________________
DECEMBER, 1893.]
VOTES ON ANTIQUITIES IN RAMANNADESA.
345
If then this stone commemorates the visit of a Siarche prince or noblo to Pegu, it is of interest and some importance as historical evidence. Until disproved I am inclined to accept the second reading as the correct one. Another possible conjecture as to the nationality of the person commemorated by the stone is that he was a Talaing nobleman with a Siamese title. This is historically reasonable.
On the tablet, already mentioned (ante, p. 343), shewing two grotesque female figures is an inscribed monogram, of which he accompanying cut gives a full-sized tracing. The characters of this monogram bear a strong resemblance to the lapidury character of Burma.
The Pegu tablets at the Phayre Museum are then clearly of two types - grotesques and portraits, and, although ail are said locally to be from the same place, i. e., Mr. Jackson's Garden, I believe that this is an error, and that the grotesques came from the garden, and the portraits from the neighbourhood of the four colossal figures of Gautama Buddha, about six miles distant, known as the Kyaikp'un Pagoda. If this belief is correct, the inscription just examined would tend to shew that the Siamese had a hand in its erection, and for external evidence of such a supposition may be consulted Fergusson's statements and plates in his History of Indian Architecture, at page 663 ff., and especially at page 680.56
The grotesques divide themselves into four groups — figures marching armed, figures fighting, figures in flight, and figures in attitudes of supplication. It may be, therefore, fairly guessed that they represent the march, battle and defeat of a foreign army, such as that of Hanuman in the Rámáyana, the story of which, by the way, is quite well known in Burma as the Yámayand, or popularly as the Yümazàt.57
8. Images and enamelled' pagodas at Thaton. Perhaps the most interesting thing yet unearthed at Thaton is a stone image in basrelief about three feet, high, which was found quite lately, at 14 ft. below the surface, in digging a well in a garden near the Shinzû Kyaung. The owner has now set it up on & modern Burmese throne, or paling beside a pipal tree on the neighhouring road-side, and has built a tazaung (tans aung, a building with terraced roofs and umbrella' top) over it. The image is now entirely gilt, and the throne and tazaung ornamented with modern Burmese 'glass' and gold decoration. The money for the purpose is being collected from worshippers on the spot, and perhaps the owner will, in the end, make a small living out of it, as does the guardian of the curious Pop'o images.58
The image is that of a man standing upright, with long arms, broad shoulders, largelobed ears, and curly hair. The right arm hangs down straight, but the left is doubled up so that the tips of the fingers touch the top of the shoulder. Under the arm-pit is a representation of a palm-leaf MS., covered over with a cloth, in the style still in use. It bears & striking resemblance to the colossal Digambara Jain figures of Western India shewn, ante, Vol. II. p. 358, and in Fergusson's History of Indian Architecture, p. 268. It is not, however, naked.68 Bad weather prevented the taking of a photograph of this image, but it is well worth reproduction and study.
* The point is, of course, at present very obscure. See post, p. 354 f., for further arguments as to it.
T For xát see above, note 26. The pictures in Growse's Ramdyana of Tulat Das may be usefully compared with these grotesques ; see Book VI., Laoks. 68 See ante, Vol. XXI. p. 381. He had started a box with a slot in it in April 1892 !
The statue at Karkala (ante, Vol. II. p. 358) is dated Saks 1858 = A.D. 1432.
