Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/542

 444 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. not on the temple itself, but on a bath or tank attached to it, though, from the character of its sculptures, it is probably coeval. 1 The reason why it is called a Serpent temple is, that the whole of the basement-moulding is made up of eight great serpents, two on each face, whose upraised heads in the centre form the side pieces of the steps that lead up to the central building (Plate LVI., Fig. 2), whatever that was. These serpents are not, however, our familiar seven-headed Nagas that we meet with everywhere in India and Cambodia, but more like the fierce crested serpents of Central America. The seven-headed serpent does occur very frequently among the sculptures at Boro- Budur never independently, however, nor as an object to be worshipped, but as adorning the heads of a Naga people who come to worship Buddha or to take a part in the various scenes represented there. Even then they are very unlike the Indian Naga, whose hood is unmistakably that of an expanded cobra. Those at Boro-Budur and Panataran are crested snakes, like that represented in the Japanese woodcut in ' Tree and Serpent Worship,' page 56. The sculptures on these monuments are not all of a religious or mythological character, but either historical or domestic. What they represent may easily be ascertained, for above each scene is a short descriptive inscription, quite perfect, and in a character so modern that I fancy any scholar on the spot might easily read them. Meanwhile it is curious to observe that we know of only two monuments in our whole history which are so treated, and these the earliest and the last of the great school : that at Bharaut, so often alluded to above, erected two centuries before Christ ; and this one attributed to the I4th century, while the struggle with the Muhammadan religion was gathering around it that strength which, within half a century from that time, finally extinguished the religion to which it belonged. There is one other temple of this class, at a place called Machanpontih, described by Herr Brumund as partly of brick, partly of stone, but singularly rich in ornamentation. "The sub-basement," he says, "is composed of a tortoise and two serpents ; the heads of these three animals unite on the west face and form the entrance." 2 The above is, it must be confessed, only a meagre outline of what might be made one of the most interesting and important 1 There are other inscriptions about this temple dated in A.n. 1197, 1319, 1320, 1347, 1369, 1373 and 1454. 'Die Volkentooneelen van Panataran ' in ' Archaeologisch Onderzoek,' Bd. ii. p. 14.* 2 ' Boro Boedoer,' p. 433.