town which contained the most famous monastery in all India. I will submit this inscription for re-translation. The other remains at Ghosrâwâ are few and unimportant. There is a mound of brick ruin touching the village, and a small temple on a low mound with some broken figures between Ghosrâwâ and the small village of Asânagar. The inscription obtained by Major Kittoe is now fixed in the wall of this temple. At the western foot of the Ghosrâwâ mound there is a four-armed standing male statue of life size, inscribed with the usual formula of the Buddhist faith. In the upper right hand there is a necklace, but the lower hand is open, the upper left hand holds a lotus, and the lower hand a bell. There is a small figure of Buddha in the head dress of the statue, from which I believe that this figure represents Avalokiteswara, as Hwen Thsang describes a similar statue at the Kapotika Sangharâma. The characters of the inscription do not seem to me to be later than A. D. 800. On the top of the mound I found the lower portion of a female figure, of which the upper part was fixed in the ground near the Asânagar Temple. The statue is two-armed, and holds a lotus in one hand. It probably represents Dharmma. There are two four-armed female attendants, that to the left carrying a human head. XI. TITARAWA. At Titarâwa, 2 miles to the north of Ghosrâwâ, there is a fine large tank 1,200 feet in length, with a considerable mound of brick ruin to the north, and a colossal statue of the ascetic Buddha to the south, which is now called Bhairav. The pedestal is 7 feet broad, and the whole figure is still 9 feet high, although the upper portion is wanting. The usual Buddhist formula is inscribed on the lotus leaves of the pedestal. There are besides several others small and unimportant, one of which bears the Buddhist formula, and another inscription in three lines of small letters. The greater portion of this inscription is injured, but sufficient remains to declare the date of the statue, which I believe to be about A. D. 800; I can read the name of Mahâpâla at the end of it. On the west side of the statue there is the foundation of a brick stupa, 18 feet in diameter. The mound of Titarâwa is about 20 feet high, and has a small modern fort on the top, with a round tower at each of the angles. Excavations for bricks are still going on, as at the period of Major Kittoe's visit. I traced the remains of several walls, from which I infer that the mound was the site of a large monastery. There is no mention of this place either in Fa-Hian or Hwen Thsang. XII. APHSAR. Five miles to the east of Ghosrâwâ, and on the eastern bank of the Sakri River, there is a low hill covered with brick ruins, close to a village called Aphsar. The long and important inscription of a second dynasty of Guptas, that was discovered at this place by Major Kittoe, is no longer to be found at Aphsar. The people are unanimous in stating that Major Kittoe removed it to Nowâda for the purpose of copying it; and he himself states that he "brought it away to re-examine it, and to restore it as much as possible before having it fixed in a pedestal near the Varâha" in Aphsar. I enquired for this inscription at Nowâda, at Gaya, and at Banâras, but could not hear any thing of it. The loss of this important inscription is very much to be regretted; but luckily I possess a transcript of it in modern Nagari, which Major Kittoe himself gave me in 1850. This has been submitted to Bâbu Rajendralal Mitra for translation.* XIII. BARABAR. At 16 miles to the north of Gaya, or 19 miles by the road, there are several groups of granite hills, called KauwaDol, Barábar, Nágárjuni, and Dharáwat.† All of these possess some Buddhistic remains, but the most interesting are the caves of Barabar and Nágárjuni, which were hewn out of the solid rock upwards of two thousand years ago. Kauwa-Dol is a detached hill nearly one mile to the south-west of the main group of hills, and just six miles * The Babu's translation will be found in the Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1866, p. 272. The inscription gives the genealogy of a dynasty of nine Gupta Kings. There is apparently nothing to guide us in fixing the date, and, in the absence of the original document, I can only conjecture that these Guptas are of later date than the well-known Gupta dynasty of the Allahabad and Bhitari Pillar inscriptions. I possess gold coins of three later Princes, Vishnu, Kumâra, and Jaya, who probably belonged to the family of the Aphsar record. † See Plate XVIII. This to the east-north-east of the Bela Dâk Bungalow. hill is quite inaccessible, as it is formed entirely of huge masses of granite piled precipitously above one another, and crowned with a single lofty block that frowns grandly over the plains below. It is said that this pinnacle was formerly topped by another block, which was so nicely balanced that it used to rock even when a crow alighted upon it. From this belief the hill acquired the name of Kauwa-Dol, or the "crow's swing," or "rocking-stone." At the northern foot of the Kauwa-Dol there has formerly been a temple of hewn granite. A large village must also once have existed on the north and east sides of the hill, as the foot of the hill, which is considerably raised above the fields, is strewn with broken bricks, hewn stones, and fragments of pottery. There are several Muhammedan tombs on this mound, built chiefly of pillars and other squared and ornamented stones of some Hindu temple. The name of this old place is said to have been Samanpur. Major Kittoe, however, was told that this name applied only to the northern portion of the ruins, the eastern portion being called Sarain. On the rocks of the northern face of the hill, numerous rude figures have been sculptured. One of these is a figure of Ganes, 2 feet high, beside a lingam. Several of them represent Gauri Sankar or Hara Gauri; but the most common of these sculptures is the favourite figure of the four-armed Durgâ slaying the Mahesasur, or Buffalo Demon. In her two right hands she holds a sword and a trident, and in her upper left hand a shield, while her lower left hand grasps the tail of the Buffalo. All of these are Brahmanical figures; but there are also rude figures of Buddha seated, and one female figure which is said to be Padmavati, or Máyá Devi, but which is most probably only a representation of Dharmma. In a recess on the east side of the hill, and amidst the ruins of a large temple, of which several pillars are still standing, there is a colossal figure of Buddha the ascetic, as he appeared when seated in mental abstraction under the Bodhi tree at Buddha-Gaya. A drawing of this figure has been given in Buchanan Hamilton's Eastern India.* It is the largest statue that I have seen, the figure *Vol. I., Plate XIV., Fig. 5. F |