TREE AND SERPENT-W ORSHIP.*

ONE who has seen the title only of this magnificent book will he puzzled to know what to expect—a history or conjecture on some extinct religion or mythology, or a description of the architecture and sculpture exhibited in the two religious edifices mentioned. From Mr. Fergusson, the author of the History of Architecture, the latter would be rather expected than the former. Yet, in the title, greater prominence is given to the "Tree and Serpent-Worship," and illustrative plates, essential to art-description, are barely alluded to. On this last point the title does no justice to his book, and we therefore announce at the outset that by " illustrations of mythology and art in India " are to be understood 99 first-class illustrations, 57 executed by photography and 42 by lithography, of which the former depict the general views and the larger sculptured pillars and gateways, and the latter show the details of the sculpture on a larger scale. But the photographs are so brilliant and so faultless in execution that the bas-reliefs afterwards lithographed on a larger scale can be readily detected on them in situ, at least where they occur on the sun-lit side of the picture. To these beautiful plates Mr. Fergusson has written not a merely professional architectural description, but a careful commentary which elucidates the history and meaning of the edifices themselves, and shrinks not from explanation (so far as possible) of the sculptured

bas-reliefs and edifices. This has drawn him away from architecture altogether, and brought him to the " Tree and Serpent-Worship question,—the archeological or mythological subject which gives a different tone (and a peculiar title) to the book.

It would have been in every respect better, we think, had Mr. Fergusson arranged his book in the order in which its subject occurred to him and gradually grew before him. As it stands, we have first the problematical, then the sure ; first a long disquisition on the traces of an ancient worship of trees and snakes in all

possible countries,—traces which in many cases we should be inclined to reject summarily, so slight or imaginary do they seem, but for a knowledge that they are to be substantiated afterwards by something more certain from India ; and then the description of the Topes and exhibition of the bas-reliefs which putt these long-doubted rites before our very eyes. Those who read the book as it is written must see that their faith in the author fail not, else they will never reach the Topes, nor the evidence on which the introduction is really built. Far better would it have been first to describe the Topes, and then to give the dissertation in which the logical inferences from the forms of worship there displayed would come before an interested and appreciative reader. Perhaps some of our readers will follow our advice on this matter, which we give the more emphatically as we desire that the substantial merits of the work should not be missed through an unfortunate arrangement of its two subjects.

We begin, therefore, with the Topes of Sanchi and Amravati. To understand them we must glance at the origin of Buddhism in India. As this religion was only known (and is now chiefly known) through books written after it had existed for centuries, spread to distant lands, and become a great power in the world, and as these books spoke quite vaguely and unhistorically of its origin, and assumed the existence of many Buddhas in various ages, it was difficult to ascertain whether there was any living man Buddha, and what was his date. These difficulties, however, are now of the past, and we know that the historical Buddha, who created the great Hindu apostacy from Brahmanism, and gave a religion to the Southern Indians, Singalese, and subsequently to pilgrims from Tibet, Burtnah, and China, was called in his lifetime Gotama, or Says Muni, and died 543 B.C. His religion was -essentially a system of philosophy such as might be held by Hindus -who did not attach themselves to him ; but accompanied by new ideas of the nature of purity, and the means of attaining it, which necessarily led to a conventual life and discipline, strongly resem

bling and anticipating Christian monachism. Thus Buddhistic Vihdras, or convents, were erected along the Ganges even during

Gotama's lifetime, in the sixth century before Christ. The King of Magadha, residing at Patna, on the Ganges, was Gotama's friend, and his principles doubtless made great

progress within the narrow limits of that kingdom ; but it is curious that not till what is generally termed the third Council of the Buddhistic Church, assembled at Rajagriha in 246 B.C., were any effective measures adopted for sending missionaries to proselytize in adjacent countries. These missions were sent to Cashmere, Candahar, and the Himalaya country in the north, to Maharashtra and other central and western districts, and to Ceylon, in the south ; and they obtained brilliant success, and raised Buddhism from a local to a world-wide importance. We can only allude to the great fact that at least three great religions, which have discarded the distinctions of race and caste from which they emerged,—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, have spread rapidly and with apparently inextinguishable life, to nations foreign and absolutely unknown to their founders. Buddhism, however, remained the religion chiefly of the Non-Aryan tribes of India, retreating from the banks of the Brahmanic Ganges, where it took its rise, southwards to the Dekkan and Ceylon.

