Page:Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India etc. (Volume III.).djvu/407

Rh “believers” conquered Delhi, about A.D. 1000. But what is this to the date of the ? or how little can these trifling relics bear comparison with the works of Greece and Egypt! and I have not yet seen; I can believe all which is said of their size and magnificence; but they are without date or inscription; they are, I understand, not mentioned, even incidentally, in any Sanscrit manuscript. Their images, &c. are the same with those now worshipped in every part of India, and there have been many Rajas and wealthy individuals in every age of Indian history, who have possessed the means of carving a huge stone quarry into a cathedral. To our cathedrals, after all, they are, I understand, very inferior in size. All which can be known is, that Elephanta must probably have been begun (whether it was ever finished seems very doubtful) before the arrival of the Portuguese at Bombay; and that Ellora may reasonably be concluded to have been erected in a time of peace under a Hindoo prince, and therefore either before the first Afghan conquest, or subsequently during the recovered independence of that part of Candeish and the Deckan. This is no great matter certainly, and it may be older; but all I say is, that we have no reason to conclude it is so, and the impression on my mind decidedly accords with, that the Hindoos after all, though they have doubtlessly existed from very great antiquity, as an industrious and civilized people, had made no great progress in the arts, and took all their notions of magnificence from 8