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

sahib. It is also true that many among them are quite athletic and carry heavy loads
over great distances. What I disliked, however, was the injustice done to the female
population of a little village when a large caravan like ours demanded the service of
practically all the women between twelve and fifty years of age. Then the claims of
their babies were left quite out of consideration, and the poor mothers had to see what
arrangements they could make with regard to their offspring for a full day or so. Our
box which contained the photographic plates was the heaviest of all, and it was always
the last taken up. The first comers took hold of the lighter loads and darted off as soon as
possible. When we were at Chogan on our way to Urni, this box with the plates did not
arrive, and Pindi Lal volunteered to stay behind and wait for it. He caught me up at
Urni when it was quite dark. The heavy box had fallen to the lot of a child of fourteen
years of age who was absolutely unequal to the task. This girl, therefore, asked three of her
friends to assist her in the hard work she had to perform, and so Pindi Lal received the
box out of the hands of four girls 'all very young and very beautiful' as he said. They
were, of course, all of high caste, and the way they took leave of the Babu and wished him
a good journey was quite charming. The system of the Tibetans is quite different from
that of the Bashahr State. In Tibet the men come first, and they are ready to do the
hardest work themselves. The women who offer to do cooly work are such as can be
spared from their homes.
I hope that the chivalrous chief of the Bashahr State will undertake to teach his
male subjects a little more chivalry.
The bridge of Wangtu is evidently in a place where there has been a bridge from
time immemorial, as is made probable by ancient carvings on the rocks. One of them
shows a man with a sword in his left hand, and a club in his right. In the rocks there
are many caves used by travellers, and on the rocks about them I saw many Tibetan
inscriptions in charcoal and red chalk, one of them reading : Sa-kya-pa-mkhyen-no, "Take
notice of this (or 'of me') O Sakya-man !" In one of the caves, there were many tablets
of burnt clay, just like those which are made of clay and the ashes of the dead. They
have generally the figure of a Buddhist saint printed on them and are deposited in
mchod-rten or caves. Here, however, they were quite plain. A dead lama was probably
cremated here in ancient times, and a mould not being at hand, the clay-tablets were
formed without it.
Sunday, the 27th June, was spent at Urni. In the afternoon I went to see the
mandirs or temples. The 'old temple' is of the square tower type, like so many of Kulu,
and has a wooden verandah running round below the slanting gable roof. It was almost
without any carvings, and people said that the devata had left the place. The 'new
temple,' not far from the old one, was thoroughly renovated, as people say, about twenty
years ago. There are many wood-carvings dating from that time, for instance hunting-
scenes : a man shooting a leopard with a rifle. They were all very primitive. There
was also a carving of a cock, and what I took for a hen with chickens, eating a snake.
But people said it was a peacock. (Garuda devouring Nāgas ?). The villagers showed
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