disfigured. Some twenty years ago the writing was,
we are assured by Chandra Das, still distinctly legible ;
the merest glance at the coloured plate will show
how far this is from being the case to-day. If all
this damage has been done in so short a time, it seems
impossible this can be the original stone, for the process
of cup-marking is one of the oldest in the world, and at
this rate would long ago have destroyed the surface of
the slab over and over again.
On the other hand, it must be confessed that the
inaccuracy of Chandra Das in many places in his book
is notorious; if in his time the inscription had long been
totally illegible,* if, in fact, as seems more likely,
these cup marks are really the products of half-centuries
instead of years, there is no reason, Mr. Hayden tells
me, why the granite slab with its inscription, although
exposed to the weather of a thousand years and more,
should not be the original. He said that the friable
appearance of the hill slopes was deceptive, and that a
new piece cut from the living rock was of an exceedingly
hard character. The western face of the Do-ring,
which is turned inwards towards the willow, is free from
cup marks, but it is covered with a blackish, mildewed
growth which conceals the inscription to a great extent.
This is a gritty crust which can be partially removed
by the finger-nail, but it seems to have affected the.
surface of the stone deeply, and the Tibetan side is
scarcely more legible than the other.
This inscription, taken from a translation in the
Asiatic Society’s Journal of a rubbing probably of the
copy still kept as a record in the Amban’s residence, f
is as follows :—
* See J. R. A. S. Vol. XII. N. S. t See Appendix H. 16.
“ The learned, warlike, filial and virtuous Emperor of the
Great Tang, and the divine and all-wise Tsanpu of the Great
Fan, two sovereigns allied as father and son-in-law, having
consulted to unite the gods of the land and grain, have concluded
Beneath the sacred willow.
a sworn treaty of grand alliance, which shall never be lost nor
changed. Gods and men have been called as witnesses, and in
order that all ages and generations may resound in praise the
sworn text, section by section has been engraved on a stone
monument.