historical episode, but have nothing to do with the origin of ancient craft traditions. Mr. Creswell and Dr. Vincent Smith approach the subject from the old standpoint of academic "styles," which has long been discarded by the expert architectural historian. The question to be decided is not what style or fashion of those days appealed to Timur's architectural fancy, but what influence the many centuries of Buddhist temple craftsmanship had upon the living building traditions of Western Asia. It cannot have been an entirely negligible factor, as Mr. Creswell assumes. Arabian architecture, like most Arabian culture, was derivative. The dome of the great mosque at Damascus, built early in the eighth century a.d., was certainly not an invention of Saracenic builders, or the first of its kind. The miniature stūpa-domes at Ajantā exhibit the same constructive principle, though they themselves are only a sculptor's representation of real structural domes, with a bambu or wooden framework, which were probably built in thousands by Buddhist temple craftsmen of the same and earlier periods, not only in India, but wherever Buddhism was planted in Asia. If it be granted that these Ajantā domes are not mere fanciful creations of a sculptor's imagination, like the decorative motives of the Italian Renaissance, but exact representations of contemporary buildings—a proposition which can hardly be disputed—it follows that the original domes must have been hollow structural ones, built in the first instance upon a bambu or wooden framework, for it is a physical impossibility to place a solid dome of brick, stone, plaster, or wood, and of a similar design, over a life-size image. The only question to be decided, then, is by what method such hollow domes of large size could have been made structurally possible? Certainly bent bambu ribs must have been used originally to produce the characteristic curve of the dome, just as they were used to form the lotus-leaf arch, or window of early Buddhist buildings, and are used in the roofing of wooden Indian cottages. The use of radiating wooden or bambu ties, like the spokes of a wheel, is suggested in several of the earliest Indian stūpas, e.g. the ancient Jain stūpa found near Mathurā: they would have
