1878.] 
F. S. Growse —Mathura Motes. 
117 
6. Mediaeval Hindu columns from Salt dr. 
Sahar is a small town in the Chhata Pargana, which was of some im¬ 
portance last century as the favourite residence of Thakur Badan Sink, the 
father of Suraj Mall the founder of the present Bharatpur dynasty. A 
short time ago a dispute arose between the Muhammadans and the Hindus 
as to the possession of a site on which they wished to erect, the one party 
a mosque, the other a temple. The real fact, as afterwards more clearly 
appeared, was that the Hindus had originally a temple there, which the 
Muhammadans had thrown down and built a mosque over it. This too had 
fallen and the ground had for some years remained unoccupied. The case 
when brought into Court was decided in favour of the Hindus, who there¬ 
upon set to work and commenced the erection of a shrine to he dedicated 
to Radha Ballabh. In digging the foundations, they came upon the re¬ 
mains of the old temple, which I rescued and brought into Mathura. They 
consist of 10 large pillars or pilasters in very good preservation and 
elegantly carved with foliage and arabesques and also a number of muti¬ 
lated capitals, bases, &c., the whole series proving an interesting illustration 
of the mediaeval Hindu style of architecture. Their value is increased by 
the fact that two of the shafts bear inscriptions, in which the date is clearly 
given as samhat 1128 (1072 A. D.). With the exception of the date, 
I have not succeeded in reading much else; but the accompanying 
photograph* of one of them is on a scale large enough to he legible. 
The style that I call ‘ the mediaeval Hindu,’ and of which these pillars 
afford a good late example, began about the year 400 A. I), and continued 
to flourish over the whole of Upper India for more than seven centuries. 
It is distinguished by the constant employment in the capital, or upper 
half column, of two decorative features, the one being a flower-vase with 
foliage over-hanging the corners and the other a grotesque mask. The 
physiognomy of the latter is generally of a very un-Indian type, and the 
more so the further we go back, as is well illustrated by Plate 13, a photo¬ 
graph that Sir John Strachey was kind enough to send me of a pillar in the 
underground temple in the Allahabad Fort. The motif is precisely the 
same as may be seen in many European cinque cento arabesques, where a 
scroll pattern is worked up at the ends, or in the centre, into the semblance 
of a human face. The fashion with us certainly arose out of the classic 
renaissance , and in India also may possibly have been suggested by the 
reminiscence of a Greek design. But it was more probably of spontaneous 
and independent origin ; as also it was among our Gothic architects, in 
whose works a similar style of decoration is not altogether unknown. In 
* The base, shown in this photograph, is more than a thousand years older and 
belongs to the Indo-Scythian period. It has been used simply as a socket in which 
to imbed the pillar and so raise the inscription above the ground. 
