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of such a form is known to exist anywhere in India, though judging from the frequency with which representations of them occur at Amravati, they . must have been at one time very common. All those, however, that occw in the bas-reliefs of the Southern Tope seem to have been of wood, and those at Sanchi, though of stone, are very slightly removed in form from their wooden prototypes. The whole of the superstructure is so essentially wooden in construction that we rather feel inclined to wonder how men dared to attempt its erection in stone, and are equally astonished that it should have stood for eighteen centuries nearly uninjured. The pillars, too, are evidently imitations of carved logs. The irregularity in spacing the divisions, the mode in which the dividing string courses stop, without running all round, and the wavyness of the lines, all betray the workmanship of EE2 220 - CONCLUSION. | people unfamiliar with the even bedding requisite for:stone, masonry in such positions, though the irregularity may be rather pleasing in wood. carving. All this is changed- when we come to the age of the Great Rail at Am*ravati - There the architectural details are carved with sharpness and precision. The string courses are horizontal, and the general construction so truly lithic, that it requires some study and some knowledge to detect the wooden forms that still remain. The examples of Rails at Muttra and Buddh Gya are probably intermediate between these two, and when published may perhaps enable us to render our history a little more complete. Enough remains at Gya to enable it to be restored with certainty when anyone will take the trouble to do so. That at Muttra is probably too far ruined, but meanwhile, till casts or photographs can™ be obtained, it. is impossible to speak with any certainty regarding them. These four Rails, however, are nearly all that now remains to enable us to write the history of structural architecture in India anterior to the building of the great Bhuvaneswar temple in 627 a.v.* We may eventually be able to eke out this meagre list by hints borrowed from the Topes in Ceylon and Afghanistan, but they, I fear, are either too modern or too much ruined to be of much service. The real complement to our scant knowledge must be derived from the Caves. We have in Behar some nearly as old as Agokea, though more modern than the Rail at Sanchi, and at Bhaj&é and Karlee in the Western Ghats we have others which were excavated before the Christian era. From that time to those at Junir and Nassick there are probably a hundred examples, including those of course at Kundana, Ajanta, and elsewhere, which may. have been executed in the first three or four centuries of the Christian era, and those at Cuttack may be, even earlier than those of the western side of India. All this makes up an amount of evidence probably sufficient for present purposes, but the caves being all interiors, do not supply all the information required. Even if the Topes at Sanchi and Amravati do not suffice to complete our knowledge, they and other bas-reliefs add immensely to our stores, and when the whole is combined together we can form a very fair idea of what the architecture of India was from the time when stone was first employed till the inhabitants acquired that perfection in the art which is exhibited in the carvings of the Rails at Amravati. The fact, however, of our having been obliged hitherto to sly: to such an extent on rock-cut examples for our knowledge of the early arts of India, has pre- vented our being able to ascertain how far the history of sculpture and decorative art has coincided with that of architecture. There is very little sculpture in the carly Caves, and what there is, is generally carved in a coarse unsuitable material, and frequently in situations where it is badly lighted and imperfectly seen. It was therefore perfectly open to anyone to argue that these sculptures were not a fair test, and that the Hindus may have been proficient in representations of the human form and in decorative sculpture at a time’ when their architectural knowledge was still in its infancy. : The great fact that we learn ficin a study of the sculptures of the Topes at Sanchi and Amravati is, that the plastic arts followed the same law as those of * JT am doubtful about the age of the Takht-i Suliman temple in Cashmere, but it may he older, a.p. 290 ? ARCHITECTURE—RELIGION. 