THE Dalai Lama celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday with followers praying, playing bagpipes and dancing to the clash of cymbals. But perhaps the festivities really marked the 614th year since the birth of the first Dalai Lama, whose current incarnation is 14th in the line.

The 10,000 pilgrims braved pouring rain in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where the 14th Dalai Lama has spent nearly half a century in exile, to pray that he will live to see many more birthdays, and even to return to his native Tibet.

In restive Tibet, security was even tighter than usual at temples and monasteries after secret instructions were sent from Tibetans in exile to Buddhist monks to join the birthday prayers.

Since the People’s Liberation Army first entered Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in 1950, tens of thousands of troops have been deployed across the Himalayan plateau, ostensibly to safeguard the strategically sensitive frontier area but also to ensure Beijing’s control.

The Dalai Lama fled in 1959, crossing snow-covered mountains on horseback with a small clutch of followers as a popular uprising against Chinese rule was crushed. Many Tibetans have virtually given up hope of ever seeing him again, at least in the present reincarnation. But they may not even see him in the next. He has hinted that he may choose not to be reborn a 15th time if he cannot return home before he dies.

The issue becomes more sensitive with each birthday and just last month Chinese officials met Tibetan representatives in Switzerland to discuss the possible return of the Dalai Lama. Any search for the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation would be fraught with controversy, China’s communist rulers will be sure to want the final word. But a choice that breaches traditions could stir yet more anger among Tibetans.

Enormous controversy already surrounds Tibet’s second-holiest living Buddha: the Panchen Lama.

Traditionally, the Dalai Lama blesses a new Panchen Lama, and vice versa. The 10th Panchen Lama died of a heart attack in 1989 while visiting a monastery in Tibet. Beijing was enraged when the exiled leader unilaterally announced in 1995 the name of the six-year-old reincarnation. The boy and his family disappeared, all photos of the Dalai Lama were banned from Tibet, and a senior communist leader flew into Lhasa to oversee the selection of another six-year-old. That boy is now 16, and only last month he travelled to oversee spiritual ceremonies at temples along Tibet’s border. But the 11th Panchen Lama lives in Beijing, and makes only infrequent trips to his monastery in the Tibet town of Xigatse, apparently amid fears for his safety. Many monks, and even Tibetans, scoff at suggestions that he, and not the boy selected by the Dalai Lama, is the true Panchen Lama.

When the Dalai Lama dies, some responsibility for identifying his reborn spirit will lie with the Panchen Lama, and that will give China huge influence in a region that it has tried for decades to pacify. “The normal way to find a new living Buddha is to read the letters and articles written by the previous Dalai or Panchen because sometimes they mention their own rebirth,” said one senior Tibetan monk, speaking from his temple by mobile phone.

The hunt can take years, and can even lead abroad. But ultimately the decision on whether the child in question displays the characteristics of his predecessor and can recognise personal possessions of the late monk lies with Tibet. “To choose the new Dalai, the Panchen is the key person responsible,” the monk said.

LANDMARKS ON A HOLY TRAIL

1935 born in eastern Tibet to family of farmers and recognised at the age of 2 as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama

1954 travels to Beijing with Panchen Lama to meet Mao Zedong

1959 flees to India when Chinese troops try to crush popular uprising. Heads Government-in-Exile in Dharamsala

1989 wins Nobel Peace Prize for peaceful campaign for freedom for Tibet

1995 enrages China by naming six-year-old boy as reincarnation of Panchen Lama

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