in the changes of scene and faces within the gaol: and in prisons with such a mixture of characters and quality, there must always be opportunities of crime desperate crime-such as ought to be not only kept out of sight of the less desperate class, but prevented from happening at all. In a page of the work before us we have Miss Carpenter's view of the necessity of such an arrangement as an ulterior convict prison, and the remarks of the Commissioners in par. 83 of their Report:

'Prisoners of such a class were formerly sent to people a new colony. Now they must remain at home; and it becomes very important that they should be placed in a separate and more penal convict prison, where arrangements should be made to provide more penal restriction, where they should be debarred from many of the advantages which they enjoy in the other convict prisons, and yet where the same principles of management which have been advocated in these volumes, should have full force. There should still be the possibility of the amelioration of their condition, and still a stimulus given to self-improvement, even if they should be destined never again to live at large in the world, condemned for their crimes to incarceration for life. Such a separate establishment has been strongly advocated by many persons highly experienced in convict treatment. Such a prison, conducted on the principles here advocated, and containing within its boundaries a sufficient enclosure of land, might be made to contribute very largely to its own expenses, as we saw was the case in the later stages of the Irish prisons. Those persons who are under life-sentences might be safely detained there, and the public no longer witness the anomaly of crimes being actually committed by those whom they believed from their sentence to be for ever prevented from injuring the public. The Commissioners make some very important observations on this object (par. 83):

"Sentences for life should, we think, be only passed on men guilty of very aggravated crimes, but when passed, they ought really to imply that those who have incurred them, shall never again be allowed to return to society, either at home, or in a colony, unless the mercy of the Crown should be extended to them on special grounds. After a certain time, if they behave well, the severity of their punishment might properly be relaxed, but they never ought to regain even the qualified freedom of the holder of a ticket-ofleave. If, however, they are to be kept in perpetual confinement, this punishment may be inflicted more safely and more conveniently at home than in a colony. Should this rule as to the enforcement of sentences for life be adopted, the courts before which offenders are tried would naturally make a distinction between the most atrocious criminals, and those whose guilt, though aggravated, is one degree less, by passing sentences for life on the former only, and on the latter sentences for a definite, though in some cases, a very long term of years." (Vol. ii. p. 301.)

We must call these bad subjects 'incorrigible,' because that is their understood description: but Miss Carpenter deprecates the adoption of it as literally and hopelessly true. Without desiring to discountenance her general view of the possible redemption of the worst sinners, we must yet see and admit that there are, in such an order of degraded beings as our criminal class, not a few who are precluded from amendment by physical conditions, original or induced, but irreversible. The existence of such doomed wretches will render life-sentences and lifelong seclusion necessary, for as far forward as we can see; and this fact should quicken our diligence in providing a proper receptacle in which to confine the curse that we cannot remove. We may hope that the number of these human devils will materially diminish; and we may fairly anticipate that some of our difficulties will die out with the criminal generation that we have encouraged by the uncertainty of our purposes and the fickleness of our systems. In many recent circumstances we see the promise of a marked decrease in the criminal class when the present generation shall have passed away; and in works like this of Miss Carpenter, we find such incitement and guidance as we want in doing our part, as society in all its orders should, in keeping watch over the safety and the virtue of the community.

ART. III.-1. The Rock-cut Temples of India, illustrated by Seventy-four Photographs taken on the spot by Major GILL. Described by JAMES FERGUSSON, F. R.S., M.R.A.S. London: 1864.

2. Life in Ancient India. By Mrs. SPEIR. London: 1856. 3. Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. XIV. January, 1851. Vol. VI.

ΟΝ

N the northern edge of the great plateau of the Dekhan, whose precipitous sides form the southern boundary of the low-lying provinces of Khandeish and Berar, and at the head of a famous pass or gorge in the mountains, through which streams of traffic and travellers--armies of invaders and invaded -of conquerors and conquered, Hindu, Mahomedan, and British, have poured for centuries-stands the picturesque town of Ajunta, which gives its name to the pass in question. The town itself, now much decayed, is situated in the territory of His Highness the Nizam. From its elevated situation, more than two thousand feet above the sea and a thousand

above the plain below, commanding the rich grain supplies of the fertile plateau to the south, as well as the high roads to and from the pass in question-it has been esteemed, in all times, one of the most important military positions of the Dekhan. Immediately at the foot of the pass, in the plain which stretches out northwards without a break to the river Taptee and city of Boorhanpoor, the boundary of the British province of Khandeish commences; and it will thus be understood, that to the north of the mountain boundary the territory is British; to the south, it belongs to the Nizam.

The portion of the Dekhan table-land on which Ajunta is situated is, in many respects, one of the most interesting in India. At its south-west corner stands the unique and famous rock-cut fortress of Dowlatabad; and near it, that is, eight miles to the east, the comparatively modern city of Aurungabad, founded by the emperor Aurungzeeb. Before the first invasion of the Dekhan by the Mahomedans in A.D. 1294, this fort was called Deogurh, the God's fort, and it was the capital of the ancient Mahratta family of Jadow-then one of the greatest of the Hindu princes of Maharashtra. It is at this place that the wonders of ancient rock-cutting commence. Here, a lofty isolated hill of trap-rock standing in the plain, outlying the main range of the plateau, was cut down, or scarped all round through its side of solid rock, to a height of from eighty to one hundred and thirty feet. A broad ditch was excavated below this, and a passage dug through the centre of the hill, which led to barracks and magazines above. By these means a place of retreat and defence was created, which for centuries was impregnable to all attack from without. It is difficult in words to give an accurate idea of this curious fort. The hill is more than as high again as the castle of Edinburgh, and stands on at least four times as much ground. The precipice towards the castle gardens resembles the artificially scarped face of the Deogurh rock; and yet, if the reader can imagine such a scarp carried round the whole of the castlehill, it will give him but a faint idea of the stupendous reality of this Indian fort, or of the vast labour bestowed upon it. Strong as it is, the Jadow family found it no place of refuge against the persevering and victorious Mahomedans; and were eventually, and after many vicissitudes, obliged to retreat to possessions in the Western Ghauts, where the descendants of that dynasty still enjoy the remains of their ancient estates. Mahomed Toghluk, emperor of Delhi, on his visit to the Dekhan in 1338, was so charmed with Deogurh and its situation that he resolved to make it the capital of his dominions, and named it

