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By JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S, M.R.A.S.,

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS,
MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF DILETTANTI,
ETC. ETC. ETC.



Tope at Manikyala.


FORMING THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE NEW EDITION OF THE
‘HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.’


LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1891.

The right of Translation is reserved.
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LONDON. WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.{v}

During the nine years that have elapsed since I last wrote on this subject,[1] very considerable progress has been made in the elucidation of many of the problems that still perplex the student of the History of Indian Architecture. The publication of the five volumes of General Cunningham’s ‘Archæological Reports’ has thrown new light on many obscure points, but generally from an archæological rather than from an architectural point of view; and Mr. Burgess’s researches among the western caves and the structural temples of the Bombay presidency have added greatly not only to our stores of information, but to the precision of our knowledge regarding them.

For the purpose of such a work as this, however, photography has probably done more than anything that has been written. There are now very few buildings in India—of any importance at least—which have not been photographed with more or less completeness; and for purposes of comparison such collections of photographs as are now available are simply invaluable. For detecting similarities, or distinguishing differences between specimens situated at distances from one another, photographs are almost equal to actual personal inspection, and, when sufficiently numerous, afford a picture of Indian art of the utmost importance to anyone attempting to describe it.

These new aids, added to our previous stock of knowledge, are {vi}probably sufficient to justify us in treating the architecture of India Proper in the quasi-exhaustive manner in which it is attempted, in the first 600 pages of this work. Its description might, of course, be easily extended even beyond these limits, but without plans and more accurate architectural details than we at present possess, any such additions would practically contribute very little that was valuable to the information the work already contains.

The case is different when we turn to Further India. Instead of only 150 pages and 50 illustrations, both these figures ought at least to be doubled to bring that branch of the subject up to the same stage of completeness as that describing the architecture of India Proper. For this, however, the materials do not at present exist. Of Japan we know almost nothing except from photographs, without plans, dimensions, or dates; and, except as regards Pekin and the Treaty Ports, we know almost as little of China. We know a great deal about one or two buildings in Cambodia and Java, but our information regarding all the rest is so fragmentary and incomplete, that it is hardly available for the purposes of a general history, and the same may be said of Burmah and Siam. Ten years hence this deficiency may be supplied, and it may then be possible to bring the whole into harmony. At present a slight sketch indicating the relative position of each, and their relation to the styles of India Proper, is all that can well be accomplished.

Although appearing as the third volume of the second edition of the ‘General History of Architecture,’ the present may be considered as an independent and original work. In the last edition the Indian chapters extended only to about 300 pages, with 200 illustrations,[2] and though most of the woodcuts reappear in the present volume, more than half the original text has been cancelled, and consequently at least 600 pages of the present work are original matter, and 200 illustrations—and these by far the most important—have been added. These, with the new chronological and topographical details, present the subject to the English reader in a more compact and complete form than has been attempted in any work on Indian architecture hitherto published. It does not, as I feel only too keenly, contain all the information that could be desired, but I am afraid it contains{vii} nearly all that the materials at present available will admit of being utilised, in a general history of the style.

When I published my first work on Indian architecture thirty years ago, I was reproached for making dogmatic assertions, and propounding theories which I did not even attempt to sustain. The defect was, I am afraid, inevitable. My conclusions were based upon the examination of the actual buildings throughout the three Presidencies of India and in China during ten years’ residence in the East, and to have placed before the world the multitudinous details which were the ground of my generalisations, would have required an additional amount of description and engravings which was not warranted by the interest felt in the subject at that time. The numerous engravings in the present volume, the extended letterpress, and the references to works of later labourers in the wide domain of Indian architecture, will greatly diminish, but cannot entirely remove, the old objection. No man can direct his mind for forty years to the earnest investigation of any department of knowledge, and not become acquainted with a host of particulars, and acquire a species of insight which neither time, nor space, nor perhaps the resources of language will permit him to reproduce in their fulness. I possess, to give a single instance, more than 3000 photographs of Indian buildings, with which constant use has made me as familiar as with any other object that is perpetually before my eyes, and to recapitulate all the information they convey to long-continued scrutiny, would be an endless, if not indeed an impossible undertaking. The necessities of the case demand that broad results should often be given when the evidence for the statements must be merely indicated or greatly abridged, and if the conclusions sometimes go beyond the appended proofs, I can only ask my readers to believe that the assertions are not speculative fancies, but deductions from facts. My endeavour from the first has been to present a distinct view of the general principles which have governed the historical development of Indian architecture, and my hope is that those who pursue the subject beyond the pages of the present work, will find that the principles I have enunciated will reduce to order the multifarious details, and that the details in turn will confirm the principles. Though the vast amount of fresh knowledge which has gone on accumulating since I commenced my{viii} investigations has enabled me to correct, modify, and enlarge my views, yet the classification I adopted, and the historical sequences I pointed out thirty years since, have in their essential outlines been confirmed, and will continue, I trust, to stand good. Many subsidiary questions remain unsettled, but my impression is, that not a few of the discordant opinions that may be observed, arise principally from the different courses which inquirers have pursued in their investigations. Some men of great eminence and learning, more conversant with books than buildings, have naturally drawn their knowledge and inferences from written authorities, none of which are contemporaneous with the events they relate, and all of which have been avowedly altered and falsified in later times. My authorities, on the contrary, have been mainly the imperishable records in the rocks, or on sculptures and carvings, which necessarily represented at the time the faith and feelings of those who executed them, and which retain their original impress to this day. In such a country as India, the chisels of her sculptors are, so far as I can judge, immeasurably more to be trusted than the pens of her authors. These secondary points, however, may well await the solution which time and further study will doubtless supply. In the meanwhile, I shall have realised a long-cherished dream if I have succeeded in popularising the subject by rendering its principles generally intelligible, and can thus give an impulse to its study, and assist in establishing Indian architecture on a stable basis, so that it may take its true position among the other great styles which have ennobled the arts of mankind.

The publication of this volume completes the history of the ‘Architecture in all Countries, from the earliest times to the present day, in four volumes,’ and there it must at present rest. As originally projected, it was intended to have added a fifth volume on ‘Rude Stone Monuments,’ which is still wanted to make the series quite complete; but, as explained in the preface to my work bearing that title, the subject was not, when it was written, ripe for a historical treatment, and the materials collected were consequently used in an argumentative essay. Since that work was published, in 1872, no serious examination of its arguments has been undertaken by any competent authority, while every new fact that has come to light{ix}—especially in India—has served to confirm me more and more in the correctness of the principles I then tried to establish.[3] Unless, however, the matter is taken up seriously, and re-examined by those who, from their position, have the ear of the public in these matters, no such progress will be made as would justify the publication of a second work on the same subject. I consequently see no chance of my ever having an opportunity of taking up the subject again, so as to be able to describe its objects in a more consecutive or more exhaustive manner than was done in the work just alluded to.

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One of the great difficulties that meets every one attempting to write on Indian subjects at the present day is to know how to spell Indian proper names. The Gilchristian mode of using double vowels, which was fashionable fifty years ago, has now been entirely done away with, as contrary to the spirit of Indian orthography, though it certainly is the mode which enables the ordinary Englishman to pronounce Indian names with the greatest readiness and certainty. On the other hand, an attempt is now being made to form out of the ordinary English alphabet a more extended one, by accents over the vowels, and dots under the consonants, and other devices, so that every letter of the Devanagari or Arabic alphabets shall have an exact equivalent in this one.

In attempting to print Sanscrit or Persian books in Roman characters, such a system is indispensable, but if used for printing Indian names in English books, intended principally for the use of Englishmen, it seems to me to add not only immensely to the repulsiveness of the subject, but to lead to the most ludicrous mistakes. According to this alphabet for instance, ḍ with dot under it represents a consonant we pronounce as r; but as not one educated Englishman in 10,000 is aware of this fact, he reads such words as Kattiwaḍ, Chîtoḍ, and Himaḍpanti as if spelt literally with a d, though they are pronounced Kattiwar, Chittore, and Himarpanti, and are so written in all books hitherto published, and the two first are so spelt in all maps hitherto engraved. A hundred years hence, when Sanscrit and Indian alphabets are taught in all schools in England, it may be otherwise, but in the present state of knowledge on the subject some simpler plan seems more expedient.

In the following pages I have consequently used the Jonesian system, as nearly as may be, as it was used by Prinsep, or the late Professor Wilson, but avoiding as far as possible all accents, except over vowels where they were necessary for the pronunciation. Over such words as Nâga, Râjâ, or Hindû—as in Tree and Serpent worship—I have omitted accents altogether as wholly unnecessary for the pronunciation. An accent, however, seems indispensable over the â in Lât, to prevent it being read as Lath in English, as I have heard done, or over the î in such words as Hullabîd, to prevent its being read as short bid in English.

Names of known places I have in all instances tried to leave as they are usually spelt, and are found on maps. I have, for instance, left Oudeypore, the capital of the Rajput state, spelt as Tod and others always spelt it, but, to prevent the two places being confounded, have taken the liberty of spelling the name of a small unknown village, where there is a temple, Udaipur—though I believe the names are the same. I have tried, in short, to accommodate my spelling as nearly as possible to the present state of knowledge or ignorance of the English public, without much reference to scientific precision, as I feel sure that by this means the nomenclature may become much less repulsive than it too generally must be to the ordinary English student of Indian history and art.{xi}

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It is in vain, perhaps, to expect that the Literature or the Arts of any other people can be so interesting to even the best educated Europeans as those of their own country. Until it is forced on their attention, few are aware how much education does to concentrate attention within a very narrow field of observation. We become familiar in the nursery with the names of the heroes of Greek and Roman history. In every school their history and their arts are taught, memorials of their greatness meet us at every turn through life, and their thoughts and aspirations become, as it were, part of ourselves. So, too, with the Middle Ages: their religion is our religion; their architecture our architecture, and their history fades so insensibly into our own, that we can draw no line of demarcation that would separate us from them. How different is the state of feeling, when from this familiar home we turn to such a country as India. Its geography is hardly taught in schools, and seldom mastered perfectly; its history is a puzzle; its literature a mythic dream; its arts a quaint perplexity. But, above all, the names of its heroes and great men are so unfamiliar and so unpronounceable, that, except a few of those who go to India, scarcely any ever become so acquainted with them, that they call up any memories which are either pleasing or worth dwelling upon.

Were it not for this, there is probably no country—out of Europe at least—that would so well repay attention as India. None, where all the problems of natural science or of art are presented to us in so distinct and so pleasing a form. Nowhere does nature show herself in such grand and such luxurious features, and nowhere does humanity exist in more varied and more pleasing conditions. Side by side with the intellectual Brahman caste, and the chivalrous Rajput, are found the wild Bhîl and the naked Gond, not antagonistic and warring{4} one against the other, as elsewhere, but living now as they have done for thousands of years, each content with his own lot, and prepared to follow, without repining, in the footsteps of his forefathers.

It cannot, of course, be for one moment contended that India ever reached the intellectual supremacy of Greece, or the moral greatness of Rome; but, though on a lower step of the ladder, her arts are more original and more varied, and her forms of civilisation present an ever-changing variety, such as are nowhere else to be found. What, however, really renders India so interesting as an object of study is that it is now a living entity. Greece and Rome are dead and have passed away, and we are living so completely in the midst of modern Europe, that we cannot get outside to contemplate it as a whole. But India is a complete cosmos in itself; bounded on the north by the Himalayas, on the south by the sea, on the east by impenetrable jungle, and only on the west having one door of communication, across the Indus, open to the other world. Across that stream, nation after nation have poured their myriads into her coveted domain, but no reflex waves ever mixed her people with those beyond her boundaries.

In consequence of all this, every problem of anthropology or ethnography can be studied here more easily than anywhere else; every art has its living representative, and often of the most pleasing form; every science has its illustration, and many on a scale not easily matched elsewhere. But, notwithstanding all this, in nine cases out of ten, India and Indian matters fail to interest, because they are to most people new and unfamiliar. The rudiments have not been mastered when young, and, when grown up, few men have the leisure or the inclination to set to work to learn the forms of a new world, demanding both care and study; and till this is attained, it can hardly be hoped that the arts and the architecture of India will interest a European reader to the same extent as those styles treated of in the previous volumes of this work.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, it may still be possible to present the subject of Indian architecture in such a form as to be interesting, even if not attractive. To do this, however, the narrative form must be followed as far as is compatible with such a subject. All technical and unfamiliar names must be avoided wherever it is possible to do so, and the whole accompanied with a sufficient number of illustrations to enable its forms to be mastered without difficulty. Even if this is attended to, no one volume can tell the whole of so varied and so complex a history. Without preliminary or subsequent study it can hardly be expected that so new and so vast a subject can be grasped; but one volume may contain a complete outline of the whole, and enable any one who wishes for more information to know where to look for it, or how to appreciate it when found.{5}

Whether successful or not, it seems well worth while that an attempt should be made to interest the public in Indian architectural art; first, because the artist and architect will certainly acquire broader and more varied views of their art by its study than they can acquire from any other source. More than this, any one who masters the subject sufficiently to be able to understand their art in its best and highest forms, will rise from the study with a kindlier feeling towards the nations of India, and a higher—certainly a correcter—appreciation of their social status than could be obtained from their literature, or from anything that now exists in their anomalous social and political position.

Notwithstanding all this, many may be inclined to ask, Is it worth while to master all the geographical and historical details necessary to unravel so tangled a web as this, and then try to become so familiar with their ever-varying forms as not only to be able to discriminate between the different styles, but also to follow them through all their ceaseless changes?

My impression is that this question may fairly be answered in the affirmative. No one has a right to say that he understands the history of architecture who leaves out of his view the works of an immense portion of the human race, which has always shown itself so capable of artistic development. But, more than this, architecture in India is still a living art, practised on the principles which caused its wonderful development in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries; and there, consequently, and there alone, the student of architecture has a chance of seeing the real principles of the art in action. In Europe, at the present day, architecture is practised in a manner so anomalous and abnormal that few, if any, have hitherto been able to shake off the influence of a false system, and to see that the art of ornamental building can be based on principles of common sense; and that, when so practised, the result not only is, but must be, satisfactory. Those who have an opportunity of seeing what perfect buildings the ignorant uneducated natives of India are now producing, will easily understand how success may be achieved, while those who observe what failures the best educated and most talented architects in Europe are constantly perpetrating, may, by a study of Indian models, easily see why this must inevitably be the result. It is only in India that the two systems can now be seen practised side by side—the educated and intellectual European always failing because his principles are wrong, the feeble and uneducated native as inevitably succeeding because his principles are right. The Indian builders think only of what they are doing, and how they can best produce the effect they desire. In the European system it is considered more essential that a building, especially in its details, should be a correct copy of something else,{6} than good in itself or appropriate to its purpose; hence the difference in the result.

In one other respect India affords a singularly favourable field to the student of architecture. In no other country of the same extent are there so many distinct nationalities, each retaining its old faith and its old feelings, and impressing these on its art. There is consequently no country where the outlines of ethnology as applied to art can be so easily perceived, or their application to the elucidation of the various problems so pre-eminently important. The mode in which the art has been practised in Europe for the last three centuries has been very confusing. In India it is clear and intelligible. No one can look at the subject without seeing its importance, and no one can study the art as practised there without recognising what the principles of the science really are.

In addition, however, to these scientific advantages, it will undoubtedly be conceded by those who are familiar with the subject that for certain qualities the Indian buildings are unrivalled. They display an exuberance of fancy, a lavishness of labour, and an elaboration of detail to be found nowhere else. They may contain nothing so sublime as the hall at Karnac, nothing so intellectual as the Parthenon, nor so constructively grand as a mediæval cathedral; but for certain other qualities—not perhaps of the highest kind, yet very important in architectural art—the Indian buildings stand alone. They consequently fill up a great gap in our knowledge of the subject, which without them would remain a void.

History.

One of the greatest difficulties that exist—perhaps the greatest—in exciting an interest in Indian antiquities arises from the fact, that India has no history properly so called, before the Mahomedan invasion in the 13th century. Had India been a great united kingdom, like China, with a long line of dynasties and well-recorded dates attached to them, the task would have been comparatively easy; but nothing of the sort exists or ever existed within her boundaries. On the contrary, so far as our knowledge extends, India has always been occupied by three or four different races of mankind, who have never amalgamated so as to become one people, and each of these races have been again subdivided into numerous tribes or small nationalities nearly, sometimes wholly, independent of each other—and, what is worse than all, not one of them ever kept a chronicle or preserved a series of dates commencing from any well-known era.[4]{7}

The absence of any historical record is the more striking, because India possesses a written literature equal to, if not surpassing in variety and extent, that possessed by any other nation, before the invention, or at least before the adoption and use, of printing. The Vedas themselves, with their Upanishads and Brahmanas, and the commentaries on them, form a literature in themselves of vast extent, and some parts of which are as old, possibly older, than any written works that are now known to exist; and the Puranas, though comparatively modern, make up a body of doctrine mixed with mythology and tradition such as few nations can boast of. Besides this, however, are two great epics, surpassing in extent, if not in merit, those of any ancient nation, and a drama of great beauty, written at periods extending through a long series of years. In addition to those we have treatises on law, on grammar, on astronomy, on metaphysics and mathematics, on almost every branch of mental science—a literature extending in fact to some 10,000 or 11,000 works, but in all this not one book that can be called historical. No man in India, so far as is known, ever thought of recording the events of his own life or of repeating the previous experience of others, and it was only at some time subsequent to the Christian Era that they ever thought of establishing eras from which to date deeds or events.

All this is the more curious because in Ceylon we have, in the ‘Mahawanso,’ and other books of a like nature, a consecutive history of that island, with dates which may be depended upon within very narrow limits of error, for periods extending from B.C. 250 to the present time. At the other extremity of India, we have also in the Raja Tarangini of Kashmir, a work which Professor Wilson characterised as “the only Sanscrit composition yet discovered to which the title of History can with any propriety be applied.”[5] As we at present, however, possess it, it hardly helps us to any historical data earlier than the Christian Era, and even after that its dates for some centuries are by no means fixed and certain.

In India Proper, however, we have no such guides as even these, but for written history are almost wholly dependent on the Puranas. They do furnish us with one list of kings’ names, with the length of their reigns, so apparently truthful that they may, within narrow limits, be depended upon. They are only, however, of one range{8} of dynasties—probably, however, the paramount one—and extend only from the accession of Chandragupta—the Sandrocottus of the Greeks—B.C. 325, to the decline of the Andra dynasty, about A.D. 400 or 408. It seems probable we may find sufficient confirmation of these lists as far back as the Anjana era, B.C. 691, so as to include the period marked by the life and labours of Sakya Muni—the present Buddha—in our chronology, with tolerable certainty. All the chronology before that period is purposely and avowedly falsified by the introduction of the system of Yugs, in order to carry back the origin of the Brahmanical system into the regions of the most fabulous antiquity. From the 5th century onwards, when the Puranas began to be put into their present form, in consequence of the revival of the Brahmanical religion, instead of recording contemporary events, they purposely confused them so as to maintain their prophetic character, and prevent the detection of the falsehood of their claim to an antiquity equal to that of the Vedas. For Indian history after the 5th century we are consequently left mainly to inscriptions on monuments or on copper-plates, to coins, and to the works of foreigners for the necessary information with which the natives of the country itself have neglected to supply us. These probably will be found eventually to be at least sufficient for the purposes of chronology. Already such progress has been made in the decipherment of inscriptions and the arrangement of coins, that all the dynasties may be arranged consecutively, and even the date of the reigns of almost all the kings in the north of India have been already approximately ascertained. In the south of India so much has not been done, but this is more because there have been fewer labourers in the field than from want of materials. There are literally thousands of inscriptions in the south which have not been copied, and of the few that have been collected only a very small number have been translated; but they are such as to give us hope that, when the requisite amount of labour is bestowed upon them, we shall be able to fix the chronology of the kings of the south with a degree of certainty sufficient for all ordinary purposes.[6]

It is a far more difficult task to ascertain whether we shall ever recover the History of India before the time of the advent of Buddha, or before the Anjana epoch, B.C. 691. Here we certainly will find no coins or inscriptions to guide us, and no buildings to illustrate the arts, or to mark the position of cities, while all ethnographic traces have become so blurred, if not obliterated, that they serve us little as guides through the labyrinth. Yet on the other hand there is so large{9} a mass of literature—such as it is—bearing on the subject, that we cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Meanwhile, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows intelligible.

Aryans.

At some very remote period in the world’s history—for reasons stated in the Appendix I believe it to have been at about the epoch called by the Hindus the Kali Yug, or B.C. 3101—the Aryans, a Sanscrit-speaking people, entered India across the Upper Indus, coming from Central Asia. For a long time they remained settled in the Punjab, or on the banks of the Sarasvati, then a more important stream than now, the main body, however, still remaining to the westward of the Indus. If, however, we may trust our chronology, we find them settled 2000 years before the Christian Era, in Ayodhya, and then in the plenitude of their power. It was about that time apparently that the event took place which formed the groundwork of the far more modern poem known as the ‘Ramayana.’ The pure Aryans, still uncontaminated by admixture with the blood of the natives, then seem to have attained the height of their prosperity in India, and to have carried their victorious arms, it may be, as far south as Ceylon. There is, however, no reason to suppose that they at that time formed any permanent settlements in the Deccan, but it was at all events opened to their missionaries, and by slow degrees imbibed that amount of Brahmanism which eventually pervaded the whole of the south. Seven or eight hundred years after that time, or it may be about or before B.C. 1200, took place those events which form the theme of the more ancient epic known as the ‘Mahabharata,’ which opens up an entirely new view of Indian social life. If the heroes of that poem were Aryans at all, they were of a much less pure type than those who composed the songs of the Vedas, or are depicted in the verses of the ‘Ramayana.’ Their polyandry, their drinking bouts, their gambling tastes, and love of fighting, mark them as a very different race from the peaceful shepherd immigrants of the earlier age, and point much more distinctly towards a Tartar, trans-Himalayan origin, than to the cradle of the Aryan stock in Central Asia. As if to mark the difference of which they themselves felt the existence, they distinguished themselves, by name, as belonging to a Lunar race,{10} distinct from, and generally antagonistic to, the Solar race, which was the proud distinction of the purer and earlier Aryan settlers in India.

Five or six hundred years after this, or about B.C. 700, we again find a totally different state of affairs in India. The Aryans no longer exist as a separate nationality, and neither the Solar nor the Lunar race are the rulers of the earth. The Brahmans have become a priestly caste, and share the power with the Kshatriyas, a race of far less purity of descent. The Vaisyas, as merchants and husbandmen, have become a power, and even the Sudras are acknowledged as a part of the body politic; and, though not mentioned in the Scriptures, the Nagas, or Snake people, had become a most influential part of the population. They are first mentioned in the ‘Mahabharata,’ where they play a most important part in causing the death of Parikshit, which led to the great sacrifice for the destruction of the Nagas by Janemajaya, which practically closes the history of the time. Destroyed, however, they were not, as it was under a Naga dynasty that ascended the throne of Magadha, in 691, that Buddha was born, B.C. 623, and the Nagas were the people whose conversion placed Buddhism on a secure basis in India, and led to its ultimate adoption by Asoka (B.C. 250) as the religion of the State.[7]

Although Buddhism was first taught by a prince of the Solar race, and consequently of purely Aryan blood, and though its first disciples were Brahmans, it had as little affinity with the religion of the Vedas as Christianity had with the Pentateuch, and its fate was the same. The one religion was taught by one of Jewish extraction to the Jews and for the Jews; but it was ultimately rejected by them, and adopted by the Gentiles, who had no affinity of race or religion with the inhabitants of Judæa. Though meant originally, no doubt, for Aryans, the Buddhist religion was ultimately rejected by the Brahmans, who were consequently utterly eclipsed and superseded by it for nearly a thousand years; and we hear little or nothing of them and their religion till they reappeared at the court of the great Vicramaditya (490-530), when their religion began to assume that strange shape which it now still retains in India. In its new form it is as unlike the pure religion of the Vedas as it is possible to conceive one religion being to another; unlike that, also, of the older portions of the ‘Mahabharata’; but a confused mess of local superstitions and imported myths, covering up and hiding the Vedantic and Buddhist doctrines, which may sometimes be detected as underlying it. Whatever it be, however, it cannot be the religion of an Aryan, or even of a purely Turanian people, because it was invented by and for as{11} mixed a population as probably were ever gathered together into one country—a people whose feelings and superstitions it only too truly represents.

Dravidians.

Although, therefore, as was hinted above, there might be no great difficulty in recovering all the main incidents and leading features of the history of the Aryans, from their first entry into India till they were entirely absorbed into the mass of the population some time before the Christian Era, there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that their history would fully represent the ancient history of the country. The Dravidians are a people who, in historical times, seem to have been probably as numerous as the pure Aryans, and at the present day form one-fifth of the whole population of India. As Turanians, which they seem certainly to be, they belong, it is true, to a lower intellectual status than the Aryans, but they have preserved their nationality pure and unmixed, and, such as they were at the dawn of history, so they seem to be now.

Their settlement in India extends to such remote pre-historic times, that we cannot feel even sure that we should regard them as immigrants, or, at least, as either conquerors or colonists on a large scale, but rather as aboriginal in the sense in which that term is usually understood. Generally it is assumed that they entered India across the Lower Indus, leaving the cognate Brahui in Belochistan as a mark of the road by which they came, and, as the affinities of their language seem to be with the Ugrians and northern Turanian tongues, this view seems probable.[8] But they have certainly left no trace of their migrations anywhere between the Indus and the Nerbudda, and all the facts of their history, so far as they are known, would seem to lead to an opposite conclusion. The hypothesis that would represent what we know of their history most correctly would place their original seat in the extreme south, somewhere probably not far from Madura or Tanjore, and thence spreading fan-like towards the north, till they met the Aryans on the Vindhya Mountains. The question, again, is not of much importance for our present purposes, as they do not seem to have reached that degree of civilisation at any period anterior to the Christian Era which would enable them to practise any of the arts of civilised life with success, so as to bring them within the scope of a work devoted to the history of art.

It may be that at some future period, when we know more of the ancient arts of these Dravidians than we now do, and have become familiar with the remains of the Accadians or early Turanian in{12}habitants of Babylonia, we may detect affinities which may throw some light on this very obscure part of history. At present, however, the indications are much too hazy to be at all relied upon. Geographically, however, one thing seems tolerably clear. If the Dravidians came into India in historical times, it was not from Central Asia that they migrated, but from Babylonia, or some such southern region of the Asiatic continent.

Dasyus.

In addition to these two great distinct and opposite nationalities, there exists in India a third, which, in pre-Buddhist times, was as numerous, perhaps even more so, than either the Aryans or Dravidians, but of whose history we know even less than we do of the two others. Ethnologists have not yet been even able to agree on a name by which to call them. I have suggested Dasyus,[9] a slave people, as that is the name by which the Aryans designated them when they found them there on their first entrance into India, and subjected them to their sway. Whoever they were, they seem to have been a people of a very inferior intellectual capacity to either the Aryans or Dravidians, and it is by no means clear that they could ever of themselves have risen to such a status as either to form a great community capable of governing themselves, and consequently having a history,[10] or whether they must always have remained in the low and barbarous position in which we now find some of their branches. When the Aryans first entered India they seem to have found them occupying the whole valley of the Ganges—the whole country in fact between the Vindhya and the Himalayan Mountains.[11] At present they are only found in anything like purity in the mountain ranges that bound that great plain. There they are known as Bhîls, Coles, Sontals, Nagas, and other mountains tribes. But they certainly form the lowest underlying stratum of the population over the whole of the Gangetic plain.[12] So far as their affinities have been ascertained, they are with{13} the trans-Himalayan population, and it either is that they entered India through the passes of that great mountain range, or it might be more correct to say that the Thibetans are a fragment of a great population that occupied both the northern and southern slope of that great chain of hills at some very remote pre-historic time.

