In the afternoon we arrived at Tashi Lunpo. In front of the western entrance I noticed two Chortens (that is, ‘Ćaityas or Stūpas,’ see p. 504 of these Lectures), one very large, with a gilt spire, and the other small. On entering the grand monastery, I mustered all my knowledge of Buddhist ceremonies and monkish etiquette, that I might not be criticised by the passing monks as one unacquainted with the duties of the wearers of the sacred costume. I walked slowly and with gravity, but secretly observing everything around me. There were a few yaks under the charge of three or four herdsmen, waiting probably for the return of some of their number from within the monastery. Some monks, riding on mules, passed us from north to south. A few parties with heavy grain packages on their backs were entering the monastery along with us. The rays of the sun, now slanting on the gilded spires of houses and tombs in the monastery, presented a very magnificent view to the eye. While residing in the monastery I saw people busily engaged in out-door work, such as collecting fuel and tending cattle. In fact, this was the busiest part of the year, when the Tibetans remain on the move for the purpose of buying and selling, at a time when the intensely cold winds wither up the vegetation, freeze the streams, harden the soil, and dry up the skin. The monks, like the lay-people, are remarkable for their habit of early rising. No monk within the walls of the monastery rose later than five in the morning, and the usual time for getting up was four a. m. Those who slept later, without any special cause, were subject to correction. At three in the morning the great trumpet summons all the monks to the religious service in the congregation hall. Whoever fails to attend is punished next morning. No register is kept, yet the officer who superintends the discipline can tell what monk out of two thousand has absented himself on any particular day. I was the only man who slept up to six in the morning. The monks used often to remark that, were I a regular monk of the monastery, the superintendent’s birch would have stript my body of its flesh. About six miles from Tashi Lunpo, and on the road leading from it in a south-westerly direction towards the monastery of Sakya (see below), is the monastery of _Narthang_, whence issued one of the three copies of the Kanjur (p. 272) brought to Europe by Brian Hodgson. We have now to notice the two most important monasteries of the Red sect.