1892.] 
at Mount TJren in the Mungir ( Monghyr ) district. 
15 
post wlien being hard-pressed by the Muhammadan invaders,—the his¬ 
torical accounts, however, state that his troops fled without offering resis¬ 
tance—still the whole appearance of the place seems to justify the belief 
that the so-called ‘ garh ’ or fort at Uren was originally and essentially 
a Buddhist monastery. It is much too small in size for a fort, nor has it 
the outline ditch or earthworks of one or any cavity or depression 
within. On the other hand it teems with fragments of Buddhist statues 
and rough-liewn lintels and door-jambs, and seems to have been an 
almost solid mass of brick buildings. An old resident states that when 
the greater part of the ruins were being dug up for bricks on the con¬ 
struction of the adjoining railway embankment over thirty years ago, 
the appearance revealed was that of innumerable small rooms, and in 
one of these he saw on a slielf-like recess in the wall a folded-up cloth 
like a sash, which crumbled to dust on being touched. 
Historic reference to this monastery .—No mention is made by Hiuen 
Tsiang of a monastery at this place : this may be owing to his not hav¬ 
ing himself visited the locality. That a monastery did exist at such a 
sacred place, hallowed by the residence of Buddha and containing so many 
visible “traces ” of his presence, and itself a place of pilgrimage, may be 
considered certain. From another source we find what seems a reference 
to this monastery. The fullest accounts of Buddha’s life, yet known, are 
preserved in the Southern Scriptures, and from these it would appear 
that this hill is the place where Buddha spent the Vassa (rains—July to 
September, the so-called Lent) of the sixteenth season of his ministry. 
Reference is only made to one occasion on which Buddha converted a 
solitary man-eating demon; and both the Sinhalese* * * § and the Burmesef 
versions of the legend agree in placing the scene at the place spelt 
respectively A-low and A-la-wi, which bears a remarkably close resem¬ 
blance to the name of Uren—seeing that the old Sinhalese and Burmese 
translators being unable to pronounce the letter r, either elided it or 
substituted an l, thus habitually mangling Indian names. The general 
details of the attendant circumstances of that event also favour the view 
that this was the same incident which Hiuen Tsiang narrates. The 
Sinhalese version further states that the place was 30 yojanas (i. e., over 
400 miles according to Sinhalese calculation^) distant from the great 
Jetavana Vihara near STavasti, which St. Martin§ indicated and Genl. 
* Spence Hardy’s Man. of Buddhism, 2nd ed., p. 269. 
f Bigandet’s Legend of Gautama, I, p. 245. 
X According to Indian calculation, the yojana is considered to be only about 
seven miles. It is generally believed, however, to have been greater than this in 
anoient times. 
§ Loc. cit., p. 355. 
