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Show jBUDDHA BUILT CUT i Great Brahman God Constructed Town of Benares. Mysterious Place of Marvelous TerrH pies, Terraces and Palaces Hardly a Ruling House In India but Has Helped In Their Building. London. Five hundred years before be-fore the Christian era, Budha came from Gaya to Sarnath, four miles from, the present Benares, to establish, there his religion. The great "tope," a huge upright cylindrical mass of stone and brick work, which rises 110 feet above the surrounding one; of the Buddhist dagobas at Anurad-hapura Anurad-hapura In Ceylon, stands in the middle mid-dle of what was called the deer park. The story is that Buddha struck by the loveliness of the gazelles, took the form of one and becoming king of the herd. A certain rajah, hunting one day with a cheetah, saw this splendid creature, and ordered the cheetah to be loosened upon him. Just as the leather hood was about to fall from the cheetah's eyes, the mind of the rajah became enlightened, and, prostrating pros-trating himself In the dust, he cried out: "Oh, sublime master, truly thou are a man and what a man! in the shape of a beast, whereas I, that wickedly sought to kill thee, I am a beast and oh, how stupid a beast! hidden under the shape of a man." Sarnath became a great place of pilgrimage, and the remains of the monastery and other buildings which were erected in the deer park have now for some years been in the course of excavation. Among other oth-er details I specially noticed a square chamber surrounded by short columns connected by rows of wide rails of stone, lozenge-shaped in section, and on some of such cross-bars circular medallions carved with patterns. Perhaps the most remarkable among the finds at Sarnath is a large quadripartite quad-ripartite lion capital and the column it surmounted. These are of polished granite, and the column, which was found in several pieces, must have been 45 feet high. In the tenth century of our era, Buddhism was crushed out by the Brahmins the votaries of the very faith from which Buddha had seceded and at Sarnath, the great monastery was destroyed by fanatical fury, and its surprised monks were burned in a gigantic holocaust. Not far away from these ruins, along a great crescent of the bank of the Ganges, Benares, the musterious, spreads out today the marvels of its temples, its terraced embankments, its vast flights of stone steps, and Its 'r.Mtmmmm:muwmA " a a...,.i,--r mini, -mi , m.'.;.... iFfSff If ll -l On the Banks of the Ganges. palaces, one beyond another, till in. the far distance, their forms seem to dissolve in dusty air of palpitating gold. Hardly a ruling house of India but has helped in their building. For four miles, from Asi Ghat at one end, to the old Raj Ghat at the other by the Dufferin bridge, the west side of the river presents this great irregular facade of the chief city of the Hindu religion, which claims today more than 200,000,000 adherents. The mighty river has played slrange freaks in flood-time, and, as my boat went slowly past the towering cliff of buildings, here and there I saw huge masses of masonry sloping at all angles an-gles and broken from the foundations as if by earthquake; carved friezes' fallen into the water, old inundated bastions thrusting decrepit heads above the tide, wlillo the very steps of some of the most crowded ghats-were ghats-were rent and riven. |
