2G1 
1872.] A. M. Broadley — The Buddhistic Remains of Bihar. 
and I cannot do better than quote his own words.* “ A Test du stoupa du 
paripoutra il fit environ trente li et arriva a une montagne appeltie Indra- 
fila-gouha. Les cavernes et les vallees de cette montagne sont tenebreuses : 
des hois fieuris la couvrent d’ une riche vegetation. Sur le passage superieur 
de cette montagne s’elevent deux pics isoles. Dans une caverne du pic meri- 
dional il y a une grande maison taillee dans le roc : celle est large et basse. 
Sur le pic oriental il y a un couvent. Devant le couvent il y a un 
stoupa qu’ on appelle Hansa-sangharama.” 
VI. — The Indra Saila Peak. 
The range of rocky hills, which run in a north-easterly direction nearly 
forty miles, abruptly ends at Giryak. The foot of the mountain is washed 
by the waters of the Panchana river, which here leaves the Hisua-Nowada 
valley, and slowly makes its way southwards through the Bihar plain to the 
Ganges. On the east side of the river is an enormous mass of ruins, which 
appears to mark the site of a Muhammadan town and fort, which tradition 
holds to have been built by K&mdar Khan Main nearly two centuries ago, to 
defend the fertile fields of Bihar from the frequent iucursions of the preda- 
tory Rajwars. Above the western bank rise the two precipitous peaks 
which crown the Indra-Saila hill. The reader will remember that in speak- 
ing of Rajgir I described a narrow ravine which stretched away to the 
east between Udayagir on the south, and Iiatnagir and the Devaghat hill 
on the north. This valley terminates at Giryak, about a mile to the 
south-west of the Indra Saila peak. From the northern side of this moun- 
tain, a rocky hill — the Masellia-pahar, (as the Rajwars call it) — runs to the 
south-west, having almost a semi-circular shape. This hill meets the off- 
shoot of Udayagir, from which it is only separated by a passage, far narrower 
than that of the Banganga. The face of the Masellia-pahar near the pass is 
almost a sheer cliff, but towards the centre of the hill the ascent is more 
gradual, and it was therefore fortified by a wall sixteen feet thick, which 
follows closely the shape of the mountain. The eastern entrance to the 
Valley of the Five Hills seems, therefore, to have been quite as strongly forti- 
fied, both by art and nature as the Banganga and Raj agriha gates. It is 
about three hundred feet from the plain, and just above the entrance of the 
ravine that the Gidda-dwar cave is situated. Seen from below, it looks like 
a small hole in the rock. Its entrance is gained with difficulty, for the last 
eight feet of the cliff are perpendicular, and have been faced by a stone wall, 
the remains of which are tolerably entire. This combination of the natural 
and the artificial reminds one forcibly of the front of the Sattapanni cave on 
the Baibhar hill. The entrance to the cavern is sixteen or seventeen feet wide, 
and its roof semi-circular in shape. There is an outer chamber forty feet long, 
from which a fissure in the rock appears to load to the interior of the hill, 
* Idem, pp. 54-5. 
