in, to hear the news of Kiahta from Alexsimevich. The expedition has
become part of the gossip-transportation system. Half the population of
Kiahta must have sent messages here,--half the Russian traders in Urga
have come to receive them. First, there is the general news dispensed
into the expectant ears of the group at Varlakoff’s. Alexsimevich is
for an hour the cynosure. Questions and answers flash back and forth,
going off sometimes explosively like fireworks. Then follow the special
events and the individual messages. At last these are all detailed.
Now come invitations from various men to visit their houses “Will the
_gaspadine_ come?”--“The _gaspadine_ must see the city.”--“_Da! da!_”
echoes the group.
Varlakoff goes out for his stick and overcoat. The wool-merchant gets
into his fleece-lined _shuba_. He achieves the feat by the usual
Siberian method. Putting the garment over his head, he pushes his arms
through the sleeves, and gradually struggles and writhes up into it
as one gets into a wet bathing-suit. Alexsimevich finishes his fourth
glass of tea, lights one of the _Hazan’s_ cigarettes, and worms his
way also into his deerskin greatcoat. Then out we go into the bright
sunlight and the snow-covered streets.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF GIGIN, URGA]
The houses of the Russian quarter of Urga were only glimpsed in the
dusk of last night. We have daylight upon them now. Squat whitewashed
buildings they are, with neatly paned windows and big square
chimneys. Across the mounds and hillocks of a broad street is the
one-storied Russian Club, where one may drink vodka, play billiards
or cards, and while away the winter evenings. Further on is a row of
shops. The bearded owners stand behind their counters, dressed in
belted Mongol _shubas_ and Russian fur caps. The doors to all the
shops are open, that the Mongols, perplexed with knobs, may not take
their trade elsewhere. Enameled kettles are hanging in festoons down
the walls. The shelves are crowded with bolts of vivid-colored cotton
cloths to be sewed into _shubas_ by the Mongols who ride in to buy.
There are big cases of sweetmeats, Moscowski caramels, acceptable
offerings to the grotesque _dokchits_ on the family shrines. Russian
monopoly tobacco is there, in stamped paper packets for the delectation
of Muscovites and Buriats who have the taste and the means, and
villainous South-China tobacco and snuff for native purchasers. One can
get vodka almost as bad as that of Siberia, and far cheaper, for it is
compounded by a local distiller who rejoices in an excise-less market.
Foreign brandies and wines fill big walls of shelves.
“_Zdravstvouitie!_” one of the merchants calls, hailing our party.
“It is Vassili Michaeloff, old friend of mine,” says Alexsimevich. “Let
us go in.”
We enter and are led back into the private part of the house.
“_Chai!_” shouts the host to somebody behind the oven.
“_Haracho_,” comes the answer.
We all sit down. If any purchasers drift into the shop, they can
wait until we get through our visit, or they can go down the line.
For wherever the Eagles are planted, the Russian joyfully drops his
business to entertain a friend. At the call of “tea” the shovel goes
into the ditch, the ledger onto the shelf, the pen into the potato. If
“_chai_” interferes with business, cut out business. Nor does it matter
in the least that we have just had breakfast; by the rule of etiquette
we must be entertained. “Tea” consists first in a ceremoniously clinked
toast drowned in vodka. Then appears the samovar in charge of the woman
of the house, the glasses, and the sugar. Next follow the cigarettes.
The talk is animated, for its local history absorbs each little world.
The fact comes out that the cousin of Michaeloff has bought a new pair
of horses for a hundred roubles. The price, the quality of the animals
and of the man, all go into the crucible. Kiahta beer arrives as the
conversation turns to the death of one Ivan Vladimiraef, which it is
agreed was not unnatural, since he had reached the age of ninety-odd
years. Still the provisions come. The good wife brings in a heaping
plate of lard-impregnated Hamburger steaks, called “cotlet,” which
Alexsimevich attacks as if his last meal were half a day instead
of half an hour distant. Other bottles accumulate to help out the
dwindling flagon of vodka. We enter upon Château Yquem, Pomeranian, and
Caucasian claret. Then cakes are set out, and more tea, and finally a
quart bottle of champagne.
Alexsimevich stands to his guns like the 38th Siberians at Tien-tsin.
But it is hard for any one of less rigorous training in this sort of
thing to hold even the straggler’s pace at nine o’clock in the morning.
