Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/125

 FURTHER EVIDENCE OF ITS HINDU ORIGIN 5B

for the purpose of visiting the shrine. He supplements this by saying, ' although the Hindus I have met in Persia know about this temple, I never heard any Zoroastrian in Persia, although I met many, express any wish to visit it or have any knowledge of its existence.' His conclusion on this point is (p. 313), ' there can be no doubt this temple is not, or never can have been a Zoroastrian temple.' The structure in the middle of the sacred enclosure he regards (p. 312, cf. p. 315) as * a much more modern building,' and he considers it to have been * dedicated to the God Siva, as shown by Siva's iron trident, which was fastened on the roof.'^ It was, however, dedicated to some form of the Hindu divinity of fire, as we have seen.

Additional weight from the Hindu side is given by the style of architecture of the building. Judged from this standpoint also, irrespective of anything else, the structure appears to be Indian rather than Persian. Heinrich Brugsch, who spent part of a day at the sanctuary, about 1884, but says little about it, noticed that the edifice was built in Indian style (' in seinem indischen Baustyl'),^ and it gives an impression similar to that of a Hindu Dharmaadld^ or religious building founded as an act of piety or charity. Stewart accordingly speaks several times of the whole sanctuary as a *Dharamsala' (p. 313), and remarks that it did not resemble the remains of any real

1 Stewart subsequently (p. 315) to the especial occasion of his visit, changes his phrase ' much more mod- because the pipes for the naphtha still ern ' to * probably more modern,' in remain in the flooring and on the roof, speaking of the central structure. The The account by Ussher, p. 207, more- inscription on its front now proves it over, shows that gas burned from the to be younger than the surrounding hole in the central edifice, and the walls with their inscribed cells. Eich- frontispiece to his book shows the flame wald (pp. 182-183) implies that it did there as well as blazing from the roof, not exist in Gmelin's time (Gmelin, 2 Brugsch, Im Lande der Sonne, Reise, 3. 45), but the latter work is not 2 ed. p. 55, Berlin, 1886. OrsoUe (Le accessible to me for reference. Stew- Caucase, p. 140) uses the same phrase, art's further statement (p. 312), that 'dans le style indien,' yet see above, this middle building ' did not contain p. 52, n. 2, end. the fire,' must be understood to refer

�� �