Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/90

 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. probably was a Buddhist emblem a wheel or the triratna orna- ment 1 but the necking still remains (Woodcut No. 5), and is almost a literal copy of the honeysuckle ornament we are so familiar with as used by the Greeks with the Ionic order. In this instance, however, it is hardly probable that it was in- troduced direct by the Greeks, but is more likely to have been borrowed, through Persia, from Assyria, whence the Greeks also originally obtained it. The honeysuckle ornament, again, occurs as the crowning member of a pillar at Sankisa, in the Doab, half-way between Mathura and Kanauj (Woodcut No. 6), and this time surmounting a capital of so essentially Persepolitan a type, that there can be little doubt that the design of the whole capital came from Persia. This pillar, of which the greater part of the shaft is lost, is surmounted by an elephant, but so mutilated that even in the 7th century the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang mistook it for a lion, if this is indeed the effigy he was looking at, as General Cunningham supposes, 2 which, however, is by no means so clear as might at first sight appear. Rh 6. Capital at Sankisa. (From a Drawing by Gen. Cunningham.) Capital of Lat in Tirhut. (From a Drawing by Capt. Kittoe.) Another capital of a similar nature to that last described crowns the Lauriya Navandgarh lat in Champaran this time surmounted by a lion of bold and good design (Woodcut No. 7). In this instance, however, the honeysuckle ornament 1 ' Tree and Serpent Worship,' plates 9, 10, loa, et passim. 2 ' Archaeological Reports,' vol. i. p. 274, plate 46.