[Sidenote:  B.C. 289.]

A dagoba (from datu, a relic, and gabbhan, a shrine[1]) is a monument raised to preserve one of the relics of Gotama, which were collected after the cremation of his body at Kusinara, and it is candidly admitted in the Mahawanso that the intention in erecting them was to provide “objects to which offerings could be made."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Deha, “the body,” and gopa, “what preserves;” because they enshrine hair, teeth, nails, &c. of Buddha.—­WILSON’S Asiat.  Res. vol. xvii. p. 605.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xvii. p. 104.]

[Illustration:  A SMALL DAGOBA AT KANDY]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 289.]

Ceylon contains but one class of these structures, and boasts no tall monolithic pillars like the lats of Delhi and Allahabad, and no regularly built columns similar to the minars of Cabul; but the fragments of the bones of Gotama, and locks of his hair, are enclosed in enormous masses of hemispherical masonry, modifications of which may be traced in every Buddhist country of Asia, in the topes of Affghanistan and the Punjaub, in the pagodas of Pegu, and in the Boro-Buddor of Java.  Those of Ceylon consist of a bell-shaped dome of brick-work surmounted by a terminal or tee (generally in the form of a cube supporting a pointed spire), and resting on a square platform approached by flights of stone steps.  Those, the ruins of which have been explored in modern times, have been found to be almost solid, enclosing a hollow vessel of metal or stone which had once contained the relic, but of which the ornament alone and a few gems or discoloured pearls set in gold, are usually all that is now discoverable.

Their outline exhibits but little of ingenuity or of art, and their construction is only remarkable for the vast amount of labour which must necessarily have been expended upon them.  But, independently of this, the first dagoba erected at Anarajapoora, the Thuparamaya, which exists to the present day, “as nearly as may be in the same form in which it was originally designed, is possessed of a peculiar interest from the fact that it is in all probability the oldest architectural monument now extant in India."[1] It was raised by King Tissa, at the close of the third century before Christ, over the collar-bone of Buddha, which Mahindo had procured for the king.[2] In dimensions this monument is inferior to those built at a later period by the successors of Tissa, some of which are scarcely exceeded in diameter and altitude by the dome of St. Peter’s[3]; but in elegance of outline it immeasurably surpassed all the other dagobas, and the beauty of its design is still perceptible in its ruins after the lapse of two thousand years.

[Footnote 1:  FERGUSON’S Handbook of Architecture, b. i. c. iii. p. 43.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xvii. The Rajavali calls it the jaw-bone, p. 184.]