[No. 2, 
160 
JVoles on the age of the ruins chiefly situate at Banaras and Jaunpur. — By 
the late Mr. Charles Horne, B. C. S. 
The following notes refer chiefly to the ruins at Bakharya Kund at 
Banaras, full accounts of which have appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal for 1866, and those at Jaunpur, viz., the three great 
mosques of Atalah-Lal Danvazalr and the Jami’ Masjid; although a large 
portion of them will apply to many other buildings in this part of India. 
Up to the winter of 1870, I had always believed, and my belief had 
been strengthened by the opinions of others, but these buildings had in 
general been built upon Buddhist or ancient Hindu substructures, or had been 
altered and converted from such buildings for Muhammadan purposes. They 
had been so treated by the Bev. M. A. Sherring and myself, when describ¬ 
ing them, and General Cunningham, Archaeological Surveyor of India, ap¬ 
peared to be of the same opinion. Thus these substructures would date very 
early, even to 300 and 500 A. D., at least. 
My attention to the subject of this alteration and conversion had been 
first aroused by Mr. Fergusson’s admirable account of such conversion, 
and most of these buildings shew traces of such alteration. But happening 
to refer to Mr. Fergusson’s History of Architecture, Yol. II, page 663, 
for a description of Indian Saracenic Architecture, the edition now used 
by me being of a later date than that I possessed before the meeting 
in 1857, I find that the writer, speaking of Bakharya Kund near Banaras, 
says, that “ there is a singular group of tombs and other buildings by the 
Moslems which are singularly pleasing specimens of the Jaunpur style. 
In the upper part of the page, there is a description of the grand old 
Atalah Mosque ( Mljf ) at Jaunpur, in which Mr. Fergusson says that he 
was “ almost inclined to agree with Baron Hiigel in considering this a 
Buddhist monastery.” I have lived five or six years in the immediate 
vicinity of all these buildings, and have examined them most carefully and 
duly weighed all the evidences of antiquity I met with, and I entirely agree 
with Baron Hiigel in holding that much of the substructure as well as the 
general plan is Buddhist or Ancient Hindu. If so, they are most interesting 
examples of their class and built examples of an ancient style which Mr. 
Fergusson holds not to exist in India at the present time. Hence the subject 
assumes great interest, and is worthy of careful and temperate discussion. 
Unfortunately, to be properly dealt with, it requires many plates. 
In two manuscript copies of the Jaunpurnamah, or ‘ History of Jaun¬ 
pur,’ which I have compared, and which was compiled some seventy years 
# In a footnote to the same page we find :—Journal of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, for 1865 (should be 1866). There however, they are mistaken for Buddhist 
remains, which they are not.” 
