A few small vessels have been found in the " topes," as in that at Manikiala in the Punjab, which probably dates from about the Christian era; but they exhibit no remarkable character, and fragments found at Brahmanabad are hardly distinguishable from Roman glass of the imperial period.
The number of topes on this and the adjoining hills is considerable.
All these topes were opened and examined by General Alexander Cunningham and Lieut.-Colonel Maisey in 1851; and the great tope has been described and illustrated by them and by James Fergusson.
The latter give the names of the donors of particular portions of the architectural ornamentation, and most of them are written in the characters used before and after the time of Asoka in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. The monuments are Buddhist, the bas-reliefs illustrate passages in the Buddhist writings, and the inscriptions make use of Buddhist technical terms. Some of the smaller topes give us names of men who lived in the Buddha's time, and others give names mentioned among the missionaries sent out in the time of Asoka.
It is not possible from the available data to fix the exact date of any of these topes, but it may be stated that the smaller topes are probably of different dates both before and after Asoka, and that it is very possible that the largest was one of three which we are told was erected by Asoka himself.