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It appears to be only an amusement of the palace. This cannot be. said of the lower: circle, Fig. 2. of Plate LXXIII. Here five men in the centre dance wildly while upholding a tray, on which is a cup, possibly the begging dish of some Bodhisattiwa.. It may even be supposed to be that of Buddha himself. Seventeen men, with various head-dresses, though in the same Hindu costume, dance wildly in front of these three. The women dance in the background, and behind the tray, in the centre, is seen the head of the principal personage of the eeremony, among the ladies and gentlemen of his court. He has no emblem, so it is impossible to say what his rank may be. (4799.) : BB 194 THE TOPE AT AMRAVATI. There can be little doubt but that this abaipuires is intended to represent a great religious ceremony, on the occasion of the public display of a much-valued relic.* The wildness with which the men dance in these two sculptures is very unlike anything we are accustomed to in India at the present day among the Hindus. All the hill tribes, however, from Beerbhoom westward, to the extreme limits of Gondwana, are passionately addicted to-dancing. ‘The young men and women of the villages meet on all festal occasions, and at certain seasons of the year dance all the night through, and with as much zest and as violent action as any Celtic Highlander could display. © We must never overlook the fact that these sculptures do not represent the Aryans—at least certainly not in their purity—but the aborigines, or tribes of: very mixed blood, and dancing with - them was a passion. I am afraid drinking was so also. : As before remarked, this bas-relief is an exact reproduction of the central circle of the pillar, Plate LXVII., except. that there a man with a seven-headed. snake hood appears among the performers. From_ this circumstance, and others to be mentioned further on, I am inclined to believe that if-we had the whole Rail we should find the same subjects repeated possibly as often as four times, once in each quadrant, and with very little variation. This I think is almost certainly the case with the inner Rail, but this is the only instance of a ‘duplicate which I have yet found belonging to the outer enclosure. . * Fa-Hian mentions having seen the begging dish of Buddha in Afghanistan, and also “ un vase ot Foé a craché ; il est de pierre.et.de la méme couleur que le pot de Foé ” (page 27), and he describes the honours paid to them and to other relics which he saw, but he does not mention dances as part of the ceremonies. According to the usually received tradition, the form of the pot here displayed is not that of the begging dish of a priest, but it may be his spittoon ! t Campbell’s Ethnology, J.A. S. B., Special Report, 1866, page 182. , et seq., and the Government Reports on the Central Provinces, passim. ; . * sag ; rc . , . a : want Wy en . ‘ ‘: * ‘ “ , hd ¢ ue es ‘HEASOYONE WLLAO JO WZOE LO HOKE TYNERINT XO Nowa a ; | “ee . a. J ‘ . t : ~~ a ‘ ’ : 5 * ® ° . ‘ ? ¢ - 7 - 5 ¥ . 7 : : = * ¥ . e ‘4 ad “WOASAW VIAN ? c : "OSes anaes _——— a WELL ee OT / ; : my GAGES: fe ay (SIM SN Ura MU Wj, EG UTR ia ON le Neon a UE SA oe = ¢ aN <} 252 SEE DRANG. EX 4 ANOS iy 3 G ’} SI y ty TS 27 yi - 4 CK Bw % a oe Sa Rice e se a “ il *MXX1 ALV1d ‘ ae Some LDR AO RE , pe: a” “a DESCRIPTION OF PLATES, 195 PLATE LXXIV. Tus bas-relief* is the pendant to that represented in the photographs, Plate LXV., Fig. 8. It is indeed earlier in Buddhist chronology, as that represented the birth of Buddha, this only the annunciation. It is divided into three compartments. In the first sits Suddhodana, the father of Buddha, surrounded by the gentlemen of his court. There are no ladies present, which is unusual. In the central division, Buddha, symbolized. by the white Elephant, descends from the Heaven Tishita, borne by celestial dwarfs and’ surrounded by Devatas. An umbrella of state is borne before him, and music and dancing accompany hin. In the third division, Maya is represented asleep on her couch. Four men guard the four angles of her bed, and her women stand or sit on either side. She dreams she sees the white Elephant descend from Heaven and enter her‘womb. As this ‘same subject has. already been presented in Plate LXV., and will occur again,. it is not necessary to describe it more particularly here. It is evidently as great a favourite with the Buddhists as the Annunciation is with early Christian painters. The preceding twenty-six Plates may he sufficient to convey a correct impression of the form of the great outer enclosure of the Amravati Tope, and of the mode in which it was decorated; but in extent they. can hardly be considered as representing more than a tenth or a twelfth of the whole. Even supposiig that some of the subjects may have been repeated in different quadrants of the. Rail, still the whole conveys