180 The Rock-cat Excavations at Uarcliolca. [No. 3, 
I found tlie roof of the upper temple, excepting over the upper 
cell, in a perfect state, and it was by observing that the edge or 
eave of the terraced roof had been chiselled off straight, that I 
was enabled to conclude with certainty that the courts of the 
temple had been originally made open to the sky just as I found 
them. This peculiarity of the Harchoka excavation was also ap¬ 
parent from finding a portion of the roof of the porch L project¬ 
ing from the back wall, whilst on the wall of the open passage 
at its side, chisel-marks could be traced not only above the level 
of the projecting fragment but right up to the top of the wall. It 
was by such aids as these, that in other parts of the temple I 
could ascertain what portions had been originally left roofed, and 
what unroofed. 
A very intelligent Muliarrir who accompanied the chief of Cliang- 
Bhokar to my camp informed me, that when he had visited this 
temple on a former occasion, he found a slab of stone lying amongst 
the debris which bore the inscription “ Kirt Mohendres Gopal, 
Pattan, Sarnbat, 744, (A. D. 688).” I searched everywhere for 
this stone but was unable to find it. It is, however, a question 
whether in this instance the man’s imagination and intelligence 
had not shot ahead of his paleeographic attainments and combin¬ 
ed to get the better of his veracity, for, though gifted with a smat¬ 
tering of Sanscrit and a good knowledge of Hindi, he was unable 
to make anything of the inscriptions which I copied. I am there¬ 
fore inclined to doubt his having deciphered a complete inscription 
unless the characters were comparatively modern Hindi, in which 
case it was probably a transliteration on cut stone of one of the 
original inscriptions on the hall pillars. This supposition, in the 
event of there being any truth in the man’s statement, becomes the 
more probable when one considers that all the inscriptions which 
I found were cut on the solid walls and pillars, and that therefore 
men who obviously engraved their names on such like places with 
a view to perpetuating their memory were not likely to commit 
the record of them to anything so liable to loss and destruction as 
a slab of stone of so comparatively small a size as that indicated 
to me by the mohurir. It remains to be seen whether the said 
inscription can be corroborated by any of those I have copied. If 
