252 'Report of the Archaeological Survey. [No. 4, 



ancient cities ; and though I was unable to trace any remains of walls 

 except in one place, yet the veiy presence of the bricks is quite suffi- 

 cient to show that the earthen ramparts must once have been crowned 

 by brick parapets and battlements. The portion of the parapet wall, 

 which I discovered still standing in the middle of the river face, was 

 10 feet thick. The whole circuit of the old earthen ramparts, accord- 

 ing to my survey, is 17,300 feet, or upwards of 3 J miles. Now this 

 is the exact size of 20 li or 3|- miles which Hwen Thsang gives to the 

 palace alone ; but, as the city was then deserted and in ruins, he must 

 have mistaken the city itself for the palace. It is certain at least 

 that the suburbs outside the walls must have been very limited indeed, 

 as the place is almost entirely surrounded with the remains of large 

 religious buildings, which would have left but little room for any 

 private dwellings. I am therefore quite satisfied that the city has 

 been mistaken for the palace ; and this mistake is sufficient to show 

 how utterly rained this once famous city must have been at so distant 

 a period as the 7th century, Avhen the place was visited by Hwen 

 Thsang. As Fa Hian describes the population as already very incon- 

 siderable in A. D. 400, while the Ceylonese annals speak of Khira- 

 dhara, King of Saivatthipura between A. D. 275 and 302, the great 

 decline of Sravasti must have taken place during the 4th century, and 

 we may perhaps not be far wrong in connecting it with the fall of the 

 Gupta Dynasty in A. D. 319. 



329. Sravasti is said to have been built by Raja Sravasta, the son 

 of Yuvanaswa of the Solar race, and the tenth in descent from Surya 

 himself. Its foundation therefore reaches to the fabulous ages of 

 Indian history, long anterior to Rama. During this early period it 

 most probably formed part of the kingdom of Ayodhya, as the Vayu 

 Purana assigns it to Lava, the son of Rama. When Sravasti next 

 appears in history, in the time of Buddha, it was the Capital of 

 King Prasenajit, the son of Maha Kosala. The King became a con- 

 vert to the new faith, and during the rest of his life he was the firm 

 friend and protector of Buddha. But his son Virudhaka hated the 

 race of the Sakyas, and his invasion of their country and subsequent 

 massacre of 500 Sakya maidens, who had been selected for his harem, 

 brought forth the famous prediction of Buddha, that within seven days 

 the King would be consumed by fire. As the story has been preserved 



