How peacefully
our dead repose under the rich green grass! None of them ever saw these
gigantic palms, sumptuous palaces and pagodas covered with gold. But
on their poor graves grow violets and lilies of the valley, and in the
spring evenings nightingales sing to them in the old birch-trees.

No nightingales ever sing for me, either in the neighboring groves, or
in my own heart. The latter least of all.----

Let us stroll along this wall of reddish stone. It will lead us to a
fortress once celebrated and drenched with blood, now harmless and half
ruined, like many another Indian fortress. Flocks of green parrots,
startled by our approach, fly from under every cavity of the old wall,
their wings shining in the sun like so many flying emeralds. This
territory is accursed by Englishmen. This is Chandvad, where, during
the Sepoy mutiny, the Bhils streamed from their ambuscades like a mighty
mountain torrent, and cut many an English throat.

Tatva, an ancient Hindu book, treating of the geography of the times
of King Asoka (250-300 B.C.), teaches us that the Mahratti territory
spreads up to the wall of Chandvad or Chandor, and that the Kandesh
country begins on the other side of the river. But English people do
not believe in Tatva or in any other authority and want us to learn that
Kandesh begins right at the foot of Chandor hillocks.----

Twelve miles south-east from Chandvad there is a whole town of
subterranean temples, known under the name of Enkay-Tenkay. Here, again,
the entrance is a hundred feet from the base, and the hill is pyramidal.
I must not attempt to give a full description of these temples, as this
subject must be worked out in a way quite impossible in a newspaper
article. So I shall only note that here all the statues, idols, and
carvings are ascribed to Buddhist ascetics of the first centuries after
the death of Buddha. I wish I could content myself with this statement.
But, unfortunately, messieurs les archeologues meet here with an
unexpected difficulty, and a more serious one than all the difficulties
brought on them by the inconsistencies of all other temples put
together.

In these temples there are more idols designated Buddhas than anywhere
else. They cover the main entrance, sit in thick rows along the
balconies, occupy the inner walls of the cells, watch the entrances
of all the doors like monster giants, and two of them sit in the chief
tank, where spring water washes them century afte