Whoever they were, they were the people who, in remote times, were apparently the worshippers of Trees and Serpents; but what interests us more in them, and makes the inquiry into their history more desirable, is that they were the people who first adopted Buddhism in India, and they, or their congeners, are the only people who, in historic times, as now, adhered, or still adhere to, that form of faith. No purely Aryan people ever were, or ever could be, Buddhist, nor, so far as I know, were any Dravidian community ever converted to that faith. But in Bengal, in Ceylon, in Thibet, Burmah, Siam, and China, wherever a Thibetan people exists, or a people allied to them, there Buddhism flourished and now prevails. But in India the Dravidians resisted it in the south, and a revival of Aryanism abolished it in the north.

Architecturally, there is no difficulty in defining the limits of the Dasyu province: wherever a square tower-like temple exists with a perpendicular base, but a curvilinear outline above, such as that shown in the woodcut on the following page, there we may feel certain of the existence, past or present, of a people of Dasyu extraction, retaining their purity very nearly in the direct ratio to the number of these temples found in the district. Were it not consequently for the difficulty of introducing new names and obtaining acceptance to what is unfamiliar, the proper names for the style prevailing in northern India would be Dasyu style, instead of Indo-Aryan or Dasyu-Aryan which I have felt constrained to adopt. No one can accuse the pure Aryans of introducing this form in India, or of building temples at all, or of worshipping images of Siva or Vishnu, with which these temples are filled, and they consequently have little title to confer their name on the style. The Aryans had, however, become so impure in blood before these temples were erected, and were so mixed up with the Dasyus, and had so influenced their religion and the arts, that it may be better to retain a name which sounds familiar, and does not too sharply prejudge the question. Be this as it may, one thing seems tolerably clear, that the regions occupied by the Aryans in India were conterminous with those of the Dasyus, or, in other words,{14} that the Aryans conquered the whole of the aboriginal or native tribes who occupied the plains of northern India, and ruled over them to such an extent as materially to influence their religion and their arts, and also very materially to modify even their language. So much so, indeed, that after some four or five thousand years of domination we should not be surprised if we have some difficulty in recovering traces of the original population, and could probably not do so, if some fragments of the people had not sought refuge in the hills on the north and south of the great Gangetic plain, and there have remained fossilised, or at least sufficiently permanent for purposes of investigation.

Sisunaga Dynasty, B.C. 691 TO 325.

Leaving these, which must, for the present at least, be considered as practically pre-historic times, we tread on surer ground when we approach the period when Buddha was born, and devoted his life to rescue man from sin and suffering. There seems very little reason for doubting that he was born in the year 623, in the reign of Bimbasara, the fifth king of this dynasty, and died B.C. 543, at the age of eighty years, in the eighth year of Ajattasatru, the eighth king. New sources of information are opening out so rapidly regarding these times, that there seems little doubt we shall before long be able to recover a perfectly authentic account of the political events of that period, and as perfect a picture of the manners and the customs of those days. It is too true, however, that those who wrote{15} the biography of Buddha in subsequent ages so overlaid the simple narrative of his life with fables and absurdities, that it is now difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; but we have sculptures extending back to within three centuries of his death, at which time we may fairly assume that a purer tradition and correcter version of the Scriptures must have prevailed. From what has recently occurred, we may hope to creep even further back than this, and eventually to find early illustrations which will enable us to exercise so sound a criticism on the books as to enable us to restore the life of Buddha to such an extent, as to place it among the authentic records of the benefactors of mankind.

Immense progress has been made during the last thirty or forty years in investigating the origin of Buddhism, and the propagation of its doctrines in India, and in communicating the knowledge so gained to the public in Europe. Much, however, remains to be done before the story is complete, and divested of all the absurdities which subsequent commentators have heaped upon it; and more must yet be effected before the public can be rendered familiar with what is so essentially novel to them. Still, the leading events in the life of the founder of the religion are simple, and sufficiently well ascertained for all practical purposes.[13]

The founder of this religion was one of the last of a long line of kings, known as the Solar dynasties, who, from a period shortly subsequent to the advent of the Aryans into India, had held paramount sway in Ayodhya—the modern Oude. About the 12th or 13th century B.C. they were superseded by another race of much less purely Aryan blood, known as the Lunar race, who transferred the seat of power to capitals situated in the northern parts of the Doab. In consequence of this, the lineal descendants of the Solar kings were reduced to a petty principality at the foot of the Himalayas, where Sakya Muni was born about 623 B.C. For twenty-nine years he enjoyed the pleasures, and followed the occupations, usual to the men of his rank and position; but at that age, becoming painfully impressed by the misery incident to human existence, he determined to devote the rest of his life to an attempt to alleviate it. For this purpose he forsook his parents and wife, abandoned friends and all the advantages of his position, and, for the following fifty-one years, devoted himself steadily to the task he had set before himself. Years were spent in the meditation and mortification necessary to fit himself{16} for his mission; the rest of his long life was devoted to wandering from city to city, teaching and preaching, and doing everything that gentle means could effect to disseminate the doctrines which he believed were to regenerate the world, and take the sting out of human misery.

He died, or, in the phraseology of his followers, obtained Nirvana—was absorbed into the deity—at Kusinara, in northern Behar, in the 80th year of his age, 543 years[14] B.C.

With the information that is now fast accumulating around the subject, there seems no great difficulty in understanding why the mission of Sakya Muni was so successful as it proved to be. He was born at a time when the purity of the Aryan races in India had become so deteriorated by the constant influx of less pure tribes from the north and west, that their power, and consequently their influence, was fast fading away. At that time, too, it seems that the native races had, from long familiarity with the Aryans, acquired such a degree of civilisation as led them to desire something like equality with their masters, who were probably always in a numerical minority in most parts of the valley of the Ganges. In such a condition of things the preacher was sure of a willing audience who proclaimed the abolition of caste, and taught that all men, of whatever nation or degree, had an equal chance of reaching happiness, and ultimately heaven, by the practice of virtue, and by that only. The subject races—the Turanian Dasyus—hailed him as a deliverer, and it was by them that the religion was adopted and proclaimed, and that of the Aryan Brahmans was for a time obliterated, or at least overshadowed and obscured.

It is by no means clear how far Buddha was successful in converting the multitude to his doctrines during his lifetime. At his death, the first synod was held at Rajagriha, and five hundred monks of a superior order, it is said, were assembled there on that occasion,[15] and if so they must have represented a great multitude. But the accounts of this, and of the second convocation, held 100 years afterwards at Vaisali, on the Gunduck, have not yet had the full light of recent investigation brought to bear upon them. Indeed the whole annals of the Naga dynasty, from the death of Buddha, B.C. 543, to the accession of Chandragupta, 325, are about the least satisfactory of the period. Those of Ceylon were purposely falsified in order to carry back the landing of Vyjya, the first conqueror from Kalinga, to a period coincident with the date of Buddha’s death, while a period{17} apparently of sixty years at least elapsed between the two events. All this may, however, be safely left to future explorers. We have annals and coins,[16] and we may recover inscriptions and sculptures belonging to this period, and, though it is most improbable we shall recover any architectural remains, there are evidently materials existing which, when utilised, may suffice for the purpose.

The kings of this dynasty seem to have been considered as of a low caste, and were not, consequently, in favour either with the Brahman or, at that time, with the Buddhist; and no events which seem to have been thought worthy of being remembered, except the second convocation, are recorded as happening in their reigns, after the death of the great Ascetic—or, at all events, of being recorded in such annals as we possess.

Maurya Dynasty, B.C. 325 TO 188.

The case was widely different with the Maurya dynasty, which was certainly one of the most brilliant, and is fortunately one of the best known, of the ancient dynasties of India. The first king was Chandragupta, the Sandrocottus of the Greeks, to whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador by Seleucus, the successor of Alexander in the western parts of his Asiatic empire. It is from his narrative—now unfortunately lost—that the Greeks acquired almost all the knowledge they possessed of India at that period. The country was then divided into 120 smaller principalities, but the Maurya residing in Palibothra—the modern Patna—seems to have exercised a paramount sway over the whole. It was not, however, this king, but his grandson, the great Asoka (B.C. 272 to 236), who raised this dynasty to its highest pitch of prosperity and power. Though utterly unknown to the Greeks, we have from native sources a more complete picture of the incidents of his reign than of any ancient sovereign of India. The great event that made him famous in Buddhist history was his conversion to that faith, and the zeal he showed in propa{18}gating the doctrines of his new religion. He did, in fact, for Buddhism, exactly what Constantine did for Christianity, and at about the same distance of time from the death of the founder of the faith. From a struggling sect he made it the religion of the State, and established it on the basis on which it lasted supreme for nearly 1000 years. In order to render his subjects familiar with the doctrines of his new faith, he caused a series of edicts embodying them to be engraved on rocks near Peshawur, in Gujerat, in the valley of the Dhoon under the Himalayas, in Cuttack, and in several intermediate places. He held the third and greatest convocation of the faithful in his capital at Patna, and, on its dissolution, sent missionaries to spread the faith in the Yavana country, whose capital was Alexandria, near the present city of Cabul. Others were despatched to Kashmir and Gandhara; one was sent to the Himawanta—the valleys of the Himalaya, and possibly part of Thibet; others were despatched to the Maharatta country, and to three other places in Central and Western India which have not yet been identified with certainty. Two missionaries were sent to the Souverna Bhumi, a place now known as Thatun on the Sitang river, in Pegu, and his own son and daughter were deputed to Ceylon.[17] All those countries, in fact, which might be called foreign, but which were inhabited by races who might in any way be supposed to be allied to the Dasyus of Bengal, were then sought to be converted to the faith. He also formed alliances with Antiochus the Great, Antigonus, and with Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Magas of Cyrene, for the establishment of hospitals and the protection of his co-religionists in their countries. More than all this, he built innumerable topes and monasteries all over the country; and, though none of those now existing can positively be identified as those actually built by him, there seems no reason whatever for doubting that the sculptured rails at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut, the caves at Bharabar in Behar, some of those at Udyagiri in Cuttack, and the oldest of those in the Western Ghâts were all erected or excavated during the existence of this dynasty, if not by him himself. These, with inscriptions and coins, and such histories as exist, make up a mass of materials for a picture of India during this dynasty such as no other can present; and, above all, they offer a complete representation of the religious forms and beliefs of the kings and people, which render any mistake regarding them impossible. It was Buddhism, but without a personal Buddha, and with Tree and Serpent worship cropping up in every unexpected corner.

There is certainly no dynasty in the whole range of ancient Indian{19} history that would better repay the labour of an exhaustive investigation than that of these Maurya kings. Not only were they the first in historical times who, so far as we know, united the whole of India into one great kingdom, but they were practically the first who came in contact with European civilisation and Western politics. More than even this, it is probably owing to the action of the third king of this dynasty that Buddhism, from being the religion of an obscure sect, became, at one time, the faith of a third of the human race, and has influenced the belief and the moral feelings of a greater number of men than any other religion that can be named.

Fortunately, the materials for such a monograph as is required are abundant, and every day is adding to them. It is to this dynasty, and to it only, that must be applied all those passages in classical authors which describe the internal state of India, and they are neither few nor insignificant. Though the Hindus themselves cannot be said to have contributed much history, they have given us, in the ‘Mudra Rakshasa,’[18] a poetical version of the causes of the revolution that placed the Mauryas on the throne. But, putting these aside, their own inscriptions give us dates, and a perfectly authentic contemporary account of the religious faith and feelings of the period; while the numerous bas-reliefs of the rails at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut afford a picture of the manners, customs, and costumes of the day, and a gauge by which we can measure their artistic status and judge how far their art was indigenous, how far influenced by foreign elements. The dates of the kings of this dynasty are also perfectly well known,[19] and the whole framework of their history depends so completely on contemporary native monuments, that there need be no real uncertainty regarding any of the outlines of the picture when once the subject is fairly grasped and thoroughly handled.

It is the firmest standpoint we have from which to judge of Indian civilisation and history, whether looking to the past or to the future, and it is one that gives a very high idea of the position at which the Hindus had arrived before they came practically into contact with the civilisation of the West.

Sunga Dynasty, B.C. 188 TO 76.
Kanwa Dynasty, B.C. 76 TO 31.

History affords us little beyond the dates of the kings’ reigns for the next two dynasties, but there seems no reason to doubt the general{20} correctness with which these are recorded in the Puranas, and by degrees we are collecting inscriptions and finding caves that certainly belong to their time, so that we may hope to breathe life into what has hitherto appeared only a dry list of names. Such inscriptions as bear their names have yet only been discovered on the western caves at Karli, Nassick, and similar places, but there seems no reason for doubting that they reigned also in Magadha, and, if so, over Orissa, so that we may look for further information regarding them on the eastern as well as on the western side of India. These dynasties were not, however, apparently known to the Greeks, and, being Buddhist, are passed over in comparative silence in the Puranas. It is thus only from their monuments that we can hope to recover their history. Up to the present time, those identified as belonging to them are few and far between, but they have not yet been systematically searched for, and till this is done there is no reason to despair of ultimate success.

Andra Dynasty, B.C. 31 TO A.D. 429.

The dynasty that succeeded to these Rois fainéants is—after the Mauryas—the most important of all those about this period of Indian history. To the classical authors they are known as the Andræ, in the Puranas as Andrabrityas, and in the inscriptions as Satakarnis or Satavahanas; but under whatever name, notwithstanding occasional periods of depression, they played a most important part in the history of India, during more than four centuries and a half. Latterly they have been very much overlooked in consequence of their leaving no coins behind them, while it is from numismatic researches, principally, that precision has been given to much of the history of the period. The dynasties in India, however, who practically introduced coinage within her limits, all came across the Indus as strangers bringing with them an art they had learnt from the Bactrians, or those who succeeded them in the north-west. The Andras, being a native dynasty of Central India, had no coinage of importance, and have consequently no place in these numismatic researches; they have, however, left many and most interesting inscriptions in the western caves, and traces of their existence occur in many parts of India.

Architecturally, their history begins with the gateways of the Tope at Sanchi; the southern or oldest of these was almost certainly erected during the reign of the first Satakarni in the first quarter of the 1st century—while Christ was teaching at Jerusalem—and the other three in the course of that century. It ends with the completion of the rail at Amravati, which with almost equal certainty was com{21}menced in the first quarter of the 4th century, and completed about A.D. 450.[20]

Between these two monuments there is no great difficulty in filling up the architectural picture from the caves, at Nassick and Ajunta, and other places in western India, and more materials will no doubt eventually be discovered.

The history of this dynasty is more than usually interesting for our purposes, as it embraces nearly the whole period during which Buddhism reigned almost supreme in India. It became the state religion, it is true, two centuries earlier under Asoka, but there is no reason for believing that the Vedic religion or Brahmanism vanished immediately. During the first four centuries, however, of the Christian Era we have not a trace of a Hindu building or cave, and, so far as any material evidence goes, it seems that Buddhism at the time was the religion of the land. It cannot, of course, be supposed that the Hindu faith was wholly obliterated, but it certainly was dormant, and in abeyance, and, to use a Buddhist expression, the yellow robes shone over the length and breadth of the land.

It was during the reign of these Andras, though not by them, that the fourth convocation was held by Kanishka, in the north of India, and the new doctrine, the Mahayana, introduced by Nagárjuna—a change similar to that made by Gregory the Great when he established the Church, as opposed to the primitive forms of Christianity, at about the same distance of time from the death of the founder of the religion. My impression is, that this convocation was held in the last quarter of the first century of our era, probably 79. Certain at least it is, that it was about that time that Buddhism was first practically introduced into China, Thibet, and Burmah, and apparently by missionaries sent out from this as they were from the third convocation.

It was towards the end of the reign of the Andras that Fa Hian visited India (A.D. 400). As his objects in doing so were entirely of a religious nature, he does not allude to worldly politics, nor give us a king’s name we can identify; but the picture we gather from his narrative is one of peace and prosperity in so far as the country is concerned, and of supremacy for his religion. Heretics are, it is true, mentioned occasionally, but they are few and far between. Buddhism was then certainly the religion of the north, especially in the north-west of India; but even then there were symptoms of a change, in the central provinces and outlying parts of the country.{22}

Guptas, 319 TO 465.
Ballabhis, 465 TO 712 (?).

At the time when Fa Hian was visiting the sacred places in India, the power of the Andra dynasty was passing away. It had culminated with Gautamiputra (312 to 333), and they were fast sinking into a second-class position among Indian princes. The dynasty that superseded them was that of the Guptas, who, at the end of the fourth century of our era, seem to have attained to the position of lords paramount in northern India. They date their inscriptions, which are numerous and interesting, from an era established by the Andra king Gautamiputra, four cycles of 60 years each, or 240 years after the Saka era of A.D. 79, or in 319; but it was not apparently till under the third king, Samudra, about 380, that they really obtained the empire of northern India, which they retained till the death of Skandagupta, about the year 465, or it may be a little later.

It is during their reign that we first perceive in high places the germs of that change which was gradually creeping over the religious system of India. That the Guptas were patrons of Buddhism is evident from the gifts Chandragupta II. made to the tope at Sanchi in the year 400, and recorded on the rail of that Monument, but their other inscriptions, on the lâts at Allahabad and Bhitari, show a decided tendency towards Hinduism, but a class of Hinduism which was still far removed from the wild extravagances of the Puranas. There seems little doubt that the boar at Erun, and the buildings there, belong to this dynasty, and are consequently among the earliest if not the very oldest temples in India, dedicated to the new religion, which was then raising its head in defiance to Buddhism.

From their coins and inscriptions, we may feel certain that the Guptas possessed when in the plenitude of their power the whole of northern India with the province of Gujerat, but how far the boasts of Samudra Gupta on the Allahabad pillar were justified is by no means clear. If that inscription is to be believed, the whole of the southern country as far as Ceylon, together with Assam and Nepal, were subject to their sway. However brilliant it may have been, their power was of short duration. Gujerat and all the western provinces were wrested from them by the Ballabhis, about the year 465, and a new kingdom then founded by a dynasty bearing that name, which lasted till the great catastrophe, which about two and a half centuries afterwards revolutionised India.

Ujjain Dynasty.

Although it was becoming evident in the time of the Guptas that a change was creeping over the religious belief of India, it was not{23} then that the blow was struck which eventually proved fatal, but by a dynasty which succeeded them in Central India. Being Hindus, we know less that is authentic about their history than about the Buddhist dynasties, who lived to inscribe their names on rocks and in caves; but there seems very little doubt that the great Vicramaditya reigned in Malwa from 495 to 530, though the Hindus, in order to connect his name with an era they thought fit to establish 56 years B.C., have done all they can to mystify and obscure the chronology of the period. Notwithstanding this, it seems perfectly clear that about this time there reigned in central India a king who, by his liberality and magnificence, acquired a renown among the Hindus, only second to that obtained by Solomon among the Jews. By his patronage of literature and his encouragement of art, his fame spread over the length and breadth of the land, and to this day his name is quoted as the symbol of all that is great and magnificent in India. What is more to our present purpose, he was an undoubted patron of the Brahmanical religion, a worshipper of Siva and Vishnu, and no tradition associates his name directly or indirectly with anything connected with Buddhism. Unfortunately we have no buildings which can be attributed to him, and no inscriptions. But the main fact of a Brahmanical king reigning and acquiring such influence in Central India at that time is only too significant of the declining position of the Buddhist religion at that period.

His successor, Siladitya, seems to have returned to the old faith, and during his long reign of sixty years to have adhered to the Buddhist doctrines.

In the beginning of the next century, after a short period of anarchy, we find a second Siladitya seated on the throne of Canouge as lord paramount in India, and, during a prosperous reign of thirty-eight to forty years, exercising supreme sway in that country. It was during his reign that the Chinese pilgrim, Hiouen Thsang visited India, and gave a much more full and graphic account of what he saw than his predecessor Fa Hian. Nothing can be more characteristic of the state of religious feeling, and the spirit of toleration then prevailing, than the fête given by this king at Allahabad in the year 643, at which the kings of Ballabhi and Kamarupa (Assam) were present. The king being himself a Buddhist, the first days were devoted to the distribution, among the followers of that religion, of the treasures accumulated during the previous five years, but then came the turn of the Brahmans, who were treated with equal honour and liberality; then followed the fête of the other sects, among whom the Jains appear conspicuous. All were feasted and fêted, and sent away laden with gifts and mementos of the magnificence and liberality of the great king.

Pleasant as this picture is to look upon, it is evident that such a state of affairs could hardly be stable, and it was in vain to expect{24} that peace could long be maintained between a rising and ambitious sect, and one which was fast sinking into decay; apparently beneath the load of an overgrown priesthood. Accordingly we find that ten years after the death of Siladitya troubles supervened as prophesied,[21] and the curtain soon descends on the great drama of the history of northern India, not to be raised again for nearly three centuries. It is true, we can still follow the history of the Ballabhis for some little time longer, and it would be satisfactory if we could fix the date of their destruction with precision, as it was the event which in the Hindu mind is considered the closing act of the drama. If it was destroyed by a foreign enemy, it must have been by the Moslem, either before or during the time Mohammed Kasim, A.H. 712, 713. It was a flourishing city in 640, when visited by Hiouen Thsang, and from that time, till the death of Kasim, the Moslems were in such power on the Indus, and their historians tell us the events of these years in such detail, that no other foreigner could have crossed the river during that period. If it perished by some internal revolution of convulsion, which is more probable, it only shared the fate that overtook all northern India about this period. Strange to say, even the Moslems, then in the plenitude of their power during the Khalifat of Bagdad, retired from their Indian conquests, as if the seething cauldron were too hot for even them to exist within its limits.

The more southern dynasty of the Chalukyas of Kalyan seem to have retained their power down to about 750, and may, up to that time, have exercised a partial sway to the north of the Nerbudda, but after that we lose all sight of them; while, as a closing act in the great drama, the Raja Tarangini represents the King of Kashmir—Lalitaditya—as conquering India from north to south, and subjecting all the five kingdoms, into which it was nominally divided, to his imperious sway.

We need not stop now to inquire whether this was exactly what happened or not. It is sufficient for present purposes to know that about the middle of the 8th century a dark cloud settled over the north of India, and that during the next two centuries she was torn to pieces by internal troubles, which have left nothing but negative evidence of their existence. During that period no event took place of which we have any record; no dynasty rose to sufficient distinction to be quoted even in the lists of the bard; no illustrious name appears whose acts have been recorded; no buildings were erected of which we have a trace;[22] and but few inscriptions engraved. Dark{25} night seems to have settled over the land, and whether we shall ever be able to penetrate into its mysteries seems more than doubtful.

When light again appears in the middle of the 10th century the scene is wonderfully changed. Buddhism had practically disappeared in the north and west at least, though it still lingered on in Bengal, and Jainism had supplanted it in most places; but the mass of the people had become followers of Vishnu or Siva. New dynasties had arisen which, though they try to trace their lineage back to the troublous times when Ballabhi fell, were new to Indian history. Old India had passed away, and the history of modern India was about to open. The old dynasties had become extinct, and the Rajput races were gaily stepping forward to assume their places—too soon, alas! to be engaged in a life or death struggle with the most implacable foe to their race and religion that India has ever known. It was a cruel Nemesis that their victories over the Buddhists should soon have been followed by the fatal siege at Somnath in 1024, and the fight on the banks of the Ghaghar in 1193, which practically laid India at the feet of the Moslem invader, and changed the whole course of her subsequent career. But, as hinted above, with the appearance of the Moslem on the scene, our chronological difficulties cease, and the subject need not therefore be further pursued in this introduction.

IMMIGRATIONS.

From the above brief sketch of ancient Indian history it may be gathered that it is doubtful whether we shall ever be able to clothe with solid flesh the skeleton of history which is all we possess anterior to the advent of Buddha. It is also possible that pious frauds may have so confused the sequence of events between his death and the rise of the Mauryas, that there will be great difficulty in restoring that period to anything like completeness. But for the thousand years that elapsed between “the revenge of Chanakya” and the fall of Ballabhi the materials are ample, and when sufficient industry is applied to their elucidation there is little doubt that the whole may be made clear and intelligible. It does not fall within the scope of this work to attempt such a task; but it is necessary to endeavour to make its outlines clear, as, without this being done, what follows will be utterly unintelligible; while, at the same time, one of the principal objects of this work is to point out how the architecture, which is one important branch of the evidence, may be brought to bear on the subject.

No direct evidence, however, derived only from events that occurred in India itself, would suffice to make the phenomena of her history clear, without taking into account the successive migrations of tribes{26} and peoples who, in all ages, so far as we know, poured across the Indus from the westward to occupy her fertile plains.

As mentioned above, the great master fact that explains almost all we know of the ancient history of India is our knowledge that two or three thousand years before the birth of Christ a Sanscrit-speaking nation migrated from the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes. They crossed the Indus in such numbers as to impress their civilisation and their language on the whole of the north of India, and this to such an extent as practically to obliterate, as far as history is concerned, the original inhabitants of the valley of the Ganges, whoever they may have been. At the time when this migration took place the power and civilisation of Central Asia were concentrated on the lower Euphrates, and the Babylonian empire never seems to have extended across the Carmanian desert to the eastward. The road, consequently, between Bactria and India was open, and nations might pass and re-pass between the two countries without fear of interruption from any other people.

If any of the ancient dynasties of Babylonia extended their power towards the East, it was along the coast of Gedrosia, and not in a north-easterly direction. It is, indeed, by no means improbable, as hinted above, that the origin of the Dravidians may be found among the Accadian or in some of the Turanian peoples who occupied southern Babylonia in ancient times, and who may, either by sea or land, have passed to the western shores of India. Till, however, further information is available, this is mere speculation, though probably in the direction in which truth may hereafter be found.

When the seat of power was moved northward to Nineveh, the Assyrians seem to have occupied the country eastward of the Caspian in sufficient force to prevent any further migration. At least, after that time—say B.C. 1000—we have no further trace of any Aryan tribe crossing the Indus going eastward, and it seems mainly to have been a consequence of this cutting off of the supply of fresh blood that the purity of their race in India was so far weakened as to admit of the Buddhist reform taking root, and being adopted to the extent it afterwards attained.

During the period of the Achemænian sway, the Persians certainly occupied the countries about the Oxus in sufficient strength to prevent any movement of the peoples. So essentially indeed had Bactria and Sogdiana become parts of the Persian empire, that Alexander was obliged to turn aside from his direct route to conquer them, as well as the rest of the kingdom of Darius, before advancing on India.

Whether it were founded for that purpose or not, the little Greek kingdom of Bactria was sufficiently powerful, while it lasted, to keep the barbarians in check; but when about the year 127-126 B.C.,{27} the Yuechi and other cognate tribes invaded Sogdiana, and finally about 120 B.C. conquered the whole of Bactria,[23] they opened a new chapter in the history of India, the effects of which are felt to the present day.

It is not yet quite clear how soon after the destruction of the Bactrian kingdom these Turanian tribes conquered Cabul, and occupied the country between that city and the Indus. Certain it is, however, that they were firmly seated on the banks of that river before the Christian Era, and under the great king Kanishka had become an Indian power of very considerable importance. The date of this king is, unfortunately, one of those small puzzles that still remain to be solved. Generally, it is supposed he reigned till about twenty to forty years after Christ.[24] Evidence, however, has lately been brought to light, which seems to prove that he was the founder of the Saka era, A.D. 79, and that his reign must be placed in the last quarter of the first century of our era, instead of in the earlier half.[25]

Be this as it may, it seems quite certain that the power of these Turuska kings spread over the whole Punjab, and extended as far at least as Muttra on the Jumna, in the first century of the Christian Era.

At the same time another horde, known to us only from the coins and inscriptions in which they call themselves Sahs or Sah kings, crossed the Indus lower down, and occupied the whole of the province of Gujerat. It is not quite clear whether the first of them, Nahapana, was only the Viceroy of one of these northern kings—probably of Kanishka himself—though he and his successors afterwards became independent, and founded a kingdom of their own. They seem to date their coins and inscriptions from the Saka era, A.D. 79, and the series extends from that date to A.D. 349, or at latest to 371.[26] It thus happens that though Gautamiputra, the Andra king (312-333), boasts of having humbled them,[27] they were only in fact finally disposed of by the rise of the Guptas.

