1865.] Report of the Archceological Survey. 271 



I measured it. This would make the base of the mound about 1,400 

 feet, which agrees with the size of 50 higahs, or 1,400,000 square feet, 

 which is popularly attributed to it by the villagers themselves. But 

 the fields are strewn with broken bricks for upwards of 1,000 feet to 

 the northward, and for 500 or 600 feet to the eastward, where there 

 are the remains of several temples. The area actually covered by 

 ruins is not less than 2,000 feet square, or upwards of 1J mile in 

 circuit, which shows that Barikhar must once have been a good sized 

 town, but I strongly doubt the story of the Brahmans which attributes 

 its foundation to Vairat Raja. The name is written by the people 

 themselves Badishar ^^^X , although it is pronounced Barikhar, and 

 I believe that similarity of sound alone has led to the identification of 

 Barikhar with Bariyakhera and Vairat Raja. • 



XXIII.— DEORYIA AND DEWAL. 



360. I couple these two places together, because they actually 

 form parts of the old nameless capital of the Bdchhal Rajas, who ruled 

 over Eastern Rohilkhand and Western Oudh before the time of the 

 Katehriyas. Dewal itself is a small village, which has received its 

 name from a temple in which is deposited a very perfect inscription 

 dated in Samvat 1049, or A. D. 992. The opposite village is called 

 Ildhdbds by the Muhammadans, but this name is scarcely known to 

 the people, who usually call it Garh-Gdjana. The inscription is chiefly 

 remarkable for the clean and beautiful manner in which the letters 

 have been engraved ; and its perfect state makes it the more valuable 

 as it furnishes us with a complete specimen of the alphabet of the 

 Kutila character, in which it is said to be engraved. James Prinsep 

 gave a specimen of the characters, along with a translation of the 

 inscription, in the Asiatie Society's Journal for 1837, page 777. But 

 the copy from which he framed his alphabet was made by hand, and 

 although it is wonderfully accurate as a mere transcript of the words, 

 yet it is very faulty as a copy of the individual letters. This is the 

 more to be regretted, as the alphabet thus framed from an inaccurate 

 copy has become the standard specimen of the Kutila characters- 

 Now, the term Kutila means " bent," and as all the letters of the 

 inscription have a bottom stroke or tail, which is turned, or " bent,'' 

 to the right, I infer that the alphabet was named Kutila from this 



