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My reasons are as follows:
(1) The inscription is approximately of that date, as is proved by its orthography.
(2) Of all the ancient kings, only king Lha-chen-nag-lug's name is mentioned in connection with Khalatse, which he is said to have founded, though this can hardly have been the case, as the Dard colony of Khalatse, with a petty Dard king of its own, was already in existence in his time. But he probably built the Brag-nag Castle above Khalatse, the bridge, and perhaps a few official houses, and he was the king who made Khalatse into a real dependency of the kings of Leh. That we find two kings, father and son, mentioned in the inscription, is quite in accordance with a custom often practised by the royal families of Western Tibet, by which the heir-apparent, on reaching manhood, became the assistant of his father in the government.
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(3) The dragon year, named in the inscription, is identical with that mentioned in the rGyalrabs as the year of the foundation of Khalatse. As the cycle is only of twelve years, this does not count for much, but in such a case as this the coincidence is worth remarking.
(4) From a technical point of view this inscription is very much superior to the many which surround it, as it is the only one which suggests the use of steel. All the rest were probably wrought with stone implements.
(B) Inscription of king Shirima.
A boulder very close to that just mentioned is covered with a royal inscription. It is of similar age, because it includes an instance of the ancient orthography, writing myi for the later mi. A great part of it is unfortunately illegible. The characters are of the ancient dBu-med1 type and are large and roughly executed, probably with some stone implement.
Tibetan Text.
4.
5.
1. rje rgyalpo
2. chenpo shirima myi tham
3.
1.
2.
.... lo rgyangba dung rgyud bod 3.
•
•
[SEPTEMBER, 1906.
•
yang dzadpai Khala [tse]
4.
shin 5.
•
Translation.
The lord, the great king
Shirima [for] all men
year, the rGyangba-dung family [from] Tibet
also made
. Khala[tse] ..
Notes.
There. is no king Shirima mentioned in the rGyalrabs of Western Tibet, so it is not likely that the king of the inscription belonged to the royal family of Leh. The name Shirims does not even appear to be of Tibetan origin, and the inscription probably alludes to one of the last petty kings who held Khalatse before the advent of the Central Tibetans, or to one of the vassal chiefs they set up in accordance with their policy of not exterminating the petty kings whom they subdued.
These kings or chiefs may have resided at the castle now in ruins on the banks of the Indus, at the end of the cultivated area of Khalatse. It was surrounded by a deep ditch on the land side, and is the only one I have seen in Ladakh not built on an eminence. Underneath it, just above the river, are the remains of the piers of a bridge, making the third bridge built at Khalatse.
The history of the three bridges seems to be as follows. The first bridge was at Balu-mkhar to reach which merchants had to travel on the left bank of the Indus for four miles over very uneven ground. The kings of Khalatse therefore built a second bridge underneath their castle to save four
1 Similar characters occur at Alohi-mkhar-gog.
