260 Report of the Archaeological Survey. [No. 4. 



follow the title of Bodhisatwa, the name of the place, Sdvasti, and the 

 name of Buddha as Bhagavata. The inscription closes with the state- 

 ment that the statue is the " accepted gift of the Sarvastidinu teachers 

 of the Kosamba hall." Judging from the old shapes of some of the 

 letters in this record, the age of the statue may be fixed with some 

 certainty as not later than the first century of the Clmstian era. The 

 characters are exactly the same as those of the Mathura inscriptions, 

 which, without doubt, belong to the very beginning of the Christian era ; 

 and as the Sravasti statue was in all probability executed at Mathura 7 

 the correspondence of the lapidary characters shows that the mscriptions 

 must belong to the same period. As there is no mention of this 

 statue in Fa Hian's narrative, I conclude that the temple in which it 

 stood must have fallen down in the great conflagration which destroyed 

 the seven-storied pavilions. But the account of Fa Hian is not very 

 intelligible. He states that the original image of Buddha was " the 

 head of an ox carved in sandal- wood ;" that on Buddha's approach 

 the statue " rose and went to meet him" and that when Buddha said r 

 " Return and be seated/' the statue " returned and sat down." The 

 origin of this rather puzzling account must, I believe, be traced to a 

 mistake, either of Fa Hian himself, or of his translator. In Sanskrit, 

 Gosirsha or " Bull's head," is the name of the most fragrant kind of 

 sandal-wood, and as we know that the famous early statue of Buddha 

 at Kosambi was made of this very wood, it is natural to conclude that 

 the earliest statue at Sravasti may have been made of the same mate- 

 rial. As this is the only figure of Buddha noticed by Fa Hian, I infer 

 that the colossal stone figure which I discovered must have been buried 

 beneath the ruins of its own temple some time before A. I). 400, and 

 most probably therefore during the great fire which destroyed the 

 whole monastery. It was concealed also at the time of Hwen Thsang's 

 visit, in A. D. 632, as he specially mentions that the only temple then 

 standing amidst the ruins of the monastery was a small brick house 

 containing a statue of Buddha in sandal-wood. The statue now dis- 

 covered was therefore not visible in his time. 



342. Both pilgrims agree in stating that the gate of the monastery 

 was on the east side, and although I was unable to find any certain 

 trace of an opening, I am quite satisfied that the gate must have been 

 on the east, as all the existing ruins are on that side. On issuing 



