BUDDHA ENGRAVINGS

These sculptures were carved into the rock between the 8th and 10th centuries. They represent the Buddha of the present - Siddhārtha Gautama - in the centre, twenty small Buddhas of the past around, and the Buddhas of the future - Maitreya - on each side. The inscriptions in Tibetan, although incomplete, instruct the faithful to take care of the sculpture. The Baltistan region was a land of Shamanism until Buddhism arrived in the 4th century with the monks of North India. Religion continued to flourish after the Tibetan conquest in the 8th century but did not resist the arrival of Islam in the 14th century