Garrick excavated two of the smaller mounds and the large mound close to south of the pillar. In the smaller mounds he found nothing, but in the larger he discovered large flat bricks under one of which he recovered a shallow earthen vessel, containing 67 cowries, at a depth of about 7 feet. Carllelye also excavated three of the mounds of which one yielded nothing; while in another he exposed, what may have been, an earthen stupa, with an outer casing of battered brick wall, surrounded by two terraces or pavements one above the other.

He calculated the height of this stupa to be about 60 feet. In the course of the digging, from the top downwards, he found scattered pieces of charcoal and perhaps bone ash and bone pieces with larger and thicker potsherds and down below them he noticed “some flakes of something very like plaster!.” While digging further down he again found ashes, bone pieces, “thick coarse ancient pottery and also a very few particles of iron totally dissolved with corrosion.” From this peculiarity he concluded that the mound may have been the receptacle of the scattered ashes of many, and not certainly the tomb of any one person. Inside the second mound also he found similar pieces of bone, charcoal, ashes, and bits of rude pottery. The observations are quite interesting as it may indicate a family or community funerary monument and is useful to trace the origin and development of the conception of stupa.

Tobe continued...