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DECEMBER, 1878.]
MASONS' MARKS FROM OLD BUILDINGS.
297
bell of Islay found at Ajudhia-see Jour. As. Soc. Beng. January 1877. In a paper in the same journal, I have noticed the resemblance between this symbol and the marks found on many of the monoliths of Europe.
No. 57 is the ” of the alphabet of Asoka's edicts (with the horizontal lines considerably lengthened) as given by Prinsep in the volume aboye quoted. No. 58 is the j used in what Prinsep calls the alphabet of the Western caves, but turned with the right side down. No. 59, a rough cross, will be found figured in Prinsep, in one of his plates of the Manikyåla inscription and relics.
The triangle and upright, the last of the two symbols in No. 60, and the lower une,—the circle with a line through it-in No. 61, resembling the Greek , may both be found in the letters of the inscriptions given in the plates of Cunningham's Bhilsa Topes. Practised eyes, and readers who have other books of reference at hand, may perhaps be able to recognize other letters and symbols among the marks herein given.
A further and more careful examination would doubtless show many more marks on the stones of Sarnath than I have been able to notice here. At Jaunpur, as will be seen from the other groups on the plate which accompanies this paper, the marks are much more elaborate and varied.
At Jaunpur. From Banaras I marched to Jaunpur, and there I had an opportunity of examining and noting some of the masons' marks on the buildings for which the ancient capital of the Sharki kings is celebrated.
A description of these buildings, illustrated by plans and engravings, will be found in Fergus. son's Indian and Eastern Architecture, book VII. chapter iv.; and General Cunningham, in his Archæological Reports, vol. III, notioes the "Jaunpuri Pathan" Architecture under his sixth group of the Muhammadan period.
The chief buildings now remaining are the fort (partly demolished), containing a small mosque and other buildings, a bridge which in 1871 withstood one of the most extraordinary floods on record, and the Juma' Atal and LAI Darwaza masjids.
The masons' marks figured in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th groups on the accompanying plates were found on the pillars and stones of the cloisters adjoining the masjids.
The peculiarity of these buildings is the mixture of two styles of architecture, Hindu and Muhammadan, regarding which Fergusson, at p. 520 of his work noticed above, remarks as follows:-"The principal parts of the mosques, such as the gateways, the great halls, and the western parts, generally are in a complete arcuate style. Wherever, indeed, wide openings and large internal spaces were wanted, arches and domes and radiating vaults were employed; and there is little in those parts to distinguish this architecture from that of the capitals. But in the cloisters that surround the courts, and in the galleries in the interior, short square pillars are as generally employed with bracket capitals, horizontal architraves, and roofs formed of flat slabs, as was invariably the case in Hindu and Jaina temples. Instead of being fused together, as they afterwards became, the arcuate style of the Moslems stands here, though in juxtaposition, in such marked contrast to the trabeate style of the Hindu, that some authors have been led to suppose that the pillared parts belonged to ancient Jaina or Buddhist monuments which had been appropriated by Muhammadans and converted to their purposes."
This view, Fergusson adds, was advanced by Baron Hugel, and has since found supporters in Mr. Horne (Jour. As. Sao, Beng. vol. XXXIV.), and in the Rev. Mr. Sherring in his Sacred City of the Hindus. Fergusson, although he admits that the Muhammadans may have utilized some Jaina or Hindu buildings, holds that at least nine-tenths of the pillars in the mosques were made at the time they were required for the places they now occupy. Cunningham, on the other hand, seems to differ from Fergusson on this point, and to support the views of Baron Hugel and his followers.
At page vi. vol. IV. of the Archæological Reports General Cunningham refers to an inscription on one of the pillars of the Atala Masjid, "which is known to have been originally a Hindu temple converted to Muhammadan use by Ibrahim Shah Sharki between the years 1403-1440 A.D."
The masons' marks which I have now to notico may perhaps be of some use in determining the class of buildings to which the stones utilized by the Muhammadans for their mosques originally belonged.
Commencing with the marks on the Juma'
