94 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [March, 1910 



Lhasa accounts have it, it is difficult to see why he should 

 have taken up his abode in the remotest part of the country. 

 Yarlung means ' the upper valle}'. ' It is a name which might 

 well have been given in contrast to Maryul, * the lower land, 5 

 the actual name of Ladakh from the remotest times. Now the 

 Tibetans are very fond of exchanging synonyms, thus, Maryul 

 is also called Marsa (Hiuen Tsang's Moloso) and Markhams; 

 king bkrashis mam rgyal is also called bJcrashis mgon (the 

 Tashikun of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi), lama Mipham dbangpo is 

 also called Mipham mgon 9 etc. And thus the word Yarlung 

 may have become exchanged in course of time for another 

 word of the same meaning. Now we actually find that the 

 plain below the place which is in my opinion the ancient capital 

 of the first king, is called Ladvags gcmgkhai thang 9 ' the upper 



plain of Ladakh ' ; this may have been exchanged for Yarthang 



1 the upper plain,' and a valley branching off from this plain 

 could very well be called Yarlung. But it is evident that 

 Yarlung as a place name may occur in various parts of Tibet, 

 and therefore I do not attach great importance to this point. 



The king's original name was Spu rgyal 9 which means ' king 

 of Spu? Spu is a large village on the Sutlej in Upper Kuna- 

 war with vast ruins around, and may very well have been the 

 seat of a petty king. In the most ancient version of this tale, 

 brought to light by Waddell in his inscription of king Khri 

 srong Ide btsan 9 the king is called • Od Ide spu rgyal. 9 'Od Ide, 

 * beautiful light/ is his personal name ; Spu rgyal means king of 

 Spu . The spelling Spu of this village is testified to by many stone 

 inscriptions in the vicinity, the oldest being apparently written 

 by the orders of the royal priest Yeshes l od (c. 1025 A.D.) On 

 the maps , the place is spelt S pooch. The name Spurgyal was also 

 given to a mountain in the neighbourhood, which is now gener- 

 ally called Purgyul. This is a case of assimilation of the vowel 

 of the second syllable to the first. As I have shown previously, 

 the Tibetan law of assimilation is different, according to which 

 the first syllable is modified to assimilate with the vowel of the 

 second. However, the people of Spu, who have accepted only 

 recently the Tibetan language, have a law of assimilation of 

 their own, as appears to me. I found two inscriptions with 

 names of modern Bashahr kings, in which the vowel of the 

 second syllable had been assimilated to the vowel of the 

 first. Instead of Eudar (Rudra) Singh, these inscriptions spell 

 Im rdur Singh, and instead of TJgra Singh they spell Ukur 

 Singh. In the same way the name Spurgyal could be changed 

 to Purgyul. 



The place where the first king was found by the hunters 

 is called Lhari. The name Lhari occurs in various parts of 

 Tibet. It means ■ mountain of the gods/ And to suit their 



case, the Central Tibetan historians who wanted by all means 

 to land the first king near Lhasa, added the word Lhari to the 



