THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
25 
stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and layeth the beams of 
His chambers in the waters.'' (Psalm civ.) Men would strive, 
especially in sacred buildings, to imitate, both in shape and propor- 
tion, the figure and measure of the material heaven, resting on the 
earth as its foundation. The effort would be, I say, to erect a 
building to resemble the dome of heaven, with its parts in the 
proportion of that dome to the line of the earth on which it 
seems to rest. Now I have tried to prove elsewhere,* in a way 
which has not been disputed, that all the domed buildings we 
meet with in India and elsewhere are intended to be imitations of 
the material heaven, or, in other words, of the visible universe. It 
is evident that the chief proportion aimed at in the erection of 
such a building would be that which exists between the base on 
which it stands and the hemisphere erected upon the base ; in 
other words, of the diameter to the semi-circumference. Unfortu- 
nately in India the stupas are so dilapidated that there is no exact 
measurement possible ; but yet we have an approximate calcula- 
tion which brings the matter almost to a certainty in the case of 
the stupa at Sanchi, where the diameter of the base is 110 feet, 
and the height of the truncated hemisphere 39 feet ; but the erec- 
tion placed on the top of this dome, together with the chatta, may 
be calculated to have been about sufficient to raise the entire 
height to 54 or 55 feet; i.e. to half the base. 
This theory is very much confirmed by what we actually know 
of the structure of the Great Pyramid. Mr. Smyth, in his work 
on this wonderful building, has calculated the dimensions with 
considerable accuracy, and he gives as one of his results that the 
height of the pyramid is to twice the base as the diameter to the 
circumference ; but this may be reduced to the simpler form of 
h : b : : d : \ c. That is to say, in the early days, before the 
great builders or masons had acquired the knowledge of dome 
structure, they still adhered to the ratio of the diameter to the 
semi-circumference for their height and base. But perhaps the 
most singular analogy to be observed in this comparison is that to 
the top of the king's chamber, so-called — which I take to be but 
indicative of the highest point of the visible heavens — from the 
central point of the base is exactly half the side of the square, 
measuring the extreme limits of the internal structure ; in other 
words, whose length is a line connecting the highest point of the 
* " Journal Royal Asiatic Society." Article, " The Great Tope of Sanchi." 
