The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.93

c29.93

The city of Gayā, we are informed, was empty and desolate; the holy places of Bōdh-Gayā, 6 miles to the south, were surrounded by jungle; and an extensive tract of country near the foot of the mountains, which had been the seat of a large population in the fifth century B. C., was now sparsely inhabited. The great city of Srāvastī, on the upper course of the Rāptī, was occupied by only two hundred families; and the holy towns of Kapilavastu and Kusinagara were waste and deserted, save for a scanty remnant of monks and their lay attendants, who clung to the sacred spots, and derived a meagre subsistence from the alms of rare pilgrims. The causes of this decay are unknown.¹