Off a courtyard beneath the temple is a shrine dedicated to Princess Zeze Khatunee, wife of Senge Namgyal, in 1642 when her Muslim background prompted Ladakh's Buddhist monks to declare that she was an incarnation of Tara. There is a large image of Maitreya, also known as the Buddha of Compassion, and the walls are painted with various divine guardians.
The Maitreya Temple in Ladakh has been restored by villagers of Basgo since the early 1990s, donating money and volunteering their time in spite of the fact that theirs is a tough existence because, like most inhabitants of India's rugged Ladakh region, they care deeply about their temple. Whether carrying the stones on their backs to help build a retaining wall or supplying food for those doing the work, these are the unsung heroes of India’s, and more specifically Ladakh’s, temple restoration more usually attributed to the architects and restorers whose praises reporters and archaeologists tend to sing.
Maitreya's main building, Chamba Lhakang temple in Ladakh is believed to date from the fifteenth century and all the buildings are constructed from local stone, wood and clay. The original roof had been waterproofed with birch bark and needed repairing. Birch trees are a protected species so the bark needed to patch the roof could not be stripped from trunks and had to be harvested from the floors of the forests of Sonamarg in the Kashmir Valley, a year in advance of being used since the roads are closed in winter.
India’s ‘Little Tibet’, as Ladakh is affectionately known, is home to many temples, dedicated to a variety of deities. At the Makhal Temple in Ladakh , the shrine of Vajrabhairava's terrifying face is only unveiled at the annual festival there in January!
At Thiksey, the temple in Ladakh of Stagmo Lakchung was built by the Gelukpa order, disciples of Jangon Tsongkhapa and a twelve-storey monastery complex created around it, with ceremonial swords and a large pillar engraved with the Buddha's teachings amongst other precious objects to be seen, not to mention the fifteen-meter high seated Buddha in the main prayer hall.
Visitors to these, and other, temples in Ladakh report enthusiastic pantomimed explanations of wall-paintings given by monks who volunteered to act as guides but whose English did not quite stretch to religious concepts! |
