1865.] Notes of a tour in the Tributary Mehals. 27 



conveniently encamp there. In the face of the great rock opposite the 

 entrance, two large caves have been excavated by human labour, the 

 largest of the two, sufficient to afford accommodation for forty or fifty 

 people. The entrance, about 30 feet wide, opens into a gallery of double 

 that length, with recesses at the extremities, intended for more private 

 apartments, probably for females. The excavation is made so as to 

 leave a platform of stone, extending through its whole length, and also 

 in the recesses, for the occupants of the cave to sit and sleep on. The 

 floor is some fifteen feet above the ground, but is accessible by steps 

 cut in the rock. In both caves I found inscriptions carved on the rock 

 in ancient ' Pali' character, and I made the best transcript of them I 

 could : this is now in the hands of Babu Rajendra Lai Mitra, and it 

 will, I trust, throw some light on the history of the retreat. 



Since writing the above, I have seen Col. Ouseley's brief notice of 

 the Ramgurh hill in the Asiatic Society's Journal No. CLXXXVI. for 

 January 1848. He does not appear to have observed the inscriptions, 

 and I do not recollect having seen in the caves any of the stone figures 

 that he noticed there. They may have been since removed. Col. Ouseley 

 calls these antiquities cave temples, but there is nothing now to indi- 

 cate that they were intended as places of worship. 



There are many other interesting collections of ruins in Sirgoojah. 

 Those to the west, in the Pal Pergunnahs, noticed by Col. Ouseley, I 

 have not seen, but he found there a stone with an inscription on it, 

 which I think must be in the Society's museum. On the banks of the 

 Kunhur river in Tuppah Chulgalee, there is a large collection of 

 temple ruins. Three distinct heaps of fragments were at my request 

 opened out, till the foundations of three large temples dedicated to 

 Shiva and Durga were disclosed. The object of worship in the largest, 

 was a huge Lingum, five feet in length, which we found divorced from 

 its appropriate " Yoni" as if it had been blown up. The latter was 

 smashed into several pieces by the destroying force, whatever it may 

 have been, and the numerous sadly maimed gods and goddesses that 

 were found in the debris, are further memorials of the barbarous zeal 

 of some uncompromising iconoclast. I observed a Shib's bull in good 

 preservation, as large as life, a well executed figure of ' Parvati' 

 three feet high, and a grand, colossal, four armed figure with one foot 

 resting on a broad-edged axe, not unlike what is still the national 



