varied scene of jungle, which forms the haunt of elephants and other wild beasts.

Though the existence of these ruins was not unknown to the natives, who frequented the forest to fell timber or gather wild honey, yet none of them ever thought it worth while to inquire into their origin, or to notice them in any way, except now and then to dig about them for hidden treasure, till James Caulfield, Esq., Acting Assistant Government Agent of the District, discovered them in one of his excursions into the interior with a party of friends, in the early part of this year.

Being anxious to furnish the Society with as accurate a description as possible of everything regarding the ruins in question, I embraced the opportunity of a visit I made to Putlam in April last to go and inspect them; and I have since caused a survey to be made of the site they occupied by Mr. Van Gunster, the District Surveyor, defraying the costs from my own private fund. The map drawn by Mr. V. G. from the survey is herewith sent, as it explains the positions of the various ruins better than I could do otherwise.

The ruins consist of thirteen groups of pillars of granite, marked in the map Nos. 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 18; of the remains of a Dágoba and a well, Nos. 6 and 17; of four tanks, Nos. 1, 3, 20 and 21; of a stone slab lying among the pillars in the group No. 8; of a niche cut in a solid rock, No. 4; of two headless figures of Buddha; and of several granite pedestals, besides fragments of bricks and potsherds scattered about in different directions.

The pillars in general exhibit a very rugged surface, and look as if they had been placed there in the rough state in which they were quarried. Several are broken, others are fallen, but the greater part are still maintaining their upright position, in spite of the shocks they frequently receive from the elephants, who are in the habit of rubbing their bodies against them. They, however, appear to have lost a considerable part of their original height, probably from the decomposition of the felspar by long exposure to the atmosphere, as has been the case with those found in other places. On measuring the pillars in the group No. 18, which is the first object that attracts notice, as one emerges from the jungle into the cleared space, I found them varying from 3 to 7 feet in height above ground, but they all nearly tally in their other dimensions, being 1 foot broad and 8 inches deep. The pillars in the group No. 11 alone measured from 9 to 10 feet in height, 1 foot 2 inches in breadth, and 10 inches in depth. With the exception of the pillars in two or three groups, the rest are not fixed with any regularity as to their distance from each other; some are 9 feet asunder and others 3 or 4.

As all the groups of pillars so nearly resemble each other that the description of one will answer the whole, I, therefore, send herewith two drawings representing only the groups Nos. 11 and 15, and for which I am indebted to the kindness of Lieut. Burleigh of the Ceylon Rifles, and Commandant of Putlam.

So far as I can judge, these different groups of pillars form the remains of different buildings, appropriated either to religious purposes, or to the residence of the king and his court. It would, however, be absurd to suppose that the pillars supported any roof; for, considering their diminutive height, the rooms would have been of the most paltry dimensions, and they, therefore, like those at Anuradhapura, must have formed the basement of upper stories constructed of timber1. I may also mention that, in nearly all the ruins still remaining in different parts of Ceylon, the pillars yet in existence are of a similar description, or that they must have been adapted to some peculiar style of architecture then prevalent.

I have not been able to find out any trace of private buildings; but this may be ascribed to their having been composed of more perishable materials, perhaps similar to the mud and cadjan now used, which, of course, will not long stand the ravages of time. This I infer from the practice which was observed by the Singhalese sovereigns, even till so late as the reign of Sri Vikrama Rája Singha of Kandy, of confining the privilege of living in tiled houses in their capitals to the members of the royal family and the adherents of the court, as I find by the following description given of the town of Kandy when the English took possession of it in 1803. "It contains no buildings of any consequence except the palace, and a few temples dedicated to Buddha. The streets in general are dirty, the houses poor and mean, built chiefly of mud, thatched with straw and leaves."

The Dagoba is of moderate size, and built entirely of alternate layers of brick and mud; but as people have examined it narrowly for treasure, it has been nearly levelled with the ground.

The well is almost filled up with the accumulated rubbish, and it appears to have been built of some kind of hard stone. This was discovered by Mr. Van Gunster only lately, as the jungle which concealed it was not cleared when I visited the place.

The tanks are still in a tolerably good condition, and from their small size they appear to have been designed, not for the purpose of irrigation, but merely as reservoirs of water for the use of the city

1 Ceylon Almanac for 1833, p. 270.

2 CORDINER'S Description of Ceylon, vol. ii., p. 182.

or as bathing-places for the people. The tank No. 20 is always dry, even in the rainy season, when the others are filled to the brim. The water is no doubt carried off by subterraneous drains or passages, but, if such exist, I have not been able to discover them, on account of the inside of the tank being at present overgrown with large thick grass.

The stone slab, found among the pillars in the group No. 8, is 8 feet long and 3 feet 6 inches broad. It is quite smooth, and on one edge it has some mouldings cut. This was probably intended for the step of a temple or for a table to place the idols on; or it may have been something similar to the stone slabs, which are placed as rude altars in the open air, before the sacred tree, near the Bhuddist temples, and are usually covered with flowers.

