[1] By striking off the zeros, which are put on by the Brahmans _out of respect_, the figures may be reduced to some natural compass of possibility. Art in a more comprehensible form appeared in India only when Buddha came to attempt a second regeneration of the people. He abolished castes, preached equality and freedom, and succeeded in awakening a high force of artistic activity in the dreamy Indians. But their art was altogether confined to the construction of rock-hewn temples, of stupas, topes, and religious buildings--architectural constructions in comparison with which even our greatest cathedrals dwindle into mere child’s play. Their works of art are tinged with the same exaggerations as their great heroic poems, and when Buddhism was stamped out in its birth-place about the seventh century A.D., the Brahmans constructed their temples, vying with those of the Buddhist artists in architectural grandeur. They went back to their monstrosities, but they could no longer check the artistic power of the Aryan spirit. The rock-hewn and isolated temples of India have details in stucco, of ornamentation, foliage, and general decoration, which, like their mythology, their heroic poems, and their abstruse philosophy, went through all the artistic metamorphoses of pliable, plastic, elastic and solid substances. In all we observe an unbounded play of imagination, uncontrolled by any law of symmetry. The walls are decorated with the most exquisite shawl and lace patterns, either in stucco or hewn in stone; a proof that before the application of those delicate forms to wall decorations they must have existed as textile fabrics of high finish. The rock-hewn temples exhibit clear imitations of rafters and cross-beams; wood had, therefore, been long in use before they attempted to imitate it in stone. Their sculptures are wood-carvings, terra-cotta or plaster-of-Paris works, turned into stone. The pliability of the softer materials visibly predominates. The gateways before the Sanchi Tope (see the masterly cast of one of these in the South Kensington Museum), though hewn in stone, are a close imitation of wooden posts and cross-beams joined together. This imitation is so faithful that even the rough and crooked outlines of the badly-cut posts and beams are preserved. The richness and variety of their decorative patterns, as also the minuteness of the details, prove that such patterns must have been carved in wood or fashioned in clay long before they were executed in the harder material--stone. Stucco must have served as a means of transition from wood-carving to sculpture. In the Ramâyâna the town of Agodhyá, built by _Manû_ (the father and lawgiver of _man_kind), is thus described: ‘It was adorned with beautiful palaces, high as mountains, and with houses of many stories; everything shining as in Indra’s heaven. Its aspect had a charming effect. The town was enlivened by ever-changing colours; regular