The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-04
AN INDIAN TROY.

After Twenty Centuries 1t is to be Elk
 cavated.
 At last the ruins of the Indian Troy, deeply buried in the debris of over twenty centuries, are likely soon to see the light.> Pataliputra, the "Paliboth- ra'' of the Greeks, the "city of sweet scented flowers" so famous in ancient Indian legend and romance, is perhaps most widely known as the capital of Asoka, the greatest of Indian emperors, and the most lavish devotee the world has ever seen. He covered his mighty Kingdom from Afghanistan to the Dec can, from Nepal to Gujerat, with countless Buddhist monuments and buildings of vast size. His stupendous stupas or mounds of solid masonry to enshrine Buddha's relics, or to mark some sacred spot, are found all over India, and are almost like Egyptian pyramids in size. His colossal edict pillars, single shafts of stone, over for ty feet in length and beautifully poll ished and sculptured, still excite the admiration and wonder of all who see them. How magnificent then must have been the capital of this great Him. doc king, who was the ally of the Greek Kings Antiochus of Syria, Pto lemy of Egypt, Antigonos of Macedon, Magnas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus
 It was already a splendid city in the fourth century B. C., in the time of his grandfather Chandragupta, the Greek Sandracottus, as we learn from the glowing descriptions of Megasthenes, the ambassador of the successor of AL exander the Great At that time the buildings were all of wood, like the palaces and temples of Burmah in the present day. It is a matter of history, however. how Asoka found this capital of wood and left it of stone. But, be- fore the dawn of our era, this great city had decayed with the fall of Aso- ka's dynasty and the smaller succeed ing dynasties, and the transfer of cap- ital elsewhere. In 400 A. D. the Chi nese pilgrim Fla Hian reported that 1t lay deserted and in ruins. Since the Mahometan invasion in the twelfth century A. D. the very site of this city was forgotten. It was known to be somewhere near the modern town of Patna in Bengal; but most of the ex- l perts and others who had deliberately searched for 1t believed that 1t had been entirely washed away by the Ganges Then it will be remembered l that Surgeon Major Waddell, in 1892 | during a flying visit to Patna, found | that the leading landmarks of AsoAa's s l capital still existed. He found several sculptured stones and images of the Asoka epoch lying on the surface or | lt,iI ;,,to nr a11S and thnSp l together with the position of the old mounds, many of which still retain their ancient names, enabled him to fix with certainty the limits of Asoka's cit | adeI. and also to indicate roughly the possible sites of particular buildings for exploratory excavations, without which, of course, no detailed identifica- tions could be decisively attempted.
 Unfortunately, most of the likely mounds now contain Mohametan graves. for the Mahometan invaders were wont to seize the highest mounds for their residence and burial grounds, and for centuries they have used these ruins as a quarry for their building material Still, a beginning has now been made, and already at Patna, where five years ago no stones of the Ssoka period were suspected to be, l there may now be seen pieces of the well-known stone posts, the so-called | Asoka railings, with their quaintly fig- | ured medallion-like bosses, by which Asoka perpetuated in stone the original
 wooden fences which surrounded the sacred Buddhist spots. And close by
 one may see, about twelve feet below the surface. parts of 'the wooden
 walls" of Palibothra, with their mar
 velously well-preserved Sal timber,
 over twenty centuries old.-Calcutta Englishman.