Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/55

 Most fortunately the presiding genius of the shrine where the finials were found, has also been revealed. The sculpture was dug up some twenty years 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 4½ inches either way, the material being a black trap, not the sang-músa, or black marble, of Jaypur. The principal figure represents 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 foutstuol, 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 been well executed. On a ledge in a line with the feet is an inscription in characters apparently of the 9th or 10th century, which reads as follows:

Ye dharmmá hetu-prabhavá hetus teshán tathágato hyavadat teshám cha yo nirodha, evam-vádi mahásramanah.

This would be in English "All things that proceed from a cause, their cause as well as their destruction the Tathágata has declared: such is the dictum of the great philosopher." It is curious that a popular symbol of faith should have been framed with so much tautology in so short a compass, and also with such inadequacy of expression. For the cardinal feature of the doctrine, is, that effects can only be destroyed by destroying their causes, is not stated at all but merely implied.

Another very curious find was a terra cotta seal probably some 1400 years old, but as fresh and clear as if it had been baked only yesterday, and still showing the pressure of the workman's fingers who had handled the clay while it was yet damp. It was inside a closed earthen jar, which