225 
1872.] A. M. Broadley — Tlie Buddhistic Remains of Bihar. 
The higher stories and roofs have toppled over on the northern side, and 
from an examination of their remains, it is clear that the building consisted 
of at least five stories, surmounted by a spire or minaret, (not by a cupola,) 
at least two hundred feet high in all. 
The excavation of the western side is the most perfect of all. The up- 
per story is about sixty-three feet long, and is exactly twelve feet above the 
lower one, which is eleven feet wide. The wall of the high terrace is quite 
plain, decorated merely by a simple moulding about throe feet from the base. 
The stories consist of solid brick, and not of chambers as I first imagined. 
This I ascertained by making a perforation six feet deep in its centre. Not 
quite in the centre of the building is an irregular protuberance, twenty-two 
feet wide and twenty-seven feet long. 1 at first imagined it to be a portico, 
but on closer examination, I think it must have been a mere support, built 
up to sustain the weight of the upper stories when they showed symptoms 
of decay ; for on removing the great portion of it (December 5th and 6th) 
the pilasters, mouldings, and statues which decorate the wall of the lower 
terrace were found entire behind it. In fact this protuberance seems so 
singularly out of place, that I should have imagined it to have been a por- 
tion of the ruins of the upper stories, had not the existence of regular walls 
precluded the possibility of such being the case. The ornamentation of each 
of these sides consisted of a series of mouldings and niches filled with stucco 
figures of Buddha in various positions. After the remqval of the protuber- 
ance above mentioned, the west side presented the following appearance. At 
the base a moulding of briclc-work, five feet three inches high, having thir- 
teen distinct turns. The moulding runs along the whole facade. After the 
first six feet, it recedes a foot and continues in the same line for eighteen, 
feet, when it again advances a foot, and continues in that line for eight feet, 
when it again recedes to the former line, and so on. Above the moulding is 
a series of niches two feet ten inches wide and three feet three inches high. 
These niches are separated by pilasters about four feet six inches high. 
These pilasters have plain square bases, and a three-sided shaft, each shaft 
being somewhat semicircuh in form, above this is a square moulded capital. 
Above the niches are projec bosses of brick, lotus-shaped, protruding 
from the wall, and above these another moulding similar to that below. The 
niches are surmounted by arches of over-lapping brick, and each contained 
a figure in plaster. The original bricks are moulded with exquisite exact- 
ness, and present great variety of patterns ; some of the pilaster bases, for 
instance, containing figures, &c., in different portions fitted together. The 
temple has evidently twice at least been covered by a coating of plaster 
moulded into different forms, but as a rule greatly inferior to the workman- 
ship of the brick underneath. The southern side is precisely similar to the 
western. On the top of the terrace, which doubtless ran round the three 
29 K 
