Note 61 — Chapter III · JOURNEY TO DONGTSE.
Reading edition
When the Chyag-dso Kusho had finished making all these presents he returned to the minister’s room, where we were with him. In course of conversation he suggested the propriety of my presenting the Tashi lama with an elephant. He said that two had recently been sent by the Rajah of Sikkim to Lhasa, to be presented to the Dalai lama, one of which had died on the way.61 He also spoke of the superiority of Indian metal images over those made in Tibet, and said that those made in Magadha, and called jai-khim, were very rare in this country. “If you had brought some of these, or of shar-li [Bengal bell-metal], or nub-li [lower Indus valley],62 and presented them to the minister, he would have been infinitely more pleased than with glass and other fragile and useless toys.”