Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/66

RAJGIR: AN ANCIENT IJAHVLON 47 The square mortice-holes in the face of the rock out of which the great Sonar Bhandar is hollowed, give us a clue that enables us to rebuild, mentally, the ancient city. For these mortice-holes held the attachments of the wooden ornaments that formed the front of the cave. Now, between Bombay and Poona, on the west of India, is another cave, that of Karli, which though of a much later date must be of the same style and period as this, and there the wooden front is still intact. Moreover, the carvings form a picture, as Fergusson has pointed out, of an ancient street, from which we gather that the second storeys of houses standing in rows were decor- ated in front with crowded wooden verandahs, porches, niches, and all sorts of beautiful and irregular curved corners. That these, further, were not mere devices of beauty in the case of the houses, as they were ♦ in those of the caves, we see in the pictures which were carved, prob- ably in the first or second century A.D., on the gateways of Sanchi. From these we can gather an idea of what the palace of Bimbisara and the homes of his subjects must have been like. The first storey, then, was massive, sloping inwards and upwards, loopholed and buttressed at its four corners by four circular towers. The first storey only was built of stone, and its parapet was battle- mented. On the strong terrace provided by the roof of this fortification were constructed the family living rooms, which were of wood and