Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/136

134 of a Muhammadan saint. In Asoka's time the place must have been visited by Hindu pilgrims.

The Bairât version, discovered by Mr. Carlleyle in 1872-3, is engraved on the lower part of the southern face of a huge block of volcanic rock 'as big as a house' at the foot of the 'Pândus' hill' close to the very ancient town of Bairât. The peculiar Bhâbrû Edict, giving the list of Asoka's favourite passages of scripture, was incised on a boulder within the precincts of a Buddhist monastery on the top of another hill near the same town. The boulder is now preserved in Calcutta.

The cave dwellings excavated in the refractory gneiss of the Barâbar and Nâgârjuni hills near Gayâ by Asoka and his grandson for the use of the Âjivikas, although not beautiful as works of art, are Wonderful monuments of patient skill and inﬁnite labour, misapplied as it seems to the modern observer. The largest is the Gopikâ cave dedicated by Dasaratha, which is 46 feet 5 inches long by 19 feet 2 inches broad, with semicircular ends and a vaulted roof $10 1⁄2$ feet in height. The whole of the interior is highly polished. The cost of such a work must have been enormous, and the expenditure of so much treasure on the Âjîvikas is good evidence of the influential position held in