Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/462

 3 86 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. animals represented extends from 18,000 to 20,000. The relief is so low that in the photograph it looks at first sight as if incised intagliato like the Egyptian sculptures ; but this is not the case. Generally speaking, these reliefs represent battle-scenes of the most animated description, taken from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, which the immigrants either brought with them, or, as the Siamese annals say, received from India in the 4th or 5th century ; these, Pathammasurivong, the founder of the city, caused to be translated into Cambodian, with con- siderable variations, and here they are sculptured almost in extenso. 1 One bas-relief, however, is occupied by a different subject popularly supposed to represent heaven, earth, and hell. Above is a procession so closely resembling those in Egyptian temples as to be startling. The king is borne in a palanquin very like those seen in the sculptures on the banks of the Nile, and accompanied by standards and emblems which go far to complete the illusion. In the middle row sits a judge, with a numerous body of assessors, and the condemned are thrown down to a lower region, where they are represented as tortured in all the modes which Eastern ingenuity has devised. One subject alone can be called mythological, and it wears an old familiar face ; it represents the second Avatar of Vishnu, the world-supporting tortoise, and the churning of the ocean with the great snake Naga. No legend in Hindu mythology could be more appropriate for a snake-temple; but, notwithstanding this, it is out of place, and I cannot help fancying that it was his choice of this subject that gave rise to the tradition that the king was afflicted with leprosy because he had deserted the faith of his forefathers. This relief is evidently the last attempted, and still remains unfinished. The only other temples that I am aware of where sculpture is used in anything like the same profusion are those at Boro- Budur in Java and that at Halebid, described above (vol. i. p. 446). In the Indian example, however, the principles on which it is employed are diametrically opposed to those in vogue in Cambodia. There all the sculptures are in high relief, many of the figures standing free, and all are essential parts of the architecture are, in fact, the architecture itself. Here, however, the two arts are kept quite distinct and independent, each mutually aiding the other, but each perfect by itself, and separate in its aim. The Gothic architects attempted to incorporate their sculpture with the architecture in the same manner as the Indian architects. The Greeks, on the contrary, 1 Bastian, loc. tit. vol. i. p. 402.