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During the visit to Kurkihar, several villagers joined our team in the excitement of having seen some curious visitors to their neglected village after a long time. They informed me that only a very small number of occasional tourists who used to read the description of the site in Guide Books happened to visit their village and often returned disappointed in the absence of tourist amenities. Even though display boards have been put up by the tourism department on the road to Gaya from Patna for informing the tourist about the existence of Kurkihar as a tourist site, there is hardly much that can possibly attract a tourist who is on a visit for visual satisfaction. The lack of tourist amenities at the site can make the remembrances of the visit for a tourist very unpleasant since due to lack of full information about the site, the visitor is likely to form a negative impression about the importance of the site.
However, the tourist is not entirely disappointed since there is still preserved a representative collection of Buddhist sculptures discovered from the area in the two temples, one of which is located on the main mound and the other which is a Devi temple is at some distance from the former. The approach roads within the village were in a bad condition in the rainy season, due to water-logging and poor drainage. I could take some photographs of the idols housed within the twin temples, which have been shared here. The Zemindar’s old kutchery could be noticed in ruins on the access route. The erstwhile times when the structure was important could be gauged from the ruins. The villagers informed that the building of the kutchery had been abandoned and the Zemindar’s family had shifted to Gaya town. I could not thus trace the status of the statues which were collected and kept at the house of the local Zemindar till 1930, as reported by Saraswati and Sarkar.
To be continued...