Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/152

 n8 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. love-making do not occur in what remains of the sculptures they do, however, occur at Bodh-Gaya to anything like the extent they do at Sanchi. There is no instance at Bharaut of any figure entirely nude ; at Sanchi apparent nudity among the females is rather the rule than the exception. The objects of worship are nearly the same in both instances, but are better expressed in the earlier than in the later examples. We may, however, make some allowance for differences of material and race or locality possibly also to peculiarities in the different sects for which the two monuments were executed. 1 The Mathura sculptures may suggest that the Digambara Jains regarded female as well as male nudity as a mark of sanctity. Before leaving these torans, it may be well to draw attention again to the fact of their being, even more evidently than the rails, so little removed from the wooden originals out of which they were elaborated. No one can look at them, however carelessly, without perceiving that their forms are such as a carpenter would imagine, and could construct, but which could not be invented by any process of stone or brick masonry with which we are familiar. The real wonder is that, when the new fashion was introduced of repeating in stone what had previously been executed only in wood, any one had the hardihood to attempt such an erection in stone ; and still more wonderful is it that, having been done, three of them should have stood during eighteen centuries, till one was knocked down by some clumsy Englishmen, and that only one probably the earliest, and consequently the slightest and most wooden should have fallen from natural causes. Although these Sanchi torans are not the earliest specimens of their class executed wholly in stone, neither are they the last. We have, it is true, no means of knowing whether those represented at Amaravati 2 were in stone or in wood, but, from their different appearances, some of them most probably were in the more permanent material. At all events, in China and Japan their descendants are counted by thousands. The "p'ai-lus" in the former country, and the " tori-is " in the latter, are copies more or less correct of these Sanchi gateways, and like their 1 The difference of style may be com- pared with that which prevails among Musalman monuments in different parts of India in the I5th and i6th centuries. 2 They must certainly have been very common in India, for, though only one representation of them has been detected among the sculptures at Sanchi ('Tree and Serpent Worship,' plate 27, fig. 2), at least ten representations of them are found at Amaravati, plates 59 (fig. 2), 60 (fig. I), 63 (fig. 3), 64 (fig. i) 69, 83 (fig. 2), 85 (figs, i and 2), 96 (fig. 3), 98 (fig. 2), and no doubt many more may yet be found. In Cave 10 at Ajanta, containing the oldest paintings there, two were represented on the left wall. ' Notes on the Bauddha Rock-Temples of Ajanta, 'p. 51, and plate II.