Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/156

RV 132

were readily obtained for the meritorious work of treading the blowing-machines. In this way the great bells and colossal images were cast.

It may be interesting to note here, that the methods of heating the mould and of repairing defective castings were in use in Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and doubtless at a very much earlier date. They are described by Theophilus in his valuable treatise, "De Diversis Artibus," written in the early half of the eleventh century, and his description is practically identical with that I have just given of them as they are practised in Japan.

What is here stated about the subsidiary processes employed for uniting the parts of colossal figures or complicated groups, has a special bearing on the work of ancient Japanese casters. The great image of Lochana Buddha at Nara is fifty-three feet high. It is in a sitting posture. Were it standing erect, it would measure 138 feet, approximately. Tradition says that the metals used were 500 pounds of gold, 16,827 pounds of tin, 1,954 pounds of mercury, and 986,180 pounds of copper; but the statement is evidently inexact, since it omits lead. The gold and mercury served, of course, for gilding purposes only. This figure was cast not in one piece, but in a number of segments,—plates measuring ten inches by twelve superficially, and six inches in thickness. The same method of construction was adopted in the case of the huge Amida at Kamakura, which has a height only three feet less than that of the Nara Dai-Butsu. History tells that the plan pursued by the early Greeks, as illustrated in the Spartan statue of Zeus described by Pausanias, was to hammer bronze plates over a model and subsequently to rivet them together. Not until the sixth century before the Christian era was the art of hollow casting discovered. Now, although