not care at all whence the gold comes so long as they grasp a large sum. The policy of the British Government therefore rests on a pedestal set a little too high to be understood and appreciated by the majority of the official circles of Tibet.
The attitude of the priesthood towards England is a puzzled one. They are puzzled to determine whether they should denounce the English as devils incarnate, or respect them as the incarnations of saints. The benevolent arrangements made by them, such as establishing philanthropic institutions, laying of railroads and such like, lead the sceptical Lamas to think that Englishmen must understand the ways of Buddhism and be a godly race. But when they think that these same Englishmen did not scruple to annex other people's land to their own dominions, their favorable impression about Englishmen receives a sudden and complete check. These two conflicting notions seem to have taken a deep hold on their minds, and they try to solve the puzzle without compromising their two convictions. They explain that there must be two distinct kinds of Englishmen in India, one benevolent and godly and the other infernal and quite wicked. Otherwise, they think, such a marvellous phenomenon as that witnessed in India could hardly have been possible.
The same priests held a strange notion about the late Queen. They believed her to be an incarnation of the patron Goddess of the Cho-khang temple in Lhasa, and therefore endowed with a supernatural power of subjugating and governing the whole world. Because of this occult affinity the Queen entertained, they believed, a fraternal feeling towards Tibet, but some of the courtiers about her were wicked and obstructed her benevolent intentions, just as the great Buḍḍha himself had among His disciples some wicked and incorrigible characters. The Tibetans, they said, must get rid of those pernicious persons for the Queen.
