A GREAT DISCOVERY.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1915, Page 5

A GREAT DISCOVERY.

Some time ago the excavations at Patliputra, the ancient Asokan capital near Patna, which liave been going on for years, disclosed among other buildings a gigantic hall containing a number ot pillars. The Indian archaeological department has now evolved the highly interesting theory that the plan of this hall bears a more than striking resemblance to the famous hall of a hundred columns at Persepolis, in Persia, the hall which Omar Khayyam refers , to. The ground plan of this ruin, according to Dr. Spooner, who has been writing a report upon the excavations, "exhibits a pronounced similarity in essential features with the famous hall of a hundred columns at Persepolis, and this, together with certain other established points of similarity would seem at present to indicate a probable connection between the two." Continuing the reading of his "sermon in stone," Dr. Spooner states that this great edifice remained in use for several centuries, probably till about the beginning of the Christian era. Then there came a great flood, caused, not improbably, by the Ganges changing its course, as it has a habit of doing when its banks are not trained, and the result was that eight or nine feet of silt was deposited all over the level floor. The destruction of the building was apparently completed by a firo which took place about the fifth oca-