Early Indian Architecture: I. Cities and City-Gates, etc.; II. Bodhi-gharas c9.s6.78

c9.s6.78

Only the upper floors were occupied as living apartments (J., III, 122–5, etc.), though we learn that the king's thoroughbred dogs were kept upstairs in the *upari-pāsāda* (J., I, 175). The texts do not speak of entering or leaving a palace, but always of going up into or coming down from it (J., I, 61, 179, 348, 351; III, 239; IV, 105, 125, 130, 215; V, 64, etc.), and this means going upstairs to or downstairs from the upper floors. As interior structures, the stairways are not visible in ordinary representations, but Figure 12 shows a covered passage or stair which seems to lead from one part of a palace to another. The texts often refer to the foot of the stairs *sopāna-pāda-mūla*, J., III, 216; VI, 428, 429, or *dhura-sopāna*, J., IV, 265, 266), and the head of the stairs (*sopāna-sīsa*, J., IV, 265, 266; VI, 430, or *sopāna-matthaka*, J., III, 216). The steps or planks of the stairs are *sopāna-kaliṅgara*, Cull., V, 21, 2. In DN., II, 181, 182, the stairs of the Palace of Righteousness are said to be twenty-four in number; a triple stairway is described in J., IV, 265, 266, and though this Saṁkassa stairway was a miraculous creation, it is likely enough that such stairways were actually made (for representations of the Saṁkassa stairs, see Cunningham, *Stupa of Bharhut*, Pl. XVII, and my *History of Indian and Indonesian Art*, Figure 104). Stairs were provided with balustrades (*vedikā*), having uprights (*thambha*, *thaba*), cross-bars (*sūci*), and hand-rail or coping (*uṇhīsa*), like other "railings" (DN., II, 181, 182).