Mentally we hoist the flag upside down, and wink at Alexsimevich as
the outward and visible sign of the inward and spirituous distress. He
takes the rest of the champagne in a last gulp, and with a series of
thanks we gain the entrance to the shop, where two Mongols and a Buriat
are waiting patiently, looking vacantly around at the crockery.
We are shown ceremoniously to the door, shake hands, remark about the
weather, give our compliments to the wife, and depart. When at the
corner, we glance back. Vassili Michaeloff is still standing on the
threshold; his three customers too are looking out leisurely at the
people passing.
“We have thrown his business out of gear,” we remark to Alexsimevich.
He seems surprised.
“There is plenty of time. Why should they mind waiting? _Nietchevo._”
Another host is overjoyed to see us, for an engineering problem of
great perplexity is, he tells us in due course, harassing his mind. No
one in Urga can help him out, but perhaps we will.
“The Chinese governor, the _Zinzin_, wants to make an automobile line
from Kalgan,” the host announces. “I saw an iron bridge once, so I
agreed to build him one over the Lara River. Have you ever seen an iron
bridge? How shall I do it?”
You allow that you have seen an iron bridge,--that you have even gone
across one. You suggest that much depends on the river. “How wide is
it, for instance?”
“I have not picked out the place for the bridge yet,” answers the host;
“but the river is somewhere between sixty and three hundred feet wide.
Have some vodka?”
“And how deep is the water?” you ask.
“Well,”--after much thought,--“it is deep in the middle and shallow at
the edges. Have a cigarette! Have some tea! If we build this bridge,
the _Zinzin_ will give us a decoration. How much will the bridge cost?”
“That depends upon what sort of bridge you build, and how long it is,
and how much material you use!”
Alexsimevich comes in.
“You see, the more iron you use, the more the bridge costs,” he
observes.
“_Navierno! navierno!_ you speak sagely, Alexsimevich. That is what I
told the _Zinzin_.”
“It must have piers and abutments,” you venture.
“But the _Zinzin_ does not like piers, because the water was not made
to put such things into. Yet I said with you, one must always have
piers. Here is brandy. Take a few sardines!”
The problem certainly needs something special for its elucidation. You
ponder, and Alexsimevich and the host breathlessly watch the hatching
of your official pronunciamento.
At last you deliver yourself.
“Find out how wide and deep the river is. Then write to a
steel-manufacturing company, to quote prices. They will send a
blue-print of an automobile bridge of the specified length, together
with the weight of the steel. You can buy pieces to build it at so many
kopecks a pound, just like butter.”
“Ah, my friend, you do not know how great a service you have rendered!
What a providence is your coming! Pray, have some cognac! Will they
send me a picture with piers,--a picture that I can show the _Zinzin_?”
“Yes,--yes, indeed.”
“I go to-morrow to tell him of this.”
We are once more in the street and the banded escort is turning into
still another Russian’s house. Their idea of sightseeing is apparently
to take tea with every Russian in the place. A mild desire is
registered to come in contact with some of the other people. The idea
strikes them in the light of a strange new doctrine.
“You wish to see Mongols?” one asks. Though surprised, they acquiesce
amiably. “To-day they have holiday; you are favored. Go see the doings
and make me visit later,” says the disappointed third host.
Then the wool-merchant speaks.
“Near by is the great temple of Urga, which few have seen, for it is
one of the most holy places of the Lama faith. It is the temple of
Maidari, the Future God. If the _gaspadine_ wishes to see it, I, who
have bought wool from the uncle of the keeper of the gate, can gain
admittance.”
[Illustration: TEMPLE IN THE URGA LAMASERY]
For this we start. The Russian section, made up of shops with posters
and signs in Slavonic letters, and homes with centre chimneys and
little square panes of glass, is left behind. Through a long dark lane
we come out into the main thoroughfare of Mongol Urga. The town is
in festival for the New Moon. The streets are ablaze with color. Red
posters are on every door and wall. The brilliant picture is framed
by the snowy girding hills and the green trees of the Holy Mountain
to the south. The tomb-like altars on the plain are dazzlingly white
against the gray-plastered fronts of the houses behind. The gilded
gargoyles of the temples flash in the sun. Down the main street, a
hundred feet broad, go bevies of girls, their hair bedecked with the
gaudiest ornaments of silver and pearl, their silken robes striped
and banded in green alternating with yellow and blue and gold. Lamas
stride here and there dressed in bright orange robes and hats, their
silver knives hanging at their sides. Great shaggy-haired dromedaries
swing past. Horsemen, robed in vivid scarlet and blue and magenta,
dash at full gallop across the wide open _piazza_ in the centre
of the town. A donkey-cart is driven slowly along, crowded with
brightly-dressed girls. A squad of Chinese cavalry trot by in white
jackets, red-lettered. Two of the Cossack garrison swagger past. A
bearded Siberian trader strolls across, clothed in the dark Mongolian
cloak which most have adopted, going toward the Russian quarter we have
just left. A string of oxen plods by, drawing cartloads of wood.
