Daily camera., 1897-02-11
BURIED IN THE DEBRIS.
Strange Story of the Indian Troy, DeaG
City.


At last the ruins of the Indian Troy,
deeply buried in the debris of over %
centuries, are likely soon to see the
light. Pataliputra, the Palibothra 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,
TIE greatest of Indian emperors and the
most lavish devotee the world has ever
seen. He covered his mighty kingdom,
from AfghaniStan to the Ocean, from
Nepal to Gujerat, with countless Bud
dhist monuments and buildings of vast
size. His stuUendous 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 colos-
sal edict pillars, single shafts of stone
over 10 feet in lcrrth and beautifully
polished and sculpture<t >''i. excite the
admiration and wonder 1t al who see
them.
How magnificent, then, must have
heen the capital of this great Hindoo
king, who was the ally of the Greek
kings, Antiochus, of Syria; Ptolemy, of
Lgypt: Antigonos, Of Macedon; Mag
las, of CyreEe, and Alexander, of
Epirus! 1t was already a splendid city
in the fourth century 3. c. in the time
of his grandfather, Chandragupta, the
Greek sandracottus, as we learn from
the glowing descriptions of Megas-
themes, the AMBASSADOR of the successor
of Alexander the Great. At that time
the buildings were all of wood, like the
palaces and temples of Burmah in the
present day. 1t is a matter of history,
however, how Asoka found this capital
of wood and left it stone. Eut before
the dawn of cur era this great city had
t.ecayed with the fall of Asoka's dynas-
ties, and the smaller succeeding dynas-
ties, and the transfer of capital else
where In 400 A. d. the Chinese pill
grim Fa Han reported that it lay de-
serted and in ruins. Since the Mo-
hammedan invasion in the twelfth cen
tury A. d. the very site of this city was
forgotten. 1t was known to be some
where near the modern town of Patna,
in Bengal, but most of the experts and
others who had deliberately searched
for it believed that it had been entire
y washed away by the Ganges. Then
it will be remembered that Surgeon
Mai. Waddell, who in 1892, made flying
visit to Patna, found that the leading
landmarks of Asoka's capital still eX-
isted
He found several sculptured stones
and images of the Asoka epoch lying
on the surface or built into houses or
walls, and these, 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 citadel, and also to
indicate roughly the possible sites OF
particular buildings for exploratory ex-
cavations, without which, of course, no
detailed identifications could be de
oisively attained. Unfortunately, most
of the likely mounds now contain Mo-
hammedan graves, for the Mohamme-
dan invaders were wont to seize the
highest mounds fer their residences and
burial grounds, and for centuries they
have used these ruins as quarry for
,heir building material.
Still, a beginning has now been made,
and already At Patna, where five years
ago no stones of the Asola period were
suspected to be, there may now be
seen pieces of the well known stone
posts, the so-called AsoIa ratings, with
their quaintly-fgured, 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 II feet
below the present surface, parts OF
'the wooden walls of Palibothra, with
their marvelously well preserved Sal
! timber, over 20 centuries old--Calcutta
FDVliS hman