156 Ancient Hindu Ruins in Garhwdl. [No. 3, 



Whether the stag and tree, common alike to temple and coin, gives 

 a clue to the builders ; whether it suggests a stream of Hindu civili- 

 zation 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 Luni 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 Panduwala) near the police 

 jungle chauki of Lall Dhang. 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 chirags were turned up by my servants, 

 while excavating the " lingam." The people at Lall Dhang told 

 a similar story to the Brahmin at Luni of figures and slabs 

 that had been carted away to the plains at different times. At 

 Panduwala I observed three or four evident indications of founda- 

 tions 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 Panduwala. At 

 Mawakot, a Boksar village in the Terai, eighteen miles east of 



