127 
1898.] S. C. Das —Identity of the great Tsang-po of Tibet . 
Captain Harman from Darjeeling to Tibet with orders to explore the 
country below Gyala Sing-dong and trace the great Tsang-po to the 
plains of India, or failing this, to throw marked logs into the stream at 
the lowest point reached. It was intended that due notice should be 
given by the Lama to Captain Harman of the period during which the 
logs were daily to be cast into the river, so that he might set watches 
at the place where the Dihong debouches into Assam, and thus prove 
the identity or otherwise of the great river of Tibet with the Brahma¬ 
putra. Kunthup, a native of Sikkim, who had previously accompanied 
the explorer Nima Sring to Gyala Sing-dong and who has since tra¬ 
versed Bhutan with Rinzing, was sent with the Gya-rong Lama as 
assistant. The proposed arrangements for casting logs into the 
Tsang-po fell through owing to the delinquency of the Lama, who having 
sold Kunthup as a slave in the Pema-koi country decamped to his 
home in Gya-rong Avithin the Chinese frontier. 
Kunthup having escaped from, the hands of his master, reached 
Onlek a short stage from Mir Padam, or Miri Padam, a village situated 
on a plain on the Tsang-po, a resort of traders from Assam, and the 
abode of the Miri and Padam tribes, who are known to inhabit the 
country near the place where the Dihong breaks through the hills into 
Assam. He was informed at Onlek that Miri Padam Avas about three 
days’ journey or 35 miles from the nearest plains of India. Kunthup 
also saAV the haze of India from Onlek in an easterly direction when 
looking doAvn the river. According to native report and also legend, the 
Tsang-po enters a deep rocky gorge at the foot of a rocky mountain 
which has the appearance of a lion’s face and is therefore called Sing- 
dong, from sing a lion and dong a face. Kunthup describes the falls of 
the Tsang-po beloAv the Pema-koi monastery as a cascade of some 150 
feet in height, and mentions the prismatic colours of the spray hanging 
over the dark basin or lake below the cliff. This rock is called Shin-je- 
sliejal, i. e., the-place of interview with the Lord of the Dead. Shin the 
dead, je lord, and she-jal an intervieAv. 
Since then Mr. Keedham, a political officer, resident near Sudya 
in Assam, has explored a part of the mountainous country, inhabited by 
Mishmi and other wild tribes, up to the borders of Za-yul, but has not 
succeeded in following up the course of the Dihong. The inscription 
before us and the letter of Mr. Barnes, quoted below, go to prove that 
the Dihong is the great Tsang-po, as it was conjectured by the late 
General Walker. The wooden block on Avhich the inscription is, came 
down from the Tsang-po. It must have belonged to some one of the 
Niij-ma monasteries of Tibet or to the monastery of Pema-koi, the last 
of the Buddhist institutions of Tibet, situated to the further East of 
