"The resemblance has struck every traveler," he replied. "And, strange
to say, all the Buddhist cave-temples are designed upon the same
general plan. There is always the organ-loft, as you see there; always
the three doors, the largest one opening on the nave, the smaller ones
each on its side-aisle; always the window throwing its light directly
on the Daghaba at the other end; always, in short, the general
arrangement of the choir of a Gothic round or polygonal apse
cathedral. It is supposed that the devotees were confined to the front
part of the temple, and that the great window through which the light
comes was hidden from view, both outside by the music-galleries and
screens, and inside through the disposition of the worshipers in
front. The gloom of the interior was thus available to the priests for
the production of effects which may be imagined."

Emerging from the temple, we saw the Buddhist monastery (_Vihara_),
which is a series of halls and cells rising one above the other in
stories connected by flights of steps, all hewn in the face of the
hill at the side of the temple. We sat down on a fragment of rock near
a stream of water with which a spring in the hillside fills a little
pool at the entrance of the Vihara. "Tell me something of Gotama
Buddha," I said. "Recite some of his deliverances, O Bhima
Gandharva!--you who know everything."

"I will recite to you from the _Sutta Nipata_, which is supposed by
many pundits of Ceylon to contain several of the oldest examples of
the Pali language. It professes to give the conversation of Buddha,
who died five hundred and forty-three years before Christ lived on
earth; and these utterances are believed by scholars to have been
brought together at least more than two hundred years before the
Christian era. The _Mahámangala Sutta_, of the _Nipata Sutta_, says,