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

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the altar. They told us that the temple was still visited by their Buddhist neighbours from Da and Hanu who pay adoration to its old deities.

On the 4th October, we marched to Mulbe, crossing the Nainika Pass (13,400 feet high). On the way, Puntsog and myself visited the ruined castle of Waka which is situated at the east end of the Mulbe valley. On a steep spur, to the north of the present village of Waka, lie the ruins of the old castle and town. They are of considerable extent. Some parts of the well-built castle are now inaccessible. This fortress was probably once a stronghold of great importance, as would appear from Jünarája's Second Rájatarangini.,' where a war between two Tibetan tribes, the Vakatanyas and Ka amanyas, is described. The former name probably stands for the garrison of Waka, and the second for the Baltis of Khar-mang. Of ancient remains we found only a stone mortar, a bone tube, and several sherds of thick, hand-made pottery, but no inscriptions.

A little below the fortress, towards the east, there were traces of an ancient hermitage (mthsams-khang), a kind of cave dwelling. Above the caves, we noticed a smooth place on the rock surface with indistinct traces of ancient frescoes. We could only make out the outlines of the picture of a mchod-rten, and a few letters of an ancient inscription. On the plain beneath, a little to the west of the ruined castle, are the remains of an ancient temple called Lha-khang-gog-po ( " ruined temple " ), a large square hall which reminded me at once of the temples of Rin-chen-bzang-po's times. It had been lately used as a dwelling place by several Muhammadan families who had built partition walls across it. This may be the reason why nothing remains of ancient frescoes. It had its door probably in the western wall.

The most famous relic at the village of Mulbe is the huge rook sculpture of Maitrëya the Mulbe " Chamba " (Byams-pa). It was noticed by Moorcroft2 in 1820, who has the following note on it : " Near the end of this day's journey, the road passed between the foot of the mountains on the right of the valley and an insulated pillar of rock, about fifty feet high. On the face of this was sculptured the figure of one of the Tibetan divinities named Chamba. It differed from the same representation in the temples in being decorated with the Brahminical cord, hanging from the left shoulder and over the right hip. The figure was naked, except round the waist, and was about twenty-four feet high, but the lower part was concealed by a low wall in front ; the upper had been protected by a screen projecting over it from the rock, but this was gone, leaving only the holes in which the pins that had fastened it, had been inserted."

As we see, Moorcroft noticed already the Brahminical cord among the characteristic emblems of the Maitréya sculpture of Mulbe. The other emblems, a flask and a rosary, are of similar interest. Several students of Indo-Buddhist art feel inclined to derive the most ancient types of Bôdhisattvas from deities of the Hindu pantheon. Thus

' Jonarája, Rájatarangini, 157 ff. (Bombay Sanskrit Series, No. LIV, pp. 14 f.) Sings of Kashmíra (transi. J. C. Dutt), Vol. III, pp. 16 ff. The passage is not quite clear, but it seems to convey that one Vakatanya was killed by certain Tibetan (Bhotla) chieftains called Kálamánya, who in their turn were exterminated by Vakatanya's son Rinchana (see beneath pp. 107 ff) who had escaped the massacre. [Ed.]

2 Travels, Vol. II, p. 17.