ON OMI'S SUMMIT

Morning View — Mountain Sickness — Life in a Monastery — Precious Relics — Beautiful Fragments — Myriad Buddhas' Temple — Magnificent Cloud Effects — Chinese District — Temple Rivalries — Deft Carpenters — Two Table Mountains — Clean Little Temple and Pleasing Priest — Erecting an Abbey — The Suicides' Precipice — Descending to Lei Tung Ping — Lamps of Mercy — Polite Begging — Glory of Buddha — Arrival of a Missionary — Panorama below us — Prognostications of Misfortune.

第六章 峨眉山之巔

晨景——高山病——寺廟生活——珍貴聖物——美麗遺跡——萬佛寺——壯麗雲海——中式街區——寺廟之爭——巧匠——兩座桌山——潔淨的小寺廟與愉悅的僧侶——修建修道院——自殺懸崖——下行至雷洞坪——慈悲燈——有禮的乞討——佛光——傳教士到來——腳下全景——不祥之兆

July 31. — Arose before dawn, hoping that the sunrise might be again clear. Ascending to the mountain summit, immediately under which the main building of the Chin Ting, in which we were lodged, is built, we go up a flight of about forty steps which lead to the temple in which is the image of Pusien on his elephant. This upper pavilion crowns the highest point of the mountain ; its front towards the west overlooks the main building and faces the sea of mountains which intervene between it and the Thibetan plateau. Its back abuts on the great precipice, from the edge of which it is separated only by a narrow footway, protected by a low breastwork of piled rocks. This pavilion had also vacant rooms in its wings, and as there was, unlike our shut-in dwelling, a grand all-round view, we tried hard, but in vain, to be allowed to move into it. The red streaks of dawn were now commencing to illumine the eastern sky as we gazed over the sea of white cloud which washed up against the face of the cliff a few hundred feet below us. To the west the same sea spread away inimitably into the darkness

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of night, the top of the cloud-piercing Omi with its summit temples standing out like a rocky islet in mid-ocean. But soon we turn from the dawn and pass quickly through the temple to the platform at its western door, and there a sight, such as we had never seen before, which will remain photographed upon our brains for ever after, met our enchanted gaze, a row of white peaks, tinted with the faintest shade of rose, stood up out of the billowy clouds like denizens of another world, so lofty and so far off that we could hardly believe they were real. Very gradually the clouds broke up : night's coverlet was slowly withdrawn as day came on, and the black heads of the intervening mountains peered out one after another above it. Meanwhile the snowy peaks which fringe the Thibetan plateau, 80 miles or 100 miles distant, as yet unmeasured, but which may range anywhere from 15,000 feet to 20,000 feet, were growing more and more distinct, while fresh peaks were showing out in the north-west, some bare rosy-tinted rock masses, some black, with snowy peaks scattered here and there amongst them. These were to our extreme right. To our left, on the south-west, arose the precipitous range of the Lolo mountains, whose recesses — known as the " Terrace of the Sun," the home of the independent Lolos — no civilised man has yet ventured to penetrate. Facing thus, with our backs to the precipice, and still looking due west, we are now able to distinguish with our binocular the glaciers descending from the "cols" and continuing the white slopes far down below the snow limit. Behind one white mountain the priest by our side told us lies Ta Chien Lu, the wonder town of the Great West, the frontier city of Thibet, whence the wealth of Central Asia — furs, drugs, rhubarb, and musk — enters the province, by the only break in the magnificent white crenelated wall confronting us, north and south as far as the eye can reach. " Ten long days' journey over impossible paths," said the priest, as we questioned him as to how one could get there. And the snowy peaks looked so near, it was impossible to believe they were nearly 100 miles distant, as the crow flies.

7月31日

破曉前起身，期待能再次觀賞清晨日出的壯麗景象。我們攀登峨眉金頂（Chin Ting）主建築上方的山巔，沿著約四十級石階拾級而上，來到供奉普賢菩薩（Pusien）騎象像的莊嚴殿堂。這座廟宇佇立於山的最高處，西面俯瞰主建築，遙望西藏高原與峨眉山之間綿延起伏的群山；東面則緊鄰峭壁，僅以一條狹窄的步道相隔，外緣築有低矮的石牆以策安全。廟宇兩側的空房擁有開闊的全景視野，遠勝於我們目前封閉狹小的住處，可惜我們雖極力爭取遷入，卻未能如願。

東方天際泛起曙光，絢麗的朝霞漸漸點亮天幕。俯瞰腳下，白色雲海如潮水般湧向懸崖，距我們僅數百英尺；西方的雲海則無邊無際地延伸入夜色深處，唯有峨眉金頂的殿宇巍然矗立，宛如雲波中的孤島。此時，我們轉身穿過廟宇，快步來到西門露臺，眼前驚現一幅震撼人心、終生難忘的奇景：一列雪白的山峰，披著淡淡玫瑰色的晨曦，從翻騰的雲海中挺拔而出，恍若來自仙境的使者，遙遠而莊嚴，令人不敢相信這是真實的景象。

隨著黎明漸近，雲層逐漸消散，夜的帷幕緩緩揭開，群山的黑色峰巔一一從雲霧中顯現。同時，雪峰愈發清晰，那些聳立在西藏高原邊緣、相距約八十至一百英里的巨峰，海拔估計在一萬五千至兩萬英尺之間。西北方向不斷有新的山峰浮現，有些是裸露的玫瑰色岩壁，有些則是點綴著皚皚白雪的黑色山脈。

