worship totally foreign to pure Buddhism,
appear side by side with the Swastika or Life-symbol of the greater creed,
with the lotus and other symbols of a phallic cult, and as in the small
cistern near cave 14 with the female face representing the low-class Hindu
belief in the divinity of the smallpox. Jain images of a later school of
Buddhism, dating from the 5th or 6th century after Christ, have helped to
rob these homes of Buddhist mendicants of their original simplicity and
severity, and have rendered it almost impossible for any save the wise men
of the East to read their chequered history aright. In almost the last cave
we entered, where two standing figures on the right and left mount guard
over the well-known image of the Master, our footsteps roused a large
female rat and her young, which crawled up the silent seated figure and
took refuge on the very crown of its head. Sanctuary! So we turned aside to
scrutinise the strange symbolical figures of the twenty-fourth cave and the
stories of the chaste and unchaste wives which are hewn in the ornamental
gateway of the third.

From the terrace in front of the caves a fine panorama greets the eye.
Below commences the wide plain which creeps northwards to the rugged hills
comprising the weird couch-shaped summit of Ramsej and the solitary cone
of the Chambhar Hill, embosoming the great Jain caves of the 12th century.
Beyond the Chambhar cone climb heavenwards the castellated pinnacles of the
Chandor range, mist-shrouded in this monsoon season. In the nearer distance
the primeval Brahman settlement of Govardhan sleeps amid her mango-groves,
and opposite to it the modern Christian village of Sharanpur marks the
threshold of that tract of fair woodland and fairer garden which is Nasik's
pride. Here and there a red roof catches the sun's rays and shews a splash
of orange amid the green; but save for this the picture has but two tints,
the warm green of the plain country in the foreground and the grey of the
mighty mountain-range which stands sentinel behind it. Your feet rest upon
soil hallowed by the memories of two thousand years, upon ground which
bears the sign-manual of early and late Buddhist, of Jain and lastly of
Maratha, who used the hill as a muster-ground of warriors and bored holes
in the graven images for the tethering of his cattle and steeds. By some
divine decree "the imperial banditti" kept their impious hands from the
famous inscriptions which are the rea