Word: lama
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From the gilded rooftop of Lhasa's Potala Palace, heralds blew 14-foot-long copper trumpets. Below, in the building's ornate Assembly Hall, a bright-eyed, 16-year-old boy sat on a high throne, about which clustered Tibet's most powerful lamas, abbots and monks. They had come in the country's hour of peril, with Chinese Communist invaders lodged deep in the Himalayan upland, to witness the coronation of the 14th Dalai Lama, the reincarnated Buddha of Mercy. Hours of prayer and ritual reached a climax when the adolescent god-king accepted...
...country's capital, Finance Minister Trepon Shakabja, head of the mission, blandly replied: "Well, if that is so, it is a sorry business." Apparently the Communists had stopped to rest or wait for supplies over the rugged caravan tracks and lofty passes from China. Meanwhile, the boy Dalai Lama and his elderly Regent Takta Rimpoche still seemed to be in Lhasa, accord ing to Sinha; they debated flight to India, last-ditch resistance, or submission to the Chinese. From Lhasa's Potala Palace to the U.N.'s Security Council went a mesage asking for help against "unprovoked...
United Press Correspondent P. D. Sharma, however, managed to scoop them all without even leaving New Delhi. "The Dalai Lama, 16-year-old boy ruler of Tibet, has fled from Lhasa," he cabled last week. "He made the decision to flee after four of his cabinet ministers were killed in battle...
Sharma could not keep such a good story to himself. London's Sunday Dispatch and Sunday Times bloomed with graphic accounts of the Lama's tearful departure. India's newspapers added that he left at the head of a yak caravan, laden with fabulous stores of gold and diamonds. Soberly, the New York Times's careful Robert Trumbull relayed deadpan accounts from the Indian papers...
...Leaking Roof. At week's end, India's mission in Lhasa went back on the air. The reason for its silence: nothing new to report. There had been no flight, the Lama was still in Lhasa. "The Tibetan government," formally announced India's Ministry of External Affairs, "is greatly distressed by the wild rumors emanating from Kalimpong. The military situation as depicted from Kalimpong has no, repeat no, relation to the facts." Caught at their crystal-gazing, U.P.'s Sharma and others hastily reported that the Lama's "attempted flight" had been "prevented...