Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Nongarh
NONGARH.
The complete exploration of the tope at Nongarh was entrusted to me by General Cunningham, and the result is detailed below.
Continuing the shaft sunk by General Cunningham downwards, I found the even horizontal layers of bricks to extend to a depth of 8 feet below the floor of the lower chamber laid open by General Cunningham; below this the bricks lay in distorted positions, and the irregularity continued right down. At a depth of 19 feet below the level of General Cunningham's lower chamber, I found an even floor of bricks laid flat in two layers over each other, covered with a thick coat of soorky and lime-plaster; over this was a thin, fine layer of lime-plaster: this floor was clearly the floor of the sanctum of a small temple. At a distance of three feet from the centre of the shaft, which itself was down the centre of the tope, was found a line of wall running east and west, or rather east by a little north; this was apparently the back wall of a room. Opposite to this, on the other side of the shaft, lay the fragments of an arch of bricks, built edge to edge, as already described in the Buddha Gaya temple. This arch appears to have been rather a sort of vaulted roof, springing from a point one foot in advance of the line of walls; this space of one foot appears to have been gained by corbelling out from the wall, as I found a brick with a bevelled edge at a depth of 14 feet below the floor of General Cunningham's chamber, or five feet above the floor of the temple below, so that the vault sprang probably from a height of five feet above the floor of the temple.
The entrance to the temple appears to have been on the north, or rather slightly to the east of north. It was impossible to determine correctly the dimensions of the sanctum from the limited size of the shaft dug, but it appeared to me that it could not have been more than seven or eight feet square; it had a vaulted roof meeting in a ridge as at Buddha Gaya, springing at a height of five feet above the floor of the sanctum. The half span of the vault appears to have been one foot, or at least 9 inches, less on each side than the half width of the sanctum, so that the vault could not have been of a larger span than perhaps 6½ feet. What came over this I had no means of ascertaining with certainty; but, judging from the irregular, loose, and confused position of the bricks above, it appears to me that it was surmounted by the usual hollow tower roof.
The bricks in the lower or confused portion were 14 inches long by 11¾ inches wide, and 3 inches thick, while the bricks in the even layers above, down to a depth of 8 feet below General Cunningham's lower chamber, or 11 feet above the floor of the temple below, were 12 inches long by 9 inches wide, and 2½ inches thick.
It appears, therefore, that there once existed here a small temple facing north; that in course of time this temple fell to ruin and became a low mound above 12 or 13 feet high; and that, subsequently, on this mound a stûpa was built; this stûpa was opened by General Cunningham.
There is nothing to shew the age of the stûpa beyond the small model stûpa found by General Cunningham in the relic chamber. Judging from this, it is not probable that the stûpa is so old as the first century before or after Christ; but the existence of the mutilated red-stone statue, with its inscribed characters, shews that there was some sort of religious building here as early as the beginning of the Christian era.
As it is clear that the stûpa was built on the ruins of the temple below, and as the stûpa is clearly not of the period about the beginning of the Christian era, the temple on whose ruins it stands must be considered of the same age as the inscribed red-stone statue, viz., of the first century before or after Christ.
This is a most important position. I am satisfied in my own mind of the correctness of this conclusion, but I wish it to undergo rigid scrutiny, as on it depends very important deductions.
Having no doubt myself that the temple was certainly as old as the statue which, according to General Cunningham, dates to the first century before or after Christ, it follows—
(1) That the true arch was known and used in India at that time.
(2) That although the principle of the true arch was known, it was, so far as we as yet positively know, built invariably of bricks edge to edge, and not face to face as our modern arches.
(3) That the use of mortar, lime and soorkey was known.
(4) That fine lime-plastering was known and used at that early period.
From the mutilated statue it appears to me idle to speculate as to the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, whether Buddhist or Brahmanical; the probabilities are in favor of its being Buddhist.