The Years of Waiting

The lamas left Lhasa on the tenth of the fourth month and reached Tsona on the fifth of the following month. In the face of persistent scoffing and contempt shown by the two governors they proceeded to examine the boy. Each day for the duration of a week they supplicated the guardian divinities and then presented the boy with an object which had been in the possession of the Great Fifth together with one or more substitutes. On each occasion the boy grabbed the correct object and insisted it was his. In this way he identified by turn a small ritual dagger which the Fifth had worn round his neck, an image of Padmasambhava in union with his consort, a book called "The Cow's Udder", a crown, a knife, a "sorcerer's horn", and finally a porcelain bowl. Moreover on being asked who the figure was in a portrait of the Great Fifth, he pointed to himself and said "Me!". They noticed too that when taking his food he always offered some first to the gods as the Fifth had used to do. And so "the two examiners shed tears involuntarily as happiness and sorrow vied with each other", for they were now totally convinced they had found the right boy.7 0

The Years of Waiting The modern sceptic, in seeking to understand this strange story of the boy's recognition as the Dalai Lama, might point to the great pressure exerted by the regent upon the two examiners to identify him without further delay. Moreover the accounts of the boy's behaviour from birth are at best second or third hand. Be that as it may, the examiners had now achieved certainty, but they let it be known to the governors of Tsona that the tests had not yet proved conclusive. It seems they still sought to give the impression that the boy might be the incarnation of the Shalu abbot rather than the Dalai Lama. At no point in the next eleven years did they dispel this impression. The boy was therefore destined to spend almost the whole of his youth in a sort of

twilight, halfway between the greatest honours and remote oblivion. Messengers from the regent followed each other at short intervals insisting on the need for secrecy. It is never made clear when the child's own alleged certainty about his identity was officially confirmed to him, but his recognition as the Dalai Lama was definitely kept from his family till 1696 and from the civil officials at Tsona till 1697. It is difficult, however, to imagine how the possibility of his being the Dalai Lama did not occur to some of them. For was it not said that the boy himself continually insisted on it? And was not all the flurry from Lhasa clearly aimed at recognizing him as the rebirth of some lama or other? In the atmosphere of complete uncertainty surrounding the case, the chance that he was the Dalai Lama would surely have been one among several possibilities in the minds of the puzzled onlookers. But how could he be the Dalai Lama if there was another still alive in the Potala who kept sending gifts and correctly sealed letters to Tsona?