1883.] 
F. S. Growse —The town of Buiandshahr. 
273 
as the bricks. The site might have been originally occupied by a fort 
or a monastery and then deserted for centuries before the potters came 
and set up their kilns on it, making use—for their houses and workshops— 
of any old building-materials they happened to light upon. But finally 
I came to the conclusion that the balustrade theory was not so very far 
wrong, and that these curious objects were manufactured in such numbers 
in order to serve as finials for miniature Buddhist stupas. The dedication 
of such votive memorials was a recognized duty on a pilgrimage, and it 
would obviously be a convenience for worshippers to have an establishment 
for their manufacture and sale in immediate connection with the shrine. 
This view is strongly confirmed by the discovery on the same spot of what 
is unmistakeably a finial (PL XXIII, figs. 3, 4, in J size). It is of similar 
configuration and has a similar orifice at one end, which in this case is 
clearly intended for the admission of a supporting rod. But later again I 
found a circular flask (Plate XXII, fig. 2, in -J size), which is of the 
same material and of equal weight and is ornamented in exactly 7 the 
same style. It is, however, easy to grasp in the hand, and apparently 7 
was intended to hold oil or some similar fluid, for pouring out drop by 
drop. Thus the only definite conclusion at which it is safe to arrive 
is that various articles for different uses were turned out at the same 
factory, all being characterized by ornamentation of a peculiar local 
pattern. 
Most fortunately the presiding genius of the shrine has also been 
revealed. The sculpture was dug up some twenty 7 y r ears ago and since then 
had been kept in an adjoining garden; but several people distinctly 
remember its being found on the same spot where the recent excavations 
have been made. The stone is a square block measuring in its mutilated 
state 1 foot 4^ inches either way, the material being a black trap, not 
the sang-musa, or black marble, of Jaypur. The principal figure repre¬ 
sents the Buddha, enveloped in a thin robe reaching to the wrists and 
ankles and falling over the body in a succession of narrow folds. His 
arms are slightly raised in front of his breast, and the thumb and fore¬ 
finger of his left hand are joined at the tips, while with his right hand 
he touches its middle finger, as if summing up the points of an argument. 
On either side of his throne is a rampant hippogriff, with its back to the 
sage and rearing its head over a devotee seated in an attitude of prayer. 
The throne is supported on two recumbent lions, flanked by Hindu 
caryatides with impossibly distorted limbs as usual; and at the base again 
are other devotees kneeling on either side of the footstool, the front of 
which is carved with the mystic wheel between two couchant deer. The 
upper part of the stone has been broken off, carrying with it the head of 
the principal figure, but what remains is in good preservation and has 
