1855.] Botes on Assam Temple Ruins. 23 



some with uplifted hands in the attitudes of exhortation or benedic- 

 tion, are surely Buddhistical. 



The third temple of this group, must have been on a larger scale 

 than the other two. Its existence was previously unknown to my 

 guides who had only told me of two, and, so dense was the jungle, 

 it would have escaped my notice, had I not determined to cut 

 through it and examine all the scarped portion of the hill. I soon 

 saw that it was the principal temple of the group, and set to work 

 to clear the jungle, so as to obtain an idea of its dimensions and 

 form ; but after this was effected, all the men I had with me were 

 unable to move some vast slabs, used in the construction of the 

 roofs, under which the more ornamental portions of the building 

 aud the altar and idol lay buried. The ruins did not cover a greater 

 space than that occupied by the second temple, but the heap was 

 higher, and the blocks, generally, twice the size of the fragments of 

 the other two. 



With great difficulty I managed to obtain such a view, as enabled 

 me to sketch parts of a lintel and a pillar of a door-case, (plate X. fig. 

 4) the latter measured 6 feet 10 inches by one foot nine. Across the 

 lintel, which was of sand-stone a ponderous architrave, of coarse 

 granite, (measuring 11 feet 10 inches by 2 feet 8 inches and 1 foot 

 10 inches) had fallen and fractured it. 



The pillars and pilasters used in this temple were about the 

 same size as, and resembling exactly in form, those of the Singori 

 temple. 



The great proportion of these ruins are of sand-stone, of which, 

 the first range of the neighbouring hills, for some miles, is chiefly 

 composed ; but there are also blocks of granite, of different degrees 

 of fineness, and they must have been transported from a very great 

 distance. 



In point of execution, the carving of the sand-stone is equal to 

 the Tezpore sculptures, but then, the latter are all of granite, and 

 with the exception of the Durgahs, the granite blocks of the Seesee 

 temples are very rudely chiseled. 



The carving of the sand-stone blocks of the first and second tem- 

 ple is very much mutilated and defaced ; it is not so with the blocks 

 you exhume of the third temple ; they were doubtless in excellent 



