Roman Mosaics; Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood
John Stuart Mill · en
In the Indian Museum at Calcutta there is a
large slab of white marble bearing the figure of a human foot
surrounded by two dragons. It was brought from a temple in Burmah,
where it used to be worshipped as a representation of Buddha's foot.
It is seven inches long and three inches broad, and is divided into a
hundred and eight compartments, each of which contains a different
mystical mark.
At Gangautri, on the banks of the Ganges, is a wooden temple
containing a footprint of Ganga on a black stone. In a strange
subterranean temple, inside the great fort at Allahabad, there are two
footprints of Vishnu, along with footprints of Rama, and of his wife
Sita. In India the "kaddam rassul," or supposed impression of
Mohammed's foot in clay, which is kept moist, and enclosed in a sort
of cage, is not unfrequently placed at the head of the gravestones of
the followers of Islam. On the summit of a mountain one hundred and
thirty-six miles south of Bhagalpur is one of the principal places of
Jain worship in India. On the table-land are twenty small Jain temples
on different craggy heights, which resemble an extinguisher in shape.
In each of them is to be found the Vasu Padukas--a sacred foot similar
to that which is seen in the Jain temple at Champanagar. The sect of
the Jain in South Bihar has two places of pilgrimage. One is a tank
choked with weeds and lotus-flowers, which has a small island in the
centre containing a temple, with two stones in the interior, on one of
which is an inscription and the impression of the two feet of
Gautama--the most common object of worship of the Jains in this
district. The other is the place in the same part of the country where
the body of Mahavira, one of the twenty-four lawgivers, was burnt
about six centuries before Christ. It resembles the other temple, and
is situated in an island in a tank. The island is terraced round, and
in the cavity of the beehive-like top there is the representation of
Mahavira's feet, to which crowds of pilgrims are continually flocking.
In the centre of the Jain temple at Puri, where this remarkable man
died, there are also three representations of his feet, and one
impression of the feet of each of his eleven disciples.