AN IMPERIAL FUNERAL AND THE DALAI LAMA IN BEIJING
[EMPRESS DOWAGER and DALAI LAMA.]
Photographs of religious traditions in Peking.
Beijing, c. 1908.
41 gelatin silver prints, most approximately c. 105 x 153 mm, or the reverse, several with date or manuscript note to verso; preserved in a cloth-covered clamshell box, printed label to spine.
A record of religious cultures and traditions with rare images of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Beijing and the preparation for the Empress Dowager Cixi’s funeral procession, in 1908.
The ‘Yellow Train’, which the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (1876–1933) is noted as arriving in, and the Lama Temple, are shown, with several images depicting the Dalai Lama’s guards on horseback and the sedan chair in which he was being carried. He arrived in September 1908 by order of an Imperial Decree, attending a politically fraught audience with the Emperor and the Empress Dowager Cixi. A crowd of elegantly dressed men and finely saddled ponies is captioned ‘Funeral Procession, Empress Dowager’, who had died a few weeks after the meeting.
Various objects for or of worship have been photographed, including a rotating prayer wheel, ‘Goas in the temple’, a ‘memorial stone’ and an elaborate, scaffolded dragon structure, labelled ‘Building a boat for Imperial worship’.
Foreigners’ faiths are also represented, with images of the Anglican Church in the British Legation, the Catholic Cathedral, Peking, and a holy man in vestments which resemble those of an Orthodox priest. A photograph tentatively dated 1907 shows Colonel J. Abbot-Anderson, Commandant of the Legation Guard, with a colleague at the Peking Races.
