"House section.-All your household will be happy and lucky, and for a time your house will be safe; but where the cattle dwell, there a thief and rogue will perhaps come. To avoid this repeat, or get repeated (by Lamas), 10,000 times the spell of Marici. "Favours section. The favours you wish will be got gradually. To remove the difficulty in the way of getting these repeat, or get repeated, 100,000 times the spell of gra-lna, and also of Devi lô-gyön-ma (this latter is Om! pisha-tsi par-na-sha-wa-ri sarba dsô-la-ta-sha-ma-na-ye swahā!), and do the Dug-kar with its contained bzlog-bsgyur (clapping of bands) celebration. "Life (Srog).—This is good. But the gDön demon from the east and south came with a blue and black article you got. To clear away this cloud do, or get done, 100,000 grib-sel, and do the Naga worship and read, or get read, 1,000 times Sherab-Ninpo. "Medical.-Taking the medicine prescribed for you for a long time secretly you shall recover. Also burn a lamp nightly from sunset to sunrise as an offering to the gods. "Enemy. You shall not suffer, as your god is strong and will protect you. "Visitors-probable.-They are coming, or news of their visit will soon be received. "Business.-If you quickly do business it shall be profitable-delay shall be unprofitable. "Travel. The actual leaving of your house shall be difficult, but if you persevere you shall travel safely. "Lost property.-If you go to the north-west you shall get the lost property, or news of it." A most peculiar application of the dice is for determining the successive regions and grades of one's future re-births. Fifty-six or more squares of about two inches wide are painted side by side in contrasted colours on a large sheet of cloth, thus giving a chequered area like an ordinary draught or chess-board. Each square represents a certain phase of existence in one or other of the six regions of re-birth, and on it is graphically depicted a figure or scene expressive of the particular state of existence in the world of man, or beast, or god, or in hell, etc., and it bears in its centre the name of its particular form of existence, and it also contains the names of six other possible states of re-birth which ensue from this particular existence, these names being preceded by one or other of the following six letters: A, S, R, G, D, Y, which are also borne on the six faces of the wooden cube which forms the solitary dice for this divination. Starting from the world of human existence, the dice is thrown, and the letter which turns up determines the region of the next re-birth. Then proceeding from it the dice is again thrown and the letter turned up indicates the next state of re-birth from this new existence, and so on from square to square ad infinitum. Thus for the Lamaist layman there appear only six states of re-birth ordinarily possible, namely:— A. The path of the sorcerer; S. Many days' journey (Ñin ts'og lam); R. The "bent goers," i.e., the beasts; G. The Unorthodox, i e., a follower of the Bön or pre-Lamaist form of religion in Tibet; D. an Indian heretic; Y. a ghostly state in Limbo. The dice accompanying my copy of this board seems to have been loaded so as to show up the letter Y, which gives a ghostly existence, and thus necessitates the performance of many expensive rites to counteract so undesirable a fate. But in addition to the ordinary six states of possible re-birth are the extraordinary states of re-birth to be obtained by the grand coup of turning up the letter A five times in succession or the letter S thirteen times in succession. The former event means direct re-birth in the paradise of St. Padma and his mythical primordial god, Samantabhadra, while the latter event is re-birth immediately into the grander paradise of the coming Buddha, Maitreya. Every year has its general character for good or evil foretold in the astrological books (like Zadkiel's),' but like most oracular utterances, these prophecies are couched in rather ambiguous terms, and as there are four or five versions of these forecasts for each year of the twelve-year cycle in addition to a separate set for each year of the sixty-year cycle, there is thus considerable latitude allowed for accounting for most phenomena. In 1891, during that great visitation of locusts which swarmed over India and into Sikhim as well, the local Lamas were in great glee on finding that the plague of locusts was down in the Lāmaist 1 The ordinary Lamaist forecast for 1891 ran as follows: During this year of the Iron-Hare, there is fear for the cattle. The valuable crops will be moderate. Dew and hail excessive. Birds and mice destructive. Robbery and loss of land, fleeing inhabitants. Slowly crops may recover. Black (seeded crops) good, white not good. Human sickness excessive. In early summer water scanty, with hail and heat afterwards. Slowly progress. If those who otherwise shall certainly die, do "the Life Ransom," the "Death Ransom " (e.g. releasing small fish from the fishmongers), and the "Ceremony to Obtain Life," then they shall be safe, etc., etc. 2 The great oriental locust is well-known to the Nepalese and Sikhim highlanders as an occasional visitant, and I am told that a few of the swarms occasionally pass actually into Tibet. The Nepalese during this last visitation were to be seen catching basketfuls of these insects, which they cooked and ate like shrimps with much relish. forecast for that year. I examined the old printed books and found that in one of the more common versions of the twelve-year cycle a plague of ch'aga was foretold for that year, and ch'aga is a short form of the word for "locust." And it seemed that it could not have come out in the forecaste oftener than about once in six years. The more demoniacal forms of divination practised by the professional oracles and wizards are described in the following chapter. |