No other foreign race, so far as we know, seems to have crossed the Lower Indus into India. But the whole external history of northern India, from the time of Kanishka to that of Ahmed Shah Durani (1761) is a narrative of a continuous succession of tribes of Scythian origin,{28} pouring across the Upper Indus into India, each more Turanian than the one that preceded it, till the whole culminated in the Mogul conquest of India, in the 15th century, by a people as distinct in blood from the Aryans as any that exist.

Of the older races, it seems probable that the Yavanas must be distinguished from the Turanians. It will hardly now be contended that they were pure Greeks, though their name may be merely a mispronunciation of Ionian. The term seems to have been applied by Indian authors to any foreign race coming from the westward who did not belong to one of the acknowledged kingdoms known to them. As such it would apply to any western adventurers, who during the existence of the Bactrian kingdom sought to establish settlements in any part of India, and would also apply to the expatriated Bactrians themselves when driven from their homes by the Yuechi, 120 or 130 years B.C. It is only in this sense that we can explain their presence in Orissa before and about the Christian Era, but in the west the term may have been more loosely applied. The Cambojas seem to have been a people inhabiting the country between Candahar and Cabul, who, when the tide was setting eastward, joined the crowd, and sought settlements in the more fertile countries within the Indus.

The Sakas were well known to classical authors as the Sacæ, or Scythians. They pressed on with the rest, and became apparently most formidable during the first four centuries of the Christian Era. It was apparently their defeat by the great Vicramaditya in the battle at Korûr, on the banks of the Indus, A.D. 524 or 544, that raised the popularity of that monarch to its highest pitch, and induced the Hindus at a subsequent age to institute the era known by his name 600 years before his time, and another called by his other name, Sri Harsha, 1000 years before the date of the battle of Korûr.[28]

Another important horde were the Ephthalites, or White Huns, who came into India apparently in the 4th century, and one of whose kings, if we may trust Cosmas Indicopleustes, was the head of a powerful state in northern India, about the year 535. They, too, seem to have been conquered about the same time by the Hindus, and, as both the Sakas and Hunas were undoubtedly Buddhists, it may have been their destruction that first weakened the cause of that religion, and which led to its ultimate defeat a little more than a century afterwards.

During the dark ages, 750 to 950, we do not know of any horde passing the Indus. The Mahomedans were probably too strong on{29} the frontier to admit of its being done, and after that age they—and they only—conducted the various invasions which completely changed the face and character of northern India. For seven centuries they were continued, with only occasional interruptions, and at last resulted in placing the Mahomedan power supreme, practically, over the whole of India, but only to fall to pieces like a house of cards, before the touch of Western civilisation. All this, however, is written, and written so distinctly, in so many books, that it need not be recapitulated here.

Southern India.

If the records of the ancient history of northern India are unsatisfactory and untrustworthy, those of the southern part of the peninsula are at least ten times more so. The Dravidians have no ancient literature like that of the Vedas. They have no traditions which point to any seat of their race out of India, or of their having migrated from any country with whose inhabitants they can claim any kindred. So far as they know, they are indigenous and aboriginal. The utmost extent to which even their traditions extend is to claim for their leading race of kings—the Pandyas—a descent from Arjuna, one of the heroes of the ‘Mahabharata.’ He, it is said, when on his travels, married a princess of the land, and she gave birth to the eponymous hero of their race, and hence their name. It is true, indeed, that they produce long lists of kings, which they pretend stretch back till the times of the Pandus. These were examined by the late Professor Wilson in 1836, and he conjectured that they might extend back to the 5th or 6th century before our era.[29] But all that has since come to light has tended to show that even this may be an over-estimate of their antiquity. If, however, as Dr. Kern believes, the Choda, Pada, and Keralaputra of the second edict of Asoka do really represent the Cholas, Pandyas, Cheras, of modern times, this triarchy existed in the third century B.C.; but there are difficulties in the way of this identification which have not yet been removed. In fact, all we really do know is that, in classical times, there was a Regio Pandionis in the country afterwards known as the Pandyan kingdom of Madura, and it has been conjectured that the king who sent an embassy to Augustus in 27 B.C.[30] was not a Porus, which would indicate a northern race, but this very king of the south. Be{30} this, however, as it may, we do know, by the frequent mention of this country by classical authors, that it was at least sufficiently civilised in the early centuries of our era to carry on a considerable amount of commerce with the western nations, and there is consequently no improbability that at least one powerful dynasty may then have been established in the south. If so, that dynasty was certainly the Pandyan. The Chola and the Chera became important states only at a much later date.

When we turn to their literature we find nothing to encourage any hope that we may penetrate further back into their history than we have hitherto been able to do. Dr. Caldwell, the best and latest authority on the subject, ascribes the oldest work in the Tamil, or any southern language, to the 8th or 9th century of our era,[31] and that even then can hardly be called native, as it undoubtedly belongs to the Jains, who are as certainly a northern sect. According to the same authority, it was superseded by a Vaishnava literature about the 12th or 13th century, and that again made way for one of Saiva tendency about the latter date. There is no trace of any Buddhist literature in the south, and nothing, consequently, that would enable us to connect the history of the south with the tolerably well-ascertained chronology of Ceylon or Northern India, nor am I aware of the existence of any ancient Buddhist monuments in the south which would help us in this difficulty.[32]

Not having passed through Bactria, or having lived in contact with any people making or using coins, the Dravidians have none of their own, and consequently that source of information is not available. Whatever hoards of ancient coins have been found in the Madras Presidency have been of purely Roman origin, brought there for the purpose of trade, and buried to protect them from spoliation.

The inscriptions, which are literally innumerable all over the Presidency, are the one source from which we can hope that new light may be thrown on the history of the country, but none of those hitherto brought to light go further back than the 5th or 6th century, and it is not clear that earlier ones may be found.[33] It is, at all events, the most hopeful field that lies open to future explorers in these dark domains. There is nothing, however, that would lead us to expect to find any Tamil or native inscription in the country extending so far{31} back as the age of Constantine. Those on the raths at Mahavellipore, or the caves at Badami, which may be as old as the age of Justinian, are in Sanscrit, and consequently look more like an evidence of the northern races pushing southward than of the southern races extending themselves northward, or being sufficiently advanced in civilisation to erect for themselves the monuments on which these inscriptions are found.

From a study of the architecture of the south we arrive at precisely the same conclusions as to the antiquity of Dravidian civilisation that Dr. Caldwell arrived at from a study of their literature. The only important Buddhist monument yet discovered in the Presidency is that at Amravati, on the Kistnah,[34] but that is avowedly a foreign intrusion. It was a colony or settlement formed by the northern Buddhists at or near their port of departure for Java and their eastern settlements. The rock-cut temples at Mahavellipore and Badami seem to be the works of northern Hindus advancing southward in the 5th or 6th century, and engraving the evidence of their religion on the imperishable rock. So far as is yet known, no indigenous native temple has been brought to light, built by any native king, or with inscriptions in any southern tongue, whose date can be carried further back than the 8th century. From that time forward their building activity was enormous. The style culminated in the 16th and 17th centuries, to perish in the 18th, under the influence of a foreign and unsympathetic invader. It is, however, by no means impossible that future investigation may enable us to fill up a portion at least of the gap that exists between the 5th and the 8th century. There may be buildings yet undescribed which are older than any we now know. But if they do carry us back to the 5th century, which is more than can reasonably be expected, they are still seven or eight centuries behind what we know for certainty to have existed in the north. There we have buildings and caves certainly, extending back to B.C. 250, and it seems by no means impossible that with sculptures, coins, and inscriptions, and written documents, we may some day be able to bridge over the gulf that exists between the death of Buddha and the accession of the Mauryas. In other words, the materials for history in the North of India carry us back with the same relative degree of certainty for more than a thousand years beyond what those found in the south enable us to trace of her history or her arts.{32}

When the history of the south does acquire something like consistency it takes the form of a triarchy of small states. The eldest and most important, that of Mádura—so called after Muttra on the Jumna—was also the most civilised, and continued longest as a united and independent kingdom.

The Chola rose into power on the banks of the Cauvery, and to the northward of it, about the year 1000, though no doubt they existed as a small state about Conjeveram for some centuries before that time. The third, the Chera, were located in the southern Mysore country, and probably extending to the coast as early as the 4th or 5th century, and gradually worked their way northward, and became so powerful that there is reason for believing that during the dark ages of the north (750 to 950) their power extended to the Nerbudda, and it may be to them that we owe the Kylas and other excavations at Ellora, erected in the southern style about that time. They were, however, superseded, first by the Cholas, about A.D. 1000, and finally eclipsed by the Hoisala Bellalas, a century or so afterwards. These last became the paramount power in the south, till their capital—Hullabîd—was taken, and their dynasty destroyed by the Mahomedan, in the year 1310.

With the appearance of the Mahomedans on the scene the difficulties of Indian chronology disappear in the south, as well as in the north. From that time forward the history of India is found in such works as those written by Ferishta or Abul Fazl, and has been abstracted and condensed in numerous works in almost every European language. There are still, it must be confessed, slight discrepancies and difficulties about the sequence of some events in the history of the native principalities. These, however, are not of such importance as at all to affect, much less to invalidate, any reasoning that may be put forward regarding the history or affinities of any buildings, and this is the class of evidence which principally concerns what is written in the following pages.

Sculptures.

In order to render the subject treated of in the following pages quite complete, it ought, no doubt, to be preceded by an introduction describing first the sculpture and then the mythology of the Hindus in so far as they are at present known to us. There are in fact few works connected with this subject more wanted at the present day than a good treatise on these subjects. When Major Moor published the ‘Hindu Pantheon’ in 1810, the subject was comparatively new, and the materials did not exist in this country for a full and satisfactory illustration of it in all its branches. When, in 1832, Coleman published his ‘Mythology of the Hindus,’ he was enabled from the{33} more recent researches of Colebroke and Wilson, to improve the text considerably, but his illustrations are very inferior to those of his predecessor. Moor chose his from such bronzes or marbles as existed in our museums. Coleman’s were generally taken from modern drawings, or the tawdry plaster images made for the Durga puja of Bengali Babus. By the aid of photography any one now attempting the task would be able to select perfectly authentic examples from Hindu temples of the best age. If this were done judiciously, and the examples carefully engraved, it would not only afford a more satisfactory illustration of the mythology of the Hindus than has yet been given to the public, but it might also be made a history of the art of sculpture in India, in all the ages in which it is known to us. It is doubtful, however, whether such a work could be successfully carried through in this country at the present day. The photographs that exist of the various deities have generally been taken representing them only as they appear as ornaments of the temples, without special reference to their mythological character. They are sufficient to show what the sculptor intended, but not so detailed as to allow all their emblems or characteristics being distinctly perceived. To be satisfactory as illustrations of the mythology, it is indispensable that these points should all be made clear. At the same time it is to be feared that there is hardly any one in this country so familiar with all the details of emblems and symbols as to be able to give the exact meaning of all that is represented. It would require the assistance of some Pandit brought up in the faith, and who is familiar with the significance of all the emblems, to convey to others the true meaning of these innumerable carvings. In India it could easily be accomplished, and it is consequently hoped it may before long be attempted there.

From its very nature, it is evident that sculpture can hardly ever be so important as architecture as an illustration of the progress of the arts, or the affinities of nations. Tied down to the reproduction of the immutable human figure, sculpture hardly admits of the same variety, or the same development, as such an art as architecture, whose business it is to administer to all the varied wants of mankind and to express the multifarious aspirations of the human mind. Yet sculpture has a history, and one that can at times convey its meaning with considerable distinctness. No one, for instance, can take up such a book as that of Cicognara,[35] and follow the gradual development of the art as he describes it, from the first rude carvings of the Byzantine school, till it returned in the present day to the mechanical perfection of the old Greek art, though without its ennobling spirit, and not{34} feel that he has before him a fairly distinct illustration of the progress of the human mind during that period. Sculpture in India may fairly claim to rank, in power of expression, with mediæval sculpture in Europe, and to tell its tale of rise and decay with equal distinctness; but it is also interesting as having that curious Indian peculiarity of being written in decay. The story that Cicognara tells is one of steady forward progress towards higher aims and better execution. The Indian story is that of backward decline, from the sculptures of the Bharhut and Amravati topes, to the illustrations of Coleman’s ‘Hindu Mythology.’

When Hindu sculpture first dawns upon us in the rails at Buddh Gaya, and Bharhut, B.C. 200 to 250, it is thoroughly original, absolutely without a trace of foreign influence, but quite capable of expressing its ideas, and of telling its story with a distinctness that never was surpassed, at least in India. Some animals, such as elephants, deer, and monkeys, are better represented there than in any sculptures known in any part of the world; so, too, are some trees, and the architectural details are cut with an elegance and precision which are very admirable. The human figures, too, though very different from our standard of beauty and grace, are truthful to nature, and, where grouped together, combine to express the action intended with singular felicity. For an honest purpose-like pre-Raphaelite kind of art, there is probably nothing much better to be found elsewhere.

The art certainly had declined when the gateways at Sanchi were executed in the first century of the Christian Era. They may then have gained a little in breadth of treatment, but it had certainly lost much in delicacy and precision. Its downward progress was then, however, arrested, apparently by the rise in the extreme north-west of India of a school of sculpture strongly impregnated with the traditions of classical art. It is not yet clear whether this arose from a school of art implanted in that land by the Bactrian Greeks, or whether it was maintained by direct intercourse with Rome and Byzantium during the early centuries of the Christian Era. Probably both causes acted simultaneously, and one day we may be able to discriminate what is due to each. For the present it is sufficient to know that a quasi-classical school of sculpture did exist in the Punjab, and to the west of the Indus during the first five centuries after Christ, and it can hardly have flourished there so long, without its presence being felt in India.

Its effects were certainly apparent at Amravati in the 4th and 5th centuries, where a school of sculpture was developed, partaking of the characteristics of both those of Central India and of the west. Though it may, in some respects, be inferior to either of the parent styles, the degree of perfection reached by the art of sculpture at{35} Amravati may probably be considered as the culminating point attained by that art in India.

When we meet it again in the early Hindu temples, and later Buddhist caves, it has lost much of its higher æsthetic and phonetic qualities, and frequently resorts to such expedients as giving dignity to the principal personages by making them double the size of less important characters, and of distinguishing gods from men by giving them more heads and arms than mortal man can use or understand.

All this is developed, it must be confessed, with considerable vigour and richness of effect in the temples of Orissa and the Mysore, down to the 13th or 14th century. After that, in the north it was checked by the presence of the Moslems; but, in the south, some of the most remarkable groups and statues—and they are very remarkable—were executed after this time, and continued to be executed, in considerable perfection down to the middle of the last century.

As we shall see in the sequel, the art of architecture continues to be practised with considerable success in parts of India remote from European influence; so much so, that it requires a practised eye to discriminate between what is new and what is old. But the moment any figures are introduced, especially if in action, the illusion vanishes. No mistake is then possible, for the veriest novice can see how painfully low the art of sculpture has fallen. Were it not for this, some of the modern temples in Gujerat and Central India are worthy to rank with those of past centuries; but their paintings and their sculptured decorations excite only feelings of dismay, and lead one to despair of true art being ever again revived in the East.

To those who are familiar with the principles on which these arts are practised, the cause of this difference is obvious enough. Architecture being a technic art, its forms may be handed down traditionally, and its principles practised almost mechanically. The higher phonetic arts, however, of sculpture and painting admit of no such mechanical treatment. They require individual excellence, and a higher class of intellectual power of expression, to ensure their successful development. Architecture, may, consequently, linger on amidst much political decay; but, like literature, the phonetic arts can only be successfully cultivated where a higher moral and intellectual standard prevails than, it is feared, is at present to be found in India.

Mythology.

Whenever any one will seriously undertake to write the history of sculpture in India, he will find the materials abundant and the sequence by no means difficult to follow; but, with regard to mythology, the case is different. It cannot, however, be said that the materials are not abundant for this branch of the inquiry also; but{36} they are of a much less tangible or satisfactory nature, and have become so entangled, that it is extremely difficult to obtain any clear ideas regarding them; and it is to be feared they must remain so, until those who investigate the subject will condescend to study the architecture and the sculpture of the country as well as its books. The latter contain a good deal, but they do not contain all the information available on the subject, and they require to be steadied and confirmed by what is built or carved, which alone can give precision and substance to what is written.

Much of the confusion of ideas that prevails on this subject no doubt arises from the exaggerated importance it has of late years been the fashion to ascribe to the Vedas, as explaining everything connected with the mythology of the Hindus. It would, indeed, be impossible to over-estimate the value of these writings from a philological or ethnological point of view. Their discovery and elaboration have revolutionised our ideas as to the migrations of races in the remote ages of antiquity, and establish the affiliation of the Aryan races on a basis that seems absolutely unassailable; but it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the Aryans are a race of strangers in India, distinct from the Indian people themselves. They may, as hinted above, have come into India some three thousand years before Christ, and may have retained their purity of blood and faith for two thousand years; but with the beginning of the political Kali Yug—or, to speak more correctly, at the time of the events detailed in the ‘Mahabharata,’ say 1200 years B.C.—they had lost much of both; while every successive wave of immigration that has crossed the Indus during the last three thousand years has impaired the purity of their race. From this cause, and from their admixture with the aborigines, it may probably be with confidence asserted that there is not now five per cent.—perhaps not one—of pure Aryan blood in the present population of India, nor, consequently, does the religion of the Vedas constitute one-twentieth part of the present religion of the people.

Though this may be absolutely so, it must not be overlooked that there are few things more remarkable, as bearing on this subject, than the extraordinary intellectual superiority of the Aryans over the Dasyus, or whatever we may call the people they found in India when they entered it. This superiority was sufficient to enable them to subdue the country, though they were probably infinitely inferior in numbers to the conquered people, and to retain them in subjection through long ages of time. Even now, when their purity of blood has become so diluted that they are almost lost among the people, their intellect, as embalmed in their writings, has left its impress on every corner of the land, and is still appealed to as a revelation of the will of God to man.

With the Vedas, however, we have very little to do in the present{37} work. The worship they foreshadow is of a class too purely intellectual to require the assistance of the stonemason and the carver to give it expression. The worship of the Aryans was addressed to the sun and moon. The firmament and all its hosts; the rain-bearing cloud; the sun-ushering dawn; all that was beautiful in the heavens above or beneficent on earth, was sung by them in hymns of elevated praise, and addressed in terms of awe or endearment as fear or hope prevailed in the bosom of the worshipper.[36] Had this gone on for some time longer than it did, the objects worshipped by the Aryans in India might have become gods, like those of Greece and Rome, endowed with all the feelings and all the failings of humanity. In India it was otherwise; the deities were dethroned, but never were degraded. There is no trace in Vedic times, so far as at present known, of Indra or Varuna, of Agni or Ushas, being represented in wood or stone, or of their requiring houses or temples to shelter them. It is true indeed that the terms of endearment in which they are addressed are frequently such as mortals use in speaking of each other; but how otherwise can man express his feeling of love or fear, or address his supplication to the being whose assistance he implores?

The great beauty of the Veda is, that it stops short before the powers of nature are dwarfed into human forms, and when every man stood independently by himself and sought through the intervention of all that was great or glorious on the earth, or in the skies, to approach the great spirit that is beyond and above all created things.

Had the Aryans ever been a numerical majority in India, and consequently able to preserve their blood and caste in tolerable purity, the religion of India never could have sunk so low as it did, though it might have fallen below the standard of the Veda. What really destroyed it was, that each succeeding immigration of less pure Aryan or Turanian races rendered their numerical majority relatively less and less, while their inevitable influence so educated the subject races as to render their moral majority even less important. These processes went on steadily and uninterruptedly till, in the time of Buddha, the native religions rose fairly to an equality with that of the Aryans, and afterwards for a while eclipsed it. The Vedas were only ultimately saved from absolute annihilation in India, by being embedded in the Vaishnava and Saiva superstitions, where their inanimate forms may still be recognised, but painfully degraded from their primitive elevation.

When we turn from the Vedas, and try to investigate the origin of those religions that first opposed and finally absorbed the Vedas in their abominations, we find our means of information painfully scanty{38} and unsatisfactory. As will appear in the sequel, all that was written in India that is worth reading was written by the Aryans; all that was built was built by the Turanians, who wrote practically nothing. But the known buildings extend back only to the 3rd century B.C., while the books are ten centuries earlier, or possibly even more than that, while, as might be expected, it is only accidentally and in the most contemptuous terms that the proud Aryans even allude to the abject Dasyus or their religion. What, therefore, we practically know of them is little more than inferences drawn from results, and from what we now see passing in India.

Notwithstanding the admitted imperfection of materials, it seems to be becoming every day more and more evident, that we have in the north of India one great group of native or at least of Turanian religions, which we know in their latest developments as the Buddhist, Jaina, and Yaishnava religions. The first named we only know as it was taught by Sakya Muni before his death in 543 B.C., but no one I presume supposes that he was the first to invent that form of faith, or that it was not based on some preceding forms. The Buddhists themselves, according to the shortest calculation, admit of four preceding Buddhas—according to the more usual accounts, of twenty-four. A place is assigned to each of these, where he was born, and when he died, the father and mother’s name is recorded, and the name, too, of the Bodhi-tree under whose shade he attained Buddhahood. The dates assigned to each of these are childishly fabulous, but there seems no reason for doubting that they may have been real personages, and their dates extend back to a very remote antiquity.[37]

The Jains, in like manner, claim the existence of twenty-four Tirthankars, including Mahavira the last. Their places of birth and death are equally recorded, all are in northern India, and though little else is known of them, they too may have existed. The series ends with Mahavira, who was the contemporary—some say the preceptor—of Sakya Muni.

The Vaishnava series is shorter, consisting of only nine Avatars, but it too, closes at the same time, Buddha himself being the ninth and last. Its fifth Avatur takes us back to Rama, who, if our chronology is correct, may have lived B.C. 2000; the fourth,—Narasinha, or man lion—points to the time the Aryans entered India. The three first deal with creation and events anterior to man’s appearance on earth. In this respect the Vaishnava list differs from the other two.{39} They only record the existence of men who attained greatness by the practice of virtue, and immortality by teaching the ways of God to man. The Vaishnavas brought God to earth, to mix and interfere in mundane affairs in a manner that neither the Aryan nor the Buddhist ever dreamt of, and so degraded the purer religion of India into the monstrous system of idolatry that now prevails in that country.

No attempt, so far as I know, has been made to explain the origin of the Saiva religion, or even to ascertain whether it was a purely local superstition, or whether it was imported from abroad. The earliest authentic written allusion to it seems to be that of the Indian ambassador to Bardasanes (A.D. 218, 222), who described a cave in the north of India which contained an image of a god, half-man, half-woman.[38] This is beyond doubt the Ardhanari form of Siva, so familiar afterwards at Elephanta and in every part of India. The earliest engraved representations of this god seem to be those on the coins of Kadphises (B.C. 80 to 100[39]), where the figure with the trident and the Bull certainly prefigure the principal personage in this religion. Curiously enough, however, he or she is always accompanied by the Buddhist trisul emblem, as if the king, or his subjects at least, simultaneously professed both religions. Besides all this, it seems now tolerably well ascertained, that the practice of endowing gods with an infinity of limbs took an earlier, certainly a greater development in Thibet and the trans-Himalayan countries than in India, and that the wildest Tantric forms of Durga are more common and more developed in Nepal and Thibet than they are even in India Proper. If this is so, it seems pretty clear, as the evidence now stands, that Saivism is a northern superstition introduced into India by the Yuechi or some of the northern hordes who migrated into India, either immediately before the Christian Era, or in the early centuries succeeding it.

It does not seem at first to have made much progress in the valley of the Ganges, where the ground was preoccupied by the Vaishnava group, but to have been generally adopted in Rajputana, especially among the Jats, who were almost certainly the descendants of the White Huns or Ephthalites, and it seems also to have been early carried south by the Brahmans, when they undertook to instruct the Dravidians in the religion of the Puranas. That of the Vedas never seems to have been known in the south, and it was not till after the Vedas had been superseded by the new system, that the Brahmanical religion was introduced among the southern people. It is also, it is to be feared, only too true that no attempt has yet been made to ascertain what the religion of the Dravidians was before the northern Brahmans induced them to adopt either the Jaina or the{40} Vaishnava or Saiva forms of faith. It is possible that among the Pandu Kolis, and other forms of ‘Rude Stone Monuments’ that are found everywhere in the south, we may find the fossil remains of the old Dravidian faith before they adopted that of the Hindus. These monuments, however, have not been examined with anything like the care requisite for the solution of a problem like this, and till it is done we must rest content with our ignorance.[40]

In the north we have been somewhat more fortunate, and enough is now known to make it clear that, so soon as the inquirers can consent to put aside personal jealousies, and apply themselves earnestly to the task, we may know enough to make the general outline at least tolerably clear. When I first published my work on ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ seven years ago, no one suspected, at least no one had hinted in type, that such a form of religion existed in Bengal. Since that time, however, so much has been written on the subject, and proof on proof has accumulated with such rapidity, that few will now be bold enough to deny that Trees were worshipped in India in the earliest times, and that a Naga people did exist, especially in the north-west, who had a strange veneration for snakes. It may be too bold a generalisation to assert, at present, that no people became Buddhists who had not previously been serpent worshippers, but it certainly is nearer the truth than at first sight appears. It is, at all events, quite certain that underlying Buddhism we everywhere find evidence of a stratum of Tree and Serpent Worship. Sometimes it may be repressed and obscured, but at others it crops up again, and, to a certain extent, the worship of the Tree and the Serpent, at some times and in certain places, almost supersedes that of the founder of the religion himself.

The five, or seven, or one thousand-headed Naga is everywhere present in the temples of the Jains, and pervades the whole religion of the Vaishnavas. In the great act of creation the Naga performs the principal part in the churning of the ocean, and in almost every representation of Vishnu he appears either as supporting and watching over him, or as performing some subsidiary part in the scene. It is, in fact, the Naga that binds together and gives unity to this great group of religions, and it is the presence of the Tree and Serpent worship underlying Buddhism, Jainism, and Vishnuism that seems to prove almost incontestably that there existed a people in the north of India, whether we call them Dasyus, Nishadhas, or by any other name, who were Tree and Serpent worshippers, before they{41} adopted any of the Hindu forms of faith. Nothing can be more antagonistic to the thoughts and feelings of any Aryan race than such forms of worship, and nothing more completely ante-Vedic than its rites. It seems also to have no connection with Saivism.[41] Nor is there any trace of it found among the Dravidians. There appears, in fact, no solution of the riddle possible, but to assume that it was an aboriginal superstition in the north of India, and it was the conversion of the people to whom it belonged that gave rise to that triarchy of religions that have succeeded each other in the north during the last two thousand years.

This solution of the difficulty has the further advantage that it steps in at once clearly to explain what philology is only dimly guessing at, though its whole tendency now seems in the same direction. If this view of the mythology be correct, it seems certain that there existed in the north of India, before the arrival of the Aryans, a people whose affinities were all with the Thibetans, Burmese, Siamese, and other trans-Himalayan populations, and who certainly were not Dravidians, though they may have been intimately connected with one division at least of the inhabitants of Ceylon.

Both the pre-Aryan races of India belonged, of course, to the Turanian group; but my present impression is, as hinted above, that the Dravidians belong to that branch of the great primordial family of mankind that was developed in Mesopotamia and the countries to the westward of the Caspian. The Dasyus, on the contrary, have all their affinities with those to the eastward of that sea, and the two might consequently be called the Western and the Eastern, or the Scythian and Mongolian Turanians. Such a distinction would certainly represent our present knowledge of the subject better than considering the whole as one family, which is too often the case at the present day.

