1882.] 
P. N. Bose —Note on some earthen pots. 
229 
cause the vesicles to be diverse and irregular ; and such is found to be the 
case. Some at least of the bones found are probably the remnants of 
dishes of animal food. 
Preserving the ashes after cremation and supplying the dead with 
cooked food, were practices in vogue with many tribes, both Indian and 
extra-Indian. Major Mockler, for instance, describes some earthen pots from 
Makran, # in which he says the dead were supplied with cooked food. But 
in this and similar cases the urns or pots occur in well recognizable and 
indisputable graves. In the instance at hand, however, the pots are extra¬ 
ordinarily numerous, and their mode of occurrence quite peculiar. 
The Thero Mahadeva who was sent by Asoka in B. C. 240 to MaMsa 
Mandalaf is reported to have made 40,000 converts to Buddhism, and 
ordained 40,000 more as priests. Hiouen Thsang, however, describes the 
people of the kingdom of Mahesvarapura as heretics, the most numerous 
being the Pasupatas.% So that if the well had anything to do with Bud¬ 
dhist funeral rites, it must have been sunk either before, or during the 
earlier centuries of the Christian era. But as the Buddhist topes hitherto 
discovered are to my knowledge of a quite different structure from the 
well-tope at Mahesvara (if tope indeed it be), I am inclined to think that 
the latter was the work of some non-Buddhist Scythian tribe in which case 
too the date could not be later than that just surmised.§ I have not, 
however, discovered any certain traces of such a tribe. The Bheels, the 
aboriginal people of the district, burn their dead, except infants and adults 
who die from unnatural causes. 
Dangerfield speaks of a shower of earth as the cause assigned for the 
inhumation ; I was told that the place had heen overturned. These tradi¬ 
tions probably point to an earthquake which would cause submergence, 
as in the case of the fort and village of Sindru on the Indus, || 
The collections consisting of ghards , bones, &c., have been presented 
to the Indian Museum. 
* Proc. A. S. B. for July 1877. The vessels found by Major Mocklor now in the 
collection of the Indian Museum are not unlike those which form the subject of this 
paper. 
f See note, ante p. 228. 
J “ Hist, de la vie de Hiouen Thsang” pp. 414-415. 
§ James Prinsep from an examination of the coins discovered by Cautley assigns 
the early centuries of the Christian era as the date of the destruction of the ancient 
city near Saharanpur. 
|| Lyell’s “ Principles of Geology,” 10th edition, Yol. II, p. 99. 
