The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.321.3

v1.c7.321.3

the uprights are as unlike lotus buds or half-blown flowers as they well can be, and the intermediate buds with four dots not at all like honey-suckle buds: We take the open petals to be bunches of slender leaves tied together. But whatever they be, they are so peculiar that an imitation on the one side or the other may be readily assumed, and if this be assumed the whole capital, and even the battlements and the mouldings, might be taken to be Assyrian, though logically we cannot admit that the cumulative effect of a number of individually weak and scarcely tenable arguments, is conclusive by any means: the imposing chain of circumstantial evidence, which in sensational novels plays so exciting a part, invariably breaks down under the first stroke of the hammer of truth. But even admitting to the full extent their force, the similitudes do not by any means suffice to settle the date of Indian stone architecture—much less to affiliate it to the Grecians of Bactria. The relation of the Indo-Aryans with Assyrians, dates from a much earlier epoch than B. C. 250, and it is possible, though in the absence of proof not very probable, that the two nations did borrow from each other many elements and requirements [18] of civilization; but no deductions about the age of Indian architecture from the similitude of particular ornaments can be reasonable or safe.