Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/251

 CHAP. VII. GANDHARA MONASTERIES. 217 part of all the great windows of the chaitya halls, from the earliest known examples, is also used for the same purpose in these Gandhara monasteries. Few things among these sculptures are more common than these semicircular frames, filled with sculpture of the most varied design. They are in fact the counterparts of what would have been carried out in painted glass had they possessed such a material. It is to be feared that it is hardly likely we shall now recover one of these cells or chapels in so perfect a state as to feel sure of its form and ornamentation. It would, however, be an immense gain to our knowledge of the subject if one were found, for it is hardly safe to depend on restorations made from conventional representations. Meanwhile there is one monument in India which mutatis mutandis reproduces them with considerable exactness. The small detached rath at Mamallapuram is both in plan and dimensions, as well as in design, an almost exact reproduction of these Jamalgarht cells. Its lower front is entirely open, flanked by two detached pillars. Above this are two roofs, with a narrow waist between them somewhat differently arranged it must be confessed, but still extremely similar. In the Jamalgarht representations of these cells everything is simplified to admit of the display of sculpture. At Mamalla- puram all the architectural features are retained, but they are still marvellously alike, so much so, that there seems no doubt this little rath (Woodcut No. 185, page 329), with its circular termination, is as exact a copy of what a Buddhist chaitya hall was at the time it was carved, as that the great rath (Woodcut No. 89, p. 172) is a correct reproduction of a Buddhist vihara at the same period. If this is so, these Gandhara sculptures and these raths represent the chaitya hall of the Buddhists in a much more complicated and elaborate form than we find it in the simple but majestic examples at Karle, Nasik, or Ajanta. The Jamalgarhi cells are not at all so modern as the rath at Mamallapuram, but they are certainly approaching to it in form. 1 General Cunningham dug out a small vihara at Shah-Dhert, the ancient Taxila, which seems more ancient than these Peshawar monasteries. As will be seen from the plan 1 One curious peculiarity of these Gandhara sculptures is that they gener- ally retain the sloping jamb on each side of their openings. In India and in a structural building this peculiarity would certainly fix their age as anterior to the Christian Era. In Gandhara it is found chiefly in decorative sculpture, but it seems also to have been occasion- ally employed structurally, as in the small vihara near Chakdarra fort in Swat, destroyed in 1896 by the Military Works Department. Ante, p. 2IO, note 2.