing of their steps from the journey out.

I allowed two more days at Shande-miao, for we had still much to do. I made notes in my journal and sketched local types. With HASLUND as interpreter, HvMMEL carried out ten anthropometric measurements and as many blood-tests.

THE DOBECHYN GEGEN

On the last day at the monastery we had no visits from the lamas. The prior had forbidden them to have any truck with people who measured their bodies and took drops of their blood. Instead, the doctor and HASLUND visited a high lama, an incarnation, the DOBECHYN GEGEN, from Tashi-lhunpo, who for four days had been staying at Shande-miao as a guest, on his journey eastwards. He was a cousin of the TASHI LAMA, whose father was the brother of his mother. The cousins were born the same year and were thus both forty-five years of age.

This gegen had received my emissaries with great courtesy, allowing himself to be photographed and sending me a packet of sugar. He had also expressed a wish to visit me, but was not able to do so until nightfall, when the lamas of the monastery would have retired to their cells.

And sure enough, at nine o'clock that evening he came. We spoke of the TASHI LAMA, his monastery and his journey to Peking, where I had met him not long before. The DOBECHYN GEGEN recollected my visit to Tashi-lhunpo, and remembered my having lived in KING GUSHVK's garden.

When, later, the gramophone was brought out and well-known songs, operas and marches filled the air around our venerable priestly visitors they brightened up wonderfully and proved quite insatiable. We had to go through the whole repertoire. But one could not truthfully describe our visitors, sitting there in their red togas, bald-headed and bare-armed, as a musical audience. They roared with laughter at HÄNDEL'S Largo, of which we had a vocal record, the Pilgrims' Chorus and other such serious music. This was evidently an expression of their astonishment at hearing mechanically reproduced human voices. An old lama in the company was most absorbed in saving night-moths and beetles from a painful death in the flame of the candle that burned at his side, for no living creature might die in the neighbourhood of the sacred personage, or for his sake.

It was nearly midnight when the DOBECHYN GEGEN finally rose to take his departure. That he was pleased with his evening he showed the following morning, by sending me a couple of Tibetan trinkets of silver.

At last, on August 29th, we were able to start off again. The lamas came down to witness our departure and wish us God-speed.

9   129