It should be also considered how great an impulse was given by Buddhism to the arts. The earlier religion of the Hindus boasted a whole pantheon of gods, but required little art. The wooden images could be housed in small and homely temples ; and the Brahmanic ascetics delighted in the solitude of the forests and the slender shelter of wooden or mossy huts. The Buddhistic :asceticism, on the other hand, encouraged religious communities, governed by rules many centuries before St. Bernard and St. Francis, and erected Vihdras all over the country capable of accommodating very large religious communities. These were sometimes excavated out of the solid rock,—a form of building very common in the early ages of India,—and sometimes erected independently ; but the latter have, of course, been more exposed to the ravages of time and the demolition practised by persons in want of building materials, and are therefore now much rarer. Besides the Vihara or convent, there are two other chief kinds of Buddhistic buildings : the Tope and the Chaitya. The Chaitya is a temple or monument, whether funereal or not, of which the existing examples are mostly cut in the rock. In arrangement, and in architecture too, it strikingly resembles the Christian cathedrals ; as, for example, the Karli Cave-Chaitya, with its noble Gothic arches, recalls the nave of Canterbury. The Tope (properly sap; a mound, Sanskrit) is properly a tumulus erected over a burial-place. Those that were of soil only must have been soon obliterated ; but some were solid atone pyramids covered with a thick coating of lime, and these have generally remained perfect, except where the scarcity of building materials has made of them a stone quarry for the neighbourhood. The love of sacred relies grew up in Buddhism and characterized it quite as strongly as it did monastic Christianity ; and the immediate friends and followers of Buddha were patriarchs or saints. A tooth or a finger of Buddha or of one of these was a relic worthy to be deposited in a tope ; and these solid stone topes are mostly built for this purpose. The pyramid, or at least its covering of lime, is curvilinear, leaving a nearly flat space at the top, which appears to have supported a small pavilion of pillars surrounding an inner shrine ; and here the relic is supposed to have found its place.

The Council of 246 B.C. was held under the auspices of King Asoka, celebrated ity the Buddhists for his religious zeal ; and in the first fervour of that time the Tope of Sanchi is believed to have been erected—one of 84,000 traditionally ascribed to Asoka. This is the earliest date that can be assigned, since Asoka was the first great Buddhistic builder ; and it suggests an interesting question on the origin of Indian (at least Buddhistic) art. Was it indigenous, or borrowed from the only sufficiently honoured and artistic nation to have been employed by them—the Greeks ? Mr. Fergusson gives no very decided opinion on this subject, but speaks thus:— "The great fact that we learn from a study of the sculptures of the Topes at Sanchi and Amravati is, that the plastic arts followed the same law as those of construction. We can now assert with confidence that all the permanent forms of art arose in India after its inhabitants were brought into contact with Western civilization by the establishment of the Grecian kingdom of Bactria. It seems probable that such sculptures as we have of Asoka's reign were actually executed by Grecian or at least by Yavana artists ; but from his time to the present day we can now trace the rise and fall of Hindu art almost without a break. We can assist at its first rude but vigorous attempts. We can follow it till it reached its highest point of manipulative dexterity, in the fourth century, at Amravati. We see it maintaining itself nearly at the same level,—with some fluctuation, of course,—till the decline of Buddhism, and the irruption of the Mohammedans. From that point the history of Hindu art is too surely written in decay, and we can trace its gradual deterioration to the present day."

The circular dome of the Tope is surrounded, at an interval of about 10 feet, by a rail, as Mr. Fergusson terms it, about 11 feet high. This rail is constructed very like our field-palings, of upright posts, each with three holes, into which horizontal railings fit ; and a heavier horizontal railing at the top holds together and keeps in their places the upright posts. But all these parts are executed in a massive style in stone. Truly does Mr. Fergusson observe :

"Another circumstance of interest connected with the rail at Small

is that it is only the first step from the wooden form There is nothing lithio in its character. The three intermediate rails must, during construction, have been held in their places by some means not now apparent. The next pillar was pushed laterally to receive their end in the mortices prepared for them, and the top rail was then fitted on to a tenon on the top of the post (as at Stonehenge), so as to hold the post upright and in its place. All this is good carpentry, but it is very clumsy masonry."

The beginnings of stone building, then, in India as in Greece, were imitations of wooden constructions ; and we might accept this as evidence of the early age of the Tope at Sanchi, even if it were not strengthened by the general belief that before Asoka's time there were none but wooden buildings in India, and that he built largely in stone.

In later times, handsome gateways were inserted in the rail, four at each quarter of the circle. Even in them the rail principle was retained ; the gateposts being carried to a considerable height (in one of the gates of Sanchi about 27 feet), and crossed by three horizontal rails, commencing about 15 feet from the ground. But while the ordinary rail was destitute of orna

mentation, every part of these gates was covered with most elaborate carving—figures of elephants, lions, and men, and bas-reliefs

on every plain perpendicular surface, to the subjects of which a large part of this book is dedicated. All this indicates a much higher state of art than the tope or its rail ; and the gates of Sanchi are referred by Mr. Fergusson to about the year 20 A.D.

No relics have been found in the great Tope at Sanchi ; there is, however, a much smaller one close by, of somewhat later

architecture, but more interesting, as affording specimens of Buddhistic relics and exhibiting the concurrence of historic and archaeologic testimony:— "This one contained four steatite boxes, in which were placed relics of Kasyapa Gotra, 'missionary to the whole of the Himawanta,' and of Madhyama, both these names being mentioned in the Mahawanso, as missionaries sent by Asoka to the Himalaya country, thus confirming to the fullest possible extent the inscriptions on the box. Another contained relics of Mogalaputra, who was the head of the Buddhist Church at the third convocation, and altogether the Tope possessed memorials of ten of the principal passages of the Buddhist community during the reign of Asoka."

