is known, there is not a single arch within the walls of the city. So it is throughout India: side by side stand the buildings of the two great sects — those belonging to the Mahommedans universally arched, those belonging to the Hindus as certainly avoiding this form of construction. This is the more remarkable as the moment we cross the frontier of India we find the arch universally prevalent in Burmah, as early certainly as the tenth or eleventh century, and in all the forms, round, pointed, and flat, which we use in the present day.[1] But if we extend our researches a little farther east, we again come to a country full of the most wonderful buildings known to exist anywhere, with bridges and viaducts and vaults; but not one single arch has yet been discovered in the length and breadth of the kingdom of Cambodia.
All this is no doubt very anomalous and strange, though, if it were worth while, some of it might be accounted, for and explained. This, however, is not the place for doing so: all that is here required is to point out the existence of the apparent anomaly, in order that we may not too hurriedly jump to chronological conclusions from the existence or absence of arches in any given building. Another most instructive lesson bearing on our present subject that is to be derived from the study of Indian antiquities will be found in that curious but persistent juxtaposition that everywhere prevails of the highest form of progressive civilization beside the lowest types of changeless barbarism. Everywhere in India the past is the present, and the present is the past; not, as is usually assumed, that the Hindu is immutable — quite the contrary. When contemporary history first dawned on us, India was Buddhist, and for eight or nine centuries that was the prevalent religion of the state. There is not now a single Buddhist establishment in the length and breadth of the land. The religions which superseded Buddhism were then new, and have ever since been changing, so that India now contains more religions and more numerous sects than any portion of the world of the same extent. Even within the last six centuries one-fifth of the population have adopted the Mahommedan religion, and are quite prepared to follow
- ↑ Yule, 'Mission to the Court of Ava,' p. 43, pl. ix.
