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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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of Buddhist monuments—the Cave Temples belonging to that persuasion--but they also, as far as has been yet ascertained, are subsequent to Christianity. The Rev. Mr. Stevenson has lately furnished important illustrations of this subject to the Journal of the Branch Asiatic Society of Bombay, in his translations of the inscriptions in the Cave Temples of Kanheri, Karlen, Junir, Nasik, and other places in the Sahyadri range of hills, from facsimiles taken under the authority of the government by Mr. Brett. They, like the inscriptions on the Sthúpas, are usually brief records of gifts not specified, by persons, for the most part, of no mark or likelihood, but there are a few names of historical value, as well as a few dates. In one case, the excavation at Nána Ghát, Mr. Stevenson conjectures for it an antiquity of 200 B.C., but there do not seem to be sufficient grounds for such a conjecture*. In another case he proposes **, for a colum at Karlen, the date 70 B.C., as it was set up by Agnimitra, son of Maharaja Bhoti, whom he would identify with the last of the Sunga dynasty, Devabhúti; but this, to say the least, is problematical, and in this, as well as in the preceding, Mr. Stevenson himself queries the chronology: the dates which he proposes without hesitation begin with A.D. 189, but we tread upon tolerably safe ground when we come to various dates from 20 B.C. to A. D. 410, because the inscrip
* [Journ. Bombay Br. R. A. Soc., V, 174 f. 428.] ** [ib. 3 f. 152 f. 426 f. (where he corrects Vhoti into yoti).]
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