II.
The Buddhists assert the ashes of their Buddha to have been divided after his cremation into eight towns, and buried there. King Ashoka is said to have seven of these graves re-opened again so as to distribute the holy ashes among some 84000 metal, crystal or stone vases or urns to cause them to be spread throughout his empire and without, and kept under barrows or stûpas.
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.