dhism was at such an ebb that Brahmans seized the temple, cast out the golden image, and installed their emblems in its place. "All was desolate and abandoned" when Fahien arrived from China, 400 a.d.; but, later, Hiouen Thsang saw and minutely described the great temple which stands to-day where stood "the chief of the eighty-four thousand shrines erected by Dharma Asoka, ruler of the earth at the close of the two hundred and eighteenth year of Buddha's Nirvana, upon the holy spot where our Lord tasted the milk and honey," as the inscribed stone declares.
In all the romance of religion, nothing equals the vicissitudes and alternating fortunes of this sacred place; for, soon after Hiouen Thsang's visit, Buddhism degenerated, the Brahmans again took over the sanctuary, and the monastery became a fort. In the sixteenth century of Buddhism, about 1000 a.d., there was a revival and a reformation of the faith; the temple was restored, and priests gathered in numbers. Again it fell away, and at the time of the Mohammedan conquest the Buddhists were persecuted like other infidels, and the ruins of their temples and monasteries tell how hundreds of priests met death by fire and sword in such asylums. In the fourteenth century the King of Burma sent an embassy to restore the temple, when a few Buddhist priests were found in the lonely place.
Floods came and left their sand deposits in the court, brick and plaster crumbled, the jungle crept upon the open space, trees flourished in every piece of masonry, and Mahabodhi was without a history
