238 An account of Upper and Lower Suwdt. [No. 3, 



colour,* but I could not tell whether it was lime, mud, or anything 

 else. Every house has a door, as have the two larger buildings also. 

 These ruins are of Buddhist, not of Grecian architecture ; but are 

 like those at Bihi near Peshawar, which we visited together in 

 December, 1849 ; and are altogether without verandahs. The large 

 buildings I refer to, as situated on the very brow of the mountains 

 are said to have been built by Suwatis of former times as watch- 

 towers ; but in my opinion they are the remains of idol temples, 

 which Hindus often build in such places, as at Purandhar near 

 Poonah in the Dekhan, which I accompanied you to, in 1852. 

 There is no made road leading to these buildings, for they are very 

 near to the open ground of the valley ; but, probably, there was 

 once a made road, which has now disappeared. This ruined city is 

 close to the Landdakaey mountain, but the village of Kottah is 

 nearer, and Barikott is still further off; for this reason I have written 

 " near Kottah instead of Barikott." This is, no doubt, the ruined 

 city mentioned by the French Colonel Courtf as near the last named 

 place, which is a large place, whilst Kottah is but a small village. 

 The ancient ruins in Suwat are situated in such difficult and out-of- 

 the-way places, that it becomes a matter of astonishment to con- 

 ceive how the inhabitants of them managed to exist, where they 

 obtained water, what they employed themselves on, and how they 

 managed to go in and out ; for several of the houses are situated 

 every here and there, on the very peaks of hills ; but Suwat does not 

 contain so many ruined sites as writers would lead us to believe. 



Proceeding on our route from Kottah, we saw the villages of 

 Nowaey-Kalaey, Abti-wah, Gurataey, Bari-kott, and Shankar-darah. 

 Close to this latter place, there is a tower called Shankar-dar. Shan- 

 kar, in the Sanskrit language, is one of the names of Siva. It 

 stands on a square base of stone and earth, seven yards in height, and 

 just forty yards in length and breadth, which 1 myself measured. 

 On this square platform, the tower, which is of stone, joined by the 

 dark coloured cement I before mentioned, stands. I computed the 

 height, from the base, which I had measured, to be about thirty 

 yards, or ninety feet ; and I also measured the base, which was 

 twenty-five yards or seventy-five feet in circumference. It is egg- 



* Probably bitumen, 

 t Asiatic Journal of Bengal, for 183i) } page 307. 



