Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/112

 8o BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. on one of the relic caskets has attracted much attention on the part of scholars as recording the deposit of relics of the Sakya clansmen of Buddha. 1 All along this line of country numerous Buddhist remains are found, all more or less ruined, and they have not yet been examined with the scientific care necessary to ascertain their forms. This is the more to be regretted as this was the native country of the founder of the religion, and the place where his doctrines appear to have been originally promulgated. If any- thing older than the age of A^oka is preserved in India, it is probably in this district that it must be looked for. A MAR A VAT! Although not a vestige remains in situ of the central stupa at Amaravatt, there is no great difficulty, by piecing together the fragments of it now in the British Museum as is done in Plates 48 and 49 of 'Tree and Serpent Worship' in ascertain- ing what its dimensions and general appearance were. When Colonel Mackenzie first saw it, in 1797, the central portion of the mound was still untouched, and rose in a turreted shape to a height of 20 ft. with a diameter of about 90 ft. at the top, and had been cased round with bricks, and so may have been 40 or 50 ft. in height. This indicates a dome of considerable size ; the base or drum was probably 162^ ft. in diameter, and wainscotted with sculptured marble ; how broad it was above we have no means of knowing, or whether there may not have been even a second terrace ; but if, as is most probable, there was only one, the dome may have been 120 to 140 ft. in diameter. The perpendicular part was covered with sculptures in low relief, representing stupas and scenes from the life of Buddha. The domical part was covered with stucco, and with wreaths and medallions either executed in relief or painted. No fragment of them remains by which it can be ascertained which mode of decoration was the one adopted. 2 Altogether, there seems no doubt that the representation of a stupa (Woodcut No. 20), copied from the Amaravati marbles, fairly represents the central building there. There were probably forty-eight such representations of dagabas on the basement of the stupa. In each the subject of the sculpture is varied, but the general design is the same throughout ; and, on the whole, the woodcut may be taken as representing the 1 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' 1899, pp. 149-180; 1905, pp. 679f; and 1907, pp. I05f. 2 For a detailed account of the Amara- vati Stupa, see ' Archaeological Survey of Southern India : The Buddhist Stupas of Amaravati and Jaggayyapeta, ' 1887.