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/9

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NOTE.


SINCE the report was written, and while it was in the press, I have, in company with General Cunningham, again visited some portions of Magadha; and although this is not the place to give an account of the places seen, and the results obtaiiwd from excavations, a few notes on disputed points will not be out of place.

In page 27 I have spoken of Bhika Pahari as a rocky hill, and have considered it identical with Panj Pahari: in both these statements I am incorrect. Panj Pahari turns out on excavation to consist of brick, and brick alone; it appears from the stratification disclosed in the excavations that the mound had long ago been dug into for bricks, the entire ones being carried off while the broken ones and the rubbish were thrown up on the sides, and mark the occurrence by the distinctly-sloping lines of the layers of rubbish with the well-defined accumulations of the larger pieces of brick-bats at the lower end of the slope, where in the actual course of excavations they would naturally roll down and accumulate; the remains, besides, of fragments of walls embedded in the mass of rubbish point to the same conclusion. Panj Pahari was therefore clearly a brick structure of some kind. General Cunningham proposes to identify it with the hill of Tipagupta, and I fully concur in his identification. But I will leave him to marshal his arguments in support of the position himself. Bhika Pahari I now learn, to my surprise, to be one of the wards within the modern city of Patna, so that it is clear my informant, in calling the great mound Bhika Pahari, had misled me. Bhika Pahari is itself a high spot, but has not been examined.

In development and continuation of my views regarding