Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/91

Rh had presided. The craftsmen at the different royal courts vied with each other in carving out of the living rock the most stately and lavishly decorated Assembly-halls, where the parliament of the Sangha met periodically to settle the spiritual affairs of the Indo-Aryan community, with a similar procedure to that of the ancient Sabha, the Aryan tribal assembly.

There are not, however, now existing any important Buddhist Assembly-halls or stūpa-houses which can be definitely ascribed to Asoka's time. The largest and most important of all of them is that which is carved in the scarp of the Western Ghats at Kārlē, between Bombay and Poona. This appears to have been completed structurally about the first century, though some of the figure-sculpture on the screen wall at the entrance is one or two centuries later. When the work was begun it is impossible to say, but the original cave may have been a natural one used by the bhikkus before Asoka's time.

The great nave (Pl. IX), which Fergusson compares in size with the choir of Norwich Cathedral, is approached through a spacious porch (Pl. X, ) somewhat loftier and wider than the stūpa-house itself, richly decorated with figure-sculptures and with the familiar motives of Hīnayāna art, the plain Vedic railing and repetitions on a smaller scale of the gigantic horse-shoe or sun-window which lights up and ventilates the nave. This great window, which follows the form of the vaulted roof, is partly filled by a massive timber framework resembling the torana of a palace gateway. Over the front wall of this porch, but now in a very dilapidated state, there was originally a wooden music