A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c11.s3.26

c11.s3.26

¹ Fergusson, *Hist. Ind. and E. Arch.*, reprint of 1899, p. 103; new ed. by Burgess (1910), vol. i, p. 123. 'Instead of the *ta-hsia*, a "great mansion", here, the B text, used by Julien, has *ta hsia*, which is a Chinese name for the country called Bactria. But this is evidently a slip of the pen, and the proper reading is that of the other texts which means a “great mansion”' (Watters, *On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India* (1905), vol. ii, p. 218). This material correction and Mr. Watters's comments on the current 'identification' of the pilgrim's *monasteries* with the Amarāvatī *stūpa* have been overlooked in the revision of Fergusson's book. 'It is hard,' Mr. Watters observes, 'to understand how any one could propose to identify a large monastery among hills and streams, and having spacious chambers and great corridors, with a building which is only a remarkable tope situated on a plain.' The error concurred in by Julien, Fergusson, and Dr. Burgess will not readily disappear from books on Indian art and antiquities.