No. 1 TOPE.-SÁNCHI. 8. The great Sánchi Tope is situated on the western edge of the hill. The ground has once been carefully levelled, by cutting away the surface rock on the east, and by building up a retaining wall on the west. The court (as it now exists) averages one hundred and fifty yards in length, and is exactly one hundred yards in breadth. In the midst stands the Great Chaitya, No. I.,* surrounded by a massive colonnade. The bald appearance of the solid dome is relieved by the lightness and elegance of the highly picturesque gateways. On all sides are ruined temples, fallen columns, and broken sculptures and even the Tope itself, which had withstood the destructive rancour of the fiery Saivas and the bigoted Musalmáns, has been half-ruined by the blundering excavations of amateur antiquaries. 9. In the north-east, south-east, and south-west corners of the court there are small ruined Topes, marked Nos. 5, 6, 7 in the plan, Plate IV. In the south there is a small temple of middle age, and an old Chaitya temple with lofty square columns. The semicircular end of this temple was first traced by my brother, "There is a stern round tower of other days, Captain J. D. Cunningham,* and afterwards more leisurely by Lieut. Maisey, who made an excavation on the supposed site of the Chaitya, and was rewarded by the discovery of a small chamber containing a broken steatite vase. 10. The great Tope itself is a solid dome of stone and brick, 106 feet in diameter, and 42 feet in height, springing from a plinth of 14 feet, with a projection of 5 feet from the base of the building, and a slope of 2 feet. The plinth or basement formed a terrace for the perambulation of worshippers of the enshrined relic; for, on the right pillar of the North Gateway there is a representation of a Tope and of two worshippers walking round it,† with garlands in their hands. The terrace was reached by a double flight of steps to the south, connected by a landing ten feet square.‡ 11. The apex of the dome was flattened into a terrace 34 feet in diameter, surrounded by a stone railing of that style so peculiar to Bauddha monuments, that I will venture to call it the "Buddhist Railing." And with two thousand years of ivy grown, Within its cave Childe Harold. * Journal As. Soc. Bengal, xvii. Plate XXVIII. + See Plate XIII. ↑ See Plate VIII. 200. Entrance of Cave Temple, near Varáha Avatar, Udayagiri 3ཤུ།ཨོཾaནཱསྤེ བྲ=༥,Fཆraཏུཊབྱམ།°H5Jརྟུ⪜༞Iཋ0ôཤྲནྡུ0སྐ༢།གཱ་སུ། སྭཱ༞ps&n@Čནྟུམྱུ༈ཆ]ཟེཎྞཱvནུམུན7ནིjjYn"22lghg— Published by Smith, Elder & Co, London Ford & West Lith Many of the pillars of this colonnade are now lying at the base of the monument; and several portions of the coping or architrave prove that the enclosure was a circular one. The inscriptions Nos. 173, 174, 175, and 176, are taken from the fallen pillars of this colonnade. The pillars are 3 feet 4 inches high, 9 inches broad, and 7 inches thick. They are of the same pattern as those of the lower enclosure, and in fact of all the enclosures of Buddhist Topes throughout India. I counted nearly forty of these pillars, but several must be buried beneath the rubbish of the destructive excavation made by the amateur antiquaries in 1822.† As the spaces between the pillars were, as nearly as can now be ascertained, about one foot, this enclosure would have required exactly sixtyone pillars. ; 12. Within the upper enclosure there was a square altar or pedestal surrounded by pillars of the same description, but much taller, some of which are still lying on the top of the dome. In 1819, when Captain Fell visited Sanchi, these pillars were all there but one of the corner pillars is now lying at the base of the monument to the north-west. It is proved to have belonged to a square enclosure, by its having faces at right angles to each other with two rows of mortices for the reception of the ends of the stone See Plates VII., IX., XXIII., and XXVIII., for specimens of enclosures. + Prinsep's Journal, iv. 712. Prinsep's Journal, iii. 490. |