Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/99

 CHAP. III. BHILSA TOPES. 67 altogether they have excited so much attention that they are perhaps better known than any group in India. We are not however, perhaps, justified in assuming, from the greater extent of this group as now existing, that it possessed the same pre- eminence in Buddhist times. If we could now see the topes that once adorned any of the great Buddhist sites in the Doab or in Bihar, the Bhilsa group might sink into insignificance. It may only be that, situated in a remote and thinly peopled part of India, they have not been exposed to the destructive energy of opposing sects of the Hindu religion, and the bigoted Moslim has not wanted their materials for the erection of his mosques. They consequently remain to us, while it may be that nobler and more extensive groups of monuments have been swept from the face of the earth. Notwithstanding all that has been written about them, we know very little that is certain regarding their object and their history. 1 Our usual guides, the Chinese Pilgrims, fail us here. Fah Hian never was within some hundreds of miles of the place ; and if Hiuen Tsiang ever was there, it was after leaving Valabhi, when his journal becomes so confused and curt that it is always difficult, sometimes impossible, to follow him. He has, at all events, left no description by which we can now identify the place, and nothing to tell us for what purpose the great tope or any of the smaller ones were erected. The ' Mahawansa,' it is true, helps us a little in our difficulties. It is there narrated that A^oka, when on his way to Ujjeni (Ujjain), of which place he had been nominated governor, tarried some time at Chetyagiri, or, as it is elsewhere called, Wessanagara, the modern Besnagar, close to Sanchi. He there married the daughter of a chief, and by her had twin sons, Ujjenia and Mahinda, and afterwards a daughter, Sanghamitta. The two last named are said to have entered the priesthood, and played a most important part in the introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon. Before setting out on this mission, Mahinda visited his royal mother at Chetyagiri, and was lodged in " a superb vihara," which had been erected by herself. 2 In all this there is no mention of the great tope, which may have existed before that time ; but till some building is found in India which can be proved to have existed before that age, it may be assumed that this is one of the 84,000 topes said to have been erected by A^oka. Had Sanchi been one of the 1 Colonel F. C. Maisey was sent by Government in 1849 to make drawings of the gateways and sculptures at Sanchi- Kanakheda. These drawings which had been first used in ' Tree and Serpent Worship,' here-published in 1892, with letterpress based on a fanciful theory as to their age and origin. 2 ' Mahawansa,' chap. 13. See also 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' pp. 99 et seqq., where all this is more fully set out than is necessary here.