Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

said Abdullah. “It is full of heathen būts. Thou also art an idolater.”

“Never mind him,” said Kim. “That is the Government’s house and there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard. Come with me and I will show.”

“Strange priests eat boys,” whispered Chota Lal.

“And he is a stranger and a būt-parast,”5 said Abdullah, the Mohammedan.

Kim laughed. “He is new. Run to your mothers’ laps, and be safe. Come!”

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch. There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of the North Country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto-relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord Buddha. The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached. Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and waterbirds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath over His head; above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

“The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,” the lama half sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist invocation:

To Him the Way⁠—the Law⁠—apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda’s Lord⁠—the Bodhisat.

“And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!”

“Yonder is the Sahib.” said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases of the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded Englishman was looking at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some fumbling drew forth a notebook and a scrap of paper.

“Yes, that is my name,” smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

“One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places⁠—he is now Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery⁠—gave it me,” stammered the lama. “He spoke of these.” His lean hand moved tremulously round.

“Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am here”⁠—he glanced at the lama’s face⁠—“to gather knowledge. Come to my office awhile.” The old man was trembling with excitement.

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out to listen and watch.

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama, haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery, the Such-zen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months’ march away. The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of many-hued strata.

“Ay, ay!” The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of Chinese work. “Here is the little door through which we bring wood before winter. And thou⁠—the English know of these things? He who is now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord⁠—the Excellent One⁠—He has honour here too? And His life is known?”

“It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art rested.”

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside him, went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it from his mound of books⁠—French and German, with photographs and reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park; the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the Curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, Fu-Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. “ ’Tis all here. A treasure locked.” Then he composed himself reverently to listen to fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the Holy Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. The brown finger followed the Curator’s pencil from point to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One’s death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the Curator lit another pipe. Kim had