1855.] Notes on Assam Temple Ruins. 15 



The bricks used in these buildings are very peculiar. They are 

 moulded in the various forms required to suit the positions! for 

 which they were destined, as constituents of domes, cornices, finials, 

 &c. We find them, therefore of various forms and sizes, some 

 with decorative mouldings, some plain. 



From the appearance of the overthrown brick edifices, I think 

 they had brick domes, but not arched, the bricks, like the stones, 

 were moulded so as to form circles, overlapping till they, from all 

 sides, met or nearly so. Very long, truncated, wedge-shaped bricks, 

 adapted for such a formation, are found. 



No lime appears to have been used in putting these buildings 

 together, and from this and their construction, it must have been 

 easy to overthrow them. 



Captain Westmacott found no brick buildings, but the modern 

 station of Tezpore has risen amidst the ruins he described ; the 

 dense forests, that impeded his observation, have been removed, 

 and, though vast quantities of finely cut stones have been buried, 

 to form the foundations of modern buildings, the more ornamental 

 fragments were spared, and still remain in sufficient number and 

 variety, to enable us to form some idea of the structures of which 

 they were members. 



In this we are assisted, by the uniformity of design to which the 

 architect was reduced, by his ignorance of the principles of the 

 arch, and poverty of invention. 



In his stone buildings, he appears to have had but the one form 

 of covering, well known in Indian architecture ; and as he could 

 not go beyond certain dimensions in the square, from which his 

 pyramidal roofs sprang, he could only obtain additional space by a 

 repetition of the squares and pyramids. 



Had we, therefore, all the constituent parts of only one temple 

 before us, however scattered, we might easily estimate its magni- 

 tude, and even put it together again ; but we find at Tezpore, slabs 

 for six or eight altars ; each of these had its shrine and vestibule, 

 and so the immense profusion of the ruins, indicate rather the 

 number, than the magnitude of the Pura temples ; and as the 

 fragments that remain, are not all now, where they were first found, 

 and so many have disappeared from the scene, it becomes impossi- 



