J. F. Campbell Collection > Memorandum on clay discs called "Spindle Whorls" and Votive Seals found at Sankisa, Behar, and other Buddhist ruins in the North Western provinces of India

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usually about four feet liigli, and four feet wide. Some of tbese walls are
as much as a quarter of a mile in length, and are made, we were informed,
with the following object. When a Buddhist undertakes a journej^, or
makes a vow, he chooses a flat stone, takes it to a monastery, and gets a
lama (or monk) to engrave some rude characters upon it, which are said to
be usually, ' Om mani padme Qm,' which has been translated to mean,
' All hail to the jewel in the flower of the lotus !' though some give other
interpretations to these words. When his stone is thus prepared, the in-
dividual places it on the top of one of these walls,' which on their upper
surface are almost covered with such engraved stones. Thibetans when
passing these walls, always keep them on their right hand, and frequently
go out of their direct road in order to do this."
There would seem, then, to be little doubt that the Terra-Cottas, plain
and ornamented, and those also bearing the formula of the Buddhist faith,
were votive offerings of a by-gone age.
In what little I can do to further the objects of the Society, I generally
trj' to content myself with bringing facts to notice, and pointing out the
resemblance between the remains found in India and those discovered in
other parts of the world. It must be left to those who are better informed
than myself, or who are more fortunate in being able to consult what has
been written b}- authorities on the subject, to determine whether there is
any real significance in the resemblance between the remains found at
Sankisa and those of Hissarlik and Italy. I am not unprepared
for the argument that a knife is a knife all the world over, and that this
form of implement must have suggested itself to all people at an early
stage of civilisation ; and that the fact of implements in the form of
knives having been found at Hissarlik and at Sankisa would not be sufticient
to establish any connection between the settlers at these widely separated
sites. It may also be urged that earthen spindle- whorls might naturally
enough suggest themselves to different races situated far apart from one
another. But surely there is something more than a chance resemblance
in the several types of these remains and the style of their ornamentation ?
And does not the continual recurrence of, what we call, the Buddhist sym-
bols on the Hissarlik finds, suggest the possibility of Hissarlik and Sankisa
having been colonized by branches of the same race, be it Buddhist or not,
one of which striking west from some point in Central Asia, found its way
to the shores of the Mediterranean, whilst another, taking a southerly
course, established itself in the Gangetic valley ?
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