Walking on, we come to a long line of kiosks which a continuous
procession of pilgrims in holiday attire is entering. In each booth
is a cask-shaped prayer-wheel, a magnified model of those which women
carry, twirling them in their hands as they walk.
Along this main square of Urga, and girding her city stockade, are
hundreds of these cylinders. All the day long, men and women are going
in and out from one kiosk to another, turning. Some say that formerly
one could enter a great Tibetan temple only after saying a prayer
so long that even a Grand Lama’s memory could not carry it. So, for
convenience, a cylinder with the written text was set up at the temple
gate. By degrees it became the custom, without reading it, to rotate
the petition for a blessing. Others say that the wheels are whirled in
literal obedience to Buddha’s precept to “turn over and over his words.”
Alternating with the wheels are stone shrines graven with Tibetan
characters, before which, on wooden couches, silken-dressed women are
abasing themselves in abject worship. A long line of pilgrims is doing
the circle of the city. They stand, then drop prostrate in the snow.
Rising, they move conscientiously forward to where their heads touched,
and again lie prone, making thus a penitential circuit of the stockade.
Most are in deadly earnest. Some, hired for a proxy service, steal
forward a few inches on each prostration.
Suddenly three distant guns boom out.
“_Scurry, scurry toda!_” says the wool-merchant. “Quick, this way. He
is coming.”
You hurry forward to where a trail leads across the square. Afar off,
in the direction of the Holy Mountain, is seen a band of galloping
cavalry. The Mongols on horseback around you are drawing rein. The
pilgrims are looking toward the approaching cavalcade. Brilliant red
and yellow are the robes that flutter as the body-guard ride. Now a
rumble of wheels is heard among the clattering hoofs. Preceded by
twenty horsemen, followed by twenty more, rolls down a Russian droshky,
with a yellow-robed lama driving. Propped among the multicolored
cushions sits a clean-shaven, silk-robed man, with puffy cheeks and
tired eyes. The European watch which he carries hangs in anomalous
awkwardness at the breast of his robe; his leg is propped on the front
seat, as if he were lame. Most turn their backs to him in Oriental
honoring; many prostrate themselves in the snow; every horseman in the
square has dismounted.
“He drives from his palace beside the Holy Mountain to the temple on
the hill beyond the city,” says the wool-merchant.
“But who is it?” we ask, as the last galloper rides by.
The Russian looks at us as an old Roman might, if in the Forum we had
not recognized Cæsar.
“That! That’s Gigin, the Living God! That’s Buddha come back to
earth,--Gigin!”
You stand a moment to take it all in. Then, despite your purpose of
respect, a smile works to the front.
At once the wool-merchant laughs gleefully. “Ask Varlakoff about the
Buddha,” he chuckles. “Varlakoff sold him his ponies for ten thousand
roubles. My friend showed him a picture of the ponies, little horses,
you know, and Gigin told him to get them. They had to send to an island
of Europe, Scotland. But Gigin was very pleased. He said Varlakoff was
the only man who had never lied to him.”
The expression of the wool-merchant was that worn according to
tradition by the Roman augurs.
“When there is not a holiday, the people have the market here in this
square,” the merchant continues. “I was here in the bazaar with a
friend last week, and we heard a commotion over by that prayer-wheel.
We went up, to find that two of the Buddha’s lamas were borrowing a
fine horse, worth three hundred roubles, which belonged to a Mongol
woman. It was all she had, she told us, and it was being taken to the
Living God’s stables. The woman was in great distress.
“‘It is mine. I will appeal to the Consul,’ said my friend.
“The Gigin’s men could not take a Russian’s horse, so they had to give
it up. The Mongol woman came and wept on him, she was so glad. She
brought a gift to my friend. Generally the Gigin returns such borrowed
booty when he has used it a while, but often not. Anything that is new,
the God will buy. These pilgrims, you see, bring him offerings. Kalmuks
come all the way from the Volga, Manchus make pilgrimages, Buriats
come down from north of Baikal, and tribesmen from Tibet. He has half
a million roubles a year from his priests, and he does not care for
anybody.”
