DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0126
('HAP. IV.
HAIL AT AMRAVATI.
103
great rail seems to have been commenced about .\.n. 319, at the time
when the tooth relic paid this place a visit on its way from Pari to
Ceylon, and its erection may have occupied the whole of the rest of
that century. The inner rail is more modern, and seems to have been
begun about a.d. 400, and, with some other detached fragments, carry
the history of the monument down, it may be, to 500. At the same
time it is clear that an older monument existed on the spot The
fragments that exist of the central tope are certainly of an earlier
age, and some of the slabs of the inner rail exhibit sculptures of a
much earlier date on their backs. It seems as if they had belonged
to some disused earlier building, and been re-worked when fitted to
their new places.
When Hiouen Thsang visited this place in the year (531) it had
already been deserted for more than a century, but he speaks of its
magnificence and the beauty of its site in more glowing terms than
he applies to almost any other monument in India. Among other
expressions he uses one not easily understood at first sight, for he
says, "it was ornamented with all the magnificence of the palaces of
Bactria " 1 (Tahia). Now, however, that we know what the native art
of India was from the sculptures at Bharhut and Sanchi, and as we
also know nearly what the art of Bactria was from those recently
dug up at Peshawur, especially at Jamalgiri, we see at once that
it was by a marriage of these two arts that the Amravati school of
sculpture was produced, but with a stronger classical influence than
anything of its kind found elsewhere in India. It is now also
tolerably evident that the existence of so splendid a Buddhist estab-
lishment so far south must have been due to the fact of the mouths of
the Kistnah and Godavery being ports of departure from which the
Buddhists of the north-west and west of India, in early-times, conquered
or colonised Pegu and Cambodia, and eventually tbe island of Java.
All this will be clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile it seems pro-
bable that with this, which is certainly the most splendid specimen
of its class, we must conclude our history of Buddhist rails. No later
example is known to exist; and the (landhara topes, which generally
seem to be of this age or later, have all their rails attached to their
sides in the shape of a row of pilasters. If they had any figured illus-
trations, they must have been in the form of paintings on plaster on
the panels between the pilasters. This, indeed, was probably the
mode in which they were adorned, for it certainly was not with sculp-
tures, but we cannot understand any Buddhist monument existing
anywhere, without the jatakas or legends being portrayed on its walls
in some shape or other.
At Sarnath all reminiscences of a rail had disappeared, and a new
L ■ Histoin da Hiouen Huang/ tmdnite oar Julien, vol. i p. 18?.
HAIL AT AMRAVATI.
103
great rail seems to have been commenced about .\.n. 319, at the time
when the tooth relic paid this place a visit on its way from Pari to
Ceylon, and its erection may have occupied the whole of the rest of
that century. The inner rail is more modern, and seems to have been
begun about a.d. 400, and, with some other detached fragments, carry
the history of the monument down, it may be, to 500. At the same
time it is clear that an older monument existed on the spot The
fragments that exist of the central tope are certainly of an earlier
age, and some of the slabs of the inner rail exhibit sculptures of a
much earlier date on their backs. It seems as if they had belonged
to some disused earlier building, and been re-worked when fitted to
their new places.
When Hiouen Thsang visited this place in the year (531) it had
already been deserted for more than a century, but he speaks of its
magnificence and the beauty of its site in more glowing terms than
he applies to almost any other monument in India. Among other
expressions he uses one not easily understood at first sight, for he
says, "it was ornamented with all the magnificence of the palaces of
Bactria " 1 (Tahia). Now, however, that we know what the native art
of India was from the sculptures at Bharhut and Sanchi, and as we
also know nearly what the art of Bactria was from those recently
dug up at Peshawur, especially at Jamalgiri, we see at once that
it was by a marriage of these two arts that the Amravati school of
sculpture was produced, but with a stronger classical influence than
anything of its kind found elsewhere in India. It is now also
tolerably evident that the existence of so splendid a Buddhist estab-
lishment so far south must have been due to the fact of the mouths of
the Kistnah and Godavery being ports of departure from which the
Buddhists of the north-west and west of India, in early-times, conquered
or colonised Pegu and Cambodia, and eventually tbe island of Java.
All this will be clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile it seems pro-
bable that with this, which is certainly the most splendid specimen
of its class, we must conclude our history of Buddhist rails. No later
example is known to exist; and the (landhara topes, which generally
seem to be of this age or later, have all their rails attached to their
sides in the shape of a row of pilasters. If they had any figured illus-
trations, they must have been in the form of paintings on plaster on
the panels between the pilasters. This, indeed, was probably the
mode in which they were adorned, for it certainly was not with sculp-
tures, but we cannot understand any Buddhist monument existing
anywhere, without the jatakas or legends being portrayed on its walls
in some shape or other.
At Sarnath all reminiscences of a rail had disappeared, and a new
L ■ Histoin da Hiouen Huang/ tmdnite oar Julien, vol. i p. 18?.