The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c7.3

c7.3

I will add that, disagreeable or not, this research is a kind of obligation, which we may no longer with decency shirk. It was in fact the original building, and not the reproduction, that just missed coming to Paris. In 1867-8 the Begum of Bhopâl was instigated to offer to the Emperor of the French one of the four great gates of the *stûpa* of Sânchî, that is to say, a portion of the most beautiful, and even of the unique architectural whole that we have retained from Ancient India. The Begum, indifferent, desired nothing better; but the English resident intervened, and this act of vandalism — we are all the more ready after this lapse of time to designate it as such, since the project fell through — was fortunately not perpetrated(¹). However, the Anglo-Indian government understood that there were there archæological remains capable of arousing the interest of artists and scholars. From 1869 it caused to be executed at great cost several mouldings of the eastern gate, one of the only two which had remained standing; and with great liberality it divided them between London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, Paris, etc. The one which fell to our share had already known some vicissitudes, till at last it found an asylum — if not a shelter — in the courtyard of the Musée Guimet. On the other hand, this costly and somewhat embarrassing present