the same tradition connected with the supposed underground
lake, which is ever ready to engulf the sacred
city.* Immediately to the left as one enters the Lu-
kang is the courtyard, in which the solitary elephant of
Tibet is kept. He had a companion on the journey up
from India destined for the Grand Lama of Tashi-
lhunpo, but that one died— it would naturally have been
that one.
The Ling-kor runs on through barley fields to the
east until it reaches the green trees overhanging the wall
of the Royal Pastures at Re-ting, where the late regent,
put to death in prison by the present Grand Lama ten
years ago, had his residence. The temporary regent,
whom we found in occupation in Lhasa, did not take up
his residence here, as he had been appointed for a special
emergency only. Soon after this Ramo-che is passed on
the right hand. This somewhat uninteresting temple
is reckoned in Tibetan eyes as inferior to the Jo-kang
alone, and claims a clearly impossible antiquity ; it is a
mediaeval building of an undistinguished type, and the
gilded roof is the prettiest thing about it. It contains,
according to Chandra Das, only a collection of military
relics, shields, spears, drums and swords and the image
of King Srong-tsan-gambo’s Nepalese wife. Nothing is
more remarkable in Lhasa than the interior destitution
of every temple except the Jo-kang itself. Nothing
has been allowed to compete in even the most timid
way with this august repository of the faith. The
only other temple which is of peculiar interest besides the
* I t is not unlikely that this bogey has been created, or, at any rate, perpetuated,
a t the Lu-kang to scare away trespassers from the favourite picnicking
ground of the Dalai Lama. His windows look out from the back
directly down upon the Lu-kang. No well in Lhasa need be more than six feet
deep, a fact which undoubtedly ^ies at the root of the subterranean lake theory
Jo-kang is the temple of the Chief Magician outside the
walls, of which a full description will be given elsewhere.
Still going onwards, the Ling-kor, now a pebbly
length of banked-up causeway, curves round to enclose
the Meru gompa on the extreme north-east of the town ;
here it touches the deep irrigation channels which drain
off the water from the swamps in this direction, flat,
treacherous and wickedly green. This water-course is
bridged by the Min-duk Sampa, or bridge of the Pleiades,
over which the Chinese trade route runs into the city.
The Ling-kor here becomes acquainted with strange surroundings,
and it becomes but a dirty and befouled track
running between houses of increasing squalor and disrepute.
Thrust out on the eastern side are the shambles
of Lhasa, for life may not be taken within the sacred
precincts of the city, as was noted by Friar Oderic more
than five hundred years ago. But this respect does not
prevent the via sacra of the faith from being used as a
refuse heap for the raw scraps of bone and skin, and ugly
red flesh from the butchers’ shops which are thrown here
to be mouthed and quarrelled over by mangy dogs and
the outlying scouts of the pig battalion.
The Ling-kor, now curving round the eastern side of
the city, skirts the quarter where, as everywhere else in
the world, the poor are congregated, and there are on
all sides broken-down hovels with unrepaired holes,
and empty window-holes grimy with the continual fog
of smoke inside. On our left hand as we go round
beside the swampy flats of Pala, which stretch out
westwards towards the distant river, the treacherous
quagmire comes right up to the causeway on which the
Ling-kor is now raised, though here and there a square
plot of ground has been reclaimed from the morass and