A—Recess with miniature Buddha, on the S.E. side.
B—Conventional lions in relief, two on each of the four sides.
In this extremely beautiful valley the river is known as the Li Ch'u. It is an unnavigable stream containing a considerable body of water sometimes nearly 100 yards broad, but occasionally narrowed to 30. An easy walk through the most charming sylvan scenery brought us, a few miles beyond Wu, to a wooded glade, where—as the moon had already risen and there was no sign of a village—I decided to camp out. There is here an obo covered with the usual inscribed slates; and close by stands a square stone building with a wooden roof. This building serves as a kind of canopy for a ch'o-ten[225] (ch'orten), or small lamaist pyramid, which occupies the whole space inside. My sketch of this ch'orten, which is of a type very common in Tibetan lands, will convey an idea of its appearance.
The stone canopy—a plain, unpretentious building[226]—faces the south-east. It has four doorways, one on each side. The ch'orten itself is of stone, covered with plaster, and whitewashed, and stands about 20 feet high.
TIBETAN CH'ORTEN
Rockhill, describing similar structures met with elsewhere, remarks that the word "ch'orten" means "offering-holder." "Great numbers" he says "are built in the vicinity of lamaseries, and serve to point out the roads leading to them. They are also something like the stations in the Catholic 'Path of the Cross,' as pilgrims, when journeying to a shrine, perform prostrations before each ch'orten met on the way thither."[227] Colonel Waddell has an interesting note to explain the symbolical character of this type of building. He says that ch'ortens are "symbolic of the five elements into which a body is resolved upon death: thus ... the lowest section, a solid rectangular block, typifies the solidity of the earth; above it water is represented by a globe; fire by a triangular tongue; air by a crescent—the inverted vault of the sky; and ether by an acuminated circle, the tapering into space."[228] The Tibetan ch'ortens may thus be regarded either as the tombstones of dead lamas or as chambers for preserving the relics of Buddhist saints. In the latter case they are analogous to the far more imposing pagodas of China or the dagobas of Burma and of Anuradhapura in Ceylon.
THE AUTHOR'S CAMP, 2ND MAY.