TO THE COURT OF AYA. 
121 
neglected on the floor. Our Burman guides 
pointing to the tallest figure, that of Siwa, said 
that he was a Nat, or demi-god, under an inter¬ 
dict for slaying cattle. The Nats, according to 
the Burmans, are an order of beings superior to 
mankind; of which some are mischievous, and 
others beneficent. Such of the Hindoo gods as 
are known to them are considered to be Nats, 
some good and some bad. In short, they seem 
to have made as free at least with Hindoo my¬ 
thology, as the Mohammedans have done with 
that of the Jews and Christians. 
This temple afforded the only evidence of 
Hinduism which we observed at Pugan, with 
the exception of a small oval tile found at a 
large temple, which I did not visit, called Gau- 
da-palen, (the throne of Gau-da, a celebrated 
Nat,) in size and structure similar to that of 
Thapin-nyu. This has upon it a figure of 
Budd’ha, in relief, under which was an inscrip¬ 
tion of three lines, in the Deva Nagari charac¬ 
ter, which I suppose to be Sanscrit.* The tem¬ 
ple containing the Hindoo images which I have 
* The inscription was afterwards examined at Calcutta by- 
Mr. Horace Wilson; but although the writing was good legi¬ 
ble Nagari, the meaning could not be made out. The lan¬ 
guage therefore was certainly not Sanscrit, or even Pali, but 
in all likelihood some provincial dialect of India. 