These, however, are speculations which hardly admit of proof in the present state of our knowledge, and would consequently be quite out of place here, were it not that some such theory seems indispensable to explain the phenomena of the architectural history of India. That of the north is so essentially different from that of the south that they cannot possibly belong to the same people. Neither of them certainly are Aryan; and unless we admit that the two divisions of the country{42} were occupied by people essentially different in blood, though still belonging to the building races of mankind, we cannot possibly understand how they always practised, and to the present employ, styles so essentially different. Until these various ethnographical and mythological problems are understood and appreciated, the styles of architecture in India seem a chaos without purpose or meaning. Once, however, they are grasped and applied, their history assumes a dignity and importance far greater than is due to any merely æsthetic merits they may possess. Even that, however, is in many respects remarkable, and, when combined with the scientific value of the styles, seem to render them as worthy of study as those of any other people with whose arts we are acquainted.

Statistics.

It would add very much to the clearness of what follows if it were possible to compile any statistical tables which would represent with anything like precision the mode in which the people of India are distributed, either as regards their religious beliefs or their ethnographical relations. The late census of 1871-72 has afforded a mass of new material for this purpose, but the information is distributed through five folio volumes, in such a manner as to make it extremely difficult to abstract what is wanted so as to render it intelligible to the general reader. Even, however, if this were done, the result would hardly, for several reasons, be satisfactory. In the first place, the census is a first attempt, and the difficulty of collecting and arranging such a mass of new materials was a task of the extremest difficulty. The fault of any shortcomings, however, lay more with the enumerated than with the enumerators. Few natives know anything of ethnography, or can give a distinct answer with regard to their race or descent; and even with regard to religion their notions are equally hazy. Take for instance the table, page 93 of the Bombay Report. The compilers there divide the Hindus of that Presidency into three classes:—

The mixed class they proceed to define as “all who simply worship some god or goddess, without knowing anything of theology”—a description that probably applies with equal truth to two-thirds of the Hindu population of the other presidencies. The upper and educated classes do know now what sect they belong to, and the sects{43} are so distinctly marked as to admit of no doubt; but even that was not so clear in former days.

The great defect, however, of the census is, that it does not include the population of the Native States, estimated at 46,245,000, or one-fifth of the whole population of India; and, though it may be fair to assume that the proportions of races and their beliefs are the same as those of the adjacent states under British rule, this is only an assumption, and as such must vitiate any attempt at precision in statements regarding the whole of India.

Notwithstanding these difficulties or defects, it may be useful to state here that the population of the whole of India—exclusive, of course, of British Burmah—was ascertained by the late census to amount to 235,000,000 of souls. Of these, about 7-10ths—or, more nearly, 15-20ths—or 175,000,000, belonged to the various branches of the Hindu religion; more than 1-5th or 4-20ths or 50,000,000, professed the Mahomedan faith; and the remaining 1-20th was made up principally of the uncivilised hill tribes, and various minor sects which cannot correctly be classified with the followers of Siva and Vishnu. In this last group of 11,000,000 are the Jains and the Christians, who, though so influential from their wealth or intellect, form numerically but a very small fraction of the entire population.

The tables of the census, unfortunately, afford us very little information that is satisfactory with regard to the distribution of races among the people. From the new edition of Caldwell’s ‘Dravidian Grammar,’ we learn that upwards of 45,000,000 are Dravidian or speak Tamil, or languages allied to that dialect.[42] This may be somewhat of an over-estimate, but, taking it as it stands, it accounts for only 1-5th of the population; and what are we to say regarding the other 4-5ths, or 190,000,000 of souls? Four or five millions may be put on one side as Koles, Bhîls, Sontals, Nagas, &c.—hill tribes of various classes, whose affinities are not yet by any means settled, but whose ethnic relations are of very minor importance compared with those of the 185,000,000 remaining.

As the census leaves us very much in the dark on this subject, supposing we assume that one-half, or 90,000,000 more or less, of the inhabitants of northern India are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the country—Dasyus, Nishadhas, or whatever we may call them. Let us further divide the remaining 90,000,000 into three parts, and assume that one-third are lineal descendants of the Aryans who entered India before the time of Buddha; one-third the descendants of Yavanas, Sakas, Hunas, and other Scythian tribes who crossed the Indus between the Christian Era and the time of the{44} Mahomedan invasion; and that the remainder are the Moslem races, or their descendants, who have entered India during the last 800 years. Such a scheme may nearly represent the facts of the case; but it seems almost certainly to exaggerate the importance of the foreign immigrant element. Taking, for instance, the last, about which we know most, it seems hardly probable that since the time of Mahmood of Guzni any such number of tribes professing the Mahomedan religion could have entered India so as to be able to procreate a population of 30,000,000 of souls, even supposing they had brought their women with them—which they certainly did not, except in the most exceptional cases. Two or three millions of warriors may have crossed the Indus in that time and settled in India, and, marrying the females of the country, may have had a numerous progeny; but thirty millions is a vast population by direct descent, especially as we know how many of the Moslems of India were recruited from slaves purchased and brought up in the faith of their masters. In Bengal especially, where they are most numerous, they are Bengalis pure and simple, many, perhaps most, of whom have adopted that faith quite recently from motives it is not difficult to understand or explain. Though there may consequently be 50,000,000 of Mussulmans in India at the present day, we may feel quite certain that not one-half of this number are immigrants or the descendants of emigrants who entered India during the last eight centuries.

The same is probably true of the Turanian races, who entered India in the first ten centuries after our era. It is most improbable that they were sufficiently numerous to be the progenitors of thirty millions of people, and, if they were so, the mothers, in nine cases out of ten, were most probably natives of India.

Of the Aryans we know less; but, if so great a number as thirty millions can trace anything like a direct descent from them at the present day, the amount of pure Aryan blood in their veins must be infinitesimally small. But, though their blood may be diluted, the influence of their intellect remains so powerfully impressed on every institution of the country that, had they perished altogether, their previous presence is still an element of the utmost importance in the ethnic relations of the land.

Another census may enable us to speak with more precision with regard to these various divisions of the mass of the people of Hindustan, but meanwhile the element that seems to be most important, though the least investigated hitherto, is the extent of the aboriginal race. It has hitherto been so overlooked, that putting it at ninety millions may seem to many an exaggeration. Its intellectual inferiority has kept it in the background, but its presence everywhere seems to me the only means of explaining most of the phenomena we{45} meet continually, especially those connected with the history of the architecture of the country. Except on some such hypothesis as that just shadowed forth, I do not know how we are to account for the presence of certain local forms of buildings we find in the north, or to explain the persistence with which they were adhered to.

When from these purely ethnographic speculations we turn to ask how far religion and race coincide, we are left with still less information of a reliable character. As a rule, the Dravidians are Saiva, and Saiva in the exact proportion of the purity of their blood. In other words, in the extreme south of India they are immensely in the majority. In Tanjore, 7 to 1 of the followers of Vishnu; in Mádura, 5 to 1; in Trichinopoly, 4 to 1; and Salem, and generally in the south, 2 to 1;[43] but as we proceed northward they become equal, and in some of the northern districts of the Madras Presidency the proportions are reversed.

In Bengal, and wherever Buddhism once prevailed, the Vaishnava sects are, as might be expected, the most numerous. Indeed if it were not that so much of the present Hindu religion is an importation into the south, and was taught to the Dravidians by Brahmans from the north, it would be difficult to understand how the Vaishnava religion ever took root there, where Buddhism itself only existed to a slight extent, and where it, too, was an importation. If, however, it is correct to assume that Saivism had its origin to the northward of the Himalayas, among the Tartar tribes of these regions, there is no difficulty in understanding its presence in Bengal to the extent to which it is found to prevail there. But, on the other hand, nothing can be more natural than that an aboriginal Naga people, who worshipped trees and serpents, should become Buddhists, as Buddhism was originally understood, and, being Buddhists, should slide downwards into the corruptions of the present Vaishnava form of faith, which is avowedly that most fashionable and most prevalent in the north of India.

One of the most startling facts brought out by the last census, is the discovery that nearly one-third of the population of Eastern Bengal are Mahomedan—20,500,000 out of 66,000,000—while in the north-west provinces the Mahomedans are less than 1-6th—4,000,000 among 25,000,000; and in Oude little more than 1-10th. It thus looks more like a matter of feeling than of race; it seems that as the inhabitants of Bengal were Buddhists, and clung to that faith long after it had been abolished in other parts of India, they came in contact with the Moslem religion before they had adopted the modern form of Vishnuism, and naturally preferred a faith which acknowledged no caste, and freed them from the exactions and{46} tyranny of a dominant priesthood. The Mahomedan religion is in fact much more like Buddhism than are any of the modern Hindu forms, and when this non-Aryan casteless population came in contact with it, before they had adopted the new faith, and were free to choose, after the mysterious evaporation of their old beliefs, they naturally adopted the religion most resembling that in which they had been brought up. It is only in this way that it seems possible to account for the predominance of the Moslem faith in Lower Bengal and in the Punjab, where the followers of the Prophet outnumber the Hindus, in the proportion of 3 to 2, or as 9,000,000 to 6,000,000.

Where Buddhism had prevailed the choice seemed to lie between Vishnu or Mahomet. Where Saivism crept in was apparently among those races who were Turanians, or had affinities with the Tartar races, who immigrated from the north between the Christian era, and the age of the Mahomedan conquest.

To most people these may appear as rash generalisations, and at the present stage of the inquiry would be so in reality, if no further proof could be afforded. After reading the following pages, I trust most of them at least will be found to rest on the firm basis of a fair induction from the facts brought forward. It might, consequently, have appeared more logical to defer these statements to the end of the work, instead of placing them at the beginning. Unless, however, they are read and mastered first, a great deal that is stated in the following pages will be unintelligible, and the scope and purpose of the work can be neither understood nor appreciated.

{47}

It may create a feeling of disappointment in some minds when they are told that there is no stone architecture in India older than two and a half centuries before the Christian Era; but, on the other hand, it adds immensely to the clearness of what follows to be able to assert that India owes the introduction of the use of stone for architectural purposes, as she does that of Buddhism as a state religion, to the great Asoka, who reigned from B.C. 272 to 236.

It is not, of course, meant to insinuate that the people of India had no architecture before that date; on the contrary it can be proved that they possessed palaces and halls of assembly, perhaps even temples, of great magnificence and splendour, long anterior to Asoka’s accession; but, like the buildings of the Burmese at the present day, they were all in wood. Stone, in those days, seems to have been employed only for the foundations of buildings, or in engineering works, such as city walls and gates, or bridges or embankments; all else, as will appear from the sequel, were framed in carpentry. Much as we may now regret this, as all these buildings have consequently perished, it is not so clear, as it may at first appear, that the Indians were wrong in this, inasmuch as, in all respects, except durability, wood is a better building material than stone. It is far more easily cut and carved, larger spaces can be covered with fewer and less cumbrous points of support than is possible with stone, and colour and gilding are much more easily applied to wood than to stone. For the same outlay twice the space can be covered, and more than twice the splendour obtained by the use of the more perishable material, the one great defect being that it is ephemeral. It fails also in producing that impression of durability which is so essential to architectural effect; while, at the same time, the facility with which it can be carved and adorned tends to produce a barbaric splendour far less satisfactory than the more sober forms necessitated by the employment of the less tractable material.{48}

Be this as it may, it will, if I mistake not, become quite clear when we examine the earliest “rock-cut temples” that, whether from ignorance or from choice, the Indians employed wood, and that only in the construction of their ornamental buildings, before Asoka’s time.[44] From this the inference seems inevitable that it was in consequence of India being brought into contact with the western world, first by Alexander’s raid, and then by the establishment of the Bactrian kingdom in its immediate proximity, that led to this change. We do not yet know precisely how early the Bactrian kingdom extended to the Indus, but we feel its influence on the coinage, on the sculpture, and generally on the arts of India, from a very early date, and it seems as if before long we shall be able to fix with precision not only the dates, but the forms in which the arts of the Western world exerted their influence on those of the East. This, however, will be made clearer in the sequel. In the meanwhile it may be sufficient to state here that we know absolutely nothing of the temples or architecture of the various peoples or religions who occupied India before the rise of Buddhism,[45] and it is only by inference that we know anything of that of the Buddhists before the age of Asoka. From that time forward, however, all is clear and intelligible; we have a sufficient number of examples whose dates and forms are known to enable us to write a perfectly consecutive history of the Buddhist style during the 1000 years it was practised in India, and thence to trace its various developments in the extra Indian countries to which it was carried, and where it is still practised at the present day.[46]

If our ethnography is not at fault, it would be in vain to look for any earlier architecture of any importance in India before Asoka’s time. The Aryans, who were the dominant people before the rise of{49} Buddhism, were essentially a non-artistic race. They wrote books and expressed their ideas in words like their congeners all the world over, but they nowhere seem successfully to have cultivated the æsthetic arts, or to have sought for immortality through the splendour or durability of their buildings. That was always the aspiration of the less intellectual Turanian races, and we owe it to this circumstance that we are enabled to write with such certainty the history of their rise and fall as evidenced in their architectural productions.

There is no à priori improbability that the Dravidian races of the south of India, or the indigenous races of the north, may not have erected temples or other buildings at a very early date, but if so, all that can be said is that all trace of them is lost. When we first meet the Buddhist style it is in its infancy—a wooden style painfully struggling into lithic forms—and we have no reason to suppose that the other styles were then more advanced. When, however, we first meet them, some six or seven centuries afterwards, they are so complete in all their details, and so truly lithic in their forms, that they have hitherto baffled all attempts to trace them back to their original types, either in the wood or brick work, from which they may have been derived. So completely, indeed, have all the earlier examples been obliterated, that it is now doubtful whether the missing links can ever be replaced. Still, as one single example of a Hindu temple dating before the Christian Era might solve the difficulty, we ought not to despair of such being found, while the central provinces of India remain so utterly unexplored as they now are. Where, under ordinary circumstances, we ought to look for them, would be among the ruins of the ancient cities which once crowded the valley of the Ganges; but there the ruthless Moslem or the careless Hindu have thoroughly obliterated all traces of any that may ever have existed. In the remote valleys of the Himalaya, or of Central India, there may, however, exist remains which will render the origin and progress of Hindu architecture as clear and as certain as that of the Buddhist; but till these are discovered, it is with the architecture of the Buddhist that our history naturally begins. Besides this, however, from the happy accident of the Buddhists very early adopting the mode of excavating their temples in the living rock, their remains are imperishably preserved to us, while it is only too probable that those of the Hindu, being in less durable forms, may have disappeared. The former, therefore, are easily classified and dated, while the origin of the latter, for the present, seems lost in the mist of the early ages of Indian arts. Meanwhile, the knowledge that the architectural history of India commences B.C. 250, and that all the monuments now known to us are Buddhist for at least five or six centuries after that time, are cardinal facts that cannot be too strongly insisted upon by{50} those who wish to clear away a great deal of what has hitherto tended to render the subject obscure and unintelligible.

Classification.

For convenience of description it will probably be found expedient to classify the various objects of Buddhist art under the five following groups, though of course it is at times impossible to separate them entirely from one another, and sometimes two or more of them must be taken together as parts of one monument.

1st. Stambhas, or Lâts.—These pillars are common to all the styles of Indian architecture. With the Buddhists they were employed to bear inscriptions on their shafts, with emblems or animals on their capitals. With the Jains they were generally Deepdans, or lamp-bearing pillars; with the Vaishnavas they as generally bore statues of Garuda or Hunaman; with the Saiva they were flag-staffs; but, whatever their destination, they were always among the most original, and frequently the most elegant, productions of Indian art.

2nd. Stupas, or Topes.—These, again, may be divided into two classes, according to their destination: first, the true Stupas or towers erected to commemorate some event or mark some sacred spot dear to the followers of the religion of Buddha: secondly, Dagobas, or monuments containing relics of Buddha, or of some Buddhist saint.[47] If it were possible, these two ought always to be kept separate, but no external signs have yet been discovered by which they can be distinguished from one another, and till this is so, they must be considered, architecturally at least, as one.

3rd. Rails.—These have recently been discovered to be one of the most important features of Buddhist architecture. Generally they are found surrounding Topes, but they are also represented as enclosing sacred trees, temples, and pillars, and other objects. It may be objected that treating them separately is like describing the peristyle of a Greek temple apart from the cella. The Buddhist rail, however, in early ages at least, is never attached to the tope, and is used for so many other, and such various purposes, that it will certainly tend to the clearness of what follows if they are treated separately.

4th. Chaityas,[48] or Assembly Halls.—These in Buddhist art cor{51}respond in every respect with the churches of the Christian religion. Their plans, the position of the altar or relic casket, the aisles, and other peculiarities are the same in both, and their uses are identical, in so far as the ritual forms of the one religion resemble those of the other.

5th. Viharas, or Monasteries.—Like the Chaityas, these resemble very closely the corresponding institutions among Christians. In the earlier ages they accompanied, but were detached from, the Chaityas or churches. In later times they were furnished with chapels and altars in which the service could be performed independently of the Chaitya halls, which may or may not be found in their proximity.

{52}

It is not clear whether we ought to claim a wooden origin for these, as we can for all the other objects of Buddhist architecture. Certain it is, however, that the lâts of Asoka, with shafts averaging twelve diameters in height, are much more like wooden posts than any forms derived from stone architecture, and in an age when wooden pillars were certainly employed to support the roofs of halls, it is much more likely that the same material should be employed for the purposes to which these stambhas were applied, than the more intractable material of stone.

The oldest authentic examples of these lâts that we are acquainted with, are those which King Asoka set up in the twenty-seventh year after his consecration—the thirty-first of his reign—to bear inscriptions conveying to his subjects the leading doctrines of the new faith he had adopted. The rock-cut edicts of the same king are dated in his twelfth year, and convey in a less condensed form the same information—Buddhism without Buddha—but inculcating respect to parents and priests, kindness and charity to all men, and, above all, tenderness towards animals.[49]

The best known of these lâts is that set up by Feroze Shah, in his Kotila at Delhi, without, however, his being in the least aware of the original purpose for which it was erected, or the contents of the inscription. A fragment of a second was recently found lying on{53}

the ground near Hindu Rao’s house, north of Delhi.[50] Two others exist in Tirhoot at Radhia, and Mattiah, and a fragment of another was recognised utilised as a roller for the station roads, by an utilitarian member of the Bengal Civil Service. The most complete, however, is that which, in 1837, was found lying on the ground in the fort at Allahabad, and then re-erected with a pedestal, from a design by Captain Smith.[51] This pillar is more than usually interesting, as in addition to the Asoka inscriptions it contains one by Samudra Gupta (A.D. 380 to 400), detailing the glories of his reign, and the great deeds of his ancestors.[52] It seems again to have been thrown down, and was re-erected, as a Persian inscription tells us, by Jehangir (A.D. 1605), to commemorate his accession. It is represented without the pedestal (Woodcut No. 3). The shaft, it will be observed, is more than 3 ft. wide at the base, diminishing to 2 ft. 2 in. at the summit, which in a length of 33 ft.[53] looks more like the tapering of the stem of a tree—a deodar pine, for instance—than anything designed in stone. Like all the others of this class, this lât has lost its crowning ornament, which probably was a Buddhist emblem—a wheel or the trisul ornament[54]—but the necking still remains (Woodcut No. 4), and is almost a literal

copy of the honeysuckle ornament we are so familiar with as used by the Greeks with the Ionic order. In this instance, however, it is hardly probable that it was introduced direct by the Greeks, but is more likely to{54} have been borrowed from its native country Assyria, whence the Greeks also originally obtained it. The honeysuckle ornament, again, occurs as the crowning member of a pillar at Sankissa, in the Doab, half-way between Muttra and Canouge (Woodcut No. 5), and this time surmounting a capital of so essentially Persepolitan a type, that there can be little doubt that the design of the whole capital came from Central Asia. This pillar, which is of a much stouter and shorter proportion than the edict lâts, is surmounted by an elephant, but so mutilated that even in the 7th century the Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang mistook it for a lion, if this is indeed the effigy he was looking at, as General Cunningham supposes,[55] which, however, is by no means so clear as might at first sight appear.

Another capital of a similar nature to that last described crowns a lât at Bettiah in Tirhoot—this time surmounted by a lion of bold and good design (Woodcut No. 6). In this instance, however, the honeysuckle ornament is replaced by the more purely Buddhist ornament of a flock of the sacred hansas or geese. In both instances there are cable ornaments used as neckings, and the bead and reel so familiar to the student of classical art. The last named form is also, however, found at Persepolis. These features it may be remarked are only found on the lâts of Asoka, and are never seen afterwards in India, though common in Gandhara and in the Indus for long afterwards, which seems a tolerably clear indication that it was from Persia, though probably on a suggestion from the Greeks, that he obtained those{55} hints which in India led to the conversion of wooden architecture into stone. After his death, these classical features disappear, and wooden forms resume their sway, though the Persian form of capital long retained its position in Indian art.

It is more than probable that each of these Asoka lâts stood in front of, or in connection with some stupa, or building of some sort; but all these have disappeared, and the lâts themselves have—some of them at least—been moved more than once, so that this cannot now be proved. So far, however, as can now be ascertained, one or two stambhas stood in front of, or beside each gateway of every great tope, and one or two in front of each chaitya hall. At least we know that six or seven can now be traced at Sanchi, and nearly an equal number at Amravati,[56] and in the representation of topes at the latter place, these lâts are frequently represented both outside and inside the rails.

At Karli, one still stands in front of the great cave surmounted by four lions, which, judging from analogy, once bore a chakra or wheel, probably in metal.[57] A corresponding pillar probably once stood on the opposite side of the entrance bearing some similar emblem. Two such are represented in these positions in front of the great cave at Kenheri, which is an exact but debased copy of the great Karli cave.[58]

The two lâts at Erun and the iron pillar at Delhi, though similar in many respects to those just described, seem certainly to belong to the era of the Guptas at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century of our era, and to be dedicated to the Vaishnava faith, and in consequence belong to a subsequent chapter. That at Pathari is not inscribed or is at least unedited, and though it looks old, may also be of the Gupta times.

This is a meagre account, it must be confessed, of Buddhist lâts, which probably at one time could be counted by hundreds in the important Buddhist localities in Bengal; but it is feared we shall hardly be able to add many more to our list. They are so easily overthrown and so readily utilised in populous localities, that all trace of most of them has probably been irrecoverably lost, though one or two more examples may probably be found in remote, out-of-the-way places.{56}

There is no instance, so far as I am aware, of a built monumental pillar now standing in India. This is sufficiently accounted for by the ease with which they could be thrown down and their materials removed, when they had lost the sanctity which alone protected them. There are, however, two such pillars among the topes of Cabul, and evidently coeval with them, now called the Surkh Minar (Woodcut No. 7), and the Minar Chakri. These are ascribed by the traditions of the place to Alexander the Great, though they are evidently Buddhist monuments, meant to mark some sacred spot, or to commemorate some event, the memory of which has passed away. There can be little doubt that their upper members are meant to be copies of the tall capitals of the Persepolitan pillars, which were probably common also in Assyria, and throughout this part of Asia, but their shape and outline exhibit great degeneracy from the purer forms with which that architecture commenced in India, and which were there retained in their purity to a much later period than in this remote province. No reliable data seem to exist for ascertaining what the age of these monuments may be. It probably was the third or fourth century of our era, or it may be even earlier.

{57}

CONTENTS.

Bhilsa Topes—Topes at Sarnath and in Behar—Amravati Tope—Gandhara Topes—Jelalabad Topes—Manikyala Tope.

There are few subjects of like nature that would better reward the labour of some competent student than an investigation into the origin of Relic Worship and its subsequent diffusion over the greater part of the old world. So far as is at present known, it did not exist in Egypt, nor in Greece or Rome in classical times, nor in Babylon or Assyria. In some of these countries the greatest possible respect was shown to the remains of departed greatness, and the bones and ashes of persons who were respected in life were preserved with care and affection; but there was no individual so respected that a hair of his head, a tooth, or a toe-nail, even a garment or a utensil he had used, was considered as a most precious treasure after his death. In none of these countries does it appear to have occurred to any one that a bone or the begging-pot of a deceased saint was a thing worth fighting for; or that honour done to such things was a meritorious act, and that prayers addressed to them were likely to be granted. Yet so ingrained do these sentiments appear to be among the followers of Buddha, that it is difficult to believe that the first occasion on which this sentiment arose, was at the distribution of his remains on his attaining Nirvana at Kusinagara, B.C. 543. On that occasion, eight cities or kingdoms are said to have contended for the honour of possessing his mortal remains, and the difficulty was met by assigning a portion to each of the contending parties, who are said to have erected stupas to contain them in each of their respective localities.[59] None of these can now be identified with certainty—everything in future ages being ascribed to Asoka, who, according to{58} popular tradition, is said to have erected the fabulous number of 84,000 relic shrines, or towers to mark sacred spots.[60] Some of these may be those we now see, or are encased within their domes; but if so, they, like everything else architectural in India, are the earliest things we find there. It is true, the great pagoda—the Shewé Dagon—at Rangoon is said to contain relics of all the four Buddhas of the present Kalpa, the staff of Kakasanda; the water-dipper of Konagamma; the bathing garment of Kasyapa, and eight hairs from the head of Gautama Buddha;[61] but supposing this to be true, we only now see the last and most modern, which covers over the older erections. This is at least the case with the great Dagoba at Bintenne, near Kandy, in Ceylon, in which the thorax-bone of the great ascetic lies enshrined. The ‘Mahawanso,’ or great Buddhist history of Ceylon, describes the mode in which this last building was raised, by successive additions, in a manner so illustrative of the principle on which these relic shrines arrived at completion, that it is well worth quoting:—“The chief of the Devos, Sumano, supplicated of the deity worthy of offerings for an offering. The Vanquisher, passing his hand over his head, bestowed on him a handful of his pure blue locks from the growing hair of the head. Receiving and depositing it in a superb golden casket, on the spot where the divine teacher had stood, he enshrined the lock in an emerald dagoba, and bowed down in worship.

“The thero Sarabhu, at the demise of the supreme Buddha, receiving at his funeral pile the Thorax-bone, brought and deposited it in that identical dagoba. This inspired personage caused a dagoba to be erected 12 cubits high to enshrine it, and thereon departed. The younger brother of King Devenampiatisso (B.C. 259), having discovered this marvellous dagoba, constructed another encasing it, 30 cubits in height. King Duttagamini (B.C. 161), while residing there, during his subjugation of the Malabars, constructed a dagoba, encasing that one, 80 cubits in height.” This was the “Mahiyangana dagoba completed.”[62] It is possible that at each successive addition some new deposit was made; at least most of the topes examined in Afghanistan and the Punjab, which show signs of these successive increments, seem also to have had successive deposits, one above the other.

