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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
roor. 4, 1872.
are called by the natives the houses of Nag Arjuna, his wife Dûrpada, and his son Abhiman, and the fourth the Singhal Chauri,-Dames not unsuggestive. For although Darpada (Draupadi) and Abhiman belong to Arjuna the Pândava, I have never heard that hero called Nag Arjuna elsewhere. But Nâgarjuna is the name of a Buddhist author of some repate, and I believe common among that sect. The name " Singhal Chauri "too, seems to point to a connection with Ceylon. There are, I believe, other caves on the top of the fort and beyond it, but of more 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 position, on what was one of the chief passes of the Såtmala Hills. Near the village is a small temple of Bhavânî, supposed to be very old. It contains some of the most obscene sculptures in Western India, which appear to me to indicate a more recent date. Above the village is the wider valley called the Bhawani Khorâ, and half a mile up it is a very ancient temple of the goddess, said to have been built either by & Rakshasa or by Hemad 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 (Rakshasas) in these parts, shortly after she slew the buffalo devil further south. She “flushed" a Daitya in the precipices about the Gai Ghat, (which we passed on our left in entering the valley), and hunted him round the cliffs till they came to a ravine called the Ganw Dhara, where the poor Daitya, being hard pressed, dived into the solid rock, and burrowed 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 somehow, and finished him with her trident. In honour of which event Hemad Panth built the little temple in the valley and devout Hindus make pilgrimage there twice a year, and present iron tridents to the goddess, some of them
Dr. Bhau Daji found an inscriprion here recording & grant of certain privileges to . College established by Changadeva, the son of Lakshmidhar, the son of the cele- bratod Bhaskaracharya. The donor was Sonbadevchief
as big as cart axles, and nail horse-shoes to her door, & practice cariously 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 tion on the west face of the temple which the Pandit whom I sent to copy it failed to decypher, * and the stone is too much covered with oil and other beastliness for rubbing off.
Above the temple the main valley of Bhawani Khora splits into several lesser glens. The most westerly terminates in a fine waterfall and pool somewhat like that in Lénapur of Ajanţa. The next is a pass, of which I forget the name, and the third is a long deep glen, containing 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 ravine, the Ganesa Ghâţ, up which there is a pass to the Dekhan formerly of considerable importance; above it is the Ganes'a Takd . curious underground cistern, possibly as old as the caves. The fifth is the Garw Dhara, or village glen, before referred to; and the sixth is the Pital Khorâ or Brazen Glen, the stream of which falls over an impassable cliff, a little behind the temple of Ai Bhawani. 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 successors of an earlier stairway probably of their making. This ladder is called the Satpâyara Ghât 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 Pital Khorå 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 Rang Mahal is a Chaitys about the size of the Chaityas at Ajanta. The roof has been supported by timber horse-shoe rafters, long gone, and two rows of polygonal pillars without capitals, separate the nave from the side aisles. subordinate to Raja Singhans, and the grant is dated S'aka 1128, A.D. 1206. A transcription and translation are given by Dr. Bhau 1 so0 Jour. R. As. Soc. N. 8. Vol. I. PP. 411, 414, 418.-ED.
