Word: lamas
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...missionaries plod Kalimpong's streets, panting to explore Tibet and its particular brand of Buddhism, but lacking permission to get in. Last week, as they have since the Chinese Reds invaded Tibet in October, Kalimpongians waited breathlessly, along with rumormongering newsmen (TIME, Nov. 20), to welcome the Dalai Lama should he flee from Lhasa into their midst, as his predecessor did in 1910. The town had one big worry. If he comes, will the Tibetan God-King bring enough sheets? In 1910 frenzied devotees kept ripping the exalted exile's linen to bits to preserve as sacred objects...
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...
...emergency investiture. Traditionally, the Dalai Lama waits for his 18th birthday before formally assuming power. By staging the ceremony two years ahead of schedule, Lhasa's theocrats seemed to be preparing for the worst. They closed the regency of septuagenarian Takta Rimpoche, abbot of Tiger Rock Monastery. They bolstered the spiritual position of the Dalai Lama should he be forced to leave Lhasa for exile abroad and should the Communists try to install a rival on his throne...
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...