The earliest hint we get of a twelve-pillared dome, such as those universally used by the Jains, is in a sepulchre at Mylassa,[249] probably belonging to the 4th century. A second hint is found in the great cave at Bagh (Woodcut No. 87) in the 6th or 7th century, and there is little doubt that others will be found when looked for--but where? In the valley of the Ganges, and wherever the Mahomedans settled in force, it would be in vain to look for them. These zealots found the slender and elegant pillars, and the richly carved horizontal domes of the Jains, so appropriate and so easily re-arranged for their purposes, that they utilised all they cared not to destroy. The great mosques of Ajmir, Delhi, Canouge, Dhar and Ahmedabad, are all merely reconstructed temples of the Jains. There is, however, nothing in any of them that seems to belong to a very remote period--nothing in fact that can be carried back to times long, if at all, anterior to the year 1000. So we must look further for the cause of their loss. As mentioned in the introduction the curtain drops on the drama of Indian history about the year 650, or a little later, and for three centuries we have only the faintest glimmerings of what took place within her boundaries. Civil wars seem to have raged everywhere, and religious persecution of the most relentless kind. When the curtain again rises we have an entirely new scene and new dramatis personæ presented to us. Buddhism had entirely disappeared, except in one corner of Bengal, and Jainism had taken its place throughout the west, and Vishnuism had usurped its inheritance in the east. On the south the religion of Siva had been adopted by the mass of the people, and these three religions had all assumed new and complex forms from the adoption of local superstitions, and differed widely from the simpler forms of the earlier faiths. My impression is that it was during these three centuries of misrule that the later temples and viharas of the Buddhists disappeared, and the earlier temples of the Jains; and there is a gap consequently in our history which may be filled up by new discoveries in remote places,[250] but which at present separates this chapter from the last in a manner it is by no means pleasant to contemplate. CHAPTER II. CONSTRUCTION. CONTENTS. Arches--Domes--Plans--Sikras. ARCHES. Before proceeding to describe the arrangements of Jaina or Hindu temples, it may add to the clearness of what follows if we first explain the peculiar modes of constructing arches and domes which they invariably employed.