Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/412

 352 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. ance to the entrances. The five terraces and the ^ikhara with finial which, with the Hti, crowns the structure are in their proportions anoMn the simplicity of the mouldings almost equal to those of the Ananda. It is quite certain that here in England any attempt to copy a cathedral of the same period as the Ananda in the nth century, such, for instance, as St Alban's or Durham, would be a miserable failure compared with the iQth century example of the Kyauktaugyi temple in Amarapura. Two other buildings might here be mentioned, firstly, the so-called Arakan pagoda, south of Mandalay, which was built by Bodauhpay^ in 1785 to contain the brass statue of Gaudama carried off by him from Arakan. It is really a square temple on the plan of the Ananda, with four great vestibules projecting on each side, the roof being a seven-storeyed pydtthat in brick. And secondly the Kuthodaw or " thousand and one pagodas." This consists of an immense zedi of the usual type, which was built by King Mindon Min, with three parallel rows round of small pagodas or shrines, all erected between 1857 an d 1864 to shelter the 729 marble slabs on which are engraved in Pali the Buddhist scriptures. The four entrance gates are evi- dently inspired by those of Cambodia, consisting of an entrance vestibule with side wings, the vestibule or hall being surmounted by a tower in two storeys set back one behind the other. SQUARE TEMPLES. The earliest example of the second class of pagoda with square plan and corridors in the thickness of the walls is that of Lemyet-hna at Prome, attributed to the 8th and 9th centuries. It is about 24 ft. square and is built in brick with a solid pier 8 ft. square in the centre surrounded by a corridor 4 ft. wide; on each face of the pier are bas-reliefs carved in stone which are lighted from four entrance doorways, one on each side of the temple. These doorways still preserve the arches built with radiating voussoirs of brick which, laid flatwise, dispensed with the need for centering. The sketch (Woodcut No. 449) shows that the bricks of the Burmese arches, which measure generally about 12 in. by 8 in. and 3 in. thick, formed a thin flat ring of voussoirs which, bedded in mortar, would remain in position till the ring was completed. This was the system employed in the vaulted passages leading to tombs in Egypt dating from 3500 B.C., in the drains of 449 Diagram the Assyrian palaces, at a later date by the Sassanians of voussoired at Serbistan, Firuzabad and Ctesiphon in Persia, and arch> is said to be found in Chinese Turkistan. It is probable that the origin and development of these constructive