the corridors or aisles. The nave was lighted and ventilated by the horse-shoe or sun-window over the main entrance, partially screened by a wooden trellis. This window, as mentioned above, was one of the most frequently used decorative motives in Buddhist art, because it was regarded as a symbol of the rising or setting sun, or of the moon, according to the orientation of the building to which it belonged.
We must not believe, however, that this stūpa-house, the Assembly-hall of the Sangha, was any more than the stūpa itself a creation of Buddhism, or that its primitiveness shows that the Indo-Aryans were little skilled in the art of building. It has been explained above that in all probability the stūpa-house, as a chapel for dead kings, had a long tradition behind it in the earliest days of Buddhism. Its structure was comparatively simple, because it was only intended to last for three generations, when the solemn Vedic rites by which the Brahman priests helped the deceased monarch's spirit on its way to swarga had fulfilled their purpose. For this reason no stūpas or stūpa-houses exist older than the third century b.c., when Asoka began to build solid stūpas of brick and stone, and provided the Sangha with permanent Assembly-halls, which might endure as long as the Moon and Sun. But though Asoka greatly increased the number of master-builders in the imperial service by the employment of foreigners, even he could not command sufficient labour for his colossal building projects,[1] so that the stūpa-houses of the Sangha continued for the most part to be built of wood and thatch. But it was in his reign that the royal craftsmen of India began the great series of rock-cut stūpa-houses and
- ↑ Tradition says that he built 84,000 stūpas; the number may not be entirely fanciful if those built of impermanent materials are eckoned.