Of all the relics of Buddha, the most celebrated is the left canine tooth. At the original distribution it is said to have fallen to the lot of Orissa, and to have been enshrined in a town called from that circumstance “Dantapura.” This, most probably, was the modern town of Puri, and the celebrated temple of Juggernath, which now{59} flourishes there, not only in all probability occupies the same spot, but the worship now celebrated there is the same, mutato nomine, as that which was once performed in honour of this tooth. Be this as it may, it seems to have remained there in peace for more than eight centuries, when the king of the country, being attracted by some miracles performed by it, and the demeanour of the priests, became converted from the Brahmanical faith, to which he had belonged, to the religion of Buddha. The dispossessed Brahmans thereon complain to his suzerain lord, resident at Palibothra, in the narrative called only by his title Pandu, but almost certainly the Gautamiputra of the Andrabhitya dynasty. He ordered the tooth to be brought to the capital, when, from the wonders it exhibited, he was converted also; but this, and the excitement it caused, led to its being ultimately conveyed surreptitiously to Ceylon, where it arrived about the year 311;[63] and in spite of various vicissitudes still remains in British custody, the Palladium of the kingdom, as it has done during the last fifteen centuries and a half.[64]

About the same time (A.D. 324[65]) another tooth of Buddha was enshrined in a tope on the island of Salsette, in Bombay harbour, apparently in the time of the same Gautamiputra, but what its subsequent fate was is not known.[66] When the tope was opened for Dr. Bird, it was not there, but only a copper plate, which recorded its enshrinement, by a noble layman called Pushyavarman.[67]

Almost as celebrated as these was the begging-pot of Sakya Muni, which was long kept in a dagoba or vihara erected by Kanishka at Peshawur, and worshipped with the greatest reverence.[68] After paying a visit to Benares,[69] it was conveyed to Kandahar, and is still said to be preserved there by the Mussulmans, and looked upon even by them as a most precious relic.[70]{60}

All this will become plainer as we proceed, for we shall find every Buddhist locality sanctified by the presence of relics, and that these were worshipped apparently from the hour of the death of the founder of the religion to the present day. Were this the place to do it, it would be interesting to try and trace the path by which, and the time when, this belief in the efficacy of relics spread towards the west, and how and when it was first adopted by the early Christian Church, and became with them as important an element of worship as with the Buddhists. That would require a volume to itself; meanwhile, what is more important for our present purpose is the knowledge that this relic-worship gave rise to the building of these great dagobas, which are the most important feature of Buddhist architectural art.

No one can, I fancy, hesitate in believing that the Buddhist dagoba is the direct descendant of the sepulchral tumulus of the Turanian races, whether found in Etruria, Lydia, or among the Scyths of the northern steppes. The Indians, however, never seem to have buried, but always to have burnt, their dead, and consequently never, so far as we know, had any tumuli among them. It may be in consequence of this that the dagobas, even in the earliest times, took a rounded or domical form, while all the tumuli, from being of earth, necessarily assumed the form of cones. Not only out of doors, but in the earliest caves, the forms of dagobas are always rounded; and no example of a straight-lined cone covering a dagoba has yet been discovered. This peculiarity, being so universal, would seem to indicate that they had been long in use before the earliest known example, and that some other material than earth had been employed in their construction; but we have as yet no hint when the rounded form was first employed, nor why the conical form of the tumulus was abandoned when it was refined into a relic shrine. We know, indeed, from the caves, and from the earliest bas-reliefs, that all the roofs of the Indians were curvilinear; and if one can fancy a circular chamber with a domical roof—not in stone, of course—as the original receptacle of the relic, we may imagine that the form was derived from this.[71]

Bhilsa Topes.

The most extensive, and taking it altogether, perhaps the most interesting, group of topes in India is that known as the Bhilsa{61} Topes, from a town of that name in the kingdom of Bhopal, near which they are situated. There, within a district not exceeding ten miles east and west and six north and south, are five or six groups of topes, containing altogether between twenty-five and thirty individual examples. The principal of these, known as the great tope at Sanchi, has been frequently described, the smaller ones are known from General Cunningham’s descriptions only;[72] but altogether they have excited so much attention that they are perhaps better known than any group in India. We are not however, perhaps, justified in assuming, from the greater extent of this group, as now existing, that it possessed the same pre-eminence in Buddhist times. If we could now see the topes that once adorned any of the great Buddhist sites in the Doab or the Behars, the Bhilsa group might sink into insignificance. It may only be, that situated in a remote and thinly-peopled part of India, they have not been exposed to the destructive energy of opposing sects of the Hindu religion, and the bigoted Moslem has not wanted their materials for the erection of his mosques. They consequently remain to us, while it may be that nobler and more extensive groups of monuments have been swept from the face of the earth.

Notwithstanding all that has been written about them, we know very little that is certain regarding their object and their history. Our usual guides, the Chinese Pilgrims, fail us here. Fa Hian never was within some hundreds of miles of the place; and if Hiouen Thsang ever was there, it was after leaving Ballabhi, when his journal becomes so wild and curt that it is always difficult, sometimes impossible, to follow him. He has, at all events, left no description by which we can now identify the place, and nothing to tell us for what purpose the great tope or any of the smaller ones were erected. The ‘Mahawanso,’ it is true, helps us a little in our difficulties. It is there narrated that Asoka, when on his way to Ujjéni (Ujjain), of which place he had been nominated governor, tarried some time at Chétyagiri, or, as it is elsewhere called, Wessanagara, the modern Besnagar, close to Sanchi. He there married Devi, the daughter of the chief, and by her had twin sons, Ujjenio and Mahindo, and afterwards a daughter, Sanghamitta. The two last named entered the priesthood, and played a most important part in the introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon. Before setting out on this mission, Mahindo visited his royal mother at Chétyagiri, and was{62} lodged in “a superb vihara,” which had been erected by herself.[73] In all this there is no mention of the great tope, which may have existed before that time; but till some building is found in India which can be proved to have existed before that age, it will be safe to assume that this is one of the 84,000 topes said to have been erected by him. Had Sanchi been one of the eight cities which obtained relics of Buddha at the funeral pyre, the case might have been different; but it has been dug into, and found to be a stupa, and not a dagoba. It consequently was erected to mark some sacred spot or to commemorate some event, and we have no reason to believe that this was done anywhere before Asoka’s time.

On the other hand two smaller topes on the same platform contained relics of an undoubted historical character. That called No. 2 Tope contained those of ten Buddhist teachers who took part in the third great convocation held under Asoka, and some of whom were sent on missions to foreign countries, to disseminate the doctrines then settled, and No. 3 Tope contained two relic caskets, represented in the accompanying woodcuts (Nos. 8 and 9). One of these contained relics of Maha Moggalana, the other of Sariputra, friends and companions of Buddha himself, and usually called his right and left hand disciples.[74] It does not of course follow from this that this dagoba is as old as the time of Buddha; on the contrary, some centuries must elapse before a bone or rag belonging to any mortal becomes so precious that a dome is erected to enshrine it. The great probability seems to be that these relics were deposited there by Asoka himself, in close proximity to the sacred spot, which the great tope was erected to commemorate. The tope containing relics of his contemporaries must of course be much more modern, probably contemporary with the gateways, which are subsequent to the Christian Era.[75]{63}

The general appearance of the Sanchi Tope will be understood from the view of it on Woodcut No. 10, and its shape and arrangement from the plan and section, Nos. 11 and 12. From these it will be observed that the principal building consists of a dome{64} somewhat less than a hemisphere, 106 ft. in diameter, and 42 ft. in height.[76]

On the top of the tope is a flat space about 34 ft. in diameter, formerly surrounded by a stone railing, some parts of which are still lying there; and in the centre of this once stood a feature known to Indian archæologists as a Tee. The woodcut (No. 13), from a rock-cut example at Ajunta, represents the usual form at this age. The lower part is adorned with the usual Buddhist rail (to be described hereafter), the upper by the conventional window, two features which are universal. It is crowned by a lid of three slabs, and no doubt either was or simulated a relic casket. No tope, and no representation of a tope—and we have hundreds—are without this feature, and generally it is or was surmounted by one or more discs representing the umbrellas of state; in modern times by as many as nine of these. The only ancient wooden one now known to exist is that in the cave at Karli (Woodcut No. 56), but the representations of them in stone and painting are literally thousands in number.

The dome rests on a sloping base, 14 ft. in height by 120 ft. in diameter, having an offset on its summit about 6 ft. wide. This, to judge from the representations of topes on the sculptures, must have been surrounded by a balustrade, and was ascended by a broad double ramp on one side. It was probably used for processions round the monument, which seem to have been among the most common Buddhist ceremonials. The centre of this great mound is quite solid, being composed of bricks laid in mud; but the exterior is faced with dressed stones. Over these was laid a coating of cement nearly 4 inches in thickness, which was, no doubt, originally adorned either with painting or ornaments in relief.

Beside the group at Sanchi, which comprises six or seven topes, there are at Sonari, six miles distant, another group of eight topes. Two of these are important structures, enclosed in square courtyards, and one of these yielded numerous relics to the explorers.

At Satdhara, three miles further on, is a great tope 101 ft. in diameter, but which, like that at Sanchi, seems to have been a stupa, and yielded no relics. No. 2, however, though only 24 ft. in diameter, was found to contain relics of Sariputra and Moggalana, like No. 3 at{65} Sanchi. Besides these there are several others, all small, and very much ruined.

The most numerous group, however, is situated at Bhojpur, seven miles from Sanchi, where thirty-seven distinct topes are grouped together on various platforms. The largest is 66 ft. in diameter, but No. 2 is described as one of the most perfect in the neighbourhood, and, like several others in this group, contained important relics.

At Andher, about five miles west of Bhojpur, is a fine group of three small, but very interesting topes. With those above enumerated, this makes up about sixty distinct and separate topes, in this small district, which certainly was not one of the most important in India in a religious point of view, and consequently was probably surpassed by many, not only in the number but in the splendour of its religious edifices.[77]

Without more data than we at present possess, it is of course impossible to speak with certainty with regard to the age of this group of topes, but, so far as can be at present ascertained, there seems no reason for assuming that any of them are earlier than the age of Asoka, B.C. 250, nor is it probable that any of them can be of later date than the era of Salivahana, A.D. 79, or say after the first century of our era. Their rails may be later, but the topes themselves seem all to be included within these three centuries and a half.

Topes at Sarnath and in Behar.

Not only is there no other group of topes in India Proper that can be compared, either in extent or in preservation, to those of Bhilsa, but our knowledge of the subject is now so complete that it is probably safe to assert that only two, or at most three, topes exist between the Sutlej and the sea, sufficiently perfect to enable their form and architectural features to be distinguished. There are, of course, numerous mounds near all the Buddhist cities which mark the site, and many of which probably hide the remains, of some of the hundreds of stupas or dagobas mentioned by the Chinese Pilgrims, besides many that they failed to distinguish. All, however, with the fewest possible exceptions, have perished; nor is it difficult to see why this should be so. All, or nearly all, were composed of brick or small stones, laid either without mortar, or with cement that was little better than mud. They consequently, when desecrated and deserted, formed such convenient quarries for the villagers, that{66} nearly all have been utilised for building huts and houses of the Hindus, or the mosques of the iconoclastic Mussulmans. Their rails, being composed of larger stones and not so easily removed, have in some instances remained, and some will no doubt be recovered when looked for; and as these, in the earlier ages at least, were the iconostasis of the shrine, their recovery will largely compensate for the loss of the topes which they surrounded.

The best known, as well as the best preserved of the Bengal topes, is that at Sarnath, near Benares (Woodcut No. 14). It was carefully explored by General Cunningham in 1835-36, and found to be a stupa: viz., containing no relics, but erected to mark some spot sanctified by the presence of Buddha, or by some act of his during{67} his long residence there. It is situated in the Deer Park, where he took up his residence with his five disciples when he first removed from Gaya on attaining Buddhahood, and commencing his mission as a teacher. What act it commemorates we shall probably never know, as there are several mounds in the neighbourhood, and the descriptions of the Chinese Pilgrims are not sufficiently precise to enable us now to discriminate between them.

The building consists of a stone basement, 93 ft. in diameter, and solidly built, the stones being clamped together with iron to the height of 43 ft. Above that it is in brickwork, rising to a height of 110 ft. above the surrounding ruins, and 128 ft. above the plain.[78] Externally the lower part is relieved by eight projecting faces, each 21 ft. 6 in. wide, and 15 ft. apart. In each is a small niche, intended apparently to contain a seated figure of Buddha, and below them, encircling the monument, is a band of sculptured ornament of the most exquisite beauty. The central part consists—as will be seen by the cut on the next page—of geometric patterns of great intricacy, but combined with singular skill; and, above and below, foliage equally well designed, and so much resembling that carved by Hindu artists on the earliest Mahomedan mosques at Ajmir and Delhi, as to make us feel sure they cannot be very distant in date.

The carvings round the niches and on the projections have been left so unfinished—in some instances only outlined—that it is impossible to guess what ultimate form it may have been intended to give them. The upper part of the tower seems never to have been finished at all, but from our knowledge of the Afghanistan topes we may surmise that it was intended to encircle it with a range of pilasters, and then some bold mouldings, before covering it with a hemispherical dome.

In his excavations, General Cunningham found, buried in the solid masonry, at the depth of 10½ ft. from the summit, a large stone on which was engraved the usual Buddhist formula, “Ye dharmma hetu,” &c., in characters belonging to the 7th century, from which he infers that the monument belongs to the 6th century. To me it appears so extremely improbable that men should carefully engrave such a formula on a stone, and then bury it ten or twelve feet in a mass of masonry which they must have hoped would endure for ever, that I cannot accept the conclusion. It seems to me much more probable that it may have belonged to some building which this one was designed to supersede, or to have been the pedestal of some statue which had been disused, but which from its age had become venerable, and was consequently utilised to sanctify this{68} new erection. I am consequently much more inclined to adopt the tradition preserved by Captain Wilford,[79] to the effect that the Sarnath monument was erected by the sons of Mohi Pala, and destroyed (interrupted?) by the Mahomedans, in 1017, before its completion.[80] The form of the monument, the character of its sculptured ornaments, the unfinished condition in which it is left, and indeed the whole circumstances of the case, render this date so much the most probable that I feel inclined to adopt it almost without hesitation.

The other Bengal tope existing nearly entire is known as Jarasandha Ka Baithak. General Cunningham state its dimensions to{69} be 28 ft. in diameter by 21 ft. in height, resting on a basement 14 ft. high, so that its total height, when complete, may have been about 55 ft.[81] As it was not mentioned by Fa Hian, A.D. 400, and is by Hiouen Thsang, A.D. 640, its age is probably, as General Cunningham states, intermediate between these dates, or about A.D. 500.[82] It is a bold, fine tower, evidently earlier than that at Sarnath, and showing nothing of the tendency towards Hindu forms there displayed. It has, too, the remains of a procession-path, or extended basement, which is wholly wanting at Sarnath, but which is always found in the earlier monuments. It was erected, as Hiouen Thsang tells us, in honour of a Hansa—goose—who devoted itself to relieve the wants of a starving community of Bhikshus.[83]

The third stupa, if it may be so called, is the celebrated temple at Buddh Gaya, which stands immediately in front of the celebrated Bodhi-tree (Ficus religiosa)[84] under whose shade Buddha attained complete enlightenment in the thirty-fifth year of his age, B.C. 588. Its history is told in such detail by Hiouen Thsang[85] that there seems little doubt as to the main facts of the case. According to this authority, Asoka built a small vihara here, but long afterwards this was replaced by a temple 160 ft. high and 60 ft. (20 paces) wide, which are the exact dimensions of the present building, according to Cunningham,[86] and we are further told that it was erected by a Brahman, who was warned by Maheswara (Siva), in a vision, to execute this work. In this temple there was a cella corresponding with the dimensions of that found there, in which the Brahman placed a statue of Buddha, seated cross-legged, with one hand pointing to the earth. Who this Brahman was we learn from an inscription translated by Mr. Wilkins in vol. i. of the ‘Asiatic Researches’ (p. 284), for it can hardly be doubted that the Brahman of the Chinese pilgrim is identical with the Amara Deva of the inscription, who was one of the ornaments of the court of Vicramaditya of Malwa, A.D. 495-530. From a Burmese inscription on the spot, first translated by Colonel Burney, we further learn that the place, having fallen into decay, was restored by the Burmese in the year 1306-1309.[87]

From the data these accounts afford us we gather, with very tolerable certainty, that the building we now see before us (Woodcut No. 16) {70} is substantially that erected by Amara the Brahman, in the beginning of the 6th century, but the niches Hiouen Thsang saw, containing golden statues of Buddha, cannot be those now existing, and the sculptures he mentions find no place in the present design; and the amalakas of gilt copper that crowned the whole, as he saw it, have disappeared. The changes in detail, as well as the introduction of radiating arches in the interior, I fancy must belong to the Burmese restoration in the beginning of the 14th century. Though these, consequently, may have altered its appearance in detail, it is probable that we still have before us a straight-lined pyramidal nine-storeyed temple of the 6th century, retaining all its essential forms—anomalous and unlike anything else we find in India, either before or afterwards, but probably the parent of many nine-storeyed towers found beyond the Himalayas, both in China and elsewhere.

Eventually we may discover other examples which may render{71} this noble tower less exceptional than it now appears to be; but perhaps its anomalous features may be due to the fact that it was erected by Brahmans for Buddhist purposes in an age of extremest toleration,[88] when it was doubtful whether the balance would incline towards Buddhist or Brahmanical supremacy. In less than a century and a half after its erection the storm burst (A.D. 648) which eventually sealed the fate of Buddhism in Central India, with only a fitful flickering of the lamp afterwards during lulls in the tempest.

At Keseriah, in Tirhoot, about 20 miles north of Bakra, where one of the pillars of Asoka mentioned above is found, are the ruins of what appears to have been a very large tope. It is, however, entirely ruined externally, and has never been explored, so that we cannot tell what was its original shape or purpose.[89] All along this line of country numerous Buddhist remains are found, all more or less ruined, and they have not yet been examined with the care necessary to ascertain their forms. This is the more to be regretted as this was the native country of the founder of the religion, and the place where his doctrines appear to have been originally promulgated. If anything older than the age of Asoka is preserved in India, it is probably in this district that it must be looked for.

Amravati.

Although not a vestige remains in situ of the central dagoba at Amravati, there is no great difficulty, by piecing together the fragments of it in the India Museum—as is done in Plate 93 of ‘Tree and Serpent Worship’—in ascertaining what its dimensions and general appearance were. It was small, only 30 ft. to 35 ft. in diameter, or about 100 ft. in circumference, and 50 ft. high. The perpendicular part, 34 ft. high, was covered with sculptures in low relief, representing scenes from the life of Buddha. The domical part was covered with stucco, and with wreaths and medallions either executed in relief or painted. No fragment of them remains by which it can be ascertained which mode of decoration was the one adopted.

Altogether, there seems no doubt that the representation of a tope on the following page (Woodcut No. 17), copied from the inner rail at Amravati, fairly represents the central building there. There were probably forty-eight such representations of dagobas on this rail. In each the subject of the sculpture is varied, but the general design is the same throughout; and, on the whole, the woodcut may be taken as representing the mode in which a Buddhist dagoba was ornamented in{72} the 4th or 5th century, which is the time at which the style seems to have reached its highest point of elaboration, in India at least.

Gandhara Topes.

The extreme paucity of examples retaining their architectural form, in the valley of the Ganges, is, to some extent, compensated for by the existence of a very extensive range of examples in Afghanistan and the western Punjab. In his memoir of these topes, published by Professor Wilson, in his ‘Ariana Antiqua,’ Mr. Masson enumerates and describes, in more or less detail, some sixty examples, or almost exactly the same number which General Cunningham described as existing at Bhilsa. In this instance, however, they extend over a range of 200 miles, from Cabul to the Indus, instead of only 16 or{73} 17 miles from Sonari to Andher. To these must be added some fifteen or twenty examples, found at Manikyala or in its neighbourhood, and it is probable about the same number still exist undescribed, making altogether perhaps 100 stupas in this province.

Notwithstanding this wealth of examples, we miss one, which was probably the finest of all. When Fa Hian passed through the province in A.D. 400, he describes the dagoba which King Kanishka had erected at Peshawur as “more than 470 ft. in height, and decorated with every sort of precious substance, so that all who passed by, and saw the exquisite beauty and graceful proportions of the tower and the temple attached to it, exclaimed in delight that it was incomparable for beauty;” and he adds, “Tradition says this was the highest tower in Jambudwipa.”[90] When Hiouen Thsang passed that way more than two hundred years afterwards, he reports the tower as having been 400 ft. high, but it was then ruined—“the part that remained, a li and a half in circumference (1500 ft.) and 150 ft. high;” and he adds, in twenty-five stages of the tower there were a “ho”—10 bushels of relics of Buddha.[91] No trace of this monument now exists.

These north-western topes are so important for our history, and all have so much that is common among them, and are distinguished by so many characteristics from those of India Proper, that it would be extremely convenient if we could find some term which would describe them without involving either a theory or a geographical error. The term Afghanistan topes, by which they are generally designated, is too modern, and has the defect of not including Peshawur and the western Punjab. “Ariana,” as defined by Professor Wilson, describes very nearly the correct limits of the province; for, though it includes Bactria and the valley of the Upper Oxus, where no topes have yet been found, we know from the Chinese Pilgrims that in the 5th and 7th centuries these countries, as far as Khoten, were intensely Buddhist, and monuments must exist, and will, no doubt, be found when looked for. The name, however, has the defect that it seems to imply the existence in that region of an Aryan people, and consequently an Aryan religion. At the time to which he was referring, that was no doubt the case, and therefore from the Professor’s point of view the name was correctly applied.

When the Sanscrit-speaking races first broke up from their original settlements in the valley of the Oxus, they passed through the valley of the Cabul river on their way to India, and lingered, in all probability, both there and in the Punjab before reaching their first permanent position on the Saraswati—the true “Arya Varta{74}”—between the Sutlej and the Jumna. It is also nearly certain that they remained the dominant caste in these countries down to the time of Alexander’s invasion, and during the supremacy of the Bactrian kingdom. About 130 years, however, before the Christian Era, if we may trust the Chinese accounts,[92] the Yuechi, and other tribes of Tartar origin, were on the move in this direction. About that time they struck down the Bactrian monarchy, and appear from thenceforward to have permanently occupied their country. It is not clear whether they immediately, or at what interval they penetrated into the Cabul valley; but between that time and the Christian Era successive hordes of Yuechi, Sakas, Turuskas, and Hunas, had poured into the valley and the western Punjab to such an extent as to obliterate, or at least for the time supersede the Aryan population, and supplant it by one of Turanian origin, and with this change of race came the inevitable change of religion. Turania would therefore for our purposes be a more descriptive name than Ariana; but it is not sufficiently precise or well defined. No people, so far as is known, ever adopted and adhered to the Buddhist religion who had not a large proportion of Turanian blood in their veins, and the name would consequently include all the people who adopted this faith. Gandhara is, on the contrary, a local name, which certainly, in early times, included the best part of this province, and in Kanishka’s time seems to have included all he reigned over, and, if so, would be the most appropriate term we could find.

It has, moreover, this advantage, that it is essentially Buddhist. In the time of Asoka, it was Kashmir and Gandhara to which he sent his missionaries, and from that time forward Gandhara is the term by which, in all Buddhist books, that kingdom is described, of which Taxila was the capital, and which is, as nearly as can now be ascertained, conterminous with our architectural province.

It is not clear whether Kanishka was or was not the first Buddhist king of this country; but, so far as is at present known, he seems to have done for Buddhism in Gandhara exactly what Asoka did for that religion in central India. He elevated it from its position as a struggling sect to that of being the religion of the State. We know, however, that Asoka himself sent missionaries to this country;[93] and, more than this, that he engraved a complete set of his edicts on a rock at Kapurdigiri, 30 miles north-east from Peshawur, but we do not know what success they or he attained. Certain it is, as Professor Wilson remarks, that “no coin of a Greek prince of Bactria has ever been met with in any tope.”[94] The local coins that are found in them all belong to dynasties subsequent to the destruction of the{75} Bactrian kingdom, and, according to the same authority (p. 322), “were selected from the prevailing currency, which was not of any remotely previous issue;” “while the Greek Bactrian coins had long ceased to be current, though they had not, perhaps, become so scarce as to be enshrined as rarities” (p. 44). Under these circumstances, Professor Wilson arrives at the conclusion that the topes “are undoubtedly all subsequent to the Christian Era” (p. 322). It is true that some of the kings whose coins are found in the topes, such as Hermæus, Azes, Kadphises, and others, may have lived prior to that epoch, but none of their coins show a trace of Buddhism. On those of the last-named king, it is also true that we find the trisul emblem of the Buddhists on the reverse, but it is coupled with the bull and trident of Siva in so remarkable a manner that it can hardly be doubted that the monarch was a follower of the Hindu religion, though acknowledging the presence of Buddhism in his realm.[95] With Kanishka, however, all this is altered. He was a Buddhist, beyond all doubt; he held the convocation called the third by the northern Buddhists—the fourth according to the southern—at which Nagárjuna was apparently the presiding genius. From that time the Thibetans, Burmese, and Chinese date the introduction of Buddhism into their countries: not, however, the old simple Buddhism, known as the Hinayana, which prevailed before, but the corrupt Mahayana, which was fabled to have been preserved by the Nagas from the time of Buddha’s death, and from whom Nagárjuna received it, and spread it from Peshawur over the whole of northern and eastern Asia. It was precisely the same revolution that took place in the Christian Church, about the same time after the death of its founder. Six hundred years after Christ, Gregory the Great established the hierarchical Roman Catholic system, in supersession of the simpler primitive forms. Six hundred years after the Nirvana, Nagárjuna introduced the complicated and idolatrous Mahayna,[96] though, as we learn from the Chinese Pilgrims, a small minority still adhered in after times to the lesser vehicule, or Hinayana system.

Although, therefore, we are probably safe in asserting that none of the Gandhara topes date before the Christian Era, it is not because there is any inherent, à priori improbability that they should date before Kanishka, as there is that those of India Proper cannot extend beyond Asoka. There is no trace of wooden construction here. All is stone and all complete, and copied probably from Bactrian originals that may have existed two centuries earlier. Their dates depend principally on the coins, which are almost invariably found{76} deposited with the relics, in these topes. No coins so far as I know have been found in any Indian tope. They are found in hundreds in these north-western ones, and always fix a date beyond which the tope cannot be carried back, and generally enable us to approximate very nearly to the true date of the monument in question. If those of Kanishka are the earliest, which appears to be the case, the great one which he commenced, at Manikyala, is probably also the last to be finished in its present form, inasmuch as below 12 ft. of solid masonry, a coin of Yasoverma of Canouge was found, and his date cannot be carried back beyond A.D. 720. Between these dates, therefore, must be ranged the whole of this great group of Buddhist monuments.

There probably were no great Buddhist establishments in Gandhara before Kanishka, and as few, if any, after Yasoverma, yet we learn that between these dates this province was as essentially Buddhist as any part of India. Fa Hian tells us, emphatically, that the law of Buddha is universally honoured, and enumerates 500 monasteries,[97] and Hiouen Thsang makes no complaint of heretics, while both dilate in ecstasies on the wealth of relics everywhere displayed. Part of the skull, teeth, garments, staffs, pots of Buddha—impressions of his feet, even his shadow—was to be seen in this favoured district, which was besides sanctified by many actions which had been commemorated by towers erected on the spot where these meritorious acts were performed. Many of these spots have been identified, and more will no doubt reward the industry of future investigators, but meanwhile enough is known to render this province one of the most interesting of all India for the study of the traditions or art of Mediæval Buddhism.

The antiquities of the western part of the province were first investigated by Dr. Honigberger, in the years 1833-34,[98] and the result of his numismatic discoveries published in Paris and elsewhere; but the only account we have of the buildings themselves is that given by Mr. Masson, who, with singular perseverance and sagacity, completed what Dr. Honigberger had left undone.[99] Those of the eastern district and about Manikyala were first investigated by General Ventura and M. Court, officers in the service of Runjeet Sing, and the result of their researches published by Prinsep in the third volume of his ‘Journal’ in 1830; but considerably further light has been thrown on them by the explorations of General Cunningham, and published in his ‘Archæological Reports’ for 1863-1864.{77}

Jelalabad Topes.

The topes examined and described by Mr. Masson as existing round Jelalabad are thirty-seven in number, viz., eighteen distinguished as the Darunta group, six at Chahar Bagh, and thirteen at Hidda. Of these about one-half yielded coins and relics of more or less importance, which proved the dates of their erection to extend from the Christian Era, or it may be a few years before it, to the 7th or 8th century.

