The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

[1] Kipling expanded and incorporated this account in his novel Kim, published in 1901.

[2] Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903. Once immensely influential and internationally popular Victorian thinker, formulator of the 'Synthetic Philosophy' that sought to apply scientific, especially evolutionary theory not only to biology but to psychology, sociology, anthropology, education and politics.

[3] By a happy coincidence Watson ends his account of Holmes's death at Reichenbach (The Final Problem), with a similar sentence. Probably Watson and Mookerjee were both unconsciously recalling the lines of another, more ancient, biographer on the death of his celebrated friend and mentor. Plato in the Phaedo wrote: 'Such was the end, Echecrates, of my friend, concerning whom I can truly say that of all the men whom I have ever known, he was the wisest and justest and the best.'

[4] Milton, Paradise Lost.

[5] Kipling's indiscretions regarding the Indian Secret Service do not seem to have been confined to just the affair concerning 'The Pedigree of the White Stallion. Kipling readers will know that Strickland and his undercover activities are mentioned not only in Kim but in a number of short stories as well. Strickland is depicted as a proficient investigator, though certainly less cerebral than Holmes. He is a master of disguise and possesses a wide knowledge of native Indian customs and folklore, especially the more arcane and shady kind.

[6] For a fuller account of Strickland's problem, see Kipling's short story 'Miss Yougal's Sais ' in Plain Tales from the Hills.

[7] Probably the Reuter's despatch that appeared in all English papers on 7 May 1881, mentioned by Dr Watson in The Empty House.

[8] A near identical thumb-nail biography of Prof. Moriarty is provided by Holmes to Dr Watson in The Final Problem and The Valley of Fear.

[9] One of Dr Watson's less celebrated gaffes as a reporter is cleared up here. In The Empty House Watson records Holmes as crediting his defeat of Moriarty to his knowledge of… 'baritsu or the Japanese system of wrestling…' In point of fact the word baritsu does not exist in the Japanese language. The actual term used by Holmes and cor-recdy reported by Hurree is bujitsu, the generic Japanese word for the martial arts, which includes the Japanese system of wrestling {jujitsu) in addition to fencing, archery, etc. The Japanese statesman-scholar, Count Makino, also offered a similar explanation to account for Watson's error, in a paper read at the founding meeting of the Baritsu chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars in Tokyo, on 12 October 1948. (See Foreign Devil: Thirty Years of Reporting in the Far East, Richard Hughes, Andre Deutsch, Great Britain, 1972.)

[10] Very similar to a sacrifice throw in Judo called Tomoe-nage.

[11] This was his brother Mycroft, as Sherlock Holmes was to later inform Dr Watson when he returned to London (see The Empty House). Holmes had also previously confided to Watson, though in a somewhat roundabout way, that Mycroft was actually the chief of British Intelligence. In The Greek Interpreter Holmes remarks that Mycroft occupied 'some small office under the British Government' though he was in truth 'the most indispensable man in the country.' In The Bruce Partington Plans Sherlock Holmes further confides to Watson that Mycroft's unique governmental position was that of a 'central exchange for incoming data' and that 'Again and again his word has decided the national policy.'

[12] Holmes expresses a similar thought at the conclusion of The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.

[13] The only other reference I have uncovered on this unique plant is by Peter Goullart in Princes of the Black Boney John Murray, 1959. Goullart mentions: 'I was told by an eminent botanist that high up on the slope of Minya Konkka, shooting through the snow, grew a remarkable primrose, called Primula Glacialis, one of the rarest flowers in the world discovered by a Catholic priest. It rivalled the sky in the purity of its blue colour and delicacy of its contours… Why did the most beautiful, most enchanting and delicate blossoms on the planet grow so high and under such impossibly hard conditions, braving frost, hail, landslides and cruel winds, out of reach of humanity?'

[14] Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker travelled throughout India (1848-50) particularly the Sikkim Himalayas, to study the distribution and evolution of plants. He was one of the most eminent of nineteenth century scientists and a close confidant of Darwin.

[15] Sherlock Holmes makes very similar statements in The Final Problem and the case preceding it, The Naval Treaty. It is interesting that the metaphysical strain in him should surface so conspicuously on these two occasions just before his finalencounter with Professor Moriarty – surely the most deadly, yet significant, moment in his life.

