That is the question. If Fergusson, being bound by facts existing
in inscriptions to acknowledge the anti-quity of Karli, will still
persist in asserting that Elephanta is of much later date, he
will scarcely be able to solve this dilemma, because the two styles
are exactly the same, and the carvings of the latter are still
more magnificent. To ascribe the temples of Elephanta and Kanari
to the Buddhists, and to say that their respective periods
correspond to the fourth and fifth centuries in the first case,
and the tenth in the second, is to introduce into history a very
strange and unfounded anachronism. After the first century A.D.
there was not left a single influential Buddhist in India. Conquered
and persecuted by the Brahmans, they emigrated by thousands to
Ceylon and the trans-Himalayan districts. After the death of King
Asoka, Buddhism speedily broke down, and in a short time was entirely
displaced by the theocratic Brahmanism.

Fergusson's hypothesis that the followers of Sakya Sing, driven
out by intolerance from the continent, probably sought shelter on
the islands that surround Bombay, would hardly sustain critical
analysis. Elephanta and Salsetta are quite near to Bombay, two
and five miles distant respectively, and they are full of ancient
Hindu temples. Is it credible, then, that the Brahmans, at the
culminating point of their power, just before the Mussulman invasions,
fanatical as they were, and mortal enemies of the Buddhists, would
allow these hated heretics to build temples within their possessions
in general and on Gharipuri in particular, this latter being an
island consecrated to their Hindu pagodas? It is not necessary
to be either a specialist, an architect, or an eminent archeologist,
in order to be convinced at the first glance that such temples as
Elephanta are the work of Cyclopses, requiring centuries and not