The Doon Mozaic, introductory issue, may 2016 1 | Page 11

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the

from the

Christian

sculpturelined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear

story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and

against acrack in the heat-split cedar door

father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the

and, following his instinct,

cousin

stretched out to listen and watch.

Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,

Master

haltingly

of impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the

at first, spoke to the curator of his own lamassery, the

Deer park;

Suchzen,

the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the

opposite the Painted Rocks, four months’ march away.

Bodhisat in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth;

The curator

the death

brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that

at Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there

very

were

place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley

almost countless repetitions of the meditation under the

of many huedstrata. “Ay, ay!” The lama mounted a pair

Bodhi tree and the adoration of the alms-bowl was every-

of horn-rimmed spectacles of

where.

Chinese work. “Here is the little door through which we

In a few

bring

minutes the curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-

wood before winter. And thou- the English know of these

telling

things?

mendicant, but a scholar of parts. And they went at it all

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.
The doon mozaic

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, Fo-Hian
and
9
Hwen-Thiang, 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.