for spiritual and temporal duties ; its candidates, its novices, its full-fledged monks of two degrees. Subject to the temporal rule of the monastery—much as in our feudal times—are the farmers of a certain territory who pay their rents into the treasury of the establishment. Nor have the monks been able to stop their development within the lines of peaceful activity. Rude arms hang on their walls, bows, arrows, spears, and the medieval matchlock. Not more ready to be hastened toward the Nirvana of their creed than is the lusty Christian to grasp his promised crown of personal immortality, these monks, who are men, have given blow for blow in that primitive competition which still holds Europe's self under the thrall of its fierce charm. Territorial rights within the land have been delineated thus by force ; attack from without has been met by battalions of monks ; and attempted rebellion of the lay chiefs has been by them subdued. Indeed, by virtue of their superior intelligence and organisation, a long era of quiet, a true pax ecclesiastica, seemed to be stretching mild years before the country when the storm of British anger fell upon the land.
Special privilege in Tibet runs not only in favour of the powerful religious bodies just surveyed, but it also upholds a lay aristocracy of inherited wealth—the term, of course, is comparative, for Tibet is poor. The important lay functionaries of government are drawn from this class. And indeed, the powerful monks are frequently scions of the noble houses —younger sons who find, in their sacred rôle, a larger power than can now be otherwise secured.
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