The first view, and indeed the whole view of this temple of Wrath or
Justice, was suggestive of a frightful Inferno, with its rows of
demon gods, hideous beyond Western conception, engaged in torturing
writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient
lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless
hands, and in a deep recess whose 'darkness' was rendered 'visible'
by one lamp, was that indescribable horror the executioner of the
Lord of Hell, his many brandished arms holding instruments of
torture, and before him the bell, the thunderbolt and sceptre, the
holy water, and the baptismal flagon. Our joss-sticks fumed on the
still air, monks waved censers, and blasts of dissonant music woke
the semi-subterranean echoes. In this temple of Justice the younger
lamas spend some hours daily in the supposed contemplation of the
torments reserved for the unholy. In the highest temple, that of
Peace, the summer sunshine fell on Shakya Thubba and the Buddhist
triad seated in endless serenity. The walls were covered with
frescoes of great lamas, and a series of alcoves, each with an image
representing an incarnation of Buddha, ran round the temple. In a
chapel full of monstrous images and piles of medallions made of the
ashes of 'holy' men, the sub-abbot was discoursing to the acolytes on
the religious classics. In the chapel of meditations, among lighted
incense sticks, monks seated before images were telling their beads
with the object of working themselves into a state of ecstatic
contemplation (somewhat resembling a certain hypnotic trance), for
there are undoubtedly devout lamas, though the majority are idle and
unholy. It must be understood that all Tibetan literature is
'sacred,' though some of the volumes of exquisite calligraphy on
parchment, which for our benefit were divested of their silken and
brocaded wrappings, contain nothing better than fairy tales and
stories of doubtful morality, which are recited by the lamas to the