12 Notes on Assam Temple Ruins. [No. 1. 



steps, is the object of worship, which I could not distinguish, as the 

 crypt was nearly full of water, when I saw it. 



The outer building or vestibule was originally 24 feet square. It 

 has two stone windows with six lancet-shaped apertures, but these 

 are now buried, and the entrance door alone most inadequately 

 lights and airs the building. 



The roof is supported, besides the outer walls, by four yery mas- 

 sive columns and eight pilasters, eight feet four inches in height, 

 dividing the building into nine compartments, each surmounted by 

 pyramids, similar, in regard to their structure as seen from within, 

 to that over the shrine. 



The centre compartments, including the pillars, measure ten feet 

 ten inches each way. The four corner compartments are also square 

 in the plan, measuring each three feet nine inches, and the side 

 compartments are consequently 10 feet 3 inches by 3 feet 9 inches; 

 additional slabs are placed close together on the architraves of these 

 oblong compartments, till the opening obtained at the base of the 

 pyramid roof is a square. 



The shafts of the columns are octagonal, to within a foot and a 

 half of the capital ; thence they are square, and the plinth of the 

 capital, fitting on to them, is also square, in other respects they 

 resemble the restored columns in plate VII. 



The shafts measure 5 feet 10 inches in circumference, and their 

 massiveness gives to the interior a very solemn, cave-like appear- 

 ance. 



This temple is held in great veneration by the Buddhist Thibe- 

 tans and Bootias. They visit it annually and leave here their long 

 tresses, cut off on assuming monastic garments. 



Tezpore or Ptjra ruins. 

 The fragments of columns, friezes, cornices and various other 

 carved stones, known as the Tezpore or Pura ruins, are so found as 

 to leave it to be implied, either that the structures for which they 

 were intended were never completed, or, that having been built, 

 they were so effectually overthrown that scarce one stone was left 

 upon another. On a closer inspection both hypotheses are required 

 to account for their present position. In some, and by far the 



