of the work. When the King was approached on the matter his Majesty replied: "I have finished giving the order to the woman to proceed with the work. Kings must not eat their words, and I cannot undo my orders now." So the tower was allowed to be finished, and hence its unique name, "Ja Rung Kashol Chorten Chenpo." I rather think, however, that the tower must have been built after the days of Shākyamuni Buḍḍha, for the above description from Tibetan books is different from the records in Samskṛṭ, which are more reliable than the Tibetan.
Every year, between the middle of September and the middle of the following February of the lunar calendar, crowds of visitors from Tibet, Mongolia, China and Nepāl come to this place to pay their respects to the great temple. The reason why they choose the most apparently unfavorable season for their travel thither is because they are liable to catch malarial fever if they come through the Himalayan passes during the summer months. By far the greatest number of the visitors are Tibetans, of whom, however, only a few are nobles and grandees, the majority being impecunious pilgrims and beggars, who eke out their existence by a sort of nomadic life, passing their winter in the neighborhood of the tower and going back to Tibet in summer.
In Nepāl I had now arrived, and the reason of my presence there was, of course, to choose a route for my purpose, for there are many highways and pathways running between that country and Tibet. My purpose was such that I could take nobody there into my confidence, not even my kind and obliging host. For, to Lama Buḍḍha Vajra I was a well-qualified Chinaman, who was to go back to Lhasa by openly taking one of the public roads, and go on thence to China. Besides, I knew that the Lama was a Tibetan interpreter to His Highness
