— BHILSA.
393
by order of the Emperor Jahangir. It is described as being of ‘elegant highly ornamented ; made of the finest brass, and cast with the appearance of a network over it, with large rings held by dolphins.’ After changing hands several times, Bhilsa was finally, in The tobacco 1570, incorporated with the Empire of Delhi by Akbar. produced in the vicinity of the town is considered the finest in India. The very best sort, however, is produced in a space not exceeding three acres, and the goodness of the tobacco in this single spot is no doubt owing to the very careful and high cultivation applied. The District produces excellent wheat, and is about to be opened up by the construction of a railway from Bhopal to Lalitpur. Bhilsa is now chiefly noteworthy as a famous place of Hindu pilgrimage to the temples, picturesquely situated in the bed of the Betwa river, and as giving its name to the remarkable and interesting series of Buddhist topes found in its neighbourhood. Mr. Fergusson describes this series as the most extensive, and, taking it altogether, perhaps the most interesting, group of topes in India,’ and devotes half of his work on proportions and
‘
Tree and Serpent Worship, and 45 plates, besides woodcuts, to the He tope at Sanchi, about 5|- miles distant. thus describes {History of Bidian a?id Eastern Architecture, pp. 61 sqq.)
illustration of the great
the entire group
There [near Bhilsa], within a district not exceeding ten miles east and west and six north and south, are five or six groups of topes, containing altogether between 25 and 30 individual examples. The principal of these, known as the Great Tope at Sanchi, in the Bhopdl State, has been frequently described the smaller ones are known from General Cunningham’s descriptions only {Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments in Cent?-al India) but altogether they have excited so much attention that they are perhaps better known than any group in ‘
India.
We
are not, however, perhaps justified in assuming, from the
now existing, that it possessed the same pre-eminence in Buddhist times. If we could now see the topes that once adorned any of the great Buddhist sites in the Doab or in Behar, the Bhilsa group might sink into insignificance. It may only be that, greater extent of this group as
and thinly-peopled part of India, they have not been energy of opposing sects of the Hindu religion, and the bigoted Moslem has not wanted their materials for the erection of his mosques. They consequently remain to us, while it may be that nobler and more extensive groups of monuments have been swept from the face of the earth.’ Little that is certain seems to be known regarding the object and history of the topes but an examination of the largest of them at Sanchi shows that it is a stupa and not a daghoba that is to say, a monument raised to mark some sacred spot, or to commemorate some event, and not a shrine containsituated in a remote
exposed
to the
destructive
—
