Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/158

RV 134 and easily manipulated segments. Records say that the plan pursued by the artists of the Nara Dai-Butsu  was to gradually build up the walls of the mould as the lower part of the casting cooled, instead of constructing the whole mould first and making the casting in a single piece. On that supposition it appears that the mould was constructed in a series of steps ascending twelve inches at a time, and as the head, which with the neck measures some twelve feet in height, was cast in one shell, it follows that the body must have been made in forty-one independent layers. The labour and risks of such a process are evidently enormous.