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/222

198 belonging to the temples, there are numerous other slabs sculptured on one face standing and lying about; my guide said they were tombstones, whereat the ministering Brahmans of the temple became very indignant; but there can be no doubt, notwithstanding the head priest’s anger, that the stones referred to are sati pillars; none are inscribed, but all are more or less sculptured; the general subjects appear to be a man drawing a bow, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, showing that the husbands of those in whose memories these pillars stand were warriors slain in battle; most of them have animals also sculptured in the topmost compartment.

The lingam in the temple is known as Buddheswar; the people of the place consider it so holy and so well known, as to compare it with the Gadadhar of Gáyá. Gadadhar they say at Gáyá and Buddheswar at Budhhpur are both equally holy and equally well known.

The material of the temples is a tolerably good sandstone, cut to shape and set plain without any cement.

In the village there are a few sati pillars; two of them were inscribed, but the weather has not left the writing legible, and what the weather spared of one appears to have been destroyed purposely by the chisel. I give the inscription in the margin: on the second one, the only word legible is Yuva-râja, in the second, which is also the last line; the first line is illegible.

There can be no doubt that Pákbirrá or Ponchá was once a place of great importance. The temples at Pákbirrá appear to have been all Buddhist and Jain, but there is a fair sprinkling of Brahmanical ones in the vicinity. Judging from the sculpture, the older temples cannot probably date earlier than the twelfth or the thirteenth century, and may be somewhat later; while, the more recent ones cannot go beyond the period of Akbar’s General, Mân Singh.  

About fourteen miles from Bánkurá on the old Grand Trunk Road through Hazaribagh to Shaharghati at the village of Chátná are some ruins; the principal consists of some temples and ruins within a brick enclosure; the enclosure and the brick temples that existed having long become mere mounds, while the laterite temples still stand; the 