Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/577

 CHAP. III. P'AI-LUS. 473 501. P'ai-lu near Canton. (From a Sketch by Mr. Fergusson.) In China they seem almost universally to be employed as honorific monuments of deceased persons either men of dis- tinction, or widows who have not married again, or virgins who have died unmarried. Frequently they are still constructed in wood, and when stone is used they retain to this hour the forms and details of wooden con- struction. Whatever the material, they consist of either two, four, or six posts, set either on the ground, so as to allow a passage through, or on a platform, as in Wood- cut No. 501, though this is quite an exceptional form, their more usual position being in front of some temple or tomb, as in Woodcut No. 493, or of an avenue leading to a tomb, as in the case of that leading to the Ming tombs in which there are five openings. Occasionally they span a street, as in that shown in Woodcut No. 503 at Amoy. The posts or piers always carry a rail or frieze bearing an inscription, which is in fact the object for which the monument was erected. The most singular features about them are the tile roofs at various levels, with which they are surmounted, probably for protection, but which, forming heavy masses widely projecting on each side, are exposed to serious injury from tempests. In Woodcut No. 502, representing a gateway at Pekin, it will be noticed that these roofs are carried |by a series of superposed brackets in groups copied from those which support the eaves-roofs of the temples. Between the bracket groups which apparently rest only on the top of the walls, there are openings which give to the latter the appearance of being later additions. The P'ai-lu serving as the portal of the cenotaph in white marble (Woodcut No. 493), though built in stone, is a direct copy of timber construction, the cross-beams being tenoned into the piers and having brackets under them to lessen the bearing, here the bracket groups are all in stone, but not pierced between. In the P'ai-lus erected in front of the Hall of Buddha in the Summer Palace (Plate LVIII.), and