221 construction. We can naw assert with confidence that all the permanent forms of art arose in India after its inhabitants were brought into contact with western. civilization, by the establishment of the Grecian kingdom of Bactria. It seems pro-. bable that such sculptures as we have of Asoka’s reign were actually executed by Grecian or at least by Yavana artists; but from his time to the present day we can now trace the rise and fall of Hindu art almost without a break. We can assist at its first rude but vigorous attempts. We can follow it till it reached its highest point of manipulative dexterity, in the fourth century, at Amravati. We see it maintaining itself nearly at the same level—with some fluctuation, of course—till the decline of Buddhism, and the irruption of the Mahomedans. From that point the history of Hindu art is too surely written in decay, and we can trace its gradual deterioration’ to the present day. In a few words, what we have gained by the study of the arts of the two Topes, is the assurance that the whole history of permanent art in India-is com-: prised in the last twenty-one centuries, and that we now possess a sufficient number of examples, and have sufficient knowledge, to grasp the subject as a whole. There may be some gaps still to fill up, some details that require rectification, but for the first time it can now be said that we know the beginning, the middle, and the end of the iistory of the arts of that great Indian branch of: the family of mankind. RELIGION. The picture which the sculptures of the Topes at Sanchi and Amravati afford us of the religious faith of the inhabitants of India at the time they were erected is perhaps more novel, and also more interesting, than. the information they afford regarding the arts of the country. Before they were discovered, the only con- temporary record we possessed of the early forms of the Buddhist faith was that derived from the inscriptions of Asoka, engraved on pillars at Delhi, Allahabad, and . in Tirhoot, &c., and. those on the rocks at Orissa, Gujerat, Peshawer, and elsewhere. What we find in them is Buddhism without Buddha. Except in the short inscrip- tion at Bhabhra (App. C.), the founder of the religion is not once mentioned, nor any of his doctrinal formulas. That marvellous tenderness. towards everything that has life is strongly inculeated; respect for parents and superiors, mutual kindness and forbearance, and above all, toleration of other faiths, are insisted upon, and many moral doctrines common to Buddhism and other forms of faith; but we scarcely gather whether they emanated from some Solon or some Socrates or from Sakya Muni. The faith was then the rival of that of the Vedas, and affected their purity and absence of all human agency or miraculous manifestations. At Sanchi, 300 years afterwards, we find the state of affairs altered, but not -to any very great extent. Buddha, the great ascetic, as we have always hitherto known him, nowhere appears. In his place we- have only the Prince who forsook parent, wife, and child, and threw aside his royal state and all worldly advantages, that he might devote his life to the benefit of his suffering fellow men. But even this is, ag it were, only incidentally announced. It requires some knowledge and a great deal of study to detect it. On the other hand the religious observances which the 299 CONCLUSION. sculptures of Sanchi reveal to us are, that in those days the old ancestral worship of a Turanian people had- been refined from reverencing the sepulchres of their forefathers into a veneration for relics and relic shrines, the Dagoba or Tope being the object most frequently and most prominently worshipped there. Next to the Dagoba, if not indeed more important, is the worship of the Tree. It occurs quite as frequently, and often in more prominent positions in the sculptures, but against this we must bear in mind .the fact, that the ¢ 2at Tope itself was * there, and those. Gateways were themselves erected to do it honour. Next in importance to these, but very much less Ail is the worship of the Wheel, and next to it the Trisul emblem, though it is very doubtful whether this last ought to-be considered as an object of worship at Sanchi, and not merely as an hicrogram, expressing a sacred meaning, but not an idol. The Serpent is only once worshipped at Sanchi, and thén apparently by a people totally distinct from the governing race, who erected the Gateways and carved the representations upon them. But groups occur six, or it may be ten, times in which man sits shielded by the seven-headed Naga, and surrounded by women who have- the strange accompaniment of a single snake at the back: of their heads. The most remarkable circumstance, however, connected with the bas-reliefs at Sanchi is the total absence of anything approaching asceticism. No priests appear anywhere; and though we ‘have palaces, there is no building that can be taken for a monastery. On the other hand, the sculptors revel in depicting regal state. Music and daneing take the place .of divine service, and drinking and love-making fill up ihe time of the Buddhists of those days. Most strange of all, we have war!