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

Lamaist temple is a recent structure and is said to be only twelve or thirteen years old.
Its style is not different from that of the ordinary dwelling-houses of Rāmpur: this temple,
therefore, differs from the common Tibetan temples, especially on account of its sloping
roof. It contains modern frescoes and a huge prayer wheel.

In one of the Rājā's garden-houses, we found more Lamaist frescoes. One of them
interested me in particular, for it evidently represents a historical scene. (Plate IV, a).
When we met His Highness Shamsher Singh, a few days later, he told us that the picture
was a copy of a picture in the palace of Lhasa. The fresco evidently represents the
treaty between Tibet and Bashahr concluded about 1650 A.D., when Bashahr was
supported by the Mughal emperor. The figure in the middle of the picture is apparently
the Mughal emperor, surrounded by his soldiers. The elephant procession which
approaches from the left is either the retinue of the Mughal, or of the Bashahr king,
Kēhari Singh.¹ A party of Bashahr people, distinguished by their black round hats, are
placed in front of the Mughal, while the embassy from Tibet is shown on the right side of
the painting. This treaty, which is mentioned in the chronicles of Bashahr, was of great
importance to the State. The Tibetans who had been beaten by the Mughal army
at Basgo, near Leh, had to cede a portion of Guge, viz., the Satluj valley down to
the Wangtu bridge, to the Bashahr State. We had the good fortune, in the course
of our expedition, to discover two versions of this treaty, concluded in 1650, in original
documents.

At Rāmpur we inspected also the royal palaces, gardens and guest-houses, but nothing
appeared to be of particular interest. Unfortunately the Rājā and his party were not
present. Here we engaged a Khalasi called Sādhu, to accompany us on our further
travels. Although this man had hardly seen any place beyond Rāmpur, he proved
useful and was always ready to work even under difficulties.

The road up the Satluj valley, from Rāmpur to Chini, is on the whole very pleasant.
The mountains are wooded in many parts, and the rocks and hills which rise abruptly
from the narrow valley form charming pictures. The road continually ascends and
descends, and for this reason the traveller passes through ever-varying temperatures.
Often we started from a bungalow five or six thousand feet above the Satluj in a cool
morning breeze. Then the road took us down almost to the valley with its blazing heat,
and it was rather hard to begin the ascent again under the scorching rays of a tropical
midday sun.

We arrived at Gaura, a little village above Rāmpur, on the 22nd June. The people
were holding their "Festival of prayers for a good harvest," and for that reason we could
not sleep much. They sang without a break through the whole of the night. It would
have been very pleasant to listen to them in the day-time, but before the sun was up they
all had disappeared. They had always two choirs, one for the line with the lower notes,
the other for the line with the higher notes. I took down one of their tunes which is
based on the Chinese scale. Others of their tunes were based on different scales. Each