Page:Report of a Tour Through the Bengal Provinces of Patna, Gaya, Mongir and Bhagalpur; The Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum and Birbhum; Bankura, Raniganj, Bardwan and Hughli in 1872-73.djvu/142

118 her husband, the commission of a crime by him was at once shewn by the lotus refusing any longer to support his wife.

An annual fair is held here at the Dasahra festival.

For further particulars, I refer to General Cunningham's Report, Vol. III.

Two new inscriptions (short lines) from the pedestals of statues were found—one on a Ganeça at Lakhisarai, the other on the fine female statue of Párvati at Rajjhâna.   The complete exploration of the tope at Nongarh was entrusted to me by General Cunningham, and the result is detailed below.

Continuing the shaft sunk by General Cunningham downwards, I found the even horizontal layers of bricks to extend to a depth of 8 feet below the floor of the lower chamber laid open by General Cunningham; below this the bricks lay in distorted positions, and the irregularity continued right down. At a depth of 19 feet below the level of General Cunningham's lower chamber, I found an even floor of bricks laid flat in two layers over each other, covered with a thick coat of soorky and lime-plaster; over this was a thin, fine layer of lime-plaster: this floor was clearly the floor of the sanctum of a small temple. At a distance of three feet from the centre of the shaft, which itself was down the centre of the tope, was found a line of wall running east and west, or rather east by a little north; this was apparently the back wall of a room. Opposite to this, on the other side of the shaft, lay the fragments of an arch of bricks, built edge to edge, as already described in the Buddha Gaya temple. This arch appears to have been rather a sort of vaulted roof, springing from a point one foot in advance of the line of walls; this space of one foot appears to have been gained by corbelling out from the wall, as I found a brick with a bevelled edge at a depth of 14 feet below the floor of General Cunningham's chamber, or five feet above the floor of the temple below, so that the vault sprang probably from a height of five feet above the floor of the temple.

The entrance to the temple appears to have been on the north, or rather slightly to the east of north. It was impossible to determine correctly the dimensions of the sanctum from the limited size of the shaft dug, but it appeared to me that it could not have been more than seven or eight feet square; it had a vaulted roof meeting in a ridge 