Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/69

50 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY Now this history of Amber and Jaipur, enacted in modern India and still fresh in the memory of the Rajput people, is our guide to much in the history of Old Rajgir. For in the lifetime of Buddha, the son of Bimbisara — that tragic king, Ajatasatru, across whose path falls the red shadow of a father's murder ! — found that the time had come to move the city of kings, and he accordingly built a new city with walls and gates like the last but out in the open plain. And there the grass-covered ruin lies to this day, to the west of the present village, the grave of a city, the memorial of New Rajgir.

Bimbisara was the king of Magadha in the days of the Great Renunciation. Ajatasatru was king at the death of Buddha. But we know, from the fact of the desertion of their highland stronghold and its rebuilding outside, that for five hundred years at least before their time there had been a city on the site of Old Rajgir.

Nor need we think that the city thus built was only a palace and its appurtenances. The fact that it actually became the new centre of population, forming the direct ancestor of the present village, shows itself two hundred years later, when the great Asoka, desiring to build fitting memorials to Him whom the emperor delighted to honour, chose its north-western corner, on the left hand of the main gateway, whereat to place a stupa and Asokan pillar with an inscription. As the edicts carved by Asoka on rocks and pillars have the character of proclamations, it follows that the rocks and pillars themselves