The great Sanchi Tope was previously known by a series of drawings by Lieutenant-Colonel Maisey, and also from General Cunningham's work on the Bhilsa Topes ; that of Amravati (near the mouth of the Kistna) it has been Mr. Fergusson's good fortune and great merit to reconstruct from broken slabs which had been stowed away in the coach-house of Fife House, and which he found fitted on to one another, until he had a whole pillar, then a rail, &c. Fortunately, the history of these forgotten and perishing antiquities was traceable, and it was found that they had been sent from Madras, and were portions of the celebrated Tope of Amravati. This had been surveyed and mapped by Colonel Mackenzie in 1817, so that it was possible to assign to each portion its position in the original buildings. The sculpture is very much more delicate and intricate than at Sanchi ; and while the origin from the wooden railings is still apparent under

the interpretation afforded by Sanchi, it almost disappears from view under the mass of new carvings that fill up every space and cover every plain surface. It is obvious from the most cursory glance at the photographs that Amravati must be much later than Sanchi ; and we are not surprised that Mr. Fergusson assigns its central building to about 200, its outer rail to after 300, and its inner rail to after 400 A.D.

We cannot say much of the second subject of the book—the worship exhibited in the bas-reliefs of the two Topes which represent the first triumph and the commencement of the decline of Buddhism in India. The Sanchi bas-reliefs show us very frequently a sacred tree, to which divine honours appear to be rendered. In most instances the subject might be dismissed with the remark that it is only the sacred fig, Pipal (ficus religiosa), which the Brahmans honour, but certainly do not deify ; but one instance is stronger, and cannot be explained away so easily. In this the tree itself is honoured with the protection of a chatta or umbrella such as generally indicates a royal personage, and is being covered with garlands by two Garudas, or flying angels ; while two female figures approach riding, on winged griffins, also to do honour. From these indications Mr. Fergusson infers an aboriginal Tree-worship. Distinguishing the Indian population into the Aryan (Hindu and Northern), Dravidian (Tamul and Southern), and Aboriginal (hill tribes scattered over the Dekkan), he thinks that this curious worship, which is acknowledged by none of the later or higher races, may be a relic of the oldest times and the oldest race, and that they could not relinquish it when Buddhism took hold of them. Having once got what looks like reliable evidence of tree-worship in India, Mr. Fergusson in his highly interesting and suggestive introductory essay hunts up traces of it in all the Western countries.

In Assyria, we have the tree which is so constantly repeated in their pictures. In Judea, we have the Ashera (' grove' in the English Bible) and the sacred trees planted by Abraham and others. In Greece, we have the sacred trees from which oracles were given forth—the oak of Dodona, the laurel of Delphi, and we may add, the fig of Athene on the Acropolis. Further west, the German forests, the Druidical oaks and mistletoe.

Along with this tree-worship is exhibited also a Serpent-worship. The serpent, sometimes with five heads, appears as the central figure in a little temple, adored by the bystanders. He also appears as the guardian angel of his votaries ; the king being honoured with a five-headed protector, while the other persons have only one-headed serpents. This worship is also attributed to the aboriginal people, and with some support even from the San

skrit, since the tribes who are called in Sanskrit Ndgas (serpents) may be called so from their religion. If the fact of serpent worship in India be well established, it is easily connected with analogous phenomena elsewhere. We have the legend of the Ser

pent in Paradise ; Moses' brazen serpent ; the serpent among the Greeks and Romans as the emblem of fEsculapius ; the serpent charming in Egypt ; and various serpents of greater or less Importance in the Norse mythology, and elsewhere.

The weakest point in his argument seems to us the lateness of the date for which Mr. Fergusson has found sculptured evidence

for these cults in India. The gateways at Sanchi, which contain the evidence, date only from the early part of the first century after Christ. We have evidence of some mythological ideas connected with the serpent in other countries from a far earlier times; from which we do not wish to deduce the actual earlier existence of this worship elsewhere, but only to say that the discovery of these Indian sculptures does not settle the question, and least of all proves India to be the source of the serpent worship or the serpent symbol to all other countries. And, as in the case of the Tree, so with the Serpent, Mr. Fergusson seems too ready to assume an actual worship, and so to deify too readily. Perhaps in the earliest forms of religion there may be no intermediate stages between man and God ; but certainly at the stages at which we know most religions, there are a multitude of things that are sacred without being divine. A Brahman looks with respect (or reverence) on his sacred fig-tree ; but he does not worship it. We speak, however, with the consciousness that further study may persuade us that there is truth in Mr. Fergusson's ideas even on this very speculative subject ; and it is only due to him to state that his ideas on subjects not connected with his profession are expressed in language of almost painful modesty, which strongly contrasts with the diligent study everywhere conspicuous. We hope, in any case, that this splendid volume, rich in matter as in beauty, will be so received as to afford the author some proof of public gratitude for the great and extraordinary labour he has bestowed, first on the restoration of the Amravati Tope, and then on the composition of the book itself.