Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s3.168

c6.s3.168

From these two typical cases, we come to know something about the original and simpler character of the *thūpa*⁶ and the *Cetiya*,⁷ ‘The topes (*thūpas*),’ says Rhys Davids,⁸ ‘were not especially Buddhist monuments, but in fact, pre-Buddhistic, and indeed only a slight modification of a worldwide custom.’ Originally made, in the Āryan days, of wood or bamboo, these soon began to give place to more enduring structures. Instead of heaps of earth or of stones covered with earth, as had been the custom in more ancient times, there now were beginning to be built solid brick structures. “The first step was probably merely to build the cairn more carefully than usual with stones, and to cover the outside with fine *cunam* plaster to give it a marble-like surface. The next step was to build the cairn of concentric layers of the huge bricks in use at the time and to surround the whole with a wooden railing.”¹ None of the most ancient structures of this kind have survived or been explored sufficiently to enable a restoration to be drawn. But some idea can, no doubt, be had from examples of a little later period.² The most glorious examples of the *stūpa* now in existence, *viz.*, those of Barhut and Sāñchī, with their wealth of inside and outside decoration, presuppose a few centuries of artistic as well as religious development.³