On the Sfati^lics of Dukhun, [Jan, 



from being within two miles of a village of that name ; fhc temple is as- 

 sociated with many cave-cliauibcrs. Tlie other Boodh excavations are 

 pierced in the hills around the ciiy of Joonur, under the hili-fort of 

 Joonnr, and at the crest of the pass into the Konkun from Joonur, called 

 the Naneh Ghat. Numerous inscriptions, in so anticpie a form of the 

 Sanscrit alphabet as not to be readable by modern Sanscrit scholars, 

 abound in these caves.* These astonishing works of art, resulting from 

 the labour of ages, and which are met with, not only in the Poona Col- 

 lectorate, but in many other parts of India, would seem to indicate that 

 the country was once inhabited by a Boodhist population, although it 

 has so entirely disappeared, that not a solitary worshipper of Boodh re- 

 mains in the peninsula of India. 



In the Under Mawul, at the village of Mhow, there is an extraordina- 

 ry large Widir-tree {Ficus Indka) ; it has sixty-eight stems, most of 

 them thicker than a man's body, and, with the exception of the original 

 stem, the whole of them originate in roots let down from the branches; 

 it was capable of affording shade, with a vertical sun, to 20,000 men, 

 being 2 01 feet long by 150 feet broad. At the town of Munch ur, in 

 the pergunnah of Pabool and Turruf Wurgaon, there is a Baubel-tree 

 ( Mimosa ArabicaJ, of surprising magnitude ; at eighteen inches from 

 the ground the trunk measures nine feet and half an inch in circumfer- 

 ence ; its head is raraous and dense, and it gives a vertical shade cover- 

 ing 5964 square feet : this species produces gum arabic. In the turruf 

 of Chakun, pergunnah Kheir, near to Mahloongah, on the slopes of some 

 hills, the shrub or small tree, producing the gum olibanum, ( Boswellia 

 ihurifera), is met with ; and it is seen also in other parts of the coun- 

 try. At Mahloongah there is a garden of flourishing cocoa-nut trees ; 

 and considering that they are at 2000 feet above the sea, and 100 miles 

 inland, the fact is sufficiently remarkable : clumps of them are also met 

 with at Pabool and other places. 



Rivers. — The rivers flowing through the Poona Collectorate are the 

 Mota, the Mola, the Inderanee, Under, Beema, Goreh, and Kokree, and 

 some smaller streams. All these have their sources in the Ghats, with- 

 in the limits of the collectorate ; they converge to the Beema, which falls 

 into the Kistnah, and thus finally reach the Bay of Bengal. The rivers 

 are only navigable during the monsoon, and then only partially. Boats 

 with sails are not seen upon them. 



* Within the last year, those indefatigable and learned orientalists. Principal Mill, 

 Mr. James Prinsep, and Mr. Stevenson have succeeded in reading most of the inscripti- 

 §113 ^?hich are found to relate exclusively to Boodhism and Boodhists. 