Dowlatabad, the abode of wealth,' which name it has since retained. The emperor's attempt to remove the population of Delhi en masse to the new capital was abortive; but he rebuilt the fortifications on the Mahomedan system, and mosques, colleges, barracks, magazines, and palaces were commenced, the ruins of which are still everywhere apparent within the enceinte. Subsequently, though always an important military station in the Dekhan, Dowlatabad never rose to the dignity of a capital, and has now dwindled to a small provincial town. As the frontispiece to the work before us, a small but very perfect view of this hill fort is given-one of Major Gill's vignette photographs. In this, the extent of the hill, its height above the plain around it, and the relative proportion of the scarp to the hill itself, are most intelligibly represented; and we have to regret that a few nearer views of the fort, particularly in illustration of the magnitude of the escarpment, and the breadth and depth of the ditch at its foot, were not given to illustrate the mode of work employed. To this day, the strokes of the pick are visible, as sharp and distinct as when struck, from which it may be inferred that the rock was of a comparatively soft character: but the exposed surface is now very hard.

Ascending the pass by Dowlatabad, the table-land to the north abounds with most interesting remains, many of which, hardly known hitherto, would well repay antiquarian research. Here, south of the high road to Roza and Ellora, are traces of a large ancient city, indicated by mounds and even the forms of streets, which are met with among the cultivated fields. No record or legend remains of this city; but there are many considerations which lead to an hypothesis, that it was either Tagara or Plithana, described in the Periplus- the exact situations of which no one has been able to define. All we know is, that one of these cities was situated twenty days' journey south of Barygaza or Baroche, and in this respect the site we speak of is nearly exact. Mr. Elphinstone explains (vol. i. p. 430) that Plithana may, from a mistake of a letter in the Greek, A for A, have been Paithana; and hence also Colonel Wilford has assumed that Paithan, the modern Moongy-Paithan, may be the original Paithana or Plithana. This modern town is about forty miles to the south of Dowlatabad, upon the left bank of the Godavery, and is celebrated for its muslin and brocade manufactures: but there are no remains as of a great city near it, and it stands in a wide plain without any defence whatever. This Paithan is by some assumed to have been the capital of Shalivahana, the Potter king, so renowned in Dekhan annals, who reigned in the first century of the Christian era; but considering

the splendour of his monarchy, it would hardly seem possible that no remains of his capital should have survived. Paithan, or Puttun, signifies however a city' only, and Plithana, or Paithana, may as easily, nay, more probably, be the ancient and mysterious city near Deogurh, as the modern Pyetun or Puttun on the Godavery. Long anterior to the occupation of Deogurh by the Jadow family, the ancient city near it may have flourished as the capital of a monarchy; the fort and its defences may have been the abode and retreat of royalty, while the mercantile and other classes of the population lived separate from the city, on the table-land two or three miles distant and perfectly accessible from the fort-an arrangement consistent with the habits of Hindu communities at the present day.

A few miles after the ascent of the pass, the picturesque village of Roza, or the garden,' is met with, celebrated as the burialplace of the emperor Aurungzeeb, whose last desire was to rest near the mausoleum of a venerated saint interred there. This holy person's mausoleum faces the emperor's, and is a much more pretentious building than that which encloses the monarch's humble grave. In the centre of a court of plain cloisters, under a simple mound of earth, with a trellis over it, on which is trained a jessamine, the mortal remains of the great emperor lie. No doubt the instructions in his curious will, by which he directed that his funeral expenses should not exceed four and a half rupees, or nine shillings, the proceeds of caps he had embroidered and sold, and that the 805 rupees (807. 10s.) he had accumulated from the sale of copies of the Koran written by his own hand, should be given to the poor-were literally carried out; but a small establishment is still supported by the endowments of the tomb, to read the Koran, and perform stated ceremonies. The Roza,' or cemetery, is without the town walls; and there the fine mausoleum of Zur Zurré, Zur Buksh, the threshold of whose tomb is inlaid with gold and silver coins the offerings of his devotees, and some stately tombs of kings of Ahmednugger, of the Nizam Shahy dynasty, and their dependants, stand among groves of mango trees, on the crest of the hill overlooking the plain. All these comparatively modern objects of interest are situated above those greatest of the remains of this locality, the Cave Temples of Ellora; and a short walk from the ridge of the table-land, down a road which has been cleared in the face of the hill, leads to these wonderful remains of Buddhist and Hindu art.

6

Here, for about two miles, the side of the plateau, sometimes nearly perpendicular, sometimes sloping into the plain, has been pierced for cave temples, cut in the solid rock, which (an amyg