114 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[voi,. VH. 
The Upper Banders, however, make up for the deficiencies of the underlying group by 
affording two varieties of excellent building stone, one dark-red, sometimes quite unspotted, 
sometimes streaked and dashed with yellowish-white spots. 
The other is a yellowish-white, very fine grained roclc, perfectly homogeneous both in 
texture and colour. 
The latter is said to be, on the whole, the better building stone on account of its more 
uniform coloring and its being not so liable to disintegration from the effects of long con¬ 
tinued exposure. 
Probably the earliest use to which any of the rocks of the Vindhyan formation were 
put to was in the manufacture of stone implements, many of which, formed of the denser 
indurated varieties of sandstone, have been found in India. 
So far as I have been able to ascertain there are no cave temples, or at least none of 
much note in the Vindhyan sandstones. But there are memorials of a very different class, 
many of which date from a period before which the idea of using stone in the construction of 
houses had not been entertained. At any rate, there are no buildings or remains of buildings 
which can with safety be regarded as belonging to so remote a period. 
These memorials are the great monoliths or lots, many of which bear the edicts of 
Asoka, the protector of the earliest Buddhists, and who reigned about 250 B. C. Besides 
these pillars he is said to have erected 84,000 Buddhist sanctuaries called stupas or topes.* 
Some of these monoliths are of great size, and are generally polished throughout the 
portion intended to be exposed. They were surmounted by carved and ornamented capitals, 
upon which figures of lions or elephants were placed. 
The polished portion of the shaft tapered uniformly from base to summit, and in every 
way these remarkable monuments testify to considerable skill in the stone-cutter’s art. Still 
it would appear that this art was not made use of in the erection of buildings, and when 
the first stone templesf were excavated and adorned a century later, the stone architecture, 
as pointed out and described by Mr. Fergusson, was a “ mere transcript of wooden forms,” 
showing that at that time the art of using stone for these purposes was only being then first 
adopted, and that though the material was changed, the workmen continued to use the 
designs suited to wood. It was only gradually through several succeeding centuries that 
the forms and designs became suitable to the material.£ 
It is considered by the best authorities that the palaces, temples, and buildings generally 
of those early times were mainly constructed of wood, as they are for the most part in 
Burma and Siam at the present day. 
The resemblance between these monoliths and those of Egypt, some of which have been 
taken away into Europe, cannot fail to strike the attention. The connection is believed to 
be more than a mere apparent one, the discussion of which, however, belongs to the province 
of the Antiquary. 
As these lats afford the most striking evidence which can be given of the size of the 
stones which are obtainable from the Vindhyan sandstones and the durability of the material, 
I append the following enumeration of the principal of them which are known. The details 
are chiefly from General Cunningham’s Archaeological reports:— 
* Balfour’s Cyclopedia, Article Asoka. 
t Stone monuments, Fergusson, 1S72, p. 456. 
t It is right to add that this deduction of Mr. Fergusson is contested by Babu Bajendra Lai Mitter. See 
Jour. As. Soe„ Beugal. 
