temple, and the erection of an image of Buddha, to the illustrious Amara Deva, who is stated to have been one of the nine gems of the court of King Vikramaditya. The last fact serves at once to identify Amara Deva with Amara Sinha, the author of the Amara Kosha, who, as a contemporary of Varáha Mihira and Kálidás, must have lived in A. D. 500. In this inscription the temple is said to have been erected in compliance with the command of Buddha himself, conveyed to him in a vision. Here then we have the same story that is found in Hwen Thsang. In both statements, a Brahman in a vision receives command from a deity to build a temple with an enshrined figure of a god. The correspondence is complete, excepting only one curious point of difference in the name of the god, whom the Buddhist Hwen Thsang describes as the Brahmanical Mahâdeva, but whom the Brahmanist recorder of the inscription calls Buddha himself.

The holy places at Buddha-Gaya were visited between A. D. 399 and 414 by another Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hian, but his account of them is unfortunately very brief. It is, however, sufficient to show that there was no temple in existence at that date. Fa-Hian notes the spot where Buddha, seated on a stone under a great tree, eat some rice presented to him by two maidens. The stone still existed, and is described by him as about 6 feet in length and breadth, and 2 feet in height.* Now, there is a large circular stone, 5 feet 7 inches in diameter and about 2 feet high, in the small temple of Vageswari Devi, which from its dimensions would seem to be the identical stone described by Fa-Hian. It is a blue stone streaked with whitish veins, and the surface is covered with concentric circles of various minute ornaments. The second circle is composed of Vajras only. The third is a wavy scroll, filled with figures of men and animals. These circles occupy a breadth of 15 inches, leaving in the centre a plain circle, 3 feet 11 inches in diameter, inside which is a square. This simple stone I believe to be the same as that mentioned by Hwen Thsang as a blue stone with remarkable veins.†

From all the facts which I have brought forward, such as the non-existence of any temple in A. D. 400, the recorded erection of a large one by Amara Deva about A. D. 500, and

* Beal's Fa-Hian, c. XXXI.

Julien's Hwen Thsang, II., 471.

the exact agreement in size as well as in material and ornamentation between the existing temple and that described by Hwen Thsang between A. D. 629 and 642, I feel satisfied that the present lofty temple is the identical one that was built by the celebrated Amara Sinha about A. D. 500.

Further information regarding this temple is to be found in the Burmese inscription discovered at Buddha-Gaya by the Burmese Mission in 1833, and translated by Colonel Burney.* Another earlier translation by Ratna Pâla was published by James Prinsep. In this inscription the dates. have been read differently by the two translators; Ratna Pâla and James Prinsep reading 667 and 668, while Colonel Burney and his Burmese assistants read 467 and 468. I have carefully copied this inscription, and I am thus enabled to state positively that Colonel Burney was certainly wrong in adopting the earlier date in compliance with the views of the Burmese priests, whose object it was to reconcile the date of the inscription with their own history. James Prinsep remained unconvinced by Colonel Burney's arguments, and appended a note to his translation, in which he states that the first figure of the upper date might be a little doubtful, but that the first six of the lower date seemed to him quite plain, and essentially different from the four which occurs in the second line of the inscription. The two dates of 667 and 668 of the Burmese era, as read by Ratna Pâla, correspond with A. D. 1305 and 1306.

In this Burmese inscription, the erection of the original temple is ascribed to Asoka, as recorded also by Hwen Thsang. Having become ruined, it is said to have been rebuilt by a priest named Naik Mahanta according to Ratna Pâla, or by a lord named Penthagu-gyi by Colonel Burney. Where the term "priest" is used by Ratna Pâla, Colonel Burney gives "lord," because, as he states, it is not now customary to say ta-youk of a priest, although in former times both priests and laymen are said to have been styled youk. The Burmese affix gyi, which means "great, has apparently been translated into the Indian Nayak or Chief; and Penthagu, which Colonel Burney regards as a proper name, and which would, therefore, be Pensagu in Indian nunciation, is rendered Mahanta by Ratna Pâla. I cannot

*

pro

Bengal Asiatic Researches, XX., 197 ; and Journal, Bengal Asiatic Society, 1834, p. 214.