National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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the former site was said to be an epidemic. There are still many graves in a side-valley near it.

Probably the most ancient monastery at Skara is the one which is situated in a little ravine, between the rGar-rtse M onastery and the ruined village. Four walls are still standing, and there are traces of red colour (frescoes) on the walls. Close by is an underground room, in which we found a human skeleton of recent date.

Below this ruined monastery, there is a mchod-rten shaped like a Mon mchod-rten." It consists of a lower square room, on the top of which is placed a round pyramid. Locally this mchod-rten is known as the grave of a king. It actually contained human bones, notably fragments of a skull.

Not far from it, on the plain, there is a group of three ancient-looking mchod-rten of the usual shape. A man from Skara had extracted from them several ancient household utensils filled with grain. Out of these, he sold me a sieve cup made of very thin copper leaf.

At Skara my attention was drawn to a rather modern-looking round mchod-rten which was hollow and furnished with a door. Inside of it we found several cremation tablets of ancient style, some with Indian inscriptions. I was told that a few years ago an ancient mchod-rten was destroyed by a Muhammadan who built a house for himself at Skara. He carried all the tablets found in the old mchod-rten to the new one and hid them there. In the desert below Skara, there are the low mounds of several ancient mchod-rtes. We found in them cremation tablets with Indian legends, very much like those at rGya.

In the desert between Skara and Spithug (dPe-thub) on the Indus, on a plateau below the western mountain range, there are the ruins of a large building called Chad-pai-lha-khang, " l'cmple of Punishment." The outer wall towards the east has a length of more than 100 feet. There is no wall on the west side. Perhaps it was left incomplete. I made a plan of it. I was told that in the days of the Ladakhi kings (no personal name could be remembered) two men were ordered to erect this temple as a punishment for some crime. No woodwork remains, and there are no traces of images or frescoes on the site.

In the desert east of Leh, there is a large mchod-rten of yellow colour, which is called Ma-dii-gser-mo. Popular tradition asserts that it is one of the most ancient here. On the western side of the dome there is a niche with a complete figure of a seated Buddha. It must formerly have had such niches on all four sides. Attached to it are two or three mchod-rten of more recent date. One of them was open, and contained all sorts of old rubbish, viz., fragments of idols, pages of books, charms, and cremation tablets. We took away some of the better preserved tablets. In 1906 we obtained from the same mchod-rten a few sheets of manuscript in a modern Indian dialect which were

sent to Dr. Vogel, for examination. As King Seng-ge-ream-rgyal (c. 1600 A.D.) exhibited strong sympathies with the religions of India, the manuscripts may date from his tirae. Of more recent date are the pages of a Sanskrit book in Dévanagari character. This book was used by the DúgrAs after the wars, 1834-1S42 A.D., when they established a

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