This combination is repeated again and again in these sculptures, and may be almost designated as the shorter Buddhist catechism, or rather the confession of faith, Buddha, Dharma, Sanga. The last woodcut (No. 39) is also interesting, as showing, besides the three emblems, the form of pillars with its double animal capitals so common in structures of this and an earlier age. The age of these rails does not seem doubtful.[131] The outer or great rail seems to have been commenced about A.D. 319, at the time when the tooth relic paid this place a visit on its way from Puri to Ceylon, and its erection may have occupied the whole of the rest of that century. The inner rail is more modern, and seems to have been begun about A.D. 400, and, with some other detached fragments, carry the history of the monument down, it may be, to 500. At the same time it is clear that an older monument existed on the spot. The fragments that exist of the central tope are certainly of an earlier age, and some of the slabs of the inner rail exhibit sculptures of a much earlier date on their backs. It seems as if they had belonged to some disused earlier building, and been re-worked when fitted to their new places. When Hiouen Thsang visited this place in the year 639 it had already been deserted for more than a century, but he speaks of its magnificence and the beauty of its site in more glowing terms than he applies to almost any other monument in India. Among other expressions he uses one not easily understood at first sight, for he says, “It was ornamented with all the magnificence of the palaces of Bactria”[132] (Tahia). Now, however, that we know what the native art of India was from the sculptures at Bharhut and Sanchi, and as we also know nearly what the art of Bactria was from those recently dug up near Peshawur, especially at Jamalgiri, we see at once that it was by a marriage of these two arts that the Amravati school of sculpture was produced, but with a stronger classical influence than anything of its kind found elsewhere in India. It is now also tolerably evident that the existence of so splendid a Buddhist establishment so far south must have been due to the fact of the mouths of the Kistnah and Godavery being ports of departure from which the Buddhists of the north-west and west of India, in early times, conquered or colonised Pegu and Cambodia, and eventually the island of Java.