the morning service?'
'Do not worry kusho] said the Lama Yonten. 'His Holiness is confident that in your good hands everything will be in order. Now, is there anything missing?'
'Missing?' the greybeard threw up his hands and commenced his lamentations again. 'Oh! Were I to have as many eyes as the Za demon, it would be impossible to tell in this chaos.'
'Has something been removed from there?' asked Sherlock Holmes, pointing to the far corner of the back wall.
'Where did you say?' the old man peered about confusedly. Holmes stepped across the room and indicated the place. 'I think we had a ... now what was it? Oh yes, there was a thangka hanging there.'
'About two feet high and a foot and a half wide?' asked Holmes.
'How did you know ...?' the Lama Yonten began to ask, amazed, then he laughed. 'Ah, Mr Holmes, you noticed the discoloration on the wall where the scroll was hanging.'
'Yes, clear observation is the basis of any investigation.'
'Which thangka was it?' the Lama Yonten asked the old chapel attendant.
'Let me think. Yes, it was the one of the mandala of the Great Tantra of the Wheel of Time. The very old one.'
'Was it of any significant value?' asked Holmes.
'In terms of material wealth, not really so,' replied the Lama. 'There are others just like it. In fact one could commission an artist to paint one exactly like it for a small sum of money. But this one originally belonged to the first Grand Lama, or so I have been told, and therefore has greater spiritual value. Even then, I really do not see why anyone should risk his life to steal it.'
As we all began to leave the chapel, the Lama Yonten turned to the old attendant and offered him a few words of consolation and encouragement. 'Don't worry. You can take the vases and ritual implements from behind the Assembly Hall to replace the broken ones. Everything will be all right.'
As we once again settled down in the reception room, Sherlock Holmes lit his pipe and spoke to the Lama Yonten. 'Could you enlighten me as to the subject of the painted scroll? My knowledge of the symbolisms of your theology is very limited.'
'Well, Mr Holmes, let me first explain to you what mandalas are in general, before discussing that particular one.'
'Pray, if you would be so kind.'
The Lama took a pinch of snuff from a jade snuff bottle and delicately wiped his nose on a yellow silk handkerchief. After blinking once or twice he proceeded to give a detailed explanation on this unique cosmological and psychological aspect of Lamaist Buddhism. The Lama Yonten's explanation was very recondite, and certainly liable to be misunderstood by someone not familiar with the tenets of Lamaism. I have therefore taken the liberty of providing a simpler (and more scientific) version of his talk.
The mandala is a circular design of many colours and great geometrical complexity. Essentially it is a symbolic map of a world; the world of the human mind and consciousness. The various circles and squares composing it represent the various stages of psychic development on the long journey from ignorance to ultimate enlightenment. The final stage is arrived at in the centre of the circle, in which resides a Buddha or Bodhisattva who represents the final goal of the spiritual quest.
The particular mandala in question was of the Great Tantra of the Wheel of Time (Skt. Sri Kala-chakra). The most complex of such occult systems, this tantra was said to have been brought to Thibet from the mythical realm of 'Shambala of the North' in the eleventh century.
Shambala, in the Lamaist world system, is regarded as a wonderland similar to Thomas Moore's Utopia, the New Atiantis of Francis Bacon, or the City of the Sun of Campanella, where virtue and wisdom had created an ideal community. This fabled land is considered to be the source of all high occult sciences, far in advance of our world in scientific and technological knowledge. The sacred scriptures of Thibet prophesy that when mankind is finally enslaved by the forces of evil, the Lords of Shambala will, in the Water-Sheep Year of the Twenty-fourth cycle (2425), send forth their great army and destroy the evil forces. After that Buddhism will flourish anew and a Perfect Age will begin. The Lama Yonten of course believed implicitly in this charming myth, as did all other Thibetans and Mongols.
At the end of the Lama's story Sherlock Holmes stretched back on his couch