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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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given not only sketches of various interesting objects, but copies and translations of more than 200 inscriptions. They are mostly short, merely specifying the liberality of some devont Buddhist in a gift which is not specified; as, Dhamma raklitasa bhichlimo dánam, “the gift of the mendicant Dharma Rakshita*." Major Cunningham conjectures the gifts to have been stones or sculptured contributions to the structure. From one of them he infers the date of the inclosure to have been the early part of the reign of Asoka“Subalitasa Gotiputasa Rája · lipikárasa dánam—the gift of the king's scribe, Subalita, son of Goti**;" Gotiputra being the teacher of the celebrated Moggaliputra. From an inscription in one of the gateways in which the name of Srí Sát Karúi occurs, Major Cumningham concludes the gateways were erected about the beginning of the Christian era, in which Lieutenant Maisey concurs *** These, however, he considers long posterior to the body of the building, which he would carry as far back as 250 B.C., or even 500 B.C., on somewhat insufficient evidence; its being as old as Asoka depending upon the identification of Gotiputra the teacher of Moggali-putra, who presided, it is said, at the third council in A. D. 241, a statement altogether erroneous, as Moggali-putra, Mandyala, or Maudgalyayana, was one of Sákya's first disciples, three centuries earlier. In the second and third of the topes of Sánchi, Major Cunningham found relic boxes,
* [Bhilsa Topes, p. 238, No. 19.] ** (1. l., p. 251, No. 110.] *** [1. I., p. 264 ff.]
