The origin of the four rivers is given in the story just as I have related it; but in reality there is not one of them that actually flows directly out of the Lake. They have their sources in the mountains which surround it, and the stories about the so-called ‘Horse’s’ and ‘Lion’s’ mouths are only legends, incapable of verification. The head-waters of the Langchen Khanbab flow in a westerly direction; those of the Mabcha Khanbab to the south; the sources of the Senge Khanbab may be ascertained with tolerable accuracy; but those of the Tamchok Khanbab have hitherto defied investigation. In India, the river that flows from the Lake in an easterly direction is known as the Brahmapu?ra, while the one that issues towards the south is the Ga?ga. The Sutlej flows away to the west, and the Si?a, or In?us, towards the north. It is, of course, possible that actual surveys of Lake Manasarovara have been made by European travellers, but in all the maps that I have seen it is represented as being far smaller than it actually is. It is, in truth, a very large body of fresh water, and has a circumference of some eighty ri, or about two hundred miles. The shape of the lake also, as it appears in the maps, is misleading. It is in reality a fairly regular octagon with various indentations, very much resembling a lotus-flower in shape. All the western maps, as far as I know, give the student an idea of the Lake which is in many respects misleading.

I arrived that night at a Bu??hist Temple known as Tse-ko-lo, on the shores of Lake Manasarovara, and in the evening heard from my host, the superior of the Temple, a story which surprised me greatly. This Lama, I should say, was a man of about fifty-five years of age; he was extremely ignorant, but did not seem to be a man who would lie for the mere pleasure of lying. He was very anxious to hear about the state of Bu??hism in China (the reader will remember that I was supposed to be a Chinese, Lama) and the readiness with which I answered his questions warmed his heart and encouraged him to treat me to the following story. He did not know, he said, how it might be with the priests in China, but for himself he could not help feeling at times thoroughly disgusted with his brethren in Tibet. In the immediate vicinity, for instance, an ordinary priest might, he said, indulge himself in all manner of excesses with impunity, and without attracting much attention, and from time to time cases would arise of extreme depravity in a Lama. For instance, there was the case of Alchu Tulku, a Lama supposed to be an incarnation of Alchu, who had at one time been in charge of a well-known temple in the vicinity of Lake Manasarovara. This Lama became so infatuated with a beautiful woman whom he took to himself as his wife that he was betrayed into transferring the greater part of the temple property as a gift to her father; and not content with that crime he afterwards absconded from the temple, taking with him his wife, and everything that he could carry away that was left of value in the temple. He had heard rumors that this recreant priest was living openly with his wife at Hor-tosho, and he asked me if I had not heard anything about him when I was passing through the place.

The reader will be able to appreciate my astonishment when I tell him that this absconding, dishonest priest was none other than he who had induced the belle of the place to treat me with so much kindness! Truly men are not always what they seem to be.

I did not conceal my astonishment from my host, but related to him all the circumstances that had brought me within the reach of their kind hospitalities, but he only smiled at what I told him.

“Ah! to be sure,” he said, “that’s just like the man; gentle and lovable in outward demeanor, but at heart an arch-sinner, a very devil incarnate, destroyer of the faith.”

It was a sad revelation to me. I had had every reason to be grateful to the man and his wife for their hospitalities and I could have wept to think that hypocrites of so black a dye should be found amongst the followers of Bu??ha. It was at least a comfort to think that things in Japan were brighter than this.

The next morning I took a walk along the Lake, lost in admiration of the magnificent mountain scenery that surrounded me on all sides, and presently came across some Hin?us and Nepalese, apparently Brahma?a devotees, who had plunged into the Lake—it was about ten o’clock—and were engaged in the performance of their religious ceremonies. To the followers of the Hin?u religion, Lake Manasarovara is a sacred sheet of water, and they worship Mount Kailasa, which rises sky-high above the lake, as being a material manifestation of the sacred Body of Maha-Shiva, one of the deities of the Indian Trinity. When they saw me, they considered me to be a holy Bu??hist Lama, and pressed me to accept from them presents consisting of many kinds of dried fruits.

