Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/277

CHAP. VIII. ANURADHAPURA. 241 threshold, popularly known as a " moonstone " l (Woodcut No. 135). Many of these are found at Anuradhapura, and as many probably at Polonnaruwa. Some are large and some smaller than others, but they are all broadly similar in design. They are not peculiar, however, to Ceylon : in temples, especially in the south of India and in the cave temples, they are usually found in front of the entrance to the shrine and often at the outer doorways, and are known as lotus-slabs the general pattern resembling the lotus flower. Inside an outer ornamental ring, in Anuradhapura examples, is a procession of animals, divided from the next compartment by a richly elaborate scroll ; within that again a row of birds bearing lotus buds, and then a lotus flower with a disc edged with leaves. The animals are always elephants, horses, lions, and bulls : the birds hansas or sacred geese chakwas. 2 These, it will be recollected, are the animals which Fah Hian and Hiuen Tsiang describe as ornamenting the five storeys of the great Dakhani monastery, and which, as we shall afterwards see, were also arranged at Halebid in the I3th century in precisely the same manner. For 1 500 years they, and they only, seem to have been selected for architectural purposes, but why this was so we are yet unable to explain. The risers of these stairs, though not adorned with storeyed bas-reliefs, like those of the Jamalgarhi monastery in Gandhara, are all richly ornamented, being divided, at Anuradhapura, into two panels by figures of dwarfs, and framed by foliaged borders, while the jambs or flanking stones are also adorned by either figures of animals or bas-reliefs. These steps lead to platforms on which stood various structures, as witnessed by the monoliths still standing on some of them ; and, so far as information is available, the buildings were ecclesiastical, surrounded by brick walls, and the roofs supported on them and the pillars. In the case of the so-called Mahasena's pavilion, and many other ruins of that type, there was a central and four subsidiary structures in the corners of the enclosure, which together constituted the vihara the larger and central building being probably a temple 1 In Sinhalese "Sanclakada pahana," in Sanskrit " padmasilam." Tawney's ' Prabandha-chintamani,' p. 57. They are also called " ardhachandras " "of half moon form." At the entrance to a vihara north of the Lankarama dagaba, a fine flight of steps was ex- cavated about twenty years ago, the large threshold stone to which presents the lotus only. Cave's ' Ruined Cities of Ceylon' (8vo. ed.), p. 106, and plate 35. One from the Dalada Maligawa at the Thuparama is represented in a photo- collotype in Smither's 'Anuradhapura,' plate 57, fig. 3 ; and another drawn to a small scale from the mis-named Maha- sena's pavilion, on plate 59 ; and in Cave's ' Ruined Cities,' plate 32, 2 The Polonnaruwa examples are more crowded with ornament. VOL. I. Q