Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/95

 CHAP. III. STUPAS. certainty everything in future ages being ascribed to Aj-oka, who, according to popular tradition, is said to have erected the fabulous number of 84,000 relic shrines, or towers to mark sacred spots. 1 Some of these may be those we now see, or are encased within their domes ; but if so, they, like everything else architectural in India, are the earliest things we find there. It is true, the great pagoda the Shwe Dagon at Rangun is said to contain relics of all the four Buddhas of the present Kalpa, the staff of Kakusandho ; the water-dipper of Kon^gamano ; the bathing garment of Kajyapa, and eight hairs from the head of Gautama Buddha ; 2 but supposing this to be true, we only now see the last and most modern, which covers over the older erections. This is at least the case with the great dagaba at Bintenne, near Kandy, in Ceylon, in which the thorax-bone of the great ascetic is said to lie enshrined. The ' Mahawansa,' or Buddhist history of Ceylon, describes the mode in which this last building was raised, by successive additions, in a manner so illustrative of the principle on which these relic shrines arrived at completion, that it is well worth quoting: "The chief of the Devas, Sumana, supplicated of the deity worthy of offerings for something worthy of worship. The Vanquisher, passing his hand over his head, bestowed on him a handful of his pure blue locks from the growing hair of the head. Receiving it in a superb golden casket, on the spot where the divine teacher had stood, he raised an emerald stupa over it and bowed down in worship. " The thero Sarabhu, at the demise of the supreme Buddha, receiving at his funeral pile the Thorax-bone, brought and deposited it in that identical dagaba. This inspired personage caused a dagaba to be erected twelve cubits high to enshrine it, and thereon departed. The younger brother of King Devanampiyatissa (B.C. 244), having discovered this marvellous dagaba, constructed another encasing it, thirty cubits in height. King Dutthagamini (cir. B.C. 96), while residing there, during his subjugation of the Malabars, constructed a dagaba, encasing that one, eighty cubits in height." Thus was the " Mahiyangana have reached Europe at least as early as the 1st century of the Christian Era, inasmuch as Plutarch (' Moralia,' p. 1002, Diibner, ed., Paris, 1841) describes a similar partition of the remains of Menander, among eight cities who are said to have desired to possess his remains ; but as he does not hint that it was for purposes of worship, the significance of the fact does not seem to have been appreciated. Conf. ' Questions of King Milinda ' in ' Sacred Books of the East,' vol. xxxv. introd. p. 20. 1 ' Mahawansa,' p. 26, ' Hiouen Thsang,' torn. ii. p. 417 ; Beal, 'Buddhist Records,' vol. ii. pp. 87-88. 2 Account of the great bell at Rangun. Hough, ' Asiatic Researches,' vol. xiv, p. 270.