64 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
We imagine too that the first settlement was
early, when faith was strong, and the living impress
of the Great Teacher was yet fresh. For how else
can we account for the strength that clung to the
bare rocks by the torrent-side with such pertinacity, decade after decade ? Were they some
band of wandering teachers, we wonder, those first
monks, appointed to preach in the countries on
the Southern Road, a mission sent to the powerful
empire of Ujjain, or an offshoot perhaps from the
mother-communities at Bhilsa and Sanchi ? In
any case, the caves were valuable to them as headquarters during the wet season, when all begging
friars are supposed to assemble for the time in
some fixed dwelling-place ; and during their
absences as a body, for eight or nine months at
a time, the work of excavation must have gone
forward. Little did they dream of how well-starred
were both the spot they had chosen and the day of
their advent ! We can see, what they could not,
close on twelve hundred years of development and
gathering fame, the learning they were to send out ;
the beauty they were to build up ; the kings who
would delight to honour them ; and roads from the
far ends of the earth, all meeting on their threshold.
Hiouen Tsang came here, in the middle of the
seventh century after Christ, and speaks of the
place as "a sangharama constructed in a dark
valley. Its lofty halls and deep side-aisles stretch
through the face of the rocks. Storey above storey,
they are backed by the crag and face the valley."
