Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/15

 In November, 1881, in fulfilment of the promise previously made to the Prime Minister of the Panchen rinpoche, Sarat Chandra started on his second journey to Tibet, again accompanied by Ugyen-gyatso, who acted as secretary, collector, and surveyor, though much of the later work, including the extremely important survey of Lake Palti (Yamdo tso), was done by the traveller himself. Sarat Chandra again established his headquarters at Tashilhunpo, whence he made various excursions along both banks of the great Tsangpo, from Sakya in the west to Samye and Tse-tang in the east. He was also so fortunate as to be able to make a short visit to Lhasa, which had only been done twice by native explorers prior to his time, once in 1866 by Nain Singh, and again in 1880 by Kishen Singh, the latter making a detailed map of the whole city and its environs. He was present at an audience of the Tale lama, and visited a number of the important monuments of the city; but for various reasons, especially of a prudential nature, he was prevented from seeing many places of great interest in and around the city; but his valuable notes are a most important addition to the descriptions left us by previous travellers.

After this brief visit to the capital of Tibet, Sarat Chandra explored the valley of the Yalung, where Tibetan civilization is said to have first made its appearance, gathering everywhere, with the usual thoroughness which distinguishes his work, valuable information concerning each locality traversed. In January, 1883, he re-entered India after an absence of about fourteen months.

The report of this journey was printed in two separate publications by order of the Government of Bengal. They are entitled, "Narrative of a Journey to Lhasa," and "Narrative of a Journey Round Lake Palti (Yamdok), and in Lhokha, Yarlung, and Sakya." For various reasons these reports were kept as strictly confidential documents by the Indian Government until about 1890, when selections from them, bearing exclusively upon the ethnology of Tibet, however, appeared in an article in the July number of the Contemporary Review, and five years later further extracts from them were published in the August number of the Nineteenth Century. It is these reports which, with only such slight modifications as have