The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.14

c11.14

Have the goodness to cast a glance either at the designs contained in the grand album accompanying Leemans' book, or at our plate XXXII. The elements of the latter were borrowed from drawings recently executed under the care of Major Van Erp, who was kind enough to communicate them to us. We have restricted ourselves to adding to the second, for the purpose of our demonstration, the dotted lines. Thanks to this simple artifice, the principles which presided over the construction of Boro-Budur will become quite clear. The plan demonstrates to us in the most evident manner that each of the lower galleries, however angular they may be, is inscribed within a circle, and is itself, at its principal points, tangent to an inner circle. On the elevation we perceive that the initial project of the architect involved the construction of an edifice assuming the general form of a segment of a sphere.