Imperial Gazetteer Punjab 1908 Vol 1

· 1908 · Public domain (published pre-1930) · archive.org ↗

1KANGRA DISTRICT 377

2some chapels a number of small brass images from China are

3ranged on shelves on one side of the altar, and on the other

4stands a bookcase full of the sacred books, which are bundles

5of loose sheets printed from engraved slabs in the fashion

6which has been in use in Tibet for many centuries. The

7walls all round the chapel are painted with figures of male

8or female divinities, saints, and demons, or hung with pictures

9on cloth with silk borders; similar pictures on cloth are also

10suspended across the cbapel on ropes. The best pictures are

11brought from Great Tibet as presents to the monastery by

12monks who return from taking the deuree of gefavy at Lhasa,

13or who have been living for some years in one of the monas-

14teres of that country. They are painted in a very quaint and

15conventional style, but with considerable power of drawing and

16colouring. Huge cylindrical prayer-wheels, which spin round

17at a slight touch of the finger, stand round the room, or on

18each side of the altar. In the storeroams among the public

19property are kept the dresses, weapons, and fantastic masks

20used in the cham or religious plays, also the drums and

21cymbals, and the robes and quaint head-dresses worn by the

22superior monks at high ceremonies,

23The refectory or public kitchen 1s only used on the ocrasion

24of certain festivals, which sometimes last several days, during

25which special services are performed in the chapels. While

26these festivals last, the monks mess together, eating and drink-

27ing their fill of meat, barley, butter, and tea. The main source

28from which the expense of these feasts is met 1s the fun,

29which is not divided among the monks for everyday consump-

30tion in the separate cells. “fo supply his private larder, each

31monk has, in the fir-t place, all he gets from his family m the

32shape of the produce of the ‘4Ayas field” or otherwise :

33secondly, he has his share, according to his rank in the

34monastery, of the é@i/a or funcral offermys and of the harvest

35alms; thirdly, anything he can acquire in the way of fees for

36attendance at marriages or other ceremunics or in the way

37of wages for work done in the summer. “The funeral offurings

38made to the monasteries on the death of any member of a

39household consist of money, Clothes, pots and pats, grain,

40butter, &c.; the harvest alms consist of gram collected by

41parties of five or six monks sent out on begging expeditions

42all over Spiti by each monastery just after the harvest. They

43go round from house to house in full dress, and standing in

44a row, chant certain verses, the burden of which is—‘ We are

45men who have given up the world, give us, in charity, the