160 Report of the Archaeological Survey. [No. 3 



ground. Judging from these dimensions, the temple of Kesava Deva 

 must have been one of the largest in India. I was unable to obtain 

 any information as to the probable date of this magnificent fane. It 

 is usually called Keso Ray, and attributed to Raja Jaga Deva, but 

 some say that the enshrined image was that of Jaga Deva, and that 

 the builder's name was Ray or Raja Kesava Deva. It is possible that 

 it may have been one of the " innumerable temples" described by 

 Mahmud in his letter to the Governor of Grhazni, written in A. D. 

 1017, as Ave know that the conqueror spared the temples either through 

 admiration of their beauty, or on account of the difficulty of destroy- 

 ing them. Mahmud remained at Mathura only 20 days, but during 

 that time the city was pillaged and burned, and the temples were rifled 

 of their statues. Amongst these there were " five golden idols whose 

 eyes were of rubies, valued at 50,000 dinars," or £25,000. A sixth 

 golden image weighed 98,300 mishkals, or 1,120 lbs., and was decor- 

 ated with a sapphire weighing 300 mishJcals, or 3|lbs. But " besides 

 these images, there were above one hundred idols of silver, which 

 loaded as many camels." Altogether the value of the idols carried of 

 by Mahmud cannot have been less than three millions of Rupees, or 

 £300,000. 



170. The date of Mahmud's invasion was A. D. 1017, or some- 

 what less than 400 years after the visit of the Chinese pilgrim Hwen 

 Thsang, who in A. D. 634 found only five Brahmanical temples in 

 Mathura. It is during these four centuries, therefore, that we must 

 place, not only the decline and fall of Buddhism, but its total dis- 

 appearance from this great city, in Avhich it once possessed twenty 

 large monasteries, besides many splendid monuments of its most famous 

 teachers. Of the circumstances which attended the downfall of Bud- 

 dhism we know almost nothing ; but as in the present case we find 

 the remains of a magnificent Brahmanical temple occupying the very 

 site of what must once have been a large Buddhist establishment, we 

 may infer with tolerable certainty that the votaries of Sakya Muni 

 were expelled by force, and that their buildings were overthrown to 

 furnish materials for those of their Brahmanical rivals ; and now these 

 in their turn have been thrown clown by the Musalmans. 



171. I made the first discovery of Buddhist remains at the temple 

 of Kesava Ray in January 1853, when, after a long search, I found 



