Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/56

28 and mountainous tracts where the early Hindus established their colonies, they soon learnt to utilize stone as a durable and cheap material for architecture, and there can be little difficulty in believing that in some of the Vedic towns there were structures and surrounding walls of stone. That the art of building was carried to some degree of excellence appears from many



allusions to mansions with a thousand pillars, but at the same time it must be admitted that there is no distinct allusion in the Rig-Veda to the art of sculpture properly so called, and the researches of antiquarians have failed to discover in any part of India traces of sculptured stone much anterior to the Buddhist era.

Most of the animals domesticated at the present day were domesticated in India in the remote period