1920-22 Draft of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom – Page 273

We all attended the feast where we saw the Indian and his sisters wife. Beyond was all the range of those concentric sweating mountains, to the valley, a mirage. Down some to a hill, at which steps were cut round in the hard shale ground, for to have taken us by an easier oblique path would have led us too gradually over the open towards what seemed a tored and banded waste, as it were the ceremonial parade ground of Aizen-myo-o himself. But not until the dusk did we note two minute human figures, one horizontal on the rocks, and whether alive or dead unknown. Only then did we see the nature and function of the place. The premastered stupa had a formal polished substance; some carvings of the deities, faded through the stone; on an engraved pattern of the earth upon the steps; square, double at each corner to turn; framing that hallowed architecture stood carved toranas, all four defaced, their pent-roof copings and the sunken doorways carved as demons' hands and fangs (to drink the souls no doubt of the credulous). This masonry was of a great age (compared with the fortress of Sane) for they said it was not restored only renewed until intolerably rude; but within, all was scoured and bright. Hermits' paths lead even up with rifts : the Ban lamas were suspicious. An adder was startled by their dark cowls rustle and rose, but a little venom went a great way then. They passed by on pikes and (what we all thought harmless) some old pans reeved on poles as if signaling or such. All else was perfectly silent and so to our talk. We'd not known we'd breaching a ward. The centre enclosure served only to kill. For one, far up the steps a bell lay on the rock and beside it a mask of beaten gold and a great brass trumpet, longbowed, while to the right a square altar stood where smoked meagre grains of incense in brass urns. But it had its sentinels; a rank of those clay gods and draped grey monks behind...