CHAPTER XIII.
INDIA.
The number of rude-stone monuments in India is probably as great or even greater than that of those to be found in Europe, and they are so similar that, even if they should not turn out to be identical, they form a most important branch of this enquiry. Even irrespective, however, of these, the study of the history of architecture in India is calculated to throw so much light on the problems connected with the study of megalithic monuments in the West that, for that cause alone it deserves much more attention than it has hitherto received.
No one, it is presumed, will now be prepared to dispute the early civilization at least of the northern parts of India. Whether the Aryans crossed the Indus three thousand years B.C., as I believe, or two thousand B.C., as others contend, is of little consequence to our present purposes. It is generally understood that the Vedas were compiled or reduced to writing thirteen centuries before Christ, and the Laws of Menu seven or eight hundred years before our era, and these works betoken a civilization of some standing. Ayodia was a great prosperous city at the time of the incidents described in the Ramayana, and Hastinapura when the tragedy of the Mahabharata was being enacted; and these great events took place probably one or two thousand years before Christ, or between these two dates. Or to come a little nearer to our time, all the circumstances depicted in all the thousand and one legends connected with the life and teaching of Sakya Muni (623 to 513 B.C.), describe a country with cities and palaces, and possessing a very high state of civilzation; and these legends are so numerous and so consentaneous that they may fairly be. considered, for this purpose at least, as rising to the dignity of history. Yet with all this we now know it for a fact that no stone building or monument of stone now exists in India that was erected before the time of Asoka, B.C.
