1940: Tibet

The outstanding event of the year 1940 in Tibet was the installation on Feb. 22 of Ling-erh Tanchu, the six-year old Chinese boy from Kokonor, as temporal head of the only theocracy in the world today. He will be the fourteenth Dalai Lama to rule Tibet, and is believed by the Tibetans to be the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama who died at Lhasa in December 1933. He will rule as 'His Holiness, the Precious Dalai Lama, Owner of All Living Things in the Snowy Country.'

The enthronement ceremony took place in the fabulous golden-roofed Potala Palace-Monastery-Fortress, which stands on a high hill overlooking the central Lhasa plain.

The day was marked throughout the country by pious rejoicing and festivities, and Lhasa presented a colorful scene of medieval splendor as the long ceremonial procession moved slowly from the Summer Palace of Norbhu Lingka to the Potala, three miles away. Little Ling-erh himself, dressed in scarlet brocaded robes and wearing a yellow satin cap on his shaven head, sat behind thin golden curtains on a gold palanquin which was supported on four long poles held by priests clad in brilliant scarlet robes and wearing yellow hats. In the procession were the highest religious and lay dignitaries of Tibet, including the Regent, who actually will govern the country for the next twelve years or until the boy reaches the age of eighteen.

Jechen Hutuktu, the regent, is known to be friendly with the Chinese government at Chungking, and, as a symbol of Tibetan allegiance to China, a portrait of the late Chinese leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was unveiled as part of the enthronement ceremonial. During the ceremonies, General Hu Ching-hsin, Chairman of the Mongolian-Tibetan Affairs Commission at Chungking, sat at the left of the new Dalai Lama, being thus accorded equal status with the enthroned ruler.

Of late years, and especially since the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, who had proclaimed Tibet an autonomous state in 1912, relations between China and Tibet have greatly improved and high hopes are held by the Chinese for increasingly active cooperation between the two countries. A friendly attitude on the part of Tibet is particularly important to the Chungking régime now, since Japan has declared its intention of creating a Special Tibetan Administrative District under the puppet government of Wang Ching-wei, set up at Nanking, China on March 30, 1940.

Trade relations between Lhasa and Chungking already have been greatly improved and negotiations are now under way for the development of Tibet's vast mineral resources by the Chinese government. It is even expected that Tibet will give some sort of active help to Chungking in its fight against Japan.

Tibet is still without a spiritual ruler, or Panchen Lama, and search is now being made for a successor to the late Panchen Lama, who, after long exile in China, died on his way back to Tibet in 1937. His spirit, according to Tibetan belief, entered into the body of some infant born at the moment of his death, and by means of the usual mystic rituals, it is expected that within the next year or two the child will be found into whose body the spirit of the departing spiritual leader of the Tibetans entered.