There Exists
Only One Brotherhood In India Whose Members Possess All Secrets,
And From Whom Nothing In Nature Is Concealed.
Here is the body
of the tiger to testify that the animal was not killed with a weapon
of any kind, but simply by the word of Gulab-Lal-Sing.
I found it,
very easily, in the bushes exactly under our vihara, at the foot
of the rock over which the tiger had rolled, already dead. Tigers
never make false steps. Gulab-Lal-Sing, you are a Raj-Yogi, and
I salute you!" added the proud Brahman, kneeling before the Takur.
"Do not use vain words, Krishna Rao!" interrupted Gulab-Sing.
"Get up; do not play the part of a Shudra."
"I obey you, Sahib, but, forgive me, I trust my own judgment. No
Raj-Yogi ever yet acknowledged his connection with the brotherhood,
since the time Mount Abu came into existence."
And he began distributing bits of hair taken from the dead animal.
No one spoke, I gazed curiously at the group of my fellow-travelers.
The colonel, President of our Society, sat with downcast eyes,
very pale. His secretary, Mr. Y - -, lay on his back, smoking a
cigar and looking straight above him, with no expression in his eyes.
He silently accepted the hair and put it in his purse. The Hindus
stood round the tiger, and the Sinhalese traced mysterious signs
on its forehead. Gulab-Sing continued quietly reading his book.
- - - - - - -
The Birza cave, about six miles from Vargaon, is constructed on
the same plan as Karli. The vault-like ceiling of the temple rests
upon twenty-six pillars, eighteen feet high, and the portico on four,
twenty-eight feet high; over the portico are carved groups of horses,
oxen, and elephants, of the most exquisite beauty. The "Hall of
Initiation" is a spacious, oval room, with pillars, and eleven very
deep cells cut in the rock. The Bajah caves are older and more
beautiful. Inscriptions may still be seen showing that all these
temples were built by Buddhists, or, rather, by Jainas. Modern
Buddhists believe in one Buddha only, Gautama, Prince of Kapilavastu
(six centuries before Christ) whereas the Jainas recognize a Buddha
in each of their twenty-four divine teachers (Tirthankaras) the
last of whom was the Guru (teacher) of Gautama. This disagreement
is very embarrassing when people try to conjecture the antiquity
of this or that vihara or chaitya. The origin of the Jaina sect
is lost in the remotest, unfathomed antiquity, so the name of Buddha,
mentioned in the inscriptions, may be attributed to the last of
the Buddhas as easily as to the first, who lived (see Tod's genealogy)
a long time before 2,200 B.C.
One of the inscriptions in the Baira cave, for instance. in
cuneiform characters, says: "From an ascetic in Nassik to the
one who is worthy, to the holy Buddha, purified from sins, heavenly
and great."
This tends to convince scientists that the cave was cut out by Buddhists.
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