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

This temple, the oldest of the existing temples of Poo, is called Lo-tsa-ba-Lha-khang
and is asserted to have been built by Lo-tsa-ba Rin-chen-bzang-po (Ratna-bhadra), the
spiritual adviser of King Ye-shes-'od. It contains a stucco statue of a seated Buddha, and
two standing images of his disciples Sāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, locally known as
Shar-gyi-Bu (son of the East) and Mi-yong-gal. In front of these large images are three
small ones, representing Padma-sambhava, Vajra-pāṇi, and Buddha. (Plate IX, a). Besides
these images, the temple contains books, musical instruments, and masks. Neither the
books nor any of the images are very ancient ; there is nothing that can claim to date
from the time of Ye-shes-'od. As this temple was the successor to the ancient temple of
dKor, all the traditions connected with the latter were probably transferred to the former.

About a mile below the village of dKor, on a hill above the river, there exist the
extensive ruins of an ancient fort called Kalagtrung or Kalag Koṭ. It is supposed, once
to have been the seat of a Thākur. The Lambardār of Poo tells me that iron arrow-
heads have often been found in the vicinity. Such articles are ultimately converted into
nails or knives by the people, and therefore I could not obtain any of them. It is inter-
esting that the site of the present summer house of the mission, high above the castle
on the hillside, is also called Kalagtrung. It seems to have been part of the same
settlement as the castle, in earlier days. We visited the site of the castle on the 14th
July. Of ancient remains we found only sherds of hand-shaped pottery, sometimes
with linear ornaments impressed on them. Only very little could be seen of ancient
walls. The site was covered all over with large undressed stones, such as people still
use for building purposes. In a few cases, the site of a former room could be seen,
in still rarer cases that of a door. Part of an ancient staircase was in rather good
preservation.

Opposite the castle, on the other side of the trade road, were the ruined terraces of
deserted fields, abandoned long ago. My impression is that the site does not only contain
the ruins of a chief's castle, but that of a whole village. This part of the country was
formerly under Guge and Ladakh, and, as in Ladakh, people were here also compelled to
live in fortified places on hilltops round their chief's stronghold.

The deserted fields are locally known by the name Khola-ring. The word ring
seems to be the same as Bunan rig, 'field.' The name would then mean 'fields of
the Khola.' Khola is very likely the same as Koli, the name of a low caste all over
the Panjāb hills and possibly the tribal name of the aboriginal population of these districts.

High up on the hill-side, above Kalagtrung, there is a locality called "the old place
of the Shar-rgan festival." It is a comparatively large plateau which was left vacant in
ancient times, as it was used for dancing. At present there have been built on it sev-
eral enclosures for sheep and cattle, two maṇi walls, and some small stone huts. One of
the maṇi walls contained an inscribed slab in Sanskrit and Tibetan, instead of the ordin-
ary votive tablet. I made an eye copy of it. The inscription contains a passage appa-
rently taken from the Prajñāpāramitā, addressed to the Yum-chen-po, the 'great mother.'
This great mother is Tārā, the wife of Śiva, and at the same time the goddess of learning.
It is not remarkable that we should find here a prayer addressed to the wife of Śiva, for