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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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AvelőkitéSvara has been compared with Siva, and 1VMaitréya with Brahiná. And in fact there are representations of Brahmá which are hardly different from some of Maitréya• Thus, for instance, among the wood-carvings of the Sakti temple at Chhatrarhi in

Chamba State, there is a four-armed Brahma, carrying a rosary and a water-pot, and accompanied by a pair of geese. The Chhatrárhil sculptures date from about 700 .X .D., and the Maitréya of Mulbe is of the same time, approximately. 'Cunningham, without any foundation, assigns it to the 17th century ! We visited the little temple below the huge sculpture, and found that its keepers were of an old family of ()n-pos (Astrologers). They said that their family had always been in charge of the sculptures, and that their family name was On-po-pa. The small temple in front of the sculpture was built by Wazirb Sod-Hams, who is the present baron of Mulbe. According to these

On-pos, the sculpture is either of Rin-chen-bzang-po's time, or a little older. Rin•chen

bzang-po is at any rate credited with having taken an interest in it. The On-pos say that the image was carved by " the eight great sons of Nyeba," whose figures are shown carved at the feet of Maitröya.1 It is particularly interesting to notice that one of these sons of Nyeba is shown wearing a round hat with a brim, as is the fashion with On-pos who probably inherited this costume from the ancient Bon-po priests of Tibet. The name Nyeba means " friend " (Skr. mitra). In the modern little temple of Wazir bSod-nams there are fanciful fresco paintings, representing " the eight great sons of Nyeba." They are of various complexions, one has a blue, another a green face ; some are even yellow black- and brown-faced. Except several repetitions of the Om mani padme hűm formula

no inscriptions are found on the sculpture.

As regards the other antiquities at Mulbe, viz., a Dard castle, two monasteries, and several important rock inscriptions, they have been fully treated in my article " The rock inscriptions at Mulbe. 72

From Mulbe we marched to Kargil by way of Shargola, on the 5th October. The

name of the village of Shargola (Shar-'ago-lha) seems to mean " Lord of the first rising " and to refer to the morning star. This amounts almost to a certainty when we examine the Song of the gDung-rten at Shargola." A g lung-rten is a kind of stűpű. The song begins with the eulogy of an ancient hero, called Á gu Drumba, who is the supposed builder of the monastery as well as of the stűpa, and ends with a direct praise of the

morning star. The morning star is called here Ham-langs-kyi-skar-then-po, " the great star of the rising heaven." A gu Drumba is probably a personification of the morning star, as is the case with Agu 'aBu-dmar-lain-bstan of the Kesar Saga.' The morning star is the herald of the sun, and therefore its personification would

1 As we learn from S. Ch. Das' Dictionary, the eight great sons of Nyeba are Buddhist saints. Their names are given on p. 485 of the dictionary. But on p. 91 of the same book, we find a group of eight Bon-po deities who are called sku-sras-brgyad, the ` eight great sons.' It is evident that the Mulbe sculptures originally represented eight Bon -pc deities who were converted into eight Buddhist deities at a later time.

The custom of representing the donors at the feet of the deity is met with both in Christian and Buddhist art.

See Note sur une statue du Gandhcìra. B. E. F. E. O. Hanoi, Vol. III, 1903, p. 149. [Ed.]

2 Ind. Ant., Vol. %XXV, pp. 72 ff.

3.A lower Ladakhi version of the Kesar Saga, Bibliotheca Indica. Can Drumba be connected with Dhruva as the Polar Star is called in Sanskrit ? ] [Ed.]