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APPENDIX
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distinct stages. After discussing the characteristics of the two Protoliterate shrines at Warka and Al'Uqair, Frankfort writes: “The significance of the Ziggurat was symbolical, and the symbolism could be expressed in more than one way. The same idea, which was unequivocally expressed in a high artificial mountain, could also be rendered by a mere platform a few feet high. One might call the platform an abbreviation of the Ziggurat.... in fact, it is more probable, that the platform of the earliest temples at Eridu, of the Al 'Ubaid Period, already represented the sacred mountain."1
Thus this Ziggurat or the peculiar raised platform is suggestive of a mountain which symbolises in theology the fountain-head of all life and the refuge of it at death.
Ziggurats were in existence in Mesopotamia at least upto 539 B.C. when the Persians under Cyruz defeated Nabonidus of Babylon. The Ziggurats, gradually ruined, would have been known to the people for a few centuries more, especially to the Persian artists.
In the sixth and the following centuries, the Achaemenian Dynasty developed a powerful empire which included parts of India, and Mesopotamian region. It was through this linking of India and Mesopotamia through Iran that much influence of the latter country could have come to India. But India's contact with Sumer are much older and possibly were continuous at least upto the age of the Buddhist Baveru Jatuka, which latter suggests direct contacts with Babylon, The discovery of the Assyrian gems and godlings from Taxila also suggests contacts between the two countries. This is further supported by the strong Aramaic influence of the clerks of the Persian court which led to the development of the Kharoșthi script.
Thus it would not seem-impossible if even a distant relation between the Ziggurat, the Stūpa aid. Samavasarana, obvious in plan and elevation, is postulated.
To return to the Stūpa architecture in India : The stūpas are essentially relic structures in honour of the dead-the Holy or the Great. The Satapatla Brāhmana, gives one of the earliest Indian literary reference to relic structures or mounds. The passage is as under :
"They now do what is auspicious for him. They now prepare a burial place (smaśāna ) for him to serve him either as a house or a monument. i Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Orient, p. 7.
Especially see, Coomaraswamy's remarks under "Early Asiatic” in his HITA., pp. II-14, giving details of the common heritage of Early Asiatic Cultures.
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