Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/132

 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. woodcut No. 28 on next page, containing a smaller vessel of gold, filled with a brown liquid, and with an inscription on the PART OF FRONT ELEVATION. 27. Elevation and Section of portion of Basement of Stupa at Manikyala. lid which has not yet been fully deciphered, but around it were one gold and six copper coins of the Kanishka type. If this were all, it would be easy to assert that the original smaller tope, as shown in the section (Woodcut No. 26), was erected under Kanishka, or in his time, and that the square block on its summit was the original tee, and that in the 8th century an envelope 25 ft. in thickness, but following the original form, was added to it, 1 and with the extended procession- path it assumed its present form, which is very much lower than we would otherwise expect from its age. Against this theory, however, there is an ugly little fact. It is said that a fragment 2 or, as it is printed, three Sassanian coins 1 It is not to be assumed that, when a stupa was enveloped by an addition, the enlarged form was symmetrical with the original ; rather it would usually add pro- portionately more to the height than to the diameter. 2 In the text it is certainly printed "three" with a reference to 19 in the plate 21 of vol. iii. The latter is un- doubtedly a misprint, and I cannot help believing the former is so also, as only one fragment is figured ; and Prinsep complains more than once of the state of the French MS. from which he was compiling his account. I observe that Gen. Cunningham adopts the same views. At p. 78, vol. v., he says: "I have a strong suspicion that Gen. Ventura's record of three Sassanian coins having been found below deposit B may be erroneous."