The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.321.1

v1.c7.321.1

The same may be said of Assyria and Persia, but with some reservations. The conical battlements of Assyrian towers are reproduced in a few of the bas-reliefs of Sāñci, and the triple-step battlements of the Palaces of Assyria occur in some bas-reliefs of Khaṇḍagiri and Sāñci; on several towers at the latter place a fourth step is added to the battlements as shown on the margin (Figs. 1 & 2); but both these features are so simple that they cannot be taken as worth anything as tests. Two ashlers put slanting towards each other, produce a triangular figure, and three ashlers of different sizes put one upon another, Figs. 3 & 4, produce the other; and children, playing with German toy bricks, produce them without any great effort of the inventive faculty. This remark would apply to the chevron and the cross-lined check mouldings, (Figs. 3 and 4); as also to the beading round the necks of Asoka's pillars, for no ornament suggests itself more readily than a band of beads round the neck. The interlacing circular moulding observable in Assyrian architecture (Fig. 5) occurs repeatedly on the temple of Bhuvan-eśvara, but the nature of the ornament is not such as to warrant any conclusion as to its origin. A wavy line is a figure which results almost instinctively when a pencil is at play in the hand of a boy, and another to interlace it requires but very little exertion of the imagination. Some of the pateras also are similar (Fig. 6);