260 Report of the Archeological Survey. — - [No. 4, 
follow the title of Bodhisatwa, the name of the place, Sdvastz, and the 
name of Buddha as Bhagavata. The inscription closes with the state- 
ment that the statue is the ‘accepted gift of the Sarvastedina teachers 
of the Kosamba hall.” Judging from the old shapes of some of the 
letters in this record, the age of the statue may be fixed with some 
certainty as not later than the first century of the Christian era. The 
characters are exactly the same as those of the Mathura inscriptions, 
which, without doubt, belong to the very beginning of the Christian era ; 
and as the Sravasti statue was in all probability executed at Mathura, 
the correspondence of the lapidary characters shows that the inscriptions 
must belong to the same period. As there is no mention of this 
statue in Fa Hian’s narrative, I conclude that the temple in which it 
stood must have fallen down in the great conflagration which destroyed 
the seven-storied pavilions. But the account of Fa Hian is not very 
intelligible. He states that the original image of Buddha was “ the 
head of an ox carved in sandal-wood ;’’ that on Buddha’s approach 
the statue “rose and went to meet him” and that when Buddha said, 
** Return and be seated,” the statue “returned and sat down.” The 
origin of this rather puzzling account must, I believe, be traced to a 
mistake, either of Fa Hian himself, or of his translator. In Sanskrit, 
Gosirsha or “ Bull’s head,” is the name of the most fragrant kind of 
sandal-wood, and as we know that the famous early statue of Buddha 
at Kosambi was made of this very wood, it is natural to conclude that 
the earliest statue at Sravasti may have been made of the same mate- 
rial. As this is the only figure of Buddha noticed by Fa Hian, I infer 
that the colossal stone figure which I discovered must have been buried 
beneath the ruins of its own temple some time before A. D. 400, and 
most probably therefore during the great fire which destroyed the 
whole monastery. It was concealed also at the time of Hwen Thsang’s 
visit, in A. D. 632, as he specially mentions that the only temple then 
standing amidst the ruins of the monastery was a small brick house 
containing a statue of Buddha in sandal-wood. The statue now dis- 
covered was therefore not visible in his time. 
342. Both pilgrims agree in stating that the gate of the monastery 
was on the east side, and although I was unable to find any certain 
trace of an opening, I am quite satisfied that the gate must have been — 
on the east, as all the existing ruins are on that side. On issuing 

