1835.] and Tirhut Pillars, and other Buddhist Monuments. 125 



" I have at last the pleasure to sen * you my drawings of the Bakhra column, 

 and the Radhia column, with their inscriptions, and a third of the Kesriah mound, 

 surmounted with its hemispherical temple or Dehgope. I trust you will animad- 

 vert severely upon the barbarous custom of cutting cyphers and names upon these 

 ancient monuments — if there were any inscription on the Bakhra column, it must 

 in this way have been scribbled over and destroyed." 



At one of the very earliest meetings of the Asiatic Society, held on 

 the 29th January, 1784, I find by the records, that Mr. Law present- 

 ed " A Short Account of Two Pillars to the North of Patna." The 

 paper does not seem to have been printed, nor has it been preserved 

 among 1 our archives ; we may therefore conclude, that it was of a merely 

 cursory nature : nor could we be certain to which of the three pillars, 

 now again brought to our notice by Mr. Hodgson, the remark applied, 

 were it not that the Bakhra pillar of Tirhut, and the Radhia or Arah- 

 raj pillar of Sarun bear too palpable evidence of the visit of Euro- 

 peans, in the names engraved over the surface of the stone. In the 

 former we find the names of C. H. Barlow, 1780, General Brisco 

 and others in 1799 ; — in the other at the foot of the original inscrip- 

 tion is inscribed the name of Reuben Burrow, 1792. This practice 

 of scribbling over and disfiguring ancient monuments is as barbarous 

 as the vain-glory of Jehangir, evinced in the zone of Persian cut 

 over the Allahabad inscription ; but fortunately in the case of the Bakhra 

 column, it seems to have been harmless : for there are no traces of an 

 ancient inscription upon it, at least on the parts of the shaft aboveground. 

 Such Nagari characters as appear in Mr. Hodgson's facsimile are all 

 modern, and record merely the names and dates of native visitors as 

 gothic as their European precursors. 



It is quite unnecessary, therefore, to give an engraving of the Bakhra 

 transcript furnished by Mr. Hodgson. The view made by his native 

 artist (see PI. VII.) is very faithful, and entirely accords with two already 

 in my possession, one by Mr. R. II. Rattray, the other by Mr. J. 

 Stephenson*, whose accurate description of the monument, and of the 

 marks of an ancient city in the neighbourhood, as well as his discovery 

 of a Buddhist image there, form the subject of a very interesting note, 

 already submitted to the Society, and to which I shall presently allude. 



Passing then to the Radhia or Sarun Lath, which is evidently the 

 one alluded to by Mr. Stirling, (and not the Bakhra column, as Mr. 

 Hodgson supposed, for the latter bears no inscription,) it is satis- 

 factory to discover that this pillar is in very good preservation, 

 although it has lost its capital and surmounting Sinha or lion ; for 



* Dr. Mill has also favored we with a sight of two paintings of the same 

 column made by a native artist for Mr. J. R. Elphinstone in 1814. 



