The tomb was not beautiful—a large square plinth, supporting layers of gradually decreasing circumference and forming steps two feet in height, the last a platform on which was based a substantial vat-like structure with no ornament or inscription except a thin line of black pencilled saints. By climbing up the layers of masonry I found a pair of slant eyes gazing at nothing and hidden by a curve in the stone from gazers below. This was the only painting on the tomb.
Never in the thousand years since the good monk was laid to rest at Nethang had a white man entered this shrine. To-day the courtyard was crowded with mules and drivers; Hindus and Pathans in British uniform: they were ransacking the place for corn. A transport officer was shouting:
'How many bags have you, babu?'
'A hundred and seven, sir.'
'Remember, if anyone loots, he will get fifty beynt' (stripes with the cat-o'-nine-tails).
Then he turned to me.
'What the devil is that old thief doing over there?' he said, and nodded at a man with archæological interests, who was peering about in a dark corner by the tomb. 'There is nothing more here.'
'He is examining Atisa's tomb.'
'And who the devil is Atisa?'
And who is he? Merely a name to a few dry-as-dust pedants. Everything human he did is forgotten. The faintest ripple remains to-day from that stone cast into the stagnant waters so many years ago. A few monks drone away their days in a monastery close by. In the courtyard there is a border of hollyhocks and snapdragon and asters. Here the unsavoury guardians of Atisa's tomb watch me as I write, and wonder what on earth I am doing among them, and what spell or mantra I am inscribing in the little black book that shuts so tightly with a clasp.