Kim
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 water-birds. Two butterfly-winged
devas 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 note-book 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 fallen asleep. When he
waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension.
“And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to the
Holy Places which His foot had trod—to the Birthplace, even to Kapila;
then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya—to the Monastery—to the
Deer-park—to the place of His death.”
The lama lowered his voice. “And I come here alone. For
five—seven—eighteen—forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law was
not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom,
charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay, even
as the child said, with _būt-parasti_.”
“So it comes with all faiths.”
“Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were dried
pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law have
cumbered ourselves—that, too, had no worth to these old eyes. Even the
followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one another. It
is all illusion. Ay, _maya_, illusion. But I have another desire”—the
seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the Curator, and the
long forefinger-nail tapped on the table. “Your scholars, by these
books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but
there are things which they have not sought out. I know nothing—nothing
do I know—but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad
and open road.” He smiled with most simple triumph. “As a pilgrim to
the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there is more. Listen to a true
thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men
said, in His father’s Court, that He was too tender for marriage. Thou
knowest?”
The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next.
“So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And at
the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave Him,
called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?”
“It is written. I have read.”
“And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far beyond
sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth, there broke
out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature, by our
Lord’s beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed himself, is
that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.”
“So it is written,” said the Curator sadly.
The lama drew a long breath. “Where is that River? Fountain of Wisdom,
where fell the arrow?”
“Alas, my brother, I do not know,” said the Curator.
“Nay, if it please thee to forget—the one thing only that thou hast not
told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with my
head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We _know_ He drew the bow!
We _know_ the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then, is
the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But where
is the River?”
“If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?”
“By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,” the lama went on,
unheeding. “The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream,
maybe—dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an old
man.”
“I do not know. I do not know.”
The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth
from the Englishman’s. “I see thou dost not know. Not being of the Law,
the matter is hid from thee.”
“Ay—hidden—hidden.”
“We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I”—he rose with a sweep
of the soft thick drapery—“I go to cut myself free. Come also!”
“I am bound,” said the Curator. “But whither goest thou?”
“First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of the
pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in
secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with me to
Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I seek
for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go—for the place is not
known where the arrow fell.”
“And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to
Benares.”
“By road and the trains. From Pathânkot, having left the Hills, I came
hither in a _te-rain_. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to see
those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up
their threads,”—he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraph-pole
flashing past the train. “But later, I was cramped and desired to walk,
as I am used.”
“And thou art sure of thy road?” said the Curator.
“Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed
persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I knew in my
lamassery from sure report,” said the lama proudly.
“And when dost thou go?” The Curator smiled at the mixture of old-world
piety and modern progress that is the note of India today.
“As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to the
River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the hours of
the trains that go south.”
“And for food?” Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere
about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.
“For the journey, I take up the Master’s begging-bowl. Yes. Even as He
went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me
when I left the hills a _chela_ (disciple) who begged for me as the
Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died.
I have now no _chela_, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable
the charitable to acquire merit.” He nodded his head valiantly. Learned
doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in
this quest.
“Be it so,” said the Curator, smiling. “Suffer me now to acquire merit.
We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of white
English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three—thick and thin,
all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.”
The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the
power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the
lama’s hand, saying: “Try these.”
“A feather! A very feather upon the face.” The old man turned his head
delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. “How scarcely do I feel them! How
clearly do I see!”
“They be _bilaur_—crystal—and will never scratch. May they help thee to
thy River, for they are thine.”
“I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,” said the
lama, “as a sign of friendship between priest and priest—and now—” He
fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it
on the Curator’s table. “That is for a memory between thee and me—my
pencase. It is something old—even as I am.”
It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector’s heart in the Curator’s bosom
had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama
resume his gift.
“When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written
picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on silk at the
lamassery. Yes—and of the Wheel of Life,” he chuckled, “for we be