me to think how here, too, the worship of an orthodox Muhammadan saint was manifestly but a survival from the days when the ruined Hindu shrine attracted its pious pilgrims. Approaching the picturesque hamlet with its houses scattered under fine walnut-trees, vines, and Chinars, I came unexpectedly upon massive walls of Gandhara construction, reaching in places to fifteen feet in height. Some seemed to have belonged to ancient dwellings, but the majority, no doubt, had been built to support terraces of cultivation. The present Pathan settlers, quite incapable of such structures, had been content to profit by the terraces. But the ancient dwellings they had long ago quarried away, to build their huts and enclosures out of the materials.
The temple itself to which the hamlet owes its name of ` Gumbat ' or dome, had, alas ! suffered badly (Fig. 4). Already by 1897 most of the well-cut sandstone facing its walls had been removed, and now it was sad to find the stripping almost completed by the villagers, a strange handwriting on the wall, as it were, by approaching
civilization.' Luckily the interior construction of the cella and the dome rising above it to a height of some twenty-seven feet was massive enough to permit of essential measurements. The arrangement of the trefoil-arched porch and what remained of the outer architectural decoration showed close relation to the style, classical in its ultimate origin, of which the temple ruins of Kashmir of the seventh to the ninth century A.D. are the best-known illustrations.
In spite of Naik Ram Singh's manful help it was getting well towards sunset before, with ground plan and elevation completed, I could hurry down through the orchards and rice-fields to the road where the main body of the escort were waiting. Luckily much of the ground before us was still level enough to be covered at a canter. The young moon, too, gave light as we rode more cautiously up the winding bridle-path towards the Kamrani Pass giving access to the Panjkora Valley near Saddo, which was our destination. Not far from the top of the pass, at times a favourite place for waylaying exploits, we were met by a party of sturdy Levies from the Saddo post
VOL. I C
IIIF Color HighRes
