288 A. M. Broadley — The Buddhistic Remains of Bihdr. [No. 3, 
precisely similar, a plain broken only by groves and tanks, through which the 
Panchana once poured its water into the Ganges, and which is bounded only 
by the banks of the sacred stream. 
The Bihar fort lies'nearly a mile east of the foot of the hill, and it was 
between the fort and the hill, and along the banks of the Panchana river 
that the old Hindu city flourished. The shape of the fort is an irregular pen- 
tagon, and its sides wore composed of large masses of grey stone, quarried, of 
course, from the neighbouring hill. The ground on which the fort stands 
is a natural plateau raised considerably above the level of the surrounding 
country. The wall appears to have been eighteen or twenty feet thick, and 
twenty-five or thirty feet in height, and its circumference measures eight 
thousand five hundred feet. The distance from the north to the south gate 
is two thousand eight hundred feet, and from the east to the west two thou- 
sand one hundred feet. There are traces of enormous buildings of brick in 
the centre, but of these I shall speak hereafter. There appear to have been 
few bastions projecting from the side ; but the north gate, which is still toler- 
ably perfect, was flanked by towers. The remains existing within the fort 
may be divided into three classes ; — 1st. The ruin of a smaller Muhammadan 
brick fort and houses belonging to the same period. 2nd. Those of Hindii 
buildings and temples. 3rd. Those of the great vihai-a, or college, of Bud- 
dhistic learning. As far as this book is concerned, I shall speak alone of the 
latter. Nearly all the centre of the fort, on either side of the road which 
crosses it, is taken up by brick quarries. The proprietor of these pays 
Rs. 40 a month to the zamindar, or owner of the freehold, of the fort for the 
exclusive right of excavating it, within certain limits, for bricks and brick- 
dust, the supply of which commodities seems quite inexhaustible. The 
workmen light daily, at a depth of from fifteen to twenty-five feet from 
the surface, on the entire foundations of buildings, composed of bricks of 
precisely the same shape and size, as those found at Nalanda and Raja- 
griha. The larger ones sell now-a-days for as much as two pice a-piece. 
In the midst of this mass of rubbish, Buddhistic carvings are daily turned 
up. I have seen as many as four ehaityas dug out in half an hour. The 
carvings found here are chiefly ehaityas, votive tablets, and mouldings 
containing figures of Buddha in different positions. These ehaityas are of 
all shapes, round, circular, square, and twelvc-sidod, and contain mostly the 
usual typical figures of Buddha. They differ greatly in design and some of 
them are very beautiful. A group of them appear in one of the photographs of 
my collection. They were probably all surmounted by umbrellas, or rather by 
series of umbrellas, which are generally broken off, and were in many instances 
carved in separate pieces of stone. The tablets alluded to vary from one foot 
to three feet in height, and generally contain one or more figures of Buddha 
under a canopy, and often bear the Buddhist creed. The cornices contain 
