34. Bas-relief on left-hand Pillar, Northern Gateway.
35. Ornament on right-hand Pillar, Northern Gateway.
Other sculptures represent sieges and fighting, and consequent triumphs, but, so far as can be seen, for the acquisition of relics or subjects connected with the faith. Others portray men and women eating and drinking and making love, and otherwise occupied, in a manner as unlike anything we have hitherto been accustomed to connect with Buddhism as can well be imagined. Be this as it may, the sculptures of these gateways form a perfect picture Bible of Buddhism as it existed in India in the first century of the Christian Era, and as such are as important historically as they are interesting artistically.[127]
The small tope (No. [3]), on the same platform as the great tope at Sanchi, was surrounded by a rail, which has now almost entirely disappeared. It had, however, one toran, the pillars and one beam of which are still standing. It is only about half the size of those of the great tope, measuring about 17 ft. to the top of the upper beam, and 13 ft. across its lower beam. It is apparently somewhat more modern than the great gateways, and its sculptures seem to have reference to the acts of Sariputra and Moggalana, whose relics, as above mentioned, were deposited in its womb.
This tope was only 40 ft. in diameter, which is about the same dimension as No. 2 Tope, containing the relics of the ten apostles who took part in the third convocation under Asoka, and afterwards in the diffusion of the Buddhist religion in the countries bordering on India.
As above pointed out, the rails at Buddh Gaya and Bharhut afford a similar picture of Buddhism at a time from two to three centuries earlier. At first sight the difference is not so striking as might be expected, but on a closer examination it is only too evident that both the art and the morals had degenerated during the interval. There is a precision and a sharpness about the Bharhut sculptures which is not found here, and drinking and love-making do not occur in the earlier sculptures—they do, however, occur at Buddh Gaya—to anything like the extent they do at Sanchi. There is no instance at Bharhut of any figure entirely nude; at Sanchi nudity among the females is rather the rule than the exception. The objects of worship are nearly the same in both instances, but are better expressed in the earlier than in the later examples. Till, however, the Bharhut sculptures are published in the same detail as those of Sanchi, it is hardly fair to insist too strongly on any comparison that may be instituted between them. I believe I know nearly all, but till the publication of General Cunningham’s work the public will not have the same advantage.
Before leaving these torans, it may be well to draw attention again to the fact of their being, even more evidently than the rails, so little removed from the wooden originals out of which they were elaborated. No one can look at them, however carelessly, without perceiving that their forms are such as a carpenter would imagine, and could construct, but which could not be invented by any process of stone or brick masonry with which we are familiar. The real wonder is that, when the new fashion was introduced of repeating in stone what had previously been executed only in wood, any one had the hardihood to attempt such an erection in stone; and still more wonderful is it that, having been done, three of them should have stood during eighteen centuries, till one was knocked down by some clumsy Englishmen, and that only one—the earliest, and consequently the slightest and most wooden—should have fallen from natural causes.