76 Description of a Mystic 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 Numxrnas with red masks and Tsaxines* 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 wis a vis ; altogether 
it was the oddest and most curious spectacle possible to imagine. What 
this strange masque 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. 

