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198
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(JULY, 1879.
All the above monograms are taken from 203, 202, 193, 192. This result very curiously Prinsep's Indian Antiquities (ed. Thomas) confirms Wilson's conjecture (A. A. p. 220), who vol. II., p. 180. In Wilson's Ariana Antiqua gives to Eathydemos the years 220–190 B.C. Pl. I, 5, there occars the following monogram - It assigns to him a period during which, it is
10. A tenth is I, which is the sign for 10, known from other considerations, he must have that is, equivalent to 110, and representing the been reigning. The length of the period makes year 202 B.C.
it very probable that the coins of the years 221 These ten monograms, thus, include a period 1 and 192 are from the very beginning and close of 29 years, from 221-192 B.C.; the several of his reiga, if not actually of its tiest and last years, represented, being 221, 218, 210, 205, years.
ANCIENT REMAINS IN AFGHANISTAN. BY REV. C. SWINNERTON, CHAPLAIN TO THE AFGHAN EXPEDITION. In marching from Dáků to Jellâlâbâd we Buddhist. This conviction was strengthened on passed the little village of Basawal, about ten my visiting Åda, or Hadah, a village five miles miles from the former place. Within a mile of south of Jellâlâbâd and pecaliarly rich in Buddhis. Basawal there is a remarkable three-peaked hill of tic remains. I here lighted on a scrap of wall schist lying in the midst of the valley south of the peeping out of ruined débris, the exact counterKabul river. Its peaks are in a line north and part in style of the walls just described. But all south, and these are all about 100 ft. in height from
doubt in the matter has since been removed. Dr. the plain. This hill is one mass of almost indis- Creagh, of I Battery, C Brigade, Royal Horse tinguishable ruins. One piece of the old masonry, Artillery, and myself rode over to the neighbourhowever, stands exposed, and as it is curious I ing tope for the purpose of examining it more venture to describe it. The builders evidently particularly. It was evident that a large slice had built in regular and carefully measured layers. been cut off the top of the original monument and They appear first to have laid down blocks of thrown over the sides, thus hiding and burying white water-worn quartz about eight inches square, the exterior. At the same time it seemed prowith divisions between them also measuring about bable that in more recent Muhammadan times & eight inches. These intervening spaces were then burj, or tower of large waterworn stones and carefully built up with small slabs or bricks of earth, had been crected, probably for purposes schist measuring about six inches in length, two of warfare, on the original tope. We were forinches in breadth, and about half an inch in tunate enough to detect, about 40 ft. or 50 ft. up thickness. The next layer consisted of similar the side of the rain, a thin broken line of chunam slabs of dark schist, laid one on the other, for or white plaster. As some Sappers were working about three inches in thickness. The third layer
near at hand, we called for a pickaxe and a spade, consisted of small blocks of a light gray sandstone
and carefully removed some of the debris from or grit dressed with the chisel, each block three or the top of this plaster, when we had the unspeak. four inches thick and six square, and the layer it- able satisfaction of finding that we had discovered self in thickness a single block. After this the the ancient cornice of the tope whence sprang the various layers were repeated in order once more, dome-shaped dagoba. Twelve inches in from the and so repeated again and again. The effect of outer broken edge of the plaster we came on the this arrangement, both as to form and colour, was solid masonry itself. It was still covered with beaumost pleasing.
tiful white plaster an inch thick, and six or eight On our arrival at Jellalábåd we became aware inches up from the top of the cornice there was a that there was a ruined Buddhist tope on the round moulding, which indicated the spring of the brow of one of the low hills about 2,000 yards now, I fear, destroyed dome. We cleared away south of the city. I took an early opportunity of with our own hands 10 or 12 yards of the cornice, examining it. It was a shapeless mass of ruins, no and we particularly remarked that the plaster was part of the exterior of the ancient tope apparently covered with a wash of rosy pink. The colour remaining. Among the ruined buildings round had penetrated the lime a sixteenth of an inch, it, however, I discovered part of an ancient wall and it was not the result of percolations through exposed, and the style of masonry was precisely the soil, because it was regularly and uniformly similar to that of the masonry referred to above. laid on, and invariably of the same tint. Here I had therefore no hesitation in arriving at al and there the plaster of the masonry itself bad conviction that the masonry in both cases was given way, when we observed that the style of
