In the year 1843 I read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society on the Rock-Cut Temples of India, in which I embodied the results obtained during several journeys I had undertaken between the years 1836 and 1842 for the purpose of investigating their history and forms, together with those of the other architectural antiquities of India. It was the first attempt that had then been made to treat the subject as a whole. Many monographs of individual temples or of groups, had from time to time appeared, but no general description, pointing out the characteristic features of cave architecture had then been attempted, nor was it indeed possible to do so, before the completion of the first seven volumes of "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" in 1838. the marvelous ingenuity which their editor James Prinsep displayed, in these volumes, in deciphering the inscriptions of Asoka and other hitherto unread documents, and the ability with which Turnour, Kittoe, and others who were inspired by his zeal, hastened to aid in his researches, revolutionized the whole character of Indian archaeology. The history of Buddha and of early Buddhism, which before had been mythical and hazy in the extreme, now became clear and intelligible and based on recognized facts. The relation, too, of Brahmanism and the other Hindu religions to Buddhism and to each other were now for the first time settled, on a basis that was easily understood and admitted of a logical superstructure raised upon it.
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