Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/156

 122 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. over these slabs was an architrave, carved like ivory, with scenes from the life of Buddha ; the whole making up a series of pictures of Buddhism, as it was understood in the ist and 2nd centuries, unsurpassed by anything now known to exist in India. The slab represented in Woodcut No. 43 (p. 121), though now much ruined, is interesting as showing the three great objects of Buddhist worship at once. At the top is the dagaba with its rail, but with the five-headed Naga in the place usually occupied by Buddha. In the central compartment is the chakra or wheel, now generally acknow- ledged to be the emblem of Dharma, the second member of the Buddhist Triad ; below that the tree, possibly repre- senting the Sangha or the con- gregation ; and in front of all a throne, on which is placed what I believe to be a relic, wrapt up in a silken cloth. This combination is repeated again and again in the earlier of these sculptures, and may be almost designated as the shorter Buddhist catechism, or rather the creed Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. The last woodcut (No. 44) is also interest- ing, as showing, besides the three emblems, the form of pillars with double animal capitals so common in structures of this and an earlier period. The age of this monument can hardly be fixed with certainty ; the sculptures on the rail and on some of the slabs that probably belonged to the stupa itself, are sufficiently analogous in general style to those left of the Bharaut stupa to suggest that they may be of scarcely more than a century later. It must have been commenced at least before figures of Buddha were represented in sculpture the relic casket and pair of footmarks being the symbols employed to represent him. But among the figures that appear to have belonged to the base of the stupa, there are many that can hardly be earlier than the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. From an inscrip- tion of the reign of Pulumavi Vasishthiputra, it would seem D^gaba (from a Slab), Amaravati.