Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/52

 Bazár,' meaning of course not a market where 'pearls' (moti) were sold, but simply a 'handsome' bazar, as we might say in English, ‘a gem of a place'. The large original mound has for many years been intersected by the high road, and was also cut up by a broad and deep ravine. This latter ran down through the town to the river and was a great nuisance. I have now turned back the drainage into a tank called the 'Lál Diggi,' further to the west, near the Magistrate's Court, the overflow from which is carried by a cutting through the fields into the river higher up in its course.

In order to fill up the old ravine I levelled the ridge on its bank and, having enclosed the entire area as an adjunct to the Town Hall, am now converting it into a public garden, which—to perpetuate the old tradition—I have designated the 'Moti Bágh.' There is much vague talk of coins and solid bars of silver discovered there in former years, but in the course of my excavations I came upon nothing of much intrinsic value. Abundant proofs were, however, afforded of the interesting fact that in old times it had been occupied by Buddhists. Among my discoveries were several specimens of the curious plain stone stools, such as are figured in Plate III of Vol. XV of the Archaeological Survey. General Cunningham says they are found of the same general pattern from Taxila to Palibothra and only at Buddhist sites. They were all about 6 inches high, and a foot long; but not one was unbroken. The ground had been so often disturbed before, that it was not possible to trace any definite line of building, but the fragments of walls and pavements yielded an enormous number of large and well-burnt bricks, each measuring as much as a cubit in length by half a cubit in breadth and three inches in thickness. They were mostly marked on one side by two parallel lines drawn by the workman's finger in the damp clay. Many were broken in digging them out, but many also had been laid in a broken state, as was evident from the appearance of the fracture.

Of more exceptional interest were the remains of what would seem to have been a special local manufacture, being some scores of strange earthen-ware flask or vase-like objects. They are all alike in general shape which resembles that of a cocoanut, or fir-cone, one end being pointed like a Roman amphora, with a very small orifice at the other for a mouth. But they vary very much in the patterns with which they have been ornamented, and are of different size, weight and thickness. Some apparently had been squeezed out of shape, before the material of which they were made