the south-west you come to the great kingdom of Sha-chi ;" and "thence, proceeding south to the distance of eight yojans, you arrive at the kingdom of Kiu-sa-lo, and the town of She-wei” (Ajudhya, or Audh). There is a difficulty in this part of the route which (I agree with Mr. Laidlay* in thinking) can only be explained away on the supposition of a misprint in the French edition, or an error in the original Chinese. Ajudhya is almost due east from Kanoj; and the direct distance is much more than eighteen yojans. Hwan Thsang is silent regarding Sháchi, although he travelled over this part of the country, and describes it in detail; besides which we know of no place of Buddhist celebrity between Kanoj and Ajudhya. On the other hand, we have the absolute identity of the names of Shá-chi, and Sánchi or Sáchi,† and the knowledge that Sánchi was a large Bauddha establishment, as well as the capital of a kingdom, at the time of Fa Hian's visit. The southwesterly direction is correct, but the distance should be about fifty yojans instead of ten.

5. The name of Sánchi, or Sáchi, is most probably only the spoken form of the Sanskrit Súnti: for I find the term Sánti-sangham (the Sánti community)

Fo-kwe-ki, c. xix. note 2-Mr. Laidlay's translation. It is impossible to conceive that any "great" kingdom, as Fa Hian calls Sháchi, could have intervened between the kingdoms of Samkassa and Kosala, or the present Mainpuri and Oudh.

+ See Journal As. Soc. Bengal, vol. xvii. p. 746. The name is always written Sátchi by my brother.

used in the inscription on the southern pillar of the Great Tope. The Chinese also transcribed sánti by sá-chi; for they say that it signifies "silence, repose." This proves the identity of the names; but until the original text of the Fo-kwe-ki has been reexamined, nothing more can be insisted upon than the probability of the identification.

6. The story of the nettle is thus told by Fa Hian. "On leaving the town of Sha-chi by the Southern Gate you find to the East of the road, the place where Fo bit a branch of nettle and planted it in the ground. This branch sprang up and grew to the height of seven feet, and afterwards neither increased nor diminished. The heretical Brahmans, fired with envy, cut and tore it to throw it away; but it always sprang up again in the same place."

7. The present village of Sánchi is situated on the low spur connecting the Tope-hill with the Kánakhera-hill. The village is now very small; but the numerous ruins scattered over the hill between Sánchi and Kánakhera prove that there has once been a large town on this site. At the time of Fa Hian's visit it was one of the principal places in the kingdom of Sanakánika. On leaving it by the South gate, the road led (as it does now) along the foot of the hill; and the great stone bowl was therefore to the eastward, as described by Fa Hian.

See Plate XIX. No. 177, for this inscription.

+ Fo-kwe-ki, c. xvii. note 17.

No. 1 TOPE.-SÁNCHI.

8. The great Sánchi Tope is situated on the western edge of the hill. The ground has once been carefully levelled, by cutting away the surface rock on the east, and by building up a retaining wall on the west. The court (as it now exists) averages one hundred and fifty yards in length, and is exactly one hundred yards in breadth. In the midst stands the Great Chaitya, No. I.,* surrounded by a massive colonnade. The bald appearance of the solid dome is relieved by the lightness and elegance of the highly picturesque gateways. On all sides are ruined temples, fallen columns, and broken sculptures and even the Tope itself, which had withstood the destructive rancour of the fiery Saivas and the bigoted Musalmáns, has been half-ruined by the blundering excavations of amateur antiquaries.

9. In the north-east, south-east, and south-west corners of the court there are small ruined Topes, marked Nos. 5, 6, 7 in the plan, Plate IV. In the south there is a small temple of middle age, and an old Chaitya temple with lofty square columns. The semicircular end of this temple was first traced by my brother,

"There is a stern round tower of other days,
Firm as a fortress with its fence of stone;
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,

Captain J. D. Cunningham,* and afterwards more leisurely by Lieut. Maisey, who made an excavation on the supposed site of the Chaitya, and was rewarded by the discovery of a small chamber containing a broken steatite vase.

10. The great Tope itself is a solid dome of stone and brick, 106 feet in diameter, and 42 feet in height, springing from a plinth of 14 feet, with a projection of 5 feet from the base of the building, and a slope of 2 feet. The plinth or basement formed a terrace for the perambulation of worshippers of the enshrined relic; for, on the right pillar of the North Gateway there is a representation of a Tope and of two worshippers walking round it, with garlands in their hands. The terrace was reached by a double flight of steps to the south, connected by a landing ten feet square.‡

11. The apex of the dome was flattened into a terrace 34 feet in diameter, surrounded by a stone railing of that style so peculiar to Bauddha monuments, that I will venture to call it the "Buddhist Railing."

And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of eternity-where wave
The green leaves, over all by Time o'erthrown,
What was this tower of strength?
What treasure lay so locked, so hid?

Within its cave
A hermit's grave."
BYRON

Childe Harold.

* Journal As. Soc. Bengal, xvii. Plate XXVIII.

+ See Plate XIII.

See Plate VIII.

Many of the pillars of this colonnade are now lying at the base of the monument; and several portions of the coping or architrave prove that the enclosure was a circular one. The inscriptions Nos. 173, 174, 175, and 176, are taken from the fallen pillars of this colonnade. The pillars are 3 feet 4 inches high, 9 inches broad, and 7 inches thick. They are of the same pattern as those of the lower enclosure, and in fact of all the enclosures of Buddhist Topes throughout India. I counted nearly forty of these pillars, but several must be buried beneath the rubbish of the destructive excavation made by the amateur antiquaries in 1822.† As the spaces between the pillars were, as nearly as can now be ascertained, about one foot, this enclosure would have required exactly sixtyone pillars.

12. Within the upper enclosure there was a square altar or pedestal surrounded by pillars of the same description, but much taller, some of which are still. lying on the top of the dome. In 1819, when Captain Fell visited Sánchi, these pillars were all there; but one of the corner pillars is now lying at the base of the monument to the north-west. It is proved to have belonged to a square enclosure, by its having faces at right angles to each other with two rows of mortices for the reception of the ends of the stone

* See Plates VII., IX., XXIII., and XXVIII., for specimens of enclosures.

+ Prinsep's Journal, iv. 712. Prinsep's Journal, iii. 490.