of the Dógrá war. In a collection of Tibetan proverbs which I acquired from a man from rGya some years ago, and which is among the manuscripts brought to Simla, there is a proverb which refers to the change of dress under this king. There it is stated that the king, whose name Seng-ge means " lion," said that he was willing to honour his subjects by giving them one of his ears ; thus the men received the high black cap, called seng-ge rna-mchog, " lion's ear " which I find pictured by Drew.' The saine proverb informs us that the great tiger lama (s Tag means a tiger) favoured the women by giving them his spotted skin. Thus the dark blue dress of the Ladakhi women with its red and yellow spots was introduced. The picture in the Nyoma monastery does not, however, show the new fashion, having possibly been painted before its introduction. All the male persons wear turbans, as was the fashion in Western Tibet from c. 1000 A.D. downwards. The royal ladies are distinguished by their rich berags, fillets of leather which are covered with precious stones. Although I have not yet been able to trace them on pictures earlier than c. 1530 A.D,, I am convinced that this fashion goes back to examples of old Indian art, where the Nf gas and Ndgis were represented by a human figure with a snake growing out of the back and over-topping their heads. The berag of the Ladakhi women which begins in the middle of the back and becomes broader over the head, looks like the representation of a snake. Perhaps the Ladakhi women wished to look like N5gis, because these water fairies were famous for their beauty.
We spent Sunday, the 15th August, on the left bank of the Indus river, opposite Nyoma, and resumed our journey on. Monday the 16th. Our next aim was Leli, and as the road along the Indus river was impracticable at that time of the year, I had to decide which of the two other roads we were to take, the road by Drangtse (map Tankse), or that by Phuga. As regards the Drangtse road, it attracted me much on account of a description Dr. Shawe had given me of it. The Phuga road, on the other hand, would take us to rGya, the antiquities of which I had previously examined. I decided for the latter route, but I will quote Dr. Shawe's letter on the Drangtse road to show the reader what we missed. He says in his letter of the 19th July 1906 : -
" I was told yesterday by one of the men that at Sakti you only visited the newest of the three old castles—the oldest being a mile or two up the valley. I am sorry I did not know when there. I saw few, if any, rock carvings in Sakti, except a migmang (see p. 57) on a boulder. At Drangtse is an old castle and village on top of a rock, destroyed by the Dogras. It is in very fair preservation, some of the streets being quite recognisable. Around Drangtse are numbers --thousands—of rock carvings of the usual ibex and yak type, but no Indian bulls, as far as I saw. At first I thought there were no inscriptions. and nobody could or would tell of any ; but later, on top of a large rock or boulder, I found a number of carvings of some of which I enclose original copies. One, a chorten, had a long inscription beneath in letters which appear to be mostly, but not entirely, Tibetan, and on another boulder a line in Persian characters. Two or three carvings of crosses
IIIF Color HighRes
