The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c5.s2.t4.8

c5.s2.t4.8

The great stupa of the "Body-offering" I have identified with the monument that was opened by General Court,§ which, according to the inscription found inside, was built in the year 20, during the reign of the great Indo-Scythian prince Kanishka, shortly before the beginning of the Christian era. Mânikyâla was, therefore, one of the most famous places in the Panjâb at a very early period; but I think that it must have been the site of a number of large religious establishments rather than that of a great city. General Abbott, when he examined the ruins around the Mânikyâla tope in 1853, could "not see any evidence of the existence of a city. The area occupied by submerged ruins would not have comprised a very considerable village, while the comparatively large number of wrought stones denotes some costly structure which might have occupied the entire site."|| In 1834, General Court described "the ruins of the town itself as of very considerable extent, massive walls of stone and lime being met with everywhere, besides a great number of wells.” After a careful examination of the site, I have come to the same conclusion as General Abbott, that there are no traces of a large city; and I am quite satisfied that all the massive walls of cut stone, which General Court truly describes as being met with everywhere, must have belonged to costly monasteries and other large religious edifices. Doubtless, a few private houses might be built of squared stones even in a village, but these massive edifices, with their thickly gilded roofs, which still repay the labour of disinterment, are, I think, too numerous, too large, and too scattered to be the remains of private buildings even of a great city. The people point to the high ground immediately to the west of the great tope, as the site of the Raja Mân’s palace, because pieces of plaster are found there only, and not in other parts of the ruins. Here it is probable that the satraps of Taxila may have taken up their residence when they came to pay their respects at the famous shrine of the “Body-gift” of Buddha. Here, also, there may have been a small town of about 1500 or 2000 houses, which extended to the northward, and occupied the whole of the rising ground on which the village of Mânikyâla now stands. I estimate the entire circuit of the space that may have been occupied by the town as about one mile and a half, which, at 500 square feet per man, would give a population of 12,500 persons, or just six persons to each house.