[16] Could this have any connection with 'the repulsive story of the red leech' that Dr Watson mentions in his introduction to the adventure of The Golden Pince-nez

[17] Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the great French detective, was the father of the revolutionary system of classifying and trapping criminals by measuring and recording certain unchangeable parts of the human body. He called his invention 'anthropometry’ or body measurement.

[18] In 1896, in the district of Hooghly in Bengal, the Inspector General of Police introduced, for the first time anywhere in the world, the system of fingerprinting for identifying criminals. Only in 1901 did Scotland Yard adopt the Henry system of classifying prints by patterns and shapes.

[19] In spite of its seeming novelty, the air-rifle had been in use earlier in history. Louis XIV hunted deer with one. It even saw military service when the French used it quite successfully against the Austrians in the Napoleonic Wars. An air-rifle was also used by Lewis and Clark on their celebrated expedition.

[20] Intermediate. One of the many classes on Indian trains in the past. Between third and second class.

[21] The Brahmo Somaj or Divine Society was founded in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Indian reformer and doyen of the Bengal Renaissance. He took his stand on the principles of reason and the rights of the individual as expressed in the Upanishads. These he said were basic to both Hindu and Western thought and formed a basis upon which they could mutually borrow. He attacked the institution of sati and abuses of caste, advocating the raising of the status of women and the abolition of idolatry.

[22] Probably

[23] The monastery of Tashi-lhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. Early European travellers to Tibet and writers mistakenly referred to the Panchen Lama as the Teshoo' lama or the 'Tashi' lama, after the monastery.

[24] In 1860 an Anglo-French expedition led by Lord Elgin occupied Peking after defeating Imperial Chinese forces and forcing the Emperor to flee to Jehol. Every palace, temple and mansion in the capital was thoroughly plundered, and the Imperial Summer Palace burned to the ground. The occasion that provoked this war was the 'Arrow' incident of 1856, when a Chinese-owned but Hong Kong-registered ship, the Arrow, was forcefully boarded by Chinese police at Canton for the alleged purpose of searching out a notorious pirate. Incidentally, Elgin is buried in an old church yard at Dharamsala, the present headquarters of the Dalai Lama in northern India.

[25] This annual trade caravan was also a tribute envoy to the Grand Lama from the king of Ladakh. Known as the Lopchag (annual prostration) mission it was established in the seventeenth century at the end of the Ladakh-Tibet-Mongol War. See'The Lapchak Missionfrom Ladakh to Lhasa in British Indian Foreign Policy,' John Bray, The Tibet Journal, Vol. XV No. 4.

[26] In 1881, Kintup (or K.P. as he is listed in Departmental records) was sent secretly to Southern Tibet to throw marked logs into the Tsangpo river to prove its continuity with the Bhramaputra. This intrepid spy pushed his way through unexplored jungles infested with wild animals, cannibals and head-hunters, and after four years of thrilling adventures and narrow escapes finally managed to throw the marked logs into the river. But there was no one watching for them below in Assam as the officer in charge of the experiment had died. For a full account of Kintup's feats see 'Exploration on the Tsangpo in 18804', Geographical Journal XXXVIII (1911). Survey of India Records IX, L.A. Waddel.

[27] Jingals. Heavy match-lock muskets mounted on stdfids'and worked by two men.

[28] Asterman was not exactly wrong. Tibetan tantric ceremonies require many strange objects for their efficacy. The meteorite iron was probably used to cast ritual implements like 'ghost daggers' (phurba), bells (drilbu) and Adamantine sceptres' (dorjee).

[29] A phrase coined by Spencer in 1852.

[30] Holmes expresses something very similar in his article 'The Book of Life', which Watson mentions (rather disparagingly) in A Study in Scarlet, his first published account of his meeting with the great detective. It is remarkable that neither Watson nor the generations of Holmesian scholars should have noticed the clear spiritual bent in Holmes's character.

[31] Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, and Manaslu.

[32] Huree is mistaken. John Grueber and Albert D'Orville visited Lhassa in 1661 and saw the Potala palace, although the construction was not fully completed till 1695.

