On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c18.15

v2.c18.15

One of the buildings of the Deer-Park establishment, as Yuan-chuang has told us, was a Buddhist temple surmounted by an embossed gilt "amra fruit". The word *amra* (or āmra) denotes the mango, but we are not to take it in that sense here. It perhaps represents *āmalaka*, used by the pilgrim in the next *chuan* of the Records, the name of a common ornament of Hindu temples. The śikhara, "tower" or "spire" of the temple, to borrow Mr. W. Simpson's description, "is surmounted by a member called the āmalaka, which is circular in plan, and might be likened to a cushion or a compressed melon: the outer surface ribbed. A kalasa, or jar, surmounts this as a pinnacle".