principal priest, where dinner was already spread upon the table. The Buddhist
priests are not permitted to eat animal food at any of their meals. The dinner,
therefore, consisted entirely of vegetables, served à la Chinoise, in numerous
small round basins, the contents of each—soups excepted—being cut up into
small square bits, to be eaten with chopsticks. The Buddhist priests contrive to
procure a quantity of vegetables of different kinds, which, by a peculiar mode of
preparation, are rendered very savoury. “In fact,” says Mr. Fortune,[33] “so
nearly do they resemble animal food in taste and in appearance, that at first we
were deceived, imagining that the little bits we were able to get hold of with our
chopsticks were really pieces of fowl or beef. Such, however, was not the case,
as our good host was consistent on this day at least, and had nothing but
vegetable productions at his table. Several other priests sat with us at table, and a
large number of others of inferior rank with servants, crowded around the doors
and windows outside.”
During dinner, Mr. Fortune learned that about a hundred priests were connected
with the monastery, but that many were always about on missions to various
parts of the country. A considerable portion of land in the vicinity belonged to
the temple, and supplied its revenue: large sums were raised every year from the
sale of bamboos, which are here very excellent, and of the branches of trees and
brushwood, which are made up in bundles for firewood. Many rice and tea farms
also belong to the priests and are cultivated by them. In addition to the sums thus
raised, a considerable revenue must accrue from the contributions of the
devotees who frequent the temple, as well as from the alms and donations
collected by the mendicant priests of the order, who are sent out on begging
excursions at stated periods of the year. There are, of course, all grades of
priests; some being merely the servants of the others, both domestic and
agricultural.
The temple forms the centre of a fine landscape. It stands at the head of a fertile
valley, with green hills all around it; this valley echoes with the music of several
bright mountain streams, and yields abundant crops of rice. On the lower slopes
of the more fertile hills grow masses of tea shrubs, with dark green leaves,
lending a fine background to the picture. A long avenue of Chinese pine trees
leads up to the temple. At first it is straight, but near the temple it winds
picturesquely round the edges of the artificial lakes, to end at a flight of stone
steps. Behind, and on each side, the mountains rise in irregular ridges, from
1,000 to 2,000 feet above the sea level; not bare and desolate like the mountains
of the south, but clothed to their tops with a dense tropical-looking growth of