# Three Years in Tibet/Chapter 3

LAMA SENGCHEN DORJECHAN.
CHAPTER III.
A foretaste of Tibetan barbarism.
To give one of Lama Shabdung's favourite recitals about Tibet: my host, while there, studied Buddhism under a high Lama of great virtues and the most profound learning, called Sengchen Dorjechan (Great-Lion Diamond-Treasury), who had been the tutor of the Secondary or Deputy Pope, so to say, of Tibet. No man in Tibet was held in higher esteem and deeper reverence than this holy man. It was this holy man himself who taught my friend and benefactor Rai Sarat, when he was in Tibet. Though Rai Sarat's pupilage under the high Lama lasted only for a short time, it had the most tragical consequences. For, after his return to India, the Tibetan Government discovered to its own mortification that Rai Sarat was an emissary of the British Government, and the parties who had become in any way connected with his visit, more particularly the man who had secretly furnished him with a pass, another in whose house he had lodged and boarded, and the high Lama, were all thrown into prison, the last named having afterward had to pay with his life for his innocent crime.
Many are the reminiscences of this holy Lama, which show that he was indeed a person very firm and enlightened in the Buddhist faith, and to that degree was the most lovable and adorable of men. But more especially affecting, even sublimely beautiful, are the episodes immediately preceding and surrounding his death, for the truth of which I depend not on the narrative of Lama Shabdung alone, but largely also upon what I was able to learn from persons of unquestionable reliability, during my disguised stay in the capital of ​Tibet. To mention a few of these : when an unpleasant rumor had just begun to be circulated, soon after Rai Sarat's departure from Tibet, about his secret mission, the high Lama Sengchen knew at once that death was at his door, but was not afraid. For, when it was hinted at by his friends that he would become involved in a serious predicament, owing to his acquaintance with Rai Sarat, he replied that he had always considered it his heaven-ordained work to try to propagate and to perpetuate Buddhism, not among his own countrymen only, but among the whole human race ; that whether or not Sarat Chandra Das was a man who had entered Tibet with the object of "stealing away Buddhism," or to play the part of a spy, was not his concern — the question had in any case never occurred to him — and that if he were to suffer death for having done what he had regarded it as his duty to do, he could not help it. That this holy Lama was an advocate of active propagandism may be gathered from the fact that, besides sending various Buddhistic images and ritualistic utensils to India, he had caused several persons to go out there as missionaries, my teacher, the Manchurian Lama Serab Gyamtso, in the Ghoompahl Temple of Darjeeling, being one of these. Unfortunately, this undertaking did not prove a success, but none the less it shows the lofty aspirations which actuated the high Lama, who, as I was told, had deeply lamented the decadence, or rather the almost entire disappearance, of Buddhism in the land of its origin, and was sincerely anxious to revive it there. It is nothing uncommon in Japan to meet with Buddhist priests interested in the work or idea of foreign propagandism; but a person so minded is an extreme rarity in that hermit-country Tibet, and that Lama Sengchen was such a one indicates the greatness of his character, and
THE LAMA'S EXECUTION.
and threw the different parts separately into the stream thus ending the grim business of execution. It will be admitted by all, especially by all Buddhists, that there was something loftily admirable in the personality of a man who had done and given his all for his faith and religion, and yet uttered not a word of complaint against Providence or man, but, in serene, noble meekness, met his most unmerited and most agonising death. As for me, besides finding it most affecting, I felt a peculiarly direct interest in the story of this high Lama's execution, from the moment when I was told of it for the first time. For, was I not on my way to Tibet? Should I succeed in my purpose? Who could tell but that there might be a repetition of that sad and cruel scene?