我們面朝西方，背倚峭壁，舉起雙筒望遠鏡細察山勢。南西方，巍峨的彝族山脈（Lolo Mountains）聳立，其神秘的深谷被稱為「太陽台地」（Terrace of the Sun），這片彝族人世代居住的土地，至今仍是外人難以涉足的淨土。轉向正西，我們可見冰川從雪山的山口（cols）蜿蜒而下，延伸至雪線以下，為山谷披上銀白色的綢緞。身旁的僧人指著一座白色山峰告訴我們，山後就是「大西之奇城」——塔箐路（Ta Chien Lu），這座西藏邊境重鎮是中亞珍寶的集散地，各類皮毛、藥材、大黃與麝香皆由此進入四川。僧人說：「要翻越眼前這道白色屏障，需要艱辛跋涉十天。」望著這些看似觸手可及的雪峰，我們很難想像它們竟在百里之外。

86 MOUNT OMI AND BEYOND

August I. — Boiled the thermometer and made the height just 16,500 feet, as against Baber's 10,800 feet, but boiling in an open pot is, according to Whymper, not reliable. At any rate, this first day, we all, and especially our coolies, felt some malaise from the elevation. These latter indeed took to their beds and remained curled up all day. We went for a walk down a rough path at the back of the mountain, through thick undergrowth to a pool, fed by a mountain burn, called Peh Lung Chih or "White Dragon " pool. A small boy accompanied us to point out the dragon. After turning over many stones in the water, he at last produced in triumph a small eft, the saurian, apparently, to which the pool owes its fame. Everything was shrouded in mist and without the boy guide we should hardly have found our way back to our temple. Here, in our small room, lit by a diminutive paper window, we looked out on a wall of damp rock, cut away to make room for the building, and warmed ourselves by the charcoal brazier kindly provided by the priest. Between the chinks in the roughly laid flooring, the fog, which was constantly blowing over the mountain, streamed up and tempered the dry heat from the fire. We passed the evenings reading Carlyle's Past and Present, and could not help being struck by the striking analogy between the state of affairs at St. Edmund's Bury in the fourteenth century and that in a Buddhist monastery in China to-day — the same rough simplicity of life ; the same dependence on the character of the abbot for the prosperity of the institution ; the difference in manners of the individual monks ; some, ignorant peasant lads knowing nothing of the world beyond their own immediate surroundings ; others, men who had lived in the world as merchants or soldiers, had become disgusted with the outside life, shaved their heads and donned the monastic garb, spending the remainder of their lives in prayer and fasting; some, it is whispered, seeking in the monastery a refuge from crime and hoping to drown remorse in life-long penance. Our monastery seemed a remarkably well-ordered one and has the reputation of being rich. Its abbot, of whom we saw a good deal, was in

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the seventies, and he certainly impressed us as being a most holy man. We often saw him before dawn (we rose in the dark nearly every morning of our stay, hoping to catch the snowy mountains again before the inevitable mists swallowed them up) engaged at his solitary devotions before Pusien, at whose feet he would be kneeling in darkness, just visible by the aid of a dim oil lamp. On the other hand, many of the monks of the neighbouring shrine seemed to be little better than opposition hotel touts, each vying with the other to see which could attract more offerings from the pilgrims, of whom one or two hundred daily came and departed. Many of these young priests were most rude and importunate, while at our Chin Ting the utmost order and decorum prevailed. Some of our priests had travelled throughout the eighteen provinces, begging their way from shrine to shrine ; nearly all had been to Pootoo, the sacred isle in the Nan Hai (Southern Sea), and so had passed through Shanghai and been, as they called it, to foreign countries, in which category Shanghai and Hongkong take rank in the eyes of the inland Chinese.

8月1日

使用沸點法測量海拔，我們得出16,500英尺的高度數據，這與巴伯（Baber）測得的10,800英尺有所出入。然而，正如懷姆珀（Whymper）指出，使用開放式容器測量沸點並不準確。不過，在海拔的影響下，我們一行人都出現了高山反應的症狀，尤其是苦力們，他們幾乎整日蜷縮在床上休息。我們則沿著後山的崎嶇小徑前行，穿過濃密的灌木叢，來到一處名為白龍池（Peh Lung Chih）的山泉匯聚處。據傳池中有白龍，一位小男孩主動為我們引路尋找。經過反覆翻找池中石塊，他終於驕傲地向我們展示了一隻小蠑螈——原來這就是池塘名字的由來。濃霧瀰漫四周，若非這位小嚮導，我們恐怕難以尋路返回寺廟。

回到寮房，透過小小的紙糊窗格望出去，映入眼簾的是一面為建築讓道而開鑿的潮濕岩壁。僧人為我們準備了木炭火盆取暖，地板縫隙間不時透入山間霧氣，與火盆的溫暖相得益彰。夜晚，我們研讀卡萊爾（Carlyle）的《過去與現在》（Past and Present），不禁驚訝於14世紀聖埃德蒙斯伯里修道院與當今中國佛寺的諸多相似之處：樸素的生活方式，住持品德決定寺院興衰；僧眾背景各異，有目光局限的鄉村青年，有厭倦紅塵的前商人或士兵，他們選擇剃度出家，投身於修行與禁慾；據說，也有人為逃避罪責而入寺，期望通過終身懺悔洗滌心靈。

我們所居的寺院管理有序，素有富庶之名。七旬有餘的住持給人以非凡的虔誠感。我們常在破曉時分，目睹他獨自跪在普賢菩薩像前禮拜，昏暗中只有一盞油燈微光照亮他的身影。相比之下，鄰寺的僧人更像是競相招攬生意的旅館職員，為爭取香客供養而明爭暗鬥，每日接待數百名匆匆而過的朝聖者。這些年輕僧人態度粗魯，甚至蠻橫地索要布施。而我們的金頂寺卻始終保持著莊重的秩序與禮儀。