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gave me one of those figures, which are made of flour and butter, and told nee that it was a custom in Tibet and Ladakh, to make presents of flour-ibex " on the occasion of the birth of a child. This is quite interesting information. I had often wondered why there were so many rock carvings of ibex at places connected with the pre-Buddhist religion of Ladakh. Now it appears probable that they are thank offerings, after the birth of children. As I have tried to show in my previous article,1 people used to go to the pre-Buddhist places of worship, in particular, to pray to be blessed with children.
On the 30th September, we left Khalatse and travelled to Lamayuru, "When we arrived on the left bank of the Indus, after crossing the Khalatse bridge, I examined again the three stones with inscriptions, which I had discovered there severa] years ago, and again made careful copies of the inscriptions, which later on I sent to Dr. Vogel. Although it is not yet possible to read them with certainty, Dr. Vogel believes the kind of character employed to be later Gupta, almost Särada, of c. 600-800 A.D.
At Lamayuru, we visited, first of all, the famous monastery of the 'aBri-khung-pa order vvhïch is very picturesquely situated on a steep rock (Plate XL, a). According to the Mahatmya of Lamayuru, the monastery was founded by the Buddhist priest Naropa in the ninth or tenth century. When Naropa arrived at the site, the whole valley was filled with a lake which he caused to 'dry up.2 The monastery received its name from a plantation of sacrificial grain which mysteriously grew into the shape of the svastika (g Yung-drung), It is interesting that there are traces of deposits of a former lake all around the mountains of Lamayuru, and it is strange that Drew in his book does not make any mention of them. But the Ladakhis must really have a geological instinct, to be able to invent stories of this kind. They have also tales of the former existence of lakes at Leh and at Trilúknáth in Lahul. The name g Yang-drang was of course not given by Naropa, but must date back to a time long before he arrived in the country, as it was then the foremost place of the Bon religion which
is called g Yung-drum-bon. The Máhátmya concludes with a tale of an image which cannot be moved out of its original position. The ` barbarian ' who spends his energy on it in vain, is in this case Diwan Hari Chand, the wgrä genera] who beat the Tibetans in 1842 A.D. I asked the monks, if they had an image of Naropa in the temple hall, to which they replied in the affirmative. We were shown a rather modern looking stucco statue of Naropa in the library which also contained images of several more lamas connected with him, for instance, Tilopa, Marpa, Milaraspa. They seem to belong to a complete set of figures of the bKâ-brgyud lamas. These bKá-brgyud lamas who are something like church-fathers of the 'aBrug-pa order of lamas, are enumerated in inscription No. 128 from Kolong in Lahul, as follows : (1) rpo-rje-'acbang, (2) Ti-lo-pa (3) Na-ro-pa, (4) Mar-pa, (5) Mi-la-ras-pa, (6) rGam-po, (7) Thar-sab-pa, (8) gNas. phug-pa, (9) dPal-ldan-'abrug-pa.
I asked the lamas to show me the most ancient part of the monastery, and we were taken to a temple called Seng-ge-sgang, which is situated at the southern end of the
'JJistorische Dokumente von Khalatse in West Tibet (Ladakh.) in Z. D. M. G., Vol. LXI, pp. 583 lA similar legend is told about Kashmir. Cf. Ráiataran-yini I, 25-27 transi. Stein, Vol. I, p. 5. [ Ed. ]
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