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

appointed time, a terrible voice is heard calling from the depth of the pit. We received
a full written statement about these practices from a native of the place.

We travelled from Sarāhan to Taranda on the 24th June. In the pass above the
village and bungalow, there is an ancient deserted Dēvatā temple of the ordinary hill
type with slanting but straight roof, in ruins. It contained two beautifully carved
columns and other wood sculptures. In front of it, there are several stone slabs with
rude carvings of human figures. They look exactly like the slabs put up in commemora-
tion of the dead in Manchad (Lahul) or like very ancient Satī-stones in Kulū. I was
informed that here also, they were erected in commemoration of the dead.

We proceeded to Paunda on the 25th June. Below the village, on the road to
Taranda, we saw the first Tibetan maṇi wall, i.e. a stone wall covered with inscribed
slabs of stone, bearing the inscription Oṁ maṇi padme Hūṁ. The characters employed
here were mostly Lañthsa. Near the wall was a gate with modern Lamaist frescoes on
the ceiling and a prayer flag on the top. These signs of Lamaism do not, however,
indicate that the population of this district are believers in Lamaism. In fact, in spite of
many inquiries, I could not ascertain that there were any Buddhists round about. I
believe that these Buddhist structures were erected by Tibetan travellers on their way
to the Rāmpur market.

On the 26th June, we marched from Paunda to Urni. Between Paunda and
Nachar is the village of Sungra, a little below the road. It is famous for its ancient
wooden Mahēśura (Mahēśvara) temple (Plate VI, a). It is a fine specimen of hill
architecture, and reminds one of the famous temple of Hiḍimbā at Manāli in Kulū which
was built by King Bahādur Siṅh in the 16th century.¹ While the temples of Nirmaṇḍ
have the shape of an ordinary rectangular house with a single gable roof, the temple at
Sungra has a square ground-plan and three slanting roofs, one above the other, the lower
one being the largest, and the top one the smallest of the three. While the two
lower ones are square, the top one is round, of the shape of a funnel. The four corner
beams of the lowest roof end in wooden figures of walking lions, almost life-size (Plate
VI, b). The temple contains a liṅgam. There are no inscriptions round about. In the
temple yard we saw two very rude specimens of śikhara stone temples.

On the road from Sungra to Nachar we noticed the first Lamaist mchod-rten (stūpa).
It was only about 6 feet high, and contained some dried apricots and a leaf or two of a
modern Tibetan printed book with a text half Tibetan, half Sanskrit.

The temple of Nachar has also a certain fame on account of its wood carvings. We
did not, however, visit it.

From Nachar the road took us down to the Satluj by a long descent, and at
Wangtu we crossed the river by a beautiful modern bridge. There was already a wooden
bridge in this place when Gerard travelled here in 1817.² This bridge is an important