One of the most remarkable of these is No. 10 of Hidda, which contained, besides a whole museum of gems and rings, five gold solidi of the emperors Theodosius (A.D. 408), Marcian and Leo (474); two gold Canouge coins; and 202 Sassanian coins extending to, if not beyond, the Hegira.[100] This tope, therefore, must belong to the 7th century, and would be a most convenient landmark in architectural history, were it not that the whole of its exterior is completely peeled off, so that no architectural mouldings remain, and, apparently from the difficulty of ascertaining them, no dimensions are quoted in the text.[101] About one-half of the others contained relics, but none were found to be so rich as this.

In general appearance they differ considerably from the great Indian topes just described, being all taller in proportion to their breadth, and having a far more tower-like appearance, than any found in India, except the Sarnath example. They are also smaller, the largest at Darunta being only 160 ft. in circumference. This is about the usual size of the first-class topes in Afghanistan, the second class being a little more than 100 ft., while many are much smaller.

In almost every instance they seem to have rested on a square base, though in many this has been removed, and in others it is buried in rubbish. Above this rises a circular base or drum, crowned by a belt sometimes composed merely of two architectural string-courses, with different coloured stones disposed as a diaper pattern between them. Sometimes a range of plain pilasters occupies this space. More generally the pilasters are joined by arches sometimes circular, sometimes of an ogee form. In one instance—the Red Tope—they are alternately circular and three-sided arches. That this belt represents the enclosing rail at Sanchi and the pilastered base at Manikyala cannot be doubted.{78} It shows, however, a very considerable change in style to find it elevated so far up the monument as it here is, and so completely changed from its original purpose.

Generally speaking, the dome or roof rises immediately above this, but no example in this group retains its termination in a perfect state. Some appear to have had hemispherical roofs, some more nearly conical, of greater or less steepness of pitch; and some (like that represented in Woodcut No. 18) were probably flat, or with only a slight elevation in the centre. It seems probable there may have been some connection between the shape of the roof and the purpose for which the tope was raised. But we have no evidence to lead us to any decision of this point.

One interesting peculiarity was brought to light by Mr. Masson in his excavation of the tope at Sultanpore, and is shown in the annexed section (Woodcut No. 19). It is proved that the monument originally consisted of a small tope on a large square base, with the relic placed on its summit. This was afterwards increased in size by a second tope being built over it.

Besides those already mentioned there are about twenty or thirty topes in the neighbourhood of Cabul, but all much ruined, and few of any striking appearance. So at least we are led to infer from Mr. Masson’s very brief notice of them. No doubt many others still remain in spots hitherto unvisited by Europeans.

In the immediate vicinity of all these topes are found caves and tumuli, the former being the residences of priests, the latter for the most part burying-places, perhaps in some instances smaller relic-shrines. Their exact destination cannot be ascertained without a careful investigation by persons thoroughly conversant with the{79} subject. There are still, however, many points of great interest which require to be cleared up by actual examination. When this has been done we may hope to be able to judge with some certainty of their affinity with the Indian buildings on the one hand, and those of Persia on the other.

Manikyala.

The most important group, however, of the Gandhara topes is that at Manikyala in the Punjab, situated between the Indus and the Jelum or Hydaspes. Fifteen or twenty examples are found at this place, most of which were opened by General Ventura and M. Court about the year 1830, when several of them yielded relics of great value, though no record has been preserved of the greater part of their excavations. In one opened by M. Court, a square chamber was found at a height of 10 ft. above the ground level. In this was a gold cylinder enclosed in one of silver, and that again in one of copper. The inner one contained four gold coins, ten precious stones and four pearls. These were, no doubt, the relics which the tope was intended to preserve. The inscription has only partially been read, but certainly contains the name of Kanishka,[102] so that we may feel assured it was erected during his reign. Some Roman coins were found much worn, as if by long use,[103] before they reached this remote locality; and, as they extend down to a date 33 B.C.,[104] it is certain the monument was erected after that date. The gold coins were all those of Kanishka. This tope, therefore, could hardly have been erected earlier than twenty years before Christ; how much later, we will be able to say only when we know more of the date and history of the monarch to whom it owes its origin. To the antiquary the inquiry is of considerable interest, but less so to the architect, as the tope is so completely ruined that neither its form nor its dimensions can now be distinguished.

Another was recently opened by General Cunningham, in the relic chamber of which he found a copper coin, belonging to the Satrap Zeionises, who is supposed to have governed this part of the country about the Christian Era, and we may therefore assume that the tope was erected by him or in his time. This and other relics were enclosed in a glass stoppered vessel, placed in a miniature representation of the tope itself, 4½ in. wide at base, and 8½ in. high (Woodcut No. 20), which may be considered as a fair representation of what a tope was or was intended to be, in that day. It is, perhaps, taller, however,{80} than a structural example would have been; and the tee, with its four umbrellas, is, no doubt, exaggerated.

The principal tope of the group is, perhaps, the most remarkable of its class in India, though inferior in size to several in Ceylon. It was first noticed by Mountstuart Elphinstone, and a very correct view of it published by him, with the narrative of his mission to Cabul in 1815. It was afterwards thoroughly explored by General Ventura, in 1830, and a complete account of his investigations published by Prinsep in the third volume of his ‘Journal.’ Since then its basement has been cleared of the rubbish that hid it to a depth of 12 ft. to 15 ft. all round by the officers of the Public Works Department. They also made careful plans and sections of the whole, manuscript copies of which are now before me.

From those it appears that the dome is an exact hemisphere, 127 ft. in diameter, and consequently, as nearly as may be, 400 ft. in circumference. The outer circle measures in like manner 159 ft. 2 in., or 500 ft. in circumference, and is ascended by four very grand flights of steps, one in each face, leading to a procession-path 16 ft. in width, ornamented both above and below by a range of dwarf pilasters, representing the detached rail of the older Indian monuments. It is, indeed, one of the most marked characteristics of these Gandhara topes, that none of them possess, or ever seem to have possessed, any trace of an independent rail; but all have an ornamental belt of pilasters, joined generally by arches simulating the original rail. This can hardly be an early architectural form, and leads to the suspicion that, in spite of their deposits, their outward casing may be very much more modern than the coins they contain.

The outward appearance of the Manikyala tope, in its present half-ruined state, may be judged of from the view (Woodcut No. 21). All that it really requires to complete its outline is the tee, which was an invariable adjunct to these buildings; no other feature has wholly disappeared. The restored elevation, half-section, half-elevation (Woodcut No. 22), to the usual scale, 50 ft. to 1 in., will{81} afford the means of comparison with other monuments; and the section and elevation of the base (Woodcut No. 23, next page) will explain its architectural details in so far as they can be made out.

On digging into this monument, General Ventura found three separate deposits of relics, deposited at apparently equal distances of 25 ft. from the surface of the finished monument and from each other, and each apparently increasing in value or importance as it{82} descended. The first was at the base of a solid cubical mass of squared masonry, and contained, inter alia, some Sassanian coins and one of Yasoverma (A.D. 720), and one of Abdullah ben Hassim, struck at Merv A.H. 66, or A.D. 685.[106] The second, at a depth of 50 ft., contained no coins. The principal deposit, at a depth of 75 ft., was on the exact level of the procession-path outside. It consisted of a copper vessel, in which was a relic casket in brass, represented in the annexed woodcut (No. 24), containing a smaller vessel of gold, filled with a brown liquid, and with an inscription on the lid which has not yet been fully deciphered, but around it were one gold and six copper coins of the Kanishka type.

If this were all, it would be easy to assert that the original smaller tope, as shown in the section (Woodcut No. 22), was erected by Kanishka, or in his age, and that the square block on its summit was the original tee, and that in the 8th century an envelope 25 ft. in thickness, but following the original form, was added to it, and with the extended{83} procession-path it assumed its present form, which is very much lower than we would otherwise expect from its age.

Against this theory, however, there is an ugly little fact. It is said that a fragment[107] or, as it is printed, three Sassanian coins were found at a depth of 64 ft. (69 ft. from the finished surface); and if this were so, as the whole masonry was found perfectly solid and undisturbed from the surface to the base, the whole monument must be of the age of this coin. As engraved, however, it is such a fragment[108] that it seems hardly sufficient to base much upon it. Unless the General had discovered it himself, and noted it at the time, it might so easily have been mislabelled or mixed up with other Sassanian fragments belonging to the upper deposits that its position may be wrongly described. If, however, there were three, this explanation will not suffice. It may, however, be that the principal deposit was accessible, as we know was sometimes the case[109] in this instance, at the bottom of an open well-hole or side gallery, before the time of the rebuilding in the 8th century, and was then, and then only, built up solid. If, however, neither of these explanations suffice, the Manikyala tope is a mystery and a riddle I cannot unravel. If we may disregard this deposit, its story seems self-evident as above explained. But whatever its internal arrangements may have been, it seems perfectly certain that its present external appearance is due to a rebuilding in the early part of the 8th century.

General Cunningham identifies M. Court’s tope as the Huta Murta, one of the most celebrated topes in the province, erected to commemorate Buddha, in a previous stage of existence, offering his body to appease the hunger of a tiger, and—according to another version—of its seven famishing cubs;[110] but, as before remarked, nothing of its exterior coating now remains. Unfortunately, the same is true of all the other fifteen topes at this place, and, what is worse, of all the fifty or fifty-five which can still be identified at Taxila. As General Cunningham remarks, of all these sixty or seventy stupas there is not one, excepting the great Manikyala tope, that retains in its original position a single wrought stone of its outer facing;[111] none, consequently, are entitled to a longer notice in a work wholly devoted to architecture.{84}

CONTENTS.

Rails at Bharhut, Muttra, Sanchi, and Amravati.

It is only recently that our rapidly-increasing knowledge has enabled us to appreciate the important part which Rails play in the history of Buddhist architecture. The rail of the great Tope at Sanchi has, it is true, been long known; but it is the plainest of those yet discovered, and without the inscriptions which are found on it, and the gateways that were subsequently added to it, presents few features to interest any one. There is a second rail at Sanchi which is more ornamented and more interesting, but it has not yet been published in such a manner as to render its features or its history intelligible. The same is at least partially true of the great rail at Buddh Gaya, though it is one of the oldest and finest of its kind. When, however, the Amravati sculptures were brought to light and pieced together,[112] it was perceived that the rail might, and in that instance did, become one of the most elaborate and ornamental features of the style. Since then General Cunningham has found two or three buried rails at Muttra, and his crowning discovery of the great rail at Bharhut, has made it clear that this was the feature on which the early Buddhist architects lavished all the resources of their art, and from the study of which we may consequently expect to learn most.

The two oldest rails of which we have any knowledge in India are those at Buddh Gaya and that recently discovered at Bharhut. The former, General Cunningham thinks, cannot be of much later date than Asoka.[113] The latter, in his ‘Memorandum,’[114] he ascribes to the age of that monarch. These determinations he founds principally on the form of the characters used in the inscriptions on them, which certainly are nearly identical with those used on the lâts. From them, and the details of the sculptures, it is quite evident they cannot be far removed in age from the dates so assigned to them.{85} On the whole, however, I am inclined to believe that the Buddh Gaya rail was really erected by Asoka, or during his reign. At all events, we know from the fifteenth chapter of the ‘Mahawanso’ that even if he did not worship this tree, he certainly reverenced it to such an extent that when he sent his daughter Sangamitta to aid in the conversion of Ceylon to the true faith, he cut off and entrusted her with a branch of this tree planted in a golden vessel. That tree was replanted with infinite ceremony at Anuradhapura, and it, or its lineal descendant, remains the principal numen of the island to this day. Hiouen Thsang tells us that Asoka built a small vihara to the east of the tree on the spot where the present temple stands;[115] and nothing is consequently more probable than he should have added this rail, which is concentric with his vihara, but not with the tree.

There certainly is no inherent improbability that he should have done so, for it seems hardly doubtful that this was the tree under whose shade Sakya Muni attained “complete enlightenment,” or, in other words, reached Buddhahood; and no spot consequently could be considered more sacred in the eyes of a Buddhist, or was more likely to be reverenced from the time forward.

The Bharhut rail, according to the inscription on it, was erected by a Prince Vâdha Pala, son of Raja Dhanabhuti,—a name we cannot recognise in any list, but hardly could have been contemporary with the all-powerful and all-pervading rule of Asoka, and must consequently have been subsequent, as no such works were, so far as we now know, erected in India before his day. The ultimate determination of the relative dates of these two monuments will depend on a careful comparison of their sculptures, and for that the materials do not exist in this country. I have, thanks to the kindness of General Cunningham, a nearly complete set of photographs of the Bharhut sculptures, but not one of the Buddh Gaya rail. It is true the drawings by Major Kittoe, in the India House Library, are very much better than those published by General Cunningham in his report;[116] but they do not suffice for this purpose. In so far, however, as the evidence at present available enables us to judge, it seems nearly certain that the Bharhut sculptures are half a century nearer those of the gateways at Sanchi than those at Buddh Gaya are; and consequently we may, for the present at least, assume the Buddh Gaya rail to be 250 B.C., that at Bharhut 200 B.C., and the gateways at Sanchi to range from 10 to say 70 or 80 A.D.[117]

The Buddh Gaya rail is a rectangle, measuring 131 ft. by 98 ft., and is very much ruined. Its dimensions were, indeed, only obtained{86} by excavation. The pillars are apparently only 5 ft. 11 in. in height, and are generally ornamented with a semi-disc top and bottom, containing a single figure, or a group of several. They have also a central circular disc, with either an animal or bust in the centre of a lotus. No part of the upper rail seems to have been recovered, and none of the intermediate rails between the pillars are sculptured. As the most ancient sculptured monument in India, it would be extremely interesting to have this rail fully illustrated,[118] not so much for its artistic merit as because it is the earliest authentic monument representing manners and mythology in India. Its religion, as might be expected, is principally Tree and Serpent worship, mingled with veneration for dagobas, wheels, and Buddhist emblems. The domestic scenes represent love-making, and drinking,—anything, in fact, but Buddha or Buddhism, as we afterwards come to understand the term.

Bharhut.

Whatever interest may attach to the rail at Buddh Gaya, it is surpassed ten times over by that of the newly-discovered rail at{87} Bharhut, which, taking it all in all, is perhaps the most interesting monument—certainly in a historical point of view—known to exist in India. The tope itself, which seems to have been 68 ft. in diameter, has entirely disappeared, having been utilised by the natives to build their villages; but about one-half of the rail, which was partly thrown down and buried in the rubbish, still remains. Originally it was 88 ft. in diameter, and consequently some 275 ft. in length. It was divided into four quadrants by the four entrances, each of which was guarded by statues 4½ ft. high, carved in relief in the corner pillars of Yakshas and Yakshinis, and Naga Rajas—the representatives, in fact, of those peoples who afterwards became Buddhists. The eastern gateway only seems to have been adorned with a Toran—or, as the Chinese would call it, a “Pailoo”—like those at Sanchi. One pillar of it is shown in the following woodcut, (No. 27), and sufficient fragments were found in the excavations to enable General Cunningham to restore it with almost absolute certainty. From his restoration it appears to have been 22 ft. 6 in. in height from the ground to the top of the chakra, or wheel, which was the central emblem on the top of all, supported by a honeysuckle ornament of great beauty. The beams had no human figures on them, like those at Sanchi. The lower had a procession of elephants, bringing offerings to a tree; the middle beam, of lions similarly employed; the upper beam has not been recovered, but the beam-ends are ornamented with conventional crocodiles, and show elevations of buildings so correctly drawn as to enable us to recognise all their features in the rock-cut edifices now existing.

The toran, most like this one, is that which surmounted the southern entrance at Sanchi, which, for reasons given elsewhere,[119] I believe to be not only the oldest of the four found there, but to have been erected in the first quarter of the first century of our era (A.D. 10 to 28). This one, however, is so much more wooden than even that and constructively so inferior, that I would, on architectural grounds alone, be inclined to affirm that it was at least a century older, and see no reason why it should not be two centuries more ancient. The age of the rail, however, does not depend on this determination, as the toran may have been added afterwards.

The rail was apparently 9 ft. in height, including the coping, and had three discs on intermediate rails. The inner side of the upper rail was ornamented by a continuous series of bas-reliefs, divided from each other by a beautiful flowing scroll. The inside also of the discs was similarly ornamented, and some of the pillars had bas-reliefs in three storeys on three of their sides. Altogether, I fancy not less than one hundred separate bas-reliefs have been{88} recovered, all representing some scene or legend of the time, and nearly all inscribed not only with the names of the principal persons represented, but with the title of the jataka or legend, so that they are easily recognised in the books now current in Buddhist countries.

It is the only monument in India that is so inscribed, and it is this that consequently gives it such value for the history not only of art but of Buddhist mythology.[120]

If this work professed to be a history of Indian art, including sculpture, it would be necessary to illustrate this rail to a much{89} greater extent than is attempted; but as architecturally it is hardly more important than others, that task may well be left to its discoverer. Meanwhile, however, it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the art here displayed is purely indigenous. There is absolutely no trace of Egyptian influence. It is, indeed, in every detail antagonistic to that art; nor is there any trace of classical art; nor can it be affirmed that anything here exhibited could have been borrowed directly from Babylonia or Assyria. The capitals of the pillars do resemble somewhat those at Persepolis, and the honeysuckle ornaments point in the same direction; but, barring that, the art, especially the figure-sculpture belonging to the rail, seems an art elaborated on the spot by Indians, and by Indians only.[121]

Assuming these facts to be as stated, they give rise to one or two inferences which have an important bearing on our investigations. First, the architecture of this rail, with its toran, are more essentially wooden than even those at Sanchi, and, so far as it goes, tends to confirm the conclusion that, at the period they were erected, the style was passing from wood to stone. On the other hand, however, the sculpture is so sharp and clean, and every detail so well and so cleverly expressed in the hard sandstone in which it is cut, that it is equally evident the carvers were perfectly familiar with the material they were using. It is far from being a first attempt. They must have had chisels and tools quite equal to carving the hardest stone, and must have been perfectly familiar with their use. How long it may have taken them to acquire this degree of perfection in stone carving, it is of course impossible to guess, without further data; but it must have been centuries. Though, therefore, we may despair of finding any architectural buildings older than the time of Asoka, it is by no means improbable that we may find images or bas-reliefs, and inscriptions of a much earlier date, and for the history of India and her arts they would be as useful as the larger examples. They, like this rail, are probably buried under some neglected mound or the ruins of some forsaken city, and will only be recovered by excavation or by accident.{90}

For the present we must be content with the knowledge, that we now know perfectly what the state of the arts was in India when the{91} Greeks first visited it. Neither the Buddh Gaya nor the Bharhut rails were, it is true, in existence in Alexander’s time; but both were erected within the limits of the century in which Megasthenes visited the country, as ambassador from Seleucus, and it is principally from him that we know what India was at that time. If he did not see these monuments he must have seen others like them, and at all events saw carvings executed in the same style, and wooden chaityas and temples similar to those depicted in these sculptures. But one of the curious points they bring out is, that the religious observances he witnessed at the courts of the Brahmanical king, Chandragupta, are not those he would have witnessed had he been deputed to his Buddhist grandson the great Asoka. There, as everywhere else at this age, everything is Buddhist, but it is Buddhism without Buddha. He nowhere appears, either as a heavenly person to be worshipped, or even as an ascetic. The nearest indication of his presence is in a scene where Ajatasatra—the king in whose reign he attained Nirvana—kneels before an altar in front of which are impressions of his feet. His feet, too, seem impressed on the step of the triple ladder, by which he descended from Heaven at Sankissa; Maya’s dream, and the descent of the white Elephant can be recognised, and other indications sufficient to convince an expert that Buddhism is the religion indicated. But, as at Sanchi, by far the most numerous objects to which worship is addressed in these sculptures, are trees, one of which, the inscription tells us, is the Bodhi-tree of Sakya Muni. Besides this, the Bo-trees of six or seven of his predecessors are represented in these sculptures, and both by their foliage and their inscriptions we can easily recognise them as those known at the present day as belonging to these previous Buddhas.[122]

Naga people, and kings with their five-headed serpent-hoods are common; but only one instance has yet been brought to light in which the serpent can be said to be worshipped. Making love and drinking are not represented here as at Sanchi—nor are females represented nude as they are at Muttra. All are decently clothed, from the waist downwards at least, and altogether the manners and customs at Bharhut are as much purer as the art is better than it is in the more modern example at Sanchi.

Muttra.

When excavating at Muttra, General Cunningham found several pillars of a rail, which, judging from the style, is most probably of about the same age as that at Bharhut, or it may be a little more modern, but still certainly anterior to the Christian Era. The pillars,{92} however, are only 4½ ft. high, and no trace of the top rail nor of the intermediate discs has been found. Each pillar is adorned by a figure of a naked female in high relief, singularly well executed, richly adorned with necklaces and bangles, and a bead belt or truss round their middles. Each stands on a crouching dwarf, and above each, in a separate compartment, are the busts of two figures, a male and female, on a somewhat smaller scale, either making violent love to each other, or drinking something stronger than water.[123]

Though the sculptures at Sanchi and Cuttack have made us familiar with some strange scenes, of what might be supposed an anti-Buddhistical tendency, this rail can hardly be Buddhist. We do not, indeed, know if it was straight or circular, or to what class of building it was attached. If part of a palace, it would be unobjectionable. But if it belonged to a temple, it ought to have been dedicated to Krishna, not to Buddha. It is not, indeed, impossible that a form of Vishnuism may have co-existed with Buddhism in the neighbourhood of Bindrabun, even at this early age. But these are problems, the existence of which is only just dawning upon us, and which cannot be investigated in a work like the present.

Sanchi.

Though the rails surrounding the topes at Sanchi are not, in themselves, so interesting as those at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut, still they are useful in exhibiting the various steps by which the modes of decorating rails were arrived at, and the torans or gateways of the great rail are quite unequalled by any other examples known to exist in India. The rail that surrounds the great tope may be described as a circular enclosure 140 ft. in diameter, but not quite regular, being elliptical on one side, to admit of the ramp or stairs leading to the berm or procession-path surrounding the monument. As will be seen from the annexed woodcut (No. 29), it consists of octagonal pillars 8 ft. in height, and spaced 2 ft. apart. These are joined together at the top by a rail 2 ft. 3 in. deep, held in its position by a tenon cut{93} on the top of the pillars, as at Stonehenge; between the pillars are three intermediate rails, which are slipped into lens-shaped holes, on either side, the whole showing how essentially wooden the construction is. The pillars, for instance, could not have been put up first, and the rails added afterwards. They must have been inserted into the right or left hand posts, and supported while the next pillar was pushed laterally, so as to take their ends, and when the top rail was shut down the whole became mortised together as a piece of carpentry, but not as any stone-work was done, either before or afterwards.

The next stage in rail design is exemplified in that of No. 2 Tope, Sanchi (Woodcut No. 30); there circular discs are added in the centre of each pillar, and semicircular plates at top and bottom. In carpentry the circular ones would represent a great nail meant to keep the centre bar in its place; the half discs, top and bottom, metal plates to strengthen the junctions—and this it seems most probably may really have been the origin of these forms.

If from this we attempt to follow the progress made in the ornamentation of these rails, it seems to have been arrived at by placing a circular disc in each of the intermediate rails, as shown in the woodcut (No. 31), copied from a representation of the outer face{94} of the Amravati rail, carved upon it. In the actual rail the pillars are proportionally taller and the spaces somewhat wider, but in all other respects it is the same—it has the same zöophorus below, and the same conventional figures bearing a roll above, both which features are met with almost everywhere.

A fourth stage was reached in that shown in the next woodcut (No. 32), from a representation of a rail in the Gautamiputra cave at Nassick, A.D. 312 to 333, where there are three full discs on the pillars as well as on the rails, and no doubt other variations may yet be found; but these are sufficient to show how the discs were multiplied till the pillars almost become evanescent quantities in the composition.

The greatest innovation, however, that took place, was the substitution of figure-sculpture for the lotus or water leaves of the discs, if that can be called an innovation, which certainly took place in the wooden age of architecture, before it was thought of translating these things into stone. The earliest rails we know, those at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut, show these changes already completed in the manner above described. The plainness of the rail, or the absence of figure-sculpture, is consequently no test of its greater or less antiquity, though the extreme multiplication of discs, as shown in the last example, seems only to have taken place just before their discontinuance.

To return, however, from this digression. The rail that surrounds the great tope at Sanchi was probably commenced immediately after its erection, which, as explained above, was probably in Asoka’s time, B.C. 250; but as each rail, as shown by the inscription on it, was the{95} gift of a different individual,[124] it may have taken 100 or 150 years to erect. The age of the torans is more easily ascertained. There is an inscription on the south gateway, which is certainly integral, which states that the gateway was erected during the reign of a Sat Karni king, and it is nearly certain that this applies to a king of that name who reigned A.D. 10 to 28. As this gateway is certainly the oldest of the four, it gives us a starting-point from which to determine the age of the others. The next that was erected was the northern. That was followed by the eastern—the one of which there is a cast at South Kensington—and the last erected was the western. The style and details of all those show a succession and a progress that could hardly have taken place in less than a century, and, with other reasons, enable us to assert without much hesitation, that the four gateways were added to the rail of the great tope during the first century of the Christian Era, and their execution spread pretty evenly over that period.[125] The northern gateway is shown in the general view of the building (Woodcut No. 10), but more in detail in the cut (No. 33) on the following page.

In design and dimensions these four gateways are all very similar to one another. The northern is the finest,[126] as well as somewhat larger than the others. Its pillars, to the underside of the lower beam, measure 18 ft., including the elephant capitals, and the total height to the top of the emblem is 35 ft. The extreme width across the lower beam is 20 ft. The other gateways are somewhat less in dimensions, the eastern being only 33 ft. in height. The other two having fallen, it is not easy to be sure what their exact dimensions may have been while standing.

All these four gateways, or torans as they are properly called, were covered with the most elaborate sculptures both in front and rear—wherever, in fact, their surface was not hidden by being attached to the rail behind them. Generally the sculptures represent scenes from the life of Buddha when he was the Prince Siddharta, rarely, if ever, after he became an ascetic, and nowhere is he represented in the conventional forms either standing or seated cross-legged, which afterwards became universal. In addition to these are scenes from the jatakas or legends, narrating events or actions that took place during the five hundred births through which Sakya Muni had passed before he became so purified as to reach perfect Buddhahood. One of{96}

{97}

these, the Wessantara, or “alms-giving Jataka,” occupies the whole of the lower beam of the northern gateway, and reproduces all the events of that wonderful tale exactly as it is narrated in Ceylonese books at the present day. Besides these historical scenes, the worship of trees is represented at least seventy-six times; of dagobas or relic shrines, thirty-eight times; of the chakra, or wheel, the emblem of Dharma—the law—ten times; and of Devi or Sri, the goddess, who afterwards, in the Hindu Pantheon, became the consort of Vishnu, ten times. The trisul or trident emblem which crowns the gateways may be, and I am inclined to believe does, represent Buddha himself. On the left-hand pillar of the north gateway it crowns a pillar, hung with wreaths and emblems, at the bottom of which are the sacred feet (Woodcut No. 34). The whole looking like a mystic emblem of a divinity, it was forbidden to represent it under a human form. The corresponding face of the opposite pillar is adorned with architectural scrolls, wholly without any esoteric meaning so far as can be detected, but of great beauty of design (Woodcut No. 35).

Other sculptures represent sieges and fighting, and consequent triumphs, but, so far as can be seen, for the acquisition of relics or subjects connected with the faith. Others portray men and women eating and drinking{98} and making love, and otherwise occupied, in a manner as unlike anything we have hitherto been accustomed to connect with Buddhism as can well be imagined. Be this as it may, the sculptures of these gateways form a perfect picture Bible of Buddhism as it existed in India in the first century of the Christian Era, and as such are as important historically as they are interesting artistically.[127]

The small tope (No. 3), on the same platform as the great tope at Sanchi, was surrounded by a rail, which has now almost entirely disappeared. It had, however, one toran, the pillars and one beam of which are still standing. It is only about half the size of those of the great tope, measuring about 17 ft. to the top of the upper beam, and 13 ft. across its lower beam. It is apparently somewhat more modern than the great gateways, and its sculptures seem to have reference to the acts of Sariputra and Moggalana, whose relics, as above mentioned, were deposited in its womb.

