DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3909#0004
ROUGH OUTLINE OF TOUR.
At 7 a.m. on the 1st of May 1866, I started from. Lahore on a tour through
Kangra, Mandi, Lahul, Zanskar, Ladak, and Kashmir, with Mr. Henry Cowie, the brother
of Mr. David Cowie, then Advocate-General of Bengal. The winter had been unusually
severe. The paths were in many places covered by landslips. . The slippery and moveable
planks over torrents had been carried away, the rope bridges had not yet been repaired, and
accumulations of show constantly impeded our progress. After a series of adventures, which
I propose to narrate in a separate publication, we- crossed the Rohtang, the Shingun, the
Marang, and the Thunglung, one month earlier in the year than these passes had been
attempted before, and reached Leh on the 4th of June. We had despatched couriers to
the Buddhist monasteries of Pugdal, Hamis, Lamajuru, &c, in order to prepare the monks
for our arrival, as we wished to see those pantomimic religious plays and other perform-
ances which had, as far as we knew, not been seen by other travellers. At Pugdal, where
the devoted Hungarian scholar, Csoma de Koros, had spent several years in learning Tibetan,
the " Abbott" offered, out of regard for the memory of the " Pelingi dasa," or European
disciple, to place .his two nephews as hostages in our territory as a guarantee to our
Government of his conducting an English traveller in safety to Lhassa, the aim of the
studies of Csoma de Koros. This offer, however, has not been accepted, although it was
announced at several of the learned societies in Europe, and the stronghold of Lamaic
Buddhism yet awaits a follower in the footsteps of Hue and Gabet. In spite of our
forced marches, we saw a good deal that had been passed over even by so close an
observer as General Cunningham, whilst a variety of information was volunteered to us in
acknowledgment of our friendly intercourse with the excellent Middle and South Tibetans,
and in return for presents of money, or of those cheap but useful domestic articles, such
as knives, scissors, &c, under whose rapidly-diminishing loads a number of Coolies
were staggering up and down the mountain-sides. On the Shingun, where we lost our
way, we suffered the usual effects of continued climbing or of the rarefaction of the
air, whilst nearly all our fifty Coolies, men and women, became snow-blind, but on the
higher passes of the Marang and the Thunglung we had no difficulty in breathing, and we
positively enjoyed existence on the Kyang plain, whose mean elevation is 15,600 feet.
Our experience proved that the Tibetan passes from the side of India, can be crossed early
in May, and that the Shingun offers an alternative when the Baralacha and the Langa- ,
lacha, generally so easy, are closed by the snow. At Taktse I saw a remarkable carving on a
Chodten, or mausoleum, representing Buddha and his followers approaching the gates 'of a
°ity> against which a scribe and a tablet-holder were sitting in an attitude of official
obstructiveness. The animal Buddha rode was an ass, and the disciples carried branches
of the palm-tree, which is unknown in the high regions of Tibet. I take this carving to be
founded on a purely Buddhistic original, representing an event in Buddha's life, which was
excavated on the frontiers of the Panjab, and of which I possess a cast, to which the Lamas,
possibly influenced by the Jesuit missionaries, during the 17th and 18th centuries, may have
added some details. There I also found an anatomical "lingam" of stone, probably a lusus
natural, which is now in my collection, after having been refused by a number of Hindu
priests, to whom an improved object of worship might have been deemed an acceptable present.
1
At 7 a.m. on the 1st of May 1866, I started from. Lahore on a tour through
Kangra, Mandi, Lahul, Zanskar, Ladak, and Kashmir, with Mr. Henry Cowie, the brother
of Mr. David Cowie, then Advocate-General of Bengal. The winter had been unusually
severe. The paths were in many places covered by landslips. . The slippery and moveable
planks over torrents had been carried away, the rope bridges had not yet been repaired, and
accumulations of show constantly impeded our progress. After a series of adventures, which
I propose to narrate in a separate publication, we- crossed the Rohtang, the Shingun, the
Marang, and the Thunglung, one month earlier in the year than these passes had been
attempted before, and reached Leh on the 4th of June. We had despatched couriers to
the Buddhist monasteries of Pugdal, Hamis, Lamajuru, &c, in order to prepare the monks
for our arrival, as we wished to see those pantomimic religious plays and other perform-
ances which had, as far as we knew, not been seen by other travellers. At Pugdal, where
the devoted Hungarian scholar, Csoma de Koros, had spent several years in learning Tibetan,
the " Abbott" offered, out of regard for the memory of the " Pelingi dasa," or European
disciple, to place .his two nephews as hostages in our territory as a guarantee to our
Government of his conducting an English traveller in safety to Lhassa, the aim of the
studies of Csoma de Koros. This offer, however, has not been accepted, although it was
announced at several of the learned societies in Europe, and the stronghold of Lamaic
Buddhism yet awaits a follower in the footsteps of Hue and Gabet. In spite of our
forced marches, we saw a good deal that had been passed over even by so close an
observer as General Cunningham, whilst a variety of information was volunteered to us in
acknowledgment of our friendly intercourse with the excellent Middle and South Tibetans,
and in return for presents of money, or of those cheap but useful domestic articles, such
as knives, scissors, &c, under whose rapidly-diminishing loads a number of Coolies
were staggering up and down the mountain-sides. On the Shingun, where we lost our
way, we suffered the usual effects of continued climbing or of the rarefaction of the
air, whilst nearly all our fifty Coolies, men and women, became snow-blind, but on the
higher passes of the Marang and the Thunglung we had no difficulty in breathing, and we
positively enjoyed existence on the Kyang plain, whose mean elevation is 15,600 feet.
Our experience proved that the Tibetan passes from the side of India, can be crossed early
in May, and that the Shingun offers an alternative when the Baralacha and the Langa- ,
lacha, generally so easy, are closed by the snow. At Taktse I saw a remarkable carving on a
Chodten, or mausoleum, representing Buddha and his followers approaching the gates 'of a
°ity> against which a scribe and a tablet-holder were sitting in an attitude of official
obstructiveness. The animal Buddha rode was an ass, and the disciples carried branches
of the palm-tree, which is unknown in the high regions of Tibet. I take this carving to be
founded on a purely Buddhistic original, representing an event in Buddha's life, which was
excavated on the frontiers of the Panjab, and of which I possess a cast, to which the Lamas,
possibly influenced by the Jesuit missionaries, during the 17th and 18th centuries, may have
added some details. There I also found an anatomical "lingam" of stone, probably a lusus
natural, which is now in my collection, after having been refused by a number of Hindu
priests, to whom an improved object of worship might have been deemed an acceptable present.
1