JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



— ♦ — 



Part I.— HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, NUMISMATICS, 

 PHILOLOGY and LITERATURE. 



No. L— 1865. 



Description of the Buddhist Ruins at Bakariya Kund, Benares. — By 

 the Bev. M. A. Sherring, LL. B., and C. Hornb, Esq., G. S., 

 Judge of Benares. Illustrated by Plans and Photographs." 



* 



[Received 15th April, 1864.] [Read 4th May, 1864.] 



The fact that Benares is the birth-place of Buddhism and that in it 

 Sakya Muni first " turned the wheel of the Law" or in other words 

 promulgated the peculiar dogmas of the Buddhist creed, is generally 

 believed to rest on good historic grounds. This circumstance alone, 

 independent of the concurrent testimony of Hindu writers, gives a 

 high antiquity to the city. If, as there is reason to believe, Sakya 

 Muni in the early part of the sixth century, B. C, in his own estima- 

 tion attained to the mysterious and mystical condition of Buddhahood 

 under the Bodhi tree at Gya, and thence proceeded to Benares, we 

 may fairly imagine that he did so because it was then a city of much 

 influence, if not also of great sanctity, among the Hindus, especially 

 the Brahmins. In this case the true epoch of ancient Benares must 

 date from an earlier period still. 



Had the Hindus been imbued with the desire of recording the 

 memory of themselves in huge buildings of brick and stone, as the 



* Copied in the lithographs issued herewith. 