This tope was only 40 ft. in diameter, which is about the same dimension as No. 2 Tope, containing the relics of the ten apostles who took part in the third convocation under Asoka, and afterwards in the diffusion of the Buddhist religion in the countries bordering on India.

As above pointed out, the rails at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut afford a similar picture of Buddhism at a time from two to three centuries earlier. At first sight the difference is not so striking as might be expected, but on a closer examination it is only too evident that both the art and the morals had degenerated during the interval. There is a precision and a sharpness about the Bharhut sculptures which is not found here, and drinking and love-making do not occur in the earlier sculptures—they do, however, occur at Buddh Gaya—to anything like the extent they do at Sanchi. There is no instance at Bharhut of any figure entirely nude; at Sanchi nudity among the females is rather the rule than the exception. The objects of worship are nearly the same in both instances, but are better expressed in the earlier than in the later examples. Till, however, the Bharhut sculptures are published in the same detail as those of Sanchi, it is hardly fair to insist too strongly on any comparison that may be instituted between them. I believe I know nearly all, but till the publication of General Cunningham’s work the public will not have the same advantage.

Before leaving these torans, it may be well to draw attention again to the fact of their being, even more evidently than the rails, so little removed from the wooden originals out of which they were{99} elaborated. No one can look at them, however carelessly, without perceiving that their forms are such as a carpenter would imagine, and could construct, but which could not be invented by any process of stone or brick masonry with which we are familiar. The real wonder is that, when the new fashion was introduced of repeating in stone what had previously been executed only in wood, any one had the hardihood to attempt such an erection in stone; and still more wonderful is it that, having been done, three of them should have stood during eighteen centuries, till one was knocked down by some clumsy Englishmen, and that only one—the earliest, and consequently the slightest and most wooden—should have fallen from natural causes.

Although these Sanchi torans are not the earliest specimens of their class executed wholly in stone, neither are they the last. We have, it is true, no means of knowing whether those represented at Amravati[128] were in stone or in wood, but, from their different appearances, some of them most probably were in the more permanent material. At all events, in China and Japan their descendants are counted by thousands. The pailoos in the former country, and the toris in the latter, are copies more or less correct of these Sanchi gateways, and like their Indian prototypes are sometimes in stone, sometimes in wood, and frequently compounded of both materials, in varying proportions. What is still more curious, a toran with five bars was erected in front of the Temple at Jerusalem, to bear the sacred golden vine, some forty years before these Sanchi examples. It, however, was partly in wood, partly in stone, and was erected to replace one that adorned Solomon’s Temple, which was wholly in bronze, and supported by the celebrated pillars Jachin and Boaz.[129]

Amravati.

Although the rail at Bharhut is the most interesting and important in India in an historical sense, it is far from being equal to that at Amravati, either in elaboration or in artistic merit. Indeed, in these respects, the Amravati rail is probably the most remarkable monument in India. In the first place it is more than twice the dimensions of the rail at Bharhut, the great rail being 195 ft. in diameter, the inner 165 ft., or almost exactly twice the dimensions of that at Bharhut; between these two was the procession-path, which in the{100} earlier examples was on the tope itself. Externally, the total height of the great rail was about 14 ft.; internally, it was 2 ft. less, while the inner rail was solid, and only 6 ft. in height.

The external appearance of the great rail may be judged of from the annexed woodcut (No. 36), representing a small section of it. The lower part, or plinth, was ornamented by a frieze of animals and boys, generally in ludicrous and comic attitudes. The pillars, as usual, were octagonal, ornamented with full discs in the centre, and half discs top and bottom, between which were figure sculptures of more or less importance. On the three rails were full discs, all most elaborately carved, and all different. Above runs the usual undulating roll moulding, which was universal in all ages,[130] but is here richly interspersed with figures and emblems. The inside of the rail was very{101} much more richly ornamented than the outside shown in the woodcut; all the central range of discs, both on the pillars and on the rails, being carved with figured subjects, generally of very great elaboration and beauty of detail, and the upper rail was one continuous bas-relief upwards of 600 ft. in length. At the returns of the gateways another system was

adopted, as shown in the above woodcut (No. 37). The pillars being narrower, and the discs smaller, the principal sculpture was on the intermediate space: in this instance a king on his throne receives a messenger, while his army in front defends the walls; lower down{102} the infantry, cavalry, and elephants sally forth in battle array, while one of the enemy sues for peace, which is probably the information being communicated to the king.

The inner rail, though lower, was even more richly ornamented than the great rail, generally with figures of dagobas—apparently twelve in each quadrant—most elaborately carved with scenes from the life of Buddha or from legends. One of these dagobas has already been given (Woodcut No. 17). Between these were pillars and slabs ornamented, either as shown in Woodcuts Nos. 38 and 39, or with either Buddhist designs or emblems, but all as rich, at least, as these; the whole making up a series of pictures of Buddhism, as it was understood in the 4th and 5th centuries, unsurpassed by anything now known to exist in India. The slab represented in Woodcut No. 38 (p. 101), though now much ruined, is interesting as showing the three great objects of Buddhist worship at once. At the top is the dagoba with its rail, but with the five-headed Naga in the place usually occupied by Buddha. In the central compartment is the chakra or wheel, now generally acknowledged to be the emblem of Dharma, the second member of the Buddhist Trinity; below that the tree, possibly representing Sanga or the congregation; and in front of all a throne, on which is placed what I believe to be a relic, wrapt up in a silken cloth.

This combination is repeated again and again in these sculptures, and may be almost designated as the shorter Buddhist catechism, or rather the confession of faith, Buddha, Dharma, Sanga. The last woodcut (No. 39) is also interesting, as showing, besides the three emblems, the form of pillars with its double animal capitals so common in structures of this and an earlier age.

The age of these rails does not seem doubtful.[131] The outer or{103} great rail seems to have been commenced about A.D. 319, at the time when the tooth relic paid this place a visit on its way from Puri to Ceylon, and its erection may have occupied the whole of the rest of that century. The inner rail is more modern, and seems to have been begun about A.D. 400, and, with some other detached fragments, carry the history of the monument down, it may be, to 500. At the same time it is clear that an older monument existed on the spot. The fragments that exist of the central tope are certainly of an earlier age, and some of the slabs of the inner rail exhibit sculptures of a much earlier date on their backs. It seems as if they had belonged to some disused earlier building, and been re-worked when fitted to their new places.

When Hiouen Thsang visited this place in the year 639 it had already been deserted for more than a century, but he speaks of its magnificence and the beauty of its site in more glowing terms than he applies to almost any other monument in India. Among other expressions he uses one not easily understood at first sight, for he says, “It was ornamented with all the magnificence of the palaces of Bactria”[132] (Tahia). Now, however, that we know what the native art of India was from the sculptures at Bharhut and Sanchi, and as we also know nearly what the art of Bactria was from those recently dug up near Peshawur, especially at Jamalgiri, we see at once that it was by a marriage of these two arts that the Amravati school of sculpture was produced, but with a stronger classical influence than anything of its kind found elsewhere in India. It is now also tolerably evident that the existence of so splendid a Buddhist establishment so far south must have been due to the fact of the mouths of the Kistnah and Godavery being ports of departure from which the Buddhists of the north-west and west of India, in early times, conquered or colonised Pegu and Cambodia, and eventually the island of Java.

All this will be clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile it seems probable that with this, which is certainly the most splendid specimen of its class, we must conclude our history of Buddhist rails. No later example is known to exist; and the Gandhara topes, which generally seem to be of this age or later, have all their rails attached to their sides in the shape of a row of pilasters. If they had any figured illustrations, they must have been in the form of paintings on plaster on the panels between the pilasters. This, indeed, was probably the mode in which they were adorned, for it certainly was not with sculptures, but we cannot understand any Buddhist monument existing anywhere, without the jatakas or legends being portrayed on its walls in some shape or other.

At Sarnath all reminiscences of a rail had disappeared, and a new{104} mode of ornamentation introduced, which bore no resemblance to anything found on the earlier topes.

Although, therefore, our history of the rails may finish about A.D. 500, it by no means follows that many examples may not yet be brought to light belonging to the seven and a half centuries that elapsed between that date and the age of Asoka. As they all certainly were sculptured to a greater or less extent, when they are examined and published we may hope to have an ancient pictorial history of India for those ages nearly as complete as that possessed by any other country in the world. At present, however, we only know of ten or twelve examples, but they are so easily thrown down and buried that we may hope to find many more whenever they are looked for, and from them to learn the whole story of Buddhist art.

{105}

CONTENTS.

Behar Caves—Western Chaitya Halls, &c.

Although, if looked at from a merely artistic point of view, it will probably be found that the rails are the most interesting Buddhist remains that have come down to our time, still, in an historical or architectural sense, they are certainly surpassed by the chaitya halls. These are the temples of the religion, properly so called, and the exact counterpart of the churches of the Christians, not only in form, but in use.

Some twenty or thirty of these are known still to exist in a state of greater or less preservation, but, with one exception, all cut in the rock. In so far as the interior is concerned this is of little or no consequence, but it prevents our being able to judge of their external form or effect,[133] and, what is perhaps worse, it hides from us entirely the mode in which their roofs were constructed. We know that they were formed with semicircular ribs of timber, and it is also nearly certain that on these ribs planks in two or three thicknesses were laid, but we cannot even guess what covered the planks externally. It could hardly have been metal, or any kind of felt, and one is unwilling to believe that they were thatched with grass, though I confess, as the evidence at present stands, this seems to me the most probable suggestion.[134]

The only structural one is at Sanchi, and is shown in plan in the accompanying woodcut (No. 41). It does not however, suffice to show us how the roofs of the aisles were supported externally. What it does show, which the caves do not, is that when the aisle which surrounded{106} the apse could be lighted from the exterior, the apse was carried up solid. In all the caves the pillars surrounding the dagoba are different from and plainer than those of the nave. They are, in fact, kept as subdued as possible, as if it was thought they had no business there, but were necessary to admit light into the circumambient aisle of the apse.

As almost all our information regarding these chaityas, as well as the viharas, which form the next group to be described, is derived from the rock-cut examples in Western India, it would be convenient, if it were possible, to present something like a statistical account of the number and distribution of the groups of caves found there. The descriptions hitherto published do not, however, as yet admit of this.

I have myself visited and described all the most important of them;[135] and in an interesting paper, communicated to the Bombay branch of the Asiatic Society by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, he enumerated thirty-seven different groups of caves, more or less known to Europeans.[136] This number is exclusive of those in Bengal and Madras, and new ones are daily being discovered; we may therefore fairly assume that certainly more than forty, and probably nearly fifty, groups of caves exist in India Proper.

Some of these groups contain as many as 100 different and distinct excavations, many not more than ten or a dozen; but altogether I feel convinced that not less than 1000 distinct specimens are to be found. Of these probably 100 may be of Brahmanical or Jaina origin; the remaining 900 are Buddhist, either monasteries or temples, the former being incomparably the more numerous class; for of the latter not more than twenty or thirty are known to exist. This difference arose, no doubt, from the greater number of the viharas being grouped around structural topes, as is always the case in Afghanistan and Ceylon; and, consequently, they did not require any rock-cut place of worship while possessed of the more usual and appropriate edifice.

The façades of the caves are generally perfect, and form an exception to what has been said of our ignorance of the external appearance of Indian temples and monasteries, since they are executed in the rock{107} with all the detail that could have graced the buildings of which they are copies. In the investigation of these objects, the perfect immutability of a temple once hewn out of the living rock is a very important advantage. No repair can add to, or indeed scarcely alter, the general features of what is once so executed; and there can be no doubt that we see them now, in all essentials, exactly as originally designed. This advantage will be easily appreciated by any one who has tried to grope for the evidence of a date in the design, afforded by our much-altered and often reconstructed cathedrals of the Middle Ages.

The geographical distribution of the caves is somewhat singular, more than nine-tenths of those now known being found within the limits of the Bombay Presidency. The remainder consist of two groups in Bengal; those of Behar and Cuttack, neither of which is important in extent; one only is known to exist in Madras, that of Mahavellipore; and two or three insignificant groups, which have been traced in Afghanistan and the Punjab.

At one time some were inclined to connect this remarkable local distribution with the comparative proximity of the west side of India to the rock-cutting Egyptians and Ethiopians. But the coincidence can be more simply accounted for by the existence in both countries of rocks perfectly adapted to such works. The great cave district of western India is composed of horizontal strata of amygdaloid and other cognate trap formations, generally speaking of very considerable thickness and great uniformity of texture, and possessing besides the advantage that their edges are generally exposed in perfectly perpendicular cliffs. No rock in any part of the world could either be more suited for the purpose or more favourably situated than these formations. They were easily accessible and easily worked. In the rarest possible instances are there any flaws or faults to disturb the uniformity of the design; and, when complete, they afford a perfectly dry temple or abode, singularly uniform in temperature, and more durable than any class of temple found in any other part of the world.

From the time of Asoka, who, two hundred and fifty years before Christ, excavated the first cave at Rajagriha, till the great cataclysm in the 8th century, the series is uninterrupted; and, if properly examined and drawn, the caves would furnish us with a complete religious and artistic history of the greater part of India during ten or eleven centuries, the darkest and most perplexing of her existence. But, although during this long period the practice was common to Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains, it ceased before the Mahomedan conquest. Hardly any excavations have been made or attempted since that period, except, perhaps, some rude Jaina monoliths in the rock at Gualior, and it may be one or two in southern India.{108}

Behar Caves.

As might be expected from what we know of the history of the localities, the oldest caves in India are situated in Behar, in the neighbourhood of Rajagriha, which was the capital of Bengal at the time of the advent of Buddha. There is, indeed, one cave there which claims to be the Satapanni cave, in front of which the first convocation was held B.C. 543. It is, however, only a natural cave very slightly improved by art, and of no architectural importance.

The most interesting group is situated at a place called Barabar, sixteen miles north of Gaya. One there, called the Karna Chopar, bears an inscription which records the excavation of the cave in the nineteenth year of Asoka (B.C. 245).[137] It is very simple, and, except in a doorway with sloping jambs, has no architectural feature of importance. A second, called the Sudama or Nigope cave (Woodcut No. 42), bears an inscription by Asoka in the twelfth year of his reign, the same year in which most of his edicts are dated, 260 or 264 B.C., and, consequently, is the oldest architectural example in India. It consists of two apartments: an outer, 32 ft. 9 in. in length, and 19 ft. 6 in. in breadth, and beyond this a circular apartment, 19 ft. in diameter, in the place usually occupied by the solid dagoba;[138] in front of which the roof hangs down and projects in a manner very much as if it were intended to represent thatch. The most interesting of the group is that called Lomas Rishi, which, though bearing no contemporary inscription, certainly belongs to the same age. The frontispiece is singularly interesting as representing in the rock the form of the structural chaityas of the age. These, as will be seen from the woodcut (No. 43), were apparently constructed with strong wooden posts, sloping slightly inwards, supporting a longitudinal rafter morticed into their heads, while three small blocks on each side are employed to keep the roof in form. Between the pillars was a framework of wood, which served to support five smaller rafters. Over these lies the roof, apparently{109} formed of three thicknesses of plank, or probably two of timber planks laid reverse ways, and one of metal or some other substance externally. The form of the roof is something of a pointed arch, with a slight ogee point on the summit to form a watershed. The door, like all those of this series, has sloping jambs[139]—a peculiarity arising, as we shall afterwards see, from the lines of the openings following, as in this instance, those of the supports of the roof.

The interior, as will be seen from the annexed plan (No. 44), is quite plain in form, and does not seem to have been ever quite completed. It consists of a hall 33 ft. by 19 ft., beyond which is an apartment of nearly circular form, evidently meant to represent a tope or dagoba, but at that early age the architects had not quite found out how to accomplish this in a rock-cut structure.

Judging from the inscriptions on these caves, the whole were excavated between the date of the Nigope and that of the Milkmaid’s Cave, so called (which was excavated by Dasaratha, the grandson of Asoka), probably within fifty years of that date. They appear to range, therefore, from 260 to 200 B.C., and the{110} Lomas Rishi is probably the most modern[140]—it certainly is the most richly ornamented. No great amount of elaboration, however, is found in these examples, inasmuch as the material in which they are excavated is the hardest and most close-grained granite; and it was hardly to be expected that a people who so recently had been using nothing but wood as a building material would have patience sufficient for labours like these. They have polished them like glass in the interior, and with that they have been content.

Western Chaitya Halls.

There are in the Western Ghâts in the Bombay Presidency five or six important chaitya caves whose dates can be made out, either from inscriptions, or from internal evidence, with very fair approximate certainty, and all of which were excavated, if I am not very much mistaken, before the Christian Era. The oldest of these is situated at a place called Bhaja, four miles south of the great Karli cave in the Bhore Ghât. There is no inscription upon it, but I have a plan and several photographs. From the woodcut (No. 45), it will be perceived that it is a chaitya hall of the usual plan, but of no great dimensions, being only 60 ft. from the back of the apse to the mortices (a a), in which the supports of the wooden screen once stood. From the woodcut (No. 46), taken from one of these photographs, it will be perceived that the pillars of the interior slope inwards at a considerable and most unpleasing angle. The rood-screen which closes the front of all other caves of this class is gone. In all other examples it is in stone, and consequently remains; but in this instance, being in wood, it has disappeared, though the holes to receive its posts and the mortices by which it was attached to the walls are still there. The ogee fronton was covered with wooden ornaments, which have disappeared; though the pin-holes remain by which they were fastened to the stone. The framework, or truss that filled the upper part of the great front opening, no longer exists, but what its appearance was may be judged of by the numerous representations of itself with which it is covered, or{111}

from the representation of a chaitya façade from the contemporary rail at Buddh Gaya (Woodcut No. 47), and there are several others on the rail at Bharhut, which are not only correct elevations of such a façade as this, but represent the wooden carved ornaments which—according to that authority—invariably adorned these façades. The only existing example of this wooden screen is that at Karli, but the innumerable small repetitions of it, not only here but in all these caves, shows not only its form, but how universal its employment was. The rafters of the roof were of wood, and many of them, as may be seen in the woodcut, remain to the present{112} day. Everything, in fact, that could be made in wood remained in wood, and only the constructive parts necessary for stability were executed in the rock.

It is easy to understand that, the first time men undertook to repeat in stone forms they had only been accustomed to erect in wood, they should have done so literally. The sloping inwards of the pillars was requisite to resist the thrust of the circular roof in the wooden building, but it must have appeared so awkward in stone that it would hardly be often repeated. As, however, it was probably almost universal in structural buildings, the doorways and openings naturally followed the same lines, hence the sloping jambs. Though these were by no means so objectionable in practice, they varied with the lines of the supports, and, as these became upright, the jambs became parallel. In like manner, when it was done, the architects could hardly fail to perceive that they had wasted both time and labour in cutting away the rock to make way for their wooden screen in front. Had they left it standing, with far less expense they could have got a more ornamental and more durable feature. This was so self-evident that it never, so far as is known, was repeated, but it was some time before the pillars of the interior got quite perpendicular, and the jambs of the doors quite parallel.

There is very little figure-sculpture about this cave; none in the interior, and what there is on the façade seems to be of a very domestic character. But on the pillars in the interior at g and h in the plan (Woodcut No. 45), we find two emblems, and at a, e, and f three others are found somewhat rudely formed, but which occur again so frequently that it may be worth while to quote them here. They are known as the trisul, or trident, the central point being usually more important than here shown, the shield, and the chakra, or wheel. The two first are generally found in combination, as in Woodcut No. 33, and the wheel is frequently found edged with trisul ornaments, as in the central compartment of Woodcut No. 38 from Amravati. The fourth emblem here is the trisul, in combination with a face, and the fifth is one which is frequently repeated on coins and elsewhere, but to which no name has yet been given.

The next group of caves, however, that at Bedsa, ten or eleven miles south of Karli, shows considerable progress towards lithic construction. The screen is in stone; the pillars are more upright,{113}

though still sloping slightly inwards, the jambs more nearly parallel, and in fact we have nearly all the features of a well-designed chaitya cave. The two pillars in front, however, as will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 49), are so much too large in proportion{114} to the rest, that they are evidently stambhas, and ought to stand free instead of supporting a verandah. Their capitals (Woodcut No. 50, p. 113) are more like the Persepolitan than any others in India, and are each surmounted by horses and elephants bearing men

and women of bold and free execution. From the view (Woodcut No. 51) it will be seen how much the surface is covered with the rail decoration, a repetition on a small scale of the rails described in the last section, and which it may here be mentioned is a fair test of the age of any building. It gradually becomes less and less used after the date{115}

{116}

of these two chaitya caves, and disappears wholly in the 4th or 5th centuries, but during that period its greater or less prevalence in any building is one of the surest indications we have of the relative age of any two examples. In this cave, as will be observed, nearly the whole of the ornamentation is made up of miniature rails, and repetitions of window fronts or façades. It has also a semicircular open-work moulding, like basket-work, which is only found in the very oldest caves, and is evidently so unsuited for stone-work that it is no wonder it was dropped very early. No example of it is known after the Christian Era. There is an inscription in this cave in an ancient form of letter, but not sufficiently distinct to fix its age absolutely without further evidence.

The third cave is the chaitya at Nassick. Its pillars internally are so nearly perpendicular that their inclination might escape detection, and the door jambs are nearly parallel.

The façade, as seen in the woodcut (No. 52, p. 115), is a very perfect and complete design, but all its details are copied from wooden forms, and nothing was executed in wood in this cave but the rafters of the roofs internally, and these have fallen down.

Outside this cave, over the doorway, there is an inscription, stating that the cave was the gift of a citizen of Nassick,[141] in the reign of King Krishna, the second of the Andrabritya kings, who reigned just before the Christian Era,[142] and inside, on the pillars, another in an older form of character, stating that it was excavated in honour of King Badrakaraka,[143] who was almost certainly the fifth king of the Sunga dynasty, and who ascended the throne about B.C. 129. It may be possible that a more critical examination of these inscriptions may render their testimony less absolute than it now appears, but, taking them in conjunction with the architecture, the age of this cave hardly seems doubtful. For myself, I see no reason for hesitating to accept B.C. 129 as the date of its inception, though its completion may be a century later, and, if this is so, it carries back the caves of Bhaja and Bedsa to a period considerably before that time, while, on the other hand, it as certainly is older than the Karli cave, which appears to come next to it in age.

Karli.

The fourth cave mentioned above, known as that at Karli, is situated on the road between Bombay and Poonah, and is the finest of all—the finest, indeed, of its class. It is certainly the largest as well as the most complete chaitya cave hitherto discovered in India,{117} and was excavated at a time when the style was in its greatest purity. In it all the architectural defects of the previous examples are removed; the pillars of the nave are quite perpendicular. The screen is ornamented with sculpture—its first appearance apparently in such a position—and the style had reached a perfection that was never afterwards surpassed.

In this cave there is an inscription on the side of the porch, and another on the lion-pillar in front, which are certainly integral, and ascribe its excavation to the Maharaja Bhuti or Deva Bhuti,[144] who, according to the Puranas, reigned B.C. 78, and, if this is so, they fix the age of this typical example beyond all cavil.

The building, as will be seen by the annexed illustrations (Nos. 53, 54, 55), resembles, to a very great extent, an early Christian church in its arrangements: consisting of a nave and side-aisles, terminating in an apse or semidome, round which the aisle is carried. The general dimensions of the interior are 126 ft. from the entrance to the back wall, by 45 ft. 7 in. in width. The side-aisles, however, are very much narrower than in Christian churches, the central one being 25 ft. 7 in., so that the others are only 10 ft. wide, including the thickness of the pillars. As a scale for comparison, it may be mentioned that its{118}

{119}

arrangement and dimensions are very similar to those of the choir of Norwich Cathedral, or of the Abbaye aux Hommes at Caen, omitting the outer aisles in the latter buildings. The thickness of the piers at Norwich and Caen nearly corresponds to the breadth of the aisles in the Indian temple. In height, however, Karli is very inferior, being only 42 ft. or perhaps 45 ft. from the floor to the apex, as nearly as can be ascertained.

Fifteen pillars on each side separate the nave from the aisles; each pillar has a tall base, an octagonal shaft, and richly ornamented capital, on which kneel two elephants, each bearing two figures, generally a man and a woman, but sometimes two females, all very much better executed than such ornaments usually are. The seven pillars behind the altar are plain octagonal piers, without either base or capital, and the four under the entrance gallery differ considerably from those at the sides. The sculptures on the capitals supply the place usually occupied by frieze and cornice in Grecian architecture; and in other examples plain painted surfaces occupy the same space. Above this springs the roof, semicircular in general section, but somewhat stilted at the sides, so as to make its height greater than the semi-diameter. It is ornamented even at this day by a series of wooden ribs, probably coeval with the excavation, which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the roof is not a copy of a masonry arch, but of some sort of timber construction which we cannot now very well understand.

Immediately under the semidome of the apse, and nearly where the altar stands in Christian churches, is placed the dagoba, in this instance a plain dome slightly stilted on a circular drum. As there are no ornaments on it now, and no mortices for woodwork, it probably was originally plastered and painted, or may have been adorned with hangings, which some of the sculptured representations would lead us to suppose was the usual mode of ornamenting these altars. It is surmounted by a Tee, the base of which is similar to the one shown on Woodcut No. 13, and on this still stand the remains of an umbrella in wood, very much decayed and distorted by age.

Opposite this is the entrance, consisting of three doorways, under a gallery exactly corresponding with our roodloft, one leading to the centre, and one to each of the side-aisles; and over the gallery the whole end of the hall is open as in all these chaitya halls, forming one great window, through which all the light is admitted. This great window is formed in the shape of a horseshoe, and exactly resembles those used as ornaments on the façade of this cave, as well as on those of Bhaja, Bedsa, and at Nassick described above, and which are met with everywhere at this age. Within the arch is a framework or centering of wood standing free (Woodcut No. 55). This, so far as we can judge, is, like the ribs of the interior, coeval with the{120} building;[145] at all events, if it has been renewed, it is an exact copy of the original form, for it is found repeated in stone in all the niches of the façade, over the doorways, and generally as an ornament everywhere, and with the Buddhist “rail,” copied from Sanchi, forms the most usual ornament of the style.

The presence of the woodwork is an additional proof, if any were wanted, that there were no arches of construction in any of these Buddhist buildings. There neither were nor are any in any Indian building anterior to the Mahomedan Conquest, and very few indeed in any Hindu building afterwards.

To return, however, to Karli, the outer porch is considerably wider{121} than the body of the building, being 52 ft. wide, and is closed in front by a screen composed of two stout octagonal pillars, without either base or capital, supporting what is now a plain mass of rock, but which was once ornamented by a wooden gallery forming the principal ornament of the façade. Above this a dwarf colonnade or attic of four columns between pilasters admitted light to the great window, and this again was surmounted by a wooden cornice or ornament of some sort, though we cannot now restore it, since only the mortices remain that attached it to the rock.

In advance of this screen stands the lion-pillar, in this instance a plain shaft with thirty-two flutes, or rather faces, surmounted by a capital not unlike that at Kesariah (Woodcut No. 6), but at Karli supporting four lions instead of one, and, for reasons given above (p. 55), they seem almost certainly to have supported a chakra or Buddhist wheel. A similar pillar probably stood on the opposite side, but it has either fallen or been taken down to make way for the little temple that now occupies its place.

The absence of the wooden ornaments of the external porch, as well as our ignorance of the mode in which this temple was finished laterally, and the porch joined to the main temple, prevents us from judging what the effect of the front would have been if belonging to a free-standing building. But the proportions of such parts as remain are so good, and the effect of the whole so pleasing, that there can be little hesitation in ascribing to such a design a tolerably high rank among architectural compositions.

