Note 26 — INTRODUCTION.

In the year 1830, while Csoma Körösi was still pursuing his studies in the monasteries of Western Tibet, a Russian official, Baron Schilling de Canstadt, was beginning to look for Tibetan books in Eastern Siberia. His first visit, he says,26 to the monastery of Tchikoï, twelve leagues from Kiachta, the town in which he was stationed, made him aware that it possessed a copy of the Kah-gyur, as well as other sacred books, which were ranged on either side of the altar, wrapped in red and yellow coverings. As the Russian ecclesiastical mission to Pekin was then on the point of starting from Kiachta, he offered to obtain by its means from China such books as the priests might require. They gladly accepted his offer, and made out lists of Tibetan books, which proved of great service to him, especially after they had been supplemented by the additions which were made by a Lama who visited him at Kiachta. He still further ingratiated himself with the priests by presenting them with a lo or tum-tum, which he procured from the nearest Chinese town, as well as by the respect he showed for their sacred books. For when he was allowed to handle a volume of their copy of the Kah-gyur, he took care to touch the margins only of the leaves, not the holy printed part.