Proceedings of tin Asiatic Society. [June, 



Buddhist monastery, on the top of a hill, to the south of the town. 

 Bairat, however, is interesting as one of the earliest plaees occupied hy 

 the Muhammadane. It is the Bazdna, or Bard?ia, or Nardna, of Abu 

 Rihan, the capital of Karzdt, and the Pdrydtra of Hwen Thsang. 

 After the capture of the place, Mahmud Ghaznavi was shown an in- 

 scription on stone which was said to he 40,000 years old. I think it 

 highly probable that the inscription now in the museum is the very 

 one that was then shown to the Mnhammadan conqueror. 



" At Ajmer I was delighted with the Great Mosque, which is the 

 most perfect specimen now existing of the earliest Muhammadan 

 architecture of India. I found a dated inscription, inserted in the 

 back wall, which is incomplete, and cannot therefore belong to its 

 present position. But it no doubt belongs to the mosque. The date 

 is A. H. 596, or only seven years later than the Great Mosque of 

 Kutb-ul-Islam at Delhi. The seven great arches of the screen wall 

 forming the front of the masjid are still standing, and form a most 

 noble entrance ; but the most curious and interesting part of the mosque 

 is a pair of small minars on the very top of the wall over the centre 

 arch. These are Mdzinahs, or towers for the Muazzin to call the 

 people to prayer, and they are fluted with alternately angular and 

 round flutes like the great Kutb minar at Delhi. Like it also they 

 have bands of inscriptions, giving the name and titles of Altamish, 

 and of the Khalif Naser, Amir-ul-Muminin. The mosque is much 

 larger than that of Delhi was originally before its enlargement by 

 Altamish. The difference can be best appreciated by the difference in 

 the thickness of the great screen wall, that of Delhi being 8 feet thick, 

 while that of Ajmer is no less than 11 J feet thick. The colonnades 

 of Hindu pillars do not form, as Tod states, a Jain temple, but are 

 made up of the spoils of many Hindu temples, which, to judge from 

 the few remaining figures, were certainly Brahmanical. 



" At Gwalior I made measurements of all the temples. The great 

 temple, which has always been called " the Jain temple" appears to 

 me to be a Brah mimical building. It is literally covered with Brah- 

 manical figures, and I could not find a single Jain sculpture. I believe 

 it to have been a temple of Vishnu. So also was the lofty temple, 

 uow called the Tvli-inaiidat, but this was afterwards taken possession 



