Lhasa and its mysteries : with a record of the expedition of 1903-1904 / by L. Austine Waddell.

  • Laurence Waddell
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lhasa and its mysteries : with a record of the expedition of 1903-1904 / by L. Austine Waddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    might have added), whilst from their mother they have inherited their roughness, cruelty, ferocity and deceit.1 In the early part of the 7th century a.d., just as they emerge on the misty horizon of history, the Tibetans overran Upper Burma and Western China, and forced the Chinese emperor to a humiliating peace. As part of the terms of this peace with China in 640 A.D., the king of Tibet, Srongtsan Gampo, then aged twenty-three years of age, received a Chinese princess in marriage. The details recorded in the Chinese annals of that time are interesting:—The Tibetan king “had erected for her a palace built [on Potala hill] with ridge-poles and eaves (in Chinese fashion). The princess disliking the reddish-brown colour put on the faces of the people, he ordered the practice to be discontinued. Moreover, he himself put on fine silks and brocade instead of felt and sheepskins, and gradually took to Chinese customs. He sent the children of the chief men to the national schools [of China]. . . . He asked for silkworms’ eggs, for stone-crushers, and presses for making wine, and for paper and ink makers. Everything was granted, together with an almanak.2” This Chinese princess, like the Nepalese wife of the king was an ardent Buddhist; so these two ladies speedily converted their young husband to their faith, and prevailed upon him to introduce their religion into savage Tibet. Thereupon he became a zealous patron of Buddhism, devoting his wealth and resources to its establishment and endowment throughout his dominions. He sent for Buddhist priests from India, where Buddhism was still flourish- ing, and got them to reduce the Tibetan language to writing in the Indian alphabet, which then became 1 Rockhill’s Life of Buddha, etc., p. 205. Also my Buddhism, p. 19, etc. 2 Rockhill, Jour. Roy. As. Soc. xxiii. 191.
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