1865.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 109 



the temple in 1863, he had no means of ascending to the top of it, 

 and as Capt. Mead was then engaged by order of Government to examine 

 and report on the ruins, he did not wish to anticipate that gentleman. 

 He was obliged therefore to confine himself in his note to the question 

 of the date of the temple. It was gratifying to him, he said, that 

 his opinion on that subject had the support of s.o able and enthu- 

 siastic an antiquarian as Mr. Home. He was not surprised that 

 Mr. Home should differ from him as to the date of the arches which 

 exist in the building, and bring them to the 5th century. So unobtru- 

 sively are they placed, so covered by plaster, that although within the 

 last 50 years the place had been visited by a great number of archaeo- 

 logists, including such distinguished men as Mr. Fergusson and the late 

 Major Kittoe, they had been observed by none until he called the notice 

 of the Society to them. Major- General Cunningham in a private 

 letter to the President of the Society, dated some months after the 

 publication of the Babu's note, stated that he had observed the arches, 

 but he took them to be modern additions put in by the Burmese 

 repairers of the temple in the 14th century. He did not think them 

 worth even a passing remark in his Archaeological Report. Judging 

 from the fact of the materials used in the other parts of the temple, 

 and the arches being of the same character, the symmetry of 

 the building and the use to which the arches had been devoted as 

 mechanical supports for the masonry above them, the Babu was induced 

 to take the arches to be synchronous with the temple, •. e. to date 

 from 250 years before Christ, and nothing had as yet been brought 

 forward, he said, which would make him change that opinion. Two 

 reasons suggest themselves to account for the introduction of new 

 arches into an old building, 1, mechanical aid ; 2, ornamentation. The 

 Buddha Gya arches are so placed, that they cannot be reckoned as 

 ornament and the practice of making hypertherions with large blocks of 

 stone, was so universal in India ; and so obvious and simple a method 

 of bridging the tops of doorways, that it was impossible to suppose 

 that people in this country would reject it in favour of arches for the 

 introduction of which large portions of thick solid masonry had to be 

 cut through, and which involved considerably greater trouble and cost. 

 Mr. Home's inference of the arches having been built in the 5th 

 century was founded upon the statement of a Sanskrit inscription 



