2 38 
An account of Upper and Lower Suwdt. 
[No. 3, 
colour,* but I could not tell whether it was lime, mud, or anything 
else. Every house has a door, as have the two larger buildings also. 
These ruins are of Buddhist, not of Grecian architecture; but are 
like those at Bilii near Peshawar, which we visited together in 
December, 1849 ; and are altogether without verandahs. The large 
buildings I refer to, as situated on the very brow of the mountains 
are said to have been built by Suwat is of former times as watch- 
towers ; but in my opinion they are the remains of idol temples, 
which Hindus often build in such places, as at Purandhar near 
Poonah in the Dekhan, which I accompanied you to, in 1852. 
There is no made road leading to these buildings, for they are very 
near to the open ground of the valley ; but, probably, there was 
once a made road, which has now disappeared. This ruined city is 
close to the Landdakaey mountain, but the. village of Kottah is 
nearer, and Bankott is still further off; for this reason I have written 
“ near Kottah instead of Barikott.” This is, no doubt, the ruined 
city mentioned by the French Colonel Courtf as near the last named 
place, which is a large place, whilst Kottah is but a small village. 
The ancient ruins in Suwat are situated in such difficult and out-of- 
the-way places, that it becomes a matter of astonishment to con¬ 
ceive how the inhabitants of them managed to exist, where they 
obtained water, what they employed themselves on, and how they 
managed to go in and out; for several of the houses are situated 
every here and there, on the very peaks of hills; but Suwat does not 
contain so many ruined sites as writers would lead us to believe. 
Proceeding on our route from Kottah, we saw the villages of 
Nowaey-Kalaey, Abu-wah, Gurataey, Bari-kott, and Shankar-darah. 
Close to this latter place, there is a tower called Shankar-dar. Shan¬ 
kar, in the Sanskrit language, is one of the names of Siva. It 
stands on a square base of stone and earth, seven yards in height, and 
just forty yards in length and breadth, which I myself measured. 
On this square platform, the tower, which is of stone, joined by the 
dark coloured cement I before mentioned, stands. I computed the 
height, from the base, which I had measured, to be about thirty 
yards, or ninety feet; and I also measured the base, which was 
twenty-five yards or seventy-five feet in circumference. It is egg- 
* Probably bitumen. 
t Asiatic Journal of Bengal, for 1830, page 307. 
