MAMDIP sGRUB PHUG

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

In the 1990ies an upright elliptical cave entrance passage (a metre wide, 2 m high, and 2.5 m long), facing away from the characteristic diurnal storms that rage in the valley throughout the year, gave access to a solitary, man-made, sugar-loaf shaped chamber (2.8 m high, 2.4 m in diameter) with a level and round ground floor. RUBINSTEIN (1988b): The walls are laid down in sedimentary bands of various thicknesses. The finer grained sediment forms thinner bands, while the coarser grain material, which contains, among other things, pebble, and shale, forms thicker bands. The rock leaves a well-defined line when scratched and, indeed, people have engraved their names. […]The bottom of the mouth forms a pitcher spout from which pours a flowstone film. ETYMOLOGY: The Practice / Meditation Cave at Mamdip (in Tibetan: Mamdip sGrub Phug) corresponds to Mamdee Ooa (RUBINSTEIN 1988b), which sounds like a a bowdlerised rendering of the Gorkhali (Nepali) Mamdip Odar, or Home / House / Shelter at amdip.SITUATION: Some 3 m up in a gully and about 20 m above the river terrace on which the traveller's lodge Om's Home stands (see: Caves at –>Mamdip). SPELUNKOLOGY: All -caves- (better: man-made rock-chambers) in Mustang have been ascribed by instant experts to be of dubious origin (PRAKASH, Raj 1971, JANGBU, Tashi 1984) or the probable result of unspecified natural phenomena (SHARMA, N. 1983). RUBINSTEIN (1988b: 13) offers aeolic abrasion (note 1) because he had recognised what he understood to represent scallops. Side by side, with their long axes vertical and parallel, they formed a single row in each band. They are smaller and their frequency greater in the fine layers (note 2).In the 1990ies an upright elliptical cave entrance passage (a metre wide, 2 m high, and 2.5 m long), facing away from the characteristic diurnal storms that rage in the valley throughout the year, gave access to a solitary, man-made, sugar-loaf shaped chamber (2.8 m high, 2.4 m in diameter) with a level and round ground floor. RUBINSTEIN (1988b): The walls are laid down in sedimentary bands of various thicknesses. The finer grained sediment forms thinner bands, while the coarser grain material, which contains, among other things, pebble, and shale, forms thicker bands. The rock leaves a well-defined line when scratched and, indeed, people have engraved their names. […]The bottom of the mouth forms a pitcher spout from which pours a flowstone film. ETYMOLOGY: The Practice / Meditation Cave at Mamdip (in Tibetan: Mamdip sGrub Phug) corresponds to Mamdee Ooa (RUBINSTEIN 1988b), which sounds like a a bowdlerised rendering of the Gorkhali (Nepali) Mamdip Odar, or Home / House / Shelter at amdip.SITUATION: Some 3 m up in a gully and about 20 m above the river terrace on which the traveller's lodge Om's Home stands (see: Caves at –>Mamdip). SPELUNKOLOGY: All -caves- (better: man-made rock-chambers) in Mustang have been ascribed by instant experts to be of dubious origin (PRAKASH, Raj 1971, JANGBU, Tashi 1984) or the probable result of unspecified natural phenomena (SHARMA, N. 1983). RUBINSTEIN (1988b: 13) offers aeolic abrasion (note 1) because he had recognised what he understood to represent scallops. Side by side, with their long axes vertical and parallel, they formed a single row in each band. They are smaller and their frequency greater in the fine layers (note 2).