y accepted
the hair and put it in his purse. The Hindus stood round the tiger,
and the Sinhalese traced mysterious signs on its forehead. Gulab-Sing
continued quietly reading his book.----

The Birza cave, about six miles from Vargaon, is constructed on the
same plan as Karli. The vault-like ceiling of the temple rests upon
twenty-six pillars, eighteen feet high, and the portico on four,
twenty-eight feet high; over the portico are carved groups of horses,
oxen, and elephants, of the most exquisite beauty. The "Hall of
Initiation" is a spacious, oval room, with pillars, and eleven very deep
cells cut in the rock. The Bajah caves are older and more beautiful.
Inscriptions may still be seen showing that all these temples were built
by Buddhists, or, rather, by Jainas. Modern Buddhists believe in one
Buddha only, Gautama, Prince of Kapilavastu (six centuries before
Christ) whereas the Jainas recognize a Buddha in each of their
twenty-four divine teachers (Tirthankaras) the last of whom was the Guru
(teacher) of Gautama. This disagreement is very embarrassing when people
try to conjecture the antiquity of this or that vihara or chaitya. The
origin of the Jaina sect is lost in the remotest, unfathomed antiquity,
so the name of Buddha, mentioned in the inscriptions, may be attributed
to the last of the Buddhas as easily as to the first, who lived (see
Tod's genealogy) a long time before 2,200 B.C.

One of the inscriptions in the Baira cave, for instance, in cuneiform
characters, says: "From an ascetic in Nassik to the one who is worthy,
to the holy Buddha, purified from sins, heavenly and great."

This tends to convince scientists that the cave was cut out by
Buddhists.

Another inscription, in the same cave, but over an-other cell, contains
the following: "An agreeable offering of a small gift to the moving
force [life], to the mind principle [soul], the well-beloved material
body, fruit of Manu, priceless treasure, to the highest and here
present, Heavenly."

Of course the conclusion is drawn that the building does not belong to
the Buddhists, but to the Brahmans, who believe in Manu.

Here are two more inscriptions from Bajah caves.

"An agreeable gift of the symbol and vehicle of the purified Saka-Saka."

"Gift of the vehicle of Radha [wife of Krishna, symbol of perfection] to
Sugata who is gone for ever."

Sugata, again, is one of the names of Buddha. A new contradiction!

It was somewhere here, in the neig