Word: lhasa
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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...
...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...
...first, no one would sponsor Lhasa's case. Then, to everyone's surprise and embarrassment, El Salvador's Dr. Hector David Castro insisted on an Assembly debate and condemnation of Red China's "unprovoked aggression." What, if anything, the U.N. would do for an independent Tibet remained to be seen...
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...
...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...