Twice, I visited Pemayangtse Monastery, but when I got to read the century-old books about the place, the romance of those words was different. These days I am following Sir Richard Temple's visit to the Himalayan state of Sikkim in 1875 and his works about the Pemayangtse Monastery is just poetry. I appreciate those visitors who really tried their best to keep the correct pronunciation of the native places, rivers, mountains, and others to the closest best. Sir Richard Temple wrote "Pemyangchi" for the more popular Pemayangtse as it is known as better known worldwide. In the English language, as in recent English proficiency training concluded at Gangtok, Saroza Pradhan, my English resource person, taught me that in phonetic English, "ts" sounds as "ch," which makes the sound of Pemayang-"ts"e as Pemyang-"ch"i. It is not "Pemyang-say," as we say often, but it should be "Pemyang-chi," as correctly pronounced by those Britishers.
Sir Richard Temple in his memoirs describes the Pemyangchi Monastery as ;
“In the afternoon we examined both the exterior and interior of the building. The present structure is quite new, though the establishment is some 200 years' old; the original building having been sacked and rifled of all its ornaments and riches by the Nepali invaders in 1814, and the building which existed in Hooker s time, 1849, having been destroyed by fire. The exterior is of the same style as that described at Tasiding, except that it is on a much larger scale. The roof is topped by a copper gilt erection, equivalent to the hti, or sacred umbrella of Burma, and the great wooden doorway is elaborately pointed. In the interior, there are two storeys. In the upper storey, which is plain, some of the monks reside, and in the lower is the chapel already mentioned, all the wooden pillai's and beams of which are painted, and all its walls covered with frescoes : the entire decoration, whether on wood or plaster, representing debased forms of Buddhism, merging into pure idolatry. The colouring is rich and good and the designs are spirited, but the execution is rough, there being abundant cleverness, but hardly any real art. The work isby Tibetan artists, and the idea and conception are of a Chinese character. The principal image represents Sakya Muni the founder of Buddhism, but is destitute of art or beauty. There are no valuable ornaments or otherproperty whatever. I should state the dimensions of the chapel in the lower storey, roughly, as length 60 feet ; breadth 42 feet; and height 12 feet.
At the entrance to the building there is a good-sized ante-room with painted pillars and with frescoes, laid to represent the ideal kings of the regions over which Buddhism has spread; also Chagdor, t.e., Chagnadorje, or Avalokitesvara, the well-known Bodhisattva, who is also the subduer of evil spirits."
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