Lands of the Thunder Bolt- Sikkm, Chumbi & Bhutan (An Old and Rare BooK)

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SOME explanation of the title which I have given to this *Amine is, perhaps, called far. The countries described are situated in the Eastern - Himalayas on the northern borders of Bengal. They contain some of the most impressive mountain scenery in the world ; and if their interest lay Solely in their physical characteristics, they would be worthy of the homage of the most blase traveller. Of Sikhim-the scene of the greater part of the excursions described in these pages it has been said that it is probably the most mountainous country. in the world ; that within its small compass it has an area of less than 3000 square miles it rises in a tumult of ranges from 700 to 28,000 feet ; that in a two bouts' scramble one can descend from 'Alpine gentians to tropical bamboos ; that the higher altitudes are ice and rock, the lower a wilderness of forest ridges and -precipitous gorges, with seldom a level space and barely room for a footpath by the side of their torrent beds.1 But. the interest of these countries by no means lies solely in their scenery, magnificent though it is. They possess also an unusual human interest by reason of the curious lines on which the thought of their people has developed, a,nd of the strange customs and practices to which that thought has given rise.

The peculiar bent of their minds has been produced by the meeting of two fundamentally opposed ideas concerning the nature of things which, instead of rebounding when they met, coalesced. Those ideas were rationalism on the one hand and superstition on the other. The former was re-presented by the metaphysics of early Buddhism ; the latter by the demonolatry which, under the name of Bon-pa, passed for religion in primitive Tibet. It is true that the former had already undergone large changes as a result of contact with thought akin to that of the latter, before ever it penetrated the mountain regions ; but the process of coalescence was completed after it had done so, and it is only in these countries that the thought and practice which are the products of this process have survived.

The man who more than any other was responsible for this paradoxical combination of ideas was a Buddhist missionary known in India as Guru Padma Sambhava, and in Tibet as Guru Rimpoche. The story of his mission, during which were laid the foundations of the elaborately organised religion to which the term lamaism is usually applied, is told hereafter. He became a power in the land, and one of the chief emblems of his might was the vajrah, or symbol of the thunderbolt of Indra. In Tibet the word vajrah became dada', and as time went on it became one of the most common of all the emblems associated with priestly power. It is almost always to be found among the objects on the altars in the temples. It is an essential object on the tables of the three priestly office-bearers whose duty it is to officiate at the temple services. The abbot or spiritual head of a monastery bears the title of Dorje-lopon, " the wielder of the thunderbolt or sceptre."

In Bhutan the title of the spiritual head of the country, known to the outside world as Dharma Raja, is Druk Gye-po, the meaning of which is the " Thunder king," that is to say, the king of the Drukpa or Thunderer sect of Buddhists ; and his motto, engraved in the centre of his official seal, is Bdag Druk Yin, signifying "Tam the Thunderer." And finally, Darjeeling, the name of the famous hill-station which was the starting-point of all the expeditions which form the subject matter of the following pages, is commonly said to be a corruption of Dorje-ling, " the place of the thunderbolt," the name of a monastery which once stood on a well-known eminence in the modern town, now known as Observatory Hill.

**Content and Sample Pages**