We know the proper history of Buddhism to begin with this king in the _third_ century _before_ our era, and in several parts of Hindustan are found still undamaged inscriptions chiselled at his order upon rocks as so many unobjectionable evidences of this fact. I willingly allow this number of 84000 to be very exaggerated—yet, it is a fact proved by many an existing and opened grave, that the Buddhists of that or later date, and wherever they might have settled, always kept small quantities of ashes or bones they considered the remains of their Buddha’s corpse, in order to be buried under earthen or stone barrows to honour them as the relics of the great Master himself.[5] There where the Buddhists founded a community, there, under such a hill or _stûpa_ they also buried an urn of ashes whereas the hill itself was honoured as the Master’s grave.[6] Those hills however, were badly protected from the influences of temperature and time, and not proof against the profaning hand of man, and therefore built of stone, the _dâgaba_ or _dagob_, generally placed on a pedestal of composed leaves of the lotus, the _padmâsana_, hardly dispensible to Indian images.[7] Many temples’ ornaments have been copied after these dagobs, among others, the shape of the small-sized prayer-bell which is still rung by the _visju_ in chinese temples even at this day. These are facts proving this tomb-stone’s having been highly honoured. III. Not anything do we know about the Buddhists of eleven centuries ago who once populated these regions where afterwards arose the Mohammedan empire of _Mataram_. We only know that there formerly must have existed a _Hindu_ empire of this name because of a found copper engraving all covered with ancient-javanese writing which contained in a oath-formula the words: “_Sri mahârâja i Mataram_.” We understand them to have come from India, probably from the North, but we don’t know when this happened, and when they first began to deposit their Buddha ashes worthily. It may be easily imagined however, that also the _Båråbudur_ must have been such a depository, and so much the more, because of its being too large to think of a mausoleum built in honour of even the most powerful prince of that empire. In flat defiance of _Rhys Davids_’s opinion who declared the Båråbudur to be only 7 centuries old, we, on the other hand, are inclined to give this monument, according to later data, more than eleven centuries[8]. That the Buddhists of Central Java were a powerful nation at that period of time may fully appear from the extent and splendour of the building which surpasses all other Buddha- and Hindu temples on all the earth.