The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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482 NOTES
7. Sherman Lee, Rajput Painting (The Asia Society,
Inc., New York, n.d.), 3.
348. 8. B. Rowland, Art in East and West (Cambridge,
Mass., 1954), figure 12, and plate 134A in the earlier
hardback editions of the present volume.
350. 9. W. G. Archer, Indian Painting in Bundi and
Kotah (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1959),
50-
354. 10. W. G. Archer, Garwhal Painting (London,
n.d.), 12.
CHAPTER 20
359.
1. See above, p. 212.
360. 2. The word dagaba is a combination of the
Sanskrit words dhatu (relics) and garbha (womb,
chamber, or receptacle). The implication is that the
relics, planted like a quickening seed in the womb of
the structure, exert an eternal animating influence on
this seemingly dead mass of masonry, generating and
perpetuating for all time and all men the spiritual
power of the Buddha.
3. A. B. Govinda, 'Some Aspects of Stupa Symbolism',
Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, II,
2 (Dec. 1934), 99-100. There is some question as to
whether this division is based on a relatively modern
system, only part reflecting the canon employed for
the oldest dagabas.
4. Ibid., 101.
361. 5. See S. Paranavitana, 'The Stupa in Ceylon',
Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon, v
(1047), 81 fF.
6. See Percy Brown, plate vi, 7.
362. 7. The largest of all, the Jetavana dagaba, is
approximately three hundred and seventy feet in
diameter. It has been conjectured that the number of
bricks in the fabric of a single one of the larger
Singhalese dagabas would be sufficient to construct
a town the size of Coventry or to build a wall ten feet
hig/h from London to Edinburgh.
8. The Mahavamsa, trans, by Wilhelm Geiger,
Oxford, The Pali Text Society, 1912, 203. For
illustrations of actual metal objects, including a goldleaf
lotus reliquary, found at the Ruvanveli dagaba,
see Illustrated London News, 11 Jan. 1947, 52-3.
9. See above, p. 208.
10. Single octagonal columns, similar to the Andhra
pillars, have been found in the ruins of some early
Singhalese stupas. It is
conjectured that these yupas,
descended from Vedic sacrificial posts, were set within
the masonry of the dome as magic replicas of the Axis
or Tree of the Universe.
363. 11. This world is derived from the Sanskrit
vihara, a monastery, and is applied indiscriminately by
association to all
stupa precinct.
the various religious edifices in the
12. Mahavamsa, Geiger, trans., 184-5. 'The pasada
was four-sided, on each side a hundred cubits, and
even so much in height. In this most beautiful of
palaces there were nine storeys .... Surrounded by a
beautiful enclosure and provided with four gateways
the pasada gleamed in its magnificence like the hall of
the thirty-three (gods). The pasada was covered over
with plates of copper, and thence came its name
"Brazen Palace".'
13. Hsiian-tsang (Beal, 11, 247) mentions a Mahayanist
community at Anuradhapura at the time of
his visit in the seventh century. For an illustration
see Paranavitana, plate xx(a).
14. These statues have been 'restored' with such
execrable taste and insensitivity that it is necessary to
study them in old photographs to get an idea of their
original qualities.
364. 15. Another metal image of the same type has
been found in East Java. See Choix de Sculptures des
Indes (The Hague, 1923), plate x. A stone Buddha
statue actually imported from Amaravati has recently
come to light in Ceylon.
16. For these references to relations between Ceylon
and China, see A. C. Soper, 'Literary Evidence for
Early Buddhist Art in China', Oriental Art, Summer,
1949, 3 fF. See also L. Bachhofer, 'Die Anfange der
buddhistischen Plastik in China', Ostasiatische Zeitschrift,
New Series 10, 1/2 (1934), 36.
17. All that remains of early South Chinese sculpture
is a few rather crude gilt bronze images of the fifth
century that have only a remote resemblance to
Indian prototypes. See O. Siren, History of Chinese
Sculpture, 11 (London, 1925), plate 15.
18. Its resemblance to Pallava sculpture suggests
a date as late as the eighth century. Cf. H. Zimmer,
The Art of Indian Asia, plates 281, 283, 289.
366. 19. A. K. Coomaraswamy, Medieval Singhalese
Art (Broad Campden, 1908), 152 fF.
370. 20. In the course of excavations around the early
stupas in Ceylon there have been found buried at
the cardinal points small bronze figures of the same
directional animals, leading us to the inevitable conclusion
that the same geomantic magic implicit in
the laying out of the Indian stupa was scrupulously
followed in Ceylon. Sometimes the animal statuettes,
together with the relics, were deposited in a ninecompartmented
receptacle or yantragara beneath the
foundation stone of the monument. (See Archaeological
Survey of Ceylon, xn (1896), 16 and plates xiixxv).
Many passages in the Mahavamsa confirm the
semi-magical nature of these Buddhist relic mounds
and the hypothesis that they were literally reconstructions
of the cosmos in architecture. For some