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/182

158 mouldings of the basement; they are fine, and boldly cut; opposite to this temple, on the right bank of the river and to the south-east and east of it, are other temples, which must have been profusely ornamented; some of the fragments of stones of the basement mouldings resemble the basement mouldings of the superb temple at Udipur in Central India in profusion and delicacy of sculpture; the forms of the mouldings, also, were apparently very beautiful; some of the curves appear to have been parabolic or elliptic—not circular; a remarkably fine one reduced from a facsimile impression is shown in plate.

The temples were certainly adorned internally with pilasters, sculptured as in the examples of Central India; and from the mutilated remains of an elephant statue lying among the ruins, I infer that, like the superb temples of Khajurâha, these temples were also adorned with elephant statues projecting from corners and salient points of the tower; there are also several fragments sculptured with the horseshoe pattern, as in the main body of the towers of the main temples at Khajurâha; of pillars not one exists. Such convenient articles cannot be expected to be left lying about when close to them stands a large flourishing village (one stands within two miles of the ruins on the north side of the river, and has several pakka houses in it, and one on the same side of the river two miles off, also with pakka houses in it); but of statues a few mutilated ones still exist; one is an eight-armed female slaying the buffalo-demon; another is a lingam and its argha; a third, curiously enough, is the architrave of a doorway, with a seated figure, like Buddha, with a halo sculptured round his head; this last is evidently Buddhist, and being on the architrave, proves the existence of a Buddhist temple, side by side with Brahmanical Saivic temples.

The largest temple of the group here was clearly a Saivic temple; the lingam and argha are still in situ; the argha is cut on a square large stone, ornamented with mouldings on its vertical faces: this temple faced east, as the spout of the argha, which is usually on the right hand side, points north; to the west of the great temple, about 100 feet off, are the ruins of a small temple, with the mutilated figure of a large nandi, and of others to the north and south of the large temple, as well as to the north-east and north-west, and to the east; of these all appear to have been small ones, and probably subordinate to the great central Saivic one; there ought properly to have been temples to the south-east and