s, declaring that we might rest assured he would make us
quit Thibet. We hastened to the Regent, in order to acquaint him with
the melancholy interview we had had with Ki-Chan. The chief Kalon had
been made aware of the projects of persecution which the Chinese
Mandarins were hatching against us. He endeavoured to reassure us, and
told us, that protecting in the country thousands of strangers, he was
powerful enough to give us the protection which the Thibetian government
extended to all. "Besides," added he, "even though our laws did prohibit
strangers from entering our country, those laws could not affect you.
Religious persons, men of prayer, belonging to all countries, are
strangers nowhere; such is the doctrine taught by our holy books. It is
written: 'The yellow goat has no country, the Lama no family.' Lha-Ssa
being the peculiar assembling-place and abode of men of prayer, that
title of itself should always secure for you liberty and protection."
This opinion of the Buddhists, which constitutes a religious man a
cosmopolite, is not merely a mystic idea written in books, but we have
found it recognised in the manners and customs of the Lamaseries; when a
man has had his head shaved, and assumes the religious habit, he
renounces his former name to take a new one. If you ask a Lama of what
country he is, he replies, "I have no country, but I pass my time in such
a Lamasery." This manner of thinking and acting is even admitted in
China, amongst the bonzes and other classes of religionists, who are
called by the generic name of Tchou-Kia-Jin, (a man who has left his
family.)

There was, respecting us, a controversy of several days' duration,
between the Thibetian government and the Chinese ambassador. Ki-Chan, in
order to insure better success to his aims, assumed the character of
defender of the Tale-Lama. This was his argument: Sent to Lha-Ssa by his
Emperor, to protect the Living Buddha, it was his duty to remove from him
whatever was calculated to injure him. Certain preachers of the religion
of the Lord of Heaven, animated, no doubt, by excellent intentions, were
propagating a doctrine which, in the end, tended to destroy the authority
and power of the Tale-Lama. Their avowed purpose was to substitute their
religious belief for Buddhism, and to convert all the inhabitants of
Thibet of every age, condition, and sex. What would become of the
Tale-Lama when he had no worshippers? The introduction into t