[33] Being Buddhists, the Dalai Lamas would, of course, never have had animals captured for their amusement. The animals in the menagerie were wounded or lost creatures rescued by pious travellers and presented to the Dalai Lama for safe-keeping. When there was an excess of animals at the zoo, the Dalai Lama would present them to government officials, who were obliged to give them a good home.

[34] The Tibetan via sacra circling the holy city. The street circling the main cathedral, the Jokang, is shorter though equally holy, and is known as the Barkor.

[35] Atisha (Skt. Dipankarajnana., Tib. Jowo-je) 982-1055, was a great Buddhist teacher from Bengal who came to Tibet in the eleventh century to revive a Buddhism that had been weakened and corrupted after the break up of the Tibetan Empire.

[36] Lurgan's power of mesmerism is described by Kipling in Kim. Lurgan hypnotises the eponymous hero into seeing a shattered water jug becoming whole again.

[37] Watson also mentions this habit of Holmes. See The Mazarin Stone.

[38] The vajra was originally the thunderbolt weapon of Indra, the Indian Zeus. The Buddhists changed it to the symbol of highest spiritual power 'the Adamantine Sceptre' which is irresistible and invincible. The double or crossed vajra (Skt. visva-vajra) symbolises immutability, and is hence used in designs of thrones and seats, inscribed on bases of statues, pillars, foundations of houses, anywhere where permanence is desired.

[39] Legends of the Chintamani stone are prevalent even beyond these places. It is believed that Tamerlane and Akbar possessed portions of such a stone, and that the stone set on Suleimans (Solomon) magic ring was a piece of the Chintamani. Nicholas Roerich, the famous White Russian mystic, artist and traveller was convinced that the Chintamani was the 'Lapis Exilis) the Wandering Stone of the old Meistersingers.

[40] In The Valley of Fear, Holmes tells Watson that Moriarty is the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid – 'a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it.'

[41] What we now call the polarisation of light.

[42] Pho-wa (Tib.) is one of the most jealously guarded secret yogic practises of Tibet. It is the yoga of transferring the principle of consciousness from one incarnation to the next without suffering any break in the continuity of consciousness.

[43] The consciousness principle (or life-force) leaves the body through the 'Aperture of Bhrama (Skt. Bhrama-randhra) situated on the crown of the head at the sagittal suture where the two parietal bones articulate, opened by means of the yogic practise of the Pho-wa. The bird flying out of it is the consciousness-principle going out; for it is through this aperture that the life-force quits the body, either permanently at death, or temporarily during the practice of Pho-wa. The process is a part of Kundalini Yoga.

[44] Judging by the Lama Yonten's words, it would seem that in this case the process was not one of reincarnation with continuing consciousness, but a radical transfer of the consciousness principle into the body of another existing person. It would therefore seem that the yoga of Trong-jug and not the yoga of Pho-wa was performed in this case. The Babu is probably not to blame for this error in the narrative. It is most likely that the Lama Yonten made-a mistake in his choice of terms, a perfectly understandable error considering the desperation of the situation.

[45] Sanskrit for the Blue Lotus (Nymphaea caerulea).

[46] The ultimate political authority in China at the time was really in the hands of the empress dowager, Cixi, the ruthless, power-hungry, cunning, and treacherous aunt of the figure-head emperor, Guangxu, who languished in palace seclusion – on her orders.

[47] Hurree was very prescient here. The thirteenth Dalai Lama not only survived a number of subsequent plots, but even after an exile to Mongolia and another to India, eventually succeeded in throwing out all Chinese influence and power in Tibet. He declared the independence of his nation on the eighth day of the first month of the Water-Ox year (1913). Besides making important reforms in the government and the church, he created a modern army that further defeated Chinese forces on the eastern frontier of Tibet, and gradually recovered lost territories of the old Tibetan Empire. For a full account of his life see Portrait of the Dalai Lama, London, 1946, by his friend Sir Charles Bell.

[48] Sherlock Holmes returned to England in the late spring of 1894. Soon after his arrival in London he succeeded in finally catching the elusive Colonel Moran in an ingenious trap, at the same time solving the strange murder of the Hon. Ronald Adair, which had left the fashionable world of London utterly dismayed (see The Empty House).