No. 34. — 1887.] jottings from a jungle diary. 3 



old bit of chain, and our only "skilled labour" consisted of 

 a convict who was said to have been a mason before he took 

 to the more profitable pursuits of a burglar. So we had to 

 set to work in truly native fashion. Fixing the eight pillars 

 in three feet of concrete and cement, we filled up the space 

 between them with earth, just leaving the tops of the pillars 

 visible. A sloping platform of earth, from the tops of the 

 pillars to the ground level, was then made, and up this, with 

 considerable difficulty, the heavy roof-stones were prized 

 with wooden levers and rollers; and it was a gratifying 

 moment when the last roller was knocked out, and the stones 

 allowed to drop upon their allotted resting-places. The slabs 

 of the frieze were then put in position, the earth cut away, 

 and the restoration complete. 



Further excavations revealed no less than three large stone 

 sannas — one quite perfect, the other two more or less 

 mutilated — and also a very perfect specimen of a Yoga stone 

 with twenty-five squares. These stones, of which four 

 specimens have been discovered, appear to have been always 

 placed near some shrine of peculiar sanctity and importance. 

 They were used by the Yogis, or Mystics, for purposes of 

 abstract meditation, and the number of squares with which 

 each stone was provided had a mystic signification : nine, for 

 instance, representing the nine gates of the body. These 

 squares were filled with certain prescribed ingredients, and 

 the devotee whose contemplation of them was sufficiently 

 abstracted and prolonged, was rewarded at last by discerning 

 a faint flicker of the light in the centre square, which 

 gradually expanded and increased until the whole of the 

 heaven above and the earth beneath was revealed to him. 

 But perhaps, after all, the most striking point elucidated by 

 the operations at the stone canopy was the extraordinary depth 

 to which it was necessary to go before reaching natural soil. 

 Dig as deep as you might, there were still tiles, bricks, 

 broken chatties, and stone fragments, bearing strange testi- 

 mony to the vast size and dense population of the buried 

 city. 



