English
A Raja, who claimed to be lord paramount in India, let loose a steed to wander wherever he listed, and followed close behind Phin prepared to fight anyone who dared to meddle with the horse, and to release him if anyone took possession of him. If he accomplished this, and brought the steed back in safety, he was acknowledged a Chakravartti Raja. If he failed, the sacrifice did not take place. ‘in the bas-relief at Sanchi, Plate XXXV. Fig. 1., a Raja is following the steed in his chariot, and that may therefore: be the commencement of the ASwamedha, At * This slab hae. been so long exposed on the bles wall of Fife House that its Bee are csity obliterated. t That is, assuming the figures of Buditha fo'be cbeval ; but they have very much the appearance of being _ added Abed * . - P 4 216 THE TOPE AT AMRAYATY Amravati the challenger is in all instances absent, and it seems difficult. to for this if such a sacrifice were intended. On the whole Teen wo kwp theirs. This does not of course preclude the idea of this form of worship a borrowed from Scythia. On the contrary, everything we learn from. eith an Amravati points to the north-west and to countries beyond the Indus ag the sour whence. everything took its origin. What the Buddhists derived from those co was, however, directly antagonistic to anything which we know that the Aryans e) race. Whether, therefore, we cal] the people Turanian or Scythian to the same thing, ‘The Buddhists must haye derived the forei neces @ northern Turanian race, occupying the countries both to the north and to the Souths a of the Himalaya chain, being the people who were. Buddhists in India and are” Buddhists in Thibet. If Sivaism arose among the Dravidians, they were of a different = race, and must have come into India by another route, probably across the Lower | Indus. is at least one of the best indications we possess, and would go far to prove that the central building is older than the Rails that enclose -it. Wherever a Rail is” represented on the enclosures ‘at Amravati, it is always of 2 more ornate and more complicated character than that on the central building. Pe Another test is the form of the characters of the inscriptions, Both. Generali Cunningham and Mr. Thomas are of “opinion that those on the central buildin “- are the oldest, but cannot, from their limited extent, fee] sure how much more 2 ancient they may, be. A The principal inseription—No. XIX. Appendix E.—merely records that the sculpture on which it is found is the pious gift of Agheya, the pupil of Buddha Kakshita, i Se Ge ae eee ee “PLATE. XOVII, : i =) ya WAR? ¢ bes \3 ¢ ja a at ——. oS. Da ih aa = $y / (keU EIR { SS Vaal apes © ea) re : . : : Kaan a hey oY fi == BND, teal Se i : i HR = Ah. LCS = a ———e fz SES |p CS pa y i! I/| Bea (8P) )) | SR ¢ oe tee Cee (See 10 (ncHeS, YN Na AAA) AAAAK AATVAT AL MN COOSU RG, NTBAU BULLDING. DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. - 217 PLATE ‘XCVIIL. Tot Wheel pillar represented in Fig. 1. of this Plate catains no novelty, or anything ‘which is not found in those represented in Plates LXXV. and LX XXVIII, but it is more distinct than the first and more complete than the last of these, and is consequently useful towards understanding one of the most characteristic features of the inner Rail to which it belonged. The. slab, Fig. 2., which is also from the Mackenzie Collection, is extremely useful towards completing the restoration’ of the central building, inasmuch as it carries us direct from the three-barred Rail to the Dagoba frieze. It will be observed in Plate XCIII. there is a hiatus between the upper range of sculptures and the Dagoba, which, as far as any evidence went, might be of any dimensions.. In this ‘slab we have the Rail, the two ranges of sculptures, and the crowning Dagobas, all in one slab, and fortunately with the dimensions written upon them, w hich settles the question. _ > The upper sculpture is alco interesting as illustrating the legend of King Dharma Asoka, .alluded to: above, page 160. “After reaching the Golden Sands, his majesty * had a'‘dream in which Devatis appeared to him and said that underneath the temple “‘ were relics which had been deposited there by order of the king of Lanka. Next “ day the king directed people to dig into the Chaitya, but the crows, or spirits in “ their shape, compelled them. to desist. : . “Tt happened that at this time the Naga with seven heads and as many tails. guarded the Chaitya, but. no sooner had the king, accompanied by Mah& Tuli - (sent by Indra to assist) and a large retinue, approached close to it, than. this | “ mighty’ snake king was observed.to be majestically disentwining himself from ° “the huge fold with which he had encompassed the relic shrine.”