ABSTRACT
According to the Chinese records the death took place on the tenth day of the tenth month (14 November) 1706.164 The Tibetan account explains carefully that the body was then taken to the provincial capital of Ziling (Hsining) just east of Kokonor. Before its cremation in that place a large number of people came to do it honour over several days. Two months later a lama called Chana Dorje, who was often employed by the emperor as an intermediary between the Chinese and Tibetan courts, arrived in Peking and reported the death of the Dalai Lama. In a rather uncharacteristic act of meanness, K'ang-hsi commanded that the corpse should be discarded in a deliberate act of insult and desecration.165 But the smoke from the funeral pyre had long since wafted in the direction of Lithang. There the Seventh Dalai Lama was born twenty-two months later.166
