Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/133

 CHAP. III. MANIKYALA. 99 were found at a depth of 64 ft. (69 ft. from the finished surface) ; and if this were so, as the whole masonry was found perfectly solid and undisturbed from the surface to the base, the whole monument must be of the age of this coin. As engraved, however, it is such a fragment l that it seems hardly sufficient to base much upon it. Unless the General had discovered it himself, and noted it at the time, it might so easily have been mislabelled or mixed up with other Sassanian fragments belonging to the upper deposits that its posi- tion may be wrongly described. If, however, there were three, this explanation will not suffice. It may, however, be that the princi- pal deposit was accessible, as we know was sometimes the case, 2 in this instance at the bottom of an open well-hole or side gallery, before the time of the rebuilding in the 8th century, and was then, and then only, built up solid. If we may disregard this deposit, its story seems self-evident as above explained. But whatever its internal arrangements may have been, it seems perfectly certain that its present external appearance is due to a rebuilding, possibly as late as the early part of the 8th century. General Cunningham attempted to identify M. Court's tope with that erected to commemorate the Buddha, in a previous stage of existence, offering his body to appease the hunger of a tigress, or according to another version of its seven famishing cubs ; 3 but this was based on a mistaken reading of some words in the inscription. The stupa of the " body- offering" must have been far to the north-east of Taxila probably in the Hazara country. 4 Unfortunately nothing of the exterior coating now remains on any of the sixteen topes at this place, and, what is worse, of all the fifty or fifty-five which can still be identified at Taxila. As General Cunningham remarks, of all these sixty or seventy stupas there is not one, excepting the great Manikyala tope, that retains in its original position a single wrought stone of its outer facing; 5 none 28. Relic Casket, Manikyala. 1 ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. iii. plate 21, fig. 18. 2 ' Foe Koue Ki,' ch. xiii. pp. 85- 86; Beal, 'Buddhist Records,' vol. i. p. xxxiv. 3 S. Julien's ' Memoires sur les Con- trees Occidentals, ' tome i. p. 164, and 'Vie de H. Th.' p. 89; or Beal's ' Buddhist Records,' vol. i. pp. 145^ ; and ' Life of H. T.' p. 67 ; Sp. Hardy's ' Manual of Budhism,' 2nd ed. pp. 93f. 4 E. Chavannes, ' Song Yun ' in 'Bulletin de 1'Ecole Fran9aise de 1'Ex- treme-Orient,' tome iii. (19x33), p. 411. 5 ' Archaeological Reports,' vol. ii. p. 172.