Diarchy of Deities

One of the disadvantages of worshiping a living god is that he may bolt. This is what his supremely exalted omnipotence, Tibet's Dalai Lama, did when he heard that the Red Chinese army was approaching his capital in 1950. Persuaded to return, he found that the Communists had brought with them a rival deity, the Panchen Lama. Last summer both Lamas journeyed to Peking to attend the First National People's Congress (TIME. Sept. 27). At a cocktail party a visiting British newsman met the Dalai Lama, wearing a saffron robe and a large collection of fountain pens, and asked him for his autograph. As the Dalai Lama obliged, the Panchen Lama, who was present at the party, reached over and signed also. Said the Dalai Lama, sternly pointing to his own signature: "Dalai Lama first. Dalai Lama top man." Last week, after seven months of brainwashing, the question of precedence seemed to have been sufficiently resolved for the Chinese Communists to return both Lamas (now aged 20 and 17) to the sacred cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, where they will share spiritual and temporal power in a kind of heavenly diarchy while Tibet is being organized into "an autonomous region" of "the Chinese motherland."

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