Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/569

 CHAP. III. TOMBS 467 architecture. It belongs to the T'ing type already described, but is perhaps the largest example in China, being 220 ft. in length and 92 ft. deep. There are nine bays in front and five on the sides the entrance is in the centre of the long front which faces the south, and there is no verandah. The hall in which the ancestral tablet of Yung-lo is placed, consists of nave and aisles of the same height and outer aisles all round roofed over at a lower level corresponding with that which in the temples forms a verandah, similar to that shown on plan in Woodcut No. 504 where, however, there are seventeen bays. The main roof is supported by thirty-two columns, 37 in. in diameter and 36 ft. high, the panelled ceiling of both nave and aisles being at the same level. The twenty-eight columns carry- ing the verandah and chambers at the back are 21 ft. high. Group of Tombs near Pekin. (From a Photograph by Beato.) Like the Temple of Heaven it is raised on a platform, rect- angular in this case, with a triple terrace surmounted by marble balustrades and three flights of steps in front, the central flight