TRUBNER & CO’S MONTHLY LIST. 97 
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PUBLICATIONS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 
NOW READY. 
' Imperial 8vo, pp. xx.-536, with Ninety-nine Plates, half-bound, price £2 2s. 
| THE CAVE TEMPLES OF INDIA. 
By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., V.P.R.A.S., 
AND 
: JAMES BURGESS, F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S., 
Membre de la Société Asiatique, &c.; Archeological Surveyor and Reporter to Government, Western India. 
“' India is covered with buildings from north to south, and of all ages, from the first introduction 
of stone architecture in the third century B.C. down to the present day. With scarcely an exception, 
these are marked with strongly developed ethnographic peculiarities, which are easily read and cannot 
be mistaken. Many of these have inscriptions upon them, from which the relative dates, at least, can 
be ascertained, and their chronological sequence followed without hesitation. In addition to this, 
nearly all those before the Moslem conquest have sculptures or paintings, which give a most vivid 
picture of the forms of faith to which they were dedicated, and of the manners and customs, as well 
of the state of civilisation of the country at the time they were erected. 
The history of Buddhism as a state religion begins with the conversion of Asoka, in the third 
century B.C., and as it happens, he was the first to excavate a cave for religious purposes. He also 
was probably the author of the sculptures on the Buddha Gaya rails, but whether this ts certain or 
not, we have in the wondrous collection of sculptures found by General Cunningham at Bharhut, a 
complete picture of Buddhism, and of the arts and manners of the natives of India, in the second 
century before Christ. The tale is then taken up with the gateways at Sancht, belonging to the first 
‘century of our era, which are equally full and equally interesting. To these follow the rails at 
Amravaio in the fourth century, showing a considerable technical advance, though accompanied 
with a decline of that vigour which characterised the earlier examples. From the fourth century to 
the decline of Buddhism in the seventh, there exist a superfluity of illustrations of its progress in the 
sculptures and paintings at Ajanta and in the western caves, while the monasteries of Gandhara, 
beyond the Indus in the north-west, supply a most interesting parallel series of illustrations. These 
last were executed under a singularly classical influence, whose origin has not yet been investigated, 
though it would be almost impossible to overrate its importance. 
We have thus, either carved in stone or painted on plaster, as complete a series of contemporary 
illustrations as could almost be desired of the rise, progress, and decline of Buddhism during the 
whole of the 1000 years in which it existed as an important religion in India. We have also a con- 
tinuation of the series illustrating the mode in which the present religious forms of India grew out of 
former faiths, and took the shapes in which they now exist in almost every part of India.” —EXTRACT 
FROM INTRODUCTION. 
Folio, pp. 178, with Sixty-one Plates, cloth, price £4 4s. 
THE ANTIQUITIES OF ORISSA. 
By RAJENDRALALA MITRA, LL.D., C.I.E. 
VoLuME II. 
“Orissa is a name which has long slept in obscurity. It was no doubt familiar enough in a certain 
sense to our great-grandfathers, who gloried in Clive’s achievements and his acquisition of the 
Diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Of these names Bengal, perhaps, presented some definite 
idea to a man of average education, but Bihar and Orissa probably conveyed only general notions of 
territory acquired somewhere in the East Indies. From Clive's day to our own, Orissa vanished from 
the knowledge of all bat those specially interested in India, or in the study of geography. When it 
burst upon our attention, it was by force of the dire misery and fearful mortality that famine brought 
in its train. Dr. Hunter’s admirable book also aroused a wide, and perhaps more than passing, 
interest in the country. The work we have before us is addressed to a more limited and select class 
of readers, but it will certainly be a work of authority on matters connected with the archaeology of 
‘India, and especially on questions of art and architecture. It is now pretty well known that the 
Government of India has, in the most liberal and enlightened spirit, instituted a systematic search 
into the archzological records of the country, with the object of conserving as far as possible those 
“monuments and remains which are capable of preservation, and of obtaining drawings and descrip- 
tions of all objects of interest. In pursuance of this design the Government of Bengal sent ‘a party 
of moulders, draughtsmen, and photographers,’ into Orissa, and the author of this work was 
ae to accompany them as archeologist.” —/xtract from Notice of Vol. I. in Saturday Review, 
Oct, 2, 1875. 
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