7 if> Notes on the Antiquities of JBhopal. [Aug. 



Instead however of driving small galleries at nearly the level of the 

 ground into the interior, the explorers began digging pits as it were 

 into the buildings, from the top or at about half way down the side, 

 and as the stones used in the construction of the hemispheres were not 

 cemented with lime, a third of one monument and a fifth portion of the 

 other have been destroyed. Falling rubbish has upset or buried stone 

 colonnades and the searches for coins or inner chambers do not appear 

 ever to have reached the bottom of either Tope. 



The two Topes in question are commonly known as the " Sass-bkow 

 ka hitlut" or as the "wife's and good mother's dung stacks/' from 

 their supposed resemblance to heaps of dried cowdung cakes. The 

 word "Tope" is wholly unknown in this part of India, although it is 

 the representative of a Sanscrit original. 



The Buddhist monuments at Satcheh are built on three platforms or 

 stages, and stretch east and west across a low range of hills. The 

 highest portion of the highest platform, the edge indeed of a precipice, 

 is occupied by a temple containing an image, and flanked on either side 

 by rows of chambers. This uppermost stage seems moreover, for the 

 most part to have been covered with buildings or cells used by the 

 members of the religious establishment at the place. The centre near- 

 ly of the middle platform is occupied by the larger Tope at a distance 

 of about 140 yards from the temple or shrine already mentioned. The 

 smaller Tope is at a somewhat greater distance from the larger Tope, 

 and occupies the third or lower stage which however has never been 

 completed or properly cleared. 



On the upper and middle stages there are several small temples or 

 shrines, some of which still contain images of Buddha mostly of the 

 kind which represent him as seated on the lotus-adorned throne. Some 

 figures have a light drapery which does not conceal the shape, and in 

 some the halo which usually invests the head is carved to resemble the 

 expanded hoods of snakes. The shrines themselves are all flat-roofed, 

 and not of the ordinary " Chaitya" or " Degopa" type with which the 

 labours of Mr. Hodgson have rendered us familiar. On the central 

 stage also are remains of what seem to have been small Topes, and in- 

 deed in one instance a regularly built circular wall is painly discernible. 

 The larger Tope has a circular base 1 20 feet in diameter, according 

 to a rough measurement. The basement is 14 feet high and it slopes 



