Word: lamas
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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...
...their figures straight, Seltzer's gazetteers had to explore far beyond the stacks of the major U.S. libraries. They pored over government manuals, foreign industrial reports, newspapers, schoolbooks and road maps. They wrote to mayors, postmasters, and even to the Dalai Lama. They wrote to every provincial government in China. By the time the Reds took over, most of the replies were in-the most complete collection of data on China available to date...
Gainsborough has also lined up an exotic array of 17 teachers. As director of studies he picked German-born Frederic Spiegelberg, Stanford's top expert in Hindu culture and religion. From Japan he got Lama Tokwan Tada, a wizened little man in yellow robes who is the only living Japanese High Lama of Lhasa. From India came Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, the former Prime Minister of Travancore...
...year-old Dalai Lama, who is supposed to exercise temporal power (TIME, May 14), will stay on in Lhasa as his people's nominal ruler. But his rival, the Communist-backed, 13-year-old Panchen Lama, will be allowed to return from exile as spiritual ruler...