76 Description of a My die Play. [No. 2, 



and petticoats, and carried bells and small hand drums ; they sat in a 

 solemn row opposite the gods, and may have been intended to repre- 

 sent dewans of the court. After the jesters had danced about and 

 played various antics, both with the actors and the lookers-on, they 

 rose and marched back into the monastery. To these succeeded a 

 set of Numkings with red masks and Tsakings* with brown, who both 

 carried the long handled drum, and from their head dress rose a tall 

 stick with a triangular flag, with a narrow brown silk border and a 

 device of three eyes painted on the centre. The two sides named 

 above, faced each other and with a kind of hop dance, advanced 

 towards each other and then retired, striking occasionally in time to the 

 music, not of their own drums, but of those of their vis a vis ; altogether 

 it was the oddest and most curious spectacle possible to imagine. What 

 this strange rnascrae was intended to represent is more than I can say, 

 and the priests of the monastery seemed to know as little of the 

 matter, or perhaps could not explain it, mixed as the subject must be 

 with theological Buddhist mysteries, the ridiculous grafted upon it 

 for the amusement of the populace. 



I will wind up my account by a description of the masque 

 which last appeared upon the scene and ended the performance. 

 The reader must now bear in mind that these last characters 

 hold a place in another and different day's festival, so that we 

 were merely shown the costume. I saw afterwards, on my return 

 to Leh from the Chang Chenmo, this play acted throughout at 

 the monastery of Gawun, an account of which I will hereafter give. 

 But to return to the actors, those that we last saw, were got up 

 in the most wonderful way to represent skeletons, their clothes being 

 tight fitting and white, the fingers and toes, loose and long, the mask 

 being a really artistic model of the human skull, the lower jaw being 

 moveable. These men danced a slow weird pas, grinning at each 

 other, and knocking together their short staves, which at the top were 

 carved into death's heads. The band played a subdued solemn chant 

 while this ghostly dance went on. These men take a part in the 

 festival, when the supposed enemy, an effigy of whom is modelled in 

 dough, is cut up and carried away by these ghostly bearers who are 

 intended to represent the dwellers of the burial-grounds. 



* See Photograph, No, 9. 



