The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.11

c7.11

These four gates, or toranas, of almost unvarying dimensions and arrangements, are likewise the work of carpenters rather than of masons; and it is even surprising that they should have had the boldness to execute them in stone. They rest on two square pillars, 0m,68 broad, 4 metres in height, with an interval of 2m,15. These two jambs are surmounted by two great capitals, 1m,25 in height and decorated in one case with dwarfs, in another with lions, and in two with elephants. These latter in their turn support no less than three lintels slightly curved, projecting on the two sides, these lateral projections becoming smaller and smaller, doubtless in order to accentuate the impression of height in the whole (cf. pl. VIII, 1). The entire construction attains a height of about 10 metres, without reckoning the mystic symbols at the summit. Caryatides of a fairly successful outline connect the outer side of the capitals with the first architrave; other figures of men, women, horses with their riders, elephants with their drivers formerly adorned the spaces of the blocks which separate the lintels. It should be remarked at once that these statues are almost the only pieces of sculpture finished in full relief that ancient India has bequeathed to us; most frequently the images even of divinities, such as those which here decorate the bases of the uprights, were not entirely detached from the stone whence the artists' chisel had elicited them. Then again, lintels, coins and jambs have all their visible faces covered with bas-reliefs. The question is to discover what these sculptures represent.