Of the interior we can judge perfectly, and it certainly is as solemn and grand as any interior can well be, and the mode of lighting the most perfect—one undivided volume of light coming through a single opening overhead at a very favourable angle, and falling directly on the altar or principal object in the building, leaving the rest in comparative obscurity. The effect is considerably heightened by the closely set thick columns that divide the three aisles from one another, as they suffice to prevent the boundary walls from ever being seen, and, as there are no openings in the walls, the view between the pillars is practically unlimited.

These peculiarities are found more or less developed in all the other caves of the same class in India, varying only with the age and the gradual change that took place from the more purely wooden forms of these caves to the lithic or stone architecture of the more modern ones. This is the principal test by which their relative ages can be determined, and it proves incontestably that the Karli cave was excavated not very long after stone came to be used as a building-material in India.

There are caves at Ajunta and probably at Junir which are as old as the four just described, and, when the history of cave archi{122}tecture comes to be written in extenso, will supply details that are wanting in the examples just quoted. Meanwhile, however, their forms are sufficient to place the history on a firm basis, and to explain the origin and early progress of the style with sufficient distinctness.

From the inscriptions and literary evidence, it seems hardly doubtful that the date of the Karli cave is about 78 B.C., and that at Nassick about 129 B.C. We have no literary authority for the date of the two earlier ones, but the archæological evidence appears irresistible. The Bhaja cave is so absolutely identical in style with the Lomas Rishi cave at Behar (Woodcut No. 43) that they must be of very nearly the same age. Their pillars and their doorways slope so nearly at the same angle, and the essential woodenness—if the expression may be used—of both is so exactly the same, that, the one being of the age of Asoka, the other cannot be far removed from the date of his reign. The Bedsa cave exhibits a degree of progress so nearly halfway between the Bhaja and Nassick examples, that it may safely be dated 150 to 200 B.C., and the whole four thus exhibit the progress of the style during nearly two centuries in the most satisfactory manner, and form a basis from which we may proceed to reason with very little hesitation or doubt.

Ajunta.[146]

There are four chaitya caves in the Ajunta series which, though not so magnificent as some of the four just mentioned, are nearly as important for the purposes of our history. The oldest there (No. 9) is the lowest down on the cliff, and is of the smallest class, being only 45 ft. by 23 ft. in width. All its woodwork has perished, though it would not be difficult to restore it from the mortices left and the representations of itself on the façade. There are several inscriptions, but they do not seem integral. They are painted on the walls, and belong, from the form of their characters, to the 2nd or 3rd century of our era, when the frescoes seem to have been renewed, so that the real tests of its age are, first, its position in the series, which make it, with its accompanying vihara (No. 12), undoubtedly the oldest there; the other test is the architecture of its façade, which so much resembles that of the Nassick chaitya (B.C. 129) that it cannot be far off in date. It may, however, be somewhat earlier, as the pillars in the interior slope inwards at a somewhat greater angle, and, in so far as that is a test of age, it indicates a greater antiquity in the Ajunta example.{123}

The next chaitya (No. 10) is situated very near to the last, a little higher up in the rock, however, and of nearly twice its dimensions. It is 94 ft. 6 in. in depth by 41 ft. 3 in. in width internally. As may be seen from the annexed view (Woodcut No. 57), the nave is separated from the aisles by a range of plain octagonal shafts, perfectly upright, but without capitals or bases. The triforium belt is of unusual height, and was originally plastered and painted. Traces of this can still be seen, though the design cannot be made out (Woodcut No. 58). One of the most remarkable characteristics of the cave is that it shows signs of transition from wood to stone in its architectural details. The ribs of the aisle are in stone cut in rock, but copied from the wooden forms of previous examples. The vault of the nave was adorned with wooden ribs, the mortices for which are still there, and their marks can still be traced in the roof, but the wood itself is gone.

There are two inscriptions in this cave which seem to be integral, but unfortunately neither of them contain names that can be identified; but from the form of their characters a palæographist would{124} almost certainly place them anterior to the Christian Era.[147] Taking, however, all the circumstances of the case into consideration, and so as to avoid stretching any point too far, it would, perhaps, be better to assume for the present that the cave belongs to the 1st century of our era.

The façades of both these caves are so much ruined by the rock falling away that it is impossible to assert that there was no sculpture on the lower parts. None, certainly, exists in the interior, where everything depends on painting; and it is, to say the least of it, very improbable that any figure-sculpture ever adorned the oldest, while it seems likely that even No. 10 depended wholly on conventional architectural forms for its adornment.

The next chaitya cave in this series (No. 19) is separated from these two by a very long interval of time. Unfortunately, no inscription exists upon it which would assist in assigning it any precise date; but it belongs to a group of viharas, Nos. 16 and 17, whose date, as we shall afterwards see, can be fixed with tolerable certainty as belonging to the 5th century of our era. The cave itself, as will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 59), is of the smallest size, nearly the same as No. 9, or 46 ft. 4 in. by 23 ft. 7 in., and its arrangements do not differ much, but its details belong to a totally different school of art. All trace of woodwork has disappeared, but wooden forms are everywhere repeated in stone, like the triglyphs and mutules of the Doric order, long after their original meaning was lost. More than this, painting in the interval had to a great extent become disused as a means of decoration, both internally and externally, and sculpture substituted for it in all monumental works; but the greatest change of all is that Buddha, in all his attitudes, is introduced everywhere. In the next woodcut (No. 60)—the view of the façade—it will be seen how completely figure-sculpture had superseded the plainer architectural forms of the earlier caves. The rail ornament, too, has entirely disappeared; the window heads have been dwarfed down to mere framings for masks; but, what is even more significant than these, is that from a pure theism or rather atheism we have passed to an overwhelming idolatry. At Karli, the eight figures that originally adorned the porch are chiefs with their wives, in pairs. All the figures of Buddha that appear there now are long{125} subsequent additions. None but mortals were sculptured in the earlier caves, and among these mortals Sakya Muni nowhere appears. Here, on the contrary, he is Bhagavat—the Holy One—the Deity—the object of worship, and occupies a position in the front of the dagoba or altar itself (Woodcut No. 61, p. 126), surmounted by the triple umbrella and as the Numen of the place.

At a future stage of our inquiries we may be able to fix more nearly the time in which this portentous change took place in Buddhist ritual. For the present it is sufficient to remark that images of Buddha, and their worship, were not known in India in the 1st century of our era, and that the revolution was complete in the 5th century.

Before leaving this cave, however, it may be well to remark on the change that had taken place in the form of the dagoba during these 500 years. If Woodcut No. 61 is compared with the dagobas in Nos. 56 and 57, it will be seen how much the low rounded form of the early examples had been conventionalised into a tall steeple-like object. The drum had become more important than the dome, and was ornamented with architectural features that have no meaning as applied. But more curious still is the form the triple umbrella{126} had assumed. It had now become a steeple reaching to the roof of the cave, and its original form and meaning would hardly be suspected by those who were not familiar with the intermediate steps.

I am not aware of more than three umbrellas being found surmounting any dagoba in the caves, but the annexed representation of a model of one found at Sultanpore, near Jelalabad (Woodcut No. 62), probably of about the same age, has six such discs; and in Behar numerous models are found with seven, making with the base and finial nine storeys,[148] which afterwards in China became the conventional number for the nine-storeyed towers of that land.

The last chaitya at Ajunta (No. 26) is of a medium size, 66 ft. by 36, and has a long inscription, but which unfortunately contains nothing to enable us to fix its date with certainty. It is certainly more modern than the last-named, its sculptures are coarser, and their meaning more mythological. We shall probably not err in assuming that it was excavated towards the end of the 6th or beginning of the 7th century;{127} and that the year 600 is not far from its true date. Its chief interest is in showing how nearly Buddhism was approximating to Brahmanism when the catastrophe took place which expelled the former from the country of its birth.

Ellora.

The celebrated Viswakarma cave at Ellora is a chaitya of the first class, intermediate in age between the two last-described caves at Ajunta, or it may be as modern as the last. There are unfortunately no inscriptions nor any traditions[149] that would assist in fixing its age, which must consequently depend wholly on its position in the series and its architectural peculiarities.

The dimensions of this cave are considerable, 85 ft. by 43 ft., and the inner end is entirely blocked up by the dagoba which, instead of being circular as in all the older examples, has a frontispiece attached to it larger than that in cave No. 19 at Ajunta, which, as shown in Woodcut No. 60, makes it square in front. On this addition is a figure of Buddha seated with his feet down, and surrounded by attendants and flying figures in the latest style of Buddhist art. In the roof, all the ribs and ornaments are cut in the rock, though still copied from wooden prototypes, and the triforium has sculptured figures as in Nos. 19 and 26 of Ajunta. Its most marked characteristic, however, is the façade, where for the first time we miss the great horseshoe opening, which is the most marked feature in all previous examples. We can still trace a reminiscence of it in the upper part of the window in the centre (Woodcut No. 63, p. 128); but it was evidently considered necessary, in this instance, to reduce the size of the opening, and it is easy to see why this was the case. At Bedsa, Karli, Kenheri and elsewhere, there was a verandah or porch with a screen in front of the great window, which prevented the direct rays of the sun from reaching it, and all the older caves had wooden screens, as at Karli, from which curtains could be hung so as to modify the light to any desired extent. At Ellora, no screen could ever have existed in front, and wooden additions had long ceased to be used, so that it consequently became necessary to reduce the size of the opening. In the two later chaityas at Ajunta, this is effected by simply reducing their size. At Ellora it was done by dividing it. If we had the structural examples in which this change was probably first introduced, we might trace its progress; but, as this one is the only example we have of a divided window, we must{128} accept it as one of the latest modifications of the façades of these chaityas. Practically, it may be an improvement, as it is still sufficiently large to light the interior in a satisfactory manner; but artistically it seems rather to be regretted. There is a character and a grandeur about the older design which we miss in this more domestic-looking arrangement, though it is still a form of opening not destitute of beauty.

Owing to the sloping nature of the ground in which it is excavated this cave possesses a forecourt of considerable extent and of great elegance of design, which gives its façade an importance it is not entitled to from any intrinsic merit of its own.{129}

Kenheri.

One of the best known and most frequently described chaityas in India is that on the island of Salsette, in Bombay Harbour, known as the great Kenheri cave. In dimensions it belongs to the first rank, being 88 ft. 6 in. by 39 ft. 10 in., and it has the advantage that its date is now almost absolutely fixed. In the verandah there is an inscription recording that the celebrated Buddhaghosha dedicated one of the middle-sized statues in the porch to the honour of the lord Bhagawan,[150] and in the same porch another inscription records the execution of the great statues of Buddha by “Gotamiputra’s imperial descendant Sri Yadnya Sat Karni.”[151] Now we know that the first-named, Buddhaghosha, went on his mission to Ceylon, B.C. 410,[152] and he is not known ever to have returned to India; and Yadnya Sri has always been assumed to have lived 408-428, generally it must be confessed on the mistaken etymology of confounding his name with that of Yuegai of the Chinese. That, however, is apparently only a translation of the “Moon beloved king,” and more applicable, consequently, to Chandra Sri or Chandragupta, who was his contemporary. The true basis for the determination of his date is the Puranic chronology, which, for this period seems indisputable.[153] Be all this as it may, the conjunction of these two names here in this cave settles their date, and settles also the age of the cave as belonging to the early years of the 5th century, at the time when Fa Hian was travelling in India.

This being so, one would naturally expect that the architecture of the cave should exhibit some stage of progress intermediate between cave(No. 10and cave No. 19 of Ajunta, but nothing of the sort is apparent here; the Kenheri cave is a literal copy of the great cave at Karli, but in so inferior a style of art that, when I first saw it, I was inclined to ascribe it to an age of Buddhist decrepitude, when the traditions of true art had passed away, and men were trying by spasmodic efforts to revive a dead art. This being now proved not to be the case, the architecture of this cave can only be looked upon as an exceptional anomaly, the principles of whose design are unlike anything else to be found in India, emanating probably from some individual caprice, the origin of which we may probably never now be able to recover.

Internally the roof was ornamented with timber rafters, and though these have fallen away, the wooden pins by which they were{130} fastened to the rock still remain; and the screen in front has all the mortices and other indications, as at Karli, proving that it was intended to be covered with wooden galleries and framework. What is still more curious, the figures of chiefs with their wives, which adorn the front of the screen at Karli, are here repeated literally, but copied so badly as not at first sight to be easily recognisable. This is the more strange as it occurred at an age when their place was reserved for figures of Buddha, and when, at Karli itself, they were cutting away the old sculptures and old inscriptions, to introduce figures of Buddha, either seated cross-legged, or borne on the lotus, supported by Naga figures at its base.[154]

In front of this cave is a dwarf rail which, with the knowledge we now have, would in itself be almost sufficient to settle the age, in spite of these anomalies (Woodcut No. 64). Unfortunately it is so weather-worn that it is difficult to make out all its details; but comparing it with the Gautamiputra rail (Woodcut No. 32) and the Amravati rail (Woodcut No. 36), it will be seen that it contains all those complications that were introduced in the 3rd and 4th centuries, but which were discontinued in the 5th and 6th, when the rail in any shape fell into disuse as an architectural ornament.[155]

The evidence in fact seems complete that this cave was excavated in the early years of the 5th century; but, admitting this, it remains an anomaly, the like of which only occurs once again so far as I know in the history of Indian architecture, and that in a vihara at Nassick of the same age, to be described hereafter.{131}

Dhumnar.

About half way between Kotah and Ujjain, in Rajputana, there exists a series of caves at a place called Dhumnar which are of considerable extent, but the interest that might be felt in them is considerably diminished by their being cut in a coarse laterite conglomerate, so coarse that all the finer architectural details had to be worked out in plaster, and that, having perished with time, only their plans and outlines can now be recognised. Among the sixty or seventy excavations here found one is a chaitya of some extent, and presenting peculiarities of plan not found elsewhere. It is practically a chaitya cella situated in the midst of a vihara (Woodcut No. 65). The cell in which the dagoba is situated is only 35 ft. by 13 ft. 6 in., but to this must be added the porch, or ante-chapel, extending 25 ft. further, making the whole 60 ft. On two sides, and on half the third, it is surrounded by an open verandah leading to the cells. The third side never was finished, but in two of the side cells are smaller dagobas—the whole making a confused mass of chambers and chaityas in which all the original parts are confounded, and all the primitive simplicity of design and arrangement is lost, to such an extent that, without previous knowledge, they would hardly be recognisable.

There are no exact dates for determining the age of this cave, but like all of the series it is late, probably between the years 500 and 600 A.D., or even later, and its great interest is that, on comparing{132} it with the chaitya and vihara at Bhaja or Bedsa (Woodcuts Nos. 46 and 49), we are enabled to realise the progress and changes that took place in designing these monuments during the seven or eight centuries that elapsed between them.

Kholvi.

Not far from Dhumnar is another series of caves not so extensive, but interesting as being probably the most modern group of Buddhist caves in India. No very complete account of them has yet been published,[156] but enough is known to enable us to feel sure how modern they are. One, called Arjun’s House, is a highly ornamented dagoba, originally apparently some 20 ft. in height, but the upper part being in masonry has fallen away. Inside this is a cell open to the front, in which is a cross-legged seated figure of Buddha, showing an approach to the Hindu mode of treating images in their temples, which looks as if Buddhism was on the verge of disappearing.

The same arrangement is repeated in the only excavation here which can be called a chaitya hall. It is only 26 ft. by 13 ft. internally; but the whole of the dagoba, which is 8 ft. in diameter, has been hollowed out to make a cell, in which an image of Buddha is enshrined. The dagobas, in fact, here—there are three standing by themselves—have become temples, and only distinguishable from those of the Hindus by their circular forms.[157]

It is probably hardly necessary to say more on this subject now, as most of the questions, both of art and chronology, will be again touched upon in the next chapter when describing the viharas which were attached to the chaityas, and were, in fact, parts of the same establishments. As mere residences, the viharas may be deficient in that dignity and unity which characterises the chaityas, but their number and variety make up to a great extent for their other deficiencies; and altogether their description forms one of the most interesting chapters in our history.{133}

CONTENTS.

Structural Viharas—Bengal and Western Vihara Caves—Nassick, Ajunta, Bagh, Dhumnar, Kholvi, and Ellora Viharas—Circular Cave at Junir.

Structural Viharas.

We are almost more dependent on rock-cut examples for our knowledge of the Viharas or monasteries of the Buddhists than we are for that of their Chaityas or churches: a circumstance more to be regretted in this instance than in the other. In a chaitya hall the interior is naturally the principal object, and where the art of the architect would be principally lavished. Next would come the façade. The sides and apse are comparatively insignificant and incapable of ornament. The façades and the interior can be as well expressed in the rock as when standing free; but the case is different with the viharas. A court or hall surrounded with cells is not an imposing architectural object. Where the court has galleries two or three storeys in height, and the pillars that support these are richly carved, it may attain an amount of picturesqueness we find in our old hostelries, or of that class of beauty that prevails in the courts of Spanish monasteries.[159] Such was, I believe, the form many of the Indian structural viharas may have taken, but which could hardly be repeated in the rock; and, unless some representations are dis{134}covered among the paintings or sculptures, we shall probably never know, though we may guess, what the original appearances may have been.

{135}

There was, however, I believe, another form of Vihara even less capable of being repeated in the rock. It was pyramidal, and is the original of all the temples of southern India. Take, for instance, a description of one mentioned both by Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang,[160] though neither of them, it must be confessed, ever saw it, which accounts in part for some absurdities in the description:—“The building,” says Fa Hian, “has altogether five storeys. The lowest is shaped into the form of an elephant, and has 500 stone cells in it; the second is in the form of a lion, and has 400 chambers; the third is shaped like a horse, and has 300 chambers; the fourth is in the form of an ox, and has 200 chambers; and the fifth is in the shape of a dove, and has 100 chambers in it”—and the account given of it by Hiouen Thsang is practically the same.[161] At first sight this looks wild enough; but if we substitute the assertion that the several storeys were adorned with elephants, lions, horses, &c., we get a mode of decoration which began at Karli, where a great range of elephants adorn the lower storey, and was continued with variations to Hullabîd, where, as we shall see further on, all these five animals are, in the 13th century, superimposed upon one another exactly as here recounted.

The opposite woodcut (No. 66), taken from one of the raths at Mahavellipore, probably correctly represents such a structure, and I believe also the form of a great many ancient viharas in India. The diagram (No. 67) is intended to explain what probably were the internal arrangements of such a structure. As far as it can be understood from the rock-cut examples we have, the centre was occupied by halls of varying dimensions according to height, supported by wooden posts above the ground-floor, and used as the common day-rooms of the monks. The sleeping-cells (Woodcuts Nos. 68, 69) were apparently on the terraces, and may have been such as are frequently represented in the bas-reliefs at Bharhut and elsewhere. Alternately they seem to have been square and oblong, and with smaller apartments between. Of course we must not take too literally a representation of a monastery, carried out solidly in the rock for a different purpose, as an absolutely correct representation of its original. The importance, however, of this form, as explaining the peculiarities of sub{136}sequent Buddhist and Dravidian architecture, is so great that it is well worth quoting here, though this will be more evident in the sequel than it can be at present. In construction the breadth, in a structural building, would probably have been greater in proportion to the height than in this example, but that is of little consequence for our present purposes.

It is, of course, always difficult, sometimes impossible, to realise the form of buildings from verbal descriptions only, and the Chinese Pilgrims were not adepts at architectural definitions. Still Hiouen Thsang’s description of the great Nalanda monastery is important, and so germane to our present subject that it cannot well be passed over.

This celebrated monastery, which was the Monte Cassino of India for the first five centuries of our era, was situated thirty-four miles south of Patna, and seven miles north of the old capital of Rajagriha. If not founded under the auspices of the celebrated Nagárjuna in the 1st century, he at all events resided there, introducing the Mahayana or great translation, and making it the seat of that school for Central India. After his time six successive kings had built as many viharas on this spot, when one of them surrounded the whole with a high wall, which can still be traced, measuring 1600 ft. north and south, by 400 ft., and enclosing eight separate courts. Externally to this enclosure were numerous stupas or tower-like viharas, ten or twelve of which are easily recognised, and have been identified, with more or less certainty, by General Cunningham, from the Pilgrim’s description.[162] The general appearance of the place may be gathered from the following:—“In the different courts the houses of the monks were each four storeys in height. The pavilions had pillars ornamented with dragons, and had beams resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow—rafters richly carved—columns ornamented with jade, painted red and richly chiselled, and balustrades of carved open work. The lintels of the doors were decorated with elegance, and the roofs covered with glazed tiles of brilliant colours, which multiplied themselves by reflection, and varied the effect at every moment in a thousand manners.” Or as he enthusiastically sums up:—“The Sangharamas of India are counted by thousands, but there are none equal to this in majesty or richness, or the height of their construction.”[163]

From what we know of the effects of Burmese monasteries at the present day this is probably no exaggeration; and with its groves of Mango-trees, and its immense tanks, which still remain, it must have been, as he says, “an enchanting abode.” Here there resided in his time—within and without the walls—10,000 priests and neophytes, and{137} religion and philosophy were taught from a hundred chairs, and here consequently our Pilgrim sojourned for five years, imbibing the doctrines of the Law of Buddha. What Cluny and Clairvaux were to France in the Middle Ages, Nalanda was to Central India, the depository of all true learning, and the foundation from which it spread over all the other lands of the faithful; but still, as in all instances connected with that strange parallelism which existed between the two religions, the Buddhists kept five centuries in advance of the Christians in the invention and use of all the ceremonies and forms common to both religions.

It would indeed be satisfactory if the architecture of this celebrated monastery could be restored and its arrangements made clear. Something has been done by Cunningham[164] towards this, and excavations have been made by Mr. Broadley and Captain Marshall. The former it is feared has destroyed more than he has restored, and his drawings are so imperfect as to be utterly unintelligible. The latter has not yet published his discoveries. Nothing, however, would probably better repay a systematic exploration than this celebrated spot, if undertaken by some one accustomed to such researches, and capable of making detailed architectural drawings of what is found.

If, however, it should turn out, as hinted above, that the whole of the superstructure of these viharas was in wood, either fire or natural decay may have made such havoc among all that remains of them, as to leave little to reward the labours of the explorer. What has been done in this direction certainly affords no great encouragement to hope for much. At Sultangunge, near Monghyr, a large vihara was cut through by the railway, but except one remarkable bronze statue of Buddha[165] nothing was found of importance. The monastery apparently consisted of two large courtyards surrounded by cells. What was found, however, could only have been the foundations, as there were no doorways to the apartments or means of communication between each other or with the exterior.[166]

The vihara excavated by Captain Kittoe and Mr. Thomas, at Sarnath, seems certainly to have been destroyed by fire. All that remained was a series of some twenty cells and four larger halls surrounding a pillared court 50 ft. square. On one side were three cells evidently forming a sanctuary, as is frequently found in the later rock-cut examples.[167]

The excavations conducted by General Cunningham, at the same place, are hardly more satisfactory in their result. The two buildings{138} he explored seem to bear the relation to one another of a vihara 60 ft. square over all, and a temple of little more than half these dimensions with a projecting porch on each face.[168] Only the foundation of these buildings now remains, and nothing to indicate how they were originally finished.

We may eventually hit on some representation which may enable us to form definite ideas on this subject, but till we do this we probably must be content with the interiors as seen in the rock-cut examples.

Bengal Caves.

None of the Behar caves can, properly speaking, be called viharas, in the sense in which the word is generally used, except perhaps the Son Bhandar, which, as before mentioned, General Cunningham identifies with the Sattapanni cave, in front of which the first convocation was held 543 B.C. It is a plain rectangular excavation, 33 ft. 9 in. long by 17 ft. wide, and 11 ft. 7 in. to the springing of the curved roof.[169] It has one door and one window, but both, like the rest of the cave, without mouldings or any architectural features that would assist in determining its age. The jambs of the doorway slope slightly inwards, but not sufficiently to give an idea of great antiquity. In front there was a wooden verandah, the mortice holes for which are still visible in the front wall.

The other caves, at Barabar and Nagárjuna, if not exactly chaityas in the sense in which that term is applied to the western caves, were at least oratories, places of prayer and worship, rather than residences. One Arhat or ascetic may have resided in them, but for the purpose of performing the necessary services. There are no separate cells in them, nor any division that can be considered as separating the ceremonial from the domestic uses of the cave, and they must consequently, for the present at least, be classed as chaityas rather than viharas.

The case is widely different when we turn to the caves in Orissa, which are among the most interesting, though at the same time the most anomalous, of all the caves in India. They are situated in two isolated hills of sandstone rock, about twenty miles from Cuttack and five from Bhuvaneswar. The oldest are in the hill called Udayagiri; the more modern in that portion designated Khandagiri. They became Jaina about the 10th or 11th century, and the last-named hill is crowned by a Jaina temple, erected by the Maharattas in the end of the last century.{139}

What we know of the age of the older caves is principally derived from a long inscription on the front of the oldest, known as the Hathi Gumpha, or Elephant Cave.[170] From it we learn that it was engraved by a king called Aira, who ascended the throne of Kalinga in his twenty-fourth year, and spread his power by conquest over neighbouring rajas. He seems at first to have vacillated between the Brahmanical and Buddhist faiths, but finally to have adopted the latter and distributed infinite alms. Among other good works, he is said “to have constructed subterranean chambers—caves containing a chaitya temple, and pillars.”

Palæographically, the forms of the letters used in this inscription are identical with those used by Asoka in the copy of his edicts on the Aswatama rock close by, and that recently found at Aska, near the northern corner of the Chilkya lake. The first presumption, therefore, is that they may be of about the same date. This is justified by the mention of Nanda in the past tense, while there seems no reason for doubting that he was one of the kings of that name who immediately preceded the revolution that placed Chandragupta on the throne. Beside these, there are other indications in this inscription which seem to make it almost certain that Aira was contemporary with the great Mauryan dynasty of Magadha; but whether he preceded or followed Asoka is not quite so clear. Still it appears unlikely that Asoka would have been allowed to set up two copies of his edicts in the dominions of such powerful kings as Aira and his father seem to have been, and as unlikely that Aira should make such a record without some allusion to the previously promulgated edicts, had they then existed. On the whole, I am inclined to believe that Aira lived before Asoka, and, if so, that this is the oldest inscription yet found in India. Be this as it may, the cave in which it is found is certainly the oldest here. It is a great natural cavern, the brow of which has been smoothed to admit of this inscription, but all the rest remains nearly in a state of nature. Close to it is a small cave, the whole “fronton” of which over the doorway is occupied by a great three-headed Naga, and may be as old as the Hathi cave. The inscription on it merely says that it is the unequalled chamber of Chulakarma, who seems also to have excavated another cave, here called the Pawan Gabha,[171] or Purification Cave.

Besides these, and smaller caves to be noticed hereafter, the great interest of the Udayagiri caves centres in two—the so-called Ganesa{140} cave, and that called the Raj Rani, or Rani Hanspur, from a tradition—Hindu—that it was excavated by the Rani of Lelat Indra Kesari, the celebrated builder of the Bhuvaneswar temple in the 7th century.

The former is a small cave, consisting of two cells, together 30 ft. long by 10 ft. wide, in front of which is a verandah, slightly longer, that was once adorned with five pillars, though only three are now standing (Woodcut No. 70). There is an inscription on this cave in the Kutila characters, dedicating it to Jaganath; but this is evidently an addition in modern times.[172] The style of the architecture may be judged of from the annexed woodcut, representing one of its pillars (Woodcut No. 71). They are of extreme simplicity, being square piers, changing into octagons in the centre only, and with a slight bracket of very wooden construction on each face. The doorways leading into the cells are adorned with the usual horseshoe formed canopies copied from the fronts of the chaitya halls, and which we are now so familiar with from the Bharhut sculptures, and from the openings common to all wooden buildings of that age.