This chronological system, too complicated for the use of the lower classes, is confined to the Lamaseries, where it is studied and understood by the more learned Lamas. The masses live on from day to day, without an idea even of the existence of this method of combining the cycles. Except the Regent, we found no one at Lha-Ssa who could tell us in what year we were. They seemed generally to be wholly unaware of the importance of denoting dates and years by particular names. One of the highest functionaries of Lha-Ssa, a very celebrated Lama, told us that the Chinese method of counting the years was very embarrassing, and not at all comparable with the simplicity of the Thibetian method; he thought it more natural to say plainly, this year, last year, twenty or a hundred years ago, and so on. When we told him that this method would only serve to make history an inextricable confusion, “Provided we know,” said he, “what occurred in times gone by, that is the essential point. What is the good of knowing the precise date of the occurrences? Of what use is that?” This contempt, or rather this indifference for chronology, is observable, in fact, in most of the Lamanesque works; they are frequently without order or date, and merely present to the reader a hotch-potch of anecdotes piled one on another, without any precision, either about persons or events. Fortunately the history of the Thibetians being continually mixed up with that of the Chinese and the Tartars, one can apply the literature of these latter peoples to the introduction of a little order and precision into the Thibetian chronology. During our stay at Lha-Ssa, we had occasion to remark that the Thibetians are very bad chronologists, not only with respect to leading dates, but even in the manner of reckoning each day the age of the moon. Their almanac is in a state of truly melancholy confusion, and this confusion entirely proceeds from the superstitious ideas of the Buddhists respecting lucky and unlucky days; all the days reputed unlucky, which occur in the course of the moon, are omitted, and do not count. Thus, for example, if the fifteenth day of the moon is a day of ill omen, they count the fourteenth twice over, and pass on direct to the sixteenth. Sometimes several days of ill-omen occur one after the other; but that is of no consequence; they cut them all off just the same, until they come to a lucky day. The Thibetians do not seem to find the least inconvenience in such a method.