well as the staircase, were enclosed by the usual vedikā, or sacrificial railing. From the numerous names of donors inscribed upon the posts, cross-bars, and coping, it would seem likely that the whole of the original railing was of wood, the change to stone taking place gradually in the course of many years as pious laymen sought to win merit for themselves by rebuilding a section of it in the more costly and permanent material. This would account for the exact imitation of the wooden structure by the stone-masons. It was not because they were unpractised in the use of stone, but because they wished to avoid a break in the railing, and to maintain the sacred associations of the old wooden work.[1]
The railing enclosing the principal or lower procession path stands open at the cardinal points—the four "doors" of the sky—and over each entrance is raised a lofty torana, or triumphal arch (Pl. III, b), reproducing in sculptured stone the massive timber structure which Indian sculptors represent as the gate of Prince Siddhartha's palace at Kapilavastu. The original torana was probably of plain timber-work like the railings, the present gates having been put up about the first century a.d., or about three centuries later than Asoka's original stūpa. Like the railings, different sections of them were votive offerings. Thus one part of the southern gateway was a gift of the son of the chief craftsman of Rāja Sīri-Sātakani, one of the kings of the Andhra dynasty, circ. 179 b.c. Another part was given by the ivory-carvers of Vidisha.
- ↑ The peculiar form of the horizontal bars of the railing, and the manner in which they are mortised into the uprights (see Pl. IV, a), suggest the craftsmanship of wheelwrights, who as makers of the Aryan war-chariots are often mentioned with honour in the Vedic hymns. Probably they were the craftsmen who made the vedikā and constructed the tabernacles for the Aryan tribal sacrifices.
