The figure was about eighteen feet high, the lower extremities being hidden behind the building at the base of the rock. It resembled in some measure the sculptures occasionally seen among Hindoo temples, but no one appeared to know anything whatever of its origin or history.
Close to this there were an immense number of stones collected together, bearing inscriptions in two different characters, one of which resembled slightly the Devanagree or Sanscrit. Seeing such a profusion about, I appropriated one which happened to be conveniently small, and carried it off in my pocket.
The sun being intensely powerful, we called a halt at a village named Waka, perched among the rocks, where we found a rattletrap of a baradurree, which saved us the trouble of pitching our tents. Opposite to us was a curiously worn mass of concrete mountain, which might easily have been mistaken for artificial lines of fortification, had not the scale been so large as to preclude the possibility of any but giants or fairies having been the engineers. At the head of the valley there was a fine snow-covered mountain, which helped to keep us cool in an otherwise excessively hot position. The cook having been rather [[158]]overcome by his exertions to-day, we got our dinner at the fashionable hour of nine P.M.
August 7.—Starting from Waka at cock-crow, we marched up a steep ascent, through a bleak-looking range of hills, to Khurboo, where we bivouacked under a tree and got breakfast about noon.
Afterwards, I examined more minutely the inscription on the stones, which, as we advanced into the country, appeared to increase considerably in number. They consisted in almost every case of the same word, containing five letters in one character and six in the other, though I occasionally there were additional letters, and sometimes, though very rarely, a stone with a different inscription altogether. After a good deal of difficulty I succeeded in unearthing a Lama from the village to help me in my researches, and a strange-looking dignitary of the Church he turned out to be when he did make his appearance. He was a bloated and fat old gentleman, dressed in a yellowish red garment of no particular shape, and looked altogether more like a moving bundle of red rags than anything else, human or divine.
Finding that nothing was required of him more expensive than information, he appeared delighted to show off his learning, and by means [[159]]of the sepoy, who was the only one of our party acquainted with both Thibetan and Hindoostanee, I ascertained that the words carved upon the stones were “Ûm mani panee,” and meant, as far as I could make out, “the Supreme Being.” As the old gentleman repeated the mystic syllables, he bobbed and scraped towards a strange-looking monument close by, in an [[160]]abject, deprecatory way, as if in extreme awe of its presence.[2]
On inquiring the origin of this new structure, which was built of stones and plaster, and decorated with red ochre, all we could get out of him was a fresh string of “Ûm mani panees,” and a further series of moppings and mowings, accompanied by a sagacious expression of his fat countenance, indicative of the most entire satisfaction at the clearness of his explanations, and a sense of his own importance as a Lama and an expositor of the doctrines of Bûddh.
He also explained the only other inscription which I had seen; and according to the interpretation [[161]]of the sepoy, it ran thus:—“As God can do so none other can.”[3]
Not another piece of information could I elicit relative to the religion beyond the continual “Ûm mani panee, Ûm mani panee!” which our friend seemed never tired of mumbling; and although the sepoy was, I believe, considerably more adapted for the extraction of reluctant supplies of food for our kitchen than for eliciting such information on the subject of theology as I was in search of, the real cause of failure was more to be attributed to the extreme ignorance of the particular pillar of the Church that we had got hold of, than to any little literary failings of the interpreter. Such were the quantities of the inscribed stones about this place, that in one long wall I estimated there must have been upwards of 3,000, and this in a country where inhabitants of any sort are few and far between, and where none appear who seem at all capable of executing such inscriptions.