a marvellous impression of the fertility of invention and patient labour with which the Indians in all ages decorated their religious edifices. There are temples both in India and in Cambodia which equal Amravati in this respect, but in none of these, so far as I am aware, is the art so dramatic, or the story told with such distinctness or such elegance, when looked at from an outside point of view. . It would be exiemely interesting if any ancient traveller had left us even an indication of what such a monument was intended by its founders to express; none such, I fear, exist. Yet when Fa-Hian visited Ceylon in the year-410, he describes _ the preparation made for the great annual festival in honour of the celebrated Tooth relic; on which occasion it was conveyed in procession, from Anurddhapura to Mehen- tele, a distance of about six miles. After the preliminary ceremonies, he goes on to say, * The king thus disposes or hangs up on the two sides of the route representations “* of the 500 successful manifestations in which Buddha had assumed various forms, “ such as the transformation into lightning (?), into the stag-horse, or the king of “ the elephants, &e. These, painted in different colours, are executed with care, and 4 * The slab from which this drawing was made was presented by Colonel Mackenzie to the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, where it now is. It was engraved for M. Foucaux’s Translation of the Lalita-Vistara, Plates III. to VI. . oe a BB2 196 THE TOPE AT AMRAVATL ~ look like life.”*- I have already had occasion to remark} that’ the Ceylonese mode of making Rails seemed to depend on some such arrangement. Instead of a continuous stone screen, as at Sanchi or Amravati, they ‘consist of stone posts, adapted to hang tapestries or pictures upon, and I fancy that this pictorial display described by Fa-Hian is. the counterpart of what we see in stone on the banks of the Kistnah. The Amravati Rail*may havebeen in progress while Fa-Hian was in Ceylon, and both displays were, if I mistake not, got up’in. honour of the sacred Tooth. The sculptures of the Amravati Rail were at one time painted, and traces of colour may still be detected in the. recesses of the sculptures. When this was the case, the difference between the temporary decoration along the path through which the Tooth was borne in triumph in Ceylon, and the permanent procession path at Amnravati, would not be so great in appearance. We must wait, however, till all the Rails known to exist in India are published before these and many other points can be settled in a satisfactory manner. Perhaps the most interesting point, regarding it at least for our present purposes, is that it is a purely original and Buddhist form of art. It hardly seems doubtful but that the unhewn circles of stones that exist at Amravati and all over the western. - world are the rude originals out of which it grew, first into such a cireular enclosure as we find at Stonehenge; then into such a Rail as we find at Sanchi, and lastly into such a screen as this. It is the blossoming of a long series of attempts which probably would have for ever remained rude in the hands of the weatern nations, ‘but which Indian taste fashioned into beauty, as we see it here. Besides its history, however, and its originality, this outer Rail at Amravati is to be admired for its elegance and appropriateness. I do not know of any archi- tectural form which,‘in such a climate, is or could be more beautiful- than this. The sculptures on the walls of a temple could not be so well lighted or so well displayed, and to a certain extent must always be subordinated to the architecture. Here the two are perfectly in accord, helping one another, and as the “temenos” enclosing a sacred spot, and uniting without hiding a group of sacred buildings, I do-not know where to look for anything combining so many excellences. of. design as this encircling screen of the great Temple of the Diamond Sands. ' * Fo&-Koué-Ki, p. 335. t Ante, p. 82. . > Sts PRI a ete ames Fa ~ . - = ; ——,'* AXX1 AlV1d MY gO Notwued ¥ ZO exo TLR ARK UW Y r wi we vi AIS pat DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. 197 PLATE LXXV. Tux inner Rail of the Amravati Tope that bounded the procession path on the side next the centre, was richer and more elaborately carved than the great outer Rail, though inferior both in dimensions and in architectural design. It was, in the first place, only half its height, or 6 feet above the path, as compared with 12 feet on the other side. It had, however, some metallic finishing on the top, which is now lost, and must have added not only to its height but to its architectural effect. The holes by which the metal cornice was fastened to the marble still remain, but no trace of the metal itself; and I have failed to detect any representation of this inner Rail from which it might be restored.