Becoming more and more steeped in celestial gossip, we go past the
gray-plastered compounds piled high with wood and timber, a main export
of Urga. Tall masts with logs suspended from them are the signs. We
reach at last a big stockaded courtyard, the beginning of the monastery
quarters.
“Come, look in here!” says the guide.
You peer through the gateway at six of the biggest bronze
_burgoo_-kettles that ever existed outside an ogre’s kitchen. Each
kettle can hold a couple of cows.
“It is to feed the monks,” says your companion.
The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with buckets suspended to the
end of a milkmaid’s yoke. They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray
tapioca pudding. What it is made of remains one of the secrets of the
monastery, whose chef is stirring the mixture with an oar.
A big stockade, enclosing tents and peaked _soumé_, from which the
sound of chattering is heard, appears ahead. As we approach, a whole
hive of boys swarm out and scatter in all directions. Some are in red,
some in yellow, some wear ordinary Mongol caps, some wear high, yellow
sugar-loaf fools’-caps, which fall over on one side. These are the
novices in training for the lama hierarchy.
The first-born of each family must by immemorial custom become a
lama. In babyhood and boyhood one of these dedicated children is clad
in yellow robes and is especially tended. “_Ubashi_,” he is called.
When about ten years old the boy goes to school, at Urga. He becomes
a _bandi_, or student of the prayers and of the Tibetan language. He
runs about as those we have just seen, and at about twenty he becomes
a _gitzul_, or first-degree lama. Now he shaves head and beard, and
wears a brilliant yellow and red robe. Next he takes the more advanced
examination and catechism, and becomes a full priest, or _gilun_,
forbidden to marry, to kill, or to work. He may continue his curriculum
in one of the departments of the lamasery, studying divinity, medicine,
or astrology.
In the divinity course a lama will memorize Tibetan prayers, and pore
for years over the big holy books which lie within the chests of the
lamasery chapels. He will repeat the creed over his beads, in rapt
self-hypnotism, meditating in celestial holiness. He will pray down
rain for the grass, and will exorcise glanders from the ponies.
A priest taking the medical course will gain a knowledge of the
innumerable herbs that grow on the Tibetan mountains, many of which
are of great value as drugs, and are known only to these monastic
seekers. Massage, warm sulphur baths, and waters, are part of his
pharmacopœia. Mixed with genuine instruction in anatomy and medicine,
he will be taught the incantations that cast out _tchutgours_, or evil
spirits, the words of power to be written on rice-paper and rolled
into a pill for the patient to swallow. He will learn what devil is
responsible for the disease which has brought low the lusty herdsman,
and the right order of image to make for allaying the infernal anger.
He will be taught when the fever crisis is at hand, so that the
cymbal-clashers, the drum-beaters, and the prayer-wailers may assemble,
and by these holy noises and a transcendental counter-excitement, lift
the patient over the fever-point.
[Illustration: A PROSTRATING PILGRIMAGE]
If he elects astrology, he will be instructed in casting horoscopes of
unfailing value, in reading the stars, predicting their future stations
and the coming of eclipses. He will be prepared to declare the reasons
for visitations of murrain and to track the trail of straying camels.
Divers are the paths of knowledge, but all may lead to the honor
of Grand Lama, head of a monastery, or member of the college of
_shabniars_, who form the Council of the Living God. And when the great
reaper has called the high priest from his earthly glory, a whitened
tomb will be raised to his memory just outside some town along the
camel-trail, while his ashes will be moulded into briquettes and godly
images, to rest before the gods in the shrine of some _soumé_.
We have arrived at the gateway to the great temple. The wool-merchant
disappears inside to work his pull. A young lama comes out to the
door, smiles at the foreigner, and then goes in again, and you tremble
lest your advent is being announced to some other than the one man who
can supposedly be “fixed.” This is the most important temple of Urga,
forbidden to foreigners, and seen through good fortune by a few only of
the old residents. But every gate they bar to hate will open wide to
love--and a ten-rouble note. The merchant comes back.
“We can go in while the lamas pray,” he whispers.
The uncle appears, with an expectant look on his face, and motions us
in through the darkness to the anteroom of the temple sanctuary.
From the chamber curtained off at one side comes a low swelling chant.
“Service begins, you may see it from here,” the lama says, just above
his breath.
