LANDS OF THE THUNDERBOLT.*
As in Tibet, so in the little hill States that lie between Tibet and India proper the priest, all powerful, is " the wielder of the thunderbolt." Lord Ronaldshay, who is one of our most accomplished and engaging literary travellers, has devoted his new book to these small States, especially Sikkim and Bhutan,which he visited during his term of office as Governor of Bengal. Sikkim with its astonishing scenery is well known
• Lands of the Thunderbolt : Sikkim, Chumbi and Bhutan. By the Earl of Ronald- ahay. London : Constable. 110a. net.)
to many sportsmen, but Bhutan is more remote, and com- paratively few Europeans have seen the wonderful feudal castles, complete with donjon, bailey, battlements and 'outer
guard, which the author describes—castles that might have risen straight out of the pages of Ivanhoe but for the touch of
Tibetan style in the tiled roofs and hanging balconies of the central keeps. Lord Ronaldshay was specially interested in the religious life of the people, and it would be hard to find
a simpler or more sympathetic exposition of the strange form of Buddhism which prevails in Tibet and its borderlands and centres in the person of the Dalai Lama at Lhasa, held to be an incarnation of Avalokiteswara, Tibet's patron saint and a counterpart of Gautama Buddha himself. Lord Ronaldshay relates the story of Buddha's life, and sketches the develop- ment and sad decline of Buddhism from the high intellectual and ethical ideals of its founder. The priest who in the eighth century converted Tibet to the Lamaistic form of Buddhism was an adept in the magical practices to which Indian Buddhists were then resorting. He was shrewd enough to incorporate in his Pantheon all the demons in whom the pagan hillmen believed. Moreover, he offered the individual soul a simple way of escape from the endless round of birth and death and rebirth which was Buddha's doctrine. Cease- less repetition of the formula, " Om mani padme hum "- originally, as Sir Charles Eliot points out, a mere invocation of Tibet's patron saint—accumulates merit for the worshipper and eventually enables him to attain oblivion. We are told of prayer-wheels arranged along the wall of a temple so that the passer-by, brushing them with his shoulder, causes them to revolve ; of prayer-wheels worked by a mountain torrent ; and of a gigantic wheel containing two tons of paper closely written with the formula, so that a single revolution, taking a second, counts to the devotee for perhaps a million prayers. Never was there such a case of vain repetitions, and yet, as Lord Ronaldshay reminds us, at the core of all this mechanical piety there is the longing of the individual soul for freedom and rest which Buddha could not satisfy. On the other hand, the Tibetan and Bhutanese Buddhists have lost sight of the stern ethical teaching of the founder, embodied in the " Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, Right Seeing, Right Aspiring, Right Doing, Right Speaking, Right Living, Right Endeavour- ing, Right Remembering and Right Reflecting "—a path that is very hard to follow. Lord Ronaldshay remarks, however, that these hillmen, despite the sterile monotony of their devotions, are happy and cheerful people, very unlike the Hindus of the plains. These interesting chapters on Buddhism arc interspersed with admirable sketches of travel amid some of the finest mountain scenery in-the world. The charm of the text is increased by the unusually good photo- graphs with which the author has illustrated it. The book is one to be read, and read again.
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