[112] ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ Preface to the First Edition.
[113] ‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. i. p. 10.
[114] ‘Memorandum,’ dated 13th April, 1874, printed by the Bengal Government, but not published.
[115] ‘Voyages dans les Contrées Occidentales,’ vol. i. p. 465.
[116] ‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. i. plates 8 to 11.
[117] For this last determination, see ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ p. 99, et seqq.
[118] It is to be hoped that when Gen. Cunningham publishes the volume he is preparing on the Bharhut Tope, he will add photographs of the pillars of this rail. It would add immensely to the value of his work if it afforded the means of comparing the two. Some illustrations of the sculpture from Major Kittoe’s drawings will be found in ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ woodcuts 7, 20, 24. Two of them are reproduced here, the first representing a man on his knees before an altar worshipping a tree, while a flying figure brings a garland to adorn it. The other represents a relic casket, over which a seven-headed Naga spreads his hood, and over him an umbrella of state. There are, besides, two trees in a sacred enclosure, and another casket with three umbrellas (Woodcuts Nos. [25], [26]). They are from drawings by Major Kittoe.
[119] ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ p. 99, et seqq.
[120] When I wrote my work on ‘Tree and Serpent Worship’ nothing was practically known as to the age of the jatakas, or the early form in which they were represented; much, therefore, that was then advanced was, or at least appeared to others to be, mere guess work, or daring speculation. It is, consequently, no small satisfaction to me to find that this subsequent discovery of a monument 200 years earlier does not force me to unsay a single word I then said. On the contrary, everything I then advanced is confirmed, and these inscriptions render certain what before their discovery was necessarily sometimes deficient in proof.
[121] The following outline ([Woodcut No. 28], on the next page) of one of the bas-reliefs on a pillar at Bharhut may serve to convey an idea of the style of art and of the quaint way in which the stories are there told. On the left, a king with a five-headed snake-hood is represented, kneeling before an altar strewn with flowers, behind which is a tree (Sirisa Accasia?) hung with garlands. Behind him is an inscription to this effect, “Erapatra the Naga Raja worships the Divinity (Bhagavat).” Above him is the great five-headed Naga himself, rising from a lake. To its right a man in the robes of a priest standing up to his middle in the water, and above the Naga a female genius, apparently floating in the air. Below is another Naga Raja, with his quintuple snake-hood, and behind him two females with a single snake at the back of their heads—an arrangement which is universal in all Naga sculpture. They are standing up to their waists in water. If we may depend on the inscription below him, this is Erapatra twice over, and the females his two wives. I should, however, rather be inclined to fancy there were two Naga Rajas represented with their two wives.