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82
BUDDHIST INDIA
community were beginning to make thein solid brick structures instead of heaps of earth, or of stones covered with eartlı, as had been the custom in more ancient times. This was done more especially by those who had tlırown off their allegiance to the priests, and were desirous to honour the memory of their teachers, who were leaders of thought, or reformers, or philosophers. And whether we agree, or not, with the opinions these thinkers put forth, we must acknowledge the very great interest, from the historical point of view, of the fact that the only monuments of the kind yet discovered were built out of reverence, not for kings or chiefs or warriors or politicians or wealthy benefactors, but precisely for such thinkers, who propounded fresh solutions of the problems of life. We need not be surprised, therefore, to learn that the priestly records carefully ignore these topes. !
The first step was probably merely to build the cairn more carefully than usual, with stones, and to cover the outside with fine chunam plaster (in the use of which the Indians were acepts) to give a marble-like surface. The next step was to build the cairn of concentric layers of the luge bricks in use at the time, and to surround the whole with a wooden railing. None of the most ancient have survived, or been explored sufficiently to enable a restoration to be drawn. But we can tell very much about what they were from the later examples. This, for instance, is Cunningham's plan and restoration of the famous Bharahat Stūpa. Fig. 13.)
'White Yajur Veda, chap. 35.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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