OTHER ANTIQUITIES. 



155 



bably having excited the cupidity of the unscrupulous natives 

 who appropriated them to their own uses. J Several pieces of 

 iron ordnance repose on the site of the old arsenal. I took 

 notice that Carron, 1792, was marked on the trunnions of some. 

 On the summit of the Drug is a pagoda. Half way down 

 the flight of steps leading to it is a musjid at the entrance 

 of a cavern. Tradition proclaims that a Mussulman hermit 

 occupied this place for some time, and in the sequel dis- 

 appeared for ever inside, on account of which he was sancti- 

 fied, and the musjid erected to his memory. He left behind 

 him nothing but his foot-prints on the rock at the entrance. 

 These foot-prints at the entrance of the cavern, I think, 

 in reality are Buddhist emblems, and the place was pro- 

 bably in ancient times a small Buddhist cave temple ; 

 indeed, I am induced to believe that in many instances the 

 foot-prints shown by the Hindus as marks of the former 

 presence of a god, or celebrated rishi, indicate the site of 

 former Buddhist places of worship, the foot-prints having 

 been converted to their own ends by the Hindus. The account 

 of the birth of Buddha states that Tapasvi-muni beheld two 

 feet fixed on the head of the child, when he first saw him. 

 Inside the fort is a pagoda to Yishnu under one of his thou- 

 sand names. No one being present to hinder me I explored 

 the building, and discovered in a choultry attached to it 

 some mythological figures made of wood and ornamented 

 with tinsel. One garuda, the bird that transports Vishnu in 

 his aerial flights, reminded me of the Guru-Puck of Indo- 

 Mahomedan folk lore, and of which it is the original. I wrote 

 an article in "Notes and Queries," May 14th, 1864, tracing 

 the origin of the European Fairy Puck to this Guru-Puck. 



This part of the country after the fall of the Anagundi 

 monarchy came into the possession of Jagaddeva, a polygar. 

 Subsequently it passed into the hands of the Nabob of 



X Read on page 171 the letter on this subject addressed by "Old 

 Mortality " to the Editor. — G. 0. 



