[211] The modillion cornice, though placed on the capital in the photograph, belongs in reality to another part of the building.
[212] ‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. v. pp. 49 and 196.
[213] ‘The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored.’ By the Author. Part II. sect. i., et passim.
[214] One curious peculiarity of these Gandhara sculptures is that they generally retain the sloping jamb on each side of their openings. In India and in a structural building this peculiarity would certainly fix their age as anterior to the Christian Era. In Gandhara it is only found in decorative sculpture, and retained apparently from association. It does not, at all events, appear as if any argument could be based on its use as there employed.
[215] Assuming that his age has been correctly ascertained, which I am beginning, however, to doubt exceedingly.
[216] I possess photographs of about 300 objects from the Lahore and other museums, and have had access to about as many actual examples—of an inferior class, however—in collections in this country, but even they barely suffice for the purpose.
[217] ‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. v., Introduction, p. vi. See also Appendix to the same volume, pp. 193-4.
[218] Texier and Pullan, ‘Byzantine Architecture,’ London, 1864, pls. 22-25 and pl. 44.
[219] De Voguë, ‘Syrie Centrale,’ passim.
[220] By a curious slip of the pen General Cunningham (‘Archæological Reports,’ vol. v. p. 193) places “These Roman examples in the baths of Caracalla in the beginning of the first century of the Christian Era, almost contemporary,” he adds, “with that which I assign to the finest Indo-Corinthian examples just described, namely, the latter half of the first century B.C.” This is so evidently a mere slip that I would not allude to it were it not that much of his argument for the early age of these sculptures is based upon this coincidence.