Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

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70
BUDDIIIST INDIA
answered the purpose at once of a drawing-room, an office, and a dining.hall.
In the king's palace there was accommodation also for all the business of the State, and for the numerous retinue and the extensive harem. We hear of no offices, in which the business of the nation could be carried on, outside the palace. And the supplementary buildings included three institutions which are strange to us, and of considerable historical in. terest.
We are told several times of a building of seven stories in height-a satta-bhiinaka-påsåda. No one of these has survived in India. But there is one of later date still standing at Pulasti-pura in Ceylon; and the thousand stone pillars on which another was erected in the second century B.C. at Anuradhapura form one of the most interesting monuments of the same island.' It seems almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that these curious buildings were not entirely without connection with the seven-storied Ziggarats which were so striking a feature among the buildings of Chaldæa. We know in other ways of connections between the civilisation of the Ganges Valley and that of Mesopotamia; and it would seem that in this case also the Indians were borrowers of an idea. But in India the use to which such sevenstoried palaces was put was entirely private, and had nothing to do with any worship of the stars.
We hear in several places that a public gambling ? Jāt, I. 227, 346; 4. 378 ; 5. 52, 426 : 6. 577, etc. • The illustration (Fig. 10) is from Mr. Cave's Ruined Cities of Ceylon (Plate XIII.). This beautiful volume ought to be in the hands of every Indian archäologist,