Travels In The Far East (page 1/2)

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Agra Palace and part of wall and gateway to the fort.

While the centre of attraction in Agra is the Taj Mahal, the fort, palace, and Moti Musjid (Pearl Mosque) are of equal interest. here we see the impress of three rulers, Akbar (the grandson of the noted Mogul king, Baber, and son of Humauyn, both of whom lived at [...] [more...] [$]

A Tower of Silence

The circular wall here encloses a place of the dead, where bodies are left to be picked apart by the vultures that we see sitting on the wall and in the tall palm trees in this photograph. [more...] [$]

The fort and castle at Osaka

Osaka, April 13th: The next morning dawned brightly, and we left in jinrikishas for a general tour, first visiting the fort where stands a noted castle, very picturesque in appearance. We hen visited the Exposition of Industrial Arts, which did not seem unlike an exposition at home in its general arrangements. The goods displayed, however, were very different. Then [...] of the place, canals being a dominant char­acteristic of the landscape. We saw a particu­larly fine temple among many others. Osaka is a commercial city of great wealth and is more celebrated from a business point of view than from its artistic aspect. (p. 233) [more...] [$]

132b.—Temple ofthe Sacred Tooth in Kandy

The Temple of the Tooth Relic has its own web site, www.sridaladamaligawa.lk. It has a photograph of the same temple entrance on the page about the temple history.

“Kandy, in the Eastern world, derives its greatest renown from being the home of Buddha’s tooth, and the temple of the Tooth attracts great crowds of pilgrims of the Buddhist faith from many lands. It [the tooth] is said to have been brought here in the sixteenth century, and the small temple in which it was placed has been enlarged and made a shrine where costly gifts are laid by devotees from China, Japan, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and other remote points. Buddhism claims the larger portion of Ceylon’s [Sri Lanka’s] subject’s, having in comparison with Hinduism a small following in India, where it originated.

“The tooth is said to be the left eye-tooth of Prince Siddhartha, taken from his ashes twenty-five centuries ago [as of 1909], but it is believed that the original tooth was burned by the Catholic Archbishop of Goa, Portugal, in 1650, and a spurious one substituted. However, it is worshipped as the real one, and the morning following our arrival, we attended the 9.30 service at the temple, where a crowd was in attendance, seemingly enjoying the hideous music of the tom-toms and instruments of a similar Oriental character. The tooth is not shown except on rare occasions, but through a glass door we saw its jewelled casket and the table on which it rests.

“There were many offerings before this relic and before the other images of Buddha which are to be found presiding over all temples. Much superstition was evident, but the sacrifices and practices that are to be seen in the Hindu temples are here wanting. It is a sad reflection, however, that Buddha’s noble teachings could not have borne better fruit.

“The library of the temple held many richly bound Buddhist books, written on leaves made from the talipot palm. The leaves bound together are long and narrow, and are hels in place between heavy covers. The priests, as in Burma, wear a yellow silk robe draped like a Roman toga. They are seen everywhere, going about in the early morning with a begging bowl; they are ever courteous and apparently well bred. [more...] [$]

Front Cover

The front cover of the book is green and gold. The countries listed are Egypt, India, Burma, Ceylon, Java, Siam, China, Manchuria and Korea. [$]