1855.] Notes on Assam Temple Ruins. 11 



ments we find at Tezpore and elsewhere. By the deposit, for so 

 many centuries, of the debris of the Singori hill, at the foot of which 

 it is built, three or four feet of the most ornamental portion of the 

 old temple is buried. Two hundred and fifty years ago, when the 

 attempt to restore it with brick was made, the silt was removed 

 from before the entrance only, and a flight of steps then added, to 

 the extent of the silting, surmounted by an additional porch. As 

 the site of the temple is high above the alluvial flats of river forma- 

 tion, its being thus buried is in itself an indication of great age, 

 common to all antiquities of the same type similarly situated. 



The sculptured stones found amongst the hills of Gowhatty have 

 been dug up from deep below the surface. The great Kamikhya 

 temple must have been thus found by its restorer, and exhumed by 

 the removal of the earth from a broad area all round it. 



The Singori temple consists of a shrine, externally octagon in the 

 plan, and 18 feet in diameter. One side of the building is occu- 

 pied by the door, the rear and two sides at right angles to this are 

 plain, with the exception of having each a niche formed by two half- 

 engaged fluted pillars supporting a pyramid with a melon-shaped 

 finial, — a miniature representation of the pyramids that surmount- 

 ed the vestibule. The remaining four sides of the octagon are 

 curiously broken into angles very effective in regard to light and 

 shade. 



These salient angles meet and blend at the base of the ornament 

 on the top of the temple, to which they ascend by a graceful para- 

 bolic curve. 



The courses of stones however continuing perfectly horizontal, 

 I have no measurement of the altitude of this or of any similar 

 temple, but, judging from the eye, I believe they may be all esti- 

 mated, like the Cashmerian temples described by Captain Cunning- 

 ham, at double the diameter of the base ; that would be, in the case 

 of Gopeswar or Singori, only 38 feet. The interior is a chamber 

 8 feet 6 inches square. The roof is constructed, as those already 

 described, of well cut slabs, forming a succession of circles, dimin- 

 ishing to about 3^ feet, and then capped by one slab, ornamentally 

 filling up the remaining space with a deeply cut, expanded lotus. 



Under this, in a crypt, to which you descend by a flight of stone 



c 2 



