Description
The author feels that few words are needed by way of preface to these volumes. Their purpose isto supply a complete and fully illustrated description of the famous group of Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, which have now been known to the world for more than a century, but of which only brief and inadequate accounts have, as yet, been published. The need of such a description has long been felt and often voiced; for, leaving aside other remains included in this group, the stupas of Sanchi, withtheir wealth of figural and decorative carvings, are by common consent the most valuable and instructive, as they are also the most imposing and best preserved, of all the monuments that early Buddhism has bequeathed to India. The idea of publishing these carvings in their entirety was first taken up by the Government of India nearly forty years ago and an admirable series of photographs was prepared for the purpose by the late Henry Cousens of the Archaeological Survey, nearly all of which have been utilized in the present volumes. From the size and weight of these volumes, it might perhaps be thought that the authors had aimed at an exhaustive treatment of their subject. This is far from beingthe case. The task which they set themselves was to furnish students with such essential data and explanations of these monuments as would prepare the way for their furtherstudy. Apart from their artistic, religious arid iconographic interest, the early sculpturesof Sanchi are an almost inexhaustible mine of information in regard to contemporary Indian civilization. The book is profusely illustrated to delineate the text properly.
