Footnote:
[14] See Geographical Journal.
NATURAL HISTORY
By A. F. R. WOLLASTON
CHAPTER XVIII
AN EXCURSION TO NYENYAM AND LAPCHE KANG
By a liberal interpretation of the expression “Mount Everest” we considered it necessary to explore the surrounding country as far as a hundred miles or more from the mountain, East, North and South; in all directions, that is, excepting toward the forbidden territory of Nepal. So it happened one day in July that Major Morshead and I, already nearly fifty miles from Everest, set out in a South-westerly direction, he anxious to add a few hundred square miles of new country to his map, and I intent on animals and plants. Our way lay across the Tingri Plain to Langkor, both names famous in the annals of Tibetan Buddhism. The following story was told us by an old monk in the monastery at Langkor:—
Many generations ago there was born in the Indian village of Pulahari a child named Tamba Sangay. When he grew into a youth he became restless and dissatisfied with his native place, so he went to visit the Lord Buddha and asked him what he should do. The Lord Buddha told him that he must take a stone and throw it far, and where the stone fell there he should spend his life. So Tamba Sangay took a rounded stone and threw it far, so that no one saw where it fell. Many months he sought in vain until he passed over the Hills into Tibet, and there he came to a place where, although it was winter, was a large black space bare of snow. The people told him that the cattle walked round and round in that space to keep it clear from snow, and in the middle of it was a rounded stone. So Tamba Sangay knew that the stone was his, and there he made a cell and dwelt until he was taken on wings to Heaven. And the place is called Langkor, which means “the cattle go round,” to this day. The people for many miles about had heard the stone as it came flying over the Hills from India; it made a whistling sound like Ting, so the country came to be called Tingri, the Hill of the Ting.
We visited the Langkor monastery and saw the casket in which the stone of Tamba Sangay is kept, only to be opened once a year by a high dignitary from Lhasa. Close by was a fair-sized river, the bridge over which had been carried away by a recent flood. The greater part of the population was busily engaged in repairing the bridge, to the accompaniment at frequent intervals of hideous blasts on a large conch-shell: this, we were told, was to keep the rain away and stop the floods. Rain fell heavily in spite of the noise, but the bridge was finished before nightfall.