The great interest of these two caves, however, lies in their sculptures. In the Ganesa cave there are two bas-reliefs. The first represents a man asleep under a tree, and a woman watching over him. To them a woman is approaching leading a man by the hand, as if to introduce him to the sleeper. Beyond them a man and a woman are fighting with swords and shields in very close combat, and behind them a man is carrying off a naked female in his arms.[173] The second bas-relief comprises fifteen figures and two elephants. There may be in it two successive scenes, though my impression is, that only one is intended, while I feel certain this is the case regarding the first. In the Raj Rani cave the second bas-relief is identical, in all essential respects, with the first in the Ganesa, but the reliefs that precede and follow it represent different scenes altogether. It is, perhaps, in vain to speculate what episode this rape scene represents, probably some local tradition not known elsewhere; its greatest interest for our present purposes is that the first named is singularly classical in design and execution, the latter wilder, and both in action and costume far more purely Indian. Before the discovery of the Bharhut sculptures, it is hardly doubtful that we would have pronounced those in the Ganesa cave the oldest, as being the most perfect. The Bharhut sculptures, however, having shown us how perfect the native art was at a very early date, have considerably modified our opinions on this subject; and those in the Rani cave, being so essentially Indian in their style, now appear to me the oldest. Those in the Ganesa Gumpha, as more classical, may have been executed by some Yavana artist at a subsequent age, but still both seem anterior to the Christian Era.[174] The other bas-reliefs in the Raj Rani cave represent scenes of hunting, fighting, dancing, drinking, and love-making--anything, in fact, but religion or praying in any shape or form. From the sculptures at Sanchi and Bharhut, we were prepared to expect that we should not find any direct evidence of Buddhism in any sculptures anterior to the first century of the Christian Era; but those at this place go beyond these in that respect. Nothing here can be interpreted as referring to any scenes in the life of Sakya Muni, or to any known jataka, and it is by no means clear whether we shall ever discover the legends to which they refer. Besides these bassi-relievi, there is in the Rani cave a figure, in high relief, of a female (?) riding on a lion. Behind him or her, a soldier in a kilt, or rather the dress of a Roman soldier, with laced boots reaching to the calf of the leg--very similar, in fact, to those represented Plate 28, fig. 1, of ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ as strangers paying their addresses to the three-storeyed dagoba--and behind this, again, a female of very foreign aspect.