Note 57 — Chapter III · JOURNEY TO DONGTSE.
Reading edition
About an hour after dinner we visited Jerung la, the second son of the Chyag-dso Kusho, who is a monk in the castle of Diba Dongtse. This building, about six hundred years old, is built of stone of the best quality; it faces south, and has balconies (rab-sal) provided with shutters along each of its five stories. It is of a partly Indian, partly Tibetan style of architecture, with a central courtyard about 100 feet broad and 200 long. Around this, on the sides, the building is 40 feet high, and has three stories, along the outer edge of which, on the courtyard side, are rows of drum-shaped prayer-wheels two feet high, and as much in diameter, that take the place of railings. There are some three hundred of these prayer-barrels on the stories of the three sides. The main building is on the north side of the court, and is some 60 to 70 feet high. We ascended to the top story by a steep ladder, and were there shown the gonkhang,57 the shrine of the guardian deities—terrible figures, among which I noticed three of Mamos, resembling Jaganath, Balavendra, and Subhadra, of the Hindus.