Part 15

“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.

“Must we eat any more dinners to-day?” we inquire.

“Only tea,” is the reply. It is not quite reassuring.

“That is Pokrin, the one that sells to the Gigin,” the wool-merchant whispers. “Go with him: he can tell you some tales.”

Obviously one must not miss the acquaintanceship of this modern Ganymede, cup-bearer of the many-bubbled French nectar and jugged ambrosia; so on we march to his compound.

Pokrin was on his way to a business appointment; but no rendezvous will interfere with prospective _chai_. He hangs his coat back on its peg, bids his wife start up the samovar, and produces the vodka-bottle. Yes, his family is very well, and he is very busy buying hides. We talk up and down and roundabout numberless themes, and at last venture: “The Gigin!”

“Ah, the Gigin was here to see me only a week ago.”

We bow our recognition of the host’s great importance, and he is started; soon he buckles down into the story.

“The Buddha came up in his carriage with his lamas riding beside him, and they tied their horses all around here in front. Then Gigin came in, walking softly because of his gout, and he said, ‘Let us drink together like friends, without quarreling.’

“I brought out the drinks, and we sat down,--Gigin and I with the lamas around us. Gigin likes best the strong drinks,--not vodka, but cognac and sweet champagne. Very many bottles we drank, Gigin and I. And at last I fell asleep. But Gigin drank still. Then he too fell asleep. In the morning the lamas carried him to his carriage, and back he drove to the palace, with the people lying down in the street as he passed. All the next day I had a very bad pain in my forehead, and it felt large.”

By non-Siberian standards Alexsimevich should be on the way to similar symptoms in the near future. For the purveyor to the Divinity has produced an assorted collection of his wares which are being sampled with due diligence. Cold meats and wheat-bread appear on the table with the samovar.

“We must eat, or he feels badly,” whispers Alexsimevich, as he makes a sandwich, an inch and a half through, which is about the depth of brandy in the Siberian highball.

Other neighbors drift in as the afternoon wears on. The talk turns to that greatest of local events, the Metropolitan Handicap of Mongolia, under the high patronage of the Living God. Things become decidedly stimulating, and the recitals lively. Everybody is living over the excitement, ejaculating and gesticulating. The child-quality in their minds keeps so vivid their impressions, that the scenes are projected almost as by a cinematograph.

From hundreds of miles around, the herdsmen have assembled. The plain before the city is a riot of color, as the horsemen ride here and there. In the centre of the field is the gay pavilion for the yellow-robed bishops and cardinals from distant lamaseries, guests of the great Gigin.

All through the morning, hundreds of riders and horses have been making for the starting-point, twenty _li_ (about seven miles) distant. The jockeys are the smallest boys available: young red-cheeked lamas, perched bareback on the shaggy racing-ponies. The monks, who are stewards of the course, have with much shouting finally, at the hour, lined them up in a long row, facing Urga. One thousand ponies have been reported as entering. It is a regiment of boys. A signal starts the whole cavalcade together. The thousand small jockeys shout at once. A thousand whips come down on flanks. Two thousand heels dig into the ponies’ withers. Over the irregular plain tear the racers, dodging around gullies, stumbling in marmot-holes, galloping helter-skelter amid furious yells. At length they come within sight of Urga. Crowds, mounted, have gone out to follow them in. The shouts redouble, the people become frantic; the riders yell at one another, and the horses are as wild as their masters.