LAMA

(Mother or pastor of souls.) Among the Mongols a title given to priests in general; among the Calmucks to the higher cla es of priests only. The Dalai-Lama {i. e. Great Lama) is honoured as the representative of divinity, or rather as a re divinity dwelling on the earth, by various tribes of Tartaric descent. This personage resides at La a in Thibet, and pilgrimages are made to his residence by the inhabitants of many distant regions of Tartary. He is now chiefly dependent, in a political sense, on the Chinese empire. When the actual Dalai-Lama dies, his spirit is supposed to seek another body in which to be born again; and the new Dalai-Lama can only be discovered by a certain favoured cla among the priests. The worshippers of the DalaiLama also pay peculiar reverence to two other subordinate Lamas (Teeshoo and Taranaut Lama). They are distinguished by the title of Yellow Caps: the Red Caps, another sect in Tartary, are under three other Lamas, styled the three S/tafnonars. Lama, Llama, or Glama. The name ofa species of the camel tribe peculiar to South America. See Auchenia. [s. 646]