The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.136.3

v2.c16.s2.136.3

The pyramidal parapets represent the same number as built on masonry houses, with ashlars of different lengths placed one over another, and are unknown in wooden houses. The Buddhist rails are copies of stone originals, thick, heavy and clumsy, and not of wooden fences, which would have been much lighter. The pillars have capitals which were practicable only in masonry work; the pilasters with bases and capitals are such as could never have been required in huts; the brackets projecting forward from the tops of the pillars and carved into female figures, could never have been required as constructive or mechanical contrivances for wooden buildings; the projecting edges of the roofs have no indications of the ends of rafters such as cannot be avoided in wooden houses,—the only instance where they do occur under the arch over a door-frame in the Ananta Cave, being just where in a wooden building they would not be required (*Ante* II pp. [ 3 ], [ 32 ]). Pilasters are doubtless the reminiscences of posts; but they had so long survived their original design at the time of the Udayagiri caves that the fact had been quite forgotten, and they were employed as mere architectural ornaments rising only to the top of the door-frame, and not up the whole height of the wall to the ceiling as posts did and should.