We
cannot forget that, persecuted by conquer-ing Brahmans, and expelled
from India, it found, at last, a shelter in Ceylon where it still
flourishes like the legendary aloe, which is said to blossom once
in its lifetime and then to die, as the root is killed by the
exuberance of blossom, and the seeds cannot produce anything but
weeds. All this we may overlook, as I said before. But the
difficulty of the archaeologists still exists, if not in the fact
of idols being ascribed to early Buddhists, then in the physiognomies,
in the type of all these Enkay-Tenkay Buddhas. They all, from the
tiniest to the hugest, are Negroes, with flat noses, thick lips,
forty five degrees of the facial angle, and curly hair! There is
not the slightest likeness between these Negro faces and any of
the Siamese or Tibetan Buddhas, which all have purely Mongolian
features and perfectly straight hair. This unexpected African type,
unheard of in India, upsets the antiquarians entirely. This is why
the archaeologists avoid mentioning these caves. Enkay-Tenkay is
a worse difficulty for them than even Nassik; they find it as
hard to conquer as the Persians found Thermopylae.
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We passed by Maleganva and Chikalval, where we examined an exceedingly
curious ancient temple of the Jainas. No cement was used in the
building of its outer walls, they consist entirely of square stones,
which are so well wrought and so closely joined that the blade of
the thinnest knife cannot be pushed between two of them; the
interior of the temple is richly decorated.
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