Richard Halliburton, visiting Leh, Ladakh, Kashmir, 1922:
As well as being the commercial center, Leh is also the religious center of the country, and the home of the “Skushok,” who being the living incarnation of Bakola (a saintly contemporary of Buddha) is the holiest and highest lama in the district. He has died about thirty times since he first became lord of the Leh monastic area, only to be reborn of noble parentage in the neighborhood of his demise. Finding a child fulfilling all their requirements of wealth and born at the proper interval after the death of Skushok, the monastery elders choose him as the incarnation of their departed master; and to prove to the people’s satisfaction that he is the true saint they place personal possessions of the former lama before him, along with unfamiliar articles. The child never fails to recognize his property, it is said; probably because the elders tutor him thoroughly.
It was our good fortune to be in Leh in time to attend the inauguration of the child Skushok at the local lamasery. There was a festival connected with it, in his honor, such as occurs only once in a lifetime, and which, lasting three days, had drawn the population (including the brothers of my shopkeeper host) from long distances.
On this momentous day, previous to being carried out for public observation, the boy was placed in state within the inner temple, where the leading monks from all the subsidiary gompas came to prostrate themselves, and in return receive a strip of colored cloth from him as his blessing. Through a secluded lattice I watched the entire ceremony. It was indeed a solemn occasion, rendered doubly so by the “dim religious light.” The gold images and brass jars of oil shone dully, garish Chinese portraits of demons and frescoes depicting the horrors of hell covered the walls, while from the ceiling hung scores of the same grotesque devil-masks we had seen at Lamayuru. The only fresh and beautiful thing in this room filled with depressing ornaments and evil-looking priests was the silk-robed child, whose sweet face and guileless eyes gave him the expression of an infant seraph. He was not more than four years old, and while obviously bored with this unnatural life, seemed to have resigned himself to it and to be enduring it manfully.
When he was carried out to his throne on the covered stage in the courtyard, from which he was to observe the entertainment, the hundreds of expectant people greeted him with enthusiasm and gave way to festivity. In the center of the open space stood enormous urns of native barley-wine around which the dancers, both men and women, shuffled and turned. The male members of the assembly, spinning their prayer-wheels, sat in rows about the ring, while the women, wearing their best turquoises, stood in crowds at the edges. The wine was served to everyone with such a lavish hand that before sundown the entire population of Leh was decidedly inebriated, and while they were by no means boisterous (a Ladakhi is never that) they became very merry and enthusiastic about the new Skushok. To the sound of drums and pipes, the dancers walked solemnly about the circle, with an occasional side-step or turn of the wrist. As their cups were always filled first they soon became so dizzy that the dancing degenerated into blind staggers—a fact not appreciated by the spectators, who were too dazed themselves to know the difference.
Meanwhile the baby on the throne had gone sound asleep. As his guardian lifted him from his pile of cushions and carried him back to the terrifying, devil-infested “playroom,” the child threw his arms about the old priest’s neck and dropped his head on the convenient shoulder. No divinity this, no superhuman saint; only a very natural and very homesick baby boy, who after such a strenuous day was more interested in his crib and his porridge than in the spiritual welfare of his fold.
I could not resist an urge to follow the child into the monastery, nor did anyone seem to disapprove. In the lurid throne-room, with no one present but myself, I asked the devoted guardian permission to take the cherub’s picture, and he consented with graciousness, posing him arrayed in all his royal robes, in a sun-illumined spot. This god-child, serene and unafraid, stood motionless, and Buddha smiled upon my undertaking, for the developed negative recorded in perfect detail the sweet and spiritual face of this favored child of Heaven. Later I sent an enlarged print back to the monastery, and no doubt it is to be found today hanging on the wall among the demon masks.
It was almost sundown, that memorable afternoon, when the infant abbot, the priest, and I returned to the seclusion of the dormitory. Seeing how attracted I was to the baby, the old man allowed me to assist in bed-time preparations. Holding the sleepy child on my lap I removed his yellow robes of state, and wrapped him in a voluminous woolen shawl. A bowl of warm barley porridge was brought to us, and with a big wooden spoon I fed my little charge his frugal supper. Nearby stood the ancient blackened cradle that had nestled previous incarnations. Into it I lifted the heavy-eyed cherub, gave him his wooden doll, and covered them both with a shaggy sheepskin. Then as the wild fantastic music and the babble of the multitude came faintly from the outside world, I was allowed to stand beside his little Holiness, and with the last ray of sunlight slanting in through the latticed window from the western Himalayas, softly rock this baby god to sleep.
From The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton, 1925, https://amzn.to/42fxFca
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Image: “Palace at Le” from Ladak: Physical, Statistical, and Historical by Alexander Cunningham, 1854