The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.117

v2.c16.s2.117

In the place of the hermit an image of a god, or a rude stone, or a grave, or a sacred relic, suddenly rising into repute for working miraclas, or for some other cause, produces the same effect. In the first fervour of devotion, wealth flows rapidly towards its endowment and embellishment, edifices rise over and round it, and a sacred place is completed. All this takes but a few short years, and the lifetime of a single generation is generally enough to effect the consummation. A different feeling next comes into play, that of respect for antiquity, which developes a strong spirit of conservatism, and its main objects are to give firmness to, and to perpetuate, existing customs, practices and observances, and to prevent changes and innovations. Devotion then leads to the erection of minor edifices around the principal building, in order to secure for them a share of the reflected sanctity of the original shrine. Hence it is—in India at least—that the richest and most elaborate shrines are the oldest, and the [41] temples and other structures around them are of comparatively recent dates. The merit of dedicating temples, ghats, chaityas, and the like in sacred places, is greatly extolled in the Śāstras, both Hindu and Buddhist, and every pilgrim erects one according to his means, and if he has not the wherewithal to build a temple or a chaitya, however humble, he satisfies his conscience by dedicating a fictile or stone model, ranging from two inches to three or four feet. Benares receives every year an accession of many scores of such temples, some of which are cubes of three or four feet with corresponding pinnacles, and the thousands of model chaityas in stone and baked clay which have been met with at Sāñchī, Buddhagayā, Sārnāth, and other places, owe their origin to the same cause.