are all nearly identical in design and quite peculiar to Ceylon--nothing of the sort having yet been found on the continent of India or elsewhere. Inside an outer ornamental ring is a procession of animals, divided from the next compartment by a richly elaborated scroll; within that again a row of birds bearing lotus buds, and then a lotus flower with a disc ornamented with circles. The animals are always elephants, lions, horses, and bulls, the birds either hansas, or sacred geese, or it may be pigeons. These, it will be recollected, are the animals which Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang describe as ornamenting the five storeys of the great Dekhani monastery, and which, as we shall afterwards see, were also arranged at Hullabîd in the 13th century in precisely the same manner. For 1500 years they, and they only, seem to have been selected for architectural purposes, but why this was so we are yet unable to explain.[240] The risers of these stairs, though not adorned with storeyed bas-reliefs, like those of the Jamalgiri monastery in Gandhara, are all richly ornamented, being divided generally into two panels by figures of dwarfs and framed by foliaged borders, while the jambs or flanking stones are also adorned by either figures of animals or bas-reliefs. If we had plans or any architectural details of the pavilions to which these steps led, it probably would be easy to say to what purpose they were dedicated and how they were roofed. The photographs do not enable us to do either, but from them we gather that some of these halls were certainly enclosed by walls, as the outer side of the pillars is left rough and unsculptured, while those in the centre are sculptured all round. Meanwhile my impression is that they are the buildings Fa Hian describes as preaching halls--the chaitya or ceremonial halls attached to the great dagobas. In India the form these take is that of halls with simulated dagobas inside them, towards which the worship was addressed, but when a real dagoba existed 200 ft. to 400 ft. in diameter, what was wanted was a hall in which the priests could assemble to chant their liturgies, and from which to address their prayers to the great object of their reverence. If this were so, the axis of these halls ought to be turned towards the dagobas, but whether this was so or not is not yet ascertained.[241]