260 DR THOMAS A. WISE ON SOME OF THE 



2. Letts, or sandstone obelisks, containing inscriptions of royal edicts regard- 

 ing ceremonial observances, &c. 



3. Large Monasteries. And, 



4. Topes, or religious edifices. These are in the form of massive hemispheri- 

 cal domes, and are another name for regular built Cairns, signifying a solid 

 mound or tumulus. These Topes are either funereal, memorial, or are dedicated 

 to the deity. 



a. The Funereal Topes, or Cairns, are the receptacles of the ashes and bones 

 of saints, and are built in honour of mortal Buddhas. They are of all ages, and 

 made of different materials ; as they were the common form of tombs, even be- 

 fore the advent of the most celebrated mortal Buddha (the Sakya Muni), who 

 died b.c. 543. 



0. Topes were built as Memorials, in celebrated places. 



c. Dedicatory Topes were intended as offerings to the Deity, the supreme invi- 

 sible God. These religious edifices contained no deposits, and were typified on 

 the outside by a pair of eyes on each of the four sides either of the base or crown 

 of the edifice, * to indicate the all-seeing, all-powerful, divine spirit, who is light, 

 and is supposed to occupy, in a special manner, the interior.f 



The great doctrine of the Buddhist religion consists in a triad, " tri-ratna,^ 

 or three jewels, or three precious ones; that is, Buddha, spirit or God, Dharma, 

 the law, and Sangha, the Buddhist community or brotherhood. This was the 

 genuine sense of the words, to certain of the initiated ; but a more clear and in- 

 telligible explanation was, that Buddha signified the spiritual, or the divine in- 

 tellectual essence of the world, or the efficient underived cause of all ; Dharma, the 

 material essence of the world, the plastic, underived cause ; and Sangha, which 

 was derived from and composed of the two others. This third member is, there- 

 fore, the collective energy of spirit and matter in the state of action ; or " the 

 embryotic creation, the type and sum of all specific forms, spontaneously evolved 

 from the union of Buddha and Dharma." % This is merely a modification of the 

 opinion of so many of the ancient nations, and nearly all the Asiatic races of the 

 present day. They believe in a spiritual deity and a fruitful earth ; in a male and 

 female principle, in mind and matter ; Osiris and Isis ; in Venus Genetrix and 

 Phallos ; Pater iEther and Mater Terra ; Lingam and Yoni, Brahma and Sarsas- 

 wete, and other gods and their saktes or wives ; Yang and Yin (Chinese), &c. 



The Buddhist missionaries found it necessary to employ symbols in Asia and 

 in the countries they visited, in order to direct and fix the attention of rude races 

 to the spiritual objects of their worship. Those symbols of the deity were in Asia — 



1. Spirit (Buddha), represented by a circle or wheel, typical of the passage of 

 the soul through the circle of existence. 



* See Plate, Fig. 10, Cunningham's Topes of Bhilsa, p. P. 



\ Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, vol. v., p. 81. J Ibid., vol. v., p. 37. 



