next he is dryly recording the discourse of a holy lama, the wayside
gossip of robbers, or the passionate advances of a love-sick maiden,
against whose enticements he steeled himself with the fortitude
becoming to his profession. He tells us with what joy he preached the
simpler truths of Buddhism to the attentive nomads, and in the next
page remarks somewhat inconsistently: "I had my own reasons for being
painstaking in these preachings. I knew that religious talks always
softened the hearts of my companions, and this was very necessary, as
I might otherwise have been killed by them.... Fortunately my sermons
were well received by my companions." His whole journey was
necessarily a long and systematic tissue of deception, but when set on
by robbers he disdains to preserve his worldly trash by a concealment
of the truth. When his friends in Lhassa discover that he is not, as
he has been supposed to be, a Chinaman, but a foreigner from Japan, he
begs them to save themselves and send him in fetters to the Dalai
Lama; but sacred meditation and a supernatural voice add themselves
opportunely to the persuasions of his friends, and with this divine
sanction he makes good his escape.

The book, indeed, has a fourfold value; it reveals artlessly and
perfectly the character of the Shramana Ekai Kawaguchi, and that is
worth knowing in itself. Secondly, it unfolds the emotional and
intellectual aspects of Japanese Buddhism, showing this religion both
on its theological side and as a practical working influence. Thirdly,
it introduces us to a host of Tibetan persons, one after another,
presenting not a vague, impressionist account of them, but individuals
with whom he lived on intimate equal terms in daily social
intercourse. And in the fourth place it gives us what we may take to
be an authoritative account of the whole social system of Tibet--the
priesthood and religion, administration, finance, trade, and the
relations between the sexes and castes.

Having in 1891 given up the rectorship of a monastery in Tokyo, he
lived for some years as a hermit and devoted himself to the study of
Buddhistic books in the Chinese language. In the course of his studies
he learnt that there were Tibetan translations of the sacred text
which, though inferior in general meaning to the Chinese, were
superior as literal translations. He determined, therefore, to
undertake a journey to the forbidden land and travel there alone as a
mendicant priest