Lost Cities of Asia

Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia.

This volume is the fruit of visits paid to the troubled peninsula of Indo-China and to Ceylon during 1960 and 1961, when the road to Pagan, in particular, was already beset with obstacles which have since made the fabulous “City of Pagodas” almost inaccessible.

The great classical cultures of Ceylon, Burma and Cambodia were united, for all their individuality and diversity, by a common bond: their spiritual allegiance to the same fountainhead. It was India, at the apogee of her glory – and ranking with China and Rome as the great centres of world culture of the time – that brought the flame of civilisation to all three areas and imposed the indelible stamp of her religious, philosophical, technical and artistic heritage.

This she achieved not through force but by voluntary acceptance of her manifestly superior gifts on the part of eager and apt pupils.