chastity, and obedience, the doctrine of incarnation and the
Trinity, and the belief in purgatory and paradise.[18]

[18] It is interesting to compare Grueber's account with the journal
of Father Rubruquis, who travelled in Mongolia in the thirteenth
century. In 1253 he wrote of the Lamas:

'All their priests had their heads shaven quite over, and they are
clad in saffron-coloured garments. Being once shaven, they lead an
unmarried life from that time forward, and they live a hundred or
two of them in one cloister.... They have with them also,
whithersoever they go, a certain string, with a hundred or two
hundred nutshells thereupon, much like our beads which we carry
about with us; and they do always mutter these words, "Om mani
pectavi (om mani padme hom)"--"God, Thou knowest," as one of them
expounded it to me; and so often do they expect a reward at God's
hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance of God.... I
made a visit to their idol temple, and found certain priests
sitting in the outward portico, and those which I saw seemed, by
their shaven beards, as if they had been our countrymen; they wore
certain ornaments upon their heads like mitres made of paper.'

We occasionally saw a monk with the refined ascetic face of a Roman
Cardinal. Te Rinpoche, the acting regent, was an example. One or two
looked as if they might be humane and benevolent--men who might make one
accept the gentle old Lama in 'Kim' as a not impossible fiction; but
most of them appeared to me to be gross and sottish. I must confess that
during the protracted negociations at Lhasa I had little sympathy with
the Lamas. It is a mistake to think that they keep their country closed
out of any religious scruple. Buddhism in its purest form is not
exclusive or fanatical. Sakya Muni preached a missionary religion. He
was Christlike in his universal love and his desire to benefit all
living creatures. But Buddhism in Tibet has become more and more
degenerate, and the Lamaist Church is now little better than a political
mechanism whose chief function is the uncompromising exclusion of
foreigners. The Lamas know that intercourse with other nations must
destroy their influence with the people.

And Tibet is really ruled by the Lamas. Outside Lhasa are the three
great monasteries of Depung, Sera, and Gaden, whose Abbots, backed by a
following of near