The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-09-22
THI-BEIT WANG TSUE:
Or, the jewellers on the Roof OF
the World"
Something About This Extraordinary PEG
ple-Their Peculiar Manners, Gus
toms and Religious Rites
The Delai Lamas.

This extraordinary people, the Thi-
belt Wang Tsue, owe their nationality
to princely Chinese rebel, who on ac-
count of some court intrigue took
refuge with his family among those
mountainous regions now called Tibet
Establishing himself on the Yarling
river, he gathered to his standard the
wild, hairy, mountain-cave jewellers of
this lofty plateau. With the Khuenlun
Mountains on the north and the mighty
Himalayas on the south, Wong Chou
felt himselfinvincible and impregnable;
and SO it proved, for this settlement of
savages Aourished, and in course of
time developed one of the strangest
civilizations in the world.
In order to understand this people.
their manners, customs and religious
rites, we must glance at their country.
1t is the Hottest plateau on the globe,
grit with steep barriers and with eX-
tremes of temperature, in some parts
freezing every night, even in summer,
while in others the noon sun is more
fierce and scorching than in the hot
test regions of Hindostan. From its
lofty table-land descend some of the
greatest rivers of Asia, the Indus, the
Brahmapootra, the Irrawady, the Gan
ges, the Hohang-ho. At their sources
mountains pile upon mountains, some
bare and volcanic, others covered with
primeval forests, frightfully tangled
together with huge creepers, as yet
unnamed by the botanist. The highest
peaks soar in awful grandeur, vapor-
crowned and snow-clad, assuming in
the rising and setting sun forms of I'M
speakable splendor. The annual trans
formations of this land of mountain
and valley are magical; evergreens,
ferns, hchens, MOSES, thousands of
mountain rills, and myriads of flowers
fill it with music, fragrance and dewy
beauty; in winter storms, darkness,
heavy mists and terrifying silence en-
wrap the land-now and then this awful
silence is broken by avalanches of ice
and snow, laundering and booming
down the mountains as with the roar
ing of distant cannon. And above all
when night comes on, there is nowhere
a land so weird; it is full of milky
vapors of serpentine form, of shades
and phantoms, inspiring in the minds
of its inhabitants a sense of awe,
mystery and sublimity. 1t is not
strange that the dwellers on the Roof
of the World" should be what they are
the most superstitious, reverential,
religious and credulous people on the
face of the earth.
Nowhere, as in Thibet, does Buddh-
ism and its mysterious doctrine of the
transmigration of souls hold sway so
absolute. The mountain caves are
filled with male and female ascetics,
who practice the most austere forms of
penance, abstinence and self-torture,
in what was once the lair of wild
beasts, live Thibetian maidens, who for
years scourge themselves with bruises,
sanctify themselves by continual fasts,
prayers and pious meditations, in the
hope that they may become mothers to
future Delai Lamas; here are converts
and monasteries without end, temples,
shrines and pagodas without number,
filled with pilgrims, saints, sages, ma
gicians, rahats Saints in the various
stages of deification), arahats, both
male and female. Here is enshrined
the great Delai Lama himself, the latest
living incarnation of the Buddha, be.
ieved in as veritable man-god, pure
infallible, omnipresent and omniscient,
who is worshiped with the most
sumptuous of pagan rituals porning
noon and night as q heavenly deity
while on every conspicuous rock and
towering peak is cut in huge Thibetian
characters the mystical and symbolic
yeroffered to this strange man-deity
'Om Mahni Padmih HON.
Amid this grand scenery and these
strange ideas Of human dedication, q
Thibetian village makes but a mean
appearance. The houses are alike,