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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
are called by the natives the houses of Nāg Arjuna, his wife Dürpada, and his son Abhimán, and the fourth the Singhāl Chauri, names not unsuggestive. For although Dürpada (Draupadi) and Abhimán belong to Arjuna the Pāndava, I have never heard that hero called Någ Arjuna elsewhere. But Nāgarjuna is the name of a
TOCT. 4, 1872.
as big as cart axles, and nail horse-shoes to her door, a practice curiously analogous to our Western custom of nailing them to stable-doors and boats' stems. The Hole which the Daitya made is shown to this day, and is neither more
nor less, to my thinking, than the remains of a ruined Chaitya cave. There is a long inscrip
Buddhist author of some repute, and I believe
tion on the west face of the temple which the
common among that sect. The name “Singhal
Pandit whom I sent to copy it failed to decypher,”
Chauri” too, seems to point to a connection with
and the stone is too much covered with oil and
Ceylon. There are, I believe, other caves on the top of the fort and beyond it, but of more
other beastliness for rubbing off. Above the temple the main valley of Bhawānī Khorā splits into several lesser glens. The most westerly terminates in a fine waterfall and pool somewhat like that in Lenapur of Ajañtā. The next is a pass, of which I forget the name, and the third is a long deep glen, containing
doubtful character.
Immediately below the fort are the remains of the village of Pâtna, the more recent of which indicate a place of about 200 houses; but much older mounds, enclosing a large area, show that in times before the population first dwindled and then disappeared altogether, there must have been a considerable town here, which
is not to be wondered at, considering the water supply, the security of the place, and its posi tion, on what was one of the chief passes of the Sātmala Hills. Near the village is a small temple of Bhawāni, supposed to be very old. It contains some of the most obscene sculptures in Western India, which appear to me to indi cate a more recent date. Above the village is the wider valley called the Bhawāni Khorā, and half a mile up it is a very ancient temple of the goddess, said to have been built either by a Rákshasa or by Hemād Panth, who is
as misty an architect here as elsewhere. The legend of the place is that the goddess, usually called here “Ai,” was shikaring the Daityas (Rákshasas) in these parts, shortly after she slew the buffalo devil further south.
She “flushed” a Daitya in the precipices about the Gai Ghāt, (which we passed on our left in entering the valley), and hunted him round the cliffs till they came to a ravine called the Gañw
Dhara, where the poor Daitya, being hard pressed, dived into the solid rock, and bur rowed to a fabulous depth, as easily as a mole in an English tulip-bed. However, the goddess was not to be easily beat, and she got him out
nothing but a teak and bamboo plantation, which
the visitor had just as well keep out of. The remains of several ruined caves appear in the face of the cliff between this and the next ra–
vine, the Ganeśa Ghāt, up which there is a pass to the Dekhan formerly of considerable importance ; above it is the Ganes'a Táká a
curious underground cistern, possibly as old as the caves. The fifth is the Gañw Dhara, or village glen, before referred to; and the sixth is the Pital Khorā or Brazen Glen, the stream of which falls over an impassable cliff, a little behind the temple of Ai Bhawāni. There is however a pass over a spur between these two
last, by steps cut in the rock, which, although they were perhaps not actually cut by the Buddhist monks, appear to me to be the succes sors of an earlier stairway probably of their
making. This ladder is called the Sātpāyara Ghàt or pass of seven steps, but there are really about eighteen.
Having got to the top of this very steep and tiresome but not dangerous pass, we go up the Pitāl Khorā for about a mile to where the ravine opens out a little, below a waterfall
under and to the right of which are the caves. The first cave is a vihara, cut right under the fall (in flood) and of considerable size, but not otherwise remarkable.
The next called the
somehow, and finished him with her trident. In honour of which event Hemad Panth built the
Rang Mahál is a Chaitya about the size of the Chaityas at Ajañtā. The roof has been
little temple in the valley and devout Hindus make pilgrimage there twice a year, and pre sent iron tridents to the goddess, some of them
supported by timber horse-shoe rafters, long
- Dr. Bhau Daji found an inscriprion here recording
a grant of certain privileges to a College established by Changadeva, the son of Lakshmidhara, the son of the cele brated Bhāskarāchārya. The donor was Sonhadeva, a chief
subordinate to Rāja Singhana, and the grant is dated Saka 1128, A.D. 1206. A transcription and translation are given
gone, and two rows of polygonal ſpillars without capitals, separate the nave from the side-aisles. by Dr. Bhau : see Jour. R. As. Soc. N. S. Vol. 1. pp. 411, 414, 418.-Ed.
