Art. IV.—On the Miniature Chaityas and Inscriptions of the Buddhist religious dogma, found in the ruins of the Temple of Sárnáth, near Benares

Extract

In a letter received on the 1st March last from Major Kittoe, engaged in antiquarian researches under the Bengal Government, he informed me that in excavating the mound constituting the rain of the great Buddhist temple of Sárnáth at Benares, he had turned up some scores of miniature chaityas in baked clay, the base of many of them being impressed with an inscription in the carly Deva Nágarí charecters in a seal form. Some of the chaityas being broken transversely at the base, it was found that an independent seal with an inscription, not in itaglio, but in cameo, was enclosed in the base; and that the seal was first prepared and hardened, and the chaitya then fashioned round it while the clay was plastic, was manifest by the raised letters of the seal having imbedded themselves in the clay, and leaving fac-similes of their forms. Major Kittee readily discovered that the seals or stamps comprised the Buddhist religious dogma, or confession of faith, “Ye dhama,” &e.or “Ye dharma,” &c., as it happened to be in Páli or Sanskrit, and he refers their date from the form of the Deva Nágarí letters to the early part of the eleventh century; but why these chaityas, the first of the kind met with, stamped with the confession of faith or containing a seal with the dogma in relief letters upon it should have been lodged with in the temple, Major Kittoe does not discuss. As the discovery of the chaityas is new in antiquarian research in India, and as there are certain circumstances connected with this confession of faith being met with in different parts of India in mongrel Sanskrit, I have thought that a drawing of a chaitya and of the enclosed seal, together with a few remarks upon the confession of faith, might be acceptable for reference in the Journal of the Society.