Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/305

 CHAP. I. MART AND. 261 and restored it in stone on his plate No. 14. The absence, however, of any fragments on the floor of the temple that could have belonged to the roof, militates seriously against this view; and, looking at the tenuity of the walls and the large voids they include, I doubt extremely if they ever could have supported a stone roof of the usual design. When, too, the plan is carefully examined, it will be seen that none of 147. Central Cell of Court at Martand. (From a Drawing by Gen. A. Cunningham.) Scale, 10 ft. to i in. the masses are square ; and it is very difficult to see how the roof of the porch could, if in stone, be fitted to that over the cella. Taking all these things into consideration, my impres- sion is, that its roof it certainly had one was in wood ; and knowing how extensively the Buddhists used wooden roofs for their chaitya halls, I see no improbability of this being the case here at the time this temple was erected. The courtyard that surrounds and encloses this temple is, in its state of ruin, a more remarkable object than the temple itself. Its internal dimensions are 220 ft. by 142 ft., 1 which are respectable, though not excessive ; they are not much 1 Cunningham in the ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' vol. xvii. (1848), pt. ii. p. 269.