Whether the stag and tree, common alike to temple and coin, gives a clue to the builders; whether it suggests a stream of Hindu civilization driven by persecution into the untrodden forests of the Terai, like "the pilgrim fathers," seeking in the wilderness quiet to worship God after the fashion of their ancestors; or whether it may perhaps go to prove that in time past the deadly fever-smitten Terai was not deadly, but a cultivated country filled with villages and inhabitants; these points I leave for antiquarians to decide. About eight miles further east in the Lúní Sot, a narrow stony ravine running down from the Himalayas, I found some more slabs, one with a beautiful female head, and two or three large pillar shafts and cornice-mouldings, similar to those at Mandhal. After a long search I could find nothing further; but an old Brahmin who had a cattle "got" in the ravine, told me that twenty years ago several fine figures, slabs, &c. were carried away to Jayapur and Gwalior by wood-cutters from Central India. Four miles further east, I came on the ruins or rather indications of a city (the place is now known as Pánduwálá) near the police jungle chauki of Láll Dháng. Here after an hour's search I at length lighted on the object of my visit; I found the ground beneath the tall tiger grass and tangled bamboos covered for a couple of square miles with heaps of small oblong red bricks, interspersed with carved slabs of stone; but the most singular and beautiful relic was the last to reward my search; this was a stone "lingam" of most exquisite work, half buried in the ground, but when excavated, standing three feet high and carved on three sides. Forty or fifty small chirágs were turned up by my servants, while excavating the "lingam." The people at Láll Dháng told a similar story to the Brahmin at Lúní of figures and slabs that had been carted away to the plains at different times. At Pánduwálá I observed three or four evident indications of foundations of houses, and in one place a half-choked canal of good stone work, which had brought water doubtless to the people of the buried city from the cool hollows of the Bijinagar "Sot." A large stone, six feet in circumference by three in diameter, also lay near the foundation of one of the houses of bygone Pánduwálá. At Mawakot, a Boksar village in the Terai, eighteen miles east of Pánduwálá, I found some more slabs, some of the three headed divinity and one bearing a very curious figure. An old Brahmin, a resident of the village, told me that it represented "Jangdeo Kumár." The mailed figure with his armed supporters seemed almost an ancient gothic knight, but the curious tracery of fishes surrounding the warrior, somewhat destroyed the illusion. I found nothing more worth recording during my stay in the Terai, but I came on continued indications of what once had been here a chipped and broken cornice near a cattle "Got." stuck up on end by the ignorant Paharis as a "Deotá," there a great slab of hewn stone lying alone among a clump of bamboos in the middle of the forest. That these remains extend through the whole length of the Rohilcund and Kumaon Terai, I should think there is little doubt. I was told that at Rámnagar in the Kumaon Terai, there were some very fine slabs and carved stones, but I was unable to make my way there. My remarks on these interesting relics are of necessity meagre, but I hope that my drawings may induce some of the antiquarians of the Society to throw some light on these ruins in the wilderness. I can find no mention of these ruins in Batten's work on Gurhwal and Kumaon, although that writer mentions the Dwáráháth frieze and carvings in Kumaon. I believe I am the first European who has seen the Mandhal temple, or indeed any of these ruins, as none of the district or forest officers had ever heard of their existence, until I mentioned them. Notes on ancient Remains in the Mainpuri District.-By [Received 8th June, 1867.] Asauli. This large village is within two miles of Mainpuri to the north east and can be best approached by the old cemetery, from which it is perhaps three-fourths of a mile distant. Crossing an "úsar" plain, and passing through the village of Sikandarpur, you see the village of Asauli picturesquely perched on its mound, which rises some forty feet from the level of the plain. At one end is a large native brick house used by the Rájá of Mainpuri during the mutiny, whilst at the other (the east) are swelling mounds covered with trees. But ere you can reach the said village, you have to go a long way round to avoid the extensive sheets of water which environ it on three sides, and which have been caused by the earth excavated therefrom to raise the mound. Entering by the east, one at once notices a large heap of stones, &c. on a small mound, and here one naturally looks for the Buddhist temple or "chaitya" which certainly faced the rising sun. Nor is one disappointed, for amidst the mass stands a stone with a deity thereon carved, now called by the villagers "Gulpib-Debí." This is represented in the rough sketch given below; it is held by me to represent "Vishnu," the supplanter of Buddh in this instance. This slab may, however, have formed part of the temple, and have been placed to the right or left of the entrance, as in the later Buddhist temple many Hindu deities were admitted. The carving about the figure is very rich and characteristic of the period I would assign to it, viz. circa 500 A. D. The large squared blocks of kankar forming the original foundation are, many of them, still in situ-and the building will appear to have been of some size and of the usual crucial form. The length of the cross is not easily ascertained. A single cornice block will, however, give some clue to the size of the structure as it measured 34" deep by 20" wide. Several heads of Buddh, carved in the conventional style, were lying about; whilst two niche ornaments revealed him sitting in contemplation, and several lintel stones two feet ten inches in length, shewed that the sanctuary had been richly carved. There were remains of sundry cruciform capitals, and of single and double bases for pillars as well as of the pillars themselves, but the most curious piece of carving to be seen there was a long slab of kankar, a basement moulding which I have figured below. It will be observed that it consists inch, and in this space there were five elephants. Another portion of the same basement moulding was found in the village, as also that of a frieze of demon faces which may possibly have formed part of another building. Amongst the ornamental carvings were several settings of "viráj" or jewel shewn in the margin; whilst the over-branching vase does not fail to assert its prominent place. There were also remains of statues of both male and female figures nearly nude, with elaborate waist-belts; but these appeared to me to belong to a time when the sensuous Jains were supplanting the Buddhists. It is very curious to trace on these stones records how the purer faith of S'ákya Muni mingled and became incorporated with and debased by the grosser superstitions of S'iva and Vishnu (( tíká" marks and -to see how the pure and, so to speak, classical severity of rendering of the human form gave way to the sensuality of engrafted creeds-how S'ákya himself became adorned, needed clothing to cover him, instead of that wondrous veil of drapery generally indicated by merely the faintest waist-line or mark across the thigh, and required tiara, how the forms of his attendant female devotees bent and twisted themselves with their distended busts, and how, in truth, the small spark of light S'ákya had revived died out. Again, wandering about the village, one finds everywhere traces of carvings on blocks of stone built into walls. See below. These much resemble those at Malaun which I have before described. Some are like the figures at Mathurá and Bhilsa; whilst I could not find that any Hindu temple had ever taken the place of the original Buddhist or Jain structure, in which, as afore-noted, it is probable that some of the Hindu Pantheon had found a place, |