One serving as the portal to a dagoba has already been given ([Woodcut No. 380]), and though rich, can hardly be considered as superior to that in Woodcut No. 389, which spans a street in Amoy. Instead of leading to a dagoba, as was the case at Sanchi, and generally in India, we have, in this instance, what appears to be a simulated coffin placed under a canopy, and above the principal cornice, which is an essentially Chinese idea. With them a handsome coffin is an object of the highest ambition, and is, consequently, a luxury which the rich take care to provide themselves with during their lifetime. So far as we know, no great structural dagobas ever existed in China, so that their form is generally unfamiliar to the people.
Probably the Chinese would have spent more pains on their tombs had they not hit on the happy device of separating the monument from the sepulchre. We do so in exceptional cases, when we erect statues and pillars or other monuments to our great men on hill-tops or in market-places; but as a rule, a man’s monument is placed where his body is laid, though it would probably be difficult to assign a good logical reason for the practice. The great peculiarity of China is that in nine cases out of ten they effect these objects by processes which are exactly the reverse of those of Europe, and in most cases it is not easy to decide which is best. In erecting the Pailoo, or monument, in a conspicuous place apart from the sepulchre, they seem to have shown their usual common sense, though an architect must regret that the designs of their tombs suffered in consequence, and have none of that magnificence which we should expect among a people at all times so addicted to ancestral worship as the Chinese.
389. Pailoo at Amoy. (From Fisher’s ‘China Illustrated.’)
In an historical point of view, the most curious thing connected with these Pailoos seems to be, that at Sanchi, about the Christian Era, we find them used as gateways to a simulated tomb. In India both the tumulus and the Pailoo had at that time passed away from their original sepulchral meaning; the one had become a relic-shrine, the other an iconostasis. Two thousand years afterwards in China we find them both still used for the purposes for which they were originally designed.
Domestic Architecture.
It is in their domestic architecture, if in any, that the Chinese excel; there we do not look either for monumental grandeur or for durability, and it is almost impossible to resist being captivated by the gaiety and brilliancy of a Chinese dwelling of the first class, and the exuberant richness and beauty of the carvings and ornaments that are heaped on every part of it.
One of the most remarkable peculiarities of their houses is the almost universal concave form of roof, which writers on the subject have generally referred to as a reminiscence of the tent of the Tartars, who are supposed to have introduced it. The authors of this theory, however, forgot that the Chinese have been longer out of tents, and know less of them, than any other people now on the face of the globe. The Tartar conquest, like our Norman one, has long been a fusion rather than a subjection, and does not seem to have produced any visible effect on the manners or customs of the original inhabitants of China. It may also be observed that the typical form of the roof of a Tartar tent was and is domical, like those represented in the Assyrian sculptures, and seldom, if ever, constructed with a hollow curve; so that the argument tells the other way. Be this as it may, the form of roof in question arose from a constructive exigence, which others would do well to imitate. In a country like China, where very heavy rains fall at one season of the year, tiled roofs, such as they almost universally use, require a high pitch to carry off the water; but the glaring sunshine of another season renders shade to walls and windows absolutely necessary. If (as on the left of the annexed diagram) the slope of the roof is continued so far out as to be effective for the last purpose, the upper windows are too much darkened, and it is impossible to see out of them. To remedy this defect, the Chinese carry out their eaves almost horizontally from the face of the walls, where a leak becomes of slight importance; and then, to break the awkward angle caused by the meeting of these two slopes, they ease it off with a hollow curve, which not only answers the double purpose of the roof more effectually, but produces what the Chinese think—and perhaps rightly—the most pleasing form of roof.