monstrous representation of a flayed human skin, were
opened for us and we went inside into the temple itself.
This, too, was clean and as bright in colour as the portico,
though the mellowed light which filtered through
awnings and screens from above took off somewhat from
the painful edge of contrast and crudity.
The ornamentation throughout this temple was of its
own kind. It differed in many ways from that which is
usually in vogue in T ib e t ; every doorway has a beading
of human skulls or decapitated heads cut roughly out
of wood and painted minutely ; long hangings of black
satin, from the lower edge of which the same heads,
with long black tresses of silk, hang helplessly, frieze
the walls, and a curious and ghastly pot-pourri of skulls,
entrails, eyeballs, brains, torn-out tongues and human
beings suffering every conceivable mutilation and torture
which man has ever devised, adorn the walls below.
Underneath this again was a dado of souls burning in
hell-fire. But it says much for the ability of man to
adapt himself to his surroundings that, after a moment,
even these sights were not entirely disagreeable, and one
could soon see beneath these horrible representations
the same spirit of devotion which moved the pen of
a Dante or the brush of a fourteenth-century Benedictine.
At the far end of the temple, opposite the doors,
is the sanctuary, a wide and deep inner chapel. Here
a striking departure from the customary arrangement
is to be seen ; in the central and advanced position,
elsewhere invariably occupied by the largest image
of Buddha that the foundation possesses, was the empty
seat of the Magician himself ; on it were heaped his
ceremonial robes, his sword of office and a small, circular