INCALCUABLE AGE

Hokitika Guardian, 14 November 1932, Page 2

INCALCUABLE AGE

ANCIENT BUDDHIST PAINTINGS

TREASURES ARRIVE IN LONDON

LONDON, October 31

Thirty priceless Buddhist paintings of incalculable age, hoarded for centuries within the sacred walls of impenetrable Tibet, arrived in London on September 8. They are to be shown at the Buddhist Temple in Gloucester Road, Reegnt’s Park, during the first exhibition of Tibetan Buddhist art ever held in Britain.

Rahul, the Buddhist monk-mystic, has taken these treasures to London after having spent an adventurous lifetime collecting them in the hidden fastness of centtral Asia. “No one else has ever' succeeded in bringing such n collection out of Tibet," he said. "I am, of course, a Buddhist, and it would have been nn unpardonable crime in that forbidden country to have given paintings of the gods and the lamas into the hands of an infidel.

“By living for a long time in Lhasa, the ‘forbidden city/ I became a monk. and lived a secluded life in a monastery. Many monks who became my friends help me to collect these paintings. I bought some of them from the monks of the famous Tasbi-Lun-Po monastery, and others from solitary hermits living on the borders of the wild Tibetan mountain ranges. “Thirteen of the paintings are unusually precious. They belonged to the Tashi Lama, the spiritual head of the Tibetan people.” ,

The pictures are painted on Chinese silk by masters from Indian universities, the oldest in the world and long