Miniature Votive Shrine, excavated at Sarnath, 1905, showing the sikra crowned by the amâlika ornament Model of a Nepalese Buddhist Temple 33335 43 45 The Asoka Column, marking the place where Buddha began to preach. Discovered at Sarnath, 1905 Buddha Preaching. Discovered at Sarnath, 1904 Carving on the Dhamek Stupa Excavations below Humayun's Tower, Sarnath, 1905 Shiva, as Natesa. From a bronze in the Madras Museum 69 "Lighting up the recesses of the cave-like shrines" A Sannyâsî's Water-Vessel 91 95 "Another venerable hermit, seated on a leopard's skin" Shivala Ghât Balcony of Man Singh's Observatory 121 "Groups of women . . . are performing puja". "Like a painted frieze from Pompeii, or the decoration of an antique 135 147 · 153 · 156 "Three old women, who pause to barter with a seller of pots and pans, unconsciously posing themselves in their classic drapery like the Fates, or the Weird Sisters" In the Ahmêty Temple: a Brahmin performing his sandhya “Thin vaporous clouds of smoke rise from the funeral pyres. The slanting rays of the morning sun cast long shadows across the ghât" 195 CHAPTER I IN THE VEDIC TIMES History, in the conventional European sense, has never possessed much interest for the Hindu mind. Thoroughly permeated with the idea of the unreality of material things, the Brahmin priesthood, while taking extraordinary precautions to preserve their inheritance of spiritual culture, have never troubled themselves to mark the footprints which kings and dynasties leave upon the sands of time. It is chiefly through the exertions of European scholars, with the help of the old Buddhist records, that the main outlines of Indian history, previous to the Muhammadan invasions, have been made intelligible. The detailed history of the petty kingdoms into which northern India was divided would probably possess little interest, even if it were sifted out of the wild legends which Eastern imagination has woven into it. Benares will always possess supreme interest as the chief centre of the evolution of two of the great world-religions Brahminism and Buddhism; but while the development of Buddhism can be, to some extent, traced and mapped out with exact dates and events, the history of Brahminism must always be regarded from a different stand-point. 1 |