Word: lamas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From Tibet came word that the Dalai Lama, 19, whose country was grabbed by China's Communists in 1951, had departed his capital city of Lhasa to journey a long, sad way to Peking, where his secular masters will presumably try to enlighten the priest-king about the joys of cooperation with their regime. His brainwashing is expected to require from six to ten months...
...Lhasa with its gold-roofed Potala ("Palace of the Gods"), the Dalai Lama's magnificent winter residence. Lhasa itself at times looks less like a holy place than a sort of religious slum. The poorly clothed priests are herded in their hopelessly overcrowded cloisters (one of which has 10,000 inmates), and the camera in one distasteful sequence watches them being fed as cattle are, by the scoop. The scene enforces the impression of a country where -according to the Thomas' narration-so many men become priests that few are left to be fathers...
There are, however, some pleasanter pictures of the beings who dwell in this lost country. The Dalai Lama, aged 16 when this film was made, looks pretty much like any other teen-ager dressed up for a masquerade. The common people seem better than their betters. As they stir their hot-buttered tea or plow the skyey pastures with their dolorous yaks, or swarm to Lhasa for their pageants, their faces are warm with the comfortable joy of creatures at home in their world...
From Tibet came an intriguing snapshot of the Dalai Lama, who in March 1951, when he was 16, was photographed in a southern Tibetan monastery. He had fled there to escape the Red Chinese hordes advancing on Lhasa, capital of his theocracy, to which he returned later that year. In the picture, the Dalai's Lord Chamberlain shows him a golden urn said to contain the ashes of Buddha's two chief disciples...
...Bhutan, like Tibet, was ruled jointly by a high lama, the Dharma Raja, who was believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha himself, and a temporal leader, the Deb Raja. Finding a new reincarnation of Buddha when the old one died was always a trouble. It involved waiting several years and then finding a baby who would proclaim his identity by recognizing certain suitable symbols. By 1907 Bhutan's lamas, grown fat and indolent with centuries of rule, got too lazy to hunt for a new Raja. The government was taken over by a local governor, the Tongsa Penlop...