Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/260

 temple of Wu-tse (Amitabha). I inquired of the beadle (ku-nyer) the whereabouts of the celebrated library with the famous Indian books which Atisha had found here when he came to this monastery eight hundred years ago. I was told, to my great disappointment, that "for our sins the great library was destroyed by fire about sixty years ago, and there are at present but modern reprints in it."

In the great congregation hall the Dalai lama’s throne occupies the north-eastern corner of the chapel of the Jo-vo. Near this latter is an image representing the first Dalai and statues of the principal disciples of the Buddha.

In the second story of this building are images of Tsepamed (Amitayus) and of the historic Buddha, besides many others of minor interest. In the third or upper story are images of the three Buddhas of the present cycle. From this story I had a splendid view of the Tsang-po, which is very wide here.

On the wall surrounding the Wu-tse temple are painted various mythological and historical scenes, also pictures of the principal sanctuaries of Tibet. The monks attached to the temple live close by in a two-storied building.

The next day (October 30) I visited the four ling, or minor temples built around the Wu-tse, and the eight ling-ten or lesser shrines. In some of the smaller chapels were life-size images of Indian sages who had visited Tibet in the early ages of Buddhism in this country, and these images are said to have been made by Hindu artists. I also noticed growing in some of the court-yards some stunted bamboos and Indian shrubs.

After visiting the white chorten, we went outside the temple walls to see the chapel built by the wives of King Tisrong detsan, which resembles in style the Wu-tse, though much smaller than it.

We made an excursion the next day to the famous cave called Chim phug, where Padma Sambhava and other worthies gave themselves up for a period to abstraction.

We passed through the village of Samye, in which there are probably a thousand people and a few Chinese and Nepalese shops, and then for a few miles travelled through cultivated fields, with here and there a little village, till we came to the foot of the Chim phug hill. The range of which it forms a part is a thousand feet or so