I spent the next night at the same temple, and on the following morning made my way to the range of mountains that stands like a great wall to the north-west of the Lake. A zigzag climb of ten miles or so brought me within view of Lake Lakgal-tso, in Tibetan, or, as it is more commonly called, Rakas-tal. It is in shape something like a long calabash, and in area smaller than Manasarovara. Another seven and a half miles brought me to a spot whence I could see the whole of its surface, and here I made a further discovery. A mountain, some two and a half miles round at the base, stands like a wall of partition between the two lakes, and where this mountain slopes into a ravine it looks, for all the world, as though there were a channel of communication for the water from one lake to the other. I found, however, that there was actually no such channel, but I discovered that the level of Lake Lakgal is higher than that of Manasarovara, and I was subsequently told that, on rare occasions, every ten or fifteen years, after phenomenally heavy rains, the waters of the two lakes do actually become connected, and that at such times Lake Lakgal flows into Manasarovara. Hence arises the Tibetan legend that every fifteen years or so Lakgal, the bridegroom, goes to visit Manasarovara, the bride. This will account for the statements of the guide-books to Kang Tise and Mount Kailasa that the relations between the two lakes are those of husband and wife.

Keeping Lake Lakgal in view, I now proceeded easily down hill for some thirteen miles or so, until I arrived at a plain through which I found a large river flowing. The river was over sixty feet wide, and was known as the Mabcha Khanbab, one of the tributary sources of the Ga?ga. It is this river that, further south, flows through the city of Purang on the borders of India and Tibet, and then, after winding through many a defile and caÑon of the Himalayas, eventually joins the main stream of the Ga?ga flowing from Haldahal. Modern Hin?us revere the Haldahal branch as being the main stream of their sacred River, but in ancient times it was mostly this Mabcha Khanbab that was considered to be the principal source.

On the banks of this river we pitched our tent for the night. In the neighborhood I found four or five similar encampments, occupied by traders from Purang. Great numbers of nomads and pilgrims come to this place in July and August of every year, and at these times, a very brisk trade takes place which presents many curious and interesting features.

Tibet is still in the barter stage, and very little money is used in trade. The people from the interior bring butter, marsh-salt, wool, sheep, goats, and yaks’ tails, which they exchange for corn, cotton, sugar and cloth, which are imported from India by Nepalese and Tibetans, living in the region of perennial snow on the Indian frontier. But sometimes, especially in selling wool and butter, they will take money, generally Indian currency, the reckoning of which is a great mystery to them. Ignorant of arithmetic and possessing no abacus to count with, they have to do all their reckoning with the beads of a rosary. In order to add five and two, they count first five and then two beads on the string, and then count the whole number thus produced to make sure that the total is really seven. It is a very tedious process, but they are incapable of anything better. They cannot do calculations without their beads, and they seem to be too dense to grasp the simplest sum in arithmetic. Thus business is always slow: when it comes to larger deals, involving several kinds of goods and varying prices, it is almost distractingly complicated.

For such calculations they arm themselves with all sorts of aids, black pebbles, white pebbles, bamboo sticks, and white shells. Each white pebble represents a unit of one; when they have counted ten of these they take them away, and substitute a black pebble, which means ten. Ten black pebbles are equivalent to one bamboo stick, ten bamboo sticks to one shell, ten shells to the Tibetan silver coin. But there is no multiplication or division; everything is done by the extremely slow process of adding one at a time, so that it will take a Tibetan three days to do what a Japanese could do in half an hour. This is no exaggeration. I stayed on the banks of this river for three whole days and watched the traders doing their business, and I saw the whole painful tediousness of the transaction.

These three days were memorable for another reason. The pilgrims who had come with me became such warm admirers of my supposed virtues and sang my praises with so much fervor that a pilgrim girl fell in love with me.