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

Page 97

70
BL'DDIST WIDIA
private grounds of the rich. Several very ancient oncs are still to be seen at Anurādhapura in a fair state of preservation in spite of the more than two thousand years that have elapsed since they were first constructed.
In the illustration of the first of these two bathing ponds, the platform, which appears as if built out into the pond, was, no doubt, the basement of a dressing pavilion supported on wooden pillars. It will be observed that it was cooled, in its turn, by a special little pond constructed to fill up one side of the platform. In the other illustration the pediments to support a canopy or awning over the steps leading down into the bath are still perceptible. (Figs. 6, 7.)
One other detail of these ancient buildings, espe. cially noticed by Buddhaghosa in his enumeration of the parts of a palace in olden times,' is the curious scroll work or string course in common use as exterior decoration. The details differ; so also do the materials used; they are usually wood or plaster, but occasionally stone, as in the annexed examples from the Bharhut Tope. (Figs. S, II, 12.)
But the great houses must have been few in number. There was probably a tangle of narrow and evil-smelling streets of one-storied wattle and daub huts with thatched roofs, the meagre dwelling-places of the poor. And we must imagine long lines of bazaars, the shops (without window's, of course, and indeed with very little wall on that side) open to the streets, and mostly devoted, in the same street, to the sale of wares of a similar kind.
Tuttha Salini, p. 107.