The want of interiors in these raths makes it sometimes difficult to make this so clear as it might be. We cannot, for instance, tell whether the apsidal rath in the centre of woodcut No. 181 was meant to reproduce a chaitya hall, or a vihara like that of woodcut No. 48. From its being in several storeys I would infer the latter, but the whole is so conventionalised by transplantation to the south, and by the different uses to which they are applied for the purposes of a different religion, that we must not stretch analogies too far.[365]
182. Arjuna’s Rath, Mahavellipore. (From a Photograph.)
There is one other rath, at some distance from the others, called Arjuna’s rath, represented in the above woodcut (No. [182]), which, strange to say, is finished, or nearly so, and gives a fair idea of the form these oblong temples took before we have any structural buildings
183. Perumal Pagoda, Mádura. (From a MS. Drawing in the possession of the late General Monteith, Madras Engineers.) No scale.
of the class. This temple, though entering in the side, was never intended to be pierced through, but always to contain a cell. The large oblong rath, on the contrary, was intended to be open all round, and whether, consequently, we should consider it as a choultrie or a gopura is not quite clear. One thing, at all events, seems certain—and it is what interests us most here—that the square raths are copies of Buddhist viharas, and are the originals from which all the vimanas in southern India were copied, and continued to be copied nearly unchanged to a very late period. Woodcut No. 183, for instance, represents one from Mádura, erected in the 18th century. It is changed, it is true, and the cells and some of the earlier features are hardly recognisable; but the wonder rather is that twelve centuries should not have more completely obliterated all traces of the original. There is nothing, however, in it which cannot be easily recognised in intermediate examples, and their gradual transformation detected by any one familiar with the subject. On the other hand, the oblong raths were halls or porticoes with the Buddhists, and became the gopuras or gateways which are frequently—indeed generally—more important parts of Dravidian temples than the vimanas themselves. They, too, like the vimanas, retain their original features very little changed to the present day, as may be seen from the annexed example from a modern Tamil temple on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Manaar ([Woodcut No. 184]). To all this, however, we shall have frequent opportunities of referring in the sequel, and it will become much plainer as we proceed.