The human figures represented in these sculptures belong in the main to two great races. One of them is easily recognised as “Hindus,”--“meaning by that term the civilized race who formerly occupied the valley of the Ganges, and who, from their capitals of Ayodhyâ and Indraprastha or Pâtaliputra (Palibothra), had been the dominant class in India for at least two thousand years before the time to which we are now referring.” It may be taken as proved that these people were originally pure immigrant Aryans, but by intermixture with other races their blood took, as it were, a new colouring, though they did not lose the civilisation and pre-eminence which they owed to their intellectual superiority. We know them in the sculptures by their costume; by the dhoti, wrapped round the loins exactly as it is worn now-a-days; the chadder over their shoulders; and the turban on their heads. So much for the dress of the men; of the undress of the women it is more difficult to speak. They are always decorated with enormous bangles about the wrists and ankles, and strings of beads round the neck; but with the exception of a bead belt round the body below the waist they wear little body clothing. From this belt slips of cloth are sometimes suspended, more generally at the sides or behind than in front,--and sometimes also a cloth not unlike a dhoti, invariably of transparent texture. This scantiness of attire can hardly be regarded as finding compensation in the dimensions and amplitude of the head-dress, which, consisting of two long plaits of hair mixed with beads, and a thick roll of cloth, forms almost a kind of tippet, covering the whole of the woman’s back. Mr. Fergusson remarks:[50] “It is, however, not only in the Topes that this absence of dress is so conspicuous. In all the sculptures at Karli, or Ellora, or Mahavellipore, or in the paintings in Ajanta, the same peculiarity is observable. Everywhere, indeed, before the Mahometan conquest, nudity in India conveyed no sense of indecency. The wife and mother of Buddha are at times represented in this manner. The queen on her throne, the female disciples of Buddha, listening to his exhortations, and on every public occasion on which women take part in what is going on, the costume is the same. It is equally remarkable that in those days those unveiled females seem to have taken part in every public transaction and show, and to have mixed with the men as freely as women do in Europe at the present day.