The cloisters are two-storied; on the upper floor the monks have their cells. Looking up, one can see hundreds of them gazing at us with interest over the banisters. The upper story, as in every temple in Tibet, is coated with a dark red substance which looks like rough paint, but is really sacred earth, pasted on to evenly-clipped brushwood so as to seem like a continuation of the masonry. On the face of the wall are emblems in gilt, Buddhist symbols, like our Prince of Wales's feathers, sun and crescent moon, and various other devices. A heavy curtain of yak-hair hangs above the entrance-gate. On the roof are large cylinders draped in yak-hair cloth topped by a crescent or a spear. Every monastery and jong, and most houses in Tibet, are ornamented with these. When one first sees them in the distance they look like men walking on the roof.
Generally one ascends steps from the outer courtyard to the temple, but in the Jokhang the floors are level. We enter the main temple by a dark passage. The great doorway that opens into the street has been closed behind us, but we leave a company of Pathans in the outer yard, as the monks are sullen. Our party of four is armed with revolvers.
Service is being held before the great Buddhas as we enter, and a thunderous harmony like an organ-peal breaks the interval for meditation. The Abbot, who is in the centre, leans forward from his chair and takes a bundle of peacock-feathers from a vase by his side. As he points it to the earth there is a clashing of cymbals, a beating of drums, and a blowing of trumpets and conch shells.
Then the music dies away like the reverberation of cannon in the hills. The Abbot begins the chant, and the monks, facing each other like singing-men in a choir, repeat the litany. They have extraordinary deep, devotional voices, at once unnatural and impressive. The deepest bass of the West does not approach it, and their sense of time is perfect.
The voice of the thousand monks is like the drone of some subterranean monster, musically plaintive--the wail of the Earth God praying for release to the God of the Skies.
The chant sounds like the endless repetition of the same formula; the monks sway to it rhythmically. The temple would be dark if it were not for the flickering of many thousands of votive candles and butter lamps. Rows upon rows of them are placed before every shrine.