IIIFカラー高解像度
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
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| IIIFカラー高解像度 |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 | |
| インドとチベット : vol.1 |
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引用情報
314 IMPRESSIONS AT LHASA
pitiful way. No words, says Kawaguchi, can describe
their poor condition. The scholar-priests have to earn
their living as well as their expenses as students. Yet
they are too busy to go out and make money, and what
they receive as offerings from believers and as salaries from
temples does not amount to enough to support them.
They get a drink of tea gratis, but no flour ; and such
is their pitiable condition that they will often pass a couple
of days without eating.
A noteworthy fact is, that though by their religion
the Lamas are not supposed to take life, yet they are said
not to be able to pass a day without eating meat, and
more than 50,000 sheep, goats, and yaks are killed at
Lhasa during the last three months of each year. 'Their
punishments, too, are so cruel—gouging out eyes, cutting
off hands, beating, etc.—as to excite the Japanese just as
much as ourselves.
It is altogether a sorry picture which Kawaguchi draws,
but it precisely bears out the casual impressions we got
during our limited stay in Lhasa, and from what inter-
course we had with the Lamas. Whether Lamaism has
on the whole been a success I doubt. It has had a
pacifying effect, it is true. If the Tibetans had been
Mohammedans, we should not have reached Lhasa as easily
as we did. And the Mongols also have lost their old
warlike tendencies. The numerous figures of the placid
Buddha sitting in calm repose have had their influence.
Cut in rocks, erected in imposing statues, or modelled
in bronze and brass, and set up in their temples and house-
hold altars, they have hypnotized the people to a sense of
peace and rest. The Tibetans, who once carried their
arms to Peking itself, are now one of the most peaceful
of people. And the Mongols, who had set up a dynasty
in China, conquered all Central Asia, and laid waste
Western Europe, are now an almost negligible quantity
in war.
Lamaism has certainly, then, nourished peace in Tibet
and Mongolia. But the peace that has been nurtured
has been the quiescence of sloth and decadence. The
Buddhist idea of repose and kindness all can appreciate.
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