[32] Huree is mistaken. John Grueber and Albert D'Orville visited Lhassa in 1661 and saw the Potala palace, although the construction was not fully completed till 1695.
[33] Being Buddhists, the Dalai Lamas would, of course, never have had animals captured for their amusement. The animals in the menagerie were wounded or lost creatures rescued by pious travellers and presented to the Dalai Lama for safe-keeping. When there was an excess of animals at the zoo, the Dalai Lama would present them to government officials, who were obliged to give them a good home.
[34] The Tibetan via sacra circling the holy city. The street circling the main cathedral, the Jokang, is shorter though equally holy, and is known as the Barkor.
[35] Atisha (Skt. Dipankarajnana., Tib. Jowo-je) 982-1055, was a great Buddhist teacher from Bengal who came to Tibet in the eleventh century to revive a Buddhism that had been weakened and corrupted after the break up of the Tibetan Empire.
[36] Lurgan's power of mesmerism is described by Kipling in Kim. Lurgan hypnotises the eponymous hero into seeing a shattered water jug becoming whole again.
[37] Watson also mentions this habit of Holmes. See The Mazarin Stone.
[38] The vajra was originally the thunderbolt weapon of Indra, the Indian Zeus. The Buddhists changed it to the symbol of highest spiritual power 'the Adamantine Sceptre' which is irresistible and invincible. The double or crossed vajra (Skt. visva-vajra) symbolises immutability, and is hence used in designs of thrones and seats, inscribed on bases of statues, pillars, foundations of houses, anywhere where permanence is desired.
[39] Legends of the Chintamani stone are prevalent even beyond these places. It is believed that Tamerlane and Akbar possessed portions of such a stone, and that the stone set on Suleimans (Solomon) magic ring was a piece of the Chintamani. Nicholas Roerich, the famous White Russian mystic, artist and traveller was convinced that the Chintamani was the 'Lapis Exilis) the Wandering Stone of the old Meistersingers.
[40] In The Valley of Fear, Holmes tells Watson that Moriarty is the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid – 'a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it.'
[41] What we now call the polarisation of light.
[42] Pho-wa (Tib.) is one of the most jealously guarded secret yogic practises of Tibet. It is the yoga of transferring the principle of consciousness from one incarnation to the next without suffering any break in the continuity of consciousness.
[43] The consciousness principle (or life-force) leaves the body through the 'Aperture of Bhrama (Skt. Bhrama- randhra) situated on the crown of the head at the sagittal suture where the two parietal bones articulate, opened by means of the yogic practise of the Pho-wa. The bird flying out of it is the consciousness-principle going out; for it is through this aperture that the life-force quits the body, either permanently at death, or temporarily during the practice of Pho-wa. The process is a part of Kundalini Yoga.
[44] Judging by the Lama Yonten's words, it would seem that in this case the process was not one of reincarnation with continuing consciousness, but a radical transfer of the consciousness principle into the body of another existing person. It would therefore seem that the yoga of Trong-jug and not the yoga of Pho-wa was performed in this case. The Babu is probably not to blame for this error in the narrative. It is most likely that the Lama Yonten made-a mistake in his choice of terms, a perfectly understandable error considering the desperation of the situation.
[45] Sanskrit for the Blue Lotus (Nymphaea caerulea).
[46] The ultimate political authority in China at the time was really in the hands of the empress dowager, Cixi, the ruthless, power-hungry, cunning, and treacherous aunt of the figure-head emperor, Guangxu, who languished in palace seclusion – on her orders.
[47] Hurree was very prescient here. The thirteenth Dalai Lama not only survived a number of subsequent plots, but even after an exile to Mongolia and another to India, eventually succeeded in throwing out all Chinese influence and power in Tibet. He declared the independence of his nation on the eighth day of the first month of the Water-Ox year (1913). Besides making important reforms in the government and the church, he created a modern army that further defeated Chinese forces on the eastern frontier of Tibet, and gradually recovered lost territories of the old Tibetan Empire. For a full account of his life see Portrait of the Dalai Lama, London, 1946, by his friend Sir Charles Bell.
[48] Sherlock Holmes returned to England in the late spring of 1894. Soon after his arrival in London he succeeded in finally catching the elusive Colonel Moran in an ingenious trap, at the same time solving the strange murder of the Hon. Ronald Adair, which had left the fashionable world of London utterly dismayed (see The Empty House).
