he was
induced to visit Peking where he was received with great ceremony but,
contrary to the precedent established when the fifth Grand Lama
attended Court, he was obliged to kneel and kotow before the Empress
Dowager. Neither could he obtain the right to memorialize the throne,
but was ordered to report to the Agents. The Court duly recognized his
religious position. On the birthday of the Empress he performed a
service for her long life, at which Her Majesty was present. It was
not wholly successful, for a week or two later he officiated at her
funeral. At the end of 1908 he left for Lhasa. He visited India in
1910 but this created dissatisfaction at Peking. In the same year[969]
a decree was issued deposing him from his spiritual as well as his
temporal powers and ordering the Agents to seek out a new child by
drawing lots from the golden urn. This decree was probably _ultra
vires_ and certainly illogical, for if the Chinese Government
recognized the Lama as an incarnation, they could not, according to
the accepted theory, replace him by another incarnation before his
death. And if they regarded him as a false incarnation, they should
have ordered the Agents to seek out not a child but a man born about
the time that the last Grand Lama died. At any rate the Tibetans paid
no attention to the decree.

The early deaths of Grand Lamas in the nineteenth century have
naturally created a presumption that they were put out of the way and
contemporary suspicion accused the regent in 1838. There is no
evidence that the deaths of the other three were regarded as unnatural
but the earlier Grand Lamas as well as the abbots of Tashilhunpo lived
to a good age. On the other hand the Grand Lamas of Urga are said to
die young. If the pontiffs of some lines live long and those of others
die early, the inference is not that the life of a god incarnate is
unhealthy but that in special cases special circumstances interfere
with it, and on the whole there are good grounds for suspecting foul
play. But it is interesting to note that most Europeans who have made
the acquaintance of high Lamas speak in praise of their character and
intelligence. So Manning (the friend of Charles Lamb) of the ninth
Grand Lama (1811), Bogle of the Tashi Lama about 1778, Sven Hedin of
his successor in 1907, and Waddell of the Lama Regent in 1904.

The above pages refer to the history of Lamaism in Tibet and Mongolia.
It also spread to China, European Russia,