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Drakchak Khongkha (Brag chag khong kha)

Basic site data

  • Site name: Drakchak Khongkha (sp.?)

  • Site number: A-55

  • Site typology: I.1x

  • Elevation: 4320 m

  • Administrative location (township): Khyunglung

  • Administrative location (county): Tsamda

  • Survey expedition: UTAE

  • Survey date: May 1 and September 6, 2001

  • Contemporary usage: The wholesale removal of stones from the site has occurred in recent years.

  • Identifiable Buddhist emblems and constructions: None.

  • Maps: UTRS V, UTRS X, HAS C3

  • View Place Dictionary Entry

  • View Site Images

General site characteristics

Drakchak Khongkha is located on a fairly flat summit rising 20 m above the left bank of the Sutlej (Sutlej river). This summit (35 m by 10 m to 18 m) commands excellent vistas of both sectors of Khyunglung village, Yültö and Yülmé. The site supports a fairly dense collection of dismantled residential ruins. The structural evidence gleaned from the few standing walls surviving (up to 1.5 m in height), indicates that the buildings once found here had roofs constructed from timbers. Remaining walls were built of random-rubble and may have been of the dry-stone variety. The rim of the hilltop appears to have been circumvallated but very little of this wall remains intact. The stones extracted from Drakchak Khongkha have been used to build a crude wall around the agricultural landholdings of Yülmé, which is watered by a stream called Chubuk.

Oral tradition

According to elders of Khyunglung, Drakchak Khongkha is an ancient habitation long in ruins, which was part of Korön (sp.?), the original settlement of Khyunglung.

Affiliated sites

Minor archaeological sites in the environs of Korön

Stone platforms

Stone platforms are found in Gyangdrak (the site of a lone rebuilt chöten). This site is located immediately north of Drakchak Khongkha, atop an unnamed flat limestone formation. The site consists of four elevated limestone masonry enclosures. These quadrate structures measure 7 m by 5m to 8 m, 6 m by 8 m, 4.5 m by 4.5 m, and 6 m by 6 m. These lightly built platforms are raised around 70 cm above the surface of the formation. Their function is unknown. Nearby, on a limestone shelf overlooking the Sutlej, are traces of single-course slab wall enclosures

Ruined building

On top of a flat limestone formation, closer to the bank of the Sutlej, there are two chöten, which were intact until the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Next to them are the remains of a building (12 m by 6 m) with a stone foundation and mud-brick walls up to 2 m in elevation. This structure was destroyed before living memory. At this site, a light-colored round stone (15 cm by 25 cm by 80 cm circumference) was found with deeply engraved but highly eroded scrollwork around one side of it. This carving appears to be of considerable age.

Stone depressions

In the plain east of Gyangdrak (Walled Formation) is a beehive-shaped outcrop that functioned as an incense brazier (incense brazier) during the horse racing festival held in the pre-modern times. Incense was burnt in a spherical depression in the top of this outcrop. A little to the east is a cylindrical hole in an outcrop said to resemble a large monastic horn (dungchen). This orifice appears to be manmade.

Do Serpo

Closer to Yültö, in the mouth of the cultivated Tingmur valley,1 there is a small hill called Do Serpo (Yellow Rock), which hosts the new Khyunglung monastery built in the 1980s.2 According to the octogenarian Metsé Wang, a native elder of Khyunglung, a ruined temple was found at Do Serpo, which had the ground-plan similar to that of Lhakhang Gyatsa, a chapel founded at Toding. Elders are under the impression that there was once an ancient settlement at Do Serpo but very little can be detected on the surface. The faint remains of walls supporting terraces, especially on the west side of the hill, are in evidence.

Footnotes
  1. ^ Tingmur is one of a number of Zhang Zhung language toponyms in Khyunglung. It denotes the color blue but may once have had other meanings as well. Up valley from the contemporary Yültö settlement there is an old agricultural zone called Murti, brought back into cultivation during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In the Zhang Zhung language, Murti means “a spring” (Bellezza, Zhang Zhung, 150). It is said that in ancient times instead of a plow, a planting stick (pundep) was used to plant seeds in places like Murti and Tingmur. According to local lore, only one seed at a time was planted using this slow but effective method. Muti Rong, a locale between Khyunglung and Jomo Rirang, also possesses a Zhang Zhung name. Other possible Zhang Zhung toponyms in the vicinity of Khyunglung are Korön, Pukti, Sati, Nyikyin, [Latsé] Kali, Hugyu, and Marcha. The Gugé region appears to have the highest proportion of place names in Upper Tibet that owe their origins to the Zhang Zhung language.

  2. ^ A stone model of an archaic chöten was discovered in Do Serpo by local residents during excavations. It is 11 cm in height, hollow and dark-colored. It has a fairly tall base surmounted by five graduated tiers and is crowned by a small, almost round bumpa.