A CUP-MARK INSCRIPTION IN THE CHUMBI VALLEY. 273 



"looking to the difficulty of such representations on the Rock, it seems more probable 

 that the system may have been by holes of two different sizes as now extant." 



The Ho River has not yet been visited, and there is consequently no record of this 

 inscription, but when the place comes to be visited it will be of the greatest interest to 

 obtain a photograph of the inscription on the rocks referred to, as this inscription will pro- 

 bably be found to be analogous to the cup mark inscriptions of Kumaon and to the pres- 

 ent one in the Chumbi Valley, and may be expected to throw light on the origin and 

 purpose of such inscriptions. That they exist in other parts of China is shown by the fact 

 that they have been discovered on a sea-cliff on the promontory of Sharting, on a hill 

 near Soochow, in a cave dwelling in the province of Canton, and elsewhere.' 



For these round marks Fuh-he, or his successors, substituted a short line — for the 



dark circle and a long line for the light circle o, and from permutations of 



these two constructed the signs or characters of his system. It is related in the " Book 

 of Changes " that the original idea of the markings in the two kinds of circles, the # and 

 the q, was suggested by the study of the heavenly bodies the suns and the moon, the 

 father and mother, and their countless progeny the stars. 



It is not possible at present to suggest what is the meaning which the makers of 

 these inscriptions intended to convey, but that there is a systematic arrangement 

 of the cups in certain groups, and that similarity of arrangement is found in different 

 examples, no doubt shows that their arrangement must be meant to convey certain 

 definite ideas. The discovery and study of many more examples will be necessary before 

 any definite groupings can be conjectured to form any one symbol. 



There would seem to be little doubt that these markings are probably a most 

 ancient form of record of ideas, dating from the stone age, when the only implement 

 available for making any form of inscription was a stone celt, by which they could be 

 easily bored or ground out. 



There are two points, however, which may be urged both against the antiquity of these 

 markings^ and also against the theory that they are a system of symbols expressing 

 ideas. The first is the fact that the cup markings are found made on monuments of a 

 known age in Tibet, Thus on the Do-Ring monument at Lhasa, which records the treaty 

 made between Tibet and China in a.d. 783, such markings have been made over the 

 inscription, very largely obliterating it. The second is that cup marks continue to be made 

 by pilgrims and passers-by at the present time on the rocks at places that are considered 

 to be sacred, as for instance on the rocks on the banks of the Kyi-Chhu River on the 

 way to Lhasa, at the place from which the first site of the Holy City is gained. 

 Here the pebbles with which these cups are ground-out remain left in the cups them- 

 selves for the use of the pious who wish to add their quota to the work of scooping out 

 the whole. (PI. xiii, fig. 4.) 



There is, however, one very great distinction between the old cup-mark inscriptions 

 and these modern cups, namely, the entire want of any system of arrangement in the 

 modern examples, or any similarity in shape or uniformity in size, as will be seen from 

 the photograph o f the rock on the way to Lhasa (PI. XIII, fig. 4), and of the Do-Ring 



1 Journ Roy. Asiat. Soc, 1903, p. 534. 



