[247]. Texier gives three dates to this church. In the ‘Byzantine Architecture,’ p. 174, it is said to be of the 7th, and at p. 4, of the 9th century. In the ‘L’Arménie et la Perse,’ at p. 120, the date is given as 1243. My conviction is that the first is correct.
[248]. Flandin and Coste, ‘Voyage en Perse,’ pls. 214, 215.
[249]. Texier and Pullan, ‘Byzantine Architecture,’ pp. lix., lx.
[250]. I am a little doubtful regarding the scales of these two buildings. They are correctly reduced from M. Brosset’s plates. But are these to be depended upon?
[251]. Even if it should be asserted that this is no proof that the inhabitants of these countries were Buddhists in those days, it seems tolerably certain that they were tree-worshippers, which is very nearly the same thing. Procopius tells us that “even in his day these barbarians worshipped forests and groves, and in their barbarous simplicity placed the trees among their gods.” (‘De Bello Gotico,’ Bonn, 1833, ii. 471.)
[252]. The principal part of the information regarding these excavations is to be found in the work of Dubois de Montpereux, passim.
[253]. [See paper by Mr. Wm. Simpson in R. I. B. A. Transactions, vol. vii., 1891.—Ed.]
[254]. All the plans and information regarding the churches at Kief are obtained from a Russian work devoted to the subject, procured for me on the spot by Mr. Vignoles, C.E.
[255]. The first bay, as shown on plan (Woodcut No. [382]), is the narthex; the five domes come beyond it.
[256]. The particulars and illustrations of this church are taken from a paper by Heinrich Keissenberger, in the ‘Jahrbuch der K. K. Commission für Enthaltung der Baudenkmale,’ 1860. A model of it, full size, was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1867.