ail. Ordering the torches to be lit, we
stepped into the first hall.

A damp breath as of the tomb met us. At our first word we all shivered:
a hollow, prolonged echoing howl, dying away in the distance, shook
the ancient vaults and made us all lower our voices to a whisper. The
torch-bearers shrieked "Devi!... Devi!..." and, kneeling in the dust,
performed a fervent puja in honor of the voice of the invisible goddess
of the caves, in spite of the angry protestations of Narayan and of the
"God's warrior."

The only light of the temple came from the entrance, and so two-thirds
of it looked still gloomier by contrast. This hall, or the central
temple, is very spacious, eighty--four feet square, and sixteen feet
high. Twenty-four massive pillars form a square, six pillars at each
side, including the corner ones, and four in the middle to prop up the
centre of the ceiling; otherwise it could not be kept from falling,
as the mass of the mountain which presses on it from the top is much
greater than in Karli or Elephanta.

There are at least three different styles in the architecture of
these pillars. Some of them are grooved in spirals, gradually and
imperceptibly changing from round to sixteen sided, then octagonal and
square. Others, plain for the first third of their height, gradually
finished under the ceiling by a most elaborate display of ornamentation,
which reminds one of the Corinthian style. The third with a square
plinth and semi-circular friezes. Taking it all in all, they made a most
original and graceful picture. Mr. Y----, an architect by profession,
assured us that he never saw anything more striking. He said he could
not imagine by the aid of what instruments the ancient builders could
accomplish such wonders.

The construction of the Bagh caves, as well as of all the cave temples
of India, whose history is lost in the darkness of time, is ascribed by
the European archeologists to the Buddhists, and by the native tradition
to the Pandu brothers. Indian paleography protests in every one of its
new discoveries against the hasty conclusions of the Orientalists.
And much may be said against the intervention of Buddhists in this
particular case. But I shall indicate only one particular. The theory
which declares that all the cave temples of India are of Buddhist origin
is wrong. The Orientalists may insist as much as they choose on the
hypothesis that the Buddhists became again idol-worshipers; it will
expla