* As already related, with the assistance of the king of Rém he was eventually successful, and founded a city, and ‘built a new Chaitya to enshrine the recovered relics. Was this the temple we now see? and are the relics those so frequently Foppesen ted: in the foregoing Plates ? It ea of ‘course, extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible to arrive at anything like certainty in such a case as this, but after what has been said above, I think the history of the Amravati Tope may be made out with very tolerable precision. First, we have indications from the coins collected by Colonel Mackenzie, and also from the slab, Plate LXXVIIL., Fig. 2., that buildings did exist. on this - spot.as early as the Christian era, but we have now no means of knowing what they may have been. In the next place, judging from the character of the sculptures, as well as from such shadowy traditions as exist, it does not seem that any part * J. A. SB. XVIL p. 90. (4799.) EE 218 THE TOPE AT AMRAVATI. of the buildings which have been. described above were undertaken till more than a century after the Gateways at Sanchi were completed. About or after the year 200, however, the central Dagoba may have beer commenced with an enclosing Rail, of which, however, nothing has reached this country. Subsequently, in the beginning of the fourth century, either in consequence of the visit of the Tooth relic on its way’ to Ceylon, or from some other local cause, ihe place acquired celebrity, and the great outer Rail was commenced, and it may have continued during the remainder of that century before being completed. Tke sculptures of the inner Rail- seem then to have been taken in hand, possibly were not completed till the year 500, after which time decay s seems to have set‘ in, and nothing further was done. All that we know. of Indian art is perfectly in accordance with this, and now that we are enabled to’ study the sculptures at Sanchi we can speak with some confidence on this subject. Before they were known, everything as we traced the history of art backwards seemed to become more and more elegant and perfect. Now that we have got hold of the earliest examples, we find ‘that the art began in rude vigour, but without any of that refinement it afterwards. attained. About the fourth century seems to have been the culminating point, and from that period the rock-cut temples, and those at Bhuvaneswar and elsewhere, carry us on without intermission till we reach such temples as those on Mount Abu, 1032; those around ILullabeed, dating from 1200 to 1800; ‘or those at Kanaruc in 1241. We know that : in this period there was no retrocession nor any age of decay which would account for the inferiority of the sculptures of the central building compared with those of the enclosure, on the supposition that these were the more modern of the two. The architecture, as far as it goes, bears out the same conclusion ,as the sculpture. At Sanchi it is careless and wooden, the string courses. seldom horizontal and occwring at every different level. It is the same in the central building at Amravati, especially | in the crowning cornice, Plate XCVII. * In the Rails, all afterwards became precise, almost finicking, and that remajns a characteristic of Ilindu art to the present: aay, CONCLUSION. ’ ARCHITECTURE. THERE are few of the subjects mooted in the previous pages regarding which it would not be easy to say a great deal more than has been said, nor would it have been difficult to find illustrations from other monuments which would have rendered the subject much more complete. It has, however, been thought better, in the first instance at least, to confine the work to the representation of the two monuments named on the title page, with only such introductory matter and descriptions as were requisite to render them intelligible, and to leave their application to a future _time, and probably to other hands. In so far as the History of Architecture is concerned, we do not learn much from these Topes that had not previously become known to us from an examination of the rock-cut examples, but there isa great deal in them that confirms what was previously only suspected, while a knowledge of their forms fills up some important gaps which existed in our history of the early styles of Indian art. ae Irrespective of this, however, these two Topes are interesting, inasmuch as they -are the two oldest structural buildings which, so far as we yet know, are to be found in India in anything like an intelligible state. If the Tope at Sanchi was really erected by Aéoka—and there seems no good. reason for doubting that it was so— it is the only one of the 84,000 Stipas he is traditionally said to have erécted of which a vestige now remains, and its Rail is the oldest and simplest in form of all those of which any fragments now exist. Its gateways, too, are unique, as no other example .