184/.] Note on the Sculptures of Bod h Gyah. 337 



" Aguni," in the pillar inscriptions which Prinsep could not account for, 

 therefore considered the passage doubtful. 



The next which occurs on the same stone is a young male figure in a 

 chariot drawn by four horses and attended by two amazons with bows 

 and arrows, which I take to be meant for " Surya" or " Mythra," the 

 Sun, whose emblem is oft repeated in the shape of the chakra or wheel. 

 This again explains another doubt in the same reading, as well as the 

 emblems on the early coins. 



A third sculpture exhibits a temple with the Monogram (on an altar) 

 so common in the coins, likewise surmounting the standards represented 



in the Bhilsa sculptures, W which I think may be considered to repre- 

 sent both the Budhist and Hindu Triad, as the trisul and the mystic 

 syllable " aum" combined ; taking the figure as it stands, it forms the 

 trisul, if separately, we have the }\ ^ and y, of which I consider it to be 

 a combination, but if the second letter is objected to and | u be required, 

 the | verticle line below the circle at once supplies it ; if again the y J^ is 

 preferred, we have it in the upper half thus U>, and I think that I shall 

 not be taxed with too great a stretch of imagination in offering this 

 solution of the problem. 



Assuming the foregoing to be correct, I must beg permission to digress 

 a little and offer a few words on this curious emblem to show its connec- 

 tion with the present idol and worship of Jugannath, and the once famous 

 Somnath ; first then let me invite the perusal of Patterson's able paper 

 on the Hindu religion, to be found in the 8th volume of the Asiatic 

 Researches, under the head Juggannath ; he attempts to show, and I 

 think successfully, the origin of the idols and worship of Juggannath ; 

 he considers those wooden idols to be an ingenious personification of the 

 triliteral and mystic word " aum" itself, held in reverence not only by 

 the three great sects of Hindus, but (as I have shown) by the Buddhist 

 likewise. Mr. Patterson imagines that the device was to render the 

 temple an object of worship for all sects, the surest method to draw a 

 large revenue from pilgrims, he was led to this supposition from the 

 similitude betwixt the written syllable 3 and the shape of the logs or idols 

 which (it will be observed) still more closely resemble the 

 symbol of these sculptures ; supposing then these inferences 

 to be correct, we come to the conclusion that the object of 



