Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c14.5

c14.5

In the neighbourhood of Sirsukh are two memorable Stūpas, viz. of sacred Head (Śirodāna Stūpa of which the story is told in the Divyāvadāna) and a Stūpa of Kuṇāla with the legend that it was constructed by Aśoka to commemorate the place where his son Kuṇāla had given his eyes and which now survives as a three-terraced Stūpa showing a lofty rectangular base (63'9'' × 105') approached by a flight of steps at its northern end and relieved by ‘a series of stunted Corinthian pilasters resting on an elaborate “torus and scotia” moulding and formerly surmounted by a dentil cornice and copings, with brackets of the “notched” variety intervening between the capitals and the cornice.’