Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c15.s1.t2.3

c15.s1.t2.3

The general plan and the decoration of the Stūpa can be ascertained with fair accuracy from the surviving remains, survey plans of the early archaeologists like Mackenzie, Sewell and Burgess, and from the depiction of the Great Stūpa on its Stūpa-paṭas. From this cumulative evidence we are able to know that the rail was the most richly ornamented of its class found anywhere else and fortunately has been preserved in a portion much larger than for any other constituent part of the Stūpa. Its diameter, as calculated, was 193', almost twice of that at Bharhut, thus making a circular enclosure of about 600', round the drum of the giant Stūpa. Each upright pillar was about 9' high, 2' 10" wide; having between each pair three crossbars (suchi, suji = sūchi), about 2' 9" in the diameter of their medallions, because of which they are appropriately named as parichakā sūchi in the inscriptions. Their lenticular ends are fitted into the mortices (sūchipuḍamtara) of the pillars. The railing pillars were topped by heavy coping-stones (uṣṇīṣa, called unisa-paṭa in the inscriptions), 2' 8" high, 1' wide, rounded at the top and secured to the pillars by the mortice-and-tenon device. At each cardinal point of the railing there was an opening, 26' wide, for the gateway, although the arrangement of the superstructure of the three architraves with small balusters is missing here as in all the Andhra Stūpas. The quadrant of the railing having reached its terminal pillar projects outwards at right-angles to a length of 16' and then with the same re-entrant device as at Sanchi turns inside at right-angles to a length of six and a half feet, and then again turning outwards at right-angles to a length of eight feet. Thus the entire length of the coping crowning the four quadrants and also the re-entrants of the gateways, measured about 800', and the grand rail itself consisted of 136 pillars and 348 cross-bars. [Fig. 205].