Whatever its origin, this amalaka is generally surmounted by a flat dome of reverse curvature, in the centre of which stands the kullus, or pinnacle, in the form of a vase, generally of very beautiful and graceful design.
124. Diagram Plan and Section of the Black Pagoda at Kanaruc, designed to explain the construction of Hindu Temples.
The great and at first sight puzzling question is, from what original is this curious combination of forms derived? It is like nothing found anywhere out of India, and like no utilitarian form in India that we now know of. It cannot be derived from the dome-like forms of the topes. They are circular both in plan and elevation. The sikras are straight-lined in plan, and their section is never a segment of a circle; it is not derived from any many-storeyed buildings, as the sikras or vimanas of the Dravidian architecture of the south of India, which seem certainly to have been copied from the many-storeyed viharas of the Buddhists, and we cannot fancy any class of domestic building which could have formed a model out of which they could have been elaborated. One curious thing we do know, which is that all the ancients roofs in India, whether represented in the bas-reliefs or copied in the caves, were invariably curvilinear—generally circular or rather ogee—having a ridge added externally to throw off the rain from that weakest part; but nothing on any bas-relief or painting gives us a hint of any building like these sikras.
Another curious and perplexing circumstance regarding the sikras is that when we first meet them, at Bhuvaneswar for instance, or the Bay of Bengal, or at Pittadkul in the 7th century, on the west coast of India, the style is complete and settled in all its parts. There was no hesitation then, nor has there been any since. During the twelve or thirteen centuries that have elapsed since the erection of these earliest known examples, they have gone on becoming more and more attenuated, till they are almost as pointed as Gothic spires, and their degree of attenuation is no bad test of their age; but they never changed in any essential feature of the design. All the parts found in the oldest examples are retained in the most recent, and are easily recognisable in the buildings of the present century.
The one hypothesis that occurs to me as sufficient to account for this peculiarity is to assume that it was a constructive necessity. If we take for instance an assumed section of the diagram ([Woodcut No. 124], p. 223), it will be seen how easily a very tall pointed horizontal arch, like that of the Treasury at Mycenæ ([Woodcut No. 122], vol. i.), would fit its external form. In that case we might assume that the tower at Buddh Gaya took a straight-lined form like that represented in Woodcuts Nos. 128, 129, vol. i., while the Hindus took the more graceful curvilinear shape, which certainly was more common in remote classical antiquity,[260] and as it is found in Assyria may have reached India at a remote period.
This hypothesis does not account for the change from the square to the circular form in the upper part, nor for its peculiar ornamentation; but that may be owing to our having none of the earlier examples. When we first meet with the form, either in Dharwar or Orissa, it is complete in all its parts, and had evidently reached that state of perfection through long stages of tentative experience. The discovery of some earlier examples than we now know may one day tell us by what steps that degree of perfection was reached, but in the meanwhile I fear we must rest content with the theory just explained, which, on the whole, may be considered sufficient for present purposes at least.[261]
CHAPTER III.
NORTHERN JAINA STYLE.
CONTENTS.