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The Great Temple as it exists now, with the restoration work carried out by Cunningham and Beglar, in 1880, consists in plan of the main shrine chamber, with a narrow passage through the thickness of the wall, an ante chamber and portico in front. The temple is built on a slightly raised terrace paved with granite stone slabs with large-size bluish bricks plastered all over their surfaces. The exterior face of the walls and of the lofty spire above them are ornamented with horizontal tiers or rows of niches, done in plaster, each niche once holding a stucco image of the Buddha perhaps gilded over in gold. Many of the images have disappeared.
The reference to the Mahabodhi temple as mentioned by Buchanan is interesting. He mentions:-
“The great Mandir is a very slender quadrangular pyramid or spire placed upon a square terrace from 20 to 30 feet high. Except ornaments, the whole has been built of brick, but it has been covered with plaster and as usual in Hindu buildings has been minutely subdivided into numberless projecting corners, niches, and petty mouldings. The niches seem to have each contained an image of a Buddh in plaster, and on each projecting corner has been placed a stone somewhat in the shape of a bee-hive and representing a temple. On one of the sides of these small temples is a door much ornamented and a cavity containing the image of a Muni, and on the three other sides are niches containing similar images. The number of these small temples scattered all over the neighbourhood for miles is exceedingly great.
The Mondir has had in front a porch containing two stairs leading up to two stories that the temple contained, but the roof has fallen in, and almost every part of the Mondir is rapidly hastening to decay, except the northern and western sides of the terrace, which have (been) very recently repaired by a Maratah chief.
To be continued....