1887.] J. Cockburn— Sitas Window. 103 



2. Description of a new species of Phytophagous Coleoptera alleged to 

 be destructive to the Dhdn crops in the Chittagong District. — By Joseph 

 Balt. Communicated by the Natural History Secretary. 



The paper has been published in Part II of the Journal for 1886. 



3. Sitd's Window, or Buddha's Shadoiv Gave, near Prabhdsa, ivith an 

 eye copy of an ancient inscription in the As'olca characters. — By J. Cock- 

 burn. 



(Abstract.) 



This is a short paper in which the writer briefly explains the 

 circumstances that led to the discovery of the inscription, and the steps 

 he took to get an eye-copy of it ; which he eventually succeeded in 

 making with the aid of an astronomical telescope. The inscription 

 consists of seven lines in the Asoka character, carved on a sunken 

 and once polished surface which is a part of the natural rock, and 

 resembles a tablet let into the rock ; the position of the tablet is above 

 the left top corner of the main entrance window of the cave, and the 

 letters, which are cut in the rock to the depth of three-sixteenth's 

 of an inch, are in a surprisingly perfect state of preservation, consider- 

 ing their great age. Sita's window is described as being an ancient 

 Buddhist hermit's cave cut into the vertical face of a precipice 50 feet 

 high, which forms the scarp of the classic hill of Prabhasa in the 

 Allahabad district. The cave is situated 150 feet to the N. E. corner 

 of the Jain Temple of Parishnath, which is built on a platform imme- 

 diately below the scarp ; and is now known to the people as " Cheta 

 Mata-ka Roseiya." Mr. Cockburn identifies the cave with the lofty 

 stone cavern of a venomous dragon, in which Buddha was supposed 

 to have left his shadow, but owing to its inaccessible position, and the 

 presence of numerous swarms of wild bees, he was unable to enter the 

 cave : it has a small entrance and two apertures about 8" square to 

 admit light, the irregular form of which he considers as the best proof 

 that it is the cave in which Buddha left his shadow, as they might well 

 be constructed to throw a shadow within, having the human outline. 



Dr. Hoernle remarked : — the copy of the inscription is not quite 

 as legible as one could wish. This is the more to be regretted as there 

 is just a possibility of its containing a chronological date in the last line 

 in the older style of numerals. The copy does not profess to be more than 

 an eye-copy, taken by means of a large telescope. As such it is probably as 

 good as it could be ; but mere eye-copies are never quite satisfactory. Mr. 

 Cockburn is fully entitled to the honour of the first discovery of the 

 inscription j at the same time it is satisfactory to know, that — as I have 



