he time when you can take your spade
and bring to light the ancient Viharas or colleges built by the
Buddhist monarchs of India.

If ever you amused yourselves with collecting coins, why the soil of
India teems with coins, Persian, Carian, Thracian, Parthian, Greek,
Macedonian, Scythian, Roman,[1] and Mohammedan. When Warren Hastings
was Governor-General, an earthen pot was found on the bank of a river
in the province of Benares, containing one hundred and seventy-two
gold darics.[2] Warren Hastings considered himself as making the most
munificent present to his masters that he might ever have it in his
power to send them, by presenting those ancient coins to the Court of
Directors. The story is that they were sent to the melting-pot. At all
events they had disappeared when Warren Hastings returned to England.
It rests with you to prevent the revival of such vandalism.

In one of the last numbers of the _Asiatic Journal of Bengal_ you may
read of the discovery of a treasure as rich in gold almost as some of
the tombs opened by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae, nay, I should add,
perhaps, not quite unconnected with some of the treasures found at
Mykenae; yet hardly any one has taken notice of it in England![3]

The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly
owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic
Mythology of India. But though the foundation of a true Science of
Mythology has been laid, all the detail has still to be worked out,
and could be worked out nowhere better than in India.

Even the study of fables owes its new life to India, from whence the
various migrations of fables have been traced at various times and
through various channels from East to West.[4] Buddhism is now known
to have been the principal source of our legends and parables. But
here, too, many problems still wait for their solution. Think, for
instance, of the allusion to the fable of the donkey in the lion's
skin, which occurs in Plato's Cratylus.[5] Was that borrowed from the
East? Or take the fable of the weasel changed by Aphrodite into a
woman who, when she saw a mouse, could not refrain from making a
spring at it. This, too, is very like a Sanskrit fable; but how then
could it have been brought into Greece early enough to appear in one
of the comedies of Strattis, about 400 B.C.?[6] Here, too, there is
still plenty of work to do.

We may go back even farther into antiquity, and still find strange