The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu [0]
The Mandala of
Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of the Great Detective in India and Tibet
A Novel
Jamyang Norbu
Based on the reminiscences of
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee
C.I.E., F.R.G.S., Rai Bahadur
Fellow of the Royal Society, London
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London and recipient of Founder's Medal
Corresponding Member of the Imperial Archaeological Society of
St. Petersburg
Associate Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal,
Calcutta
Life Member of Brahmo Somaj, Calcutta
BLOOMSBURY
Copyright © 1999 by Jamyang Norbu
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress
eISBN 978-1-58234-328-0
First published in India by
HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, in 1999
First published in the United States by Bloomsbury as
Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years in 2001
This paperback edition published in 2003
4 6 8 10 9 7 5
Printed in the United States of America by
R.R. Donnelley & Sons, Harrisonburg
I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend.
Sherlock Holmes
The Empty House
Is not all life pathetic and futile?... We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow — misery.
Sherlock Holmes
The Retired Colourman
The Mandala (Tib.: dkyi-‘khor) is a sacred circle surrounded by light rays or the place purified of all transitory or dualist ideas. It is experienced as the infinitely wide and pure sphere of consciousness in which deities spontaneously manifest themselves ... Mandalas have to be seen as inward pictures of a whole (integral) world; they are creative primal symbols of cosmic evolution and involution, emerging and passing in accordance with the same laws. From this perspective, it is but a short step to conceiving of the Mandala as a creative principle in relation to the external world, the macrocosmos — thus making it the centre of all existence.
Detlef Ingo Lauf
Tibetan Sacred Art
From time to time, God causes men to be born — and thou art one of them — who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news — today of far-off things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, no more than ten are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu.
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen to me till the end.
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
Contents
Preface
Map of Sherlock Holmes's route from Simla to Lhassa
Map of Lhassa City (1892)
Introduction
India
The Mysterious Norwegian
The Red Horror
Sherlock Holmes Reminisces
Flora and Fauna
The Brass Elephant
A Shot in the Dark
The Frontier Mail
Under the Deodars
A Pukka Villain
Thibet
More Bundobast
On the Hindustan-Thibet Road
A Dam'-Tight Place
Passport to Thibet
On the Roof of the World
The City of the Gods
Tea at the Jewel Park
And Beyond
The Flying Swords
The Missing Mandala
The Dark One
To the Trans-Himalayas
The Ice Temple of Shambala
Opening of the Wisdom Eye
His Last Bow
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Preface
Too many of Dr John Watson's unpublished manuscripts (usually discovered in 'a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box' somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Company, at Charing Cross) have come to light in recent years, for a longsuffering reading