232 SPORT IN THE HIGHLANDS OF KASHMIR chap, xiv 



Part of our spare time at Leh was spent in visiting 

 some of the Buddhist monasteries in the neighbourhood. 

 We saw three, including the one situated on the high hill ^ 

 immediately overlooking Leh. Their main distinguish- 

 ing feature was dirt, and the second most striking point 

 was smell. Each had a sort of altar, on which were 

 sometimes images of the Buddha, but more frequently idols 

 apparently borrowed from Hindu mythology. In one 

 Gompa (as the place of worship in each monastery appears 

 to be called) there were figures of demons painted black 

 and made as terror-inspiring as possible. In all there were 

 lights burning before the altars, mostly a small wick 

 of cotton inserted in a bowl of ghi.^ The bowls were 

 sometimes 2 feet across, and of proportionate depth. 

 The lights were supposed to be kept burning night and 

 day. The bowls I saw had been recently filled, the date 

 being contemporaneous with the Himis festival of the 

 middle of June. They are supposed to be filled once a 

 year, but I expect amongst such a slipshod race the rule 

 is not very carefully observed. The most curious thing, 

 as it seemed to us, about these Gompas was the library. 

 Each had a set of shelves set apart for sacred books, 

 printed from blocks, many of which we saw. Each 

 block was a piece of wood about 18 inches long by 4 

 inches wide, and half an inch thick. The work of carv- 

 ing the sentences on these blocks must have been very 

 tedious. The printing was done on coarse paper, and 

 the books were tied up between slips of wood, much in 

 the same way as the Burmese leaf -books are tied 

 together. In a side-room of the Monastery on the high 



1 See illustration, p. 233. ^ Clarified butter. 



