Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/122

100 museum. When the Piprawah mound at Padaria on the Nepal frontier was excavated, and the stone coffer containing the relics and fragments of the body of Gautama Buddha were found, no archæologist or representative of the government was present, and the "L. G." of the Northwest Provinces, when communicated with, divided the treasures between the India Museum and the King of Siam, the only Buddhist sovereign of this day. The sandstone coffer, a soapstone vase, a crystal vase, some bits of bone and crumbling particles of wood, many pearls, tiny gold beads and flowers, and cut amethyst, topaz, carnelian, coral, garnet, beryl, and jade stars, together with larger beaten gold ornaments in the shape of the swastika, came to this museum—more authentic relics of the founder of a great religion than any European cathedral contains. It possesses also the inscription recording the deposit of these relics of the body of the Buddha in that mound by the members of the Sakya clan—a treasure of archæology which makes real the personality of the Buddha, the founder of that religion no longer a solar myth. This museum has an average of sixty thousand visitors a month, equaling nearly the throngs at the Louvi'e; but the company of bare-footed, sheeted Bengalis are so aimless and vacant-looking that one questions whether the carefully planned exhibits reach beyond the retina, whether they have any comprehension of the objects.

One does not expect to find a great leisure class in India, where the struggle for existence is so close and bitter, but watching the idle drift of natives