is a layman found who can read
or write.

The Lamaseries and the Lamas, as well as the land and property belonging
to them, are absolutely free from all taxes and dues. Each Lama and
novice is supported for life, and receives an allowance of _tsamba_,
bricks of tea, and salt. The Lamas are recruited from all ranks. Honest
folks, murderers, thieves, swindlers--all are eagerly welcomed in
joining the brotherhood. One or two male members of each family in Tibet
take monastic orders, and thus the monks obtain a powerful influence
over each house or tent-hold. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that
in Tibet half the members of the male population are Lamas.

In each monastery are found Lamas, Chibbis,[7] and a lower grade of
ignorant and depraved Lamas--slaves, as it were, of the higher Lamas.
The latter dress, and have clean-shaven heads like their superiors. They
do all the handiwork of the monastery; but they are mere servants, and
take no direct, active part in the politics of the Lama Government. The
Chibbis are novices. They enter the Lamasery when young, and remain
students for many years. They are constantly under the teaching and
supervision of the older ones. Confession is practised, from inferior to
superior. After undergoing successfully several examinations, a Chibbi
becomes a Lama, which word translated means "high-priest." These Chibbis
take minor parts in the strange religious ceremonies in which the Lamas,
disguised in skins and ghastly masks, sing and dance with extraordinary
contortions to the accompaniment of weird music of bells, horns, flutes,
cymbals, and drums.

Each large monastery has at its head a Grand Lama, not to be confounded
with the Dalai Lama of Lhassa, who is believed, or rather supposed, to
have an immortal soul transmigrating from one body into another.

The Lamas eat, drink, and sleep together in the monastery, with the
exception of the Grand Lama, who has a room to himself. For one "moon"
in every twelve they observe a strict seclusion, which they devote to
praying. During that time they are not allowed to speak. They fast for
twenty-four hours at a time, with only water and butter-tea, eating on
fast-days only sufficient food to remain alive, and depriving themselves
of everything else, including snuff and spitting--the two most common
habits among Tibetan men.

The Lamas have great pretensions to infallibility, and on account of
this they claim, and obtain, the veneration of th