Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/147

 CHAP. IV. RAIL AT SANCHI. Gautamiputra cave at Nasik, dr. A.D. 160 to 175, where there are three full discs on the pillars as well as on the rails, and no doubt other variations may yet be found ; but these are sufficient to show how the discs were multiplied till the pillars almost become evanescent quantities in the composition. Rail in Gautamiputra Cave, Nasik, The greatest innovation, however, that took place, was the substitution of figure - sculpture for the lotus or water leaves of the discs, if that can be called an innovation, which certainly took place in the wooden age of architecture, before it was thought of translating these things into stone. The earliest rails we know, those at Bodh-Gaya and Bharaut, show these changes already completed in the manner above described. The plainness of the rail, or the absence of figure-sculpture, is consequently no test of its greater or less antiquity, though the extreme multiplication of discs, as shown in the last example, seems only to have taken place just before their discontinuance. To return, however, from this digression. The rail that surrounds the great tope at Sanchi was probably commenced immediately after its erection, which, as explained above, was probably in A^oka's time, B.C. 250; but as each rail, as shown by the inscription on it, was the gift of a different individual, 1 1 Gen. Cunningham collected and translated 196 inscriptions from this tope, in his work on the Bhilsa Topes, pp. 235 ef seqq., plates 16-19 ; but the more accurate versions of a larger collec- VOL. I. tion of 378 from this rail and 78 from that of Stupa No. 2, are those by Professor Buhler, published in ' Epi- graphia Indica,' vol. ii. pp. 87 et seqq., and 366 et seqq. H