582 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



wise described as a palace. The nearest textual confirmation to the 

 suggestion that the revetment of the stupa was in a sense a vision of 

 celestial architecture is contained in the description of the building of 

 the Lohapasada in the Mahavamsa. 



The significance of this seeming digression is that with the accept- 

 ance of the hoinme-arcade as a means of representing the architecture 

 of Paradise it seems not at all unlikely, but indeed very probable, that 

 the form was adopted for Buddhist usage to represent the realms of the 

 Buddahs. In earlier Indian art, as, for example, on the east gate at 

 Safici, the palaces of the devas are represented as columnar halls prob- 

 ably drawn from contemporary architecture ; such a conception of the 

 Buddhist Heaven recurs in the sixth-century fresco of Buddha in the 

 Tusita Heaven in Cave 2 at Ajantaa. In this regard, it is interesting 

 to note that we may identify the three central figures of the BImaran 

 reliquary as a representation of the descent of Sakyamuni from the 

 Tusita Heaven. The multiple images of Buddhas on the stupas of 

 Gandhara, then, could be explained as representing the Buddha and 

 the Buddhas of other Jcalpas enshrined in the golden halls of their 

 heavens: the substitution of classical architectural forms being made 

 the easier by the fact that Indian architectural forms had already been 

 used for paradisiacal settings in earlier Indian art. The fact that the 

 Komrtie- arcade was specifically used to depict the architecture of the 

 celestial regions in the West would only make it more acceptable to the 

 Buddhists of Gandhara who always showed themselves open to bor- 

 rowing ready made classical types and techniques of all sorts for the 

 realization of their iconographical ideas. The concept of the Buddhas 

 in their heavens as a decoration for the exterior of the stupa is not in 

 the least incompatible with the essential meaning of these monuments 

 as symbols of the universe. The hypothesis becomes even more con- 

 vincing when we recall that although the arcade undergoes a consider- 

 able transformation — into Indian terms — it is still employed to shel- 

 ter the Buddhas of the Four Directions whose multiple images once 

 crowded the niches of the Mahabodhi temple at Gaj^a and the many 

 copies of that memorial in the Eastern world. Again, single images of 

 Buddhas, either of the Four Buddhas of the Past or the Four Mystic 

 Buddhas, were often placed at the four sides of stupa bases to symbolize 

 the paradises of these Tathagatas at the four points of the compass. 

 The Buddhas on the stupas of Gandhara, sitting or standing in a 

 palatial architectural setting of mixed classical and Indian form, could 

 then be said to be a primitive form of the Paradise iconography, a 

 concept exactly paralleling the prototype of the Heavenly Jerusalem 

 as symbolized by the arcades of the early Christian sarcophagi. 



In conclusion, it should be emphasized that, in the examples of 

 religious art we have examined, traditions of the most ancient cos- 



