Note 614 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
It is noteworthy that Dalai, "Ocean," is itself a Mongol word, though Lama, "Priest," is Tibetan. The explanation is that in the thirteenth century a local incarnation of Buddha was raised by the then dominant Mongols to the first rank, and this title of Dalai Lama, the "Ocean Priest," i.e. the Priest of fathomless wisdom, was bestowed on one of his successors in the sixteenth century, and still retained by the High Pontiff at Lhasa.