It was the annual ceremony of the Devil Dance of the great Buddhist monastery of Tuna, one of the fantastic Mystery Plays, the now almost meaningless functions into which the ideal faith preached by Gautama, the Buddha, the high-souled reformer, has degenerated.
From all parts of Bhutan west of the dividing line of the great Black Mountain Range, from Tibet, even from far-distant Ladak, the faithful had made pilgrimage to be present at the great festival in this most famous and sacred _gompa_ of the land. Red lamas from Western Tibet and yellow from Lhassa, abbots and monks from little-known monasteries lost among the rugged mountains, nuns with close-cropped hair from the convents of Thimbu, Paro and Punaka, robber chiefs of the Hah-pa and graziers from Sipchu, townsfolk from the capital and peasants from the fever-laden Himalayan valleys--all had gathered there. For all who attended the sacred festival could gain indulgences that would save them a century or two's sojourn in the hot or cold hells of their religion.
In a gallery adorned with artistic wooden carvings and hung with brocaded silk and gold embroideries sat a fat, bare-legged man with close-cropped hair and scanty beard, wearing an ample, red silk gown ornamented with Chinese designs worked in gold thread. He was the Penlop of Tuna, the great feudal lord of the province, whose high-walled _jong_, or castle, crowned the rocky hill on which the monastery and the town were built. Behind him stood his officers and attendants clad in silk or woollen kimono-like garments bound at the waist by gaily-worked leather belts from which hung handsome swords with elaborately-wrought silver hilts inlaid with coral and turquoises and with gold-washed silver scabbards.
The courtyard was gay with fluttering prayer-flags, the poles of which as well as the wooden pillars of the arcades were hung with the beautiful banners artistically worked with countless pieces of coloured silks and brocades and needlework pictures of Buddhist gods and saints for which the monasteries of Bhutan are justly famed. From the blue sky the sun blazed on the riot of mingled hues of the decorations and the dresses of spectators and performers.
Especially gorgeous were the robes of the high priests in the spectacle. They strongly resembled Catholic bishops in their gold-embroidered mitres, copes and vestments as, carrying pastoral crooks or sprinkling holy water, they moved around the courtyard in solemn procession behind acolytes carrying sacred banners, swinging censers and intoning harmonious chants. Troops of baffled demons fled at their approach howling in diabolic despair. Shuddering wretches clad in scanty rags, groping blindly as in the dark, wailing miserably and uttering weird, long-drawn whistling notes, shrank aside from the fleeing devils and stretched out their hands in supplication to the saintly prelates. They were intended to represent the spirits of dead men straying in the period of _Bardo_--the forty-nine days after death--during which the soul released from the body is doomed to wander in search of its next incarnation. In its journeyings it is assailed and terrified by demons, who can only be defeated by the prayers of pious lamas to Chenresi the Great Pitier.