3-028-485 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Indian Architecture: Eastern Gateway of the Sanchi Tope, (Boodhist, A.D. 15), 1870. Engraving of a photograph by Lieutenant Waterhouse showing an example '...of Boodhist architecture - the oldest type of Indian art known...many topes - i.e., places for the deposit of relics, tombs, and so forth - are scattered throughout India. Around them were frequently constructed circular walls, and the gateways were generally of an architectural character. The Tope at Sanchi, in Bhilsa, is one of the most remarkable. The date of the tope itself is 500 b.c., while the gateway is about 500 years later. Of the four gateways which originally surrounded it, the eastern is the most perfect; the others have suffered much damage from weather and other disastrous effects, and two of them are now nothing more than masses of richly carved blocks of stone, lying one on the top of the other. Of the eastern gateway a cast is at the present moment being made by a party of Royal Engineers under a subaltern officer, appointed Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India in the North-West Provinces, especially told off for this work by the Government of India. When finished, the cast will be sent to England and exhibited at the South Kensington Museum'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.