Your station is in darkness, but just the other side of the curtain
are the lamas, and their apartment is lighted by windows. Two rows of
benches extend the length of their chamber, leaving an aisle between
them, reaching from the door to the altar. A score of priests in yellow
robes, with red sashes slung tartan-fashion over a shoulder, are
sitting on these seats facing each other. They are ranged evidently
in the order of their ages. Two old _giluns_, fluent in the Tibetan
litany, sit next the altar. Then come younger lamas, the _gitzul_, not
yet full priests. Finally next to the door are _bandi_, ten or twelve
years old, intense in youthful delight that their part in the ceremony
is to pound as lustily as they can the big prayer-drums. The service
begins with the chanting of a ritual in form not unlike the Slavonic
litanies of Siberia. At appointed times it is necessary to call the
god’s attention to the fact that something is going on in his honor.
At once a most deafening clamor begins. The small boy with a drum is
drowned out by his big brother, further up the line, who officiates
upon a huge wooden cornet, and by his uncle with the conch-shell or
the cymbals. The droning of prayers is like the buzz of hiving bees.
There seem to be no responses, but all of them read together. Presently
comes a sudden clamor, almost like a fire-alarm; then the crash and the
droning suddenly cease.
“It is over!” says the guide.
The lamas file out by a further door, and we tiptoe in to inspect the
holy of holies at the heart of the great lama sanctuary. In the dimness
one sees first before him the table for offerings, on which are the two
main sacerdotal instruments,--a silver bell and a silver handle like a
carving-knife-rest,--and row after row of targets made of dough-paste,
of brass cups filled with oil to serve the tapers, of millet, rice,
currants. Behind this altar, towering far up into the hollow of the
dome, is the bronze colossus of the smiling Buddha, Maidari, the Future
God.
Fifty feet in height, the figure is, cross-legged, with open, painted
eyes. From Buddha’s hands hang long silken streamers. One of very fine
quality is embroidered with the ten thousand gods.
“This,” the priest whispers, “is a present from the Dalai Lama.”
A great festival takes place in summer in honor of this god, who will
rule a myriad years hence, when the race of giants descends to kill
mankind and to people the earth with their own kindred. The Gigin’s
elephant is brought out, and he himself takes the lesser dignity of a
carriage in deference to Maidari. Even the gods of the present must
honor the gods of the future.
The Gigin’s throne is to the left of the statue. It has triple silk
cushions. Around are twelve colossi of Buddha, some ten feet in height,
and entirely gilt save for the red lips and the eyes. The hands are
held in differing positions, folded, outstretched, pointing. Here and
there a silk scroll is hung.
The walls of the sanctuary are lined with shelves like a book-store,
and these are loaded with statuettes of the ten thousand gods.
We tiptoe back the way we came, and are soon in the street of the
monastery. The uncle has seen us safely away. We betake our route from
the Mongol toward the Russian section.
“You saw the throne cushion of Dalai Lama?” the wool-merchant asks.
“They have put it back now. Gigin kicked it out of the temple when
Dalai Lama left. The Angleski drove Dalai Lama from Lhasa, and he came
to Urga to visit Gigin, because here is the second great Buddhist holy
place. Now Dalai Lama is very monkish, very austere, and always prays
and fasts. But our Gigin”--here follows another expansive smile--“Gigin
rode out with his Council, the _shabniars_, and took some of Pokrin’s
best champagne in the cart, for they would not have it in Lhasa.
Dalai Lama was very stiff. Gigin asked him, ‘Have a drink!’ Dalai did
not understand, for drink is forbidden. Then he asked him again, and
Dalai Lama refused rebukingly. They came to Gigin’s palace at the
foot of the Holy Mountain, which is built like the Russian consulate.
After the prostrations, Gigin said to Dalai that he had come far and
few women were on the road and those mostly old and ugly. Dalai Lama
refused that too. Cigarettes and snuff, and canned tomatoes he offered,
but Dalai Lama refused them all. Then, in the Assembly of the Lamas,
Dalai rebuked Gigin, and made him sit below his servants in penalty,
for Dalai Lama is more of a god than Gigin. All the pilgrims came to
offer gifts to Dalai Lama, and Gigin did not get his. For months Dalai
Lama stayed here. Afterwards he went away to China. Gigin came to
this temple then and kicked Dalai Lama’s throne, throwing it down. He
celebrated in the summer palace when Dalai Lama left, for he was very
happy.”
* * * * *
Mongol Urga is left behind, and we reënter the Russian town. A hail
from one of the passers-by is not long delayed. “Will you have _chai_?”
he questions. He is an alert-looking Russian, smartly clad in a _shuba_
of green leather trimmed with sable.