National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

interest. This is due mainly to the detailed notice which Hsüan-tsang, the great
Chinese pilgrim, has left us of his visit to the territory of Siṁhapura and of the
sacred spots seen by him in the neighbourhood of its capital. General Cunningham
had been the first to look for Siṁhapura at Ketās, a much-frequented place of Hindu
pilgrimage situated about 2 miles to the west of Chōa Saidān Shāh and marked
by a number of ruined temples around its sacred pool. But he had not been able
to advance conclusive proof for this identification and had subsequently changed
his location of the site to Malōt, some 10 miles from Ketās to the south-west.²

At neither place had he succeeded in tracing a sacred site of the Jainas to
which Hsüan-tsang makes detailed reference in connexion with Siṁhapura. The
special interest attaching to this site induced that great Indologist, the late Pro-
fessor G. Bühler, to call my attention to the problem presented. I accordingly
used the brief freedom from official duties afforded by a Christmas vacation to
visit Ketās in December, 1889. Led by local information about a ruin which had
furnished much ancient sculpture and building material, I traced the remains,
plentiful if sadly damaged, of what evidently had been the sanctuary referred to
at a place called *Mūrti* situated in the Gamdhāla valley some 5 miles down the
stream which issues from the sacred pool of Ketās. A small grant kindly placed
at my disposal by the Panjāb Government enabled me in the following hot
weather with the assistance of my friend Mr. F. H. Andrews, then officiating
Principal of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore, rapidly to clear what was left of
the ruined structure. It had been extensively quarried before for building opera-
tions at Chōa Saidān Shāh. An account of the discovery of the site and of the
main result of the clearing, which had brought to light a mass of fine sculptural
remains, was recorded by me in letters addressed to Professor Bühler and pub-
lished by him in the *Vienna Oriental Journal*.³

The agreement between the situation of Mūrti, the remains found there, and
Hsüan-tsang's description of the spot is so close that the location of the capital
of Siṁhapura at or near Ketās could in the opinion of such competent scholars
as Professor Bühler and Mr. Vincent Smith be safely deduced from it. But as
the late Mr. T. Watters, in his posthumous work dealing with Hsüan-tsang's
'Records of Western Countries', has treated this identification with a good deal
of scepticism,⁴ it seems desirable to review here briefly the reasons, both topo-
graphical and archaeological, which notwithstanding the doubts raised by that
distinguished Sinologist point clearly to the Salt Range being intended by the
pilgrim's territory of Siṁhapura, and the vicinity of Ketās by his account of its