Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/54

 helped Dao Namgyal to cook the food, another blew the bellows. The lamas were engaged in their annual reading of the Kahgyur, which occupied them daily from 5 in the morning to 7.30 p.m., when they retired to their respective cells. There were fifteen monks and seven in in the lamasery.

Ugyen had been suffering most of the day with violent pains in the bowels; he now wrapped himself in all the blankets I could spare, and lay groaning and crying, "Achi-che apa-ouh!" so that I felt grave apprehensions for him, and feared that his illness might oblige us to stop over in this wretched place.

November 28.—Phurchung had been away on a drunken bout all night, and I arose full of fear lest he might have disclosed our plans to his companions, and Ugyen shared my alarm. After a while Phurchung and Phuntso appeared, and with much salaaming and lolling of the tongue asked me to wait here a day, the latter assuring me that he hoped to obtain, without much difficulty or the payment of custom duty (called chua in this part of Nepal), permission for us to proceed on our journey. Shortly after the elders arrived, the richest man among them recognizable by his tamuski hat, a long earring, and a deep red serge robe of purug. He had come from the village of Yangma riding a half-breed yak (jo), which, with the saddle still on its back, stood tied at the gate of the monastery. I anxiously awaited the result of their conference with my men, and in great anxiety prayed to the Supreme Dispenser of our destinies that nothing might happen unfavourable to ourselves and our enterprise.

The Manding gomba, or Nub Man-ding gomba, "The Western Flying-Medicine Monastery," owes its name to the fact that lama Lha-tsun once lived for three years in a cave close by called the Zimphug, to discover medicines of wonderful potency, and that he there obtained three wonderful pills. One came to him through the air, falling on the spot where the lamasery now stands. The second pill fell a little above the monastery, where the people of the village now burn their dead; and the third alighted on the spot where the great chorten now stands.