Although the above sketch cannot pretend to be anything like a complete and exhaustive treatise on the subject, it may probably be accepted, as far as it goes, as a fairly correct and intelligible description of Buddhist architecture in India. We certainly know the beginning of the style, and as certainly its end. The succession of the buildings hardly admits of doubt, and their dates are generally ascertained within very narrow limits of error. A great deal more must, of course, be done before all the examples are known and all the _lacunæ_ filled up; but this is being rapidly done, and in a few years from this time all that is necessary to complete the history may be available for the purpose. It is hardly probable, however, that anything will be now discovered in India which will materially alter the views put forward in the preceding pages. Another discovery like General Cunningham’s at Bharhut may reward the industry of explorers; but even that, though it has given breadth and precision to our inquiries, and added so much to our stores of knowledge, has altered little that was known before. What was written in my work on ‘Tree and Serpent Worship’ before the discovery was made, has, in almost every instance, been confirmed, and in no important particular modified or changed; and our knowledge is now so extended, it probably will be the same in other cases. It is difficult, however, to form an opinion on the chances of any such discoveries being now made. The one important building we miss of which accounts have reached us, is the rock-cut monastery described by the Chinese Pilgrims (_ante_, p. 135). If it was rock-cut, it almost certainly exists, and may yet be found in some of the unexplored parts of the Nizam’s territory. If it is discovered, it will throw more light on Buddhist architecture in the first century of our era than anything yet brought to light. That it did exist seems hardly doubtful, inasmuch as we have in the great rath at Mahavellipore (Woodcut No. 66) a literal copy of it--on a small scale, it is true--but so perfect that it certainly is not a first attempt to repeat, in a monolithic form, a class of building that must have been very common at the time this was attempted.