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/211

Rh The ruins consist, with one single exception of low brick and stone mounds, the only standing structure being a small temple of brick oil a small isolated hill south of the village and close to the river banks; it is built of brick set in mud, smoothed and ornamented with plain lines of mouldings, the bricks for the purpose being cut to shape; the roof is a semicircular arch internally, of bricks, cut to shape and set edge to edge; the bricks are 14" × 10"; the entrance is of the usual pattern of bricks in overlapping courses; the temple appears to have been Saivic, But there were probably other temples on the hill; one of the fragments of sculpture represents a Female seated on a peacock.

About ¼ mile to north by a little east are the walls of a small fort or citadel; a portion of it has been carried away by the river; the walls were of brick, and were probably strengthened with earth behind; the place was a simple enclosure of no strength.

Of the numerous mounds there is not much to say; some are of stone, others of brick, and are clearly the ruins of temples of the respective materials; the sculptures show that there were Vaishnavic, Saivic, and Buddhist or Jain temples; the last were all exclusively at the extreme north end of what was probably the old city, extending a distance of 3 miles along the river banks; the Hindu ones were in groups; some groups being exclusively Saivic, others as exclusively Vaishnavic. One statue alone of Aditya, on the banks of a small tank, where lie also some fragments of Ganeça, &c., is inscribed, in characters of probably the tenth century; judging from the sculpture, the temples would date to about that period, but it appears that the place continued long in a flourishing condition, for, though some of the sculpture and ornamentation are very good, others are markedly inferior; there is nothing of any special note in the sculpture, but it is almost certain, from the great superiority of the Buddhist or Jain sculpture, that that was the religion which was in the ascendant first, having been succeeded by Hinduism. Some of the sculpture is clearly Jain, and it is not impossible, but on the contrary probable, that the others regarding which there can be any doubt are also Jain; there must accordingly have been a large Jain establishment here in the ninth and tenth centuries, succeeded, say, about the eleventh century, by Hinduism.

The largest tank in the place in known as the Chhátá Pokhar, and is so named from a chhátá or chhátri in the