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

To-go-che used to be an official who ranked between a minister and a Grong-dpon, or
mayor. The present representative of the To-go-che is Munshi dPal-rgyas, the chronicler
of Ladakh. To the west of his house we find the house Grong-dpon or "Mayor," and
below it the old Byams-pa (Maitreya) monastery. But on Trebeck's sketch of Leh we
see two high palace-like buildings behind the Maitreya and Avalokitesvara Monasteries,
of which no trace remains. What were the names of these two buildings? From the
chronicles of Ladakh we learn that a "new palace" was built above the sPyan-ras-gzigs
Monastery during the reign of King Thse-dpal-rnam-rgyal. That would account for
one of those buildings. During the reign of the same king mention is also made of a
"Theg-chen-gong-ma Hall." As, however, nothing definite is said with regard to its
situation, we do not know whether it is a room in the old castle or the building shown
on Trebeck's sketch between the large royal palace and the "New Palace," behind the
Avalokitesvara Monastery.

We could not possibly examine all the antiquities of Leh within four weeks, but
we did some work, and I now wish to describe what we found.

We were just entering Leh, when I heard that somebody had again opened the
ancient Dard graves near the Ten-gser-po, about two miles above the Commissioner's com-
pound in the Leh valley. This is the same site on which Dr. Shawe and myself had done
some excavation work in 1903. As I did not wish anybody else to take away the more
important objects of interest, I asked Mr. Schmitt of the Moravian Mission to go with
me to the graves on the 23rd August. This we did, and the two Christian boys who
accompanied us proved very useful in opening the graves, which involved very hard
work. The roof of the grave is more than a yard below the present level of the ground.
It consists of large unhewn stones of rectangular shape, each about 1½ yards long, and a
foot or so broad. The walls of the grave consist of masonry of unhewn stones. It is
about two yards long, 1½ yards broad, and at least six feet deep. We had not yet
reached the bottom, when we stopped our excavations. Originally the roof of the
grave was probably above the ground. Later on, the deposits accumulated and buried
it. But destruction did not set in, as I believe, until a field was made above it. Then,
the continual flood of the irrigation water destroyed all the woodwork and many of the
bronze implements began to oxydize. I suppose that the Leh graves originally con-
tained wooden boards just like those at rGya.

The grave contained clay pots of various sizes, a few entire, but most of them in
fragments (Plate XXVIII, a). The largest pot, of which only fragments came to light,
may have had a height of three feet, and its diameter was probably not much less. The
smaller pots, which were rarer than the large ones, had a height of 10 to 15 cm. There
were also small, saucer-like vessels of clay, probably lamps. The natives who were with
us at once asserted, that the pottery of the grave was distinctly different from present
day Tibetan pottery. The pottery of the grave is not wheel-made but hand-made and
characterised by very small handles. When Dr. Shawe and myself visited this grave
(or another in the neighbourhood) in 1903, we found two elegant pots of medium
size which were ornamented with designs in dark red colour. These pots were kept by