At the head of these ruins, on the east, there are several solid rocks, and in the middle of one of them a niche is hollowed out. It is evident that a Dagoba was intended to be built upon this rock, and the hole in question was made to deposit the sacred relic in.

The two figures of Buddha, in a sitting posture, are of entire blocks of granite, and they were both found without heads, which appear to have been broken off by violence. Only one of these now remains in the place; the other has been removed to Putlam.

Before I conclude these remarks, it may not be out of place to insert here an extract from a short notice of the discovery of the ruins, which I sent to the Editor of the Columbo Observer, and which appeared in his paper of the 19th of August last. "It is affirmed that after the death of Vijaya, his successor transferred the seat of government to Upatissa Nuwera, which he built at Ella Sattara; but we are not informed when it was that Tammana Nuwera became finally deserted by its inhabitants. We have however reason to suppose that it contained inhabitants till a very late period, or otherwise the Dúgoba and the images of Buddha, which are found amongst its ruins, could not have been there, as the religion of Buddha was introduced into Ceylon only 209 years after the death of Vijaya."

ART. XIII.-On a Passage in an ancient Inscription at Sanchi near Bhilsa,proving the Proprietary Right in the Soil to be in the Subject and not in the Prince. By LIEUT.-COL. W. H. SYKES, F.R.S.

(Read 20th June, 1840.)

In a paper of mine published in the 4th and 6th numbers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, on Land Tenures in Dakhun (Deccan), I endeavoured to prove, and I believe successfully, from the authority of the Mahratta princes themselves, that the proprietary right in the soil in Dakhun was vested in the subject, and not in the prince, and I expressed my belief that such was the case all over India, and had been so from antiquity. It was therefore with no ordinary gratification, that I found a confirmation of my opinion in an inscription on the colonnade of a Buddhist tope or chaitya, at Sanchi, near Bhilsa in Bhopal, recorded in the 6th volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, p. 456., and the translation of which, from the ancient Deva Nagari character, we owe to the indefatigable zeal, the singular ingenuity, and the varied knowledge of the lamented Mr. James Prinsep.

The inscription records a grant of money and lands for the support of five ascetics, on the part of the Great Emperor Chandra Gupta, by his agent, to the Buddhist tope or chaitya, which must have been of great dignity and respect, from its magnitude, and the varied, numerous, and laboured sculptures connected with it.

The following is the inscription:

"To the all-respected Sramanas; the chief priests of the Avasath ceremonial, who by deep meditations have subdued their passions, the champions [sword] of the virtues of their tribe.

"The son of Amuka, the destroyer of his father's enemies, the punisher of the oppressors of a desolated country, the winner of the glorious flag of victory in many battles, daily by his good council, gaining the esteem of the worthy persons of the court, and obtaining the gratification of every desire of his life through the favour of the great Emperor Chandra Gupta; having made salutation to the eternal gods and goddesses, has given a piece of ground purchased at the legal rate, also five temples, and twenty-five [thousand] dinars, [half of which has been spent for the purchase of the said ground], as an

Abú Said Muhammad bnu 'lhusain Ibn Abd-ulrahím, surnamed Amíd-uldaulah, a chapter relating to Wali-uldaulah Ibn Khairán above mentioned. He also speaks of one of his poems, and says that he was a young man of beautiful countenance. His death is said to have taken place in the month Ramadhan, A.H. 431. I happened to meet with this section, about the year 675, in Káhirah."

This additional account has been inserted by M. Wüstenfeld, in his edition, fas. v., p. 170, for which he must have followed the authority of some other MS. than that above alluded to, as having been copied from one which had been transcribed, before the author had revised and completed his work. In a MS. in the British Museum, the only one which I have been able to refer to, and which coincides in almost all respects with the readings adopted from the MS. above spoken of, these subsequent additions do not exist. The author left Káhirah a second time for Damascus, A.H. 676.

It would not be an uninteresting task, to follow through at much greater length, the various additions and emendations which are found in the margin of this volume, and to trace from one to another, the time, manner, and circumstances, under which they were severally made. But enough has been said to give a general idea of their nature, and to answer the purpose for which they have been chiefly cited, that of proving and establishing the authenticity of this MS. To sum up then in brief, the arguments that this volume is the original draught of the author, and in his own handwriting, they are principally these: that the appearance of the MS., had there been no date, would lead us undoubtedly to assign it to the age at which the author lived-that it bears a date in the same hand as the rest of the work, and that this declares it to have been written in the very place, and at the very time, in and at which we know from other sources that the author did write this book-that it has not the appearance of having been written by a professed transcriber-that it certainly was in the possession of the person who wrote it, for upwards of twenty years-that during the space of this time he continued to add, change, and correct-that the cause of the various readings, and the differences of the length of the chapters in other MSS. can be accounted for, from the additions and emendations in this-that events spoken of in them as occurring subsequently to the date of this MS., or of which information could only be obtained subsequently, are in this volume always written in the margin, and not in the body of the work, except in one or two instances, and in these new leaves have been inserted for the purpose-that it is evident that these additions and corrections have been made at many