May 1861. j 



Sculptures at Masulipatam. 



45 



bahs of Ceylon and the Punjab. I have given a drawing of one 

 of these Sculptures, but my details are not so elaborate as in the 

 original. What remains of the Manikyala tope in the Punjab 

 contributes much to verify my conjecture. 



Some broad steps (now mostly ruined) lead to the base of the 

 tope. Round the base is a moulding on which are pilasters about 

 four feet high and six feet asunder ; these have plain capitals, 

 and support a cornice marked with parallel lines and headings. 

 The whole of this may be seven or eight feet high, from the up- 

 permost step to the top of the cornice. The building then retires, 

 leaving a ledge of a foot or two broad, from which rises a perpen- 

 dicular wall about six feet high ; about a foot above the ledge is a 

 fillet formed by stones projecting a very little from the wall, and 

 at the top of the wall is a more projecting cornice. Above this 

 complex basement, which may be taken to be from sixteen to 

 twenty feet high, rises a dome approaching in shape to a hemis- 

 phere, but truncated and flat near the summit. 



The Masulipatam stones and others I have seen in India, are 

 singularly like the ancient upright stones found in Great Britain, 

 on many of which, at a period subsequent to their erection, have 

 been wrought crosses by the early Christian Missionaries. Many 

 of the British stones, like the first class of the Masulipatam Sculp- 

 tures, have circles wrought upon them, for example the centre 

 stone of the Aberlemno groupe in Scotland. The right hand 

 stone of the same groupe is very like a stone found by Mr. Kittoe 

 in Cuttack, and the left hand stone of the Aberlemno stones is 

 actually the same thing as the Nagum or sacred snake stone set 

 up for worship in India. 



Mr. O'Brien in his " Round Towers of Ireland," describes se- 

 veral ancient stones in Ireland, on which occur the rhinoceros, 

 elephant, tiger, and objects that maintain the same places on the 

 stones in India, and the originals of which are animals belonging 

 to the East. The religion of the Scandinavians was a type of 

 Buddhism, and the Druidic superstition a modification of Brah- 

 minism ; hence these singular resemblances. 



