RAJGIR: AN ANCIENT BABYLON 39
with every here and there a field of white opium-poppies in full bloom. But now, at the change of the season in October, we see here fields as patches of many-coloured earth — purple and brown and red — and we remember the words of Buddha, half laughing doubtless yet full of affectionate memory and tenderness, of one who said to a disciple in a much-patched garment that he reminded him of the ricefields about Rajgir.
A quarter of a mile behind us the hills open out into a circle, and here lie the ruins of the ancient city of kings — wonderfully clear and distinct in every part of them. We almost might trace out the very lines of the bazaars. With regard to streets and roads, it sounds dangerously near truisrrr to say that they retain their positions with little change from age to age, yet I do not know that the fact has been much noted. Here in Rajgir at any rate, where hundreds of cows and buffaloes, sheep and goats, are driven daily by the herds to and from the ancient ruins, many of the main roadways remain much ?,s they must have been in the dim past. Here, for instance, is the thoroughfare that ran through the city, with traces at a certain point near the centre of the palace walls, bastions, and gateways ; and here beyond the palace are the outlines of the royal pleasure-grounds, with their wonderfully engineered ornamental waters intact to this day. All through this little mountain- arena and the pass that leads to it, indeed, there has been an extraordinary amount of hydraulic
