History of Indian and Eastern ArchitectureFergusson, James
History
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- India; Architecture, Asian
As mentioned above, it is from their coins, and from them only, that the
names of most of the kings of Bactria and their successors have been
recovered; but we have not yet found a vestige of a building that can be
said to have been erected by them or in their age, nor one piece of
sculpture that, so far as we now know, could have been executed before
their downfall, about B.C. 130. This, however, may be owing to the fact
that Bactria proper has long been inhabited by fanatic Moslems, who
destroy any representations of the human form they meet with, and no
excavations for hidden examples have yet been undertaken in their
country; while it is still uncertain how far the influence of the true
Bactrians extended eastward, and whether, in fact, they ever really
possessed the valley of Peshawur, where all the sculptures yet
discovered have been found. No one, in fact, suspected their existence
in our own territory till Lieutenants Lumsden and Stokes, in 1852,
partially explored the half-buried monastery at Jamalgiri, which had
been discovered by General Cunningham in 1848. It is situated about
thirty-six miles north-east from Peshawur, and from it these officers
excavated a considerable number of sculptures, which afterwards came
into the possession of the Hon. E. Clive Bayley. He published an account
of them in the ‘Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society,’ in 1853, and
brought the collection itself over to this country. Unfortunately, they
were utterly destroyed in the disastrous fire that occurred at the
Crystal Palace, where they were being exhibited in 1860, and this
before they had been photographed, or any serious attempt made to
compare them with other sculptures.
Since that time other collections have been dug out of another monastery
eight miles further westward, at a place called Takht-i-Bahi, and by Dr.
Bellew at a third locality, ten miles southward, called Sahri Bhalol,
some of which have found their way to this country; and two years ago
Dr. Leitner brought home an extensive collection, principally from
Takht-i-Bahi. The bulk of the sculptures found in these places have been
deposited in the Lahore Museum, where upwards of 800 specimens of this
class of art now exist, and many are being added every season. Some of
these have been photographed,[203] and these representations, together
with the specimens brought home, are sufficient to enable a student to
obtain a fair general idea of the art they represent. The worst thing
is, that the excavations have been so unsystematically carried on that
it is impossible to ascertain in most instances where the sculptures
came from,[204] and in almost no instance can the position of any one
piece of sculpture be fixed with anything like certainty.[205]
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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