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Tibetan style of the carvings suggests that its construction took place before 1550 A.D., i.e., before the chiefs of Chigtan became Muhammadan.
Among the ruins of the old town below the castle, we found two stone slabs which contained inscriptions in a very faulty form of Tibetan. One of them treated of the remission of taxes and forced labour, and gave the name of Adam Malig of Chigtan. This Adam Malig is probably identical with a chief whose name is found in the genealogical roll of the chiefs of Chigtan, and who probably reigned c. 1580 A.D. The other inscription is more fragmentary. It does not contain the name of any chief, but apparently treats of a similar subject and may be attributed to the same time.
The ancient Buddhist monastery of Chigtan is situated at the other end of the village and on the further bank of the brook, coming from the palace (Plate XLII, b). It is similar in type to the monasteries of Rin-then-bzang-po's times and is attributed to the so-called bKá-gdams-pa epoch, judging by the Wanla inscription, mentioned above. The bKá-gdams-pa epoch probably began in the middle of the 11th century, a generation or so after Rin-chen-bzang-po's time. There are a great number of raised medallions on the wall opposite the door, and all had formerly stucco images in front of them, which were destroyed, when Chigtan adopted the Muhammadan religion. I counted the medallions and found their number to be thirty-nine. This is seven more than the usual thirty-two ; but the seven additional medallions seem to belong to a special group of larger images which once occupied the central portion of the wall. We found traces of a number of inscriptions on the temple walls, the best preserved of which is the Tibetan inscription of the old Lamaist chiefs of Chigtan, which I discovered in 1906.' There are also traces of another Tibetan, one Arabic (or Persian), and at least five or six Sáradá inscriptions. .Ai ost of them are found on the medallions. We took photos of two of the Sáradá inscriptions, and with one of them we succeeded so well that Pandit Mukund Ram Shastri of Kashmir who examined the photo with a magnifying glass, was able to read a couple of words. The inscription was in Sanskrit, and the character a very late type of gáradá. As the words army " and " inflated skins " occur among the distinct portions of the inscription, it looks almost as if it had been written by a Dúgrá Brahmin during the time of the Dúgrá wars. In front of the medallions has been erected an altar (thatho) which is ornamented with twigs of the pencil cedar ; a number of brass cups containing offerings of butter, have been placed below it. The temple hall is a square of 14 or 15 paces each side. Its height is about 24 feet. The roof which was recently renovated is supported by four high pillars of pencil cedar wood. They are quite plain, but the door of the temple is elaborately carved in Indian style (Plate XLIII, b). It shows the figures of a number of Buddhist saints, whose identity it is however impossible to ascertain, owing to the decayed state of the wood. We found the temple in charge of two Muhammadans who said that they were descended from its former Buddhist keepers. Their house name is Lha-khang pa or dGon pa pa. These people still light the butter-filled lamps in the temple, and look after
1 It is described in my First Collection of Inscriptions under No. 43.
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