Page:Himalayan journals; or, Notes of a naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, &c- Volume I.djvu/379

 Jan. 1849. SEPARATE FROM DR. CAMPBELL. 331 of colour and form, and the walls are completely covered with allegorical paintings of Lamas and saints expounding or in contemplation, with glories round their heads, mitred, and holding the dorje and jewel. The principal image is a large and hideous figure of Sakya-thoba, in a recess under a blue silk canopy, con- trasting with a calm figure of the late Rajah, wearing a cap and coronet. Pemiongchi was once the capital of Sikkim, and called the Sikkim Durbar : the Rajah's residence was on a curious flat to the south of the temple, and a few hundred feet below it, where are the remains of (for this country) extensive walls and buildings. During the Nepal war, the Rajah was driven west across the Teesta, whilst the Ghorkas plundered Tassiding, Pemiongchi, Changachelling, and all the temples and convents to the east of that river. It was then that the famous history of Sikkim,* compiled by the Lamas of Pemiongchi, and kept at this temple, was destroyed, with the exception of a few sheets, with one of which Dr. Campbell and myself were each presented. We were told that the monks of Changachelling and those of this establishment had copied what remained, and were busy compiling from oral information, &c. : whatever value the original may have possessed, however, is irretrievably lost. A magnificent copy of the Boodhist Scriptures was destroyed at the same time ; it consisted of 400 volumes, each containing several hundred sheets of Daphne paper. The ground about the temple was snowed ; and we descended a few hundred feet, to encamp in a most picturesque grove, among chaits and inscribed stones, with of Tibet paper, painted black to resist decay, and the letters were yellow and gold. The Nepalese soldiers wantonly employed the sheets to l'oof the theds they erected, as a protection from the weather.
 * This remarkable and beautiful manuscript was written on thick oblong sheets