I may now put the question, is the Hindu temple a development from a tomb, or is it not? My own impression is that the evidence just given is highly in favour of an affirmative answer.

Wishing to know Mr. Fergusson's ideas on this, about two years ago I wrote and gave him some of the statements which have just been laid before you. I may mention that my information has been accumulating since then. I received a note which first stated that "the linga in its present form . . . is derived from the Buddhist emblem of a dagoba"; and that he was sending me a pamphlet where, he said, “you will find my last ideas of the origin of the Sikhara. They are not very definite, but are the best I can form."

The pamphlet is entitled Archæology in India, and is perhaps the last work of Fergusson's which has appeared. I will give a quotation which bears on the subject now in hand: "For the last fifty years the question of the Hindu Sikhara has been constantly before my mind, and hundreds of solutions have from time to time suggested themselves, but all have been in turn rejected as insufficient to account for the phenomena. Though the one I am now about to propose looks more like a solution than any other that has occurred to me, it is far from being free from difficulties, and must at best be considered as a mere hypothesis till some new facts are discovered which may either confirm or demolish it. The conclusion I have now arrived at is, that the Hindu Sikhara is derived from the Buddhist dagoba, or, in other words, it is only a development of the style of architecture which was practised, both by Hindus and Buddhists, during the early ages in which stone architecture was practised, subsequent to the Mauryan epoch."

The Sikhara I shall deal with immediately, but here it

that the Linga is simply a stone pillar; the worshippers pour Ganges water on the top of it, and make offerings of rice and flowers. I have seen lingas with a jar of water suspended above, and by means of a small hole the water continued to drop on the emblem so as to keep it constantly moist. The celebrated temple of Somnath, in Kathiawar, had jaghires attached, the rents of which were devoted to pay men who continually travelled to and from the Ganges, bearing" Gunga pani" to keep the Mahadeo always in a wet state. This is the Gunga falling on the head of Siva.

may be pointed out that in identifying it with the Dagoba, Fergusson does not reject the idea of a tomb development, for that is the origin of the Dagoba; in fact, the admission implies this very tomb origin I am at the moment contending for. Previously to this pamphlet, Mr. Fergusson had always rejected the theory of the sikhara and the dagoba being the same in origin. In this I felt he was right, and I cannot yet, even with such a high authority as a guide, accept the idea. Fergusson certainly does not insist that it is the only solution which may yet be possible; and he speaks in rather a diffident and doubtful manner in its favour. I do not reject it as impossible, for I know that through the mutations of development, architecture presents us with results as strange and unexpected as we find in other walks of science, where time produces changes. In this case-at present I refer not to the sikhara, but to the body of the temple on which it stands-we have to account for such a great change as that of a solid mass, which the dagoba is, and often a very large mass, to a small hollow cell, and from what seems to have been an established round form, to a square. The changes necessary to account for the sikhara are equally difficult. I will assume, for the moment, that the Hindu temple is derived from a tomb. If such was the case, the original, I think, was not a mound or a cairn, which implies solidity, and it must, at some early period at least, have been square in form. India, with its many races and forms of religion, would no doubt have many forms of burial: various customs and rites exist still. It would have been a very remarkable phenomenon if all the places of sepulchre were similar, over such an extent of country There is a curious passage in the Satapatha Brahmana, which gives colour to what I say; at the same time, it has, I think, an important bearing on the subject. It is as follows: "Four-cornered. The Gods and Asuras, both the offspring of Prajapati, contended in the regions" [conceived, apparently, as square, or angular]. "They, being regionless, were overcome. Hence, the people who are divine construct their graves fourcornered, whilst the Eastern people, who are akin to the

1

Asuras, construct them round. For the Gods drove the Asuras from the Regions." This passage leaves much that one would desire to know as to the exact meaning of the words; it is in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, and with no explanation.

The round graves here alluded to were in all probability the stupas, or dagobas. So far as can be judged at present, the stupa is a very old form of structure. In the Book of the Great Decease,2 Buddha himself, when directing how his remains were to be treated, refers to stupas such as were erected to contain the ashes of Chakravarta Rajas: he mentions these monuments as if they were well known. The ceremonies performed at Buddha's death seem also to have been akin to those of the Asuras, which were probably Turanian, rather than Aryan. A passage in the KhandogyaUpanishad will illustrate this point. The Asuras,-“They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes, flowers, and fine raiment, by way of ornament, and think they will thus conquer the world." 3 The account of the ceremonies at Buddha's death were even more decorative and festal than is indicated by the above passage. The funeral ceremonies of the Todas and other tribes of the Nilgiris, who are Dravidian, and consequently allied to the old Asuras, are also of a festal character.

