108 



GEORGE D-S-DUNBAR ON 



very striking. The "a-rah" seemed to me to be pure aniseed, which I swallowed 

 with difficulty and, having taken leave of the party in the parlour, went up to the 

 temple on the top of the hill above Yortong. 



The thing was so unexpected, to breast the hill and find enclosed within a well- 

 built stone wall a solid two-storied building, white, with strong bands of colour, blue, 

 light green and chocolate in diamond patterns, half way up the building and just 

 under the eaves. 1 Really good mushrabeah windows lit the upper storey. Its south- 

 ern balconied face overlooked from its grassy site on the hill top the deep Tsanpo 

 valley. Bipung like a garden city, surrounded by its ampitheatres of terraced culti- 

 vation, lay mapped out 3000 ft. below us. This is the place where Kinthup threw in 

 his 500 marked logs to prove (by the orders of the Survey of India) that the Dihang 

 and the Tsanpo are the same river. On the steep hillside opposite and high above 

 Bipung a tremendous waterfall thundered in foam down the green mountain-side. 



servant's quarters'^ 



GRASS 



oct 



if I ISTEPS if 



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Cl 



DOOR 



a 



(a) Tsogan; 

 (6) Altar; 



(c) Large altar and offerings ; 



(d) Prayer-banner ; 



(e) Lama's house; 



(/) Flower beds to supply 

 altar vases ( Pink holly- 

 hocks and marigolds). 



S£ "«'' 5 « fe 



STONE WALL 



QUARTERS. 



The tsogan south wall was worthy of its surroundings. The white wall with 

 its bands of colour, the solid wood carving of the eaves, balcony and the lintels 

 of the great door, the massive effect softened by swaying pink hollyhocks cannot 

 be described — nor can a photograph reproduce its charm. The quaintest keys in 

 the world, like flattened lobsters of white metal, were brought and the big doors 

 opened to let me see the shrine. My first impression, before one got used to 

 the gloom and realized the somewhat startling galaxy of colours, reminded me 

 of a Chinese temple. And then I began to take in details and the superficial 

 likeness vanished. The square room was distempered a reddish chocolate : two 

 rather low beams across the ceiling each supported by two wooden pillars broke 

 up the temple into three parts. Facing the door on his throne sat gilded and 

 haloed, against a rainbow background, a large Buddha, but with the face of a devil, 

 radiating fiendish malevolence. The Lama who showed me round simply called him 



1 S. C D. (" Journey to Lhasa," p. 238) states that all Nyingma lay and religions buildings are distinguished by 

 black and blue stripes about 9 inches broad cut perpendicularly into the walls. This decoration was seen in the Memba 

 country, but not at Yortong or Marpung. 



