“In 1859, the Jesuit Fathers presented a petition to the Madras Government representing the tower to be in a dangerous condition, and requesting permission to pull it down and appropriate the materials to their own use....”  In 1867 “the Fathers renewed their application for leave to remove it, on the following grounds:  ’1st, because they considered it to be unsafe in its present condition; 2nd, because it obstructed light and sea-breeze from a chapel which they had built behind it; 3rd, because they would very much like to get the land on which it stood; and 4th, because the bricks of which it was built would be very useful to them for building purposes.’

“The Chief Engineer, who meanwhile had himself examined the edifice, and had directed the District Engineer to prepare a small estimate for its repair, reported that the first only of the above reasons had any weight, and that it would be met if Colonel O’Connell’s estimate, prepared under his own orders, received the sanction of Government.  He therefore recommended that this should be given, and the tower allowed to stand....

“The Chief Engineer’s proposal did not meet with approval, and on the 28th August 1867, the following order was made on the Jesuits’ petition:  ’The Governor in Council is pleased to sanction the removal of the old tower at Negapatam by the officers of St. Joseph’s College, at their own expense, and the appropriation of the available material to such school-building purposes as they appear to have in contemplation.

“The Fathers were not slow in availing themselves of this permission.  The venerable building was speedily levelled, and the site cleared.”

In making excavations connected with the college a bronze image representing a Buddhist or Jaina priest in the costume and attitude of the figures in wood and metal brought from Burma was found; it was presented to Lord Napier, in 1868; a reproduction of it is given in Sir Walter Elliot’s paper.

In a note added by Dr. Burnell to this paper, we read:  “As I several times in 1866 visited the ruin referred to, I may be permitted to say that it had become merely a shapeless mass of bricks.  I have no doubt that it was originally a vimana or shrine of some temple; there are some of precisely the same construction in parts of the Chingleput district.”

XVI., p. 336 n.

NEGAPATAM.

We read in the Tao yi chi lio (1349) that “T’u t’a (the eastern stupa) is to be found in the flat land of Pa-tan (Fattan, Negapatam?) and that it is surrounded with stones.  There is stupa of earth and brick many feet high; it bears the following Chinese inscription:  ’The work was finished in the eighth moon of the third year hien chw’en (1267).’  It is related that these characters have been engraved by some Chinese in imitation of inscriptions on stone of those countries; up to the present time, they have not been destroyed.”  Hien chw’en is the nien hao of Tu Tsung, one of the last emperors of the Southern Sung Dynasty, not of a Mongol Sovereign.  I owe this information to Prof.  Pelliot, who adds that the comparison between the Chinese Pagoda of Negapatam and the text of the Tao yi chi lio has been made independent of him by Mr. Fujita in the Tokyo-gakuho, November, 1913, pp. 445-46. (Cathay, I., p. 81 n.)