As to the divine people who made their graves fourcornered, we may suppose in this case that the Aryans are understood. This could scarcely have been the form of their graves at an early period, for we know that they buried in mounds. There is a hymn in the 8th book of the Rig Veda which is very distinct on this matter; from it we learn that the body was buried, and the earth heaped up over it. Dr. Rajendralala Mitra has published a paper entitled Funeral Ceremony in Ancient India, which deals principally with this hymn. He thinks that burial of the body was the rule till about the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C.; this was followed by cremation, and burial of the ashes in an urn,

1 Satap. Brahm. xiii. 8, 1, 5; quoted in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. ii. p. 485. 2 The Maha-Parinibbâna-Sutta, trans. by T. W. Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 93.

3 Khandogya-Upanishad, Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 137.

which lasted till the beginning of the Christian era, when the throwing of the ashes into a river began. This would perhaps indicate the time when the worship of Siva had assumed predominance, and the belief in the purifying power of the Ganges water, as well as the legends connected with it, were accepted. The modern Siva, or Rudra, is so very different from the Vedic Rudra, that he may be classed as a non-Aryan deity, and the last change in the funeral ceremony may indicate pretty nearly the date when the Vedic Rudra had become the non-Aryan Siva; and this would agree with the conclusion which Fergusson came to, that the Hindu Temple was originated and developed during the first five centuries of our era. Whether the four-cornered grave of the divine people was the primitive germ which afterwards became the Hindu temple, or whether some structure connected with the worship of the non-Aryan Siva, was the source, I think we have not as yet the necessary information on which to found an opinion. I am still hopeful that something will turn up to give us light on the subject. If I have shown that the Hindu temple is a development from a tomb, or from some structure connected with the rites of the dead, the point may be of some value as indicating the direction in which to seek for evidence, not only among architectural remains, but also in the old ceremonies, whether given in books of the present or of the past.

Fergusson's identification of the linga with the Buddhist dagoba is rather startling; it may be so, but I regret that we have not his reasons for coming to that conclusion. I know of dagobas which the Brahmins have adopted as lingas; but I should suppose he had more solid reasons than a practice of this kind on which to base his statement.1

The theory which Fergusson gives of the origin of the Sikhara in his pamphlet 2 is, as already stated, that it

1 The Brahmins have utilized the Great Cave at Karli, at least I found them in possession in 1862 when I visited it, and the dagoba was represented by them to be a linga. Rajendralala Mitra mentions that some of the graves of the Mahants, already referred to in this paper, were surmounted by small votive chaityas or dagobas, which did duty as lingas.

was derived from the dagoba, with its surmounting umbrellas. He frankly enough acknowledges the difficulties of the case, and how hard it is to believe that the horizontal lines of the dagoba should have entirely vanished in the transmutation, and left no trace behind them. He states clearly enough that he only gives it as the best out of a multitude of suggestions which had occurred to him during the long space of fifty years back. That Fergusson, with all his vast knowledge of detail in Indian architecture, had spent such a length of time considering the subject, and failed to find a satisfactory explanation, is, I think, sufficient evidence that under the peculiar circumstances of the case it must be a very hard nut to crack. I am perfectly aware of the obscurity and consequent difficulties of the question, to venture upon being rash, where Fergusson has been so fearful to venture. As I am dealing in suggestions, I will give you one on this subject, but I confess at once that the evidence in its favour is but small; still it must be remembered that theories, even although not satisfactory, often lead others to think; and in this way even blunders may help towards the true explanation.

It is now three or four years ago, when looking over a popular history of India, full of illustrations,1 that my eye fell on a picture called the "Car of Juggernaut ”—not the one at Puri;-it was evidently from a photograph, and hence I assume was not a fancy picture. No explanation appears, but the car is elaborate, and seems not to have been dismantled after the yearly ceremony, which is the usual practice, but has been kept as a permanent temple; and for this purpose there is what looks like a permanent mantapa or porch built, and the car has been placed alongside, so that the whole produces a complete Hindu temple. No one could look at this without a suggestion of origin coming to the mind. If this combination has taken place in late years, it might also have taken place during the first five centuries. At that time, so far as I can judge, the use of cars at cere

1 Cassell's Illustrated History of India, by James Grant, vol. i. p. 372.