civilised Asia, and spread Buddhist and Hindu learning far and wide, both in the East and West. The rockcut monuments of Ajantā, Ellora, Aurangabad, and other places enable us to understand the splendour to which Indian universities, such as Taksasilā, Benares, and Nālanda, attained when Mahāyana Buddhism relaxed the ascetic rules of its great Teacher and their Abbots were the Lords Spiritual, whose authority the War-lords of the Five Indies did not dare to dispute. The excavations now in progress on the site of Nālanda[1] will surely bring in a rich harvest of archæological treasures and show the detailed planning of the great monastery, which is described in outline by Hiuen Tsang; but they will not restore its lofty towers, which, in Hiuen Tsang's flowery language, seemed "like pointed hill-tops, lost in the mists of the morning," nor its shady groves and gardens, with lotus pools and mango orchards, where the ten thousand monks and scholars took their recreation. The viharas of five stories, with "soaring domes and pinnacles," seem to have been like the pyramidal towers of which a sculptured monolithic model exists at Māmallapuram (Pl. XXXII, b). It is arranged on the same principle as the tower of the Siva temple. Four pillared pavilions gradually diminishing in size are piled one over the other, the three upper ones being surrounded by rows of monastic cells, the cubical ones for meditation and study in the day-time, the oblong ones used as dormitories. The topmost pavilion is octagonal and is crowned by the stūpa-dome. This was no doubt "the upper room" which was accorded to scholars of distinction. This type of college building, which
- ↑ The modern Barāgāon, close to Rājagriha, which was the capital of Magadha in the days of the Buddha, and thirty-four miles from Pātaliputra, the modern Patna.
