Page:Report of a Tour Through the Bengal Provinces of Patna, Gaya, Mongir and Bhagalpur; The Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum and Birbhum; Bankura, Raniganj, Bardwan and Hughli in 1872-73.djvu/82

58 more than a mere accident of construction. Constructively, it was evidently impossible to form in brick the amalaka which invariably surmounts temples of stone, itself again surmounted by either urns or tapering discs ending in a spire. But whether the cylinder with a hemispherical top bears a not merely accidental resemblance to a lingam, or whether it is intended to represent a chaitya or stûpa which, originally hemispherical, became gradually elongated till it resembled nothing so much as a lingam, is a point deserving of inquiry. The temple of Konch appears to have been Buddhist, if we assume, as is sometimes done by high authority, that the Buddhists alone adopted the effective mode of lighting up the object of worship in the manner explained before, while the Brahmanists were rather disposed to hide their gods in the gloom of a dark sanctum; but this is a view not only not supported by any evidence, but is contradicted by examples elsewhere; in the brick temples of the Central Provinces, notably in the example at Sirpur, which proves that the Brahmanists as early as, perhaps, the 5th century, did not hide their gods in the gloom of a dark sanctum, but actually adopted precisely the same mode of lighting the object of worship as is supposed to have been adopted by the Buddhists alone. This circumstance shows that on this ground alone the temple at Konch cannot be considered Buddhist, but there is other evidence more conclusive as to its Brahmanical character. The spout for letting out water used in libations by Brahmanists, but not by Buddhists, still exists buried under accumulations of rubbish at the centre of the north side of the temple, and the sculptures lying about are all Brahmanical, so that I conclude that the temple was originally a Brahmanical shrine and not a Buddhist one; the cylinder, therefore, which crowned it could not have been intended as the representation of a Buddhist chaitya.

But this is not all. General Cunningham ascribes the construction of the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ. His arguments are very ingenious, but by no means conclusive; and especially so, as he gives no argument to show that the temple was not built, as is expressly stated in the "Amara Devâ" inscription, by Amara Devâ, one of the nine gems in the Court of Vikramâditya, and