104 Notes on some of the Temples of Kashmir. [No. 2, 



rowed to a square of 2J feet ; and lastly this opening is covered by a 

 single stone, decorated with a large expanded lotus surrounded by a nar- 

 row square moulding, whose angles bisect the sides of the upper open- 

 ing of the ceiling. All the angles are occupied by a flowered ornament 

 of three leaves, something like that of the upper part of the tympa- 

 num in the niche of the upper roof at Payach.* 



The gateway, about 22J feet wide, is to the N. N. E. of the 

 principal temple, almost in the N. E. corner of the enclosing wall, 

 and about 30 feet from the nearest of the smaller temples. It was 

 divided into two chambers, and had two columns on each front ; one 

 on either side of the entrance and supporting the architrave, as in 

 the Bhaniyar gateway .f The surrounding wall formed on two sides 

 a facing and support to the platform, on which the temples stand. 

 On one of these sides, viz. that to the east, the wall is over 20 feet 

 high in some places, and is built of small thin dark -coloured stone 

 without mortar. On another side, viz. that on which the gateway is, 

 and the furthest from the river, only the foundation remains ; but 

 14 feet beyond it there is a second wall, very massive, built of rough 

 blocks of stone, and forming a facing to the hill. It has evidently 

 been erected at a later date, to protect the temples and the gateway 

 from a landslip (probably), which threatened to bury them all in its 

 descent towards the river. 



There is built up in this wall a fragment of the pediment of one of 

 the smaller temples. At the S. W. corner of the enclosure there is 

 the base of an enormous lingam, 5J- feet in diameter. 



From the N. E. corner of the first group of temples there was a 

 road-way flanked with large stones, leading down to the second group, 

 a few hundred yards distant. Half way down, a little to the right 

 of the road, are the ruins of a small solitary temple, but so much 

 injured that it is impossible to make out the original form of the 

 building. Close to it is a block of granite (measuring 10 feet in 

 length, 16 inches in height, and 26 inches in thickness) which seems 

 to have formed part of the facing wall of a resting-place just above it, 

 where the base of a small column is still in its place, at one corner of 

 a rectangular platform. A little further down the road, on the same 

 side, is another rectangular platform, which seems to have been the 



* See Cunningham, plate No. XII. 



f See ante, p. 96, and Photograph, No. III. 



