1864.]' 



On the JRuins of Buddha Gay&. 



175 



the original tree, people from time to time built raised terraces and 

 covered up its roots, so that the tree in a manner rose with the rise of 

 the ground-level, and that every new terrace or step was not neces- 

 sarily an evidence in favour of a new tree ; but the fact of the tree that 

 now exists being a modern one, warrants the presumption of its having 

 had several predecessors at different times. Moreover, as the plan of 

 renewing the tree was evidently not by cutting down the old and 

 planting a new one in its place, but by dropping a seedling in the axilla 

 or a decayed spot of the old tree, so as to lead to the supposition that 

 it was only a new shoot of the parent stem and not a stranger brought 

 from a distance, it was found necessary to cover up the root of the 

 new comer under guise of putting fresh mould on the root of the old 

 one, to prevent the imposition being discovered. Hence it is that the 

 present terrace is much higher than the tops of the surrounding heaps 

 ©f rubbish. 



Close by the tree, on the north side, is placed the Burmese inscrip- 

 tion noticed by Col, Burney in the last volume of the Asiatic Be- 

 searches. And immediately to the east of it stands the great temple 

 of the place, a monument rising to the height of 160 feet from the 

 level of the plain. Its pinnacle is broken ; when entire it must have 

 added at least twenty feet to the altitude of this cyclopsean structure, 

 General Cunningham^ in his Archaeological Survey Report for 186 i -62,^ 

 has given a full description of this edifice ; but there is one point of 

 importance in it which escaped his notice, and to it, therefore, I wish 

 to draw particular attention : I allude to the existence of three com- 

 plete arches on the eastern face of the building. The doorway is wide 

 but low, and is formed of granite side-posts with a hyperthyrion of the 

 same material. That was, however, supposed to be unequal to the 

 weight of the great mass of masonry rising to the height of near 150 

 feet, which rested on \t y and three Saracenic or pointed arches were 

 accordingly thrown across to remove the weight from the hyperthyrion 

 to the side abutments. Two of these arches have fallen in, breaking 

 exactly where an over- weighted arch would break, namely, at the points 

 where the line of resistance cuts the intrados, The third is entire. It 

 is pointed at the top, but is formed, exactly as an arch would be in the 

 present day, of voussoirs or arch-stones placed wedgewise, the first and 

 last of which are sustained on the abutments, while the intermediate 

 * Ante Yol. XXXII. p. via. 



2 A 2 



